A Short Biographical Dictionary of English LiteratureCousin, John W. (John William)
General
A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature
Cousin, John W. (John William)
American literature -- Bio-bibliography; English literature -- Bio-bibliography
Endowed with an intellect of the first order, and an imagination at once
delicate and splendid, C., from a weakness of moral constitution, and the
lamentable habit already referred to, fell far short of the performance
which he had planned, and which included various epic poems, and a
complete system of philosophy, in which all 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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