as In another letter, about this time (De- brotherly feeling that we ever met, even cember, 1796), Lamb transmitted to Cole- the sober citizen, when his son went astray ridge two Poems for the volume—one a upon the mountains of Parnassus, is said to copy of verses To a Young Lady going out have cursed wit and Poetry and Pope.' I to India," which were not inserted, and are quote wrong, but no matter. These letters not worthy of preservation; the other, en- I lent to a friend to be out of the way, for titled, "The Tomb of Douglas," which was a season, but I have claimed them in vain, inserted, and which he chiefly valued as a and shall not cease to regret their loss. Your memorial of his impression of Mrs. Siddons' packets, posterior to the date of my misforacting in Lady Randolph. The following tunes, commencing with that valuable consopassage closes the sheet. latory epistle, are every day accumulatingthey are sacred things with me." "At length I have done with versemaking; not that I relish other people's poetry less; theirs comes from 'em without effort, mine is the difficult operation of a brain scanty of ideas, made more difficult by disuse. I have been reading The Task' with fresh delight. I am glad you love Cowper: I could forgive a man for not enjoying Milton, but I would not call that man my friend who should be offended with the 'divine chit-chat of Cowper.' Write me. God love you and yours. C. L." The following long letter, bearing date on the outside, 5th January, 1797, is addressed to Mr. Coleridge at Stowey, near Bridgewater, whither he had removed from Bristol, to enjoy the society and protection of his friend Mr. Poole. The original is a' curious specimen of clear compressed penmanship; being contained in three sides of a sheet of fools cap. TO MR. COLERIDGE. Sunday morning. You cannot surely mean to degrade the Joan of Arc into a potgirl. You are not going, I hope, to annex to that most splendid ornament of Southey's poem all this cock-and-bull story of Joan, the publican's daughter of Neufchatel, with the lamentable episode of a waggoner, his wife, and six children. The texture will be most lamentably disproportionate. The first forty or fifty lines of these addenda are, no doubt, in their way, admirable, too; but many would prefer the Joan of Southey. 'On mightiest deeds to brood Of shadowy vastness, such as made my heart "They wondered at me, who had known me once A cheerful careless damsel;' The eye, That of the circling throng and of the visible world I see nothing in your description of the Maid I almost burned all your letters,—I did as bad, 'For she had lived in this bad world And touched not the pollutions of the dead; · copy of LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. "In your notice of Southey's new volume you omit to mention the most pleasing of all, the Miniature ' There were Who formed high hopes and flattering ones of thee, the fierce and terrible benevolence' of the wounds I may have been inflicting on Southey; added to this, that it will look like my poor friend's vanity. rivalship in you, and extort a comparison with Southey, I think to your disadvantage. And the lines, considered in themselves as an addition to what you had before written, (strains of a far higher mood,) are but such as Madame Fancy loves in some of her more familiar moods, at such times as she has met 'Spirit of Spenser!- was the wanderer wrong?' Noll Goldsmith, and walked and talked with him, calling him 'old acquaintance.' Southey "Fairfax I have been in quest of a long certainly has no pretensions to vie with you time. Johnson, in his Life of Waller,' gives in the sublime of poetry; but he tells a plain a most delicious specimen of him, and adds, tale better than you. I will enumerate some in the true manner of that delicate critic, as woful blemishes, some of 'em sad deviations well as amiable man, 'It may be presumed that this old version will not be much read from that simplicity which was your aim 'Hailed who might be near' (the 'canvas- after the elegant translation of my friend coverture moving,' by the by, is laughable); Mr. Hoole.' I endeavoured I wished to ‘a woman and six children' (by the way,- gain some idea of Tasso from this Mr. Hoole, why not nine children? It would have been the great boast and ornament of the India just half as pathetic again): statues of sleep House, but soon desisted. I found him more smallest small beer sunthey seemed': frost-mangled wretch': vapid than green putridity': 'hailed him immortal' vinegared.' Your Dream,' down to that (rather ludicrous again): voiced