Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Poetical and Dramatic Works of S. T. Coleridge, with a Memoir. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1854. Excerpt: ... MEMOIK OF THE AUTHOR. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on the 21st of October, 1772, at Ottery, St. Mary, Devonshire. He was the youngest of ten children, and, as his father, the vicar of the parish of Ottery, and master of the grammar school, had but a small salary, the means of the family were much straitened. Of his mother but little has been handed down, beside the fact that she made her youngest child her spoiled favorite. There are some stories respecting the eccentricities of the vicar which are interesting only as one can trace in them the origin of some of the peculiarities of his more distinguished son. Coleridge in a letter to his friend Thomas Poole, says of his father, "The truth is, my father was not a first-rate genius; he was, however, a first-rate Christian, which is much better. I need not detain you with his character. In learning, goodheartedness, absentness of mind, and excessive ignorance of the world, he was a perfect Parson Adams." The early years of the future poet were unhappy enough. He described them as follows: "So I became fretful, timorous, and a tell-tale; and the schoolboys drove me from play and were always tormenting me. And hence I took no pleasure in boyish sports, but read incessantly. I read through all gilt-covered little books that could be had at that time, and likewise all the uncovered tales of Tom Hickathrift, Jack the Giant Killer, and the like. And I used to lie by the wall and mope; and my spirits used to come upon me suddenly, and in a flood;--and then I was accustomed to run up and down the churchyard, and act over again all I had been reading on the docks, the nettles, and the rank grass. At six years of age I remember to have read Belisarius, Eobinson Crusoe, and Philip Quarles Quarll; and then I found t...