"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 Jamblichus, 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 re-echoed to the accents of the _inspired charity boy_!" ('Essays of Elia.')--Ed.] [Footnote Y: The river Otter, in Devon, thus addressed by Coleridge in one of his early poems: 'Dear native Brook! wild Streamlet of the West! How many various-fated years have passed, What blissful and what anguished hours, since last I skimmed the smooth thin stone along thy breast, Numbering its light leaps! Yet so deep imprest Sink the sweet scenes of Childhood, that mine eyes I never shut amid the sunny haze, But straight with all their tints, thy waters rise, Thy crowning plank, thy margin's willowy maze, And bedded sand that veined with various dyes Gleamed through thy bright transparence to the gaze! Visions of childhood! oft have ye beguiled Lone Manhood's cares, yet waking fondest sighs, Ah! that once more I were a careless child!' Ed.] [Footnote Z: Coleridge entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in February 1791, just a month after Wordsworth had taken his B. A. degree, and left the university.--Ed.] [Footnote a: Coleridge worked laboriously but unmethodically at Cambridge, studying philosophy and politics, besides classics and mathematics. He lost his scholarship however.--Ed.] [Footnote b: Debt and despondency; flight to London; enlistment in the Dragoons; residence in Bristol; Republican lectures; scheme, along with Southey, for founding a new community in America; its abandonment; his marriage; life at Nether Stowey; editing 'The Watchman'; lecturing on Shakespeare; contributing to 'The Morning Chronicle'; preaching in Unitarian pulpits; publishing his 'Juvenile Poems', etc. etc.; and throughout eccentric, impetuous, original--with contagious enthusiasm and overflowing genius--but erratic, self-confident, and unstable.--Ed.] [Footnote c: Robert Jones, of Plas-yn-llan, near Ruthin, Denbighshire, to whom the 'Descriptive Sketches', which record the tour, were dedicated.--Ed.] [Footnote d: See 'Descriptive Sketches', vol. i. p. 35.--Ed.] [Footnote e: Compare Shakespeare, 'Sonnets', 16: 'Now stand you on the top of happy hours.' Ed.]