[Footnote 1: C. V. Le Grice.]
In May and June, 1793, Frend's trial took place in the Vice- Chancellor'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 partizan. 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 favour;—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 committed 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.
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 £100 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 sergeant, 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 Tomkyn 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 apprized of his situation, and after some difficulty he was duly discharged on the both 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 neighbour 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", Bohn Library edition, p. 290.
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.
The first letter to Southey was written from Gloucester on 6th July 1794, and it shows the degree of intimacy on which the two undergraduates stood at this time. They had met only about a month before, for Southey writes on 12th June to his friend Grosvenor Bedford: "Allen is with us daily and his friend from Cambridge, Coleridge, whose poems you will oblige me by subscribing to, either at Hookam's or Edward's. He is of most uncommon merit, of the strongest genius, the clearest judgment, the best heart. My friend he already is, and must hereafter be yours," ("Life and Correspondence of Southey", i, 210). The poems mentioned were a projected volume of "Imitations from Modern Latin Poets", of which an ode after Casimir is the only relic. Coleridge's first letter to Southey reads as follows:
LETTER 7. TO SOUTHEY
6 July 1794.
You are averse to gratitudinarian flourishes, else would I talk about hospitality, attention, &c. &c.; however, as I must not thank you, I will thank my stars. Verily, Southey, I like not Oxford, nor the inhabitants of it. I would say thou art a nightingale among owls; but thou art so songless and heavy towards night that I will rather liken thee to the matin lark, thy "nest" is in a blighted cornfield, where the sleepy poppy nods its red-cowled head, and the weak-eyed mole plies his dark work; but thy soaring is even unto heaven. Or let me add (for my appetite for similes is truly canine at this moment), that as the Italian nobles their new-fashioned doors, so thou dost make the adamantine gate of Democracy turn on its golden hinges to most sweet music. [1]
[Footnote 1: Letter XXXII gives the full text of No. 7. Letter XXXIII is dated 15 July, 1794.]