or other of restless disquietude, Coleridge suddenly quitted Cambridge
and came up, very slenderly provided with money, to London, where,
after a few days' sojourn, he was compelled by pressure of actual need
to enlist, under the name of Silas Titus Comberback (S. T. C.), [5] as a
private in the 15th Light Dragoons. It may seem strange to say so, but
it strikes one as quite conceivable that the world might have been a
gainer if fate had kept Coleridge a little longer in the ranks than the
four months of his actual service. As it was, however, his military
experiences, unlike those of Gibbon, were of no subsequent advantage to
him. He was, as he tells us, an execrable rider, a negligent groom of
his horse, and, generally, a slack and slovenly trooper; but before
drill and discipline had had time to make a smart soldier of him, he
chanced to attract the attention of his captain by having written a
Latin quotation on the white wall of the stables at Reading. This
officer, who it seems was either able to translate the ejaculation,
"Eheu! quam infortunii miserrimum est fuisse felicem," [7] or, at any
rate, to recognise the language it was written in, interested himself
forthwith on behalf of his scholarly recruit. [6] Coleridge's discharge
was obtained at Hounslow on April 10, 1794, and he returned to
Cambridge.

The year was destined to be eventful for him in more ways than one. In
June he went to Oxford to pay a visit to an old schoolfellow, where an
accidental introduction to Robert Southey, then an undergraduate of
Balliol, laid the foundation of a friendship destined largely to
influence their future lives. In the course of the following August he
came to Bristol, where he was met by Southey, and by him introduced to
Robert Lovell, through whom and Southey he made the acquaintance of two
persons of considerable, if not exactly equal, importance to any young
author--his first publisher and his future wife. Robert Lovell already