COLERIDGE.





CHAPTER I.

Birth, parentage, and early years--Christ's Hospital--Jesus College,
Cambridge.

[1772-1794.]


On the 21st of October 1772 there was added to that roll of famous
Englishmen of whom Devonshire boasts the parentage a new and not its
least illustrious name. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE was the son of the Rev.
John Coleridge, vicar of Ottery St. Mary in that county, and head
master of Henry VIII.'s Free Grammar School in the same town. He was
the youngest child of a large family. To the vicar, who had been twice
married, his first wife had borne three children, and his second ten.
Of these latter, however, one son died in infancy; four others,
together with the only daughter of the family, passed away before
Samuel had attained his majority; and thus only three of his brothers,
James, Edward, and George Coleridge, outlived the eighteenth century.
The first of these three survivors became the father of Henry Nelson
Coleridge--who married his cousin Sara, the poet's accomplished