Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was an English poet, philosopher, and critic, born in Devonshire. He was passionately devoted to classical and metaphysical studies. Coleridge was educated at Christ's Hospital and had Charles Lamb for schoolmate. At Cambridge he devoted himself to classics. After falling into debt he enlisted as a soldier, and was, after four months, bought off by his friends. He gave himself up to a literary life. He married, and took up house near Wordsworth, in Somersetshire, where he produced the "Ancient Mariner," "Christabel," and "Remorse". Occasionally he preached in Unitarian pulpits. He visited Germany and other parts of the Continent. He lectured in London in 1808. When there he took to opium, broke off the habit in 1816, and went to stay with the Gillmans at Highgate as their guest, under whose roof, after four years' confinement to a sick-room, he died.

Among his works were "The Friend," his "Biographia Literaria," "Aids to Reflection," &c., published in his lifetime, and "Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit," "Literary Remains," and "Table Talk" after his death. He was a man of subtle and large intellect, and exercised a great influence on the thinkers of his time, though in no case was the influence a decisive one, as it had the most opposite effects on different minds. His philosophy was hazy, and his life was without aim, "once more the tragic story of a high endowment with an insufficient will". See Carlyle's estimate of him in the "Life of Sterling."

Wisdom & Quotes

• The dwarf sees farther than the giant, when he has the giant's shoulder to mount on.

- The Friend

• Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

- Hymn Before Sunrise

• He prayeth well, who loveth well

Both man and bird and beast.
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

• He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

• Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

• A sadder and a wiser man

He rose the morrow morn.
- The Ancient Mariner

• Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics.

- Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton

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

- Biographia Literaria

Friedrich von Schlegel