Coleridge left school with great anticipation of success from all who
knew him, for his character for scholarship, and extraordinary accounts
of his genius had preceded him. He carried with him too the same
childlike simplicity which he had from a boy, and which he retained even
to his latest hours. His first step was to involve himself in much
misery, and which followed him in after life, as the sequel will
evidence. On his arrival at College he was accosted by a polite
upholsterer, requesting to be permitted to furnish his rooms. The next
question was, "How would you like to have them furnished?" The answer
was prompt and innocent enough, "Just as you please, Sir!"--thinking the
individual employed by the College. The rooms were therefore furnished
according to the taste of the artizan, and the bill presented to the
astonished Coleridge. Debt was to him at all times a thing he most
dreaded, and he never had the courage to face it. I once, and once only,
witnessed a painful scene of this kind, which occurred from mistaking a
letter on ordinary business for an application for money. [2] Thirty
years afterwards, I heard that these College debts were about one
hundred pounds! Under one hundred pounds I believe to have been the
amount of his sinnings; but report exceeded this to something which
might have taxed his character beyond imprudence, or mere want of
thought. Had he, in addition to his father's simplicity, possessed the
worldly circumspection of his mother, he might have avoided these and
many other vexations; but he went to the University wholly unprepared
for a College life, having hitherto chiefly existed in his own 'inward'
being, and in his poetical imagination, on which he had fed.

But to proceed. Coleridge's own account is, that while Middleton,
afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, remained at Pembroke, he "worked with him
and was industrious, read hard, and obtained the prize for the Greek
Ode," [3] &c. It has been stated, that he was locked up in his room to