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COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR (1772-1834)

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Originally appearing in Volume V06, Page 681 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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COLERIDGE, See also:SAMUEL See also:TAYLOR (1772-1834) , See also:English poet and philosopher, was See also:born on the 21st of See also:October 1772, at his See also:father's vicarage of Ottery St See also:Mary's, See also:Devonshire. His father, the Rev. See also:John Coleridge (1719–1781), was a See also:man of some See also:mark. He was known for his See also:great scholarship, simplicity of See also:character, and affectionate See also:interest in the pupils of the See also:grammar school, of which he was appointed See also:master a few months before becoming See also:vicar of the See also:parish (1760), reigning in both capacities till his See also:death. He had married twice. The poet was the youngest See also:child of his second wife, See also:Anne Bowdon (d. 1809), a woman of great See also:good sense, and anxiously ambitious for the success of her sons. On the death of his father, a presentation to See also:Christ's See also:Hospital was procured for Coleridge by the See also:judge, See also:Sir See also:Francis See also:Buller, an old See also:pupil of his father's. He had already begun to give See also:evidence of a powerful See also:imagination, and he has described in a See also:letter to his valued friend, Tom See also:Poole, the pernicious effect which the admiration of an See also:uncle and his circle of See also:friends had upon him at this See also:period. For eight years he continued at Christ's Hospital. Of these school-days See also:Charles See also:Lamb has given delightful glimpses in the Essays of See also:Edict. The headmaster, See also:Bowyer (as he was called, though his name was See also:Boyer), was a severe disciplinarian, but respected by his pupils.

See also:

Middleton, after-wards known as a See also:Greek See also:scholar, and See also:bishop of See also:Calcutta, reported Coleridge to Bowyer as a boy who read See also:Virgil for amusement, and from that See also:time Bowyer began to See also:notice him and encouraged his See also:reading. Some compositions in English See also:poetry, written at sixteen, and not without a See also:touch of See also:genius, give evidence of the See also:influence which See also:Bowles, whose poems were then in See also:vogue, had over his mind at this time. Before he See also:left school his constitutional delicacy of See also:frame, increased by See also:swimming the New See also:River in his clothes, began to give him serious discomfort. In See also:February 1791 he was entered at Jesus See also:College, See also:Cambridge. A school-See also:fellow who followed him to the university has described in glowing terms evenings in his rooms, " when See also:Aeschylus, and See also:Plato, and See also:Thucydides were pushed aside, with a See also:pile of lexicons and the like, to discuss the See also:pamphlets of the See also:day. Ever and anon a pamphlet issued from the See also:pen of See also:Burke. There was no need of having the See also:book before us;—Coleridge had read it in the See also:morning, and in the evening he would repeat whole pages verbatim." See also:William Frend, a fellow of Jesus, accused of See also:sedition and See also:Unitarianism, was at this time tried and expelled from Cambridge. Coleridge had imbibed his sentiments, and joined the ranks of his partisans. He See also:grew discontented with university See also:life, and in 1793, pressed by See also:debt, went to See also:London. Perhaps he was also influenced by his See also:passion for Mary See also:Evans, the See also:sister of one of his school-See also:fellows. A poem in the Morning See also:Chronicle brought him a See also:guinea, and when that was spent he enlisted in the 15th Dragoons under the name of See also:Silas Tomkyn Comberbache. One of the See also:officers of the See also:dragoon See also:regiment, finding a Latin See also:sentence inscribed on a See also:wall, discovered the See also:condition of the very awkward recruit.

