ight was significant. Early on a July morning he
slipped quietly off--in one pocket a copy of an English poet, a volume
of Euripides in the other. His first move was toward Chester, the
seventeen-year-old runaway deeming it proper that he should report at
once to his mother, who was now living in that town. So he trudged
overland forty miles and faced his astonished and indignant parent. At
the suggestion of a kind-hearted uncle, just home from India, Thomas
was let off easily; indeed, he was given an allowance of a guinea a
week, with permission to go on a tramp through North Wales, a
proposition which he hailed with delight. The next three months were
spent in a rather pleasant ramble, although the weekly allowance was
scarcely sufficient to supply all the comforts desired. The trip ended
strangely. Some sudden fancy seizing him, the boy broke off all
connection with his friends and went to London. Unknown, unprovided
for, he buried himself in the vast life of the metropolis. He lived a
precarious existence for several months, suffering from exposure,
reduced to the verge of starvation, his whereabouts a mystery to his
friends. The cloud of this experience hung darkly over his spirit,
even in later manhood; perceptions of a true world of strife were
vivid; impressions of these wretched months formed the material of his
most sombre dreams.

Rescued at last, providentially, De Quincey spent the next period of
his life, covering the years 1803-7, in residence at Oxford. His
career as a student at the university is obscure. He was a member of
Worcester College, was known as a quiet, studious man, and lived an
isolated if not a solitary life. With a German student, who taught him
Hebrew, De Quincey seems to have had some intimacy, but his circle of
acquaintance was small, and no contemporary has thrown much light on
his stay. In 1807 he disappeared from Oxford, having taken the written
tests for his degree, but failing to present himself for the necessary
oral examination.

The year of his departure from Oxford brought to De Quincey a
long-coveted pleasure--acquaintance with two famous contemporaries
whom he greatly admired, Coleridge and Wordsworth. Characteristic of
De Quincey in many ways was his gift, anonymously made, of L300 to his
hero, Coleridge. This was in 1807, when De Quincey was twenty-two, and
was master of his inheritance. The acquaintance ripened into intimacy,
and in 1809 the young man, himself gifted wi