e_, when, by some strange arrangement, we were turned
out for the livelong day, upon our own hands, whether we had friends
to go to or none. I remember those bathing excursions to the New River
which Lamb recalls with so much relish, better, I think, than he
can--for he was a home-seeking lad, and did not care much for such
water-parties. How we would sally forth into the fields, and strip
under the first warmth of the sun, and wanton like young dace in the
streams, getting appetites for the noon; which those of us that were
penniless (our scanty morning crust long since exhausted) had not the
means of allaying--while the cattle and the birds and the fishes were
at feed about us, and we had nothing to satisfy our cravings; the very
beauty of the day and the exercise of the pastime, and the sense of
liberty setting a keener edge upon them! How faint and languid,
finally, we would return toward nightfall to our desired morsel, half
rejoicing, half reluctant, that the hours of uneasy liberty had
expired!

"It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling about the streets
objectless, shivering at cold windows of printshops, to extract a
little amusement; or haply, as a last resort, in the hope of a little
novelty, to pay a fifty-times-repeated visit (where our individual
faces would be as well known to the warden as those of his own
charges) to the lions in the Tower, to whose _levee_, by courtesy
immemorial, we had a prescriptive right of admission."

This melancholy and harsh life was, however, ameliorated by some
curious personal incidents. Once, for example, the solitary boy,
moving along the crowded streets, fancied, in the strange vividness of
his waking dream, that he was Leander swimming across the Hellespont.
His hand "came in contact with a gentleman's pocket" as he pursued
this visionary amusement, and for two or three minutes Coleridge was
in danger of being taken into custody as a pickpocket. On finding out
how matters really stood, however, this stranger--genial, nameless
soul--immediately gave to the strange boy the advantage of a
subscription to a library close by, thus setting him up, as it were,
in life. On another occasion, one of the higher boys, a
"deputy-Grecian," found him seated in a corner reading Virgil. "Are
you studying your lesson?" he asked. "No, I am reading for pleasure,"
said the boy, who was not sufficiently advanced to read Virgil in
school. This introduced him to the favorable notice