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Nor has the rolling year twice measured,
From sign to sign, its steadfast course,
Since every mortal power of Coleridge
Was frozen at its marvellous source;

The rapt One of the godlike forehead,
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth;

And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,
Has vanished from his lonely hearth.

S. C.

CHAPTER II.

[1791 to 1795.]

"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!""S. T. COLERIDGE entered at Jesus College, Cambridge, the 5th of February, 1791. He gained Sir William Brown's gold medal for the Greek Ode in the summer of that year. It was on the Slave Trade. The poetic force and originality of this Ode were, as he said himself, much beyond the language in which they were conveyed. In the winter of 1792-3 he stood for the University (Craven) Scholarship with Dr. Keate, the late head-master of Eton, Mr. Bethel (of Yorkshire), and Bishop Butler, who was the successful candidate. In 1793 he wrote, without success, for the Greek Ode on Astronomy, the prize for which was gained by Dr. Keate. The original is not known to exist, but the reader may see what is, probably, a very free version of it by Mr. Southey in his Minor Poems. (Poetical Works, vol. ii., p. 170.) "Coleridge," says a schoolfellow of his who followed him to Cambridge in 1792, was very studious, but his reading was desultory and capricious. He took little exercise merely for the sake of exercise: but he was ready at any time to unbend his mind in conversation; and, for the sake of this, his room (the ground-floor room on the right hand of the staircase facing the great gate) was a constant rendezvous of conversation-loving friends. I will not call them loungers, for they did not call to kill time, but to enjoy it. What evenings have I spent in those rooms! What little suppers, or sizings, as they were called, have I enjoyed, when Æschylus, and Plato, and Thucydides were pushed aside, with a pile of lexicons and the like, to discuss the pamphlets of the day. Ever and anon a pamphlet issued from the pen of Burke. There was no need of having the book before us :-Coleridge had read it in the morning, and in the evening he would repeat whole pages verbatim.”College Reminiscences, Gentleman's Mag., Dec., 1834.

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In May and June, 1793, Frend's trial took place in the Vice-Chancel

lor's Court, and in the Court of Delegates, at Cambridge. Frend was a Fellow of Jesus, and a slight acquaintance had existed between him and Coleridge, who, however, soon became his partisan. Mr. C. used to relate a remarkable incident, which is thus preserved by Mr. Gillman :— "The trial was observed by Coleridge to be going against Frend, when some observation or speech was made in his favor;-a dying hope thrown out, as it appeared, to Coleridge, who, in the midst of the Senate House, whilst sitting on one of the benches, extended his hands and clapped them. The Proctor, in a loud voice, demanded who had comImitted this indecorum. Silence ensued. The Proctor, in an elevated tone, said to a young man sitting near Coleridge, ""Twas you, Sir!" The reply was as prompt as the accusation; for, immediately holding out the stump of his right arm, it appeared that he had lost his hand ;— "I would, Sir," said he, "that I had the power!" That no innocent person should incur blame, Coleridge went directly afterwards to the Proctor, who told him that he saw him clap his hands, but fixed on this person, who he knew had not the power. You have had," said he, "a narrow escape !"-(Life of S. T. C., i., p. 55.)

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Coleridge passed the summer of 1793 at Ottery, and whilst there wrote his Songs of the Pixies (Poetical Works, i., p. 13), and some other little pieces. He returned to Cambridge in October, but, in the following month, in a moment of despondency and vexation of spirit, occasioned principally by some debts not amounting to 1007., he suddenly left his college and went to London. In a few days he was reduced to want, and, observing a recruiting advertisement, he resolved to get bread, and overcome a prejudice at the same time, by becoming a soldier. He accordingly applied to the serjeant, and, after some delay, was marched down to Reading, where he regularly enlisted as a private in the 15th Light Dragoons, on the 3d of December, 1793. He kept his initials under the names of Silas Titus Comberbacke. "I sometimes," he writes in a letter, "compare my own life with that of Steele (yet O! how unlike!)-led to this from having myself also for a brief time borne arms, and written 'private' after my name, or rather another name; for, being at a loss when suddenly asked my name, I answered Cumberback, and verily my habits were so little equestrian, that my horse, I doubt not, was of that opinion." Coleridge continued four months a light dragoon, during which time he saw and suffered much. He rode his horse ill, and groomed him worse; but he made amends by nursing the sick, and writing letters for the sound. His education was detected by one of his officers, Captain Nathaniel Ogle, who observed the words, " Eheu! quam infortunii miserrimum est fuisse felicem !—freshly written in pencil on the stable-wall or door, and ascertained that Comberbacke was the writer.

But the termination of his military career was brought about by a chance recognition in the street; his family was apprised of his situation, and, after some difficulty, he was duly discharged on the 10th of April, 1794, at Hounslow.

