Volume 40, Number 18 · November 4, 1993
The Poet of Chemistry
By Oliver Sacks
Humphry Davy: Science and Power
by David Knight
Blackwell, 218 pp., $29.95
On April 6, 1804, Coleridge boarded the Speedwell and sailed into exile. A grim apprehension gripped him and most of his friends. 'Suppose,' writes Richard Holmes, in the tantalizing postscript which ends the first volume of his biography, 'Coleridge had indeed died, as he and his friends clearly expected he would, aged thirty-one, somewhere in the Mediterranean in 1804?…Suppose his life had never actually had a part two? How would his reputation now stand?…Had Coleridge died young; had he always remained as that youthful, archetypal figure on the ship sailing south, we might be tempted to think of him, paradoxically, as already greater than the man he eventually became.' But Coleridge was to live another thirty-two years; his giant, complex future still lay before him.
Review, 7863 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |