During the summer of 1796, the English poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) recorded in his notebooks elaborate plans for his future literary endeavors, which included the following:
Essay on Rev. William Bowles (poet, author of Sonnets, “Written chiefly on Picturesque Spots, During a Tour”)
Essay (“Strictures”) on William Godwin (political philosopher, author of Political Justice)
Essay on Pantisocracy (the self-governing pastoral social model of which Coleridge was an advocate)
Essay on Jakob Boehme (German mystic and Gnostic philosopher, author of The Life Which Is Above Sense)
Essay on the “Reveries” of Emanuel Swedenborg (Swedish scientist, philosopher and theologian)
In common with much of Coleridge’s oeuvre, none were commenced, let alone completed. Considering his flair for visionary works that remained visions twenty years later in his autobiographical Literaria Biographia, Coleridge explained: “By what I have effected, am I to be judged by my fellow men, what I could have done, is a question for my own conscience.”