was no school title with Bowyer. The errand of this lady being to ask a short leave of absence for some boy, on the sudden appearance in town of his country cousin, still lingering at the door, after having been abruptly told to go, Bowyer suddenly exclaimed, Bring that woman here, and I'll flog her!"

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Coleridge's themes in his fifteenth year,* in verse as well as prose, marked him as a boy of great talent, but of talent only according to his own definition of it (vide "Friend," vol. iii. edit. 1818). His verse was good, his prose powerful, and language correct, and beyond his years in depth of thought, but as yet he had not manifested, according to the same test, anything of genius. I met among some of his notes, written at the age of fifty-one, the following critique on one of his schoolboy themes: "This theme was written at the age of fifteen: it does not con"tain a line that any schoolboy might not have written, and like most school-poetry, there is a putting of thoughts into verse. Yet such verses "as a striving of mind and struggles after the "intense and vivid, are a fair promise of better

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things." The same observation might be made in the intense application of his intellectual powers in search of truth, at the time he called himself

* In his biographical sketch of his literary life, he informs us that he had translated the eight Hymns of Synesius from the Greek, into English Anacreontics, before his fifteenth year.

an infidel; in this struggle of mind was the "fair promise of better things." It was the preparation necessary for such a mind; the breaking up and tilling of the soil for the successful germination of the seeds of truth.

The sleeping powers of thought were roused and excited into action.

Perhaps this may be considered, as entering too early into the history of his mind in boyhood: to this I reply, that the entire man so to speak, is to be seen even in the cradle of the child.*

The serious may be startled at the thought of a young man passing through such an ordeal; but with him it was the exercise of his strength, in order that he might "fight the good fight," and conquer for that truth which is permanent, and is the light and the life of every one who comes into the world, and who is in earnest search of it.

In his sixteenth year he composed the allegory of "Real and Imaginary Time," first published in the Sibylline Leaves, having been accidentally omitted in the Juvenile Poems,

"On the wide level of a mountain's head,

(I knew not where, but 'twas some fairy place)
Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread,
Two lovely children run an endless race,

the childhood shews the man,

As morning shews the day.

Paradise Regained, book iv. v. 220.

A sister and a brother!

That far outstripped the other;

Yet ever runs she with reverted face,

And looks and listens for the boy behind;
For he, alas! is blind!

O'er rough and smooth with even step he passed,

And knows not whether he be first or last."*

in which may be traced the first dawnings of his genius. He pictures to himself a boy returning to school after the holidays; in his day-dreams making plans for the future, and anticipating the pleasure he is to enjoy on his return home; his vivid thoughts, and sanguine expectations "far outstripping" the reality of time as marked by the watch or almanack. Real time is personified as a blind boy steadily pursuing his path; whilst imaginary time is represented as a fleeting girl, looking back and listening for her brother whom she has outrun. Perhaps to Mr. Bowyer's excellent method of instruction may be attributed this early developement of his genius. Coleridge remarks of him, "He was an admirable educer, no less than educator of "intellect; he taught me to leave out as many

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epithets as would make eight syllable lines, and "then ask if the exercise would not be greatly "improved." Although in this year he began to indulge in metaphysical speculations, he was wedded to verse, and many of his early poems

* Aldine Edition, Vol. i. p. 6.-Pickering, London, 1834.

were planned; some of which he finished, and they were published in the "Juvenile Poems," on his entry into life; but as many more were scattered among his friends, who had greatly increased in number. About this time he became acquainted with a widow lady, "whose "son," says he, "I, as upper boy, had protected, "and who therefore looked up to me, and taught

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me what it was to have a mother. I loved her "as such. She had three daughters, and of "course I fell in love with the eldest. From this "time to my nineteenth year, when I quitted "school for Jesus, Cambridge, was the era of

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poetry and love." It has been observed, that about this sixteenth year, he first developed genius, and that during this early period of his life, his mind was incessantly toiling in the pursuit of knowledge. His love of reading seemed to have increased in proportion to his acquirements, which were equally great: his representing himself as an infidel was better perhaps understood by his master, who believed it to be only puerile vanity; and therefore Coleridge considered the flogging he received on this occasion, a just and appropriate punishment; and it was so, for as a boy he had not thought deep enough on an equally important point, viz., what is Fidelity, and how easily, he particularly might mistake the genuineness of sincere fidelity for mere outward forms, and the simple observ

ance of customs. Perhaps I might have been disposed to pass over this era with a slighter notice, which he in his simplicity of character thought it right to record. He was always honest in every thing concerning himself, and never spared self-accusation, often, when not understood, to his own injury. He never from his boyhood to his latest life, received kindness without grateful feelings, and, when he believed it coupled with love, without the deepest sense of its value; and if the person possessed sensibility and taste, he repaid it tenfold. This was the experience of nearly twenty years intimate knowledge of his character.

His description of his first love was that of a young poet, recording the first era of the passion, the fleeting dream of his youth-but not that love which he afterwards records in the Geneviève when he says,

"All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,

All are but ministers of love,

And feed his sacred flame."

First love, so seldom the mature love of future days, is a flower of premature growth and developement, on which fancy exercises itself in castle-building, and is in unison with that age when youth flings his limbs about in the air, as an exercise to rid himself of the superfluous volition, the accumulation of which gives him a