ln less grandiloqent terms, Charles Lamb, writing about
the Tale of Paraguay id Southey in 1825, says, "How she
Dobrizhoffered it all out, puzzles my slender Latinity to
conjecture." In 1825 her second work appeared, a transla
tion from the mediaeval French, in 2 volumes, called The
Right Joyous and Pleasant History of the Feats, Jests, and
Prou esses of the Chevalier Bayard, the Good Knight ivith-
out Fear and without Reproach : P>y the Loyal Servant.
In September 1829, at Crosthwaite Church, Keswick. after an engagement of seven years duration, Sara Coleridge was married to her cousin, Henry Kelson Coleridge, then a Chancery barrister in London. The first eight years of her married life were spent in a little cottage on Down- shire Hill, in the town of Hampstead. There four of her children were born, of whom two survived. In 1834 Mrs Coleridge published her Pretty Lessons in Verse for Good Children; with some Lessons in Latin in Easy Rhyme. These were originally written for the instruction of her own children. On their publication they became very popular ; and a new edition has been lately published by Henry S. King & Co. In 1837 the Coleridges removed to Chester Place, Regent s Park ; and in the same year appeared Phnntasmion, a Fairy Tale, Sara Coleridge s longest original work. An edition of this also was published in 1874 by Henry S. King & Co., with a preface by Lord- Chief-Justice Coleridge. The Songs of Phantasmion were much admired at the time by Leigh Hunt and other critics ; and Mr Justice Coleridge is not afraid to say of them in Ids preface that they are " surely worthy of any great lyrical writer." Without meriting such praise as this, how ever, some of these songs, such as "Sylvan Stay " and " One Face Alone," are extremely graceful and musical, and the whole fairy tale is noticeable for the beauty of the story and the richness of its language.
In 1843 Mr Henry Coleridge died, leaving to his widow the unfinished task of editing her father s works. To these slie added some compositions of her own, among which are the Essay on Rationalism, with a special applica tion to tlie Doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, appended to Coleridge s Aids to Reflection, a Preface to the Essays on his Own Times, l>y S. T. Coleridge, and the Introduction to the Biographia Literaria. During the last few years of her life Sara Coleridge w r as a confirmed invalid. Shortly before she died she amused herself by writing a little auto biography for her daughter. This, which reaches only to her uinth year, was completed by her daughter, and pub lished in 1873, together with some of her letters, under the title Memoirs and Letters of Sara Coleridge. These let ters show a cultured and highly speculative mind. They contain many apt criticisms of known people and books, and are specially interesting for their allusions to Words worth and the Lake Poets. Sara Coleridge died at Chester Place, May 3, 1852, and was buried by the side of her father, mother, and husband, in Highgate churchyard.
COLET, John ( 1466-151 9) dean of St Paul s, the eldest son of Sir Henry Colet, was born at London in 1406. His education commenced in St Anthony s school in that city, from which, in 1483, he was sent to Mag dalen College, Oxford. After seven years study of logic and philosophy, he took his degree in art?. About the year 1493 he went to Paris, and thence to Italy, in order to im prove himself in the Greek and Latin languages, which at that time were imperfectly taught in our universities. During his residence abroad he became acquainted with Budaeus and Erasmus. On his return to England in 1497 he took orders, and settled at Oxford, where he read lec tures, without fee, on the Epistles of St Paul. At this period he held the rectory of St Dennington in Suffolk, to which he had been instituted at the early age of nineteen ; and he was also prebendary of York, and canon of St Martin s ie Grand, London. In 1502 he became prebend ary of Sarum, in 1505 prebendary of St Paul s, and immediately afterwards dean of that cathedral, having previously taken the degree of doctor of divinity. He was no sooner raised to this dignity than he introduced the practice of preaching and expounding the Scriptures ; and he soon afterwards established a perpetual divinity lecture, on three days in each week, in St Paul s Church, an institution which helped to pave the way for the Refor mation. About the year 1508 Dean Colet formed his plan for the foundation of St Paul s school, which he completed in 1512, and endowed with estates of an annual value of 122 and upwards. The celebrated grammarian William Lilly was the first master, and the company of mercers were appointed trustees. The dean s religious opinions were so much more liberal than those of the contemporary clergy, that they deemed him little better than a heretic ; and on this account he was so frequently molested that he at last determined to spend the rest of his days in peaceful retirement. To carry this resolution in to- effect he built a house near the palace of Richmond ; but being seized with the sweating sickness, lie died in 1519, in the fifty-third year f his age. He was buried on the south side of the choir of St Paul s, where a stone was laid over his grave, with no other inscription than his name. Resides the preferments above mentioned, he was rector of the guild of Jesus at St Paul s, and chaplain to Henry VIII. Dean Colet, though in communion with the Church of Rome, disapproved of auricular confession, of the celibacy of priests, and other tenets and ceremonies which have since been rejected by all Protestants. He v, rote Alsohttissi- mus de octo orationis partium conslructione Lilelh/s (Ant werp, 1530), Rudimenta Grammatices (London, 1539), Daily Devotions, Monition to a Godly Life, Epistoloe ad Erasmum, and commentaries on different parts of the sacred books, together with a number of smaller theological works.
COLET, Louise Revoil (1808-1876), French poetess and novelist, belonged to a Provencal family, and was born at Aix. In 1834 she came to Paris; and in 1836 appeared her Flews du Midi, a volume of verse, of liberal tendency, which made some noise, and gained her the friendship of Teste and Cousin. It was followed in 1839 by Ptnserosa, a second volume of verse ; by Le Mustc de Versailles, a poem crowned by the Institute ; by La Jeunesse de Gotthe, a one-act comedy; and by L(s Cceurs Jurists, a novel. In 1840 she published Les FuneraUles de Napoleon, a poem, and La Jeunesse de Miralcau, a reckless novel. Ihe criticisms on her books, however, on her academical successes, and on her connection with several celebrated men about this time, exasperated her to an incredible de gree ; and in 1841 Paris was diverted by her attempted re prisals on Alphonse Karr for certain notices in Les Giiepes. In 1849 she had to defend an action brought against her by the heirs of Madame Rc camier, whose correspondence with Renjamin Constant she had taken it upon herself to publish in the columns of the Presse. She was crowned five or six times by the Institute, a distinction which she owed, however, to the influence of Cousin rather than to the quality of her work. She produced a host of writings in prose and verse novels, plays, anacreontics, didactic poems, travels, copy for a milliner s journal, translations from Shakespeare singularly unequal in matter and stjle. Only one of her books lias survived Lui : Roman Con- tcmporain, the novel in which she told the story of her life; and that, whatever value it may possess as an historical document, is worthless as a work of art. Madame Colet seems to have been a woman of some literary talent, want ing altogether in the quality of self-respect and the power of self-control.
