COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR (1772-18341. An English poet, philosopher, and critic. He was born at Ottery Saint :Mary, Devonshire, and educated at Christ's Hospital, where Charles Lamb was a school-fellow. He was an omnivorous reader, even as a boy, and gaining access to a li brary through a chance acquaintance, lie read "right through the catalogue." Be soon gained a remarkable knowledge of Greek, and before he was fifteen plunged boldly into the sea of metaphysics. The sonnets of W. L. Bowles, which fell into his hands at this time, gave him his first impulse toward poetry. In 1701 he entered Jesus College, Cambridge. At the university his whole mind was given to classics, and he obtained a prize for a Greek ode. During his second year there, in a. fit of despondency, he went up to London and en listed in the Fifteenth Dragoons, under the name of Silas Tomkyn Comberback, or Cumberbatch remaining faithful to the initials S. T. C., which were afterwards to be so familiar among the readers of his period. His identity was dis covered through an accident. and his friends intervened to procure his discharge. He re turned to Cambridge in 1794, but never took a degree. During a visit to Oxford he became acquainted with Southey. and in the same year, after a trip through Wales. visited him at Bris tol. The two young men and some of their friends now formed a scheme for emigrating to the United States, where, on the banks of the Susquehanna (the melody of the name seems to have been one of the inducements). they were to found a colony where the laws of equality and fraternity were to prevail, and the Goblen Age was to be ushered in. They, with Words worth and other generous youths of the time, were deeply impressed with the proclamation of liberal principles in the French Revolution, though they afterwards drew back, alarmed by its excesses. some into extreme Toryism. The establishment of their ideal 'Pantisocracy' was delayed by the lack of capital; and a year or two later the dream faded away.
At Bristol, Coleridge became acquainted with his future wife, Sara Fricker, to whose sister Southey was engaged. Joseph Cottle, a bookseller in Bristol, had offered Coleridge thirty guineas for a volume of his poems, and promised him a guinea and a half for every hundred lines he should write after finishing it. On this prospect
he married in October, 1795, and settled in a cottage at Clevedon. After many delays, his volume of Jurcnile Poems appeared in April, 1790. His earlier work is all in the stereotyped style of the eighteenth century, and shows little trace of the powers which were to make him famous. In the early part of 1796 lie began the publication of a weekly review, the Watehninn, devoted to literature and politics, but nut with little success and abandoned the undertaking after the tenth issue. In the winter of 1796 he settled at Nether Stowey, near Bridgewater, whither Wordsworth removed in the following year. He was freed from the material cares of life by the generosity of Charles Lloyd, the son of a Birmingham banker, who had become a de voted disciple of Coleridge, and Thomas Poole. who conferred on him a small annuity. At Nether Stowey, inspired perhaps partly by the beautiful scenery, and still more by the strength ening companionship of his friend, he composed his finest poems, including the "Ancient and the first part of "Christabel," and "Kukla. Khan," though the two latter were not published until eighteen years afterwards, The two authors had many discussions on the principles of their art, which resulted in the publication, in 1798. of their epoch-making Lyrical Ballads. This little hook, published anonymously. though a total failure at the time, was decisive in its influence on the future of nineteenth-century poetry, free ing it finally from the conventional trammels which had loffg bound it. The work of the two poets is singularly complementary, Coleridge treating supernatural subjects in such a way as to give a strong impression of their reality, while Wordsworth so handled the simplest themes as to disclose unsuspected elements of mytery and awe. Coleridge's contribution to the Ballads com prised the Ancient Mariner, the Nightingale, and two scenes from his play Osorio. In the edition of 1800 there was added Introduction to the Talc of the Drink Ladle.