he "Tusculan Disputations" which you often quote,
with their reasons why death is not to be feared.

* * * * *

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Biographia Literaria

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born at Ottery St. Mary, in the
county of Devon, on October 21, 1772. He was educated at
Christ Hospital where Charles Lamb was among his friends. He
read very widely but was without any particular ambition or
practical bent, and had undertaken to apprentice himself to a
shoemaker, when his head-master interfered. He entered Jesus
College, Cambridge, in 1791. During the second year of his
residence at the University, he left Cambridge, on account of
an unsuccessful love affair, and enlisted in the regiment of
dragoons under an assumed name. He soon secured his discharge
from the army and went to Bristol where he met Southey. In
1795 he married Miss Fricker, and removed to Nether Stowey, a
village in Somersetshire, where he wrote the "Ancient Mariner"
and the first part of "Christabel." While here he became a
close friend of Wordsworth. Coleridge originally intended his
"Biographia Literaria" to be a kind of apologia, in other
words, to put forth his claims for public recognition; and
although he began the book with this intention, it
subsequently developed into a book containing some of his most
admirable criticism. He gives voice to a crowd of
miscellaneous reflections, suggested, as the work got under
way, by popular events, embracing politics, religion,
philosophy, poetry, and also finally settling the controversy
that had arisen in respect of the "Lyrical Ballads." The
autobiographical parts of the "Biographia" are confined solely
to his intellectual experiences, and the influences to which
his life was subjected. As a treatise on criticism, especially
on Wordsworth, the book is of supreme importance. "Here," says
Principal Shairp, "are canons of judgement, not mechanical,
but living." Published in 1817, it was followed shortly after
his death by a still more important edition with annotations
and an introduction by the poet's daughter Sara.

_I.--The Nature of Poetic Diction_

Little of what I have here written concerns myself personally; the
narrative is designed chiefly to introduce my principles of politics,
religion,