For an account of the first four lectures, see H. C. Robinson's _Diary_, i. 385-388.
[92] I have followed Professor Knight in omitting a passage in which "he gives a lengthened list of circumstances which seemed to justify misunderstanding." The alleged facts throw no light on the relations between Coleridge and Wordsworth.
[93] The cryptogram which Coleridge invented for his own use was based on the arbitrary selection of letters of the Greek as equivalents to letters of the English alphabet. The vowels were represented by English letters, by the various points, and by algebraic symbols. An expert would probably decipher nine tenths of these memoranda at a glance, but here and there the words symbolised are themselves anagrams of Greek, Latin, and German words, and, in a few instances, the clue is hard to seek.
[94] The Right Honourable Spencer Perceval was shot by a man named Bellingham, in the lobby of the House of Commons, May 11, 1812.
[95] The occasion of this letter was the death of Wordsworth's son, Thomas, which took place December 1, 1812. It would seem, as Professor Knight intimates, that the letter was not altogether acceptable to the Wordsworths, and that "no immediate reply was sent to Coleridge." We have it, on the authority of Mr. Clarkson, that when Wordsworth and Dorothy did write, in the spring of the following year, inviting him to Grasmere, their letters remained unanswered, and that when the news came that Coleridge was about to leave London for the seaside, a fresh wound was inflicted, and fresh offence taken. As Mr. Dykes Campbell has pointed out, the consequences of this second rupture were fatal to Coleridge's peace of mind and to his well-being generally. The brief spell of success and prosperity which attended the representation of "Remorse" inspired him for a few weeks with unnatural courage, but as the "pale unwarming light of Hope" died away, he was left to face the world and himself as best or as worst he could. Of the months which intervened between March and September, 1813, there is no record, and we can only guess that he remained with his kind and patient hosts, the Morgans, sick in body and broken-hearted. _Life of W. Wordsworth_, ii. 182; _Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Narrative_, by J. Dykes Campbell, 1894, pp. 193-197.