Samuel T. Coleridge

Copyright Michael D. Robbins 2005

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Biography
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to Volume 3 Table of Contents

Samuel Taylor Coleridge—Poet:

October 21, 1772, 10:45 AM LMT, Ottery, St. Mary, England.  (Source: LMR references Arthur Blackwell who quotes Table Talk of S.T. Coleridge.Same from Leo in How to Judge a Nativity) Died (of aortic disease) July, 25, 1834, Highgate, London.

(Ascendant, Sagittarius; MC in Libra, with Mercury in Libra conjunct both the MC and the NN, also in Libra; Moon in Leo; Venus in Virgo conjunct both Neptune and Saturn, both also in Virgo; Mars in Cancer conjunct the Vertex; Jupiter in Aquarius; Uranus in Taurus; Pluto in Capricorn)

A man may devote himself to death and destruction to save a nation; but no nation will devote itself to death and destruction to save mankind.
A man's as old as he's feeling. A woman as old as she looks.

A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.

Advice is like snow - the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper in sinks into the mind.

All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.

All thoughts, all passions, all delights Whatever stirs this mortal frame All are but ministers of Love And feed His sacred flame.

An orphan's curse would drag to hell, a spirit from on high; but oh! more horrible than that, is a curse in a dead man's eye!

And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin is pride that apes humility.

And though thou notest from thy safe recess old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air love them for what they are; nor love them less, because to thee they are not what they were.

As I live and am a man, this is an unexaggerated tale - my dreams become the substances of my life.

As it must not, so genius cannot be lawless; for it is even that constitutes its genius - the power of acting creatively under laws of its own origination.

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.

Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.

Friendship is a sheltering tree.

General principles... are to the facts as the root and sap of a tree are to its leaves.

Good and bad men are less than they seem.

Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends.

He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.

How inimitably graceful children are in general before they learn to dance!

How like herrings and onions our vices are in the morning after we have committed them.

I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance.

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order.

If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake - Aye, what then?

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in failure.

Its body brevity, and wit its soul.

My case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement of the Volition, and not of the intellectual faculties.

No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.

No one does anything from a single motive.

Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm.

O pure of heart! Thou needest not ask of me what this strong music in the soul may be!

Oh sleep! It is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole.

Our own heart, and not other men's opinions form our true honor.

People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.

Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from.

Poor little Foal of an oppressed race! I love the languid patience of thy face.

Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic.

So for the mother's sake the child was dear, and dearer was the mother for the child.

Some men are like musical glasses; to produce their finest tones you must keep them wet.

Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.

Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole.

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.

That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions - the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment.

The Language of the Dream/Night is contrary to that of Waking/Day. It is a language of Iimages and Sensations, the various dialects of which are far less different from each other, than the various Day-Languages of Nations.

The most happy marriage I can picture or imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.

The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation, are - 1. Security to possessors; 2. Facility to acquirers; and, 3. Hope to all.

To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illuminate only the track it has passed.

To see him act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.

To sentence a man of true genius, to the drudgery of a school is to put a racehorse on a treadmill.

What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul.

Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have not the time nor means to get more.

Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

Samuel Taylor "Estese" Coleridge
(1772-1834)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Ottery St. Mary on 21 October 1772, youngest of the ten children of John Coleridge, a minister, and Ann Bowden Coleridge. He was often bullied as a child by Frank, the next youngest, and his mother was apparently a bit distant, so it was no surprise when Col1 ran away at age seven. He was found early the next morning by a neighbor, but the events of his night outdoors frequently showed up in imagery in his poems (and his nightmares) as well as the notebooks he kept for most of his adult life. John Coleridge died in 1781, and Col was sent away to a London charity school for children of the clergy. He stayed with his maternal uncle2. Col was really quite a prodigy; he devoured books and eventually earned first place in his class.

His brother Luke died in 1790 and his only sister Ann in 1791, inspiring Col to write "Monody," one of his first poems, in which he likens himself to Thomas Chatterton3. Col was very ill around this time and probably took laudanum for the illness, thus beginning his lifelong opium addiction. He went to Cambridge in 1791, poor in spite of some scholarships, and rapidly worked himself into debt with opium, alcohol, and women. He had started to hope for poetic fame, but by 1793, he owed about £150 and was desperate. So he joined the army.

