Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on the 21st of October, 1772,
youngest of many children of the Rev. John Coleridge, Vicar of the
Parish and Head Master of the Grammar School of Ottery St. Mary, in
Devonshire. One of the poet's elder brothers was the grandfather of
Lord Chief Justice Coleridge. Coleridge's mother was a notable
housewife, as was needful in the mother of ten children, who had
three more transmitted to her from her husband's former wife.
Coleridge's father was a kindly and learned man, little
sophisticated, and distinguishing himself now and then 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 promised what help he could give to the anxious wife.
When his father died, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was but eight years
old, and Charles Buller obtained for him his presentation to Christ's
Hospital. Coleridge's mind delighted in far wandering over the
fields of thought; from a boy he took intense delight in dreamy
speculation on the mysteries that lie around the life of man. From a
boy also he proved his subtleties of thought through what Charles
Lamb called the "deep and sweet intonations" of such speech as could
come 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 the Slave Trade,
but through indolence he slipped into a hundred pounds of debt. The
stir of the French Revolution was then quickening young minds into
bold freedom of speculation, resentment against tyranny of custom,
and yearning for a higher life in this world. Old opinions that
familiarity had made to the multitude conventional were for that
reason distrusted and discarded. Coleridge no longer held his