Shortly afterwards an old school-fellow (G. L. Tuckett) heard of his whereabouts, and by the intervention of his See also:

brother,See also:Captain See also:James Coleridge, his See also:discharge was procured. He returned for a See also:short time to Cambridge, but quitted the university without a degree in 1794. In the same See also:year he visited See also:Oxford, and after a short tour in See also:Wales went to See also:Bristol, where he met See also:Southey. The See also:French Revolution had stirred the mind of Southey to its depths. Coleridge received with rapture his new friend's See also:scheme of Pantisocracy. On the See also:banks of the Susquehanna was to be founded a brotherly community, where selfishness was to be extinguished, and the virtues were to reign supreme. No funds were forthcoming, and in 1795, to the chagrin of Coleridge, the scheme was dropped. In 1794 The Fall of See also:Robespierre, of which Coleridge wrote the first See also:act and Southey the other two, appeared. At Bristol Coleridge formed the acquaintance of See also:Joseph Cottle, the book-seller, who offered him See also:thirty guineas for a See also:volume of poems. In October of 1795 Coleridge married Sarah Fricker, and took up his See also:residence at See also:Clevedon on the Bristol Channel.

A few See also:

weeks afterwards Southey married a sister of Mrs Coleridge, and on the same day quitted See also:England for See also:Portugal. Coleridge began to lecture in Bristol on politics and See also:religion. He embodied the first two lectures in his first See also:prose publication, Conciones ad Populuvi (1795). The book contained much invective against See also:Pitt, and in after life Coleridge declared that, with this exception, and a few pages involving philosophical tenets which he afterwards rejected, there was little or nothing he desired to retract. The first volume of Poems was published by Cottle See also:early in 1796. Coleridge projected a periodical called The Watchman, and in 1796 undertook a See also:journey, well described in the Bibgraphia. Literaria, to enlist subscribers. The Watchman had a brief life of two months,,but at this time Coleridge began to think of becoming a Unitarian preacher, and abandoning literature for ever. See also:Hazlitt has recorded his very favourable impression of a remarkable See also:sermon delivered at See also:Shrewsbury; but there are other accounts of Coleridge's See also:preaching not so enthusiastic. In the summer of 1795 he met for the first time the brother poet with whose name his own will be for ever associated. See also:Wordsworth and his sister had established them-selves at Racedown in the See also:Dorsetshire hills, and here Coleridge visited them in 1797. There are few things in See also:literary See also:history more remarkable than this friendship.

The gifted Dorothy Wordsworth described Coleridge as " thin and See also:

pale, the See also:lower See also:part of the See also:face not good, wide mouth, thick lips, not very good See also:teeth, longish, loose, See also:half-See also:curling, rough, See also:black See also:hair,"—but all was forgotten in the magic See also:charm of his utterance. Wordsworth, who declared, " The only wonderful man I ever knew was Coleridge," seems at once to have desired to see more of his new friend. He and his sister removed in See also:July 1797 to Alfoxden, near Nether Stowey, to be in Coleridge's neighbourhood, and in the most delightful and unrestrained intercourse the friends spent many happy days. It was the delight of each one to communicate to the other the productions of his mind, and the creative See also:faculty of both poets was now at its best. One evening, at Watchett on the See also:British Channel, The See also:Ancient Mariner first took shape. Coleridge was anxious to embody a See also:dream of a friend, and the See also:suggestion of the See also:shooting of the See also:albatross came from Wordsworth, who gained the See also:idea from Shelvocke's Voyage (1726). A See also:joint volume was planned. Wordsworth was to show the real poetry that lies hidden in See also:commonplace subjects, while Coleridge was to treat supernatural subiects to illustrate the See also:common emotions of humanity. From this sprang the Lyrical See also:Ballads, to which Coleridge contributed The Ancient Mariner, the See also:Nightingale and two scenes from See also:Osorio, and after much cogitation the book was published in 1998 at Bristol by Cottle, to whose reminiscences, often indulging too much in dejail, we owe the See also:account of this remarkable time. A second edition of the Lyrical Ballads in 1800 included another poem by Coleridge—Love, to which subsequently the sub-See also:title was given of An Introduction to the See also:Tale of the Dark Ladle. To the Stowey period belong also the tragedy of Osorio (afterwards known as Remorse), Kubla See also:Khan and the first part of Christabel. In 1798 an See also:annuity, granted him by the See also:brothers See also:Wedgwood, led Coleridge to abandon his reluctantly formed intention of becoming a Unitarian See also:minister.

