mountain of plumb-cake, and eating a room for myself, and then eating
it into the shapes of tables and chairs--hunger and fancy!"

In his lad-hood he says,

"My talents and superiority made me for ever at the head in my routine
of study, though utterly without the desire to be so; without a spark
of ambition; and, as to emulation, it had no meaning for me; but the
difference between me and my form-fellows, in our lessons and
exercises, bore no proportion to the measureless difference between me
and them in the wide, wild, wilderness of useless, unarranged
book-knowledge and book-thoughts. Thank Heaven! it was not the age nor
the fashion of getting up prodigies; but at twelve or fourteen I
should have made as pretty a juvenile prodigy as was ever emasculated
and ruined by fond and idle wonderment. Thank Heaven! I was flogged
instead of flattered. However, as I climbed up the school, my lot was
somewhat alleviated."

When Coleridge arrived at the age of fifteen, he was, from the little
comfort he experienced, very desirous of quitting the school, and, as he
truly said, he had not a spark of ambition. Near the school there
resided a worthy, and, in their rank of life, a respectable middle-aged
couple. The husband kept a little shop, and was a shoemaker, with whom
Coleridge had become intimate. The wife, also, had been kind and
attentive to him, and this was sufficient to captivate his affectionate
nature, which had existed from earliest childhood, and strongly endeared
him to all around him. Coleridge became exceedingly desirous of being
apprenticed to this man, to learn the art of shoemaking; and in due
time, when some of the boys were old enough to leave the school, and be
put to trade, Coleridge, being of the number, tutored his friend Crispin