COLERIDGE'S LECTURES
for the first time in this volume), and he had every cause for his self-gratulation: "I flatter myself therefore that my pains will not have been lost and that through the interchange of statements which but for me would probably never have been made, a reconciliation will have taken place most desirable and salutary." A week later, on May 19th, he wrote that: "W. has seen C. several times and been much in his company, but they have not yet touched upon the subject of their correspondence. Thus, as I hoped, the wound is healed, but, as I observed to Mrs. C[larkson] probably the scar remains in Coleridge's bosom." Henry Crabb Robinson was a shrewd observer and student of human nature, and there is little doubt that the famous lines in Christabel may be applied to this episode, though it is more likely they originally referred to the quarrel with Southey after the break-up of the Pantisocracy scheme:
Alas, they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain
•••••
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder.
But we are anticipating the date of Coleridge's second course of lectures, which were delivered in November 1811, some months after he had left Montagu's house and established himself in that of Mr. John Morgan at 7 Portland Place, Hammersmith, where Crabb Robinson appears to have been a comparatively frequent visitor. Thanks largely to Mr. Morgan, Coleridge this time fulfilled his engagement, and the fifteen lectures were duly delivered. Already on November 6 Coleridge had sent Robinson a prospectus, together with the following letter:
