The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poems, Plays, Essays, Lectures, Autobiography & Personal Letters (Illustrated). Samuel Taylor Coleridge

      PREFACE.

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      The more frequently we read and contemplate the lives of those eminent men so beautifully traced by the amiable Izaak Walton, the more we are impressed with the sweetness and simplicity of the work. Walton was a man of genius — of simple calling and more simple habits, though best known perhaps by his book on Angling; yet in the scarcely less attractive pages of his biographies, like the flowing of the gentle stream on which he sometimes cast his line, to practise “the all of treachery he ever learnt,” he leads the delighted reader imperceptibly on, charmed with the natural beauty of his sentiments, and the unaffected ease and simplicity of his style.

      In his preface to the Sermons of (that pious poet and divine,) Dr. Donne, so much may be found applicable to the great and good man whose life the author is now writing, that he hopes to be pardoned for quoting from one so much more able to delineate rare virtues and high endowments: “And if he shall now be demanded, as once Pompey’s poor bondman was, who art thou that alone hast the honour to bury the body of Pompey the great?” so who is he who would thus erect a funeral pile to the memory of the honoured dead? …

      With the writer of this work, during the latter twenty years of his life, Coleridge had been domesticated; and his intimate knowledge of that illustrious character induces him to hope that his present undertaking, “however imperfectly it may set forth the memory he fain would honour,” will yet not be considered presumptuous; inasmuch as he has had an opportunity of bringing together facts and anecdotes, with various memoranda never before published, some of which will be found to have much of deep interest, of piety and of loveliness.

      At the same time he has also been desirous of interweaving such information as he has been enabled to collect from the early friends of Coleridge, as well as from those of his after-life. Thus, he trusts, he has had the means of giving, with truth and correctness, a faithful portraiture of one whom he so dearly loved, so highly prized. Still he feels that from various causes, he has laboured under many and great difficulties.

      First, he never contemplated writing this Memoir, nor would he have made the attempt, had it not been urged on him as a duty by friends, whom Coleridge himself most respected and honoured; they, “not doubting that his intimate knowledge of the author, and dear love to his memory, might make his diligence useful.”

      Secondly, the duties of a laborious profession, rendered still more arduous by indifferent health — added to many sorrows, and leisure (if such it might be called,) which permitted only occasional attention to the subject — and was liable to frequent interruptions; will, he flatters himself, give him a claim to the candour and kindness of his readers. And if Coleridge’s “glorious spirit, now in heaven, could look down upon him, he would not disdain this well meant sacrifice to his memory — for whilst his conversation made him, and many others happy below, his humility and gentleness were also preeminent; — and divines have said, those virtues that were but sparks upon earth, become great and glorious flames in heaven.”

CHAPTER I.

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      BIRTHPLACE OF COLERIDGE. — SLIGHT SKETCH OF HIS PARENTS. — WHIMSICAL ANECDOTES HE USED TO RELATE OF HIS FATHER, &C. — AS A PASTOR, HOW MUCH BELOVED. — HIS BROTHERS AND SISTERS ENUMERATED. — THE DEATH OF HIS FATHER. — HIS ENTRANCE AT CHRIST’S HOSPITAL. — LAMB’S ACCOUNT OF HIM WHEN AT SCHOOL. — WRITES THIS ACCOUNT UNDER THE NAME OF ELIA. — LAMB’S ADMISSION THAT HE MEANT COLERIDGE FOR THE “FRIENDLESS BOY.” — THE DELICACY OF HIS STOMACH. — HIS FIRST ATTEMPT AT MAKING VERSE WHEN A SCHOOL BOY. — AND CONTINUATION OF HIS SUFFERINGS WHEN AT SCHOOL. — HIS WATER EXCURSIONS, THE ORIGIN OF MOST OF HIS SUBSEQUENT SUFFERING.

      SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, the subject of this memoir, was born at Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, the 21st October, 1772. His father, the Rev. John Coleridge, was vicar of Ottery, and head master of Henry VIII Free Grammar School, usually termed the King’s School; a man of great learning, and one of the persons who assisted Dr. Kennicott in his Hebrew Bible. Before his appointment to the school at Ottery he had been head master of the school at South Molton. Some dissertations on the 17th and 18th chapters of the Book of Judges, and a Latin grammar for the use of the school at Ottery were published by him. He was an exceedingly studious man, pious, of primitive manners, and of the most simple habits: passing events were little heeded by him, and therefore he was usually characterized as the “absent man”.

      Many traditional stories concerning his father had been in circulation for years before Coleridge came to Highgate. These were related with mirth in the neighbourhood of Ottery, and varied according to the humour of the narrator.

      To beguile the winter’s hour, which, however, was never dull in his society, he would recall to memory the past anecdotes of his father, and repeat them till the tears ran down his face, from the fond recollection of his beloved parent. The relation of the story usually terminated with an affectionate sigh, and the observation, “Yes, my friend, he was indeed an Israelite without guile, and might be compared to Parson Adams.” The same appellation which Coleridge applied to his father will also, with equal justice, be descriptive of himself. In many respects he “differed in kind” from his brothers and the rest of his family, but his resemblance to his father was so strong, that I shall continue this part of the memoir with a sketch of the parent stock from which he sprung.

      The Rev. John Coleridge had been twice married; his second wife, Anne Bowdon, by whom he had a large family, was the mother of my friend, and seems to have been peculiarly fitted for the wife of a clergyman who had a large family and limited means. Her husband, not possessing that knowledge usually termed worldly wisdom, she appeared to supply the place of the friend, which such a man required in his wife. He was better fitted for the apostolic age, so primitive was he in his manners and uneducated in the fashions and changing customs surrounding him: his companions were