Coleridge and the Romantic Vision of the World

Abstract

His last name, the poet enjoins us, is to be pronounced as three syllables, with the ‘o’ long. ‘For it is one of the vilest Belzebubberies of Detraction to pronounce it Col-ridge, Cŏllěridge, or even Cōle-ridge. It is & must be to all honest and honorable men, a trisyllabic Amphimacer, — ∪ —!’¹ And upon his first name Coleridge projected his self-distrust and the contempt he felt for his lack of decisiveness — attitudes which all his life made him heavily reliant on the good opinion of others to buttress his self-esteem. ‘From my earliest years,’ he wrote, ‘I have had a feeling of Dislike & Disgust’ for the name Samuel: ‘such a vile short plumpness, such a dull abortive smartness, in [the] first Syllable … the wabble it makes, & staggering between a diss- & a tri-syllable … altogether it is perhaps the worst combination, of which vowels & consonants are susceptible.’²

Bicentenary lecture given at Jesus College, Cambridge.