print: he actually shed tears. He
asked whose the lines were, and it chanced that nobody but myself
remembered that they occur in a half-forgotten poem of Langhorne's,
called by the unpromising title of _The Justice of Peace_. I whispered
my information to a friend present, who mentioned it to Burns, who
rewarded me with a look and a word, which though of mere civility, I
then received with very great pleasure. His person was strong and
robust; his manner rustic, not clownish; a sort of dignified plainness
and simplicity. His countenance was more massive than it looks in any
of the portraits. I would have taken the poet, had I not known who he
was, for a very sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch school--the
_douce gudeman_ who held his own plow. There was a strong expression
of sense and shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think,
indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and
of a dark cast, which glowed (I say literally, glowed) when he spoke
with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human
head, though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time."

XIII

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE IN SCHOOL AND COLLEGE

The following affecting narrative, written in Coleridge's person by
the tender-hearted Elia, gives the best view possible of Coleridge's
scanty and suffering commencement of life. At that time, it may be
premised, the dietary of Christ's Hospital was of the lowest:
breakfast consisting of a "quarter of penny loaf, moistened with
attenuated small beer in wooden piggins, smacking of the pitched
leathern jack it was poured from," and the weekly rule giving "three
banyan-days to four meat days."

"I was a poor, friendless boy; my parents, and those who should have
cared for me, were far away. Those few acquaintances of theirs, whom
they could reckon upon being kind to me in the great city, after a
little forced notice, which they had the grace to take of me on my
first arrival in town, soon grew tired of my holiday visits. They
seemed to them to recur too often, though I thought them few enough.
One after another they all failed me, and I felt myself alone among
six hundred playmates. Oh the cruelty of separating a poor lad from
his early homestead! The yearnings which I used to have towards it in
those unfledged years!... The warm, long days of summer never return
but they bring with them a gloom from the haunting memory of those
_whole days' leav