St. Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian; he lived from October 21, 1772, to July 25, 1834. He was a member of the Lake Poets and co-founder of the Romantic Movement in England with his friend William Wordsworth. In addition, he worked and exchanged books with Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, & Charles Lloyd.

Along with the important prose work Biographia Literaria, he produced the poems Kubla Khan and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. His critical writings, particularly those on William Shakespeare, had a significant impact and aided in the dissemination of German idealism philosophy among English-speaking societies. Coleridge is credited with creating a number of well-known expressions, such as "suspension of disbelief.". He had a significant impact on American transcendentalism and Ralph Waldo Emerson. It has been suggested that Coleridge had bipolar disorder, which was not diagnosed in his lifetime because he experienced debilitating episodes of depression and anxiety throughout his adult life. His physical ailments could have been caused by a childhood sickness and a case of rheumatic fever. He was given laudanum as a treatment for these ailments, which led to a lifetime addiction to opium. After his death, Coleridge's reputation increased, and he was regarded as one of the most significant people in English literature despite having a stormy personal and professional life marked by highs and lows. As an illustration, a 2018 article published in The Guardian described him as "a genius" who had developed into "one of the most renowned English poets." Groups like the Church of England honor his contributions by holding public celebrations like a June "Coleridge Day" that feature literary readings.

Childhood and schooling

In the Devonian town of Ottery St. Mary, England, on October 21, 1772, Coleridge was born. As the renowned pastor of St. Mary's Church in Ottery St. Mary and headmaster of the King's School, a free grammar school founded in the town by King Henry VIII (1509-1547), Samuel's father was the Reverend John Coleridge (1718-1781). Previously, he had been a lecturer at neighbouring Molland and master of Hugh Squier's School at South Molton, Devon.

John Coleridge's first wife gave birth to three children. Samuel was the youngest of ten children born to Anne Bowden, the Reverend Mr. Coleridge's second wife (1726-1809), who was most likely John Bowden's daughter, the 1726 mayor of South Molton, Devon. Rather than "taking any pleasure in boyish sports," Coleridge claims that he read "incessantly" and played alone. Samuel was eight years old when John Coleridge passed away in 1781. He was sent to Christ's Hospital, a charitable school established in the sixteenth century in Greyfriars, London, where he spent his early years learning poetry and writing. Coleridge studied the writings of William Lisle Bowles and Virgil at the institution, where he also became acquaintances with fellow student Charles Lamb.

According to Coleridge's account of his schooldays in Biographia Literaria, he appears to have valued his teacher. "I benefited greatly from having a master who was both really stern and very intelligent. He assigned us to read Shakespeare and Milton as lessons at the same time that we were learning about the Greek Tragic Poets. These were the subjects that took the most effort and time to discuss in order to avoid his disapproval. He taught me that poetry, even the most sublime and seemingly wild odes, has a logic all its own that is just as strict as science's. It is also more challenging as poetry is more nuanced, intricate, and dependent on an increasing number of elusive causes.

He gave no mercy to phrases, metaphors, or images in our English compositions (at least during the last three years of our schooling), where they were not backed up by a clear sense of when the same meaning could have been expressed just as forcefully and dignifiedly in simpler language. I can practically hear him now, yelling, "Harp?" The harp? A lyre? Pen and ink, you really mean it! Boy, muse, muse? You mean your Nurse's daughter? Pierian springtime? Whoa, it's the cloister pump! Whatever the case, there was one master's custom that I cannot discuss in silence because I believe it to be...worthy of imitation. He would frequently let our theme exercises pile up until each boy had four or five to go over. After setting the entire number faceup on his desk, he would ask the writer why a particular sentence might not have fit as well under a particular thesis. If he did not receive a satisfactory response, and two exercises had the same type of error, the exercise was declared void, and another on the same topic had to be produced in addition to the day's tasks.

In the poem Frost at Midnight, he subsequently wrote of his loneliness in school, saying, "With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt/Of my sweet birthplace." Coleridge studied at Jesus College, Cambridge, from 1791 to 1794. For an ode he penned criticizing the slave trade, he was awarded the Browne Gold Medal in 1792. Perhaps due to debt or the rejection he received from the girl he loved, Mary Evans, he left the institution in December 1793. He enlisted under the fictitious identity "Silas Tomkyn Comberbache" in the 15th (The King's) Light Dragoons. A few months later, his brothers made arrangements for his discharge on the grounds of "insanity," and he was reinstated to Jesus College, albeit he would never graduate from the institution.

