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18 CAMBRIDGE [1791says
never used to have any disagreeable effects on him.
George also is ill, and Coleridge employs his spare moments
in writing sermons for him, which he sends through Le
Grice at Christ's Hospital. 1 In January, however, George
has been perturbed by hearing of relations with William
Frend, a Fellow of Jesus, who was a Unitarian. Frend's
company is by no means invidious, says Coleridge. He is
intimate with Dr. Pearce himself. Moreover, 'though I am
not an Alderman, I have yet prudence enough to respect that
gluttony of faith waggishly yclept orthodoxy'. There is some
camouflage about this. We know from a later statement of
Coleridge that he still considered himself an infidel, when
he began a deep study of the subject, which left him a religious
man, but a necessitarian. And one can hardly doubt
that the development he describes was largely due to the
influence of Frend. 2
Christmas was spent in London with the Evans family,
and through the tenderness of Mrs. Evans Coleridge's
health improved. There are now several letters to her, to
Mary, and to Anne. There is no evidence as yet of any deep
affection for Mary. They are the half-chaffing letters of a
"brother Coly'. He sends compliments to the girls, encloses
poems he has written, tells stories of Cambridge happenings.
He keeps a cat and has acquired a swanskin waistcoat. 3 In
April he tells George that he means to write for all the
prizes, and he was in fact successful in winning the medal
for a Greek Sapphic Ode on the Slave-Trade, which he read
at the Encaenia on 3 July 1792. It was not of great merit;
Richard Porson offered to show a hundred and thirty-four
examples of bad Greek in it. 4 That he then paid another
visit to London, and probably spoke of love to Mary, is
suggested by an invocation, a year later, to Fancy : 5
O bid the Maid arise,
Chaste Joyance dancing in her bright-blue eyes;
As erst when from the Muses' calm abode
I came, with Learning's meed not unbestowed;
1 2
C. 8, 9, 15; G. 1, 2. C. 9; G. 28; A, p. 32. 3 c. 10-14.
4
Campbell, Poems, 476; C. 15; Blackwood's Magazine (Oct. 1817), 12.
5
P. IF. 51.