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Coleridge's Book of Moonlight

Thomas Vogler

My head-knockings, therefore, have to be real ones, solid and substantial, with

nothing sophistical or imaginary about them.
—COLERIDGE

To this End, the Philosopher's Way in all Ages has been by erecting certain
Edifices in the Air . . .
—SWIFT

I would build that d o m e in air . . .

—COLERIDGE

What have we MOONITES done?

—STERNE

Like most of my essay, the title presumes to be nothing more than an

image thrown out in an attempt to change our conventional way of read­
ing the Biographia Literaria. I offer it as an image of the work itself, and
introduce the phrase with three quotations. First, from page 46 of Blake's
Notebook:

Delicate Hands 8c Heads will never appear

While Titian's &c as in the Book of Moonlight p 5
This statement lies there enigmatically on the page, more teasing even
than Nietzsche's umbrella, until we find what I take to be a gloss on it in
Wallace Stevens' Comedian as the Letter C:
The book of moonlight is not written yet
Nor half begun, but when it is, leave room
For Crispin . . . .
Leave room, therefore, in that unwritten book
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