Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 58:229 (Jan 1901)
Article: Coleridge And His Poetic Work
Author: Theodore W. Hunt

BSac 58:229 (Jan 1901) p. 88

Coleridge And His Poetic Work

Professor Theodore W. Hunt

Samuel Taylor Coleridge. son of Rev. John C. Coleridge, of Devonshire, England (Ottery St. Mary), Headmaster of the Grammar School, was, from the first, a character of unique and even eccentric interest. As he says of his own boyhood, “I never thought as a child, never had the language of a child.” As a mere lad, he was inquisitive as to the nature and reasons of things, speculative and imaginative, cogitating or dreaming when his companions were playing.

At school at “Christ’s Hospital,” we find him at Cambridge, in 1791, which university, for some unexplained reason, he suddenly left, enlisting as a private in the Fifteenth Light Dragoons, returning, however, to Cambridge in April, 1794. In 1795, he entered on the role of a lecturer at Bristol, a city of importance in the history of Coleridge, as it was there he met Southey, whom he had seen at Oxford, and Lovell, the publisher, which two married sisters of the lady, Miss Fricker, whom Coleridge was yet to marry. His lectures, “Conciones ad Populum,” as they were called, were designed to be popular, political discussions, in the service of what he deemed to be the rights and liberties of the people. In 1796, a journalist in the pages of The Watchman and, later, in The Morning Post and Morning Chronicle and The Friend, all of these schemes were unsuccessful, as might have been supposed,

BSac 58:229 (Jan 1901) p. 89

by reason of the poet’s unfitness for such a line of work, and the capricious nature of his mind and plans. It was in these years that he had in view, with Southey and others, his pantisocratic scheme, a semi-socialistic and political plan to be carried out in republican America, on the banks of the Susquehanna, a species of romantic adventure, as it would seem, especially attractive to British literary minds. Coleridge, in this respect, was a fanatic, making plans involving large capital, when he had scarcely funds enough at his command to meet his ordinary expenses.

In 1797–1800, he began what has been called his critical career, as a student of philosophy at Göttingen, studying the German language and civilization, and, especially, German metaphysics. His well-executed translation of the dramas of Schiller, shortly after his return to England, revealed the practical results he had reached in the mastery of German.

At Keswick, 1800–04, we reach the crisis of his life, for it was now, when his literary ambitions were at the highest, that we find him succumbing more and more slavishly to that accursed opium-habit which was, at length, to occasion the loss of physical and mental vigor, the miscarriage of his best schemes, and the c...