Coleridges Ancient Mariner and Select Poems

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Title: Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Release Date: February 15, 2004 [EBook #11101]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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EDITED BY
FREDERICK H. SYKES, PH.D.
TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA
UNIVERSITY
COLERIDGE'S ANCIENT MARINER AND SELECT POEMS
1908
PREFATORY NOTE
The text of the poems in this volume is that of J. Dykes Campbell in the Globe edition of
Coleridge's poems. For the introduction I have depended also largely upon his Memoir of
Coleridge, and upon the two volumes of the "Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge," edited
by the poet's grandson, Mr. E.H. Coleridge. In the Notes, as will be seen, I am indebted
particularly to the general editor of this series, Dr. F.H. Sykes, to Dr. Lane Cooper of
Cornell University, and again to Mr. Coleridge, through whose kindness I have been able
to get a reproduction of the Marshmills crayon, undoubtedly the most satisfactory portrait
of the poet in existence, for the frontispiece.
H.M.B.
CONTENTS
BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION:
I. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
II. COLERIDGE'S POEMS
TEXT:
THE ANCIENT MARINER
CHRISTABEL
KUBLA KHAN
LOVE

FRANCE: AN ODE
DEJECTION: AN ODE
YOUTH AND AGE
WORK
WITHOUT HOPE
EPITAPH
NOTES
*SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY*
EDITIONS:
Globe Edition. Edited by J. Dykes Campbell. 1 vol. Muses' Library. Edited by Richard
Garnett.
LIFE AND CRITICISM:
Stephen, Leslie, Article "Coleridge" in "The Dictionary of National Biography."
H.D. Traill, "Coleridge" ("English Men of Letters Series").
Caine, T.H., "Coleridge" ("Great Writers Series").
Coleridge, S.T., "Biographia Literaria" ("Everyman's Library").
De Quincey, T., "Lake Poets."
Hazlitt, W., "First Acquaintance with Poets."
Cottle, J., "Reminiscences of Coleridge and Southey."
Pater, W., "Appreciations."
Shairp, J.C., "Studies in Poetry and Philosophy."
Sarrazin, Gabriel, "La Renaissance de la Poésie Anglaise, 1798-1889."
Brandl, Alois, "S.T. Coleridge and the English Romantic School."
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Haney, J.L., "A Bibliography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge."
INTRODUCTION

I. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
I. THE BEGINNINGS
Coleridge lived in what may safely be called the most momentous period of modern
history. In the year following his birth Warren Hastings was appointed first
governor-general of India, where he maintained English empire during years of war with
rival nations, and where he committed those acts of cruelty and tyranny which called
forth the greatest eloquence of the greatest of English orators, in the famous impeachment
trial at Westminster, when Coleridge was a sixteen-year-old schoolboy in London. A few
years before his birth the liberal philosophy of France had found a popular voice in the
writings of Rousseau, which became the gospel of revolution throughout Europe in
Coleridge's youth and early manhood. "The New Héloise" in the field of sentiment and of
the relation of the sexes, "The Social Contract" In political theory, and "Émile" in matters
of education, were books whose influence upon Coleridge's generation it would be hard
to estimate. When Coleridge was four years old the English colonies in America declared
their independence and founded a new nation upon the natural rights of man,--a nation
that has grown to be the mightiest and most beneficent on the globe. Coleridge was
seventeen when the French Revolution broke out; he was forty-three when Napoleon was
sent to St. Helena. He saw the whole career of the greatest political upheaval and of the
greatest military genius of the modern world. Fox, Pitt, and Burke,--the greatest Liberal
orator, the greatest Parliamentary leader, and the greatest philosophic statesman that
England has produced--were at the height of their glory when Coleridge went up to
Cambridge in 1791.
In literature--naturally, since literature is but an interpretation of life--the age was not less
remarkable. Dr. Johnson was still alive when Coleridge came up to school at Christ's
Hospital, Goldsmith had died eight years before. But a new spirit was abroad in the
younger generation. Macpherson's "Fingal," alleged to be a translation from the ancient
Gaelic poet Ossian, had appeared in 1760; Thomas Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry," a collection of folk-ballads and rude verse-romances such as the common people
cherished but critics had long refused to consider as poetry, was published in 1765. These
two books were of prime importance in fostering a new taste in
literature,--a love of
natural beauty, of simplicity, and of rude strength. The new taste hailed with delight the
appearance of a native lyric genius in Burns, whose first volume of poems was printed in
1786. It welcomed also the homely, simple sweetness, what Coleridge and Lamb called
the "divine