Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772. The youngest of 14 children, he was educated after his father's death and excelled in classics. He attended Christ's Hospital and Jesus College, Cambridge. While attending college, he befriended two other Romanticists, Charles Lamb and Robert Southey, the latter causing him to eventually drop out of college and pursue both poetic and political ambitions. Although he often wrote poetry, his talent did not manifest until after 1794, when he transitioned into what would later be described as Romantic poetry. During this time, he worked with Southey on developing an ideal political government called Pantisocracy. Eventually, Coleridge would give up his political ambitions and focus on his poetic career. Parents Coleridge's grandfather, the elder John Coleridge, was a weaver by trade, and, as Coleridge claimed to William Godwin, he was also "half–poet and half–madman". In 1719, his wife Mary gave birth to John, the younger. Their son was sent to the Crediton Grammar School until the age of 15, when the bankruptcy of the elder prompted the younger to seek employment. While the younger despaired at his fate, a random gentleman discovered him and offered him a job as an usher for a school. While working for the school, he took up a wife, had four daughters, and pursued his studies. In 1747, he was accepted into Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, at the age of 28, and studied classics and Hebrew. After finishing college, the younger John Coleridge became a teacher in Devon. A few years after moving to Devon, the younger John Coleridge's wife died. In 1753, he married Ann Bowden, a woman from Exmoor of a modest background. They had 9 sons and 1 daughter, with Samuel Coleridge being the youngest. By 1772, the year of Samuel's birth, John Coleridge was a well-respected vicar of the parish and had advanced to the position of Head Master of The King's Free Grammar School at Ottery. The positions brought the family only a small income, but they did earn the friendship of local baronet, Stafford Northcote. In addition to his employment, John Coleridge also wrote a few religious works and a Latin grammar. Childhood Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in the rural town of Ottery St Mary, Devon, England, the youngest of the children. Of his childhood, Coleridge suggests that he "took no pleasure in boyish sports" but instead read