CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM & Date Due I *.i>-4l|l -FO^ J9S1 -^ft— 1954 HS T^^^^J35£nj .j ^^^mrsrBzl '^iliw^i^lW^.' -m^^JLS. ^m. -TKir Cornell University Library PR4483.C13 Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 3 1924 012 964 213 3 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 296421 f( (Breat Mntere.' EDITED BY ERIC S. ROBERTSON, M.A., PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATUftE AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF THE PUNJAB, LAHORE. ZJJ^E OF COLERIDGE. LIFE SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE BY HALL CAINE LONDON WALTER SCOTT 24 WARWICK LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW 1887 4 ±ii^2.ys" CORNELL ONiVERSITY VLiBRARV NOTE. THIS short biography has been compiled from many sources that cannot be mentioned here—table-talk, letters, diaries, memoirs, reminiscences, magazine articles, newspaper reports, and a few documents which have not hitherto been employed by any biographer of Coleridge. To two living Coleridgeans I must more particularly acknowledge my indebtedness—Mr. T. Ashe, and Mr. H. D. Traill. I have, however, been compelled to depart from these excellent authorities in my rendering of certain incidents of the first importance, and in my general reading of Coleridge's character as a man. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGB Testimonies to Coleridge's greatness ; he is born October 21, 1772, at Ottery St. Mary, wliere his father is vicar and schoolmaster ; his mother's character ; leaves Ottery on his father's death, and is admitted to Christ's Hospital July, 1782 ; not happy at school ; has thoughts of becoming a shoemaker, and then of entering the medical profession ; is a solitary lad ; reads poetry and metaphysics ; is flogged for infidelity ;' greatly influenced by Bowles' poetry ; begins to write himself; leaves Christ's Hospital in the autumn of 1790; Charles Lamb, his schoolfellow, describes him as he then was . ^ It CHAPTER II. Coleridge goes to Cambridge, February, 1791 ; talks much and ' is a democrat ; falls into debt ; runs away from Caimbridge an4, enlists in Dragoons, December, 1793 ; is discharged^ April, 1794 ; relations with his family much strained . 2f CHAPTER III. Coleridge returns to Cambridge ; greatly impressed with Words- worth's first book ; visits Oxford, and makes friends with Southey ; visits Bristol (1794) and falls in love with Sarah Fricker, to whose sister Southey is engaged ; literary society of Bristol j Coleridge, Southey, and Allen project new social system, to be known as " Fantisocrasy," and determine to go to America and establish it there ; mean- while Coleridge stays in London in society of Lamb, and " frequents Salutation and Cat " ; is married October 4, 1795 ; Fantisocrasy abandoned 34 ; 8 CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. PAGE press pro- Married life at Clevedon ; Coleridge writes for the ; jects Watchman; first number appears March I, 1796; of his first volume of poems appears in April ; thinks sorrows becoming a Unitarian minister ; Lamb's home ; Coleridge writes to him in his dark hour , . .47 CHAPTER V. career Coleridge meets Wordsworth ; sketch of latter's early ; description of Coleridge by Dorothy Wordsworth ; Cole- ridge and Wordsworth discuss poetry, and write " Lyrical Ballads"; origin of "Ancient Mariner," autumn 1797; Coleridge writes "Ancient Mariner," " Dark Ladie," first part of " Christabel," " Osorio," " Three Graves," " Fears in Solitude," " France, an Ode"; how "Kubla Khan" came to be written ; "Lyrical Ballads" published in 1798, and proves a failure ; temporary quarrel with Lamb . ., 59 CHAPTER VI. Material position not prosperous in 1798 ; Coleridge thinks again of Unitarian pulpit ; makes acquaintance of Harlitt at Shrewsbury; Hazlitt describes him; eloquence as a speaker; the brothers Wedgewood give Coleridge £,1^0 a year, and he goes to Germany with Wordsworth in summer of 1798 to learn German ; returns to England in " June, 1799, and translates Wallenstein " ; writes for Morning Post ; is offered share in Post and Courier, but declines; goes in summer of i8cx3 to live at Greta Hall, near Keswick 70 CHAPTER VII. " Situation of Greta Hall ; second part of Christabel " ; Cole- ridge lives in content ; visited by Lamb and his sister repartee, animal spirits, and exercise ; goes to Scotland, in summer of 1803, with Wordsworth and his sister ; returns home alone in bad health and spirits ... .80 CHAPTER VIIL Coleridge physics himself, and unconsciously takes to opium ; goes to Malta (April, 1804) chiefly for his health ; appointed secretary to the governor ; visits Rome ; leaves Rome for England August, 1806 ; a bad correspondent while away, and on bad terms with Southey and his own family on his ;; CONTENTS. 