[Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other inconsistencies. Text that has been changed to correct an obvious error is noted at the end of this ebook.] COLERIDGE BY S. L. BENSUSAN [Illustration] LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK 67 LONG ACRE, W. C., AND EDINBURGH NEW YORK: DODGE PUBLISHING CO. [Illustration: Samuel Coleridge] CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE INTRODUCTION 7 I. EARLY YEARS 13 II. IN SEARCH OF THE IDEAL 25 III. IN THE LAKE COUNTRY AND AT MALTA 33 IV. TROUBLED YEARS 41 V. COLERIDGE AS AN OBSERVER OF NATURE 61 VI. COLERIDGE AS POET AND CRITIC 75 INDEX 93 COLERIDGE INTRODUCTION Among the great writers whose activity is associated with the closing years of the eighteenth and the opening of the nineteenth centuries, are several who claim more respect than popularity. If they were poets, their works find a place in a thousand libraries, but the dust gathers upon covers long unopened, and only the stray enthusiast removes it. Southey, Cowper, and Coleridge, for example, are authors of well-nigh universal acceptance, but who, outside the ranks of professed students of poetry, could claim an intimate acquaintance with their work? In _An Anthology of Longer Poems_ published at Oxford two years ago and prepared by two Professors of English Literature, Southey, for all his great gifts, is not represented at all, and William Cowper is responsible for nothing more than the familiar lines to his mother's picture.