'There is a Providence which shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.'

That which Middleton deemed a misfortune drew him from the cobwebs of
a college library to the active energies of a useful and honoured
life."

If, as Shakespeare observes, "there be a providence which shapes our
ends," such words as "fortunate" or "unfortunate," in their customary
use, will be found, on closer attention, and deeper thought, worthless
and full of error. We have each our part allotted to us in the great
drama of life.

But to return to Coleridge.

"When he quitted college, which he did before he had taken a degree,
in a moment of mad-cap caprice, and in an inauspicious hour!

'When,' as Coleridge says, 'I left the friendly cloisters, and the
happy grove of quiet, ever-honoured Jesus' College, Cambridge.'

Short, but deep and heartfelt reminiscence! In a Literary Life of
himself, this short memorial is all that Coleridge gives of his happy
days at college. Say not that he did not obtain, and did not wish to
obtain, classical honours! He did obtain them, and was eagerly
ambitious of them; [7] but he did not bend to that discipline which
was to qualify him for the whole course. He was very studious, but his
reading was desultory and capricious. He took little exercise merely
for the sake of exercise; but he was ready at any time to unbend his
mind in conversation; and, for the sake of this, his room (the