Transcribed from the 1892 Cassell & Company edition byDavid Price,
CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.
Confessions
OF AN
Inquiring Spirit.
TO WHICH AREADDED
MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS
FROM“THEFRIEND.”
BY
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
LONDON, PARIS &MELBOURNE.
1892.
INTRODUCTION.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born onthe 21st of October, 1772, youngest of many children of the Rev.John Coleridge, Vicar of the Parish and Head Master of theGrammar School of Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire. One ofthe poet’s elder brothers was the grandfather of Lord ChiefJustice Coleridge. Coleridge’s mother was a notablehousewife, as was needful in the mother of ten children, who hadthree more transmitted to her from her husband’s formerwife. Coleridge’s father was a kindly and learnedman, little sophisticated, and distinguishing himself now andthen by comical acts of what is called absence of mind. Charles Buller, afterwards a judge, was one of his boys, and,when her husband’s life seemed to be failing, had promisedwhat help he could give to the anxious wife. When hisfather died, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was but eight years old, andCharles Buller obtained for him his presentation toChrist’s Hospital. Coleridge’s mind delightedin far wandering over the fields of thought; from a boy he tookintense delight in dreamy speculation on the mysteries that liearound the life of man. From a boy also he proved hissubtleties of thought through what Charles Lamb called the“deep and sweet intonations” of such speech as couldcome only from a poet.
From the Charterhouse, Coleridge went to Jesus College,Cambridge, where he soon won a gold medal for a Greek ode on theSlave Trade, but through indolence he slipped into a hundredpounds of debt. The stir of the French Revolution was thenquickening young minds into bold freedom of speculation,resentment against tyranny of custom, and yearning for a higherlife in this world. Old opinions that familiarity had madeto the multitude conventional were for that reason distrusted anddiscarded. Coleridge no longer held his religious faith inthe form taught by his father. He could not sign theThirty-nine Articles, and felt his career closed at theUniversity. His debt also pressed upon him heavily. After a long vacation with a burdened mind, in which one pleasantday of picnic gave occasion to his “Songs of thePixies,” Coleridge went back to Cambridge. But soonafterwards he threw all up in despair. He resolved tobecome lost to his friends, and find some place where he couldearn in obscurity bare daily bread. He came to London, andthen enlisted as a private in the 15th Light Dragoons. After four months he was discovered, his discharge was obtained,and he went back to Cambridge.
But he had no career before him there, for hi