"whose son," says he, "I, as upper boy, had protected, and who
therefore looked up to me, and taught me what it was to have a mother.
I loved her as such. She had three daughters, and of course I fell in
love with the eldest. From this time to my nineteenth year, when I
quitted school for Jesus, Cambridge, was the era of poetry and love."

It has been observed, that about this sixteenth year, he first developed
genius, and that during this early period of his life, his mind was
incessantly toiling in the pursuit of knowledge. His love of reading
seemed to have increased in proportion to his acquirements, which were
equally great: his representing himself as an infidel was better perhaps
understood by his master, who believed it to be only puerile vanity; and
therefore Coleridge considered the flogging he received on this
occasion, a just and appropriate punishment; and it was so, for as a boy
he had not thought deep enough on an equally important point, viz., what
is Fidelity, and how easily, he particularly might mistake the
genuineness of sincere 'fidelity' for mere outward forms, and the simple
observance of customs. Perhaps I might have been disposed to pass over
this era with a slighter notice, which he in his simplicity of character
thought it right to record. He was always honest in every thing
concerning himself, and never spared self-accusation, often, when not
understood, to his own injury. He never from his boyhood to his latest
life, received kindness without grateful feelings, and, when he believed
it coupled with love, without the deepest sense of its value; and if the
person possessed sensibility and taste, he repaid it tenfold. This was
the experience of nearly twenty years intimate knowledge of his
character.

His description of his first love was that of a young poet, recording
the first era of the passion, the fleeting dream of his youth--but not