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.