Coleridge won the Chancellor's Prize for Latin verse in 1810, graduated first-class in classics in 1812, won the prizes for English and Latin essays in 1813 (as Keble had done in 1811), and became a Vinerian Scholar and a fellow of Exeter College.

[1] In 1824, on William Gifford's retirement, he assumed the editorship of the Quarterly Review, resigning it a year afterwards in favour of John Gibson Lockhart.

In 1825 he published a well regarded edition of William Blackstone's Commentaries, and in 1832 he was made a serjeant-at-law and recorder of Exeter.

He died at Ottery St Mary, Devon, leaving two sons and two daughters.

His brother Francis George was the father of Arthur Duke Coleridge (born 1830), clerk of assizes on the Midland circuit and author of Eton in the Forties and whose daughter Mary E. Coleridge became a well-known writer of fiction.