Derwent Coleridge Derwent Coleridge Derwent Coleridge (1800–1883), third child of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was a distinguished English scholar and author. Derwent Coleridge was born at Keswick, Cumberland, 14 September 1800 (Derwent Water is not far away). He was sent with his brother Hartley to be educated at a small school near Ambleside. The two brothers were in those days in continual intercourse with Southey and Wordsworth. Derwent was sent to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he formed intimate lifelong friendships with W. M. Praed, Macaulay, John Moultrie, Sidney Walker, Charles Austin, and Bulwer. In the autumn of 1822, he joined them as
William Wordsworth long supposed that Wordsworth relied chiefly on Coleridge for philosophical guidance, but more recently scholars have suggested that Wordsworth's ideas may have been formed years before he and Coleridge became friends in the mid-1790s. In particular, while he was in revolutionary Paris in 1792, the 22-year-old Wordsworth made the acquaintance of the mysterious traveler John "Walking" Stewart (1747–1822), who was nearing the end of his thirty years of wandering, on foot, from Madras, India, through Persia and Arabia, across Africa and Europe, and up through the fledgling United States. By the time of their association, Stewart had published an ambitious