His family was irate when they finally found out. He'd used the improbable name of Silas Tomkyn Comberbache and had escaped being sent to fight in France because he could only barely ride a horse. His brother George finally arranged his discharge by reason of insanity and got him back to Cambridge. It was there that he met Robert Southey, and they became instant friends. Both political radicals4, they began planning Pantisocracy, their own socio-political movement5. Robert was already engaged to a woman named Edith Fricker, and introduced Col to her sister Sara. Within a few weeks, Col was willing to marry Sara, which he did in October of 1795. Robert and Col had started arguing over Pantisocracy, and finally Robert agreed to his family's wish that he become a lawyer instead of emigrating. Robert's best gift to posterity was the fact that he introduced Col to William Wordsworth. It was Col's misfortune that he met Sara6 Hutchinson through William, who would eventually marry Sara H.'s sister. Col fell in love with this Sara almost immediately, putting an extra strain on an already iffy marriage.

With his marriage, Col tried very hard to become responsible7. He scraped together a fairly respectable income of £120 per year, through tutoring and gifts from his admirers8. His Poems, published in 1797, was well-received and it looked like he was on the fast track to fame. He already had one son, David Hartley Coleridge, born September 1796, followed by Berkeley Coleridge in May 17989. In 1798, the famous Lyrical Ballads was published, the collaboration between Col and William which pretty much created the Romantic movement. The authors didn't realize this at the time, of course; they went to Germany with William's sister Dorothy. Col's son Berkeley died while he was away; the baby had been given the brand-new smallpox vaccination and died of a reaction to it. Col, as was typical of him, returned home slowly so as not to have to deal openly with Berkeley's death, and got little work done.

After a string of illnesses brought on by the damp climate of the Lake Country, Col turned to newspaper work in 1801 to try and recover financially. He was convinced he would die soon, and insured his life shortly after the birth of his daughter Sara10 in 1802. In 1804, he left for Malta in hopes of a cure from the warm climate. Here, he spied a bit for his majesty11, who wanted Malta as a British port, though officially Col was the temporary Public Secretary. Col had also hoped for a release from his addiction, but this was not to be. He returned to England in 1806, and, plucking up his courage, asked for a legal separation from his wife. Though Sara was furious, the separation happened. Col's paranoia and mood swings, brought on by the continual opium use, were getting worse, and he was hardly capable of sustained work12. His friendship with William was all but nonexistent, and Col was again writing newspaper articles to earn a living, further supplemented by various lecture courses13. Most of his remaining work was non-fiction, except for a play or two, and included such works as Biographia Literaria(1817), a work on nearly everything14.

He was still haunted by his failure to break free from opium, however, and to this end he moved into the house of an apothecary named James Gillman, asking Gillman to help cut back his opium dose. Like all addicts, though, Col quickly had an alternate supply arranged. Col had apparently separated from his children as well; his friends and relatives had to take up a collection to send Hartley to school, and at one point, he went 8 years without seeing his children15. His London friends, though, loved his conversational skills and continually sought him out. His nephew, Henry Nelson Coleridge16, published a collection of Col's conversation called Table Talk, and Col himself was not only publishing new works, like Aids to Reflection(1825), but was reprinting the old in hopes of finally making a real financial contribution to his family. By 1830, the reviews of his work were becoming more and more positive, and he was generally hailed as the finest critic of his day17. He still couldn't reach financial security, however; a government reorganization lost him his pension from the Royal Society of Literature, his one remaining reliable source of income. He died, surprisingly peacefully, on 25 July 1834, leaving only books and manuscripts behind.

Though he's really only known today for his poetry, Col's contributions to the field of criticism and our language were many. For instance, he not only coined the word 'selfless,' he introduced the word 'aesthetic' to the English language. Charles Lamb wrote one of my favorite descriptions of Col in 1817: "his face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient glory, an Arch angel a little damaged." Cole summed himself up this way, in the epitaph he wrote for himself:

Beneath this sod
A Poet lies; or that which once was he.
O lift one thought in prayer for S.T.C.
That he, who many a year with toil of breath,
Found Death in Life, may here find Life in Death.

