I believe this officer to have been Capt. Ogle, [12] who I think visited
him in after life at Highgate. It seems that his attention had been
drawn to Coleridge in consequence of discovering the following sentence
in the stables, written in pencil, "Eheu! quam infortunii miserrimum est
fuisse felicem!" but his more immediate discovery arose from a young man
who had left Cambridge for the army, and in his road through Reading to
join his regiment, met Coleridge in the street in his Dragoon's dress,
who was about to pass him, but, said he,

"No, Coleridge, this will not do, we have been seeking you these six
months; I must and will converse with you, and have no hesitation in
declaring that I shall immediately inform your friends that I have
found you."

This led to Coleridge's return to Cambridge. The same story is also
related and made the ground work of some scene in a novel, without the
names, by his early friend, Charles Lloyd--he who was included by
Canning in the Anti-jacobin with Coleridge, Mr. Southey, and Lamb. He
returned to Cambridge, but did not long remain there; and quitted it
without taking a degree.

It has been observed, that men of genius move in orbits of their own;
and seem deprived of that free will which permits the mere man of talent
steadily to pursue the beaten path. Coleridge had very early pictured to
himself many of the advantages of mechanical employment, its immunities
and exemptions from the sufferings consequent on the laborious exercise
of 'thought'; but yet he never shrank from the task apparently allotted
to him; he was made to soar and not to creep; even as a young man, his
acquirements were far beyond the age in which he lived. With his amiable