Page:Cousins's Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.djvu/103

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Dictionary of English Literature
91

knowledge was to be co-ordinated. He has, however, left enough poetry of such excellence as to place him in the first rank of English poets, and enough philosophic, critical, and theological matter to constitute him one of the principal intellectually formative forces of his time. His knowledge of philosophy, science, theology, and literature was alike wide and deep, and his powers of conversation, or rather monologue, were almost unique. A description of him in later life tells of " the clerical-looking dress, the thick, waving, silver hair, the youthful coloured cheek, the indefinable mouth and lips, the quick, yet steady and penetrating greenish-grey eye, the slow and continuous enunciation, and the everlasting music of his tones."

Summary.—B. 1772, ed. Christ's Hospital and Camb., enlists 1794 but bought off, became intimate with Southey, and proposes to found pantisocracy, settles at Clevedon and Nether Stowey 1795, and became friend of Wordsworth, began to take opium 1796, writes Ancient Mariner, and joins W. in Lyrical Ballads, became Unitarian preacher, visits Germany 1798, pub. translation of Wallenstein 1800, settles at Greta Hall and finishes Christabel, goes to Malta 1804, lectures on Shakespeare 1808, leaves his family and lives with W. 1809, and thereafter with various friends, latterly with Gillman at Highgate, returned to Trinitarianism, pub. various works 1808-1825, d. 1834.

S. T. Coleridge, a Narrative, J. D. Campbell (1893), also H. D. Traill (Men of Letters Series, 1884), also Pater's Appreciations, De Quincey's Works, Principal Shairp's Studies in Poetry and Philosophy (1868).

Coleridge, Sara (1802-1852).—Miscellaneous writer, the only dau. of the above, m. her cousin, Henry Nelson C. She translated Dobrizhöffer's Account of the Abipones, and The Joyous and Pleasant History ... of the Chevalier Bayard. Her original works are Pretty Lessons in Verse, etc. (1834), which was very popular, and a fairy tale, Phantasmion. She also ed. her father's works, to which she added an essay on Rationalism.

Colet, John (1467-1519).—Scholar and theologian, was b. in London, the s. of a wealthy citizen, who was twice Lord Mayor. The only survivor of a family of 22, he went to Oxf. and Paris, and thence to Italy, where he learned Greek. He entered the Church, and held many preferments, including the Deanery of St. Paul's. He continued to follow out his studies, devoting himself chiefly to St. Paul's epistles. He was outspoken against the corruptions of the Church, and would have been called to account but for the protection of Archbishop Warham. He devoted his great fortune to founding and endowing St. Paul's School. Among his works are a treatise on the Sacraments and various devotional writings. It is rather for his learning and his attitude to the advancement of knowledge than for his own writings that he has a place in the history of English literature.

Collier, Jeremy (1650-1726).—Church historian and controversialist, b. at Stow, Cambridgeshire, ed. at Ipswich and Camb., entered the Church, and became Rector of Ampton, Suffolk,