RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
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to the Crown, and the judicial committee of the Privy Council pronounced his deposition null and void. A state of schism ensued, Colenso maintaining himself as still lawfully bishop of Natal, while out of communion with the rest of the Anglican body in South Africa, which set up the bishopric of Maritzburg to take the place of Natal.
Bishop Colenso was a warm friend of the Zulus, and in the later part of his life alienated many of his English adherents in South Africa by his advocacy of their cause. In 1875 he visited England to obtain justice for a native chief against the local authorities, and in the war with Cetywayo in 1879 and following years he stood boldly for right treatment of the king and his people regardless of the fears and selfish interests of the colonists. Besides the works already mentioned, he published two volumes of Natal Sermons (London, 1866-68) and The New Bible Commentary by Bishops and Other Clergy of the Anglican Church [i.e., the "Speaker's Commentary," ed. F. C. Cook, which was gotten up largely to answer his views] Critically Examined (6 parts, London, 1871-74).
Bibliography: For list of writings by and on Bishop Colenso, consult: G. C. Boase and W. D. Courtney, Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, i. 76-79, iii. 1125-27, London, 1874-81; Life is by G. W. Cox, 2 vols., ib. 1888; DNB, xi. 290-293.
-COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR: A famous English poet, philosopher, and critic; b. at Ottery St. Mary (12 m. e. of Exeter) Oct. 21, 1772; d. in London July 25, 1834. After gaining a thorough knowledge of the classics, and of Shakespeare and Milton, at the " Bluecoat School " in London, he was sent in 1791 to Jesus College, Cambridge. He suddenly left the university without a degree in 1793, and enlisted in a regiment of dragoons, from which, however, his friends procured his discharge not long afterward. He decided now to devote himself to a literary career, and joined Southey at Bristol, forming part of a group of enthusiastic young men who hailed the French Revolution as the beginning of a new order of things. They dreamed of founding a sort of communistic colony, to which they gave the high-sounding name of Pantisocracy, on the banks of the Susquehanna. Southey soon saw the futility of the undertaking, and withdrew from it; and Coleridge settled for a while at Nether Stowey, near Bridgewater, in Somersetshire, whither presently Wordsworth also came. The two friends, dur- Life. ing their long walks and talks, felt the need of applying their principles of freedom to literature, and especially to poetry. They broke altogether with the stiff, artificial style which had been the rule of the eighteenth century, and boldly proclaimed their intention of going straight to nature for both subject and manner of treatment. Their first appearance in print after this decision was taken— anonymous, so little confidence had they in its reception — was with the epoch-making book Lyrical Ballads (1798), which is usually considered as marking the formal beginning of the English romantic movement. Coleridge's contributions to the book were only four in number, of which " The Ancient Mariner " was the most
important. In fact, there is probably no poet in the whole range of English literature to whom so high a rank has been universally conceded on the basis of so small a body of first-rate poetry, including, besides the poem mentioned, especially " Christabel," " Kubla Khan," and " Genevieve." Coleridge made a trip to Germany in the company of Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, spent some time at Gottingen, and became absorbed in the philosophy of Kant, which he was the first to introduce to his countrymen. Indeed, the main purpose of his later life was the interpretation and enforcement of its principles. With the exception of a year in Malta and Rome, he spent most of the time until 1810 with his friends in the Lake District, after which he went to London, and for the last nineteen years of his life was an inmate of the house of Dr. Gillman at Highgate Hill. Gillman's influence and care finally succeeded in weaning him from the opium habit, to which, at first under the stress of physical suffering, he had become enslaved. He planned many books, and partly executed a few; but he exerted more power in wonderful conversations with his friends, including a large number of younger men who, as his reputation for transcendental wisdom increased, resorted to him as an oracle. The combination of manifold gifts which he possessed was, in a way, a hindrance to achievement. He was too much of a poet to be a strict philosopher, and too much of a philosopher, at least in his later life, to give free play to his marvelous poetic faculty. Moreover, with all his learning, he was lacking in the energy necessary to fuse into one whole, according to a definite plan, the scattered material of which his mind was full. He was a very great critic; in fact the decided opinion of so competent a judge as Mr. Saintsbury {History of Criticism, iii. 230, London, 1904) is that he deserves in this capacity the third rank, surpassed only by Aristotle and Longinus. Not the least of the services which he rendered as a critic was the restoration of Shakespeare to his rightful position, after the oblivion into which the eighteenth century had cast him.
Coleridge had especially what is called a " seminal " mind; there was probably no one in his generation who sowed the seeds of so many ideas which were destined later to bring forth much fruit. Even more than in poetry, he was the originator of new tendencies in religious thought. On account of the desultory and fragmentary way in which he left his reflections, it is not easy to bring his views into a clear and definite system. While some have seen in him a convinced defender of revealed religion against deism and pantheism, others have thought that he was a pantheist himself, or at least a thorough Neoplatonist. There is no doubt that he passed through successive phases of belief, from the empirical philosophy
through pantheism to Christian theism. His Religion In his youthful ambition for freedom, and Philos- he cut loose from the dogmas of the ophy. Church of England and threw in his
lot with the Unitarian movement. 01 his German masters he followed Kant most closely, though he went a good deal beyond him
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