Coleridge, who had hecome a Unitarian at Cambridge. preached frequently during this period in the chapels of that body, and had thoughts of becoming a regular minister. To deliver him from this necessity, two brothers named Wedgwood settled on him an annuity of 1150, and this enabled hint to carry out the long-cherished plan of going to Germany to study. In September. 1798. he sailed for Ham burg with Wordsworth, and after acquiring the language went to GiAtingen, remaining. in all, nearly a year. This was a period of vast im portance in his development, and he said himself that there was no time of his life to which he looked back with such unmingled satisfaction. He came under the influence of what Shairp calls "an impulse, the most orighml, the most far-reaching. and the most profound which Europe has seen since the Boformation." The first result of his new knowledge of German thought was not in philosophy, but in poetry; on his return to Eng land he published his noble translation of Schil ler's 11V/cosh-in. Ile also contributed fitfully to the Morning Post, to the end of 1802. Before that time, however, he had settled at Greta Hall. Keswick, in the Lake district, attracted by the proximity of Wordsworth and Southey. who were to share with him the designation of Lake Poets, given in derision by the Edinburgh Review. Here, in 1800, he wrote the second part of "Christabel." Driven from the north by rheuma tism in 1804, he went to the Mediterranean, act ing for some months as secretary to the Governor of Malta, and spending several more at Rome.
On his return to England. he delivered some lectures on poetry and the fine arts at. the Royal Institution, London, and began the publication of Thr Friend, a periodical which contained too much abstruse philosophy to be popular, and lived less than a year. During part of 1811 he was connected with the Courier, contributing articles of a general political nature. In 1813 his play Remorse was successfully produced at the Drury Lane Theatre and helped to relieve his distressed financial condition. His enslavement to opium, which he had begun to take as a relief from his rheumatic pains, was now increasing, and in De Quincey's ()pinion "killed him as a poet." His constitutional indolence and dislike for steady application completed his unfitness for meeting the demands of life. Roving between London and the Lakes, where his family was gen erally under Southey's care, he spent a number of baffled and disappointed years.
From 1816 until his death. July 25, 1834, he lived in the house of Mr. Gillman, at Highgate in London, where he received the kindest and most judicious care, and at least to some extent mastered his craving for opium. Though he pro jected far more than his habits ever allowed him to accomplish, lie left as the result of those years no inconsiderable bulk of critical and philosophic writing; the Biographia Literaria (1817) is especially noteworthy. It was, however, as a talker, discoursing with an inexhaustible flow of ideas to admiring visitors, that he shone most brilliantly in his latter years. Talk was his best medium for showing himself to others. Ilis style in prose writing was cumbrous and his matter involved. In reading his written work of this class, we feel instinctively that the critic was greater than the criticism.
No man had ever appeared in England who united in so eminent a degree the three func tions of critic, philosopher. and poet. With all his defects. Coleridge must he recognized as being, in Mill's phrase, the greatest "seminal mind" of his time. The present generation does not. real
ize how much it owes to him in many fields of thought—how many impulses. still powerful. he set in motion. In criticism, he was the father of modern Shakespearean study. laying, in a few pregnant sentences, a broad basis for criticism, in contrast to the narrow canons of Johnson and the eighteenth-century school. His Aids to Re firctioh and some of his other theological writ ing inspired Maurice and Stanley and the 'Broad Church Movement' as a whole. His aphorisms are often decisive—it is to him we owe what are now commonplapes, the distinction between genius and talent, fancy and imagination. wit and humor. Detached phrases of his are still upon the lips of many who do not remember their source—like "Every man is born either an Aristotelian or a Platonist," or "I'rose is words in their best order; poetry is the best words in the best order." In philosophy, originally a fervent disciple of Hartley (q.y.), who had been a member of his own college, he passed on through the theories of Berkeley and Leibnitz; and, after falling under the influence of the Ger man and other mystics, came to a point where, he says, the works of Kant took hold of him as with a giant's hand. He adopted and based all his teachings on Kant's distinction between the Understanding and the Reason; and while he has not as a philosopher left any complete sys tem, yet he rendered excellent service by his in sistence, in such a period as his, on the reality and preeminence of the spiritual verities. Ilis introduction into England of German literature and philosophy, so powerfully seconded by Car lyle, is alone enough to give him a high place among the forces that determined the course of nineteenth-century thought among English-speak ing people. But it is as a poet that he must hold the highest rank. though no other poet has ever attained such a place on so small a volume of first-class work. "Christabel," "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." and "Kubla Khan" (which so good a judge as Swinburne has called "for absolute melody and splendor the first poem in the language•) cannot be put in any but the highest class. Moreover, his influence on his successors must be taken into account. The Pre-Ilaphaelite Movement, which Theodore \Vatts-Dunton defines as "the Renaissance of the Spirit of Wonder in poetry and art," owes more to him than to any other English poet. One can only regret that so much was wasted of the greatest powers which for generations had been granted to any Englishman.
Consult: the Complete Works. ed. by Shedd (7 vols., New York, 1884) ; his Poetical ed. by Campbell (London. 1893) Poems. a fac simil• reproduction of the proof and MSS. of some of the poems. ed. Campbell (London. 1899) Lyrical Ballads, centenary edition by Hutchinson ( London. 1898) ; Anima Poeta', from his unpub lished note-books by his grandson (London. 1895) ; lives by Gillman (London, 1838), Traill ("English Men of Letters" series, London, 1884), Dykes (London. 1894), and Hall Caine (London, 1887) ; Early Recollections (London, 1837) ; Brandi. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and die englische Romantik (Berlin. 1886: English trans lation by Lady Eastlake, London, 1887) ; and a thorough and luminous discussion in Shairp. Studies in Poetry and Philosophy (Edinburgh. 1868). Consult also: E. H. Coleridge. Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (London, 1805) : and Beers, English Romanticism in time Nineteenth Century (Ne• York. 1000),