Samuel Taylor Coleridge the crypt and allow public access. Says vicar Kunle Ayodeji of the plans: “. . we hope that the whole crypt can be cleared as a space for meetings and other uses, which would also allow access to Coleridge’s cellar.” Coleridge is one of the most important figures in English poetry. His poems directly and deeply influenced all the major poets of the age. He was known by his contemporaries as a meticulous craftsman who was more rigorous in his careful reworking of his poems than any other poet, and Southey and Wordsworth were dependent on his professional advice. His
The White Doe of Rylstone the reviewers were at best lukewarm. The "Eclectic Review" did concede that "where he comes in contact with the ordinary sympathies of human nature, no living poet leaves so strongly the impression of a master genius", but Francis Jeffrey of the "Edinburgh Review", a long-time foe of the Lake Poets, thought it had "the merit of being the very worst poem we ever saw imprinted in a quarto volume". Coleridge, by then in a state of uneasy reconciliation with Wordsworth, quoted a passage from "The White Doe" in his "Biographia Literaria", praising its beauty and imaginative power. John Ruskin, in