Coleridge | Page 2

Watchman-- Retirement to Stowey--Introduction to Wordsworth.
CHAPTER III.
[1797-1799.] Coleridge and Wordsworth--Publication of the Lyrical Ballads--The Ancient Mariner--The first part of Christabel--Decline of Coleridge's poetic impulse--Final review of his poetry.
CRITICAL PERIOD.
CHAPTER IV.
[1799-1800.] Visit to Germany--Life at Gottingen--Return--Explores the Lake country-- London--The Morning Post--Coleridge as a journalist--Retirement to Keswick.
CHAPTER V.
[1800-1804.] Life at Keswick--Second part of Christabel--Failing health--Resort to opium--The Ode to Dejection--Increasing restlessness--Visit to Malta.
CHAPTER VI.
[1806-1809.] Stay at Malta--Its injurious effects--Return to England--Meeting with De Quincey--Residence in London--First series of lectures.
CHAPTER VII.
[1809-1810.] Return to the Lakes--From Keswick to Grasmere--With Wordsworth at Allan Bank--The Friend--Quits the Lake country for ever.
CHAPTER VIII.
[1810-1816.] London again--Second recourse to journalism--The Courier articles-- The Shakespeare lectures--Production of Remorse--At Bristol again as lecturer--Residence at Calne--Increasing ill health and embarrassments --Retirement to Mr. Gillman's.
METAPHYSICAL AND THEOLOGICAL PERIOD.
CHAPTER IX.
[1816-1818.] Life at Highgate--Renewed activity--Publications and republications--The Biographia Literaria--The lectures of 1818--Coleridge as a Shakespearian critic.
CHAPTER X.
[1818-1834.] Closing years--Temporary renewal of money troubles--The Aids to Refection--Growing weakness-Visit to Germany with the Wordsworths-- Last illness and death.
CHAPTER XI.
Coleridge's metaphysics and theology--The Spiritual Philosophy of Mr. Green.
CHAPTER XII.
Coleridge's position in his later years--His discourse--His influence on contemporary thought--Final review of his intellectual work.
INDEX.

COLERIDGE.
CHAPTER I.
Birth, parentage, and early years--Christ's Hospital--Jesus College, Cambridge.
[1772-1794.]
On the 21st of October 1772 there was added to that roll of famous Englishmen of whom Devonshire boasts the parentage a new and not its least illustrious name. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE was the son of the Rev. John Coleridge, vicar of Ottery St. Mary in that county, and head master of Henry VIII.'s Free Grammar School in the same town. He was the youngest child of a large family. To the vicar, who had been twice married, his first wife had borne three children, and his second ten. Of these latter, however, one son died in infancy; four others, together with the only daughter of the family, passed away before Samuel had attained his majority; and thus only three of his brothers, James, Edward, and George Coleridge, outlived the eighteenth century. The first of these three survivors became the father of Henry Nelson Coleridge--who married his cousin Sara, the poet's accomplished daughter, and edited his uncle's posthumous works--and of the late Mr. Justice Coleridge, himself the father of the present Lord Chief-Justice of England. Edward, the second of the three, went, like his eldest brother William, to Pembroke College, Oxford, and like him took orders; and George, also educated at the same college and for the same profession, succeeded eventually to his father's benefice and school. The vicar himself appears from all accounts to have been a man of more mark than most rural incumbents, and probably than a good many schoolmasters of his day. He was a Hebrew scholar of some eminence, and the compiler of a Latin grammar, in which, among other innovations designed to simplify the study of the language for "boys just initiated," he proposed to substitute for the name of "ablative" that of "quale-quare-quidditive case." The mixture of amiable simplicity and not unamiable pedantry to which this stroke of nomenclature testifies was further illustrated in his practice of diversifying his sermons to his village flock with Hebrew quotations, which he always commended to their attention as "the immediate language of the Holy Ghost"--a practice which exposed his successor, himself a learned man, to the complaint of his rustic parishioners, that for all his erudition no "immediate language of the Holy Ghost" was ever to be heard from him. On the whole the Rev. John Coleridge appears to have been a gentle and kindly eccentric, whose combination of qualities may have well entitled him to be compared, as his famous son was wont in after- life to compare him, to Parson Adams.
Of the poet's mother we know little; but it is to be gathered from such information as has come to us through Mr. Gillman from Coleridge himself that, though reputed to have been a "woman of strong mind," she exercised less influence on the formation of her son's mind and character than has frequently been the case with the not remarkable mothers of remarkable men. "She was," says Mr. Gillman, "an uneducated woman, industriously attentive to her household duties, and devoted to the care of her husband and family. Possessing none even of the most common accomplishments of her day, she had neither love nor sympathy for the display of them in others. She disliked, as she would say, your 'harpsichord ladies,' and strongly tried to impress upon her sons their little value" (that is, of the accomplishments) "in their choice of wives." And the final judgment upon her is that she was "a very good woman, though, like Martha, over careful in many things; very ambitious for the advancement of her sons in life, but wanting, perhaps, that flow of heart which her husband possessed so largely." Of Coleridge's