--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_!
William Wordsworth
--Ed.]
[Footnote S: Mary Hutchinson.--Ed.]
[Footnote T: The Border Beacon is the hill to the north-east of Penrith.
It is now covered with wood, but was in Wordsworth's time a "bare
fell."--Ed.]
[Footnote U: He had gone to Malta, "in search of health."--Ed.]
[Footnote V: The Etesian gales are the mild north winds of the
Mediterranean, which are periodical, lasting about six weeks in spring
and autumn.--Ed.]
[Footnote W: A blue-coat boy in London.--Ed.]
[Footnote X: Christ's Hospital. Compare Charles Lamb's 'Christ's
Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago'.
"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.
