as the dark haunts of terrific agents, on which none may
intrude with impunity; and now all a-glow, with colours not
their own, they are gazed at as the splendid palaces of
happiness and power. But in all ages there have been a few
who, measuring and sounding the rivers of the vale at the
feet of their furthest inaccessible falls, have learned that
the sources must be far higher and far inward; a few who,
even in the level streams, have detected elements which
neither the vale itself nor the surrounding mountains
contained or could supply.

_Biographia Literaria._

'I was driven from life in motion to life in thought and sensation.'
So Coleridge sums up his childhood with its delicacy, its
sensitiveness, and passion. From his tenth to his eighteenth year he
was at a rough school in London. Speaking of this time, he says:

When I was first plucked up and transplanted from my
birthplace and family, Providence, it has often occurred to
me, gave me the first intimation that it was my lot, and
that it was best for me, to make or find my way of life a
detached individual, a _terrae filius_, who was to ask love
or service of no one on any more specific relation than that
of being a man, and as such to take my chance for the free
charities of humanity.[38]

[38] Biographical Supplement to _Biographia Literaria_, chap.
ii.

Even his fine external nature was for years repressed, wronged, driven
inward--'at fourteen I was in a continual state of low fever.' He
becomes a dreamer, an eager student, but without ambition.

This depressed boy is nevertheless, on the spiritual side, the child
of a noble house. At twenty-five he is exercising a wonderful charm,
and has defined for himself a peculiar line of intellectual activity.
He had left Cambridge without a degree, a Unitarian. Unable to take
orders, he determined through Southey's influence to devote himself to
literature. When he left Cambridge there was a prejudice against him
which has given occasion to certain suspicions. Those who knew him
best discredit these suspicions. What is certain is that he was
subject to fits of violent, sometimes fantastic, despondency. He
retired to Stowey, in Somersetshire, to study poetry and philosophy.
In 1797 his poetical gift was in full flower; he wrote _Kubla Khan_,
the first part of _Christabel_, and _The Anci