When Sara Coleridge was about to marry her cousin Henry in 1829, William Wordsworth bought her a set of kitchen scales. In the days before aspirational wedding lists, the Bard of Rydal clearly thought this the ideal present, for he had given the same to Felicia Hemans, one of the best-known poets of her day. The message was clear: a wife must acknowledge where her first duties lie. Poor Sara didn’t even know which way up the scales should be.Her own father gave Sara his copy of William Sotheby’s Georgica Heptaglotta. This rich gift did at least acknowledge her remarkable intellect. When only 18, she had published a three-volume translation, from the Latin, of the Jesuit Martin Dobrizzhoffer’s Account of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Paraguay.By the time of her ma