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130-576: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (originally The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere ) is the longest major poem by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge , written in 1797–98 and published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads . Some modern editions use a revised version printed in 1817 that featured a gloss . It is often considered a signal shift to modern poetry and the beginning of British Romantic literature . The Rime of

260-453: A calling to the eremitic life, after years living in the cenobium or community of the monastery, to move to a cell suitable as a hermitage on monastery grounds. There have also been many hermits who chose that vocation as an alternative to other forms of monastic life. The term "anchorite" (from the Greek ἀναχωρέω anachōreō , signifying "to withdraw", "to depart into the country outside

390-482: A secluded prayer-focused life, and sometimes interchangeably with anchorite/anchoress , recluse , and "solitary". Other religions, including Buddhism , Hinduism , Islam ( Sufism ), and Taoism , afford examples of hermits in the form of adherents living an ascetic way of life. In modern colloquial usage, "hermit" denotes anyone living apart from the rest of society, or having entirely or in part withdrawn from society, for any reason. The word hermit comes from

520-620: A bishop other than their diocesan as an additional spiritual resource and, if necessary, an intermediary. At the start of the twenty-first century, the Church of England reported a notable increase in the number of applications from people seeking to live the single consecrated life as Anglican hermits or solitaries. A religious community known as the Solitaries of DeKoven, who make Anglican prayer beads and Pater Noster cords to support themselves, are an example of an Anglican hermitage . In

650-479: A black albatross . "Ah! well a-day! what evil looks Had I from old and young! Instead of the cross, the Albatross About my neck was hung." As they discussed Shelvocke's book, Wordsworth proffered the following developmental critique to Coleridge, which importantly contains a reference to tutelary spirits : "Suppose you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the south sea, and

780-656: A considerable amount of poetry, of variable quality. He published other writings while he was living at the Gillman homes, notably the Lay Sermons of 1816 and 1817, Sibylline Leaves (1817), Hush (1820), Aids to Reflection (1825), and On the Constitution of the Church and State (1830). He also produced essays published shortly after his death, such as Essay on Faith (1838) and Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (1840). A number of his followers were central to

910-425: A constructed dwelling, situated in the desert or the forest. People sometimes sought them out for spiritual advice and counsel. Some eventually acquired so many disciples that they no longer enjoyed physical solitude. Some early Christian Desert Fathers wove baskets to exchange for bread. In medieval times, hermits were also found within or near cities where they might earn a living as gate keepers or ferrymen. In

1040-578: A culture dominated by empiricism . In 1799, Coleridge and the Wordsworths stayed at Thomas Hutchinson's farm on the River Tees at Sockburn , near Darlington . It was at Sockburn that Coleridge wrote his ballad-poem Love , addressed to Sara Hutchinson. The knight mentioned is the mailed figure on the Conyers tomb in ruined Sockburn church. The figure has a wyvern at his feet, a reference to

1170-464: A day or two of preaching he received a letter from Josiah Wedgwood II , who had offered to help him out of financial difficulties with an annuity of £150 (approximately £13,000 in today's money ) per year on condition he give up his ministerial career. Coleridge accepted this, to the disappointment of Hazlitt who hoped to have him as a neighbour in Shropshire. From 16 September 1798, Coleridge and

1300-472: A detailed study of the published versions of the poem. Over all, Coleridge's revisions resulted in the poem losing thirty-nine lines and an introductory prose "Argument", and gaining fifty-eight glosses and a Latin epigraph. In general the anthologies included printed lists of errata and, in the case of the particularly lengthy list in Sibylline Leaves , the list was included at the beginning of

1430-512: A fate worse than death as punishment for his killing of the albatross. One by one, all of the crew members die, but the mariner lives on, seeing for seven days and nights the curse in the eyes of the crew's corpses, whose last expressions remain upon their faces: Four times fifty living men, (And I heard nor sigh nor groan) With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, They dropped down one by one. The souls did from their bodies fly,— They fled to bliss or woe! And every soul, it passed me by, Like

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1560-581: A fever in April 1796. Coleridge was with him at his death. In 1796, he released his first volume of poems entitled Poems on Various Subjects , which also included four poems by Charles Lamb as well as a collaboration with Robert Southey and a work suggested by his and Lamb's schoolfriend Robert Favell. Among the poems were Religious Musings , Monody on the Death of Chatterton and an early version of The Eolian Harp entitled Effusion 35 . A second edition

1690-561: A joint volume of poetry, Lyrical Ballads , which proved to be the starting point for the English romantic age . Wordsworth may have contributed more poems, but the real star of the collection was Coleridge's first version of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner . It was the longest work and drew more praise and attention than anything else in the volume. In the spring Coleridge temporarily took over for Rev. Joshua Toulmin at Taunton's Mary Street Unitarian Chapel while Rev. Toulmin grieved over

1820-574: A kind of Magus , girt in mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr. Gilman's house at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain whether oracles or jargon." Coleridge is now buried in the aisle of St Michael's Parish Church in Highgate , London. He was originally buried at the Old Highgate Chapel, next to the main entrance of Highgate School . Coleridge could see the red door of the then new church from his last residence across

1950-402: A lifelong opium addiction. Coleridge had a turbulent career and personal life with a variety of highs and lows, but his public esteem grew after his death, and he became considered one of the most influential figures in English literature. For instance, a 2018 report by The Guardian labelled him "a genius" who had progressed into "one of the most renowned English poets." Organisations such as

2080-475: A local acquaintance of Coleridge's, had related a dream about a skeleton ship crewed by spectral sailors. In September 2003, a commemorative statue, by Alan B. Herriot of Penicuik , Scotland, was unveiled at Watchet harbour. In Biographia Literaria , Coleridge wrote: The thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural, and

