There are signs that from the time he arrived in Cambridge – and probably well before – Coleridge was thinking intensely about politics. Le Grice's account of his mingling of scholarly interest with what was happening in the world is relevant here:

Le Grice's additional reference to the trial of Frend, which took place in May 1793, gives a clear indication of the period in question. By the following year, Coleridge had already run away from Cambridge, served a few months as a dragoon, been discharged and reprimanded by his college, and returned to Cambridge – only to abandon his undergraduate career once more and embark on the enterprise of Pantisocracy. All these events may be seen as responses to the extreme drama that was unfolding across the Channel. where guillotining and counter-guillotining responded to one another in quick succession.

The main impact on Coleridge at this time came from events and activities; yet because he saw himself from the beginning as a literary practitioner, it could not be long before he was responding to the effects on language itself of what was happening across the Channel. In England the movement of change was subtle.