COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, was born at Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire, of which parish his father was the vicar, on the 21st of October 1772. He was the youngest of a numerous family, and became an orphan at the age of nine. Owing to the straitened circum • stances of his family, he was sent to be educated at Christ's Hospital, where the late Charles Lamb was among his contemporaries. Here he made very great progress in classical knowledge, as may be inferred from the fact that he had, before his fifteenth year, translated the hymns of Synesiva into English Anacreontics. His choice of these hymns for translation is explained by his having, even at that early age, plunged deeply into metaphysics. Speaking of himself in the 'Bio graphia Literaria' (vol. i. p. 15), he says :—" At a very premature age, even before my fifteenth year, I had bewildered myself in metaphysics and in theological controversy. Nothing else pleased me. History and particular facts lost all iutereat in my mind. Poetry itself, yea, novels and romances, became insipid to me." From such pursuits he was however weaned for a time, while yet at Christ's Hospital, by the perusal of Mr. Bowles's ' Sonnets,' which had then just been pub lished. The powerful influence which these sonnets exercised upon his mind is described at length iu the first chapter of the 'Biographia Literaria.' In 1791 Coleridge entered Jeans College, Cambridge. While at the university he did not turn his attention at all to mathematics, but obtained a prize for a Greek ode, and distinguished himself in a con test for the Craven scholarship, in which Dr. Butler, afterwards bishop of Lichfield, was the successful candidate. Coleridge did not stay to take a degree. During the second year of his residence at Cambridge, he suddenly left the university in a fit of despondency, occasioned, it is said, by unrequited love; and after wandering for a while about the streets of London in extreme pecuniary distress, terminated this adventure by enlisting in the 15th Dragoons, under the assumed name of Comberbatch. One of the officers, accidentally discover ing his classical acquirements, was led to conclude that Comber batch was something more than he professed. Questioning him in a friendly manner, and eliciting his real history, he communi cated Coleridge's situation to his friends, who forthwith effected his discharge.
Coleridge now betook himself to Bristol, where be joined with three other young and clever men, like himself of ardent poetic tem peraments, and imbued with strong but vague ideas of universal brotherhood—Southey and a friend, George Burnet from Oxford, and Lovell, a young quaker. They soon formed a scheme for emigratiog to the banks of the Susquehanna in North America, in order there to form a social colony, the main principle of which was to be a commu nity of goods, and where selfishness was to be proscribed. But the friends found that money would be required to establish this 'pantis ocracy; as they termed it, and Coleridge had soon not enough to furnish him with daily subsistence. He had, with the other pantiace cratista, been introduced to Joseph Cottle, a benevolent bookseller at Bristol, and himself a writer of verses; and now, in his emergency, Cottle not only rendered him pecuniary assistance, but, on finding that be had written enough poems to make up a small volume, readily offered him 30 guineas for them, just five times the largest sum be had found a London bookseller willing to give. The social colony was soon dropped. Coleridge quarrelled first with Lovell, and then with Southey, and the whole scheme fell quickly into abeyance. Cottle, after paying iu advance the 30 guineas, continued to furnish the young poet with other sums on the strength of promised poems, as his neces sities became urgent; but it was long before the publisher received any of the poetry. The volume was published however at last (1794), and other literary schemes were projected. One, from which Coleridge anticipated great results, was a periodical entitled the 'Watchman,' which was to advocate liberal opinions ; and he made a tour through the northern manufacturing towns for the purpose of canvassing for subscribers. An account of this tour, amusing on the whole, is con tained in the 10th chapter of the Biographia Literaria.' The periodi cal, owing partly to a want of punctuality in its appearance, and partly to the fact that its opinions were not those which its supporters had expected, did not live beyond the 9th number.