eological and
metaphysical treatises. At ten he was sent to the Charity School of
Christ's Hospital, London, where he met Charles Lamb, who records his
impression of the place and of Coleridge in one of his famous essays.[224]
Coleridge seems to have remained in this school for seven or eight years
without visiting his home,--a poor, neglected boy, whose comforts and
entertainments were all within himself. Just as, when a little child, he
used to wander over the fields with a stick in his hand, slashing the tops
from weeds and thistles, and thinking himself to be the mighty champion of
Christendom against the infidels, so now he would lie on the roof of the
school, forgetting the play of his fellows and the roar of the London
streets, watching the white clouds drifting over and following them in
spirit into all sorts of romantic adventures.

At nineteen this hopeless dreamer, who had read more books than an old
professor, entered Cambridge as a charity student. He remained for nearly
three years, then ran away because of a trifling debt and enlisted in the
Dragoons, where he served several months before he was discovered and
brought back to the university. He left in 1794 without taking his degree;
and presently we find him with the youthful Southey,--a kindred spirit, who
had been fired to wild enthusiasm by the French Revolution,--founding his
famous Pantisocracy for the regeneration of human society. "The Fall of
Robespierre," a poem composed by the two enthusiasts, is full of the new
revolutionary spirit. The Pantisocracy, on the banks of the Susquehanna,
was to be an ideal community, in which the citizens combined farming and
literature; and work was to be limited to two hours each day. Moreover,
each member of the community was to marry a good woman, and take her with
him. The two poets obeyed the latter injunction first, marrying two
sisters, and then found that they had no money to pay even their traveling
expenses to the new Utopia.

During all the rest of his career a tragic weakness of will takes
possession of Coleridge, making it impossible for him, with all his genius
and learning, to hold himself steadily to any one work or purpose. He
studied in Germany; worked as a private secretary, till the drudgery wore
upon his free spirit; then he went to Rome and remained for two years, lost
in study. Later he started _The Friend_, a paper devoted to truth and
liberty; lectured on poetry and the fine arts to enrapt