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10 THE BLUE-COAT BOY [1772the
University excellent Latin and Greek scholars, and tolerable
Hebraists'. By him the poet's taste was early moulded
to the preference of the better classical writers, of Demosthenes
to Cicero, of Homer and Theocritus to Vergil, of
Vergil to Ovid, of Lucretius, Terence, and Catullus to the
poets even of the Augustan era. Nor did he neglect the
English writers. Shakespeare and Milton were to be studied
as seriously as the Greek tragedians.
I learnt from him, that Poetry, even that of the loftiest, and, seemingly,
that of the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as that
of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and
dependent on more, and more fugitive causes. In the truly great poets,
he would say, there is a reason assignable, not only for every word,
but for the position of every word.
He seems to have made much use of verse compositions as
an instrument of menfal training, and to have shown, in
commenting on them, a critical instinct somewhat in advance
of his age. The stock imagery and periphrases of the
Augustan poets were an abomination to him.
In fancy I can almost hear him now, exclaiming, 'Harp? Harp?
Lyre ? Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, Muse ? Your Nurse's
daughter, you mean! Pierian spring ? Oh aye! the cloister-pump, I
suppose!'
Certain recurrent similes, of the poisonous manchineel
fruit, for example, or of Alexander and Clytus, were placed
upon a special index expurgatorius. It is a rather refreshing
sidelight upon eighteenth-century pedagogy. 1 Coleridge
received some kindness from Boyer in a later time of
trouble, and when he died, expressed the hope that his soul
was now in heaven, 'borne by a host of cherubs, all face
and wing, and without anything to excite his whipping
propensities'. 2
We do not know how Coleridge spent his earlier school
holidays. Probably he had to remain at the Hospital. Apart
from the expense involved, he was too young to travel alone.
But the first letter of his which has been preserved, to his
mother on 4 February 1785, suggests that he had paid a visit
1 B.L. i. 4; G. 258, 398; P.W. 3; Studies, 69.
2 C. 23; Robinson. Diarv. ii. 36.