the speech and the garb of the young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold in
thy deep and sweet intonations the mysteries of Iamblichus or Plotinus
(for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic
draughts), or reciting Homer in the Greek, or Pindar, while the walls
of the old Grey Friars re-echoed with the accents of the _inspired
charity-boy_."

It is interesting to note such a point as that of the "deep and sweet
intonations" of the youthful voice--its most notable and impressive
characteristic in after-life. Another schoolfellow describes the young
philosopher as "tall and striking in person, with long black hair," and
as commanding "much deference" among his schoolfellows. Such was
Coleridge between his fifteenth and seventeenth year, and such
continued to be the state of his mind and the direction of his studies
until he was won back again from what he calls "a preposterous pursuit,
injurious to his natural powers and to the progress of his education,"
by--it is difficult, even after the most painstaking study of its
explanations, to record the phenomenon without astonishment--a perusal
of the sonnets of William Lisle Bowles. Deferring, however, for the
present any research into the occult operation of this converting
agency, it will be enough to note Coleridge's own assurance of its
perfect efficacy. He was completely cured for the time of his
metaphysical malady, and "well were it for me perhaps," he exclaims,
"had I never relapsed into the same mental disease; if I had continued
to pluck the flowers and reap the harvest from the cultivated surface
instead of delving in the unwholesome quicksilver mines of metaphysic
depths." And he goes on to add, in a passage full of the peculiar
melancholy beauty of his prose, and full too of instruction for the
biographer, "But if, in after-time, I have sought a refuge from bodily
pain and mismanaged sensibility in abstruse researches, which exercised