{"product_id":"coleridge-s-ancient-mariner-and-select-poems-gb-11101","title":"Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eColeridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eColeridge lived in what may safely be called the most momentous period\r\nof modern history. In the year following his birth Warren Hastings was\r\nappointed first governor-general of India, where he maintained English\r\nempire during years of war with rival nations, and where he committed\r\nthose acts of cruelty and tyranny which called forth the greatest\r\neloquence of the greatest of English orators, in the famous impeachment\r\ntrial at Westminster, when Coleridge was a sixteen-year-old schoolboy in\r\nLondon. A few years before his birth the liberal philosophy of France\r\nhad found a popular voice in the writings of Rousseau, which became the\r\ngospel of revolution throughout Europe in Coleridge's youth and early\r\nmanhood. \"The New Hloise\" in the field of sentiment and of the relation\r\nof the sexes, \"The Social Contract\" In political theory, and \"mile\" in\r\nmatters of education, were books whose influence upon Coleridge's\r\ngeneration it would be hard to estimate. When Coleridge was four years\r\nold the English colonies in America declared their independence and\r\nfounded a new nation upon the natural rights of man,a nation that has\r\ngrown to be the mightiest and most beneficent on the globe. Coleridge\r\nwas seventeen when the French Revolution broke out; he was forty-three\r\nwhen Napoleon was sent to St. Helena. He saw the whole career of the\r\ngreatest political upheaval and of the greatest military genius of the\r\nmodern world. Fox, Pitt, and Burke,the greatest Liberal orator, the\r\ngreatest Parliamentary leader, and the greatest philosophic statesman\r\nthat England has producedwere at the height of their glory when\r\nColeridge went up to Cambridge in 1791.\nIn literaturenaturally, since literature is but an interpretation of\r\nlifethe age was not less remarkable. Dr. Johnson was still alive when\r\nColeridge came up to school at Christ's Hospital, Goldsmith had died\r\neight years before. But a new spirit was abroad in the younger\r\ngeneration. Macpherson's \"Fingal,\" alleged to be a translation from the\r\nancient Gaelic poet Ossian, had appeared in 1760; Thomas Percy's\r\n\"Reliques of Ancient English Poetry,\" a collection of folk-ballads and\r\nrude verse-romances such as the common people cherished but critics had\r\nlong refused to consider as poetry, was published in 1765. These two\r\nbooks were of prime importance in fostering a new taste in\r\nliterature,a love of natural beauty, of simplicity, and of rude\r\nstrength. The new taste hailed with delight the appearance of a native\r\nlyric genius in Burns, whose first volume of poems was printed in 1786.\r\nIt welcomed also the homely, simple sweetness, what Coleridge and Lamb\r\ncalled the \"divine chit-chat,\" of Cowper, whose \"Task\" appeared in the\r\npreceding year. But it was in Coleridge himself and his close\r\ncontemporaries and followers that the splendor of the new poetry showed\r\nitself. He was two years younger than Wordsworth, a year younger than\r\nScott; he was sixteen at the birth of Byron, twenty at that of Shelley,\r\ntwenty-four at that of Keats; and he outlived all of them except\r\nWordsworth. His genius blossomed early. \"The Ancient Mariner,\" his\r\ngreatest poem, was published some years before Wordsworth's \"Ode on the\r\nIntimations of Immortality\" was written, or Scott's \"Lay of the Last\r\nMinstrel.\" He was in the prime of life, or what should have been the\r\nprime of lifeforty years oldwhen Byron burst into sudden fame with\r\nthe first two cantos of \"Childe Harold\" in 1812; he was forty-six when\r\nKeats published \"Endymion\"; he was fifty-one when Shelley was drowned.\r\nAnd of all this gifted company Coleridge, though not the strongest\r\ncharacter or the most prolific poet, was the profoundest intellect and\r\nthe most originative poetic spirit.\nThere was little hint, however, of future greatness or of fellowship\r\nwith great names in his birth and early circumstances. His father was a\r\ncountry clergyman and schoolmaster in the village of Ottery St. Mary, in\r\nDevonshire, a simple-hearted unworldly man, full of curious learning and\r\nnot very attentive to practical affairs. His mother managed the\r\nhousehold and brought up the children. Both his parents were of simple\r\nWest-country stock; but his father, having a natural turn for study and\r\nhaving done well in his early manhood as a schoolmaster, went at the age\r\nof thirty-one as a sizar, or poor student, to Sidney-Sussex College,\r\nCambridge, took orders, and was afterwards given the living of Ottery\r\nSt. Mary. Here he continued his beloved work of teaching, in addition to\r\nhis pastoral duties, and by means of this combination won the humble\r\nlivelihood which, through his wife's careful economy, sufficed for\r\nrearing his large family. Coleridge tells us that his father \"had so\r\nlittle of parental ambition in him that he had destined his children to\r\nbe blacksmiths, etc.\" (though he had \"resolved that I should be a\r\nparson\"), \"and had accomplished his intention but for my mother's pride\r\nand spirit of aggrandizing her family.\" Several of the children rewarded\r\ntheir mother's care by distinguishing themselves in a modest way in the\r\narmy or in the church, but the only one about whom the world is curious\r\nnow was the youngest of the ten, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was born\r\nat Ottery St. Mary, October 21, 1772.\n\u003cb\u003e ......Buy Now (To Read More)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eProduct details\u003ch3\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eEbook Number\u003c\/b\u003e: 11101 \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor\u003c\/b\u003e: Coleridge, Samuel Taylor \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRelease Date\u003c\/b\u003e: Feb 1, 2004 \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat\u003c\/b\u003e: eBook \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage\u003c\/b\u003e: English \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"booksdeli.com","offers":[{"title":"Coleridge, Samuel Taylor,1772-1834 \/ eBook \/ English","offer_id":43216266264733,"sku":"gb-11101-ebook","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0619\/5648\/9373\/products\/11101.jpg?v=1671342341","url":"https:\/\/booksdeli.com\/products\/coleridge-s-ancient-mariner-and-select-poems-gb-11101","provider":"booksdeli.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}