For many years he had desired to see the See also:

continent, and in See also:September 1798, in See also:company with Wordsworth and his sister, he left England for See also:Hamburg. Satyrane's Letters (republished in Biog. Lit. 1817) give an account of the tour. A new period in Coleridge's life now began. He soon left the Wordsworths to spend four months at Ratzeburg, whence he removed to See also:Gottingen to attend lectures. A great intellectual See also:movement had begun in See also:Germany. Coleridge was soon in the full whirl of excitement. He learnt much from See also:Blumenbach and See also:Eichhorn, and took interest in all that was going on around him. During his stay of nine months in Germany, he made himself master of the See also:language to such purpose that the See also:translation of Wallenstein—his first piece of literary See also:work after his return to England—was actually accomplished in six weeks. It was published in 1800, and, although it failed to make any impression on the See also:general public, it became at once prized by See also:Scott and others as it deserved. It is See also:matter for regret that a See also:request to Coleridge that he should undertake to translate See also:Faust never received serious See also:attention from him.

During these years See also:

Cole-See also:ridge wrote many newspaper articles and some poems,. among them " See also:Fire, See also:Famine and Slaughter," for the Morning See also:Post (See also:January 8, 1798). He had vehemently opposed Pitt's policy, but a See also:change came over his way of thought, and he found himself separated;from See also:Fox on the question of a struggle with See also:Napoleon. He had lost his admiration for the Revolutionists, as his " See also:Ode to See also:France " shows (Morning Post, See also:April 16, 1798). Like many other Whigs, he See also:felt that all questions of domestic policy must at a time of See also:European peril be postponed. From this time, however, his value for the ordered See also:liberty of constitutional See also:government increased; and though never exactly to be found among the ranks of old-fashioned Constitutionalists, during the See also:remainder of his life he kept steadily in view the principles which received their full exposition in his well-known work on See also:Church and See also:State. In the year 1800 Coleridge left London for the Lakes. Here in that year he wrote the second part of Christabel. In 1803 Southey became a joint lodger with Coleridge at Greta See also:Hall, See also:Keswick, of which in 1812 Southey became See also:sole See also:tenant and occupier. In 18o1 begins the period of Coleridge's life during which, in spite of the evidence of work shown in his compositions, he sank more and more under the dominion of See also:opium, in which he may have first indulged at Cambridge. Few things are so sad to read as the letters in which he ,details the consequences of his transgression. He was occasionally seen in London during the first years of the See also:century, and wherever he appeared he was the delight of admiring circles. He toured in See also:Scotland with the Wordsworths in 1803, visited See also:Malta in 1804, when for ten months he acted as secretary to the See also:governor, and stayed nearly eight months at See also:Naples and See also:Rome in 18o5-18o6.

In Rome he received a hint that his articles in the Morning Post had been brought to Napoleon's notice, and he made the voyage from See also:

Leghorn in an See also:American See also:ship. On a visit to See also:Somersetshire in 1807 he met De Quincey for the first time, and the younger man's admiration was shown by a See also:gift of £300, " from an unknown friend." In 1809 he started a See also:magazine called The Friend, which continued only for eight months. At the same time Coleridge began to contribute to the See also:Courier. In 18o8 he lectured at the Royal Institution, but with little success, andtwo years later he gave his lectures on See also:Shakespeare and other poets. These lectures attracted great attention and were followed by two other See also:series. In 1812 his income from the Wedgwoods was reduced, and he settled the remainder on his wife. His friends were generous in assisting him with See also:money. Eventually See also:Mackintosh obtained a See also:grant of £roo a year for him in 1824 during the lifetime of See also:George IV., as one of the royal associates of the Society of Literature, and at different times he received help principally from See also:Stuart, the publisher, Poole, See also:Sotheby, Sir George See also:Beaumont, See also:Byron and Wordsworth, while his See also:children shared Southey's See also:home at Keswick. But between 1812 and 1817 Coleridge made a good See also:deal by his work, and was able to send money to his wife in addition to the annuity she received. The tragedy of Remorse was produced at See also:Drury See also:Lane in 1813, and met with considerable success. Three years after this, having failed to conquer the opium See also:habit, he deter-See also:mined to enter the See also:family of Mr James Gillman, who lived at See also:Highgate. The letter in which he discloses his misery to this See also:kind and thoughtful man gives a real insight into his character.

