THE POET COLERIDGE RECALLS HIS CHILDHOOD

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) described himself as a precocious and imaginative child. Reading his recollection of himself as a child, one sees the emerging poet who was to become one of the most important and influential figures in the English Romantic movement.¹

My father's sister kept an every-thing shop at Crediton—and there I read through all the gilt-cover little books that could be had at that time, and likewise all the uncovered tales of Tom Hickathrift, Jack the Giant-killer, etc. and etc. etc. etc.—and I used to lie by the wall, and mope—and my spirits used to come upon me suddenly, and in a flood—and then I was accumstomed to run up and down the church-yard, and act over all I had been reading on the docks, the nettles, and the rank-grass. At six years old I remember to have read Belisarius, Robinson Crusoe, and Philip Quarll—and then I found the Arabian Nights' entertainments—one tale of which (the tale of a man who was compelled to seek for a pure virgin) made so deep an impression on me (I had read it in the evening while my mother was mending stockings) that I was haunted by spectres whenever I was in the dark—and I distinctly remember the anxious and fearful eagerness with which I used to watch the window in which the books lay—and whenever the sun lay upon them, I would seize it, carry it by the wall, and bask, and read.

My father found out the effect which these books had produced—and burnt them.