Coleridge was born in Devonshire in 1772. He attended the college in Cambridge but he never graduated because he was too actively involved in the ideals of the French Revolution, but also because he was an heavy drinker. He was such an idealist that, together with Southey he arrived to imagine an ideal society called Pantisocracy which should have been realized in America. It would have been formed by young people and the main characteristic would have been  the abolition of private property. His dream was never realized.

In 1796  he met Wordsworth and thanks to their friendship, they decided to write together the Lyrical Ballads. Their friendship was determinant for Coleridge’s production but it also marked a dramatic change in Coleridge’s ideas. Wordsworth though at the beginning a great supporter of the French Revolution, had changed his mind because of its transformation in a period of terror and violence. So he had become a conservative and his influence on  Coleridge was so important that he did the same.

The two poets travelled abroad together, then they settled in the Lake District. Here Coleridge started to be involved in journalism but, because of love sufferings, he turned again to alcohol and opium in order to find inspiration, to find comfort but also to ease the pain for his rheumatism.

In the years between 1808 and 1818, he gave lectures (=lezioni, conferenze) on Shakespeare and they are worth to be remembered because they represented the beginning of Shakespeare’s criticism.

In Coleridge Imagination plays an important role and it is divided into: primary and secondary imagination.

Primary imagination is a faculty that all human beings have. It is used unconsciously and thanks to it all the people can perceive material reality and give order to the chaos of the world.

Secondary imagination is the faculty of the poet, of the artist. He uses it consciously in order to re-create the world. The artist has both forms of imagination. This idea represented a break with the past because while in the past the artist was seen as a man who was able to represent reality as it actually was, now the artist was a man who re-created a new reality personal and original.

So making a comparison and finding analogies between Wordsworth and Coleridge we can say that:

The primary imagination of Coleridge corresponds to the “intuition” of Wordsworth: it is in fact an unconscious and spontaneous overflow of feelings.

The secondary imagination is, on the contrary, the kindred emotion of Wordsworth. The poet re-creates the original emotion, he re-creates the world according to his will.

Coleridge talked also of “Fancy”: it was the ability of the poet in using poetical devices(alliteration, rhymes, assonances etc) to express his ideas.

Coleridge’s vision of nature is very different from the one of Wordsworth: the latter had in fact a pantheistic vision of nature where man was part of the natural world and God could be identified with Nature itself; the former, a very religious man,  had adopted a neo-Platonic vision: there was the perfect world of Ideas and our reality was the mere reflection of this perfect world. Finally he didn’t consider nature as a refuge or as a source of consolation but a place of symbols, of important abstract meanings that he used in his poems.

Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in London, England, on April 23, 1775. His father was a barber. His mother died when he was very young. The boy received little schooling. His father taught him how to read, but this was the extent of his education except for the study of art. By the age of 13 he was making drawings at home and exhibiting them in his father's shop window for sale.

Turner was 15 years old when he received a rare honor--one of his paintings was exhibited at the Royal Academy. By the time he was 18 he had his own studio. Before he was 20 print sellers were eagerly buying his drawings for reproduction.

He quickly achieved a fine reputation and was elected an associate of the Royal Academy. In 1802, when he was only 27, Turner became a full member. He then began traveling widely in Europe.

Venice was the inspiration of some of Turner's finest work. Wherever he visited he studied the effects of sea and sky in every kind of weather. His early training had been as a topographic draftsman. With the years, however, he developed a painting technique all his own. Instead of merely recording factually what he saw, Turner translated scenes into a light-filled expression of his own romantic feelings.

As he grew older Turner became an eccentric. Except for his father, with whom he lived for 30 years, he had no close friends. He allowed no one to watch him while he painted. He gave up attending the meetings of the academy. None of his acquaintances saw him for months at a time. Turner continued to travel but always alone. He still held exhibitions, but he usually refused to sell his paintings. When he was persuaded to sell one, he was dejected for days.

In 1850 he exhibited for the last time. One day Turner disappeared from his house. His housekeeper, after a search of many months, found him hiding in a house in Chelsea. He had been ill for a long time. He died the following day--Dec. 19, 1851.

Turner left a large fortune that he hoped would be used to support what he called "decaying artists." His collection of paintings was bequeathed to his country. At his request he was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.

Although known for his oils, Turner is regarded as one of the founders of English watercolor landscape painting. Some of his most famous works are Calais Pier, Dido Building Carthage, Rain, Steam and Speed, Burial at Sea, and The Grand Canal, Venice.