2210-448: A major influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and American transcendentalism . Throughout his adult life, Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been speculated that he had bipolar disorder , which had not been defined during his lifetime. He was physically unhealthy, which may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for these conditions with laudanum , which fostered

2340-455: A member of St. Michael's stewardship committee states, "They put the coffins in a convenient space which was dry and secure, and quite suitable, bricked them up and forgot about them." A recent excavation revealed the coffins were not in the location most believed, the far corner of the crypt, but actually below a memorial slab in the nave inscribed with: "Beneath this stone lies the body of Samuel Taylor Coleridge". St. Michael's plans to restore

2470-411: A more authoritative version and Coleridge published somewhat revised versions of the poem in his Poetical Works anthology editions of 1828, 1829, and lastly in 1834—the year of his death. More recently scholars look to the earliest version, even in manuscript, as the most authoritative but for this poem no manuscript is extant . Hence the editors of the edition of Collected Poems published in 1972 used

2600-424: A more natural modern phrasing as "Water, water, everywhere / But not a drop to drink"; some such appearances have, in turn, played on the frequency with which these lines are misquoted. Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( / ˈ k oʊ l ə r ɪ dʒ / KOH -lə-rij ; 21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who

2730-473: A place in the Egyptian desert, and continued in various sketes today, including several regions on Mount Athos . Members of religious orders: Diocesan hermits according to canon 603: Others: Communities: From a religious point of view, the solitary life is a form of asceticism , wherein the hermit renounces worldly concerns and pleasures. This can be done for many reasons, including: to come closer to

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2860-699: A purposeful new route. He coined the term mountaineering. In 1804, he travelled to Sicily and Malta , working for a time as Acting Public Secretary of Malta under the Civil Commissioner, Alexander Ball , a task he performed successfully. He lived in San Anton Palace in the village of Attard . He gave this up and returned to England in 1806. Dorothy Wordsworth was shocked at his condition upon his return. From 1807 to 1808, Coleridge returned to Malta and then travelled in Sicily and Italy, in

2990-552: A sense of danger, the supernatural, or serenity, depending on the mood in different parts of the poem. The poem begins with an old grey-bearded sailor, the Mariner, stopping a guest at a wedding ceremony to tell him a story of a sailing voyage he took long ago. The Wedding-Guest is at first reluctant to listen, as the ceremony is about to begin, but the mariner's glittering eye captivates him. The mariner's tale begins with his ship departing on its journey. Despite initial good fortune,

3120-447: A special ceremony conducted by the local bishop after the anchorite had moved in. Medieval churches survive that have a tiny window ("squint") built into the shared wall near the sanctuary to allow the anchorite to participate in the liturgy by listening to the service and to receive Holy Communion . Another window looked out into the street or cemetery, enabling charitable neighbors to deliver food and other necessities. Clients seeking

3250-441: A specific need for corporal works of mercy. Hermits are also bound by the law of work. If they are not financially independent, they may engage in cottage industries or be employed part-time in jobs that respect the call for them to live in solitude and silence with extremely limited or no contact with other persons. Such outside jobs may not keep them from observing their obligations of the eremitic vocation of stricter separation from

3380-587: A surface level the poem explores a violation of nature and the resulting psychological effects on the mariner and on all those who hear him. According to Jerome McGann the poem is like a salvation story. The poem's structure is multi-layered text based on Coleridge's interest in higher criticism . "Like the Iliad or Paradise Lost or any great historical product, the Rime is a work of trans-historical rather than so-called universal significance. This verbal distinction

3510-570: A teacup. His marital problems, nightmares, illnesses, increased opium dependency, tensions with Wordsworth, and a lack of confidence in his poetic powers fuelled the composition of Dejection: An Ode and an intensification of his philosophical studies. In 1802, Coleridge took a nine-day walking holiday in the fells of the Lake District . Coleridge is credited with the first recorded descent of Scafell to Mickledore via Broad Stand, although this may have been more due to his getting lost than

3640-515: A vocation to some form of consecrated life. An example of this is life as a Poustinik , an Eastern Catholic expression of eremitic living that is finding adherents also in the West. In the Catholic Church , the institutes of consecrated life have their own regulations concerning those of their members who feel called by God to move from the life in community to the eremitic life, and have

3770-562: A weekly newspaper tax. The first issue of the short-lived journal was published in March 1796. It had ceased publication by May of that year. The years 1797 and 1798, during which he lived in what is now known as Coleridge Cottage , in Nether Stowey , Somerset, were among the most fruitful of Coleridge's life. In 1795, Coleridge met poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy . (Wordsworth, having visited him and being enchanted by

3900-453: Is continually acted upon; thirdly, that the events having no necessary connection do not produce each other; and lastly, that the imagery is somewhat too laboriously accumulated. Yet the Poem contains many delicate touches of passion, and indeed the passion is every where true to nature, a great number of the stanzas present beautiful images, and are expressed with unusual felicity of language; and

4030-537: Is difficult to imagine Wordsworth's great poems, The Excursion or The Prelude , ever having been written without the direct influence of Coleridge's originality. Hermit In Christianity , the term was originally applied to a Christian who lives the eremitic life out of a religious conviction, namely the Desert Theology of the Old Testament (i.e., the 40 years wandering in the desert that

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4160-491: Is everything to him. Here is a particular call to find in the desert, in the thick of spiritual battle, the glory of the Crucified One. Catholic Church norms for the consecrated eremitic and anchoritic life do not include corporal works of mercy. Nevertheless, every hermit, like every Christian, is bound by the law of charity and therefore ought to respond generously, as his or her own circumstances permit, when faced with

4290-545: Is important because it calls attention to a real one. Like The Divine Comedy or any other poem, the Rime is not valued or used always or everywhere or by everyone in the same way or for the same reasons." Whalley (1947) suggests that the Ancient Mariner is an autobiographical portrait of Coleridge himself, comparing the mariner's loneliness with Coleridge's own feelings of loneliness expressed in his letters and journals. In Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), Camille Paglia writes that