a sad and exquisite line 6 simple tale' (abominable!): improvendered': 'such his tale': 'Ah! suffering to the height 'I can't tell half his adventures,' of what was suffered' (a most insufferable is a most happy resemblance of Chaucer. line): amazements of affright': the hot sore brain attributes its own hues of ghastliness and torture' (what shocking confusion of ideas)! "In these delineations of common and natural feelings, in the familiar walks of poetry, you seem to resemble Montauban dancing with Roubigné's tenants much of his native loftiness remained in the execution.' "I was reading your Religious Musings' the other day, and sincerely I think it the noblest poem in the language, next after the 'Paradise Lost,' and even that was not made the vehicle of such grand truths. There is one mind,' &c., down to Almighty's throne,' are without a rival in the whole compass of my poetical reading. The remainder is so so. The best line, I think, is, 'He belong'd, I believe, to the witch Melancholy.' By the way, when will our volume come out? Don't delay it till you have written a new Joan of Arc. Send what letters you please by me, and in any way you choose, single or double. The India Company is better adapted to answer the cost than the generality of my friend's correspondents such poor and honest dogs as John Thelwall, particularly. I cannot say know Colson, at least intimately; I once supped with him and Allen; I think his manners very pleasing. I will not tell you what I think of Lloyd, for he may by chance come to see this letter, and that thought puts a restraint on me. I cannot think what subject would suit your epic genius; some philosophical subject, I conjecture, in which shall be blended the sublime of poetry and I wish I could have written those lines. I of science. Your proposed Hymns' will be rejoice that I am able to relish them. The a fit preparatory study wherewith 'to disloftier walks of Pindus are your proper cipline your young noviciate soul.'. I region. There you have no compeer in dull; I'll go walk myself out of my modern times. Leave the lowlands, unenvied, dulness. in possession of such men as Cowper and Southey. Thus am I pouring balsam into 'Stands in the sun, and with no partial gaze, Sunday night. You and Sara are very good to think so kindly and so favourably of poor Mary; I would to God all did so too. | imagery, Hartley's Five Motives to Conduct: But I very much fear she must not think of-1. Sensation; 2. Imagination; 3. Ambicoming home in my father's lifetime. It is tion; 4. Sympathy; 5. Theopathy: - First. very hard upon her; but our circumstances Banquets, music, &c., effeminacy, and their are peculiar, and we must submit to them. insufficiency. Second. Beds of hyacinth and God be praised she is so well as she is. She roses, where young Adonis oft reposes;' bears her situation as one who has no rightFortunate Isles;' The Pagan Elysium,' to complain. My poor old aunt, whom you &c.; poetical pictures; antiquity as pleasing have seen, the kindest, goodest creature to to the fancy; their emptiness; madness, me when I was at school; who used to &c. Third. Warriors, Poets; some famous toddle there to bring me good things, when I yet, more forgotten; their fame or oblivion school-boy like, only despised her for it, and now alike indifferent; pride, vanity, &c. used to be ashamed to see her come and sit Fourth. All manner of pitiable stories, in herself down on the old coal-hole steps as you Spenser-like verse; love; friendship, relawent into the old grammar-school, and open tionship, &c. Fifth. Hermits; Christ and her apron, and bring out her bason, with his apostles; martyrs; heaven, &c. An some nice thing she had caused to be saved imagination like yours, from these scanty for me; the good old creature is now lying hints, may expand into a thousand great on her death-bed. I cannot bear to think ideas, if indeed you at all comprehend my on her deplorable state. To the shock she scheme, which I scarce do myself. received on that our evil day, from which she never completely recovered, I impute her illness. She says, poor thing, she is glad she is come home to die with me. I was always her favourite: No after friendship e'er can raise "Lloyd has kindly left me, for a keep-sake, 'John Woolman.' You have read it, he says, and like it. Will you excuse one short extract? I think it could not have escaped you.— Small treasure to a resigned mind is sufficient. How happy is it to be content with a little, to live in humility, and feel that in us, which breathes out this language Abba! Father!'