66 * his breeches unbuttoned, and his shoes down at the heel, walking to and fro, or sitting on a step, or in a corner, deeply engaged in some book. This had attracted the notice of Middleton, at that time a deputy grecian, and going up to him one day, asked what he was reading; the answer was "Virgil." Virgil." "Are you then," said M. studying your lesson?" "No," said C., "I "am reading it for pleasure;" for he had not yet arrived at Virgil in his class studies. This struck Middleton as something so peculiar, that he mentioned it to the head master, as Coleridge was then in the grammar school (which is the lower part of the classical school), and doing the work of the lower boys. The Rev. James Bowyer, who was at that time head master, a quick discerning man, but hasty and severe, sent for the master of the grammar school, and inquired about Coleridge; from him he learnt that he was a dull and inapt scholar, and that he could not be made to repeat a single rule of syntax, although he would give a rule in his own way. * Whatever might have been his habits in boyhood, in manhood he was scrupulously clean in his person, and especially took great care of his hands by frequent ablutions. In his dress also he was as cleanly as the liberal use of snuff would permit, though the clothes-brush was often in requisition to remove the wasted snuff. Snuff," he would facetiously say, "was the final cause of the nose, though troublesome and expensive in its use." This brought Coleridge before Bowyer, and to this circumstance may be attributed the notice which he afterwards took of him: the school and his scholars were every thing to him, and Coleridge's neglect and carelessness never went unpunished. I have often heard him say, he was so ordinary a looking boy, with his black head, that Bowyer generally gave him at the end of a flogging an extra cut; "for," said he, you are such an ugly fellow!" 66 When, by the odd accident before mentioned, he was made a subscriber to the library in King Street, "I read,” says he, "through the catalogue, folios and all, whether I understood them, or did not understand them, running "all risks in skulking out to get the two vo"lumes which I was entitled to have daily. "Conceive what I must have been at fourteen; "I was in a continual low fever. My whole being was, with eyes closed to every object "of present sense, to crumple myself up in a sunny corner, and read, read, read; fancy my"self on Robinson Crusoe's island, finding 66 66 mountain of plumb-cake, and eating a room “for myself, and then eating it into the shapes "of tables and chairs-hunger and fancy!" 66 In his lad-hood he says, My talents and "superiority made me for ever at the head in my routine of study, though utterly without the "desire to be so; without a 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, wil"derness of useless, unarranged book-knowledge and book-thoughts. Thank Heaven! "it was not the age nor the fashion of getting up prodigies; but at twelve or fourteen I "should have made as pretty a juvenile prodigy 66 as was ever emasculated and ruined by fond " and idle wonderment. Thank Heaven! I was flogged instead of flattered. However, as I climbed up the school, my lot was somewha alleviated." When Coleridge arrived at the age of fifteen, he was, from the little comfort he experienced, very desirous of quitting the school, and, as he truly said, he had not a spark of ambition. Near the school there resided a worthy, and, in their rank of life, a respectable middleaged couple. The husband kept a little shop, and was a shoemaker, with whom Coleridge had become intimate. The wife, also, had been kind and attentive to him, and this was sufficient to captivate his affectionate nature, which had existed from earliest childhood, and strongly endeared him to all around him. Coleridge became exceedingly desirous of being apprenticed to this man, to learn the art of shoemaking; and in due time, when some of the boys were old enough to leave the school, and be put to trade, Coleridge, being of the number, tutored his friend Crispin how to apply to the head master, and not to heed his anger should he become irate. Accordingly, Crispin applied at the hour proposed to see Bowyer; who, having heard the proposal to take Coleridge as an apprentice, and Coleridge's answer and assent to become a shoemaker, broke forth with his favourite adjuration, “'Ods my life, man, what d'ye mean?" At the sound of his angry voice, Crispin stood motionless, till the angry pedagogue becoming infuriate, pushed the intruder out of the room with such force, that Crispin might have sustained an action at law against him for an assault. Thus, to Coleridge's mortification and regret, as he afterwards in joke would say, "I lost the oppor'tunity of supplying safeguards to the under'standings of those, who perhaps will never thank me for what I am aiming to do in exercising their reason." 66 66 66 46 66 Against my will," says he, "I was chosen by my master as one of those destined for "the university; and about this time my brother 66 66 Luke, or the Doctor,' so called from his in fancy, because being the seventh son, he had, “from his infancy, been dedicated to the me"dical profession, came to town to walk the "London Hospital, under the care of Sir Wil"liam Blizard. Mr. Saumarez, brother of the "Admiral Lord Saumarez, was his intimate "friend. Every Saturday I could make or ob“tain leave, to the London Hospital trudged I. “O the bliss if I was permitted to hold the plas"ters, or to attend the dressings. Thirty years "afterwards, Mr. Saumarez retained the liveliest "recollections of the extraordinary, enthusiastic "blue-coat boy, and was exceedingly affected in "identifying me with that boy. I became wild "to be apprenticed to a surgeon. English, Latin, yea, Greek books of medicine read I incessantly. Blanchard's Latin Medical Dictionary I had nearly by heart. Briefly, it 66 66 66 66 66 was a wild dream, which gradually blending with, gradually gave way to a rage for metaphysics, occasioned by the essays on Liberty "and Necessity in Cato's Letters, and more by theology. After I had read Voltaire's Philo 66 sophical Dictionary, I sported infidel! but my "infidel vanity never touched my heart:"-nor ever with his lips did he for a few months only support the new light given him by Voltaire. "With my heart," says he, "I never did abandon "the name of Christ." This reached Bowyer's ears, and he sent for him: not to reason with him, as teachers and parents do too often, and by this means as often increase the vanity of these tyro-would-be-philosophers; but he took the surest mode, if not of curing, at least of checking the disease. His argument was short |