1. As near as I can tell, no one but his wife ever called him Samuel; he was usually Coleridge or Col, and definitely NEVER Sam. He often signed his works S.T.C. or Estese.
2. Uncle John used to take his 10-year-old nephew to the taverns, where Col would join in the barroom debates while his uncle got drunk. Col loved it. Everyone called him a prodigy.
3. Thomas was the original Romantic poet, living in a garret and continually on the verge of starvation as he struggled to write and make a name for himself. He killed himself when he was only 17 years old.
4. They and other radical young men of the time (that is, most of the young men of the time) often toasted the King: "May he be the last."
5. It was a utopia sort of thing, a group of young people living in America, communal style. See also Wordsworth.
6. I know it's confusing having all these Saras around, but it'll get worse.
7. It didn't quite work.
8. Yes, he already had admirers (he published his first book of poetry in 1796). In 1798, the Wedgwoods, sons of the famous maker of fine china, also gave him an annuity. For some reason, nearly everyone Col knew was always more than willing to give him money.
9. Col named these two sons after his favorite philosophers; his third son, born September 1800, was named Derwent, after the river near their house. Robert wondered, "Why will he give his children such heathenish names? Did he dip him in the river and baptize him in the name of the Stream God?"
10. See?
11. William and Robert also were turning away from his radical ways, leading future luminaries like Keats and Shelley to call them fickle, and worse.
12. The famous episode involving "Kublai Khan," which he probably wrote around 1797, where Col was unable to finish the poem because he was interrupted by a "person from Porlock" who wouldn't leave, is probably not true. Most likely, Col just couldn't keep his concentration.
13. The lectures were apparently quite good, though they were mostly lost. No one took good notes on the first set, and the man Robert hired to record the next set, Payne Collier, was later famous as a literary forger, so his notes were taken with a grain of salt.
14. I'm not kidding. He was very well-read, and this work included every subject he'd ever thought about seriously. The literary criticism section really made his name as a critic. He even dared to criticize William's work, which William hated even though Col was both fair and perceptive.
15. Young Sara, of course, knew him least, but she was much like him in intelligence and temperament, unfortunately. She also became an opium addict.
16. Henry fell in love with Col's daughter and married her, even though they were first cousins.
17. And he was also being hailed along with William as one of the two finest poets of the day, in spite of the extreme popularity of Sir Walter Scott.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
''This page is about the nineteenth century English poet. For the twentieth century classical composer, see Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (October 21, 1772-July 25, 1834) was an English poet, critic, and philosopher and, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England. He is probably best known for his poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Coleridge was born in Ottery St. Mary, the son of a vicar. After the death of his father, he was sent to Christ's Hospital, a boarding school in London. In later life, Coleridge idealised his father as a pious innocent, but his relationship with his mother was a difficult one. His childhood was characterised by attention-seeking, which has been linked with his dependent personality as an adult, and he was rarely allowed to return home during his schooldays. From 1791 until 1794 he attended Jesus College at the University of Cambridge, except for a short period when he enlisted in the royal dragoons. At the university he met political and theological ideas then considered radical. He left Cambridge without a degree and joined the poet Robert Southey in a plan, soon abandoned, to found a utopian communist-like society, called pantisocracy, in the wilderness of Pennsylvania. In 1795 the two friends married Sarah and Elizabeth Fricker (who were sisters), but Coleridge's marriage proved unhappy. Southey departed for Portugal, but Coleridge remained in England. In 1796 he published Poems on Various Subjects.

In 1795 Coleridge met poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. The two men published a joint volume of poetry, Lyrical Ballads (1798), which proved to be a manifesto for Romantic poetry. The first version of Coleridge's great poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner appeared in this volume.

Around 1796, Coleridge started using opium as a pain reliever. His and Dorothy Wordsworth's notebooks record that he suffered from a variety of medical complaints, including toothache and facial neuralgia. There appears to have been no stigma associated with merely taking opium then, but also little understanding of the physiological or psychological aspects of addiction.

The years 1797 and 1798, during which the friends lived in Nether Stowey, Somerset, were among the most fruitful of Coleridge's life. Besides the Ancient Mariner, he composed the symbolic poem Kubla Khan, written as a result of an opium dream, in "a kind of a reverie", and began the narrative poem Christabel. During this period he also produced his much-praised "conversation" poems This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, Frost at Midnight, and The Nightingale.

In the autumn of 1798 Coleridge and Wordsworth left for a stay in Germany; Coleridge soon went his own way and spent much of his time in university towns. During this period he became interested in German philosophy, especially the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant, and in the literary criticism of the 18th-century dramatist Gotthold Lessing. Coleridge studied German and, after his return to England, translated the dramatic trilogy Wallenstein by the romantic poet Friedrich Schiller into English.

In 1800 he returned to England and shortly thereafter settled with his family and friends at Keswick in the Lake District of Cumberland. Soon, however, he fell into a vicious circle of lack of confidence in his poetic powers, ill-health, and increased opium dependency.