—I am almost ashamed to patch up a letter in this miscellaneous sort -but I please myself in the thought, that anything from me will be acceptable to you. I am rather impatient, childishly so, to see our names affixed to the same common volume. Send me two, when it does come out; two will be enough—or indeed onebut two better. I have a dim recollection that, when in town, you were talking of the Origin of Evil as a most prolific subject for a long poem; - why not adopt it, Coleridge? "Monday morn.- A London letter-Ninepence half-penny!' Look you, master poet, I have remorse as well as another man, and my bowels can sound upon occasion. But I must put you to this charge, for I cannot keep back my protest, however ineffectual, against the annexing your latter lines to those former - this putting of new wine into old bottles. This my duty done, I will cease from writing till you invent some more reasonable mode of conveyance. Well may the ragged followers of the Nine!' set up for flocci-nauci-what-do-you-call-'em-ists! and I do not wonder that in their splendid visions of Utopias in America, they protest against the admission of those yellow complexioned, copper-coloured, white-livered gentlemen, who never prove themselves their friends! Don't you think your verses on a Young Ass' too trivial a companion for the Religious Musings?'-' scoundrel monarch,' alter that; and the Man of Ross' is scarce admissible, as it now stands, curtailed of its fairer half: reclaim its property from the Chatterton,' which it does but eucumber, and it will be a rich little poem. I hope you expunge great part of the old notes in the new edition: that, in particular, most barefaced, unfounded, impudent assertion, that Mr. Rogers is indebted for his story to Loch Lomond, a poem by Bruce! I have read the latter. I scarce think you have. Scarce anything is common to them both. The author of the 'Pleasures of Memory' was somewhat hurt, Dyer says, by the accusation | was given; at all events, the result was, that of unoriginality. He never saw the poem. she left the asylum and took up her abode I long to read your poem on Burns-I retain so indistinct a memory of it. In what shape and how does it come into public? As you leave off writing poetry till you finish your Hymns, I suppose you print, now, all you have got by you. You have scarce enough unprinted to make a second volume with Lloyd? Tell me all about it. What is become of Cowper? Lloyd told me of some verses on his mother. If you have them by you, pray send 'em me. I do so love him? Never mind their merit. May be I may like 'em, as your taste and mine do not always exactly identify. Yours, for life with her brother Charles. For her sake, at the same time, he abandoned all thoughts of love and marriage; and with an income of scarcely more than 100%. a-year, derived from his clerkship, aided for a little while by the old aunt's small annuity, set out on the journey of life at twenty-two years of age, cheerfully, with his beloved companion, endeared to him the more by her strange calamity, and the constant apprehension of a recurrence of the malady which had caused it! C. LAMB." Soon after the date of this letter, death CHAPTER III. released the father from his state of imbe- LETTERS TO COLERIDGE AND MANNING IN LAMB'S FIRST YEARS OF LIFE WITH HIS SISTER. [1797 to 1800.] THE anxieties of Lamb's new position were assuaged during the spring of 1797, by frequent communications with Coleridge respecting the anticipated volume, and by some additions to his own share in its pages. He was also cheered by the company of Lloyd, who, having resided for a few months with Coleridge, at Stowey, came to London in some perplexity as to his future course. Of this visit Lamb speaks in the following letter, probably written in January. It contains some verses expressive of his delight at Lloyd's visit, which, although afterwards inserted in the volume, are so well fitted to their frame-work of prose, and so indicative of the feelings of the writer at this crisis of his life, that I may be excused for presenting them with the context. cility and the son from his wearisome duties. With his life, the annuity he had derived from the old bencher he had served so faithfully, ceased; while the aunt continued to linger still with Lamb in his cheerless lodging. His sister still remained in confinement in the asylum to which she had been consigned on her mother's death-perfectly sensible and calm, and he was passionately desirous of obtaining her liberty. The surviving members of the family, especially his brother John, who enjoyed