4420-415: Is initially uncertain as to whether or not he is hallucinating: Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed The light-house top I see? Is this the hill? is this the kirk? Is this mine own countree? We drifted o'er the harbour-bar, And I with sobs did pray— O let me be awake, my God! Or let me sleep alway. The rotten remains of the ship sink in a whirlpool, leaving only the mariner behind. A hermit on

4550-413: Is partially expiated. It then starts to rain, and the bodies of the crew, possessed by good spirits, rise again and help steer the ship. In a trance, the mariner hears two spirits discussing his voyage and penance, and learns that the ship is being powered supernaturally: The air is cut away before, And closes from behind. Finally the mariner wakes from his trance and comes in sight of his homeland, but

4680-479: Is recognized by law as one dedicated to God in consecrated life if he or she publicly professes in the hands of the diocesan bishop the three evangelical counsels, confirmed by vow or other sacred bond, and observes a proper program of living under his direction. Canon 603 §2 lays down the requirements for diocesan hermits. The Catechism of the Catholic Church of 11 October 1992 (§§918–921), comments on

4810-458: Is the source of the psychology which is found in Frost at Midnight . Hartley argued that one becomes aware of sensory events as impressions, and that "ideas" are derived by noticing similarities and differences between impressions and then by naming them. Connections resulting from the coincidence of impressions create linkages, so that the occurrence of one impression triggers those links and calls up

4940-489: The Ancient Mariner . In Table Talk , Coleridge wrote: Mrs. Barbauld once told me that she admired The Ancient Mariner very much, but that there were two faults in it – it was improbable, and had no moral. As for the probability, I owned that that might admit some question; but as to the want of a moral, I told her that in my own judgement the poem had too much; and that the only, or chief fault, if I might say so,

5070-481: The Arabian Nights' Entertainments – one tale of which (the tale of a man who was compelled to seek for a pure virgin) made so deep an impression on me (I had read it in the evening while my mother was mending stockings) that I was haunted by spectres whenever I was in the dark – and I distinctly remember the anxious and fearful eagerness with which I used to watch the window in which the books lay – and whenever

5200-477: The Browne Gold Medal for an ode that he wrote attacking the slave trade . In December 1793, he left the college and enlisted in the 15th (The King's) Light Dragoons using the false name "Silas Tomkyn Comberbache", perhaps because of debt or because the girl that he loved, Mary Evans , had rejected him. His brothers arranged for his discharge a few months later under the reason of "insanity" and he

5330-732: The Church of England celebrate his work during public events, such as a "Coleridge Day" in June, with activities including literary recitals. Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in the town of Ottery St Mary in Devon , England. Samuel's father was the Reverend John Coleridge, the well-respected vicar of St Mary's Church, Ottery St Mary and was headmaster of the King's School , a free grammar school established by King Henry VIII in

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5460-450: The Lake District of Cumberland to be near Grasmere , where Wordsworth had moved. He stayed with the Wordsworths for eighteen months, but was a difficult houseguest, as his dependency on laudanum grew and his frequent nightmares would wake the children. He was also a fussy eater, to the frustration of Dorothy Wordsworth , who had to cook. For example, not content with salt, Coleridge sprinkled cayenne pepper on his eggs, which he ate from

5590-562: The Latin ĕrēmīta , the latinisation of the Greek ἐρημίτης ( erēmitēs ), "of the desert", which in turn comes from ἔρημος ( erēmos ), signifying "desert", "uninhabited", hence "desert-dweller"; adjective: "eremitic". In the common Christian tradition the first known Christian hermit in Egypt was Paul of Thebes ( fl. 3rd century), hence also called "St. Paul the first hermit". Antony of Egypt (fl. 4th century), often referred to as "Antony

5720-680: The Orthodox Church and Eastern Rite Catholic Churches , hermits live a life of prayer as well as service to their community in the traditional Eastern Christian manner of the poustinik. The poustinik is a hermit available to all in need and at all times. In the Eastern Christian churches, one traditional variation of the Christian eremitic life is the semi-eremitic life in a lavra or skete , exemplified historically in Scetes ,

5850-615: The Oxford Movement , and his religious writings profoundly shaped Anglicanism in the mid-nineteenth century. Coleridge also worked extensively on the various manuscripts which form his " Opus Maximum ", a work which was in part intended as a post-Kantian work of philosophical synthesis . The work was never published in his lifetime, and has frequently been seen as evidence for his tendency to conceive grand projects which he then had difficulty in carrying through to completion. But while he frequently berated himself for his "indolence",

5980-606: The Society of St. John the Evangelist , now has only solitaries in its British congregation. Anglicanism also makes provision for men and women who seek to live a single consecrated life, after taking vows before their local bishop; many who do so live as solitaries. The Handbook of Religious Life , published by the Advisory Council of Relations between Bishops and Religious Communities, contains an appendix governing

6110-674: The Sockburn Worm slain by Sir John Conyers (and a possible source for Lewis Carroll 's Jabberwocky ). The worm was supposedly buried under the rock in the nearby pasture; this was the "greystone" of Coleridge's first draft, later transformed into a "mount". The poem was a direct inspiration for John Keats ' famous poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci . Coleridge's early intellectual debts, besides German idealists like Kant and critics like Lessing, were first to William Godwin 's Political Justice , especially during his Pantisocratic period, and to David Hartley 's Observations on Man , which

6240-478: The deity or deities they worship or revere, to devote one's energies to self-liberation from saṃsāra , etc. This practice appears also in ancient Śramaṇa traditions , Buddhism , Jainism , Hinduism , Kejawèn , and Sufism . Taoism also has a long history of ascetic and eremitic figures. In the ascetic eremitic life, the hermit seeks solitude for meditation , contemplation , prayer , self-awareness, and personal development on physical and mental levels, without

