Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor ( 1772 – 1834 ),poet, critic, and philosopher of Romanticism . Youngest son of the vicar of Ottery St Mary, Devon , he was destined for the Church. A temperamental, dreamy child, he was sent away after his father's early death to Christ's Hospital school, London, where his precocious classical reading and powers of ‘inspired’ talk (which never left him) attracted a circle of young admirers, including Leigh Hunt and the future essayist Lamb . At Jesus College, Cambridge ( 1792 – 4 ), a brilliant career in classics was diverted by French revolutionary politics, heavy drinking, and an unhappy love affair, which led Coleridge to enlist in desperation in the 15th Light Dragoons under the name of Comberbache. He was bought out under an ‘insanity’ clause by his brother, but did not take a degree.
In the summer of 1794 an undergraduate walking-tour through Oxford brought him...
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