Readers may be divided into four classes: 1) Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtied. 2) Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time. 3) Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read. 4) Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also

William Hazlitt a Unitarian minister's son was in the congregation having walked from Wem in order to hear him. These events cut cruelly into the hearts of old men: but the good Dr. To Coleridge the "cinque spotted spider" making its way upstream "by fits and starts" [Biographia Literaria] is not merely a comment on the intermittent nature of creativity imagination or spiritual progress but the journey and destination of his life.

Throughout his adult life Coleridge suffered from crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been speculated by some that he suffered from bipolar disorder a condition not identified during his lifetime. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria. He was treated for these concerns with laudanum which fostered a lifelong opium addiction.