SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE was born on the 21st of October, 1772, youngest
of many children of the Rev. John Coleridge, Vicar of the Parish and Head
Master of the Grammar School of Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire. One of
the poet’s elder brothers was the grandfather of Lord Chief Justice
Coleridge. Coleridge’s mother was a notable housewife, as was needful in
the mother of ten children, who had three more transmitted to her from
her husband’s former wife. Coleridge’s father was a kindly and learned
man, little sophisticated, and distinguishing himself now and then by
comical acts of what is called absence of mind. Charles Buller,
afterwards a judge, was one of his boys, and, when her husband’s life
seemed to be failing, had promised what help he could give to the anxious
wife. When his father died, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was but eight years
old, and Charles Buller obtained for him his presentation to Christ’s
Hospital. Coleridge’s mind delighted in far wandering over the fields of
thought; from a boy he took intense delight in dreamy speculation on the
mysteries that lie around the life of man. From a boy also he proved his
subtleties of thought through what Charles Lamb called the “deep and
sweet intonations” of such speech as could come only from a poet.
From the Charterhouse, Coleridge went to Jesus College, Cambridge, where
he soon won a gold medal for a Greek ode on the Slave Trade, but through
indolence he slipped into a hundred pounds of debt. The stir of the
French Revolution was then quickening young minds into bold freedom of
speculation, resentment against tyranny of custom, and yearning for a
higher life in this world. Old opinions that familiarity had made to the
multitude conventional were for that reason distrusted and discarded.
Coleridge no longer held his religious faith in the form taught by his
father. He could not sign the Thirty-nine Articles, and felt his career
closed at the University. His debt also pressed upon him heavily. After
a long vacation with a burdened mind, in which one pleasant day of picnic
gave occasion to his “Songs of the Pixies,” Coleridge went back to
Cambridge. But soon afterwards he threw all up in despair. He resolved
to become lost to his friends, and find some place where he could earn in
obscurity bare daily bread. He came to London, and then enlisted as a
private in the 15th Light Dragoons. After four months he was discovered,
his discharge was obtained, and he went back to Cambridge.
But he had no career before him there, for his religious opinions then
excluded belief in the doctrine of the Trinity, and the Universities were
not then open to Dissenters. A visit to Oxford brought him into relation
with Robert Southey and fellow-students of Southey’s who were also
touched with revolutionary ardour. Coleridge joined with them in the
resolve to leave the Old World and create a better in the New, as
founders of a Pantisocracy—an all-equal government—on the banks of the
Susquehannah. They would need wives, and Southey knew of three good
liberal-minded sisters at Bristol, one of them designed for himself; her
two sisters he recommended for as far as they would go. The chief
promoters of the Pantisocracy removed to Bristol, and one of the three
sisters, Sarah Fricker, was married by Coleridge; Southey marrying
another, Edith; while another young Oxford enthusiast married the
remaining Miss Fricker; and so they made three pairs of future patriarchs
and matriarchs.
Nothing came of the Pantisocracy, for want of money to pay fares to the
New World. Coleridge supported himself by giving lectures, and in 1797
published Poems. They included his “Religious Musings,” which contain
expression of his fervent revolutionary hopes. Then he planned a weekly
paper, the _Watchman_, that was to carry the lantern of philosophic
truth, and call the hour for those who cared about the duties of the day.
When only three or four hundred subscribers had been got together in
Bristol, Coleridge resolved to travel from town to town in search of
subscriptions. Wherever he went his eloquence prevailed; and he came
back with a very large subscription list. But the power of close daily
work, by which alone Coleridge could carry out such a design, was not in
him, and the _Watchman_ only reached to its tenth number.
Then Coleridge settled at Nether Stowey, by the Bristol Channel, partly
for convenience of neighbourhood to Thomas Poole, from whom he could
borrow at need. He had there also a yearly allowance from the Wedgwoods
of Etruria, who had a strong faith in his future. From Nether Stowey,
Coleridge walked over to make friends with Wordsworth at Racedown, and
the friendship there established caused Wordsworth and his sister to
remove to the neighbourhood of Nether Stowey. Out of the relations with
Wordsworth thus established came Coleridge’s best achievements as a poet,
the “Ancient Mariner” and “Christabel.” The “Ancient Mariner” was
finished, and was the chief part of Coleridge’s contribution to the
“Lyrical Ballads,” which the two friends published in 1798.
“Christabel,” being unfinished, was left unpublished until 1816.
With help from the Wedgwoods, Coleridge went abroad with Wordsworth and
his sister, left them at Hamburg, and during fourteen months increased
his familiarity with German. He came back in the late summer of 1799,
full of enthusiasm for Schiller’s last great work, his _Wallenstein_,
which Coleridge had seen acted. The _Camp_ had been first acted at
Weimar on the 18th of October, 1798; the _Piccolomini_ on the 30th of
January, 1799; and _Wallenstein’s Death_ on the 10th of the next
following April. Coleridge, under the influence of fresh enthusiasm,
rapidly completed for Messrs. Longman his translation of _Wallenstein’s
Death_ into an English poem of the highest mark.
Then followed a weakening of health. Coleridge earned fitfully as
journalist; settled at Keswick; found his tendency to rheumatism
increased by the damp of the Lake Country; took a remedy containing
opium, and began to acquire that taste for the excitement of opium which
ruined the next years of his life. He was invited to Malta, for the
benefit of the climate, by his friend, John Stoddart, who was there. At
Malta he made the acquaintance of the governor, Sir Alexander Ball, whose
worth he celebrates in essays of the _Friend_, which are included under
the title of “A Sailor’s Fortune” in this little volume. For a short
time he acted as secretary to Sir Alexander, then returned to the Lakes
and planned his journal, the _Friend_, published at Penrith, of which the
first number appeared on the 1st of August, 1809, the twenty-eighth and
last towards the end of March, 1810.
Next followed six years of struggle to live as journalist and lecturer in
London and elsewhere, while the habit of taking opium grew year by year,
and at last advanced from two quarts of laudanum a week to a pint a day.
Coleridge put himself under voluntary restraint for a time with a Mr.
Morgan at Calne. Finally he placed himself, in April, 1816—the year of
the publication of “Christabel”—with a surgeon at Highgate, Mr. Gillman,
under whose friendly care he was restored to himself, and in whose house
he died on the 25th of July, 1834. It was during this calm autumn of his
life that Coleridge, turning wholly to the higher speculations on
philosophy and religion upon which his mind was chiefly fixed, a revert
to the Church, and often actively antagonist to the opinions he had held
for a few years, wrote, his “Lay Sermons,” and his “Biographia
Literaria,” and arranged also a volume of Essays of the _Friend_. He
lectured on Shakespeare, wrote “Aids to Reflection,” and showed how his
doubts were set at rest in these “Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit,”
which were first published in 1840, after their writer’s death.