Under judicious treatment the See also:

hour of mastery at last arrived. The See also:shore was reached, but the See also:vessel had been miserably shattered in its passage through the rocks. For the See also:rest of his life he hardly ever left his home at Highgate. During his residence there, Christabel, written many years before, and known to a favoured few, was first published in a volume with Kubla Khan and the Pains of See also:Sleep in 1816. He read widely and wisely, in poetry, See also:philosophy and divinity. In 1816 and the following year, he gave his See also:Lay Sermons to the See also:world. Sibylline Leaves appeared in 1817; the Biographia Literaria and a revised edition of The Friend soon followed. Seven years afterwards his most popular prose work—The See also:Aids to Reflection—first appeared. His last publication, in 183o, was the work on Church and State. It was not till 184o that his Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, by far his most seminal work, was posthumously published. In 1833 he appeared at the See also:meeting of the British Association at Cambridge, but he died in the following year (25th of July 1834), and was buried in the See also:churchyard See also:close to the See also:house of Mr Gillman, where he had enjoyed every See also:consolation which friendship and love could render. Coleridge died in the communion of the Church of England, of whose polity and teaching he had been for many years a loving admirer.

An interesting letter to his See also:

god-child, written twelve days before his death, sums up his spiritual experience in a most touching See also:form. Of the extraordinary influence which he exercised in conversation it is impossible to speak fully here. Many of the most remarkable among the younger men of that period resorted to Highgate as to the See also:shrine of an See also:oracle, and although one or two disparaging judgments, such as that of See also:Carlyle, have been recorded, there can be no doubt that since Samuel See also:Johnson there had been no such See also:power in England. His See also:nephew, See also:Henry See also:Nelson Coleridge, gathered together some specimens of the Table Talk of the few last years. But remarkable as these are for the breadth of sympathy and extent of reading disclosed, they will hardly convey the impressions furnished in a dramatic form, as in See also:Boswell's great work. Four volumes of Literary Remains were published after his death, and these, along with the chapters on the poetry of Wordsworth in the Biographia Literaria, may be said to exhibit the full range of Coleridge's power as a critic of poetry. In this region he stands supreme. With regard to the See also:preface, which contains Wordsworth's theory, Coleridge has honestly expressed his dissent:—" With many parts of this preface, in the sense attributed to them, and which the words undoubtedly seem to authorize, I never concurred; but, on the contrary, objected to them as erroneous in principle, and contradictory (in See also:appearance at least) both to other parts of the same preface, and to the author's own practice in the greater number of the poems themselves." This See also:disclaimer of perfect agreement renders the remaining portion of what he says more valuable. Coleridge was in England the creator of that higher See also:criticism which had already in Germany accomplished so much in the hands of See also:Lessing and See also:Goethe. It is enough to refer here to the fragmentary series of his Shakespearian criticisms, containing evidence of the truest insight, and a marvellous appreciation of the judicial " sanity " which raises the greatest name in literature far above even the highest of the poets who approached him. As a poet Coieridge's own See also:place is safe. His See also:niche in the great See also:gallery of English poets is secure.