Coleridge now returned to Cambridge, and remained there till the commencement of the summer vacation. But the adventures of the preceding six months had broken the continuity of his academic life, and given birth to new views of future exertion. His acquaintance with Frend had materially contributed to his adoption of the system called Unitarianism, which he now openly professed, and this alone made it imperative on his conscience to decline availing himself of any advantages dependent on his entering into holy orders, or subscribing the Articles of the English Church. He lived, nevertheless, to see and renounce his error, and to leave on record his deep and solemn faith in the catholic doctrine of Trinal Unity, and the redemption of man through the sacrifice of Christ, both God and Man. Indeed, his Unitarianism, such as it was, was not of the ordinary quality. "I can truly say"were Coleridge's words in after life—" that I never falsified the Scripture. I always told the Unitarians that their interpretations of the Scripture were intolerable upon any principles of sound criticism; and that, if they were to offer to construe the will of a neighbor as they did that of their Maker, they would be scouted out of society. I said then, plainly and openly, that it was clear enough that John and Paul were not Unitarians. But, at that time, I had a strong sense of the repugnancy of the doctrine of vicarious atonement to the moral being, and I thought nothing could counterbalance that. 'What care I,' I said, 'for the Platonisms of John, or the Rabbinisms of Paul?—My conscience revolts !' That was the ground of my Unitarianism." (Table Talk, p. 305, 2d edition.)

At the commencement of the Long Vacation, in June, 1794, Coleridge went to Oxford on a visit to an old school-fellow, intending, probably, to proceed afterwards to his mother at Ottery. But an accidental introduction to Robert Southey, then an under-graduate at Balliol College, first delayed, and ultimately prevented, the completion of this design, and became, in its consequences, the hinge on which a large part of Coleridge's after-life was destined to turn. Upon the present occasion, however, he left Oxford with an acquaintance, Mr. Hucks, for a pedestrian tour in Wales.* Two other friends, Brookes and Berdmore, joined

*It is to this tour that he refers in the Table Talk, p. 83.-" I took the thought of grinning for joy in that poem (The Ancient Mariner) from my companion's (Berdmore) remark to me, when we had climbed to the top of Penmaenmaur, and were nearly dead with thirst. We could not speak

them in the course of their ramble; and, at Caernarvon, Mr. Coleridge wrote the following letter to Mr. Masters, of Jesus College.

"DEAR MASTERS,

July 22d, 1794.

"From Oxford to Gloucester,* to Ross,* to Hereford, to Leominster, to Bishop's Castle,* to Montgomery, to Welshpool, Llanvelling,* Llan gunnog, Bala,* Druid House,* Llangollin, Wrexham,** Ruthin, Den. bigh,* St. Asaph, Holywell,* Rudland, Abergeley,* Aberconway, Abber,* over a ferry to Beaumaris* (Anglesea), Amlock,* Copper Mines, Gwindu, Moeldon, over a ferry to Caernarvon, have I journeyed, now philosophizing with hacks, now melancholizing by myself, or else indulging those day-dreams of fancy, that make realities more gloomy. To whatever place I have affixed the mark *, there we slept. The first part of our tour was intensely hot-the roads, white and dazzling, seemed to undulate with heat-and the country, bare and unhedged, presented nothing but stone fences, dreary to the eye and scorching to the touch. At Ross we took up our quarters at the King's Arms, once the house of Mr. Kyle, the celebrated Man of Ross. I gave the window-shutter a few verses, which I shall add to the end of the letter. The walk from Llangunnog to Bala, over the mountains, was most wild and romantic; there are immense and rugged clefts in the mountains, which, in winter, must form cataracts most tremendous; now there is just enough sun-glittering water dashed down over them to soothe, not disturb, the ear. I climbed up a precipice on which was a large thorn-tree, and slept by the side of one of them near two hours.

At Bala I was apprehensive that I had caught the itch from a Welsh democrat, who was charmed with my sentiments; he bruised my hand with a grasp of ardor, and I trembled lest some discontented citizens of the animalcular republic might have emigrated. Shortly after, in came a clergyman well dressed, and with him four other gentlemen. I was asked for a public character; I gave Dr. Priestley. The clergyman whispered his neighbor, who it seems is the apothecary of the parish— "Republicans!" Accordingly when the doctor, as they call apothecaries, was to have given a name, "I gives a sentiment, gemmen! May all republicans be gulloteened!" Up starts the democrat; "May all fools be gulloteened, and then you will be the first!" Fool, rogue, traitor, liar, &c., flew in each other's faces in hailstorms of vociferation. This is nothing in Wales-they make it necessary vent-holes for the sulphureous fumes of their temper! I endeavored to calm the tempest

from the constriction, till we found a little puddle under a stone. He said to me, You grinned like an idiot.' He had done the same."

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