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he entered this regiment as a cornet. Some years afterwards, I believe he was then captain of Coleridges' troop, going into the stables, at Reading, he remarked, written on the white wall, under one of the saddles, in large pencil characters, the following sentence, in Latin

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"Eheu! quam infortunii miserimum est fuisse felicem !' "Being struck with the circumstance, and himself a scholar, Captain Ogle inquired of a soldier whether he knew to whom the saddle belonged. Please your honour, to Comberback,' answered the dragoon,-' Comberback!' said the captain, 'send him to me.' Comberback presented himself, with the inside of his hand in front of his His officer mildly said, Comberback, did you cap. write the Latin sentence which I have just read under your saddle?''Please your honour,' answered the soldier, 'I wrote it.'' Then, my lad, you are not what you appear to be. I shall speak to the commanding officer, and you may depend on my speaking as a friend.' The commanding officer, I think, was General Churchill. Comberback* was examined, and it was found out, that having left Jesus College, Cambridge, and being in London without resources, he had enlisted in this regiment. He was soon discharged-not from his democratical feelings, for whatever those feelings might be, as a soldier he was remarkably orderly and obedient, though he could not rub down his own horse. He was discharged from respect to his friends and his station. His friends having been informed of his situation, a chaise was soon at the door of the Bear Inn, Reading, and the officers of the

When he enlisted he was asked his name. He hesitated, but saw the name of Comberback over a shop door near Westminsterbridge, and instantly said his name was "Comberback."-Note by Bowles.

15th cordially shaking his hands, particularly the officer who had been the means of his discharge, he drove off, not without a tear in his eye, whilst his old companions of the tap-room* gave him three hearty cheers as the wheels rapidly rolled away along the Bath road to London and Cambridge.

"Having seen the extract mentioned, I communicate this more correct account, which you may publish with or without a name; and I am, &c.

66 WILLIAM L. BOWLES." In 1794, Coleridge published a small volume of poems; they were praised by the critics of the day.

At this time the recent French Revolution had intoxicated most of the enthusiastic minds of Europe. Coleridge did not escape the infection. He had, in 1792, become acquainted with Southey, who, with a third poet and Utopian, Mr. R. Lovell, were equally full of enthusiasm in the cause of ideal freedom, and the regeneration of mankind. They proposed founding a society in the wilds of America,` under the name of “ Pantisocracy," where all the evils of European society were to be remedied, property was to be in common, and every man a legislator. To forward these views, Coleridge, in the winter of 1794-5, delivered, at Bristol, a course of lectures on the French Revolution; they were well received and much applauded. About the same time Southey and he wrote a drama, entitled, The Fall of Robespierre; they began it one evening at 7 o'clock, finished by 12 o'clock noon the following day, and got it printed and published on the next day. In 1795, Coleridge published two pam

It should be mentioned, that by far the most correct, sublime, chaste, and beautiful of his poems, meo judicio," Religious Musings," was written, non inter sylvas academi, but in the tap-room at Reading. A fine subject for a painting by Wilkie.-Note by Bowles.

phlets; one, Conciones ad Populum, or Addresses to the People; and, A Protest against certain Bills (then pending) for Suppressing Seditious Meetings. To further their scheme of emigration, the three poets married three sisters of the name of Fricker: however, the project was abandoned; Southey quietly settled himself as law-student in Gray's Inn; and Coleridge and his wife went to reside at Nether Stowey; where he first became acquainted with Wordsworth.

When Coleridge married Miss Sarah Fricker, he was without a profession, or means adequate to support a wife and family. To procure this, and diffuse the political principles then held by him and his friends, he was persuaded, while residing at Nether Stowey, in 1796, to start a magazine. Of this ill-judged and ruinous speculation, he has given an amusing account in his Literary Life. "Toward the close of the first year from the time, that, in an inauspicious hour, I left the friendly cloisters, and the happy grove of quiet, ever honoured Jesus College, Cambridge, I was persuaded by sundry philanthropists and anti-polemists to set on foot a periodical work, entitled The Watchman, that (according to the general motto of the work) all might know the truth, and that the truth might make us free! In order to exempt it from the stamp-tax, and likewise to contribute as little as possible to the supposed guilt of a war against freedom, it was to be published on every eighth day, thirty-two pages, large octavo, closely printed, and price only FOURPENCE. Accordingly, with a flaming prospectus, 'Knowledge is Power,' &c. to try the state of the political atmosphere, and so forth, I set off on a tour to the north, from Bristol to Sheffield, for the purpose of procuring customers; preaching by the way in most of the great towns, as a hireless volunteer, in a blue coat and white

waistcoat, that not a rag of the woman of Babylon might be seen on me. For I was at that time, and long after, though a Trinitarian (i. e. ad norman Platonis) in philosophy, yet a zealous Unitarian in religion; more accurately, I was a Psilanthropist, one of those who believe our Lord to have been the real son of Joseph, and who lay the main stress on the resurrection rather than on the crucifixion. O! never can I remember those days with either shame or regret. For I was most sincere, most disinterested! My opinions were indeed, in many, and most important points, erroneous; but my heart was single. Wealth, rank, life itself then seemed cheap to me, compared with the interests of (what I believed to be) the truth, and the will of my Maker. I cannot even accuse myself of having been actuated by vanity; for in the expansion of my enthusiasm I did not think of myself at all.

"My campaign commenced at Birmingham; and my first attack was on a rigid Calvinist, a tallow-chandler by trade. He was a tall, dingy man, in whom length was so predominant over breadth, that he might almost have been borrowed for a foundry poker. O, that face! a face κατ' εμρασιν ! I have it before me at this moment. The lank, black, twine-like hair, pingui-nitescent, cut in a strait line above the black stubble of his thin gunpowder eye-brows, that looked like a scorched after-math from a last week's shaving. His coat collar behind in perfect unison, both of colour and lustre, with the coarse, yet glib cordage, that I suppose he called his hair, and which with a bend inward at the nape of the neck, (the only approach to flexure in his whole figure) slunk in behind his waistcoat; while the countenance lank, dark, very hard, and with strong perpendicular furrows, gave me a dim notion of some one looking at me through a used

gridiron, all soot, grease, and iron! But he was one of the thorough-bred, a true lover of liberty, and (I was informed) had proved to the satisfaction of many, that Mr. Pitt was one of the horns of the second beast in the Revelations, that spoke like a dragon. A person, to whom one of my letters of recommendation had been addressed, was my introducer. It was a new event in my life, my first stroke in the new business I had undertaken of an author, yea, and of an author trading on his own account. My companion, after some imperfect sentences and a multitude of hums and haas, abandoned the cause to his client; and I commenced an harangue of half an hour to Phileleutheros, the tallow-chandler, varying my notes through the whole gamut of eloquence from the ratiocinative to the declamatory, and in the latter, from the pathetic to the indignant. I argued, I described, I promised, I prophesied; and beginning with the captivity of nations, I ended with the near approach of the millenium ; finishing the whole with some of my own verses, describing that glorious state out of the The Religious Musings:

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-Such delights,

As float to earth, permitted visitants!
When in some hour of solemn jubilee

The massive gates of Paradise are thrown

Wide open and forth come, in fragments wild,
Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies,

And odors snatch'd from beds of Amaranth,
And they that from the chrystal river of life

Spring up on freshen'd wings, ambrosial gales!

'My taper man of lights listened with perseverant and praise-worthy patience, though (as I was afterwards told, on complaining of certain gales that were not altogether ambrosial) it was a melting day with him. And what, Sir, (he said after a short pause) might the cost be?' Only four-pence (O! how I felt the anti-climax, and

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