Read it through once

The statement has reference to the interest which Samuel Taylor Coleridge evinced in one of her earliest literary efforts, _Christina; or, The Maid of the South Seas_, when it was being prepared for press at about the year 1811. This interest she ascribes to “Mr. Coleridge’s kind recognition of my father’s exertions” in his behalf and relates to that romantic period of the poet’s life when, in the December of 1793, he suddenly enlisted as a common soldier in the 15th Light Dragoons under the _nom de guerre_ of “Silas Tomkyn Cumberbatch.” We have it on good authority that on December 4, 1793, he was sent, with other raw recruits, to be drilled with his regiment, then garrisoned at Reading, from which date until his discharge on April 10, 1794, he clearly proved his unfitness for the calling of a man-at-arms.