6370-486: The literary criticism of the 18th-century dramatist Gotthold Lessing . Coleridge studied German and, after his return to England, translated the dramatic trilogy Wallenstein by the German Classical poet Friedrich Schiller into English. He continued to pioneer these ideas through his own critical writings for the rest of his life (sometimes without attribution), although they were unfamiliar and difficult for

6500-483: The 10th century, a rule for hermits living in a monastic community was written by Grimlaicus . In the 11th century, the life of the hermit gained recognition as a legitimate independent pathway to salvation. Many hermits in that century and the next came to be regarded as saints . From the Middle Ages and down to modern times, eremitic monasticism has also been practiced within the context of religious institutes in

6630-430: The 1798 version but made their own modernisation of the spelling and they added some passages taken from later editions. The 1817 edition, the one most used today and the first to be published under Coleridge's own name rather than anonymously, added a new Latin epigraph but the major change was the addition of the gloss that has a considerable effect on the way the poem reads. Coleridge's grandson E.H. Coleridge produced

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6760-586: The 1820s that he had in fact completed a long translation of the work. In September 2007, Oxford University Press sparked a heated scholarly controversy by publishing an English translation of Goethe's work that purported to be Coleridge's long-lost masterpiece (the text in question first appeared anonymously in 1821). From 1814 to 1816, Coleridge rented from a local surgeon, Mr Page, in Calne , Wiltshire. He seemed able to focus on his work and manage his addiction, drafting Biographia Literaria . A blue plaque marks

6890-468: The 1983 Code of Canon Law legislates in the Section on Consecrated Life (canon 603) as follows: §1 Besides institutes of consecrated life the church recognizes the eremitic or anchoritic life by which the Christian faithful devote their life to the praise of God and salvation of the world through a stricter separation from the world, the silence of solitude, and assiduous prayer and penance. §2 A hermit

7020-438: The Ancient Mariner recounts the experiences of a sailor who has returned from a long sea voyage. The mariner stops a man who is on his way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The Wedding-Guest's reaction turns from amusement to impatience to fear to fascination as the mariner's story progresses, as can be seen in the language style; Coleridge uses narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create

7150-500: The Ancient Mariner was no exception – he produced at least eighteen different versions over the years. He regarded revision as an essential part of creating poetry. The first published version of the poem was in Lyrical Ballads in 1798. The second edition of this anthology in 1800 included a revised text, requested by Coleridge, in which some of the language and many of the archaic spellings were modernised. He also reduced

7280-474: The Antarctic. However, the sailors change their minds when the weather becomes warmer and the mist disappears: 'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay, That bring the fog and mist. They soon find that they made a grave mistake in supporting this crime, as it arouses the wrath of spirits who then pursue the ship "from the land of mist and snow"; the south wind that had initially blown them north now sends

7410-512: The Bible. There were many opinions on why Coleridge inserted the gloss. Charles Lamb , who had deeply admired the original for its attention to "Human Feeling", claimed that the gloss distanced the audience from the narrative, weakening the poem's effects. The entire poem was first published in the collection of Lyrical Ballads . Another version of the poem was published in the 1817 collection entitled Sibylline Leaves (see 1817 in poetry ). On

7540-583: The Bridegroom, Wedding-Guest and Mariner all represent aspects of Coleridge: "The Bridegroom is a masculine persona" that is "integrated with society", and that the Wedding-Guest is an adolescent seeking "sexual fulfilment and collective joy", that must merge with the Bridegroom but is unable to because of the appearance of a spectre -self, a "male heroine" who "luxuriates in passive suffering". Coleridge often made changes to his poems and The Rime of

7670-570: The Christian West. In the Catholic Church , the Carthusians and Camaldolese arrange their monasteries as clusters of hermitages where the monks live most of their day and most of their lives in solitary prayer and work, gathering only briefly for communal prayer and only occasionally for community meals and recreation. The Cistercian , Trappist , and Carmelite orders, which are essentially communal in nature, allow members who feel

7800-520: The Great", is perhaps the most renowned of all the early Christian hermits owing to the biography by Athanasius of Alexandria . An antecedent for Egyptian eremiticism may have been the Syrian solitary or "son of the covenant" ( Aramaic bar qəyāmā ) who undertook special disciplines as a Christian. Christian hermits in the past have often lived in isolated cells or hermitages , whether a natural cave or

7930-546: The High Street at Shrewsbury . He is said to have read his Rime of the Ancient Mariner at a literary evening in Mardol. He was then contemplating a career in the ministry, and gave a probationary sermon in High Street church on Sunday, 14 January 1798. William Hazlitt , a Unitarian minister's son, was in the congregation, having walked from Wem to hear him. Coleridge later visited Hazlitt and his father at Wem but within

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8060-560: The Old Testament, it may be said that the desert of the urban hermit is that of their heart, purged through kenosis to be the dwelling place of God alone. So as to provide for men and women who feel a vocation to the eremitic or anchoritic life without being or becoming a member of an institute of consecrated life, but desire its recognition by the Roman Catholic Church as a form of consecrated life nonetheless,

8190-537: The Principles of Poetry." Coleridge's ill-health, opium-addiction problems, and somewhat unstable personality meant that all his lectures were plagued with problems of delays and a general irregularity of quality from one lecture to the next. As a result of these factors, Coleridge often failed to prepare anything but the loosest set of notes for his lectures and regularly entered into extremely long digressions which his audiences found difficult to follow. However, it

8320-603: The Wordsworths left for a stay in Germany; Coleridge soon went his own way and spent much of his time in university towns. In February 1799 he enrolled at the University of Göttingen , where he attended lectures by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and Johann Gottfried Eichhorn . During this period, he became interested in German philosophy, especially the transcendental idealism and critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant , and in

