occasioned principally by some debts not amounting to L100 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