INTRODUCTION.

THE AUTHOR.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in the village of Ottery St. Mary in Devonshire, in the year 1772.

His father was rector of the

little parish and had a large family, of whom Samuel was the youngest. He lived here until he was nine years old when, unfortunately for him, his father died.

As he was without money or friends, he was sent to the great London Charity School, Christ's Hospital, which Lamb has described so vividly in "Elia."

Here his life was by no means an easy one. Once, indeed, he tried to escape, and became the apprentice of a shoe-maker, but he was forced to go back to school again. Coleridge, however, had an unfailing refuge from all the ills that afflicted him. This was the dream world in which from his earliest years he lived much of the time. spirit of imagination," he says, "Nature gave

This " shaping