8450-461: The anchorite's advice might also use this window to consult them. Catholics who wish to live in eremitic monasticism may live that vocation as a hermit: There are also lay people who informally follow an eremitic lifestyle and live mostly as solitaries. Not all the Catholic lay members that feel that it is their vocation to dedicate themselves to God in a prayerful solitary life perceive it as

8580-649: The archaic words. The poem may have been inspired by James Cook 's second voyage of exploration (1772–1775) of the South Seas and the Pacific Ocean; Coleridge's tutor, William Wales , was the astronomer on Cook's flagship and had a strong relationship with Cook. On this second voyage Cook crossed three times into the Antarctic Circle to determine whether the fabled great southern continent Terra Australis existed. Critics have also suggested that

8710-433: The circumvallate city") is often used as a synonym for hermit, not only in the earliest written sources but throughout the centuries. Yet the anchoritic life, while similar to the eremitic life, can also be distinct from it. Anchorites lived the religious life in the solitude of an "anchorhold" (or "anchorage"), usually a small hut or "cell", typically built against a church. The door of an anchorage tended to be bricked up in

8840-478: The crypt and allow public access. Says vicar Kunle Ayodeji of the plans: "...we hope that the whole crypt can be cleared as a space for meetings and other uses, which would also allow access to Coleridge's cellar." Coleridge is one of the most important figures in English poetry . His poems directly and deeply influenced all the major poets of the age. He was known by his contemporaries as a meticulous craftsman who

8970-668: The direction of their bishop as members of the consecrated life . The same is true in many parts of the Anglican Communion , including the Episcopal Church in the United States, although in the canon law of the Episcopal Church they are referred to as "solitaries" rather than "hermits". Often, both in religious and secular literature, the term "hermit" is used loosely for any Christian living

9100-401: The drowning death of his daughter Jane. Poetically commenting on Toulmin's strength, Coleridge wrote in a 1798 letter to John Prior Estlin , "I walked into Taunton (eleven miles) and back again, and performed the divine services for Dr. Toulmin. I suppose you must have heard that his daughter, (Jane, on 15 April 1798) in a melancholy derangement, suffered herself to be swallowed up by the tide on

9230-551: The eremitic life as follows: From the very beginning of the Church there were men and women who set out to follow Christ with greater liberty, and to imitate him more closely, by practicing the evangelical counsels . They led lives dedicated to God, each in his own way. Many of them, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit , became hermits or founded religious families. These the Church, by virtue of her authority, gladly accepted and approved. ... Hermits devote their life to

9360-436: The excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life ... In this idea originated

9490-443: The eye of the genie's son. Wordsworth wrote to Joseph Cottle in 1799: From what I can gather it seems that the Ancient Mariner has upon the whole been an injury to the volume, I mean that the old words and the strangeness of it have deterred readers from going on. If the volume should come to a second Edition I would put in its place some little things which would be more likely to suit the common taste. However, when Lyrical Ballads

9620-436: The green, where he lived with a doctor he had hoped might cure him (in a house owned until 2022 by Kate Moss ). When it was discovered Coleridge's vault had become derelict, the coffins – Coleridge's and those of his wife Sarah, daughter Sara Coleridge , son-in-law Henry Nelson Coleridge , and grandson Herbert Coleridge , were moved to St. Michael's Highgate after an international fundraising appeal in 1961. Drew Clode,

9750-599: The hope that leaving Britain's damp climate would improve his health and thus enable him to reduce his consumption of opium. Thomas De Quincey alleges in his Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets that it was during this period that Coleridge became a full-blown opium addict, using the drug as a substitute for the lost vigour and creativity of his youth. It has been suggested that this reflects De Quincey's own experiences more than Coleridge's. His opium addiction (he

9880-448: The last three years of our school education) he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where the same sense might have been conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer words...In fancy I can almost hear him now, exclaiming Harp? Harp? Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, Muse? your Nurse's daughter, you mean! Pierian spring? Oh aye! the cloister-pump, I suppose! ...Be this as it may, there

10010-472: The law of all moral and rational beings. Essay on Faith Carlyle described him at Highgate: "Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill, in those years, looking down on London and its smoke-tumult, like a sage escaped from the inanity of life's battle...The practical intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer: but to the rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime character; and sat there as

10140-716: The legends of the Wandering Jew , who was forced to wander the earth until Judgement Day for a terrible crime, found in Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer , M. G. Lewis' The Monk (a 1796 novel Coleridge reviewed), and the legend of the Flying Dutchman . It is argued that the harbour at Watchet in Somerset was the primary inspiration for the poem, although some time before, John Cruikshank,

10270-401: The lessons too, which required most time and trouble to bring up, so as to escape his censure. I learnt from him, that Poetry, even that of the loftiest, and, seemingly, that of the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more, and more fugitive causes...In our own English compositions (at least for

10400-492: The long list of his published works calls this myth into question. Critics are divided on whether the "Opus Maximum", first published in 2002, successfully resolved the philosophical issues he had been exploring for most of his adult life. Coleridge died in Highgate, London on 25 July 1834 as a result of heart failure compounded by an unknown lung disorder, possibly linked to his use of opium. Coleridge had spent 18 years under

10530-407: The mainland who has spotted the approaching ship comes to meet it in a boat, rowed by a pilot and his boy. When they pull the mariner from the water, they think he is dead, but when he opens his mouth, the pilot shrieks with fright. The hermit prays, and the mariner picks up the oars to row. The pilot's boy laughs, thinking the mariner is the devil, and cries, "The Devil knows how to row". Back on land,

