216501_Samuel_T ... e_A_Biographical_Study.pdf - OUDL Home

PREFACE
EVERY writer about Coleridge must be conscious of his
debt to the Narrative of James Dykes Campbell, which
took its final form in 1894, and must regret that the full
biography, so long contemplated by the poet's grandson,
Ernest Hartley Coleridge, was destined to remain a fragment.
Some intrepid scholar will, no doubt, one day take
up that task. My own survey, like Campbell's, is a comparatively
brief one, but it is able to draw upon a good deal of
* material which has accumulated during the last half-century,
and some which, although probably known to him, he did
not, in 1894, think it discreet to use. And, like Campbell,
I have confined myself, in the main, to the limits of a narrative.
One does not, indeed, get the full picture of Coleridge
from a bare chronicle of his questing and self-tortured
pilgrimage through life. But I do not think that it would
' have been wise to break the continuity of the book by any
attempt at a detailed appreciation of his poetry, or of his
Shakespearean criticism, or of his contribution to aesthetic
theory, or of his political development, or of his final endeavour
to provide a metaphysical basis for Trinitarian
Christianity. These are tempting themes, but, although their
student must take account of chronology, they can hardly
be presented under its limitations.
Much of the purely biographical interest lies, I think, in
the rise and fall of Coleridge's many friendships. Into these
he was apt to enter lightly. He was not unaware of the
tendency; there was little, indeed, in his own psychology,
or in the whole sphere of things, which he was unable, by
flashes, to illumine. He had the gift of good companionship,
could both feel and inspire strong affections, and was
ready, at times, to take considerable trouble for others.
But in friendship, as in all else, he lacked staying-power.
His 'Estese' was the most pathetic of his dreams. The