THE GROVE, HIGHGATE 



under the assumed name of " Silas Comberbach." As might 

 have been expected, he made a very indifferent dragoon, but his 

 excellent conversational powers made him popular with his com- 

 rades ; he nursed the sick in the hospital, and told admirable 

 stories to the men ; but at the end of four months he betrayed him- 

 self by a Latin legend which he wrote on the wall, stating that 

 " he is doubly wretched who had never once been happy." This 

 attracting attention, he became orderly to an officer, and one day, 

 walking behind him in the street, a Cambridge student recognized 

 Coleridge, and the upshot was that his friends procured his dis- 

 charge from the army, and he was sent back to complete his term 

 at the University, but he left it without taking a degree. 



He formed a scheme, in common with Southey and some others, 

 to emigrate to America, and found a colony started on entirely new 

 principles on the banks of the Susquehanna. It failed because the 

 would-be emigrants had not the wherewithal to pay their passages. 

 Coleridge was bitterly disappointed. 



He was only twenty-three when he married the eldest Miss 

 Fricker, of Bristol, one of whose sisters shortly after became Mrs. 

 Southey. The poet and his young wife settled at Clevedon on the 

 Bristol Channel, in a pretty one-storied cottage, with whitewashed 

 parlour walls, and roses peeping in at the casement, that they rented 

 at five pounds per annum. They soon after removed to Nether 

 Stowey, and Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy came to Alfoxden, 

 distant a mile and a half, to be near them. 



Coleridge's appearance at this time is described by Dorothy 

 14 thin and pale, the lower part of the face not good, wide mouth, 

 thick lips, not very good teeth, longish, loose, half-curling, rough, 

 brown hair." 



There is nothing in the annals of literature more remarkable 

 than the beautiful and lifelong friendship of Coleridge and Words- 

 worth, founded on mutual attraction and instinctive sympathy, 

 and cemented by a profound appreciation of each other's gifts. 



It is doubtful whether Wordsworth's most human lyrics, not 

 to speak of his longer poems, would ever have been published, or 

 even written at all, but for the enthusiastic encouragement given 

 by his friend, at a moment of early and acute disappointment. 

 On the other hand, it was at Watchet, on the Bristol Channel, that 

 the idea of the " Rime of the Ancient Mariner " was developed ; 



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