Lyrical Ballads

English poet, philosopher, and critic, born at Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, son of the Rev. John Coleridge (1719-81), vicar of the parish. In the summer of 1790 he swam the New River in his clothes, caught rheumatic fever, and was confined for some months to the sick-ward of the hospital. This illness, and, as may be conjectured, doses of opium administered to allay the 'seas of pain' (see his son...