a sympathetic comrade and schoolmate. For two years De Quincey
remained in this school, achieving a great reputation in the study of
Latin, and living a congenial, comfortable life. This was followed by
a year in a private school at Winkfield, which was terminated by an
invitation to travel in Ireland with young Lord Westport, a lad of De
Quincey's own age, an intimacy having sprung up between them a year
earlier at Bath. It was in 1800 that the trip was made, and the
period of the visit extended over four or five months. After this
long recess De Quincey was placed in the grammar school at Manchester,
his guardians expecting that a three years' course in this school
would bring him a scholarship at Oxford. However, the new environment
proved wholly uncongenial, and the sensitive boy who, in spite of his
shyness and his slender frame, possessed grit in abundance, and who
was through life more or less a law to himself, made up his mind to
run away. His flight 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,