Marriage and pantisocracy

The poet Robert Southey, with whom Coleridge worked on the drama The Fall of Robespierre, and other then-radical political and theological beliefs were exposed to him at Jesus College. Coleridge partnered with Southey on an eventual scrapped plan to establish Pantisocracy, a commune-style utopian community, deep in Pennsylvania's forest. The two companions wed Sara and Edith Fricker in 1795 at St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, although Coleridge's union with Sara didn't work out. By 1804, they had split up. Writing to his brother, Coleridge accused Sara of being the source of all of his problems, saying, "The few friends who have been Witnesses of my domestic life have long advised separation as the necessary condition of everything desirable for me..." Later biographers have disagreed with Coleridge's unfavorable unfavorable of the woman he initially referred to as his "Sally Pally."

Mary, the third sister, had already wed Robert Lovell, the third poet, and the two of them joined forces to form Pantisocracy.

In April 1796, Lovell succumbed to a fever after introducing Coleridge and Southey to Joseph Cottle, who would later become their patron. At his death, Coleridge was by his side. His first collection of poems, Poems on Various Subjects, was published in 1796. It had four pieces by Charles Lamb, a joint effort with Robert Southey[citation needed], and an addition recommended by Robert Favell, who was also friends with Lamb when they were at school. The poems included Monody on the Death of Chatterton, Religious Musings, and Effusion 35, an early draught of The Eolian Harp. In 1797, a reprint of the first edition was released, this time with an addition of pieces by Lamb and Charles Lloyd, the young poet Coleridge had taken on as a student.

Sonnets by Various Authors, which he privately printed in 1796, included sonnets by William Lisle Bowles and other older poets in addition to Lamb, Lloyd, and Southey. In order to get around a weekly newspaper tax, Coleridge planned to start a journal called The Watchman, which would be published every eight days. The brief journal's inaugural issue was released in March 1796. During May of that year, publication had stopped.

One of Coleridge's most productive periods of life was from 1797 to 1799, when he resided in what is currently referred to as Coleridge Cottage in Nether Stowey, Somerset. Coleridge got to know poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy in 1795. (Wordsworth rented Alfoxton Park, which is slightly over three miles [five km] distant, after visiting him and becoming fascinated with the surroundings.) In addition to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge also wrote the first section of the narrative poem Christabel and the symbolic poem Kubla Khan, which he said was created as a result of an opium dream, in "a kind of a reverie." The story told in Kubla Khan, which is about the Mongol monarch Kublai Khan and his fabled mansion at Xanadu, was allegedly cut short by the entrance of a "Person from Porlock"; this incident has been extended in a variety of contexts, including science fiction and Nabokov's Lolita. He also wrote his highly acclaimed "conversation poems" This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, Frost at Midnight, and The Nightingale at this time.

The English Romantic era began with the publication of Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems coauthored by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798. The first edition of Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was the true standout of the collection, even though Wordsworth contributed more poetry. It was the longest piece in the anthology and received more recognition and attention than the others. In the spring, when Rev. Joshua Toulmin was grieving over the drowning loss of his daughter Jane, Coleridge filled in for him temporarily at the Mary Street Unitarian Chapel in Taunton. Coleridge, in a 1798 letter to John Prior Estlin, poetically observed Toulmin's vigor, writing, "I walked into Taunton (eleven miles) and back again, and performed the divine services for Dr. Toulmin." You must have heard that on April 15, 1798, Jane, his daughter, permitted herself to be swept away by the water on the seashore between Sidmouth and Bere in a state of tragic delusion. Old men's hearts are horribly wounded by these happenings, but good Dr. Toulmin handles them as a truly practical Christian would; although he has a tear in his eye, it is raised to the Heavenly Father."

Coleridge also had a brief employment in Shropshire, when he served as locum ta o Dr. Rowe, the local Unitarian minister, in December 1797 at their church on Shrewsbury's High Street. It is reported that during a literary afternoon in Mardol, he read from Rime of the Ancient Mariner. On Sunday, January 14, 1798, he delivered a probationary sermon in the High Street church while considering a future in the clergy. The son of a Unitarian minister, William Hazlitt, had come from Wem to hear him speak and was present in the congregation. A day or two after preaching, Coleridge received a letter from Josiah Wedgwood II offering to help him out of his financial situation with an annuity of £150 (roughly £13,000 in today's money) per year, provided he gave up his ministerial career. Coleridge later stopped by Hazlitt and his father at Wem. To the dismay of Hazlitt, who had intended to have Coleridge as a neighbour in Shropshire, Coleridge accepted this.

