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12 THE BLUE-COAT BOY [1772-
University was the natural avenue, was still regarded as his
destiny. His Anglo-Indian brother John, indeed, had hoped
that a General Goddard of his acquaintance would provide
for the boy, and when the General died in 1783, planned
to procure him an Indian cadetship. But John himself died
in 1787, and the Church still held the field. 1 CleaHy, however,
it was not consistent with Voltaireanism. Coleridge
decided that he would become, not a Grecian, but an artisan,
and arranged with a shoemaker to visit Boyer and apply for
him as an apprentice. ' 'Ods my life, man, what d'ye mean ?'
said Boyer, and thrust Crispin out of the room. Coleridge
pointed out that he was an infidel. And then, he tells us,
he had the one just flogging of his life-time. 2 Voltaireanism
soon gave way to Platonism, and even Neoplatonism, of
which he may have learnt through the recent translation by
Thomas Taylor. It is of this stage that Lamb writes:
Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the day-spring of thy
fancies, with hope like a fiery column before thee—the dark pillar not
yet turned—Samuel Taylor Coleridge—Logician, Metaphysician, Bard!
—How have I seen the casual passer through the Cloisters stand still,
intranced with admiration (while he weighed the disproportion between
the speech and the garb of the young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold,
in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or
Plotinus (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic
draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar—while
the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the inspired
charity-boy ! 3
In 1789, now already well in the Grecian fairway, Coleridge
paid a visit to Ottery, of which a memorial long remained
in a dated inscription of his name at the entrance of a cave,
known as the Pixies' Parlour, beside the bank of the Otter.
It has gone now, but the recollection of Lord Coleridge and
others is clear as to the date. A poem, which records his
wanderings beside the river and the illness of his sister Ann,
is a confirmation. 4 His attention had been diverted to poetry
by the gift from his friend and protector Middleton of the
recently published Sonnets of Thomas Lisle Bowles, which
1 D.H. 31, 39. 2 T.T. 83; Gillman, 23.
3 B.L. i. 94, 170; Lamb, Works, ii. 21.
4 D.H. 59 (with an old photo, which leaves the date obscure); P.W. 11.