ornatura et orationis fucus; vel sanguinis e materiæ ipsius corde effluentis rubor quidam nativus et incalescentia genuina; 10_removed all obstacles to the appreciation of excellence in style without diminishing my delight. That I was thus prepared for the perusal of Mr. Bowles's sonnets and earlier poems, at once increased their influence, and my enthusiasm. The great works of past ages seem to a young man things of another race, in respect to which his faculties must remain passive and submiss, even as to the stars and mountains. But the writings of a contemporary, perhaps not many years older than himself, surrounded by the same circumstances, and disciplined by the same manners, possess a reality for him, and inspire an actual friendship as of a man for a man. His very admiration is the wind which fans and feeds his hope. The poems themselves assume the properties of flesh and blood. To recite, to extol, to contend for them is but the payment of a debt due to one, who exists to receive it. There are indeed modes of teaching which have produced, and are producing, youths of a very different stamp; modes of teaching, in comparison with which we have been called on to despise our great public schools, and universities, in whose halls are hung Armoury of the invincible knights of old— 11 modes, by which children are to be metamorphosed into prodigies. And prodigies with a vengeance have 10 [I presume this Latin to be Mr. Coleridge's own-not being able to find the passage in any other author, and believing that incalescentia is a good word not countenanced by any classic writer of Rome. Ed.] "[Wordsworth. Poet. W. III. p. 190. Ed.] I known thus produced;-prodigies of self-conceit, shallowness, arrogance, and infidelity! Instead of storing the memory, during the period when the memory is the predominant faculty, with facts for the after exercise of the judgment; and instead of awakening by the noblest models the fond and unmixed love and admiration, which is the natural and graceful temper of early youth; these nurslings of improved pedagogy are taught to dispute and decide; to suspect all but their own and their lecturer's wisdom; and to hold nothing sacred from their contempt, but their own contemptible arrogance ;-boy-graduates in all the technicals, and in all the dirty passions and impudence of anonymous criticism. To such dispositions alone can the admonition of Pliny be requisite, Neque enim debet operibus ejus obesse, quod vivit. An si inter eos, quos nunquam vidimus, floruisset, non solum libros ejus, verum etiam imagines conquireremus, ejusdem nunc honor præsentis, et gratia quasi satietate languescet? At hoc pravum, malignumque est, non admirari hominem admiratione dignissimum, quia videre, complecti, nec laudare tantum, verum etiam amare contingit.12 12 I had just entered on my seventeenth year, when the sonnets of Mr. Bowles, twenty in number, and just then published in a quarto pamphlet,13 were first made known and presented to me, by a schoolfellow who had quitted us for the University, and who, during the 12 [Epist. I. p. 16. Ed.] 13 [The volume here mentioned appears to have been the second edition of Mr. Bowles's Sonnets, published in 1789, and containing twenty-one in number. The first edition with fourteen sonnets only had been published half a year previously. Ed.] whole time that he was in our first form, (or in our school language a Grecian,) had been my patron and protector. I refer to Dr. Middleton, the truly learned, and every way excellent Bishop of Calcutta: qui laudibus amplis Ingenium celebrare meum, calamumque solebat, It was a double pleasure to me, and still remains a tender recollection, that I should have received from a friend so revered the first knowledge of a poet, by whose works, year after year, I was so enthusiastically delighted and inspired. My earliest acquaintances will not have forgotten the undisciplined eagerness and impetuous zeal, with which I laboured to make proselytes, not only of my companions, but of all with whom I conversed, of whatever rank, and in whatever place. As my school finances did not permit me to purchase copies, I made, within less than a year and a half, more than forty transcriptions, as the best presents I could offer to those, who had in any way won my regard. And with almost equal delight did I receive the three or four following publications of the same author. Though I have seen and known enough of mankind to be well aware, that I shall perhaps stand alone in my creed, and that it will be well, if I subject myself to no worse charge than that of singularity; I am not therefore deterred from avowing, that I regard, and ever have regarded the obligations of intellect among the most sacred of the claims of gratitude. A valua 14 [Petrarc. Epist. I. 1. Barbato Subnonensi. Bishop Middleton left Christ's Hospital on the 26th of September, 1788, on having been elected to Pembroke College, Cambridge. Ed.] ble thought, or a particular train of thoughts, gives me additional pleasure, when I can safely refer and attribute it to the conversation or correspondence of another. My obligations to Mr. Bowles were indeed important, and for radical good. At a very premature age, even before my fifteenth year, I had bewildered myself in metaphysics, and in theological controversy.15 Nothing else pleased me. History, and particular facts, lost all interest in my mind. Poetry-(though for a school-boy of that age, I was above par in English versification, and had already produced two or three compositions which, I may venture to say, without reference to my age, were somewhat above mediocrity,16 and which had gained me more credit than the sound, good sense of my old master was at all pleased with,)—poetry itself, yea, novels and romances, became insipid to me. In my friendless wanderings on our leave-days," (for I 15 ["Come back into memory," says Lamb, "like as thou wast in the day-spring 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 cloister stand still, intranced 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 Iamblichus, of 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 re-echoed to the accents of the inspired charity-boy!" Prose Works, II. p. 46. Ed.] 16 [See amongst his Juvenile Poems the lines entitled, Time real and imaginary, (Poet. Works, I. p. 5.) which is the first decided indication of his poetic and metaphysical genius toge ther, and was written in his sixteenth year. Ed.] 17 The Christ's Hospital phrase, not for holidays altogether, but for those on which the boys are permitted to go beyond the precincts of the school. was an orphan, and had scarcely any connections in London,) highly was I delighted, if any passenger, especially if he were dressed in black, would enter into conversation with me. For I soon found the means of directing it to my favourite subjects Of providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate, This preposterous pursuit was, beyond doubt, injurious both to my natural powers, and to the progress of my education. It would perhaps have been destructive, had it been continued; but from this I was auspiciously withdrawn, partly indeed by an accidental introduction to an amiable family, chiefly however, by the genial influence of a style of poetry, so tender and yet so manly, so natural and real, and yet so dignified and harmonious, as the sonnets and other early poems of Mr. Bowles. Well would it have been for me, perhaps, had I never relapsed into the same mental disease; if I had continued to pluck the flower and reap the harvest from the cultivated surface, instead of delving in the unwholesome quicksilver mines of metaphysic lore. And if in after time I have sought a refuge from bodily pain and mismanaged sensibility in abstruse researches, which exercised the strength and subtilty of the understanding without awakening the feelings of the heart; still there was a long and blessed interval, during which my natural faculties were allowed to expand, and my original tendencies to develope themselves; my fancy, and the love of nature, and the sense of beauty in forms and sounds.18 18 [For not to think of what I needs must feel, |