ground-floor room on the right hand of the staircase facing the great
gate,) was a constant rendezvous of conversation-loving friends; I
will not call them loungers, for they did not call to kill time, but
to enjoy it. What evenings have I spent in those rooms! What little
suppers, or 'sizings', as they were called, have I enjoyed; when
AEschylus, and Plato, and Thucydides were pushed aside, with a pile of
lexicons, &c. to discuss the pamphlets of the day. Ever and anon, a
pamphlet issued from the pen of Burke. There was no need of having the
book before us. Coleridge had read it in the morning, and in the
evening he would repeat whole pages verbatim."

Then came another disturbing cause, which altered the course of his path
in life, and this was Frend's trial. [8]

"During it," to resume the quotation, "pamphlets swarmed from the
press. Coleridge had read them all; and in the evening, with our
negus, we had them 'viva voce' gloriously."

Coleridge has recorded that he was a Socinian till twenty-five. Be not
startled, courteous reader! nor ye who knew him only in his later life,
if the impetuous zeal and ardour of his mind in early youth led him
somewhat wide of those fixed principles which he adopted in riper years.

To quote his own words, written soon after he left college, and
addressed to the late Rev. George Coleridge,

"If aught of error or intemperate truth
Should meet thine ear, think thou that riper age
Will calm it down, and let thy love forgive it!"