Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772, at Ottery St.Mary in Devon. His father, John Coleridge, was the vicar of the town and the master of the local grammar school. He was a singularly precocious and imaginative child, who read the 'Arabian Nights' before he was five, and preferred daydreaming to playing games with other children. After his father's death in 1781, Coleridge was sent to school at Christ's Hospital, where he amazed everyone by expounding Plotinus, and reciting Homer in the original Greek (1). He was famously described by Charles Lamb as 'the inspired charity-boy' (2). He dabbled in medicine, metaphysics and poetry and was always ready to argue with any chance passer-by in the streets. His abstraction from reality could lead him into embarrassing situations. In one of his daydreams, while walking in the street, his hands came into contact with a gentleman's clothes. On being challenged as a pickpocket, he explained that he was Leander swimming the Hellespont (3). He incurred permanent injuries to his health by swimming in a river without undressing and neglecting to change his clothes afterwards. He spent much of his seventeenth and eighteenth year in the school's sick ward with jaundice and rheumatic fever.

Coleridge left Christ's Hospital in September 1790, and came up to Jesus College Cambridge in October 1791. He received a Rustat scholarship, for the sons of clergymen, and also a foundation scholarship, which alleviated his poverty. His period at Jesus College coincided with the aftermath of the French Revolution, and he threw himself into the politics of the day on the revolutionary side. In May 1793 William Frend, a fellow of Jesus College, was tried in the vice-chancellor's court at Cambridge for a pamphlet attacking the monarchy and the Church of England. Coleridge enthusiastically took his side and incurred some risk by applauding Frend at his trial. After various legal proceedings, Frend was eventually banished from the college and the university. Meanwhile, Coleridge had got himself further into trouble by running up debts and fleeing to London at the end of 1793. He then enlisted with the 15th Regiment of Light Dragoons in December 1793, under the name of Silas Tomkins Comberbache. He was eventually discharged, after repeatedly falling off his horse, in April 1794. He returned to Jesus College, but went down without taking his degree at the end of 1794. His name was 'taken off the boards' on 14 June 1795.

His next project was to set up a utopian community with his friends Robert Southey, Robert Lovell and George Burnett. They were to marry and emigrate to the banks of the Susquehanna (chosen mainly because of its mellifluous name), living according to the principles of 'pantisocracy', a political system devised by themselves. Although nothing came of this plan, it led to Coleridge's marriage to Sara Fricker, Southey's sister-in-law, on 4 October 1795. At this period, Coleridge began writing in earnest as a way of earning a living. A bookseller named Joseph Cottle offered him thirty guineas for a volume of poems, which was published in April 1796. He also began giving public lectures, expressing his radical opinions on the subject of 'Revealed religion: its corruptions and its political views'. He now turned to journalism, embarking on a weekly magazine, called 'The Watchman', published by Joseph Cottle, which folded after its tenth number for the 'short and satisfactory reason' that it did 'not pay its expenses' (4). His first son, Hartley, was born on 19 September 1796, and the family moved to a small house at Nether Stowey, in Somerset, during the winter of 1796-97.

It was at this time that Coleridge became the friend of William Wordsworth, perhaps the most significant friendship in the history of English poetry. Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy moved to Alfoxden, near Nether Stowey, and, in 1797, the two poets agreed to combine forces in a volume of poems to be called Lyrical Ballads, which was published by Joseph Cottle in September 1798. Coleridge's principal contribution was 'The Ancient Mariner', one of the two poems on which his reputation now mainly rests. The other, 'Kubla Khan', was also written in 1797, but remained unpublished for eighteen years. Lyrical Ballads was not a success at the time it appeared, but its long-term influence on English poetry was incalculable.

In 1798, Coleridge received the offer of an annuity from Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood, on condition that he devote himself entirely to philosophy and poetry, an offer that he eventually accepted. The Wedgwoods' munificence enabled him to fulfil a plan that he had already formed of studying the new idealist philosophy in Germany. He started for Hamburg in September 1798, in the company of the Wordsworths, where they visited the poet Klopstock. Coleridge settled with a protestant pastor at Ratzeburg and set about learning German. In January 1799, he moved to Gottingen, where he attended lectures and made the acquaintance of Immanuel Kant. In May 1799, he went on a walking tour through the Hartz Mountains and wrote the poem 'Lines on ascending the Brocken'. In June he returned to England and was back in Nether Stowey in August 1799.

