"Clime of the unforgotten brave! Those waters blue that round you lave, These scenes, their story not unknown, Arise, and make again your own."-The Giaour. Coleridge, 1772-1834 Biographical Outline.-Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born October 21, 1772, at Ottery St. Mary; father vicar of the town and master of the public grammar school, a man of unusual learning; Coleridge is the youngest of ten children; he is remarkably precocious and imaginative as a child, and says of himself later, "I never thought as a child and never used the language of a child;" he reads the "Arabian Nights" before he is five, and, on the death of his father, in 1781, obtains, through Sir Francis Buller, a presentation to Christ's Hospital, a school that he enters in July, 1782; here he forms an intimate friendship with Charles Lamb, which lasts during Lamb's lifetime; afterward, in his "Essays of Elia," Lamb writes of Coleridge as "the inspired charity boy," who expounded Plotinus, recited Homer in the Greek, and read Virgil for pleasure; before his fifteenth year Coleridge translates eight Greek hymns into English Anacreontics; on receiving, by accident, a subscription to a loan library, he "skulks out" of school and reads "right through the catalogue;" at first he proposes to become a physician, aids his brother in hospital operations, and memorizes a whole Latin medical dictionary; before his fifteenth year he exchanges medicine for metaphysics; Voltaire "seduces him into infidelity, out of which he was flogged by the head-master of Christ's Hospital"-a chastisement that Coleridge afterward called "the only just flogging I ever received; he is recalled from metaphysics to poetry by falling in love with the sister of a school-mate and by reading the sonnets of Bowles, which he repeatedly transcribes as presents to his friends; while at Christ's Hospital he impairs his health by imprudent exposure and improper and scanty food, but, in spite of spending many months in the sick-ward, he rises to the head of the school, which he leaves in September, 1790. Having been appointed to an exhibition worth £40 a year at Jesus College, Cambridge, Coleridge begins residence. there as a sizar in October, 1791, and becomes a pensioner in the following November; in 1792 he wins a medal offered for the best Greek ode; as he is prevented from competing for the highest honors of the university by his ignorance of mathematics, his reading becomes desultory, and he grows fond of society, in which he shines as a conversationalist; during 1793 he loses the favor of the college authorities through his liberal political views, and becomes depressed by debt; late in 1793 he runs away from Cambridge and reaches London, where he sells a poem to the Morning Chronicle for a guinea; soon afterward he publishes in the Chronicle a series of "Sonnets on Eminent Characters; then he enlists in the dragoons under the name of Comberback, and is sent to Reading to be drilled with his regiment; here he fails as a horseman, but wins the favor of his comrades by writing their letters and nursing them in the hospital; an accident leads to his recog nition and discharge from the army in April, 1794; he writes a penitent letter to his brothers, and through their aid he returns, April 12, 1794, to Cambridge, where he is admonished in the presence of the fellows; in June, 1794, while visiting a friend at Oxford, he meets Southey; soon afterward he makes a pedestrian tour through North Wales, where he meets his sweetheart, Mary Evans, at Wrexham; this tour is afterward described by Coleridge and his companion in a small volume; returning by way of Bristol, he again meets Southey there, and on short acquaintance he becomes engaged to Sara Fricker, daughter of a Bristol tradesman, to whose sister Southey was already engaged; while at Bristol Coleridge joins with Southey and others in developing a socialistic scheme called by them " Pantisocracy;" they were to marry, emi grate to the banks of the Susquehanna, and establish there a modern Utopia; about this time Coleridge collaborates with Southey in writing "The Fall of Robespierre," which was published as the work of Coleridge in 1794. Coleridge leaves Cambridge without a degree late in 1794, and first visits London, where he renews his association with Lamb; Southey recalls him to his fiancée at Bristol, where Coleridge meets Joseph Cottle, a young bookseller, who lends him money to pay for his lodgings and those of the other "Pantisocratians" at 48 College Street; Cottle also offers Coleridge thirty guineas for a volume of poems; during the following six months Coleridge increases his income somewhat by giving at least eighteen public lectures, mainly on political subjects; although the volume of poems is not completed, Cottle offers him one and one-half guineas for every hundred lines written after the completion of the volume; with this assurance of support, the poet promptly marries Sara Fricker, on October 4, 1795, ten days before the marriage of her sister to Southey; the Coleridges settle at once at a small one-story cottage at Clevedon, and Southey leaves his bride for a voyage to Portugal, whence he writes to Coleridge that the scheme of " Pantisocracy" must be abandoned. Coleridge's first volume of poems, including three sonnets by Lamb, is published by Cottle at Bristol in April, 1796; he now proposes to establish a new journal, and makes a tour of Northern England in search of subscribers; he secures over a thousand subscribers, establishes The Watchman, an eightday paper, issues just five editions, and then abandons the venture on the ground that it does not pay expenses; meantime Coleridge has become an occasional preacher at Unitarian chapels, and considers seriously the idea of becoming a regular minister of that sect; while at Birmingham, during his tour in search for subscribers, he had met a young banker, Charles Lloyd, who was so fascinated by Coleridge's conversation that he gave up his business, and soon afterward came to Bristol to live with the poet and to contribute largely to his support; in the winter of 1796-97 Coleridge and Lloyd remove to a small house at Nether Stowey, near Bridgewater, where Coleridge's friend, Thomas Poole, raises a subscription sufficient to provide the poet with a small annuity; a second edition of Coleridge's poems, with some by Lloyd and Lamb, appears in 1797; Lamb and his sister visit Coleridge at Nether Stowey in June, 1797, and soon afterward Wordsworth settles at Alfoxden, near Nether Stowcy, in order to be near Coleridge; while at Nether Stowey Coleridge writes "Osorio," afterward called "Remorse," and refuses thirty guineas offered by Cottle for the drama because Coleridge hopes to have it produced on the stage, but Sheridan ignores it; during 1797 and 1798 Wordsworth and Coleridge collaborate in writing the "Lyrical Ballads," which are published in September, 1798; Coleridge's principal contribution to the volume was "The Ancient Mariner," to which Wordsworth contributed a few lines; during 1797 Coleridge also writes the first parts of "Christabel" and "Kubla Khan," although these poems were not published till eighteen years afterward; the volume "Lyrical Ballads" was a financial failure, and when Cottle sold out to the Longmans, a little later, the copyright was listed as having no value; Lloyd leaves Coleridge during 1798, and the poet renews, for a time, his former practice of preaching in Unitarian pulpits; about this time his friend Josiah Wedgwood offers Coleridge an annuity of £150 on condition that he will decline a proffered pastorship at Shrewsbury and devote himself henceforth to philosophy; after some hesitation Coleridge accepts the offer, and thereupon severs his connection with the Unitarian body. In September, 1798, he starts for Germany with Wordsworth and Wordsworth's sister, Coleridge's expenses being borne by Wedgwood; the poets visit Klopstock at Hamburg, and when the Wordsworths go to Goslar, Coleridge settles at Ratzeburg, where he studies German diligently with a |