GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
plank that crossed it, and the sands of varied tint that lay in its 
bed.”’ In another place he recalls his daylight vision of the old 
church tower of St. Mary Ottery—‘‘ The bells of which haunted him 
even under the preceptor’s stern gaze, when his eyes were fixed in 
mock study on his swimming books.” This being so, we can well 
believe him when he says that he “‘ never thought as a child, never 
had the language of a child.” 
In his “‘ Table Talk,” Coleridge, in later years, describes the iron 
discipline at Christ’s Hospital in those days as being, indeed, “ ultra 
spartan’”’; all thoughts of home were to be banished. “ Boy,” he 
remembered the head master saying to him once when he was crying, 
the first day of his return after the holidays, “ Boy, the school 
is your father, Boy, the school is your mother! Boy, the school 
is your brother! the school is your sister, the school is your first 
cousin and your second cousin, and all the rest of your relations. 
Let’s have no more crying!” The head-master’s severity, also 
the excellence of his teaching, is recorded by Coleridge’s school- 
fellow and lifelong friend, Charles Lamb, his junior by some three 
years, and himself a sizar at Christ’s ; he recalls in the “ Essays of 
Klia’ how “the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the 
accents of the inspired charity boy,’’ who even then read Virgil 
for amusement. 
On monthly holidays the scholars were turned adrift for a day— 
those who had friends in London seeking them out, while those who 
had not, wandered about the streets till it was time to return. 
On one such occasion Coleridge, swimming in the New River in his 
clothes, caught jaundice and rheumatic fever, to the deleterious 
effects of which may be traced much of the trouble of later life. 
Another time he made the acquaintance of a shoe-maker and his 
wife, whose kindness to the friendless lad resulted in his announcing 
his determination to make shoe-making his trade, instead of 
entering the Church, for which, in common with most of the scholars 
of Christ’s Hospital, he was being prepared. Asked his reason, he 
boldly declared that he was an “ infidel,” whereupon the head 
master, sensible but severe, birched him. “So, sirrah, you are an 
infidel, are you? Then Ill flog your infidelity out of you!” 
Sent to Cambridge, Samuel left it without the knowledge of the 
authorities, and escaping to London, spent a night on a doorstep 
in Chancery Lane, and next day enlisted in a regiment of dragoons, 
288 
