ich also Scott was
connected.]

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Born in 1772, died in 1834; educated at Cambridge, but was
not graduated; formed an unsuccessful scheme for a
communistic settlement on the Susquehanna River, in
Pennsylvania; married a sister of Southey's wife in 1795;
published at Bristol a volume of poems in 1796; "The Ancient
Mariner" in 1798; settled at Keswick with Southey and
Wordsworth in 1800; lectured in London to fashionable
audiences, becoming in 1816 the guest of Mr. Gillman, a
London physician, at Highgate, where he spent the remainder
of his life; published "Christabel" in 1816, "Aids to
Reflection" in 1825, his "Literary Remains" appearing in
1836-39.

I

DOES FORTUNE FAVOR FOOLS?[15]

"Does Fortune favor fools? Or how do you explain the origin of the
proverb, which, differently worded, is to be found in all the
languages of Europe?"

This proverb admits of various explanations, according to the moods of
mind in which it is used. It may arise from pity, and the soothing
persuasion that Providence is eminently watchful over the helpless,
and extends an especial care to those who are not capable of caring
for themselves. So used, it breathes the same feeling as "God tempers
the wind to the shorn lamb"--or the more sportive adage, that "the
fairies take care of children and tipsy folk." The persuasion itself,
in addition to the general religious feeling of mankind, and the
scarcely less general love of the marvelous, may be accounted for from
our tendency to exaggerate all effects that seem disproportionate to
their visible cause, and all circumstances that are in any way
strongly contrasted with our notions of the persons under them.
Secondly, it arises from the safety and success which an ignorance of
danger and difficulty sometimes actually assists in procuring;
inasmuch as it precludes the despondence which might have kept the
more foresighted from undertaking the enterprise, the depression which
would retard its progress, and those overwhelming influences of terror
in cases where the vivid perception of the danger constitutes the
greater part of the danger itself. Thus men are said to have swooned
and even died at the sight of a narrow bridge, over which they had
ridden the night before in perfect safety, or at tracing the footmarks
along the edge of a precipice which the darkness had concealed from
them. A mor