10660-429: The mariner is compelled by "a woful agony" to tell the hermit his story. As penance for shooting the albatross, the mariner, driven by the agony of his guilt, is now forced to wander the earth, telling his story over and over, and teaching a lesson to those he meets: He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all. After finishing his story,

10790-431: The mariner leaves, and the wedding-guest returns home, waking the next morning "a sadder and a wiser man". The poem received mixed reviews from critics, and Coleridge was once told by the publisher that most of the book's sales were to sailors who thought it was a naval songbook. Coleridge made several modifications to the poem over the years. In the second edition of Lyrical Ballads , published in 1800, he replaced many of

10920-526: The memory of those ideas with which it is associated (See Dorothy Emmet, "Coleridge and Philosophy"). Coleridge was critical of the literary taste of his contemporaries, and a literary conservative insofar as he was afraid that the lack of taste in the ever growing masses of literate people would mean a continued desecration of literature. In 1800, he returned to England and shortly thereafter settled with his family and friends in Greta Hall at Keswick in

11050-483: The monasteries of these orders are in fact clusters of individual hermitages where monks and nuns spend their days alone with relatively short periods of prayer in common. Other orders that are essentially cenobitical, notably the Trappists , maintain a tradition under which individual monks or nuns who have reached a certain level of maturity within the community may pursue a hermit lifestyle on monastery grounds under

11180-472: The necessary condition of everything desirable for me..." Subsequent biographers have not agreed with Coleridge's negative view of the wife he called his 'Sally Pally' when he first married her. A third sister, Mary, had already married a third poet, Robert Lovell , and both became partners in Pantisocracy. Lovell also introduced Coleridge and Southey to their future patron Joseph Cottle , but died of

11310-406: The permission of their religious superior to do so. The Code of Canon Law contains no special provisions for them. They technically remain a member of their institute of consecrated life and thus under obedience to their religious superior. The Carthusian and Camaldolese orders of monks and nuns preserve their original way of life as essentially eremitic within a cenobitical context, that is,

11440-478: The plan of the Lyrical Ballads ; in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least Romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. ... With this view I wrote

11570-554: The playwright as a model for contemporary writers. Much of Coleridge's reputation as a literary critic is founded on the lectures that he undertook in the winter of 1810–11, which were sponsored by the Philosophical Institution and given at Scot's Corporation Hall off Fetter Lane, Fleet Street. These lectures were heralded in the prospectus as "A Course of Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, in Illustration of

11700-600: The poem may have been inspired by the voyage of Thomas James into the Arctic . According to Wordsworth , the poem was inspired while Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Wordsworth's sister Dorothy were on a walking tour through the Quantock Hills in Somerset . The discussion had turned to a book that Wordsworth was reading, that described a privateering voyage in 1719 during which a melancholy sailor, Simon Hatley , shot

11830-442: The poem was criticized for being obscure and difficult to read. The use of archaic spelling of words was seen as not in keeping with Wordsworth's claims of using common language. Criticism was renewed again in 1815–1816, when Coleridge added marginal notes to the poem that were also written in an archaic style. These notes or glosses , placed next to the text of the poem, ostensibly interpret the verses much like marginal notes found in

11960-486: The praise of God and salvation of the world through a stricter separation from the world, the silence of solitude, and assiduous prayer and penance. (Footnote: CIC, can. 603 §1) They manifest to everyone the interior aspect of the mystery of the Church, that is, personal intimacy with Christ. Hidden from the eyes of men, the life of the hermit is a silent preaching of the Lord, to whom he has surrendered his life simply because he

12090-439: The property today. In April 1816, Coleridge, with his addiction worsening, his spirits depressed, and his family alienated, took residence in the Highgate homes, then just north of London, of the physician James Gillman, first at South Grove and later at the nearby 3, The Grove . It is unclear whether his growing use of opium (and the brandy in which it was dissolved) was a symptom or a cause of his growing depression. Gillman

12220-557: The publication of the journal entitled The Friend . It was a weekly publication that, in Coleridge's typically ambitious style, was written, edited, and published almost entirely single-handedly. Given that Coleridge tended to be highly disorganised and had no head for business, the publication was probably doomed from the start. Coleridge financed the journal by selling over five hundred subscriptions, over two dozen of which were sold to members of Parliament, but in late 1809, publication

12350-435: The roof of the Gillman family, who built an addition onto their home to accommodate the poet. Faith may be defined as fidelity to our own being, so far as such being is not and cannot become an object of the senses; and hence, by clear inference or implication to being generally, as far as the same is not the object of the senses; and again to whatever is affirmed or understood as the condition, or concomitant, or consequence of

12480-423: The same kind were found in one exercise, the irrevocable verdict followed, the exercise was torn up, and another on the same subject to be produced, in addition to the tasks of the day. He later wrote of his loneliness at school in the poem Frost at Midnight : "With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt/Of my sweet birth-place." From 1791 until 1794, Coleridge attended Jesus College, Cambridge . In 1792, he won

12610-438: The same. This will be best explained by an instance or example. That I am conscious of something within me peremptorily commanding me to do unto others as I would they should do unto me; in other words a categorical (that is, primary and unconditional) imperative; that the maxim ( regula maxima , or supreme rule) of my actions, both inward and outward, should be such as I could, without any contradiction arising therefrom, will to be

12740-615: The sea-coast between Sidmouth and Bere [ sic ] ( Beer ). These events cut cruelly into the hearts of old men: but the good Dr. Toulmin bears it like the true practical Christian, – there is indeed a tear in his eye, but that eye is lifted up to the Heavenly Father." Coleridge also worked briefly in Shropshire , where he came in December 1797 as locum to its local Unitarian minister, Dr. Rowe, in their church in

12870-460: The selection, consecration, and management of solitaries living outside recognised religious communities. In the Canon Law of the Episcopal Church (United States) , those who make application to their diocesan bishop and who persevere in whatever preparatory program the bishop requires, take vows that include lifelong celibacy. They are referred to as solitaries rather than hermits. Each selects

