[35] Francis Syndercombe Coleridge, who died shortly after the fall of Seringapatam, February 6, 1792.
[36] Edward Coleridge, the Vicar of Ottery’s fourth son, was then assistant master in Dr. Skinner’s school at Salisbury. His marriage with an elderly widow who was supposed to have a large income was a source of perennial amusement to his family. Some years after her death he married his first cousin, Anne Bowdon.
[37] The husband of Coleridge’s half sister Elizabeth, the youngest of the vicar’s first family, “who alone was bred up with us after my birth, and who alone of the three I was wont to think of as a sister.” See Autobiographical Notes of 1832. Life of Coleridge, 1838, p. 9.
[38] The brother of Mrs. Luke and of Mrs. George Coleridge.
[39] A note to the Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Moxon, 1852, gives a somewhat different version of the origin of this poem, first printed in the edition of 1796 as Effusion 27, and of the lines included in Letter XX., there headed “Cupid turned Chymist,” but afterwards known as “Kisses.”
[40] G. L. Tuckett, to whom this letter was addressed, was the first to disclose to Coleridge’s family the unwelcome fact that he had enlisted in the army. He seems to have guessed that the runaway would take his old schoolfellows into his confidence, and that they might be induced to reveal the secret. He was, I presume, a college acquaintance,—possibly an old Blue, who had left the University and was reading for the bar. In an unpublished letter from Robert Allen to Coleridge, dated February, 1796, there is an amusing reference to this kindly Deus ex Machina. “I called upon Tuckett, who thus prophesied: ‘You know how subject Coleridge is to fits of idleness. Now, I’ll lay any wager, Allen, that after three or four numbers (of the Watchman) the sheets will contain nothing but parliamentary debates, and Coleridge will add a note at the bottom of the page: “I should think myself deficient in my duty to the Public if I did not give these interesting debates at full length.”’”
[41] It would seem that there were alleviations to the misery and discomfort of this direful experience. In a MS. note dated January, 1805, he recalls as a suitable incident for a projected work, The Soother in Absence, the “Domus quadrata hortensis, at Henley-on-Thames,” and “the beautiful girl” who, it would seem, soothed the captivity of the forlorn trooper.
[42] In the various and varying reminiscences of his soldier days, which fell “from Coleridge’s own mouth,” and were repeated by his delighted and credulous hearers, this officer plays an important part. Whatever foundation of fact there may be for the touching anecdote that the Latin sentence, “Eheu! quam infortunii miserrimum est fuisse felicem,” scribbled on the walls of the stable at Reading, caught the attention of Captain Ogle, “himself a scholar,” and led to Comberbacke’s detection, he was not, as the poet Bowles and Miss Mitford maintained, the sole instrument in procuring the discharge. He may have exerted himself privately, but his name does not occur in the formal correspondence which passed between Coleridge’s brothers and the military authorities.
[43] The Compasses, now The Chequers, High Wycombe, where Coleridge was billeted just a hundred years ago, appears to have preserved its original aspect.
[44] See Notes to Poetical Works of Coleridge (1893), p. 568. The “intended translation” was advertised in the Cambridge Intelligencer for June 14 and June 16, 1794: “Proposals for publishing by subscription Imitations from the Modern Latin Poets, with a Critical and Biographical Essay on the Restoration of Literature. By S. T. Coleridge, of Jesus College, Cambridge....