...second, figurative meaning of fragment include the following one from Coleridge's The Friend (1809-10): "However irregular and desultory his talk, there is method in the fragments.'" With a view to literary analysis, the lexical definition of "fragment" given by the OED is usefully...

...novelty of his remarks ; not any unusual interest of facts communicated by him," etc., etc. * * * " It is the unpremeditated and evidently habitual arrangement...principles, or to evolve them from their psychological processes ; it is impossible that a man should be thus disciplined without acquiring the power of thinking...

...Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb, etc., (EJ Morley, ed., Manchester University Press, 1922), p. 134. that he then intends to communicate. However irregular and desultory his talk, there is method in the fragments."10 Coleridge has more to say on the narrower subject of diction. The central proposition,...