'You have had,' said
he, 'a narrow escape.'"--"Life of S. T. C"., i, p. 55.
Coleridge passed the summer of 1793 at Ottery, and whilst there wrote
his "Songs of the Pixies" ("Poetical Works", i, p. 13), and some other
little pieces. He returned to Cambridge in October, but, in the
following month, in a moment of despondency and vexation of spirit,
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.
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