Indeed, it sometimes seems that Coleridge is more famous as a failure than for anything he wrote. His loyal daughter, trying to explain his relatively small output, declared, "He could not bear to complete incompletely, which everybody else does." But it is E. M. Forster, writing a century after the poet's death, who offers what may be the best rejoinder to Coleridge's critics:

He seldom did what he or what others
   hoped, and posterity has marked him
   as her prey in consequence. She has
   never ceased to hold up her plump
   finger to him, and shake it and say
   that he has disappointed her. And
   he has acquiesced because he is a darling.
   But if one turns on posterity and
   says, "Well! what else do you want
   him to do? Would you rather have
   Comberbacke [sic] as he is or not at
   all?" she is apt to be silent or to
   change the conversation.