e, and to throw
thyself into the wilderness of London. Yet _that_ was the destiny of
Coleridge. At nine years old he was precipitated into the stormy arena
of Christ's Hospital. Amongst seven hundred boys he was to fight his way
to distinction; and with no other advantages of favour or tenderness
than would have belonged to the son of a footman. Sublime are these
democratic institutions rising upon the bosom of aristocratic England.
Great is the people amongst whom the foundations of kings _can_ assume
this popular character. But yet amidst the grandeur of a national
triumph is heard, at intervals, the moaning of individuals; and from
many a grave in London rises from time to time, in arches of sorrow
audible to God, the lamentation of many a child seeking to throw itself
round for comfort into some distant grave of the provinces, where rest
the ear and the heart of its mother.

Concerning this chapter of Coleridge's childhood, we have therefore at
present no vestige of any record beyond the exquisite sketches of his
schoolfellow, Charles Lamb. The five letters, however, though going over
so narrow a space, go far enough to throw a pathetic light upon
Coleridge's frailties of temperament. They indicate the sort of nervous
agitation arising from contradictory impulses, from love too tender, and
scorn too fretful, by which already in childish days the inner peace had
been broken up, and the nervous system shattered. This revelation,
though so unpretending and simple in manner, of the drama substantially
so fearful, that was constantly proceeding in a quiet and religious
parsonage--the bare possibility that sufferings so durable in their
effects should be sweeping with their eternal storms a heart so
capacious and so passively unresisting--are calculated to startle and to
oppress us with the sense of a fate long prepared, vested in the very
seeds of constitution and character; temperament and the effects of
early experience combining to thwart all the morning promise of
greatness and splendour; the flower unfolding its silken leaves only to
suffer canker and blight; and to hang withering on the stalk, with only
enough of grace and colour left to tell pathetically to all that looked
upon it what it might have been.

EDITOR'S NOTE TO THIS ESSAY.

Certainly this idea of De Quincey about the misfortune to Coleridge of
the early loss of his father, separation from his mother, and removal
from Devon to London, is fully born