for a few weeks previous to entering Christ's Hospital. "My uncle was very proud of me, and used to carry me from coffee-house to coffee-house, and tavern to tavern, where I drank, and talked, and disputed as if I had been a man. Nothing was more common than for a large party to exclaim in my hearing, that I was a prodigy, &c.; so that while I remained at my uncle's, I was most completely spoilt and pampered, both mind and body."* In July, he was admitted to Christ's Hospital, and there underwent that trying experience in a boy's life, when, for the first time separated from home, he is thrown upon his own resources and compelled to make a place and friends for himself. Coleridge remained at Christ's Hospital for eight years. Here it was that his friendship with Charles Lamb, which death alone was permanently to interrupt, commenced; and long afterward Lamb embodied his recollections of the school-boy life of his friend in the beautiful essay, "Christ's Hospital five-and-thirty years ago." Who that has read his glowing description of Coleridge at this time, so sad from the contrast with his later life, can forget it, and who that has read it once but will be glad to read it again? * Biographia Literaria, ii. 326. "Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the dayspring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before thee, the dark pillar not yet turned, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Logician, Metaphysician, Bard! How have I seen the casual passer through the Cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration, (while he weighed the disproportion between the speech and the garb of the young Mirandula,) to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jamblicus, or Plotinus, (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic draughts,) or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar,while the walls of the old Grey Friars reëchoed to the accents of the inspired charity boy!" The Reverend James Bowyer was at this period head master of Christ's Hospital. He was a stern master; "J. B. was a rabid pedant," says Lamb, but he knew how to teach his boys, and Coleridge was accustomed to speak in warm terms of the obligations which they were under to him, not only for his discipline of their intellects, but also for his cultivation of their taste. Nothing was done for their religious or moral education; though Coleridge long afterward declared that he had received one just flogging at school, on his taking occasion to declare himself an infidel. talents and superiority made me,” he says, ever at the head in my routine of study, though utterly without the desire to be so; without a 66 My "for spark of ambition; and as to emulation, it had no meaning for me; but the difference between me and my form-fellows, in our lessons and exercises, bore no proportion to the measureless difference between me and them in the wide, wild, wilderness of useless, unarranged book knowledge and book thoughts."* Such was his standing, indeed, that in 1790 he was elected to College, and bade farewell to school in the sonnet, beginning, Farewell, parental scenes! a sad farewell! To you my grateful heart still fondly clings, Though fluttering round on Fancy's burnished wings On the 5th of February, 1791, Coleridge entered at Jesus College, Cambridge. He was not yet nineteen years old. His natural taste and fortuitous circumstances had led him to read all sorts of books, whether "he understood them or did not understand them;" and he had spent much time over metaphysical and theological writers, whose obscure speculations had bewildered and unsettled a mind originally not well balanced. He had neglected mathematics and the other branches of exact science, and late in life he thus expressed his sense of the great disadvantage which this had been to him: "In a long brief dream-life of regretted regrets, I still find a noticeable space marked out by the regret of having neglected the mathematical sciences. No weeks, few days, pass unhaunted by a fresh conviction of the truth in the Platonic superscription over the portal of Philosophy, Μήδεις ἀγεωμέτρητος εισίτω.” The want of that strict discipline of the reasoning powers which is gained by the study of mathematics was a loss of more than usual importance to Coleridge. His memory was very retentive, but deficient in method and arrangement. Highly endowed with imagination by nature, his education had tended to develop this faculty still further, until it had assumed a disproportionate influence over his life. "History and particular facts lost all interest in my mind," he says. He was always forming plans and laying out great projects, which were rarely brought to the point of execution. His moral perceptions were strong and acute in regard to matters of theory, but his conscience was silent and inoperative in the affairs of every-day occurrence. He had no fixed principles, and, keeping no object to live for steadily in view, he was continually shifting from one aim to another. The summer after he entered college, he gained Sir William Brown's gold medal for the Greek ode. It was on the Slave-trade. Once or twice afterward he was an unsuccessful candidate for C college honors, though there can be no doubt that at this time he was a very considerable proficient in classical studies. An old school and college friend,* who very shortly after Coleridge's death published some reminiscences of these days, said of him, - "Coleridge was very studious, but his reading was desultory and capricious; he was ready at any time to unbend his mind in conversation, and for the sake of this, his room was a constant rendezvous of conversation-loving friends." Two years were spent at Cambridge, the only fruits of which now remaining are a few short pieces in verse published among his "Juvenile Poems." They were unsatisfactory years to himself. "Prodigal and reckless of his priceless wealth, he gave himself up to indolence and accomplished little but the increase of an already immense heap of undigested miscellaneous learning. In lines written about this time he says,— "To me hath Heaven with bounteous hand assigned The daring ken of Truth, the Patriot's part, *C. V. Le Grice. "College Reminiscences." Gentleman's Magazine, December, 1834. "Many were the 'wit combats' between him and C. V. Le G-," says Elia of their school days. |