In the clouds woven was thy lucid robe!
"Ah! who can tell how little for this sphere
That frame was fitted of empyreal fire!" [1]


Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the youngest child of the Reverend John
Coleridge, Chaplain-Priest and Vicar of the parish of Ottery St. Mary,
in the county of Devon, and Master of the Free Grammar, or King's
School, as it is called, founded by Henry VIII in that town. His
mother's maiden name was Ann Bowdon. He was born at Ottery on the 21st
of October 1772, "about eleven o'clock in the forenoon," as his father,
the Vicar, has, with rather unusual particularity, entered it in the
register.

John Coleridge, who was born in 1719, and finished his education at
Sidney-Sussex College, Cambridge,[2] was a country clergyman and
schoolmaster of no ordinary kind. He was a good Greek and Latin scholar,
a profound Hebraist, and, according to the measure of his day, an
accomplished mathematician. He was on terms of literary friendship with
Samuel Badcock, and, by his knowledge of Hebrew, rendered material
assistance to Dr. Kennicott, in his well known critical works. Some
curious papers on theological and antiquarian subjects appear with his
signature in the early numbers of "The Gentleman's Magazine", between
the years 1745 and 1780; almost all of which have been inserted in the
interesting volumes of Selections made several years ago from that work.
In 1768 he published miscellaneous Dissertations arising from the 17th
and 18th chapters of the Book of Judges; in which a very learned and
ingenious attempt is made to relieve the character of Micah from the
charge of idolatry ordinarily brought against it; and in 1772 appeared a
"Critical Latin Grammar", which his son called "his best work," and