Of no one can it be more emphatically said that at his highest he was " of imagination all compact." He does not possess the fiery See also:

pulse and humaneness of See also:Burns, but the exquisite perfection of his See also:metre and the subtle See also:alliance of his thought and expression must always secure for him the warmest admiration of true lovers of poetic See also:art. In his early poems may be found traces of the fierce struggle of his youth. The most remarkable is the Monody on the Death of See also:Chatterton and the Religious Musings. In what may be called his second period, the ode entitled France, considered by See also:Shelley the finest in the language, is most memorable. The whole soul of the poet is reflected in the Ode to Dejection. The well-known lines " O See also:Lady! we receive but what we give, And in our life alone does nature live; Ours is her See also:wedding garment, ours her See also:shroud," with the passage which follows, contain more vividly, perhaps, than anything which Coleridge has written, the expression of the shaping and colouring See also:function which he assigns, in the Biographia Literaria, to imagination. Christabel and the Ancient Mariner have so completely taken See also:possession of the highest place, that it is needless to do more than allude to them. The super-natural has never received such treatment as in these two wonderful productions of his genius, and though the first of them remains a torso, it is the loveliest torso in the gallery of English literature. Although Coleridge had, for many years before his death, almost entirely forsaken poetry, the few fragments of work which remain, written in later years, show little trace of weakness, although they are wanting in the unearthly See also:melody which imparts such a charm to Kubla Khan, Love and Youth and See also:Age. (G. D. B.; H.

CH.) In the latter part of his life, and for the See also:

generation which followed, Coleridge was ranked by many See also:young English church-men of liberal views as the greatest religious thinker of their time. As Carlyle has told in his Life of See also:Sterling, the poet's distinction, in the eyes of the younger churchmen with philosophic interests, lay in his having recovered and preserved his See also:Christian faith after having passed through periods of See also:rationalism and Unitarianism, and faced the full results of See also:German criticism and philosophy. His opinions, however, were at all periods somewhat mutable, and it would be difficult to state them in any form that would hold good for the whole even of his later writings. He was, indeed, too receptive of thought impressions of all kinds to be a consistent systematizer. As a schoolboy, by his own account, he was for a time a Voltairean, on the strength of a perusal of the Philosophical See also:Dictionary. At college, as we have seen, he turned Unitarian. From that position he gradually moved towards See also:pantheism, a way of thought to which he had shown remarkable leanings when, as a schoolboy, he discoursed of Neo-See also:Platonism to Charles Lamb, or—if we may See also:trust his recollection—translated the See also:hymns of See also:Synesius. Early in life, too, he met with the doctrines of See also:Jacob Behmen, of whom, in the Biographia Literaria, he speaks with See also:affection and gratitude as having given him vital philosophic guidance. Between pantheism and Unitarianism he seems to have balanced till his thirty-fifth year, always tending towards the former in virtue of the recoil from " See also:anthropomorphism " which originally took him to Unitarianism. In 1796, when he named his first child See also:David See also:Hartley, but would not have him baptized, he held by the " Christian See also:materialism " of the writer in question, whom in his Religious Musings he terms " wisest of mortal kind." When, again, he met Wordsworth in 1797, the two poets freely and sympathetically discussed See also:Spinoza, for whom Coleridge always retained a deep admiration; and when in 1798 he gave up his Unitarian preaching, he named his second child See also:Berkeley, signifying a new See also:allegiance, but still without accepting Christian See also:rites otherwise than passively. Shortly afterwards he went to Germany, where he began to study See also:Kant, and was much captivated by Lessing. In the Biographia he avows that the writings of Kant " more than any other work, at once invigorated and disciplined my understanding "; yet the gist of his estimate there is that Kant left his See also:system undeveloped, as regards his idea of the See also:Noumenon, for fear of orthodox persecution—a See also:judgment hardly compatible with any See also:assumption of Kant's Christian orthodoxy, which was notoriously inadequate.

