ed with senses
capable of the nicest perceptions, and with a mental and moral
constitution which tended always, with the certainty of a physical
law, to the beautiful, the pure, and the sublime, he led what many
might call an ideal life. Yet was he far from being a recluse, or from
being disposed to an excess of introversion. On the contrary, he was
a popular, high-spirited youth, almost passionately fond of society,
maintaining an unusual number of warm friendships, and unsurpassed by
any of the young men of his day in adaptedness to the elegancies and
courtesies of the more refined portions of the moving world. Romances
of love, knighthood, and heroic deeds, tales of banditti, and stories
of supernatural beings, were his chief delight in his early days. Yet
his classical attainments were considerable, and, as a scholar in the
literature of his own language, his reputation was early established.
He delivered a poem on taking his degree, which was much admired in
its day.

On leaving college, he returned to South Carolina. Having determined
to devote his life to the fine arts, he sold, hastily and at a
sacrifice, his share of a considerable patrimonial estate, and
embarked for London in the autumn of 1801. Immediately upon his
arrival, he became a student of the Royal Academy, of which his
countryman, West, was President, with whom he formed an intimate and
lasting friendship. After three years spent in England, and a shorter
stay at Paris, he went to Italy, where he spent four years devoted
exclusively to the study of his art. At Rome began his intimacy with
Coleridge. Among the many subsequent expressions of his feeling toward
this great man, none, perhaps, is more striking than the following
extract from one of his letters:--"To no other man do I owe so much,
intellectually, as to Mr. Coleridge, with whom I became acquainted
in Rome, and who has honored me with his friendship for more than
five-and-twenty years. He used to call Rome the silent city; but I
never could think of it as such while with him; for, meet him when and
where I would, the fountain of his mind was never dry, but, like the
far-reaching aqueducts that once supplied this mistress of the world,
its living stream seemed specially to flow for every classic ruin over
which we wandered. And when I recall some of our walks under the pines
of the Villa Borghese, I am almost tempted to dream that I have once
listened to Plato in the groves of the Academy."