13000-422: The ship into uncharted waters near the equator, where it is becalmed : Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink. The very deep did rot: Oh Christ! That ever this should be! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon

13130-537: The ship is driven south by a storm and eventually reaches the icy waters of the Antarctic . An albatross appears and leads the ship out of the ice jam where it is stuck, but even as the albatross is fed and praised by the ship's crew, the mariner shoots the bird: [...] With my cross-bow I shot the Albatross . The crew is angry with the mariner, believing the albatross brought the south wind that led them out of

13260-402: The slimy sea. The sailors change their minds again and blame the mariner for the torment of their thirst. In anger, the crew forces the mariner to wear the dead albatross about his neck, perhaps to illustrate the burden he must suffer from killing it, or perhaps as a sign of regret: Ah! well a-day! what evil looks Had I from old and young! Instead of the cross, the Albatross About my neck

13390-590: The sun lay upon them, I would seize it, carry it by the wall, and bask, and read." Coleridge seems to have appreciated his teacher, as he wrote in recollections of his school days in Biographia Literaria : I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time, a very severe master...At the same time that we were studying the Greek Tragic Poets , he made us read Shakespeare and Milton as lessons: and they were

13520-539: The supervision of the abbot or abbess. Thomas Merton was among the Trappists who undertook this way of life. The earliest form of Christian eremitic or anchoritic living preceded that of being a member of a religious institute, since monastic communities and religious institutes are later developments of the monastic life . Bearing in mind that the meaning of the eremitic vocation is the Desert Theology of

13650-490: The surroundings, rented Alfoxton Park , a little over three miles [5 km] away.) Besides The Rime of the Ancient Mariner , Coleridge composed the symbolic poem Kubla Khan , written—Coleridge claimed—as a result of an opium dream, in "a kind of a reverie"; and the first part of the narrative poem Christabel . The writing of Kubla Khan , written about the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan and his legendary palace at Xanadu ,

13780-428: The title to The Ancient Mariner but for later versions the longer title was restored. The 1802 and 1805 editions of Lyrical Ballads had minor textual changes. In 1817 Coleridge's Sibylline Leaves anthology included a new version with an extensive marginal gloss , written by the poet. The last version he produced was in 1834. Traditionally literary critics regarded each revision of a text by an author as producing

13910-655: The town. He had previously been master of Hugh Squier 's School in South Molton , Devon, and lecturer of nearby Molland . John Coleridge had three children by his first wife. Samuel was the youngest of ten by the Reverend Mr. Coleridge's second wife, Anne Bowden (1726–1809), probably the daughter of John Bowden, mayor of South Molton, Devon, in 1726. Coleridge suggests that he "took no pleasure in boyish sports" but instead read "incessantly" and played by himself. After John Coleridge died in 1781, 8-year-old Samuel

14040-543: The tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime." By the time the trio finished their walk, the poem had taken shape. Bernard Martin argues in The Ancient Mariner and the Authentic Narrative that Coleridge was also influenced by the life of Anglican clergyman John Newton , who had a near-death experience aboard a slave ship . The poem may also have been inspired by

14170-405: The versification, though the metre is itself unfit for long poems, is harmonious and artfully varied, exhibiting the utmost powers of that metre, and every variety of which it is capable. It therefore appeared to me that these several merits (the first of which, namely that of the passion, is of the highest kind) gave to the Poem a value which is not often possessed by better Poems. Upon its release,

14300-599: The volume. Such changes were often editorial rather than merely correcting errors. Coleridge also made handwritten changes in printed volumes of his work, particularly when he presented them as gifts to friends. In addition to being referred to in several other notable works, due to the popularity of the poem, the phrase "albatross around one's neck" has become an English-language idiom referring to "a heavy burden of guilt that becomes an obstacle to success". The phrase "Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink" has appeared widely in popular culture, but usually given in

14430-418: The whizz of my cross-bow! Eventually, this stage of the mariner's curse is lifted after he begins to appreciate the many sea creatures swimming in the water. Despite his cursing them as "slimy things" earlier in the poem, he suddenly sees their true beauty and blesses them ("A spring of love gush'd from my heart, And I bless'd them unaware"). As he manages to pray, the albatross falls from his neck and his guilt

14560-544: The wilderness of Pennsylvania. In 1795, the two friends became engaged to sisters Sara and Edith Fricker, with Sara becoming the subject of Coleridge's poem, The Eolian Harp . They wed that year in St Mary Redcliffe , Bristol, but Coleridge's marriage with Sara proved unhappy. By 1804, they were separated. When Coleridge wrote to his brother he laid all the blame on Sara: "The few friends who have been Witnesses of my domestic life have long advised separation as

14690-652: The world and the silence of solitude in accordance with canon 603, under which they have made their vow . Although canon 603 makes no provision for associations of hermits, these do exist (for example the Hermits of Bethlehem in Chester, NJ, and the Hermits of Saint Bruno in the United States; see also lavra , skete ). Many of the recognised religious communities and orders in the Anglican Communion make provision for certain members to live as hermits, more commonly referred to as solitaries. One Church of England community,

14820-811: Was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets with his friend William Wordsworth . He also shared volumes and collaborated with Charles Lamb , Robert Southey , and Charles Lloyd . He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan , as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria . His critical works were highly influential, especially in relation to William Shakespeare , and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking cultures. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases, including " suspension of disbelief ". He had

14950-404: Was approached by John Murray , Lord Byron 's publisher, about the possibility of translating Goethe's classic Faust (1808). Coleridge was regarded by many as the greatest living writer on the demonic and he accepted the commission, only to abandon work on it after six weeks. Until recently, scholars were in agreement that Coleridge never returned to the project, despite Goethe's own belief in