9 PAGE return ; opium the cause ; returns to Keswick ; misunder- standings with his wife ; takes refuge with Wordsworth " " note on noticeable man with large grey eyes . , 92 CHAPTER IX. De Quincey ; his relations with the Coleridges ; takes Mrs. Coleridge and children to Keswick ; where they lodge with Southey ; want of sympathy between Southey and Cole- ridge ; in winter 1806 Coleridge comes to London and resumes journalism ; lectures at Royal Institution goes ; ^^ to live with Wordsworth at Grasmere in summer 1808 position of Edinburgh Review towards Lake poets ; early in 1809 Coleridge starts the Friend; mismanaged and not a success ; more misunderstandings with his wife ; leaves her finally October, 18 10 ; comes to London penniless ; writes for Courier and lives miserably ; lectures again on Shake- speare and Milton; " Remorse" brought out at Drury Lane 1813 ; lectures at Bristol ; more than ever a slave to opium " " writes Biographia Literaria ; places himself under care of Dr. Gillman at Highgate early in 1816- . 105 CHAPTER X. Means taken for his cure; "Christabel" published, and un- " favourably received ; " Biographia Literaria published, and also unfavourably received ; "Zapolya"; "Sibylline " ' " Leaves ; poem of ' The Three Graves ; poems again unfavourably received ; Coleridge deeply injured ; growing spirituality of his character 127 CHAPTER XL Coleridge lectures again in 1818 on Shakespeare and literature ; again in pecuniary difficulties ; always a worker ; does hack work ; feels that his power is going from him ; tide of ad- versity turns somewhat ; in 1825 publishes " Aids to Re- flection," which is well received ; and obtains a pension from George IV. ; the house of the Gillmans a place of literary resort through presence of Coleridge ; names of men who gathered about him ; Thomas AUsop ; Coleridge's power as a talker ; Talfourd's description of him ; Carlyle's famous description ; works on in failing health ; writes his own epitaph ; writes to the Lambs from his 4eath-bed ; dies July 25, 1834 ; is buried at Highgate .... 138 LIFE OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. CHAPTER I. AM grieved," said Southey, " that you never met I are mere children to him, and yet all is palsied by a total want of moral strength." " He is like a lump of coal rich with gas," said Scott, "which lies expending itself in puffs and gleams, unless some shrewd body will clap it into a cast-iron box, and compel the compressed element to do itself justice." " He is the only person I ever knew, who answered to the idea of a man of genius," said Hazlitt ; " he is the only person from whom I ever learnt anything. His genius had . angelic wings, and fed on manna. He talked on for ever ; and you wished him to talk on for ever." "He is," said De Quincey, " the largest and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and most comprehensive that has yet existed among men." ! " Impiety to Shakespeare " cried Landor ; " treason to Milton ! I give up all the, rest, even Bacon. Certainly, since their day we have had nothing at all comparable with him. Byron and Scott were but as gun-flints to a 12 LIFE OF granite mountain ; Wordsworth has one angle of resemb- lance." Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on October 21, 1772, at Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire. His father combined the functions of vicar and schoolmaster of his native parish. The vicar had been twice married, and Samuel was the youngest of thirteen children. His mother is described as a homely, house-minding, un- imaginative woman, uneducated, out of sympathy with the accomplishments that were fashionable among ladies, resembling Martha in being over careful in many things. Her husband appears to have been a man of simple manners and amiable character, a little eccentric, a little pedantic, a little unmindful of immediate interests. Coleridge used to tell a story which he considered characteristic of both his parents. On one occasion the~~ old gentleman had to take a journey which would keep him from home three or four days. His wife packed his little trunk, and impressed upon him the necessity of putting on a clean shirt every day. He gave the required promise, and set out. On his return it was observed that he had not lost flesh during his absence. In due course his trunk was unpacked, and then it was discovered that all the linen had disappeared. The good man had strictly obeyed his wife's instructions by putting on a clean shirt every day, but had always forgotten to take off the old one. It seems to have been a constant habit of this rural clergyman to diversify his discourses with liberal quotations from the Hebrew, which he described as " the immediate language of the Holy Ghost." His rustic flock appear to have acquired a mysterious reverence for SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 13 this kind of teaching, and when the old vicar was gone, they thought lightly of a successor from whom no " immediate language " was ever heard. Recalling the half-conscious pedantry, and less than half-conscious eccentricity, of this gentle, learned, simple-hearted father, Coleridge would compare him with Parson Adams.