In his bathing excursions he had greatly injured his health, and reduced
his strength; in one of these bathing exploits he swam across the New
River in his clothes, and dried them in the fields on his back: from
these excursions commenced those bodily sufferings which embittered the
rest of his life, and rendered it truly one of sickness and suffering.
When a boy he had a remarkably delicate, white skin, which was once the
cause of great punishment to him.

His dame had undertaken to cure him of the itch, with which the boys of
his ward had suffered much; but Coleridge was doomed to suffer more than
his comrades, from the use of sulphur ointment, through the great
sagacity of his dame, who with her extraordinary eyes, aided by the
power of glasses, could see the malady in the skin deep and out of
common vision; and consequently, as often as she employed this
miraculous sight, she found or thought she found fresh reasons for
continuing the friction, to the prolonged suffering and mortification of
her patient. This occurred when he was about eight years of age, and
gave rise to his first attempt at making a verse, as follows:

"O Lord, have mercy on me!
For I am very sad!
For why, good Lord? I've got the itch,
And eke I've got the 'tad',"

the school name for ringworm. He was to be found during play-hours often
with the knees of his breeches unbuttoned, and his shoes down at the
heel, [7] walking to and fro, or sitting on a step, or in a corner,
deeply engaged in some book. This had attracted the notice of Middleton,
at that time a deputy grecian, and going up to him one day, asked what