“When this method fails, they have two others more effectual, which the learned among them call acrostics and anagrams. First, they can decipher all initial letters into political meanings. Thus N , shall signify a plot; B , a regiment of horse; L , a fleet at sea; or, secondly, by transposing the letters of the alphabet in any suspected paper, they can lay open the deepest designs of a discontented party. So, for example, if I should say, in a letter to a friend, ‘Our brother Tom has just got the piles,’ a skilful decipherer would discover, that the same letters which compose that sentence, may be analysed into the following words, ‘Resist⁠—, a plot is brought home⁠—The tour.’ And this is the anagrammatic method.”

The professor made me great acknowledgments for communicating these observations, and promised to make honourable mention of me in his treatise.