The main fruit of Coleridge's German trip was his translation of Schiller's play Wallenstein, which was published by Longman in 1800. He also embarked on a second attempt at journalism, as a contributor to the 'Morning Post', and had some success with political articles, on the subjects of Pitt and Napoleon, and a couple of poems. However his capacities as a poet were beginning to fail, and virtually his last poem of any importance, 'Dejection: An Ode' (1802), was a lament for the loss of his imaginative powers. In July 1800, he and his family moved to Greta Hall in Keswick, where, in 1803, Robert Southey joined him. He suffered increasingly from rheumatism and neuralgic pains in the head and relieved his sufferings by taking opium. 'Kubla Khan' had been written under the influence of opium and, increasingly, he became enslaved to the habit, which was to blight the rest of his life. His medical advisers recommended him to try 'an even and dry climate' (5), and, in April 1804, he set out for Malta.

In Malta he made the acquaintance of the governor, Sir Alexander Ball, who offered him the vacant post of his secretary. Coleridge accepted, and filled the post for several months, despite suffering from chronic ill health. He left Malta, on the arrival of a new secretary, in September. 1805, and visited Sicily, Naples and Rome. At Rome, he was warned by the German writer Wilhelm von Humboldt, then Prussian Minister at Rome, that Napoleon had taken personal umbrage at some of the articles that Coleridge had written for the 'Morning Post', and that, in consequence, he was a marked man. He fled Italy in an American ship, which sailed from Leghorn. It is said that a French cruiser pursued the American ship and, attempting to conceal his identity, Coleridge threw his papers overboard, thus losing all the literary labours he had been engaged in during his stay in Rome (6). It may seem hard to believe that Napoleon should pursue a vendetta against an English provincial journalist, but apparently he blamed Coleridge's articles for the renewal of the war against France.

On returning to England, Coleridge became a friend of Thomas De Quincey, the author of Memoirs of an English Opium Eater, and gave lectures at the Royal Institution in the spring of 1808, which were not a success with the public. Coleridge had become estranged from his wife, and settled with the Wordsworths at Grasmere, while his family was still living at Keswick. At Grasmere, he attempted for the third time to embark on a journalistic career. He began a paper called 'The Friend', which lasted from August 1809 to March 1810. The subscribers were not charmed by its heavily metaphysical content. However in the winter of 1810-11 Coleridge gave lectures on Shakespeare, Milton and other poets, which excited considerable public interest. He was also much in demand in society because of the extraordinary fascination of his conversation. Indeed, Lord Byron wrote that Coleridge 'is a kind of rage at present' (7).

Coleridge lectured on Shakespeare and Milton again, in Bristol, during the summer of 1812 and the beginning of 1813, although his attendance at the lectures became increasingly unpredictable. Once, on his way to Bristol, a sudden impulse in the coach induced him to escort a lady to Wales and therefore to miss his appointment (8). When he arrived in Bristol, Joseph Cottle and other old friends were shocked by his appearance and he confessed to them his abject dependence on opium. Indeed, Coleridge himself declared that his best chance of being saved was to be placed in a private lunatic asylum (9). Eventually, on 15 April 1816, he put himself in the hands of James Gillman of Highgate, who received him into his house as a guest, and under whose roof he was to live for the rest of his life. Gillman never succeeded in weaning him from his opium addiction, but he seems to have brought it under control.

In 1816, Coleridge published two of his finest poems, 'Kubla Khan' and 'Christabel', both of which had been written long before; and, in 1817, a collection of his poems, called Sibylline Leaves, and Biographia Literaria, his most important prose work, were published. Coleridge was now famous and many people came to the house in Highgate to hear his legendary conversation, but his life's work as a writer was almost at an end. He lived a quiet life as an invalid with Gillman and his family. He was still occasionally seen in society and, in 1828, he even accompanied the Wordsworths on a tour up the Rhine. In 1833, Coleridge revisited Cambridge, where he still talked with all his customary brilliance. Soon afterwards his health deteriorated and he died on 25 July 1834.

Further Reading:

  1. Cf. 'Recollections of Christ's Hospital' and 'Christ's Hospital thirty-five years ago' in Essays of Elia, by C.Lamb (1823).
  2. Essays of Elia, by C.Lamb (1823).
  3. Life of Coleridge, by J.Gillman (1838), p.17.
  4. Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, by J.Cottle (1847), p.74.
  5. Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs (1956), Vol. II: To Sir George Beaumont, 2 February 1804.
  6. Life of Coleridge, by J.Gillman (1838), p.181.
  7. Byron's Letters and Journals, ed. L.Marchant (1973), Vol II: To William Harness, 15 Dec. 1811.
  8. Dictionary of National Biography, ed. by L.Stephen (1887) Vol. XI, p.312.
  9. Dictionary of National Biography, Vol.XI, p.312

Alex Perkins