Citizenship

The tangle of delusions which stifled and distorted the growing tree of our well-being has been torn away; the parasite weeds that fed on its very roots have been plucked up with salutary violence.

To us there remain only quiet duties, the constant care, the gradual improvement, the cautions and unhazardous labors of the industrious though contented gardener—to prune, to strengthen, to engraft, and one by one to remove from its leaves and fresh shoots the slug and the caterpillar.

-       Coleridge[1]

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[1] Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the youngest son of the vicar of Ottery St Mary, Devon, was born in 1772. He was educated at Christ’s Hospital and Jesus College, Cambridge and planned to become a minister. At university he became interested in politics and was enthusiastic about the French Revolution. In 1794 Samuel met Robert Southey and the two became close friends. They developed radical political and religious views and began making plans to emigrate to Pennsylvania to set up a commune. They eventually abandoned this plan and instead stayed in England where they concentrated on communicating their radical ideas. This included the play they wrote together, The Fall of Robespierre.

In 1795 Samuel and Robert Southey married two sisters, Sarah and Edith Flicker. Samuel and Sarah moved to Bristol where he lectured at Unitarian chapels and wrote over fifty articles for the Morning Chronicle. This gave him the opportunity to explain the ideas of Joseph Priestley and William Godwin to a large audience. The Morning Chronicle also published his anti-war poem, Fire, Famine, Slaughter: A War Eclogue. Coleridge also edited the radical Christian journal, The Watchman.

In 1797 Coleridge met William Wordsworth. Together the two men developed a new poetry. The following year they introduced it to the public in Lyrical Ballads. Extremely popular, this collection marked the beginning of the Romantic Movement in poetry.  It included Coleridge’s famous poems, the Ancient Mariner and The Nightingale. For the next few years he concentrated on writing poetry, but an addiction to opium damaged the quality of his work.

Samuel retained an interest in journalism and in 1809 began publishing his own newspaper, The Friend, which only lasted 28 issues. He returned to poetry and in 1816 published Christabel and Kubla Khan. Samuel’s writing during this period about what had gone wrong with society had a considerable influence on Christian Socialists such as Frederick Maurice and Charles Kingsley. In his later years Coleridge wrote several important books on literature including Biographia Literaria (1817) and Aids to Reflection (1825). Samuel died of a heart attack in 1834.