But after his stay at Malta, Coleridge announced to his friends that he had given up his " Socinianism " (of which ever afterwards he spoke with asperity), professing a return to Christian faith, though still putting on it a mystical construction, as when he told Crabb See also:

Robinson that " Jesus Christ was a Platonic philosopher." At this See also:stage he was much in sympathy with the historicorationalistic criticism of the Old Testament, as carried on in Germany; giving his assent, for instance, to the naturalistic See also:doctrine of See also:Schiller's See also:Die Sendung See also:Moses. From about 1810 onwards, however, he openly professed Christian orthodoxy, while privately indicating views which cannot be so described. And even his published speculations were such as to draw from J. H. See also:Newman a protest that they took " a liberty which no Christian can tolerate," and carried him to " conclusions which were often See also:heathen rather than Christian." This would apply to some of his positions concerning the See also:Logos and the Trinity. After giving up Unitarianism he claimed that from the first he had been a Trinitarian on Platonic lines; and some of his latest statements of the doctrine are certainly more pantheistic than Christian. The explanation seems to be that while on Christian grounds he repeatedly denounced pantheism as being in all its forms See also:equivalent to See also:atheism, he was latterly much swayed by the thought of See also:Schelling in the pantheistic direction which was natural to him. To these conflicting tendencies were probably due his self-contradictions on the problem of See also:original See also:sin and the conflicting claims of feeling and See also:reason. It would seem that, in the extreme spiritual vicissitudes of his life, conscious alternately of See also:personal weakness and of the largest speculative grasp, he at times threw himself entirely on the consolations of evangelical faith, and at others reconstructed the cosmos for himself in terms of Neo-Platonism and the philosophy of Schelling. So great were his See also:variations even in his latter years, that he could speak to his friend Allsop in a highly latitudinarian sense, declaring that in See also:Christianity " the miracles are supererogatory," and that " the See also:law of God and the great principles of the Christian religion would have been the same had Christ never assumed humanity." From Schelling, whom he praised as having See also:developed Kant where See also:Fichte failed to do so, he borrowed much and often, not only in the metaphysical sections of the Biographia but in his aesthetic lectures, and further in the See also:cosmic speculations of the See also:posthumous Theory of Life. On the first See also:score he makes but an equivocal See also:acknowledgment, claiming to have thought on Schelling's lines before reading him; but it has been shown by See also:Hamilton and See also:Ferrier that besides transcribing much from Schelling without avowal he silently appropriated the learning of Maass on philosophical history. In other directions he laid under See also:tribute See also:Herder and Lessing; yet all the while he See also:cast severe imputations of See also:plagiarism upon See also:Hume and others.

His own plagiarisms were doubtless facilitated by the physiological effects of opium. Inasmuch as he finally followed in philosophy the mainly poetical or theosophic movement of Schelling, which satisfied neither the logical needs appealed to by See also:

Hegel nor the new demand for naturalistic See also:induction, Coleridge, after arousing a great amount of philosophic interest in his own See also:country in the second See also:quarter of the century, has ceased to " make a school." Thus his significance in intellectual history remains that of a great stimulator. He undoubtedly did much to deepen and liberalize Christian thought in England, his influence being specially marked in the school of F. D. See also:Maurice, and in the lives of men like John Sterling. And even his many borrowings from the German were assimilated with a rare power of development, which See also:bore See also:fruit not only in a widening of the See also:field of English philosophy but in the larger scientific thought of a later generation. (J. M. Ro.) Of Coleridge's four children, two (Hartley and Sara) are separately noticed. His second child, Berkeley, died when a baby. The third, See also:Derwent (1800-1883), a distinguished scholar and author, was master of See also:Helston school, See also:Cornwall (1825-1841), first See also:principal of St Mark's College, See also:Chelsea (1841-1864), and See also:rector of See also:Hanwell (1864–188o); and his daughter Christabel (b. 1843) and son Ernest Hartley (b.

1846) both became well known in the world of letters, the former as a novelist, the latter as a biographer and critic. After Coleridge's death several of his wcrks were edited by his nephew, Henry Nelson Coleridge, the See also:

husband of Sara, the poet's only daughter. In 1847 Sara Coleridge published the Biographia Literaria, enriched with annotations and See also:biographical supplement from her own pen. Three volumes of See also:political writings, entitled Essays on his Own Times, were also published by Sara Coleridge in 185o. The See also:standard life of Coleridge is that by J. Dykes See also:Campbell (1894) ; his letters were edited by E. H. Coleridge.

End of Article: COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR (1772-1834)

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