With the departure of the Wordsworths on September 16, 1798, Coleridge embarked on a self-imposed exile in Germany, spending most of his time in university cities. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach & Johann Gottfried Eichhorn gave lectures at the University of Göttingen when he enrolled there in February 1799. This is where he developed an interest in German philosophy, particularly in the critical philosophy and transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant, as well as in the literary criticism of Gotthold Lessing, the dramatist of the eighteenth century. After returning to England, Coleridge translated Friedrich Schiller's dramatic trilogy Wallenstein into English. Coleridge learned German. Despite their unfamiliarity and difficulty in a culture dominated by empiricism, he continued to pioneer these concepts for the remainder of his life through his critical publications, sometimes without citation.

At SockbuRn, near Darlington, on the River Tees, Coleridge & the Wordsworths lodged in 1799 at Thomas Hutchinson's farm. Coleridge penned his ballad poem "Love," which is dedicated to Sara Hutchinson, while he was in Sockburn. The knight in question is the mail figure found on the tomb of Conyers in the now-demolished Sockburn chapel. With a wyvern at his feet, the image alludes to the Sockburn Worm, which Sir John Conyers killed (and which may have served as inspiration for Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky). In the next field, the worm was said to be buried beneath the rock; this was the "greystone" of Coleridge's initial draught, which was then changed into a "mount." The poem directly influenced John Keats's well-known work La Belle Dame Sans Merci.

Aside from German critics like Lessing and idealists like Kant, Coleridge owed his early ideas primarily to David Hartley's Observations on Man, which provided the psychology for Frost at Midnight, and William Godwin's Political Justice, particularly during the latter's Pantisocratic phase. According to Hartley, sensory events become apparent as impressions, and one names "ideas" after identifying the similarities and contrasts among impressions. Linkages are formed when impressions coincide; the occurrence of one impression initiates these linkages and evokes memories of the ideas it is related with (See Dorothy Emmet, "Coleridge and Philosophy"). Coleridge was a literary conservative in that he believed that the increasing numbers of literate people would continue to defile literature due to their lack of taste, and he was critical of the literary tastes of his contemporaries in this regard.

He went back to England in 1800, and a short time after, he and his family moved to Greta Hall in Keswick in the Cumberland Lake District, close to Grasmere, where Wordsworth had relocated. During his eighteen months as the Wordsworths' guest, he became increasingly dependent on laudanum and frequently caused the children to wake from nightmares. He was also a picky eater, which annoyed Dorothy Wordsworth, who was responsible for cooking. For instance, Coleridge added cayenne pepper to his eggs, which he consumed from a teacup because he was not satisfied with just salt. Dejection: An Ode was written, and his philosophical studies were intensified as a result of his marital issues, illnesses, nightmares, growing opium use, conflicts with Wordsworth, and lack of trust in his poetry abilities.

Coleridge went on a nine-day walking vacation in the Lake District's fells in 1802. Although this may have been more the result of Coleridge being lost than of him intentionally discovering a new route, Coleridge is credited with making the first known descent of Scafell to Mickledore through Broad Stand. Mountaineering is a phrase he invented.

Later Life and Rising Drug Usage

He visited Malta and Sicily in 1804 when he briefly served as Alexander Ball, the Civil Commissioner's Acting Public Secretary. He did this job well. He resided in the Attard village's San Anton Palace. In 1806, he abandoned this and went back to England. When he returned, Dorothy Wordsworth was astounded by his state.

With the Hope that escaping the wet climate of Britain would help him become healthier and, thus, be able to cut back on his opium addiction, Coleridge journeyed to Sicily and Italy in 1807 and 1808. In Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets, Thomas De Quincey claims that Coleridge developed a full-blown opium addiction at this time, using the substance to replace the lost energy and inventiveness of his youth. Some have argued that De Quincey's experiences are more reflected in this than Coleridge's.

He was abusing opium to the point where he was taking up to two quarts of laudanum per week. As a result, he lost a portion of his annuity in 1811, got into a fight with Wordsworth in 1810, filed for bankruptcy in 1808, and was placed in the care of Dr. Daniel in 1814. His addiction led to extreme constipation, necessitating frequent, embarrassing enemas. Coleridge launched The Friend, a journal, in 1809, marking his second attempt at becoming a newspaper proprietor. Written, edited, & published nearly entirely by one person, it was a weekly periodical that reflected Coleridge's usually ambitious approach. Coleridge was usually a very disorganized person with no financial acumen. Thus, the publication was probably doomed from the start. In order to keep the journal going, Coleridge sold more than 500 subscriptions, more than two dozen of which were sold to members of Parliament. However, in late 1809, a financial crisis crippled the publication, and Coleridge was forced to approach "Conversation Sharp," Tom Poole, and one or two other wealthy friends for an emergency loan. Drawing from Coleridge's extraordinarily broad knowledge of law, philosophy, morals, historical events, politics, & literary criticism, The Friend was an eclectic periodical.