you were but settled. Do continue to write to me. I read your letters with my sister, and they gave us both abundance of delight. Especially they please us too, when you talk in a religious strain; not but we are offended occasionally with a certa n freedom of expression, a certain air of mysticism, more consonant to the conceits of pagan philosophy than consistent with humility of genuine piety. To instance now in your lası letter, you say, 'it is by the press that God hath given finite spirits, both evil and good (I suppose you mean simply bad men and good men), a portion as it were of his Omnipresence!' Now, high as the human intellect comparatively will soar, and wide as its influence, malign or salutary, can extend, is there not, Coleridge, a distance between the Divine mind and it which makes such language blasphemy? Again, in your first fine consolatory epistle you say, 'you are a temporary sharer in human misery, that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine Nature.' What more than this do those men say who are for exalting the man Christ Jesus into the second person of an unknown Trinity, men, whom you or I scruple not to call idolators? Man, full of imperfections, at best, and subject to wants which momentarily remind him of dependance; man, a weak and ignorant being, 'servile' from his birth to all the skiey influences,' with eyes sometimes open to discern the right path, but a head generally too dizzy to pursue it; man, in the pride of speculation, forgetting his nature, and hailing in himself the future God, must make the angels laugh. Be not angry with me, Coleridge; I wish not to cavil; I know I cannot instruct you; I only wish to remind you of that humility which best becometh the Christian character. God in the New Testament (our best guide) is represented to us in the kind, condescending, amiable, familiar light of a parent and in my poor mind 'tis best for us so to consider of him, as our heavenly father, and our best friend, without indulging too bold conceptions of his nature. Let us learn to think humbly of ourselves, and rejoice in the appellation of 'dear children,' 'brethren,' and 'coheirs with Christ of the promises,' seeking to know no further. "I am not insensible, indeed I am not, of the value of that first letter of yours, and I shall find reason to thank you for it again and again long after that blemish in it is forgotten. It will be a fine lesson of comfort to us whenever we read it; and read it we often shall, Mary and I. Accept our loves and best kind wishes for the welfare of yourself, and wife, and little one. Nor let me forget to wish you joy on your birthday so lately past; I thought you had teen older. My kind thanks and remembrances to Lloyd. “God love us all, and may he continue to be the father and the friend of the whole human race! "Sunday evening." "C. LAMB. The next letter, commencing in a similar strain, diverges to literary topics, and especially alludes to "Walton's Angler," a book which Lamb always loved as it were a living friend. TO MR. COLERIDGE. "My dear friend, I am not ignorant that to be a partaker of the Divine Nature is a phrase to be met with in Scripture; I am only apprehensive lest we in these latter days, tinctured (some of us, perhaps, pretty deeply) with mystical notions and the pride of metaphysics, might be apt to affix to such phrases a meaning which the primitive users of them, the simple fisher of Galilee for instance, never intended to convey. With that other part of your apology I am not quite so well satisfied. You seem to me to have been straining your comparing faculties to bring together things infinitely distant and unlike; the feeble, narrow-sphered operations of the human intellect; and the everywhere diffused mind of the Deity, the peerless wisdom of Jehovah. Even the expression appears to me inaccurate-portion of omnipresence-omnipresence is an attribute whose very essence is entireness. How can omnipresence be affirmed of anything in part? But enough of this spirit of disputaciousness. Let us attend to the proper business of human life, and talk a little together respecting our domestic concerns. Do you continue to make me acquainted with what you are doing, and how soon you are likely to be settled once for all? "Have you seen Bowles's new poem on 'Hope?' What character does it bear? Has he exhausted his stores of tender plaintiveness? or is he the same in this last as in all his former pieces? The duties of the day call me off from this pleasant intercourse with my friend; so for the present adieu. Now for the truant borrowing of a few minutes from business. Have you met with a new poem called the 'Pursuits of Literature?' From the extracts in the 'British Review' I judge it to be a very humorous thing; in particular I remember what I thought a very happy character of Dr. Darwin's poetry. Among all your quaint readings, did you ever light upon Walton's Complete Angler?' I asked you the question once be fore; it breathes the very spirit of innocence, purity, and simplicity of heart; there are many choice, old verses interspersed in it; it would sweeten a man's temper at any time VOL. 1.-2 to read it; it would Christianize every discordant angry pas sion; pray make yourself acquainted with it. "When will Southey be delivered of his new epic? Madoc, I think, is to be the name of it, though that is a name not familiar to my ears. What progress do you make in your hymns? What Review' are you connected with? if with any, why do you delay to notice White's book? You are justly offended at its profaneness, but surely you have undervalued its wit, or you would have been more loud in its praises. Do not you think that in Slender's death and madness there is most exquisite humour mingled with tenderness, that is irresistible, truly Shakspearian? Be more full in your mention of it. Poor fellow, he has (very undeservedly) lost by it; nor do I see that it is likely ever to reimburse him the charge of printing, &c. Give it a lift if you can. I am just now wondering whether you will ever come to town again, Coleridge; 'tis among the things I dare not hope, but can't help wishing. For myself, I can live in the midst of town luxury and superfluity and not long for them; and I can't see why your chil dren might not hereafter do the same. Remember you are not in Arcadia when you are in the west of England, and they may catch infection from the world