COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, an English poet and philosopher, born at Ottery St. Mary, England, October 21, 1772; died at Highgate, London, July 25, 1834. He was the youngest of the ten children of the Vicar of Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire, who died while this son was a child. A scholarship at Christ Hospital, London, was obtained for the boy, who, at the age of fourteen, had acquired a reputation for extraordinary genius and erudition. In 1791, being head-scholar of the school, he obtained a presentation to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he studied for three years. Worried by some debts, not amounting in all to £100, and by other annoyances, he went back to London, where in a fit of desperation he enlisted as a dragoon, under an assumed name. His friends learned of his whereabouts, and with some difficulty obtained his discharge. He returned to the college, where he remained only a short time, and left without taking his degree. He visited Oxford, where he became acquainted with Robert Southey, two years his junior, who was a student at Balliol College. The young men were deeply tinctured with the democratic theories of the French Revolution, and with Robert Lovell, the son of a wealthy Quaker, and several other collegians, they formed a scheme for emigrating to the banks of the Susquehanna,

in Pennsylvania, there to establish a "Pantisoc racy," or community in which all the members were to be on a perfect equality; all were to work with their hands; their wives-for all were to be married-to perform the domestic duties, and the men were to cultivate literature in their leisure hours, " with neither king nor lord nor priest to mar their felicity." To raise the necessary funds for the enterprise Coleridge and Southey each delivered a course of lectures, and in conjunction wrote a drama, The Fall of Robespierre, of which Southey composed two-thirds.

They went together to Bristol, the native place of Southey. Here Joseph Cottle, a thriving bookseller, himself the author of some indifferent poems, was so charmed with the conversation and verses of Coleridge that he offered to publish what had been written, and as many more as he should write, at a certain sum per line. Some disputes sprang up among the Pantisocrats, and the scheme was abandoned, much to the chagrin of Coleridge. At Bristol were three sisters-Sara Fricker, the eldest of these, was married to Coleridge in October, 1795; a few months later Edith became the wife of Southey; another sister was already married to Lovell, who died not long after. Coleridge took up his residence in a pretty cottage at Stowey, at the foot of the Quantock Hills, where he remained two years. Here was written not a little of the best of the poetry of Coleridge: The Ode on the Departing Year; Fears in Solitude; France-an Ode; The Ancient Mariner; the first part of Christabel, and the tragedy of Remorse. At

this time Coleridge was a Unitarian in religion, and was accustomed to preach for congregations of that faith. One Sabbath morning William Hazlitt walked ten miles to hear Coleridge, whose preaching is thus described by him:

THE PREACHING OF Coleridge.

"When I got there, the organ was playing the 100th Psalm, and when it was done, Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text: 'He departed again into a mountain Himself alone.' As he gave out this text, his voice rose like a stream of rich distilled perfumes, and when he came to the last two words, which he pronounced deep, loud, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young, as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if that prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the universe. The idea of St. John came into my mind-of 'one crying in the wilderness, who had his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts and wild honey.' The preacher then launched into his subject like an eagle dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon Peace and War -upon Church and State-not their alliance, but their separation; on the spirit of the World and the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but as opposed to one another. He talked of those who had inscribed the Cross of Christ upon banners dripping with human gore! He made a poetical and pastoral excursion; and to show the fatal effects of war, drew a striking contrast between the simple shepherd-boy driving his team afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, as though he should never be old, and the same poor country lad, crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse, turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with powder and pomatum, a long queue at his back, and tricked out in the finery of the profession of blood.-'Such were the notes our once-loved poet sung;' and for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had heard the music of the spheres."-Hazlitt's Essays.