[131] _Poetical Works_, p. 176; Appendix H, pp. 525, 526.
[133] In 1815 an act was brought in by Mr. Robinson (afterwards Lord Ripon) and passed, permitting the importation of corn when the price of home-grown wheat reached 80s. a quarter. During the spring of the year, January-March, while the bill was being discussed, bread-riots took place in London and Westminster.
[134] It would seem that Coleridge had either overlooked or declined to put faith in Wordsworth's Apology for _The Excursion_, which appeared in the Preface to the First Edition of 1814. He was, of course, familiar with the "poem on the growth of your mind," the hitherto unnamed and unpublished _Prelude_, and he must have been at least equally familiar with the earlier books of _The Excursion_. Why then was he disappointed with the poem as a whole, and what had he looked for at Wordsworth's hands? Not, it would seem, for an "ante-chapel," but for the sanctuary itself. He had been stirred to the depths by the recitation of _The Prelude_ at Coleorton, and in his lines "To a Gentleman," which he quotes in this letter, he recapitulates the arguments of the poem. _This_ he considered was _The Excursion_, "_an Orphic song indeed_"! and as he listened the melody sank into his soul. But that was but an exordium, a "prelusive strain" to _The Recluse_, which might indeed include the Grasmere fragment, the story of Margaret and so forth, but which in the form of poetry would convey the substance of divine philosophy. He had looked for a second Milton who would put Lucretius to a double shame, for a "philosophic poem," which would justify anew "the ways of God to men;" and in lieu of this pageant of the imagination there was Wordsworth prolific of moral discourse, of scenic and personal narrative--a prophet indeed, but "unmindful of the heavenly Vision."
[135] The Rev. William Money, a descendant of John Kyrle, the "Man of Ross," eulogised alike by Pope and Coleridge, was at this time in possession of the family seat of Whetham, a few miles distant from Calne, in Wiltshire. Coleridge was often a guest at his house.
[136] A controversial work on the inspiration of Scripture. A thin thread of narrative runs through the dissertation. It was the work of the Rev. J. W. Cunningham, Vicar of Harrow, and was published in 1813.