without visiting the metropolis. But you seem to have set your heart upon this same cottage plan, and God prosper you in the experiment! I am at a loss for more to write about, so 'tis as well that I am arrived at the bottom of my paper. "God love you, Coleridge; our best loves and tenderest wishes await on you, your Sarah, and your little ones. "C. L." Having been encouraged by Coleridge to entertain the thought of publishing his verses, he submitted the poem called "The Grandame" to his friend with the following letter: TO MR. COLERIDGE. Monday night. "Unfurnished at present with any sheet-filling subject, I shall continue my letter gradually and journal-wise. My second thoughts entirely coincide with your thoughts on 'Joan of Arc,' and I can only wonder at my childish judgment which overlooked the first book and could prefer the ninth; not that I was insensible to the soberer beauties of the former, but the latter caught me with its glare of magic; the former, however, left a more pleasing general recollection in my mind. Let me add, the first book was the favourite of my sister; and I now, with John, often think on Domremi and the fields of Arc.' I must not pass over without acknowledging my obli gations to your full and satisfactory account of personifications. I have read it again and again, and it will be a guide to my future taste. Perhaps I had estimated Southey's merits toc much by number, weight, and measure. I now agree com pletely and entirely in your opinion of the genius of Southey. Your own image of melancholy is illustrative of what you teach, and in itself masterly. I conjecture it is disbranched from one of your embryo 'hymns.' When they are mature for birth (were I you) I should print 'em in one separate volume, with 'Religious Musings,' and your part of the 'Joan of Arc.' Birds of the same soaring wing should hold on their flight in company. Once for all (and by renewing the subject you will only renew in me the condemnation of Tantalus), I hope to be able to pay you a visit (if you are then in Bristol) some time in the latter end of August or beginning of September, for a week or fortnight; before that time, office business puts an absolute veto on my coming. Of the blank verses I spoke of, the following lines are the only tolerable complete ones I have written out of not more than one hundred and fifty. That I get on so slowly you may fairly impute to want of practice in composition, when I declare to you that (the few verses which you have seen excepted) I have not written fifty lines since I left school. It may not be amiss to remark that my grandmother (on whom the verses are written) lived housekeeper in a family the fifty or sixty last years of her life; that she was a woman of exemplary piety and goodness; and for many years before her death was terribly afflicted with a cancer in her breast, which she bore with true Christian patience. You may think that I have not kept enough apart the ideas of her heavenly and her earthly master, but recollect I have designedly given in to her own way of feeling; and if she had a failing, 'twas that she respected her master's family too much, not reverenced her Maker too little. The lines begin imperfectly, as I may probably connect 'em if I finish at all; and if I do, Biggs shall print 'em in a more economical way than you yours, for (sonnets and all) they won't make a thousand lines as I propose completing 'em, and the substance must be wiredrawn. The following letter, written at intervals, will give an insight into Lamb's spirit at this time, in its lighter and gayer moods. It would seem that his acquaintance with the old English dramatists had just commenced with Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger. TO MR. COLERIDGE. “Tuesday evening. "To your list of illustrative personifications, into which a fine imagination enters, I will take leave to add the following from Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Wife for a Month;' 'tis the conclusion of a description of a seafight:The game of death was never played so nobly; the meager thief grew wanton in his mischiefs, and his shrunk hollow eyes smiled on his ruins.' There is fancy in these of a lower order, from 'Bonduca :''Then did I. see these valiant men of Britain, like boding owls, creep into todds of ivy, and hoot their fears to one another nightly. Not that it is a personification; only it just caught my eye in a little extract-book I keep, which is full of quotations from B. and F. in particular, in which authors I can't help thinking there is a greater richness of poetical fancy than in any one, Shakspeare excepted. Are you acquainted with Massinger? At a hazard I will trouble. you with a passage from a play of his called 'A Very Woman.' The lines are spoken by a lover (disguised) to his faithless mistress. You will remark the fine effect of the double endings. You will by your ear distinguish the lines, for I write 'em as prose. 'Not far from where my father lives, a lady, a neighbour by, blessed with as great a beauty as nature durst bestow without undoing, dwelt, and most nappily, as I thought then, and blessed the house a thousand times she dwelt in. This beauty, in the blossom of my youth, when my first fire knew no adulterate incense, nor I no way to flatter but my fondness; in all the bravery my friends could show me, in all the faith my innocence could give me, in the best language my true tongue could tell me, and all the broken sighs my sick heart lend me, I sued and served; long did I serve this lady, long was my travail, long my trade to win her; with all the duty of my soul I SERVED HER.' Then she must love.' 'She did, but never me: she could not love me; she would not love, she hated-more, she scorned me; and in so poor and base a way abused me for all my services, for all my bounties, so bold neglects flung on me.' • What out of love, and worthy love, I gave her (shame to her most unworthy mind), to fools, to girls, to fiddlers and her boys she flung, all in disdain of me.' One more passage strikes my eye from B. and F.'s 'Palamon and Arcite.' One of 'em complains in prison: This is all our world; we shall know nothing here but one another; hear nothing but the clock that tells us our woes; the vine shall grow, but we shall never see it,' &c. Is not the last circumstance exquisite ? I mean not to lay myself open by saying they exceed Milton, and perhaps Col |