lamented friend compiled. He commences one of the notes above alluded
to, with his early childhood.

"I was," says he, "the last child, the youngest child of ten by the
same mother, that is to say, John, William (who died in infancy),
James, William, Edward, George, Luke, Ann, Francis, and myself, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, beneficially abridged Esteese [Greek: estaesae],
i.e. S. T. C., and the thirteenth, taking in three sisters by my dear
father's first wife,--Mary, afterwards Mrs. Bradley,--Sarah, who
married a seaman and is lately dead, and Elizabeth, afterwards Mrs.
Phillips--who alone was bred up with us after my birth, and whom alone
of the three I was wont to think of as a sister, though not exactly,
yet I did not know why, the same sort of sister, as my sister Nancy.

Being the youngest child, I possibly inherited the weakly state of
health of my father, who died at the age of 62, before I had reached
my seventh year; and from certain jealousies of old Molly, my brother
Frank's dotingly fond nurse, (and if ever child by beauty and
loveliness deserved to be doted on, my brother Francis was that
child,) and by the infusions of her jealousy into my brother's mind, I
was in earliest childhood huffed away from the enjoyments of muscular
activity from play, to take refuge at my mother's side, on my little
stool, to read my little book, and to listen to the talk of my elders.
I was driven from life in motion, to life in thought and sensation. I
never played except by myself, and then only acting over what I had
been reading or fancying, or half one, half the other, with a stick
cutting down weeds and nettles, as one of the seven champions of
Christendom. [5] Alas! I had all the simplicity, all the docility of
the little child, but none of the child's habits. I never thought as a
child, never had the language of a child. I forget whether it was in