From 1804 to 1806, Coleridge lived in Malta and travelled in Sicily and Italy, in the hope that leaving Britain's damp climate would improve his health and thus enable him to reduce his consumption of opium. For a while he had a civil-service job as the Public Secretary of the British administration of Malta. Thomas de Quincey alleges in his Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets that it was during this period that Coleridge became a full-blown opium addict, using the drug as a substitute for the lost vigour and creativity of his youth. It has been suggested, however, that this reflects de Quincey's own experiences more than Coleridge's.

Between 1808 and 1819 this "giant among dwarfs", as he was often considered by his contemporaries, gave a series of lectures in London and Bristol – those on Shakespeare renewed a cultural interest in the playwright.

In 1816 Coleridge, his addiction worsening, his spirits depressed, and his family alienated, took residence in the home of the physician James Gillman, in Highgate. ln Gillman's home he finished his major prose work, the Biographia Literaria (1817), a volume composed of 25 chapters of autobiographical notes and dissertations on various subjects, including some incisive literary theory and criticism. The sections in which Coleridge's definitions of the nature of poetry and the imagination – his famous distinction between primary and secondary imagination on the one hand and fancy on the other – are especially interesting. He published other writings while he was living at the Gillman home, notably Sibylline Leaves (1817), Aids to Reflection (1825), and Church and State (1830). He died in Highgate on July 25, 1834.

Poetry
Coleridge is probably best known for his hypnotic long poems, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel. Even those who have never read the Rime have come under its influence: its words have given the English language the metaphor of an albatross around one's neck, the (mis)quote of "water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink", and the phrase "a sadder but wiser man". Christabel is known for its musical rhythm and language and its Gothic tale.

Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream, A Fragment, although shorter, is also widely known and loved. It has strange, dreamy imagery and (like most good poems) can be read on many levels. The name of Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu comes from the first line of Kubla Khan. Both Kubla Khan and Christabel have additional "romantic" aura because they were never finished.

Coleridge's shorter, meditative "conversation poems" speak from the heart of the man who wrote them. These include both quiet poems like This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison and Frost at Midnight and also strongly emotional poems like Dejection and The Pains of Sleep.

Other works
Although known today primarily for his poetry, Coleridge also published essays and books on literary theory and criticism and on politics, philosophy, and theology. He introduced Immanuel Kant to the British public in his lectures and "Thursday-night seminars" at Highgate. Coleridge's treatment of the German idealist philosophers in the Biographia Literaria has been subject to the accusation of plagiarism. It is known that he presents lengthy translations, particularly from Schelling, as his own work. de Quincey compares this to kleptomania, although Coleridge's defenders attribute it to his poor organisation of notes rather than dishonesty.

He wrote both political commentary and hack journalism for several newspapers, especially during the Napoleonic wars. He translated two of Schiller's plays from the German and himself wrote several dramas (Zapolya had successful runs in London and Bristol). He also worked as a teacher and tutor, gave public lectures and sermons, and almost single-handedly wrote and published two periodicals, the Watchman and the Friend. During his life, he was famous as a conversationalist.

His letters, Table Talk, and range of friends reflect the breadth of his interests. In addition to literary people such as William Wordsworth and Charles Lamb, his friends included Humphry Davy the chemist, industrialists such as the tanner Thomas Poole and members of the Wedgwood family, Alexander Ball the military governor of Malta, the American painter Washington Allston, and the physician James Gillman.

It was in all probability Charles Lamb who introduced Coleridge to the writings of Sir Thomas Browne. Browne's learning, literary style and personality impressed Coleridge and Thomas De Quincey and both were aware of Browne's drowsy opiate imagery. Coleridge not only annotated Browne's major literary works, but in his correspondence exclaimed, "O to write a character of this man!"

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), English lyrical poet, critic, and philosopher, whose Lyrical Ballads,(1798) written with William Wordsworth, started the English Romantic movement.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Ottery St Mary, Devonshire, as the youngest son of the vicar of Ottery St Mary. After his father's death Coleridge was sent away to Christ's Hospital School in London. He also studied at Jesus College. In Cambridge Coleridge met the radical, future poet laureate Robert Southey. He moved with Southey to Bristol to establish a community, but the plan failed. In 1795 he married the sister of Southey's fiancée Sara Fricker, whom he did not really love.

