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Samuel Taylor Coleridge on His Name


From a letter by STC (slightly edited, due to the limitations of html formatting):

``I think, that the word Coleridge (amphimacron = long on both sides) has a noble verbal physiognomy ... it is one of the vilest Belzebubb cries of Detraction to pronounce it Coll-ridge, or Coll-er-idge, or even Cole-ridge. It is & must be to all honest and honorable men, a trisyllabic Amphimacer, -- -- !''


However, he himself made these rhymes (as jokes??):
Parry seeks the Polar ridge,
Rhymes seeks S. T. Coleridge;
and:
Elsewhere in College, knowledge, wit and scholarage
To Friends and Public known as S. T. Coleridge.
and, from a poem written for one of his sons:
Could you stand upon Skiddaw, you would not from the whole ridge
See a man who so loves you as your fond S. T. Coleridge.

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