Editing Samuel Taylor Coleridge (section)

===West Midlands and the North===
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Coleridge also worked briefly in [[Shropshire]], where he came in December 1797 as locum to its local Unitarian minister, Dr. Rowe, in their church in the High Street at [[Shrewsbury]]. He is said to have read his ''Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' at a literary evening in Mardol. He was then contemplating a career in the ministry, and gave a probationary sermon in High Street church on Sunday, 14 January 1798. [[William Hazlitt]], a Unitarian minister's son, was in the congregation, having walked from [[Wem]] to hear him. Coleridge later visited Hazlitt and [[William Hazlitt (Unitarian minister)|his father]] at Wem but within a day or two of preaching he received a letter from [[Josiah Wedgwood II]], who had offered to help him out of financial difficulties with an annuity of £150 (approximately £13,000 in today's money<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/relativevalue.php?use%5B%5D=CPI&use%5B%5D=NOMINALEARN&year_early=1795&pound71=150&shilling71=0&pence71=0&amount=150&year_source=1795&year_result=2012|title=Measuring Worth – Purchase Power of the Pound|website=measuringworth.com|access-date=4 November 2017|archive-date=7 November 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171107111850/https://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/relativevalue.php?use%255B%255D=CPI&use%255B%255D=NOMINALEARN&year_early=1795&pound71=150&shilling71=0&pence71=0&amount=150&year_source=1795&year_result=2012|url-status=dead}}</ref>) per year on condition he give up his ministerial career. Coleridge accepted this, to the disappointment of Hazlitt who hoped to have him as a neighbour in Shropshire.<ref name=Dickins>{{cite book|last=Dickins|first=Gordon|title=An Illustrated Literary Guide to Shropshire|year=1987|publisher=Shropshire Libraries|page=19|isbn=0-903802-37-6}}</ref>

From 16 September 1798, Coleridge and the Wordsworths left for a stay in Germany; Coleridge soon went his own way and spent much of his time in university towns. In February 1799 he enrolled at the [[University of Göttingen]], where he attended lectures by [[Johann Friedrich Blumenbach]] and [[Johann Gottfried Eichhorn]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=Coleridge and Cosmopolitan Intellectualism 1794–1804. The Legacy of Göttingen University|last=van Woudenberg|first=Maximiliaan|publisher=Routledge|year=2018|isbn=9781472472380|location=London|pages=93–103}}</ref> During this period, he became interested in German philosophy, especially the [[transcendental idealism]] and [[critical philosophy]] of [[Immanuel Kant]], and in the [[literary criticism]] of the 18th-century dramatist [[Gotthold Ephraim Lessing|Gotthold Lessing]]. Coleridge studied German and, after his return to England, translated the dramatic trilogy ''Wallenstein'' by the German Classical poet [[Friedrich Schiller]] into English. He continued to pioneer these ideas through his own critical writings for the rest of his life (sometimes without attribution), although they were unfamiliar and difficult for a culture dominated by [[empiricism]].

In 1799, Coleridge and the Wordsworths stayed at Thomas Hutchinson's farm on the [[River Tees]] at [[Sockburn]], near [[Darlington]].

[[File:Sara Coleridge 1.jpg|right| thumb | Samuel Taylor Coleridge's daughter [[Sara Coleridge]] – 1830. Portrait by [[Richard James Lane]]]]
It was at Sockburn that Coleridge wrote his ballad-poem ''Love'', addressed to Sara Hutchinson. The knight mentioned is the mailed figure on the Conyers tomb in ruined Sockburn church. The figure has a [[wyvern]] at his feet, a reference to the [[Sockburn Worm]] slain by Sir John Conyers (and a possible source for [[Lewis Carroll]]'s "[[Jabberwocky]]").{{efn|'''Old Sockburn church''': "The stone effigy of a knight, four brasses and some grave-covers occupy their original positions in the chapel. The effigy belongs apparently to the middle of the 13th century (fn. 130), and is represented in a suit of mail with sleeveless surcoat. The head rests on a square cushion and the feet on a '''lion and wyvern in combat'''."{{sfn|Page|1914|pp=449–454}}}}{{efn|'''LOVE''' (1798–1799) "She leant against the armed man, / The statue of the armed knight"<ref name= Coleridge_Love>*{{cite book |title= Poems of Coleridge by Samuel Taylor Coleridge |publisher= Project Gutenberg| url= https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8208|access-date= 1 June 2022}}</ref>}} The worm was supposedly buried under the rock in the nearby pasture; this was the "greystone" of Coleridge's first draft, later transformed into a "mount". The poem was a direct inspiration for [[John Keats]]' famous poem "[[La Belle Dame Sans Merci]]".<ref>The Conyers falchion (a broad, short medieval sword) is traditionally presented to incoming [[Bishops of Durham]], as they ride across the bridge at [[Croft-on-Tees|Croft]].</ref>

Coleridge's early intellectual debts, besides German idealists like Kant and critics like Lessing, were first to [[William Godwin]]'s ''Political Justice'', especially during his Pantisocratic period, and to [[David Hartley (philosopher)|David Hartley]]'s ''Observations on Man'', which is the source of the psychology which is found in ''Frost at Midnight''. Hartley argued that one becomes aware of sensory events as impressions, and that "ideas" are derived by noticing similarities and differences between impressions and then by naming them. Connections resulting from the coincidence of impressions create linkages, so that the occurrence of one impression triggers those links and calls up the memory of those ideas with which it is associated (See Dorothy Emmet, "Coleridge and Philosophy").

Coleridge was critical of the literary taste of his contemporaries, and a literary conservative insofar as he was afraid that the lack of taste in the ever growing masses of literate people would mean a continued desecration of literature.

In 1800, he returned to England and shortly thereafter settled with his family and friends in Greta Hall at [[Keswick, Cumbria|Keswick]] in the [[Lake District]] of [[Cumberland, England|Cumberland]] to be near [[Grasmere (village)|Grasmere]], where Wordsworth had moved. He stayed with the Wordsworths for eighteen months, but was a difficult houseguest, as his dependency on [[laudanum]] grew and his frequent nightmares would wake the children. He was also a fussy eater, to the frustration of [[Dorothy Wordsworth]], who had to cook. For example, not content with salt, Coleridge sprinkled cayenne pepper on his eggs, which he ate from a teacup.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Poets' Daughters: Dora Wordsworth and Sara Coleridge|last=Waldegrave|first=Katie|publisher=Windmill Books|year=2013|isbn=978-0099537342|location=London|pages=21}}</ref> His marital problems, nightmares, illnesses, increased opium dependency, tensions with Wordsworth, and a lack of confidence in his poetic powers fuelled the composition of "[[Dejection: An Ode]]" and an intensification of his philosophical studies.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Waldegrave|first1=Katie|title=The Poets' Daughters: Dora Wordsworth and Sara Coleridge|date=2014|location=London|isbn=9780099537342|page=21}}</ref>

In 1802, Coleridge took a nine-day walking holiday in the fells of the [[Lake District]]. Coleridge is credited with the first recorded descent of [[Scafell]] to [[Mickledore]] via Broad Stand, although this may have been more due to his getting lost than a purposeful new route. He coined the term mountaineering.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://iberianature.com/britainnature/poet-climbs-scafell/#more-3118|title=Poet climbs Scafell – A natural history of Britain|website=iberianature.com|date=18 December 2010 |access-date=4 November 2017}}</ref>