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tnni> iii tin- school*. His failure after no lew* 

 than three attempts to gain tin- Newdigate tilled 

 Iii in with 'a passionate de.s|Mndency,' from which 

 ) turned for relief to a fatal remedy. When at 

 length he had gained with credit an'Oriel fellow 

 ship, at the close of his probationary year he was 

 judged to have forfeited it mainly on the ground 

 oi intemperance. 'The sentence might be con- 

 sidered severe,' says his brother ; ' it could not l>e 

 said to he unjuHt.' Unhappily it ruined his life, 

 crushed his spirit, and made recovery impossible. 

 \\iih t'.'HX) given In in by the college, Hartley spent 

 the next two years in London, then tried for four 

 or live years taking pupils at Ambleside, occasion- 

 ally writing for BlackwoocTs Magazine, next lived 

 some time at (Jrasmere, and then went to live at 

 Leeds with one Bingley, a publisher, for whom he 

 agreed to write a biographical work on the worthies 

 of Lancashire and Yorkshire. ( )f these but thirteen 

 lives had already been written when Bingley failed. 

 These were published under the titles of Biographia 

 Borealis ( 1833) and of Worthies of Yorkshire and 

 I.uni'itshire (1836). Bingley also printed a small 

 volume of his poems in 1833. Hartley next 

 returned to Grasmere, the only remaining inter- 

 ruptions to his ordinary life being two short and 

 not unsuccessful intervals of teaching at Sedbergh 

 grammar-school. His father, who died in 1834, 

 made a special provision for him in a codicil to 

 his will, and his mother's death in 1845 made him 

 by an annuity completely independent. He con- 

 tinued to write, poetry, and wrote a life of Mas- 

 singer for an edition projected by Moxon. His days 

 were spent in fitful study, lonely reverie, and wan- 

 derings over the Lake Country, with, unhappily, 

 occasional lapses into intemperance. The dales- 

 men everywhere treated ' Poet Hartley ' with a 

 singularly affectionate respect, not without a kind 

 of awe at his eerie appearance, his abstracted air, 

 his small stature, prematurely white hair, and 

 gentle manners. He loved children and animals, 

 and was fondly loved by them in return. He died 

 6th January 1849, and was buried beside what was 

 soon to be Wordsworth's grave. 



Hartley Coleridge's poetry falls short of the 

 great, but sometimes approaches it, and even 

 nearly. It is graceful, tender, and sincere, per- 

 vaded throughout with a charm of a nature rare and 

 almost unique, alternately wise and playful, and 

 often perfect in the expression of the thoughts 

 it has to convey. He is greatest in the sonnet 

 a form which seems exactly to have been the 

 measure of his powers, or rather of the fitful 

 periods of his poetic passion. Leonard and Susun, 

 a narrative poem in blank verse, and Prometheus, 

 a dramatic fragment, are the only poems of any 

 length. His Poeins were collected by his brother 

 Derwent, with a Memoir (2 vols. 1851); also his 

 Essays and Marginalia (2 vols. 1851 ). 



Coleridge, LORD. John Duke Coleridge ( eldest 

 son of Sir John Taylor Coleridge, the great poet's 

 nephew, and himself the biographer of Keble ) was 

 born in 1821, and educated at Eton and Oxford, 

 was called to the bar in 1847, and was for some 

 years leader of the western circuit. Appointed 

 recorder of Portsmouth in 1855, he took silk in 

 1861, and from 1865 to 1873 represented Exeter in 

 parliament. He was successively Solicitor-general 

 (1868), Attorney-general (1871), Chief-justice of 

 the Common Pleas (1873), and (1880), Lord Chief 

 justice. An occasional contributor to the reviews, 

 and a man of exceptional culture and polished 

 eloquence, he died 14th June 1894. 



Coleridge* SAMUEL TAYLOR, was born at 

 Ottery St Mary, Devonshire, October 21, 1772, 

 where his father was vicar, and master of the 

 grammar-school. He was the youngest of ten 



children of his father'* sei-oiid marriage. A 

 larly precocious child, he hud read the Arabian 

 \i-//i/-, in his fourth year ; but he -aid of himself, 

 I never thought as a child.' On hut father's death 

 he was sent, in his ninth year, to he educated at 

 Christ's Hospital, where he had Charles Lamb for 

 a .sehool companion, fie was j>oorly fed, and badly 

 taught ; but ne plunged with eagerness into a whole 

 library of literature, and read Homer and Virgil 

 for the mere pleasure of it. Remaining at chri-t '. 

 for eight years, he became head of the school, and 

 showed a remarkable capacity for assimilating all 

 sorts of knowledge. He was a mental rover from 

 his boyhood onwards, with a very miscellaneous 

 intellectual appetite. At school he translated the . 

 hymns of Synesius, studied works on medicine in ' 

 Latin, on metaphysics in Greek, and fell in love 

 with the sister of one of his companions. His last 

 years at school, however, were years of suffering. 

 He used to bathe in the New River, plunging 

 into the water with his clothes on, and after a 

 swim, resumed his games, or returned to his books, 

 without changing his garments. The inevitable 

 result was rheumatic fever and other ailments. 

 While at school he had a passing attraction 

 not only to his schoolmate's sister, but to the 

 shoemaker's craft. This was a short-lived fancy ; 

 and in October 1791 he passed to Jesus College, 

 Cambridge, a few months after Wordsworth had 

 taken his B.A. degree, and left the university. 

 During his first year at college he did good work in 

 classics, and became one of four selected candidates 

 for the Craven scholarship in 1793 ; but his bent 

 not being mathematical, and having little chance 

 of winning the chancellor's medal, he gave himself 

 up to general literature. He also became inter- 

 ested in politics, took a strong position on the 

 Liberal side, and won distinction, even thus early, 

 as a marvellous talker. He got into difficulties 

 in Cambridge, through extravagance in furnishing 

 his rooms, became depressed, and in a panic fled to 

 London, where he enlisted in the loth Dragoons, 

 under the name of Silas Tomkyns Comberbach (a 

 name assumed to conceal and yet reveal his identity 

 as S. T. C. ). He never could learn, however, how- 

 to manage a horse, never rose out of the awkward 

 squad ; and a chance accident disclosing his know- 

 ledge of classics, led to his discovery by his friends, 

 and to his being bought out of the service. At the 

 close of the summer term, he went from Cambridge 

 to Oxford ; and there, at Balliol College, he for the 

 first time met Southey. In July he took a pedes- 

 trian tour in North \\ ales, after which he went to 

 Bristol, and there again met both with Southey 

 and with Robert Lovell, the latter of whom had 

 just married a Miss Flicker, to whose sister ( Edith) 

 Southey had engaged himself. Coleridge at once 

 followed his example, and became engaged to 

 another sister (Sara); and amongst them they 

 formed the Quixotic plan of emigration to the banks 

 of the Susquehanna in America, where they were to 

 form a ' Pantisocracy ' an ideal community on the 

 principles of Communism. Two hours of daily 

 labour were to suffice for providing the necessaries 

 of life, the rest of their time being devoted to intel- 

 lectual work and social converse. They were to 

 have all things in common ; and, as a result of the 

 experiment, were to bring in a golden age, for 

 themselves and others. It was a dream ; and it 

 passed, as dreams do. 



Coleridge had left Cambridge without taking a 

 degree. In the late autumn of 1794 he went up to 

 London, and there renewed his acquaintance with 

 Lamb. But in December he was brought back to 

 Bristol by Southey, who feared he might come 

 under some new fascination in the metropolis. He 

 had to find the means of livelihood, not on the 

 Susquehanna, but in the west of England ; and 