Coleridge's collection Poems On Various Subjects was published in 1796, and in 1797 appeared Poems. In the same year he began the publication of a short-lived liberal political periodical The Watchman. He started a close friendship with Dorothy and William Wordsworth, one of the most fruitful creative relationships in English literature. From it resulted Lyrical Ballads, which opened with Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and ended with Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey". These poems set a new style by using everyday language and fresh ways of looking at nature.

The brothers Josiah and Thomas Wedgewood granted Coleridge an annuity of 150 pounds, thus enabling him to pursue his literary career. Disenchanted with political developments in France, Coleridge visited Germany in 1798-99 with Dorothy and William Wordsworth, and became interested in the works of Immanuel Kant. He studied philosophy at Göttingen University and mastered the German language. At the end of 1799 Coleridge fell in love with Sara Hutchinson, the sister of Wordsworth's future wife, to whom he devoted his work "Dejection: An Ode" (1802). During these years Coleridge also began to compile his Notebooks, recording the daily meditations of his life. In 1809-10 he wrote and edited with Sara Hutchinson the literary and political magazine The Friend. From 1808 to 1818 he gave several lectures, chiefly in London, and was considered the greatest of Shakespearean critics. In 1810 Coleridge's friendship with Wordsworth came to a crisis, and the two poets never fully returned to the relationship they had earlier.

Suffering from neuralgic and rheumatic pains, Coleridge had become addicted to opium. During the following years he lived in London, on the verge of suicide. He found a permanent shelter in Highgate in the household of Dr. James Gillman, and enjoyed an almost legendary reputation among the younger Romantics. During this time he rarely left the house.

In 1816 the unfinished poems "Christabel" and "Kubla Khan" were published, and next year appeared "Sibylline Leaves". According to the poet, "Kubla Khan" was inspired by a dream vision. His most important production during this period was the Biographia Literaria(1817). After 1817 Coleridge devoted himself to theological and politico-sociological works. Coleridge was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1824. He died in Highgate, near London on July 25, 1834.

10/21/1772 Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Ottery St. Mary, youngest of the ten children of John Coleridge, a minister, and Ann Bowden Coleridge
Approx 1780 He was often bullied as a child by Frank, the next youngest, and his mother was apparently a bit distant, so it was no surprise when Coleridge ran away at age seven. He was found early the next morning by a neighbor, but the events of his night outdoors frequently showed up in imagery in his poems as well as the notebooks he kept for most of his adult life.
1781 John Coleridge died (His father), and young Coleridge was sent away to a London charity school for children of the clergy
1790 His brother Luke died.
1791 His only sister Ann died, inspiring Col to write Monody, one of his first poems. Coleridge was very ill around this time and probably took laudanum for the illness, thus beginning his lifelong opium addiction.
1793 He had started to hope for poetic fame, but by now, he owed about £150 (because of opium, alcohol, and women)and was desparate. So he joined the army. His family was furious. He`d used the improbable name of Silas Tomkyn Comberbache and had escaped being sent to fight in France because he could only barely ride a horse.
Approx 1793 His brother George finally arranged his discharge by reason of insanity and got him back to Cambridge.
1795 Marries Sara Fricker.
1796 David Hartley Coleridge was born. First son.
1797 Poems published
1798 Berkeley Coleridge born, second son
1798 The famous Lyrical Ballads was published, a collaboration between Coleridge and William Wordsworth. The authors didn`t realize this at the time,they went to Germany with William`s sister Dorothy.
1798 Col`s son Berkeley died while he was away; the baby had been given the brand-new smallpox vaccination and died of a reaction to it. Col, as was typical of him, returned home slowly so as not to have to deal openly with Berkeley`s death, and got little work done.
1800 Col named his first two sons after his favorite philosophers; his third son, was named Derwent, after the river near their house. Robert wondered, "Why will he give his children such heathenish names? Did he dip him in the river and baptize him in the name of the Stream God?"
1802 Birth of his daughter Sara.
1804 Coleridge spied a bit for his majesty, who wanted Malta as a British port, though officially Col was the temporary Public Secretary. Col had also hoped for a release from his addiction, but this was not to be.
1806 He returned to England and plucking up his courage, asked for a legal separation from his wife.
1834 Died. Coleridge summed himself up this way, in the epitaph he wrote for himself: Beneath this sod A Poet lies; or that which once was he. O lift one thought in prayer for S.T.C. That he, who many a year with toil of breath, Found Death in Life, may here find Life in Death.