15080-465: Was crippled by a financial crisis and Coleridge was obliged to approach "Conversation Sharp" , Tom Poole and one or two other wealthy friends for an emergency loan to continue. The Friend was an eclectic publication that drew upon every corner of Coleridge's remarkably diverse knowledge of law, philosophy, morals, politics, history, and literary criticism. Although it was often turgid, rambling, and inaccessible to most readers, it ran for 25 issues and

15210-412: Was hung. After a "weary time", the ship encounters a ghostly hulk. On board are Death (a skeleton) and the "Night-mare Life-in-Death", a deathly pale woman, who are playing dice for the souls of the crew. With a roll of the dice, Death wins the lives of the crew members and Life-in-Death the life of the mariner, a prize she considers more valuable. Her name is a clue to the mariner's fate: he will endure

15340-602: Was meant to bring about a change of heart). In the Christian tradition the eremitic life is an early form of monastic living that preceded the monastic life in the cenobium . In chapter 1, the Rule of St Benedict lists hermits among four kinds of monks. In the Roman Catholic Church , in addition to hermits who are members of religious institutes , the Canon law (canon 603) recognizes also diocesan hermits under

15470-482: Was more rigorous in his careful reworking of his poems than any other poet, and Southey and Wordsworth were dependent on his professional advice. His influence on Wordsworth is particularly important because many critics have credited Coleridge with the very idea of "Conversational Poetry". The idea of utilising common, everyday language to express profound poetic images and ideas for which Wordsworth became so famous may have originated almost entirely in Coleridge's mind. It

15600-464: Was one custom of our master's, which I cannot pass over in silence, because I think it ...worthy of imitation. He would often permit our theme exercises...to accumulate, till each lad had four or five to be looked over. Then placing the whole number abreast on his desk, he would ask the writer, why this or that sentence might not have found as appropriate a place under this or that other thesis: and if no satisfying answer could be returned, and two faults of

15730-517: Was partially successful in controlling the poet's addiction. Coleridge remained in Highgate for the rest of his life, and the house became a place of literary pilgrimage for writers including Carlyle and Emerson. In Gillman's home, Coleridge finished his major prose work, the Biographia Literaria (mostly drafted in 1815, and finished in 1817), a volume composed of 23 chapters of autobiographical notes and dissertations on various subjects, including some incisive literary theory and criticism. He composed

15860-432: Was printed in 1797, this time including an appendix of works by Lamb and Charles Lloyd , a young poet to whom Coleridge had become a private tutor. In 1796, he also privately printed Sonnets from Various Authors , including sonnets by Lamb, Lloyd, Southey and himself as well as older poets such as William Lisle Bowles . Coleridge made plans to establish a journal, The Watchman , to be printed every eight days to avoid

15990-436: Was readmitted to Jesus College, though he would never receive a degree from the university. At Jesus College, Coleridge was introduced to political and theological ideas then considered radical , including those of the poet Robert Southey with whom he collaborated on the play The Fall of Robespierre . Coleridge joined Southey in a plan, later abandoned, to found a utopian commune -like society, called Pantisocracy , in

16120-412: Was reprinted, Wordsworth included it despite Coleridge's objections, writing: The Poem of my Friend has indeed great defects; first, that the principal person has no distinct character, either in his profession of Mariner, or as a human being who having been long under the control of supernatural impressions might be supposed himself to partake of something supernatural; secondly, that he does not act, but

16250-531: Was republished in book form a number of times. Years after its initial publication, a revised and expanded edition of The Friend , with added philosophical content including his 'Essays on the Principles of Method', became a highly influential work and its effect was felt on writers and philosophers from John Stuart Mill to Ralph Waldo Emerson . From 1810 to 1820, Coleridge gave a series of lectures in London and Bristol – those on Shakespeare renewed interest in

16380-407: Was said to have been interrupted by the arrival of "a person on business from Porlock " – an event that has been embellished upon in such varied contexts as science fiction and Nabokov's Lolita . During this period, he also produced his much-praised " conversation poems " This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison , Frost at Midnight , and The Nightingale . In 1798, Coleridge and Wordsworth published

16510-590: Was sent to Christ's Hospital , a charity school which was founded in the 16th century in Greyfriars, London , where he remained throughout his childhood, studying and writing poetry. At that school Coleridge became friends with Charles Lamb , a schoolmate, and studied the works of Virgil and William Lisle Bowles . In one of a series of autobiographical letters written to Thomas Poole , Coleridge wrote: "At six years old I remember to have read Belisarius , Robinson Crusoe , and Philip Quarll – and then I found

16640-542: Was the lecture on Hamlet given on 2 January 1812 that was considered the best and has influenced Hamlet studies ever since. Before Coleridge, Hamlet was often denigrated and belittled by critics from Voltaire to Dr. Johnson . Coleridge rescued the play's reputation, and his thoughts on it are often still published as supplements to the text. In 1812, he allowed Robert Southey to make use of extracts from his vast number of private notebooks in their collaboration Omniana; Or, Horae Otiosiores . In August 1814, Coleridge

16770-490: Was the obtrusion of the moral sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle or cause of action in a work of such pure imagination. It ought to have had no more moral than the Arabian Nights ' tale of the merchant's sitting down to eat dates by the side of a well, and throwing the shells aside, and lo! a genie starts up, and says he must kill the aforesaid merchant, because one of the date shells had, it seems, put out

16900-423: Was using as much as two quarts of laudanum a week) now began to take over his life: he separated from his wife Sara in 1808, quarrelled with Wordsworth in 1810, lost part of his annuity in 1811, and put himself under the care of Dr. Daniel in 1814. His addiction caused severe constipation, which required regular and humiliating enemas. In 1809, Coleridge made his second attempt to become a newspaper publisher with

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