Coleridge’s bad luck when each of his publications, whether poetical, philosophical, or journalistic, very regularly encountered a hostile critical reception. Yet, rather paradoxically, with the exception of a few professors and some rare spoilsports, whoever met the young man fell prey to his charm, and could have sworn that he was a genius of the most promising order.
The high stakes that were often placed on his intellectual capacities may partly account for the fact that Coleridge, by his life more than by his works, may sometimes have seemed disappointing. The story of his life is such that it would probably be difficult to write his hagiography. To some extent, he is perhaps a case in point of a great man whose achievement has hardly anything to gain, and perhaps much to lose, from his biographers.
In 1802, writing to William Godwin, Coleridge defined himself by saying: “In plain and natural English, I am a dreaming and therefore an indolent man. I am a Starling self-incaged, and always in the Moult, and my whole Note is Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” (Collected Letters II, 782). The man did have some humour indeed, and he was conscious of the slightly ridiculous, and possibly alarming sides of his character. But in the world of letters, as much as in politics, it is often observed that an unedifying life will tend to run down a man’s works.
That was all right for Byron, who thrived on a scandalous character and an intentionally dissolute life, and whose pranks were so many advertisements. But the deal was not quite the same for Coleridge, who very assiduously posed as a preacher of virtue, whether in the garb of the poet, or in that of the philosopher.
Coleridge was a clever pupil, especially in Latin and Greek, and he was a brilliant student at Jesus College, Cambridge.