how to apply to the head master, and not to heed his anger should he
become irate. Accordingly, Crispin applied at the hour proposed to see
Bowyer; who, having heard the proposal to take Coleridge as an
apprentice, and Coleridge's answer and assent to become a shoemaker,
broke forth with his favourite adjuration, "'Ods my life, man, what d'ye
mean?" At the sound of his angry voice, Crispin stood motionless, till
the angry pedagogue becoming infuriate, pushed the intruder out of the
room with such force, that Crispin might have sustained an action at law
against him for an assault. Thus, to Coleridge's mortification and
regret, as he afterwards in joke would say,

"I lost the opportunity of supplying safeguards to the understandings
of those, who perhaps will never thank me for what I am aiming to do
in exercising their reason.

"Against my will," says he, "I was chosen by my master as one of those
destined for the university; and about this time my brother Luke, or
'the Doctor,' so called from his infancy, because being the seventh
son, he had, from his infancy, been dedicated to the medical
profession, came to town to walk the London Hospital, under the care
of Sir William Blizard. Mr. Saumarez, brother of the Admiral Lord
Saumarez, was his intimate friend. Every Saturday I could make or
obtain leave, to the London Hospital trudged I. O the bliss if I was
permitted to hold the plasters, or to attend the dressings. Thirty
years afterwards, Mr. Saumarez retained the liveliest recollections of
the extraordinary, enthusiastic blue-coat boy, and was exceedingly
affected in identifying me with that boy. I became wild to be
apprenticed to a surgeon. English, Latin, yea, Greek books of medicine
read I incessantly. Blanchard's Latin Medical Dictionary I had nearly
by heart. Briefly, it was a wild dream, which gradually blending with,