COLENSO, JOHN WILLIAM (1814-1883).—­Mathematician and Biblical critic, b. at St. Austell, Cornwall, and ed. at St. John’s Coll., Camb., where he was a tutor, entered the Church, and pub. various mathematical treatises and Village Sermons.  In 1853 he was appointed first Bishop of Natal.  He mastered the Zulu language, introduced printing, wrote a Zulu grammar and dictionary, and many useful reading-books for the natives.  His Commentary on the Romans (1861) excited great opposition from the High Church party, and his Critical Examination of the Pentateuch (1862-1879), by its then extreme views, created great alarm and excitement.  He was in 1863 deposed and excommunicated by Bishop Gray of Cape Town, but confirmed in his see by the Courts of Law.  His theological writings are now largely superseded; but his mathematical text-books, for the writing of which he was much better equipped, hold their place.

COLERIDGE, HARTLEY (1796-1849).—­Poet, eldest s. of Samuel T.C. (q.v.), b. at Clevedon, spent his youth at Keswick among the “Lake poets.”  His early education was desultory, but he was sent by Southey to Oxf. in 1815.  His talents enabled him to win a Fellowship, but the weakness of his character led to his being deprived of it.  He then went to London and wrote for magazines.  From 1823 to 1828 he tried keeping a school at Ambleside, which failed, and he then led the life of a recluse at Grasmere until his death.  Here he wrote Essays, Biographia Borealis (lives of worthies of the northern counties) (1832), and a Life of Massinger (1839).  He is remembered chiefly for his Sonnets.  He also left unfinished a drama, Prometheus.

COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR (1772-1834).—­Poet, philosopher, and critic, s. of the Rev. John C., vicar and schoolmaster of Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, was b. there in 1772, the youngest of 13 children.  He was at Christ’s Hospital from 1782 to 1790, and had Charles Lamb for a schoolfellow, and the famous scholar and disciplinarian, James Boyer, for his master.  Thence he proceeded to Jesus Coll., Camb., in 1791, where he read much, but desultorily, and got into debt.  The troubles arising thence and also, apparently, a disappointment in love, led to his going to London and enlisting in the 15th Dragoons under the name of Silas Tomkyn Comberbacke.  He could not, however, be taught to ride, and through some Latin lines written by him on a stable door, his real condition was discovered, his friends communicated with, and his release accomplished, his brothers buying him off.  After this escapade he returned (1794) to Camb.  He had by this time imbibed extreme democratic or, as he termed them, pantisocratic principles, and on leaving Camb. in the same year he visited Oxf., where he made the acquaintance of Southey, and discussed with him a project of founding a “pantisocracy” on the banks of the Susquehanna,