a fair income in the South Sea House, opposed her discharge; and painful doubts were suggested by the authorities of the parish, where the terrible occurrence happened, whether they were not bound to institute proceedings, which must have placed her for life at the disposition of the Crown, especially as no medical assurance could be given against the probable recurrence of dangerous frenzy. But Charles came to her deliverance; he satisfied all the parties who had power to oppose her release, by his solemn engagement "Dear Col. You have learned by this that he would take her under his care for time, with surprise, no doubt, that Lloyd is life; and he kept his word. Whether any with me in town. The emotions I felt on his communication with the Home Secretary coming so unlooked-for, are not ill expressed occurred before her release, I have been in what follows, and what, if you do not unable to ascertain; it was the impression object to them as too personal, and to the of Mr. Lloyd, from whom my own knowledge world obscure, or otherwise wanting in of the circumstances, which the letters do worth, I should wish to make a part of not ascertain, was derived, that a communi- our little volume. I shall be sorry if that cation took place, on which a similar pledge volume comes out, as it necessarily must do, TO MR. COLERIDGE. "1797. unless you print those very schoolboy-ish | you all. Lloyd takes up his abode at the verses I sent you on not getting leave to Bull and Mouth Inn: the Cat and Salutation come down to Bristol last summer. I say I would have had a charm more forcible for shall be sorry that I have addressed you in me. O noctes cænæque Deum! Anglicenothing which can appear in our joint Welch rabbits, punch, and poesy. Should volume; so frequently, so habitually, as you you be induced to publish those very schooldwell in my thoughts, 'tis some wonder those boy-ish verses, print 'em as they will occur, thoughts came never yet in contact with a if at all, in the Monthly Magazine; yet I poetical mood. But you dwell in my heart should feel ashamed that to you I wrote of hearts, and I love you in all the naked nothing better: but they are too personal, honesty of prose. God bless you, and all and almost trifling and obscure withal. your little domestic circle - my tenderest Some lines of mine to Cowper were in last remembrances to your beloved Sara, and a Monthly Magazine; they have not body of smile and a kiss from me to your dear dear thought enough to plead for the retaining of little David Hartley. The verses I refer to 'em. My sister's kind love to you all. above, slightly amended, I have sent (forgetting to ask your leave, tho' indeed I gave them only your initials), to the Monthly Magazine, where they may possibly appear next month, and where I hope to recognise your poem on Burns. ΤΟ CHARLES LLOYD, AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR. Alone, obscure, without a friend Why seeks my Lloyd the stranger out? That him in aught compensate may In brief oblivion to forego Friends, such as thine. so justly dear,. To stay, a kindly loiterer, here? For this a gleam of random joy Hath flush'd my unaccustom'd cheek; O! sweet are all the Muse's lays, And sweet the charm of matin bird"Twas long, since these estranged ears The sweeter voice of friend had heard. The voice hath spoke; the pleasant sounds Long, long, within my aching heart The grateful sense shall cherish'd be; That Lloyd will sometimes think on me. "C. LAMB." It would seem, from the following fragment of a letter of 7th April, 1797, that Lamb, at first, took a small lodging for his sister apart from his own - but soon to be for life united. TO MR. COLERIDGE. "By the way, Lloyd may have told you about my sister. I told him. If not, I have taken her out of her confinement, and taken a room for her at Hackney, and spend my Sundays, holidays, &c. with her. She boards herself. In one little half year's illness, and in such an illness of such a nature and of such consequences! to get her out into the world again, with a prospect of her never being so ill again-this is to be ranked not among the common blessings of Providence." The next letter to Coleridge begins with a transcript of Lamb's Poem, entitled "A Vision of Repentance," which was inserted in the Addenda to the volume, and is preserved among his collected poems, and thus proceeds: TO MR. COLERIDGE. "April 15th, 1797. "The above you will please to print immediately before the blank verse fragments. Tell me if you like it. I fear the latter half is unequal to the former, in parts of which I think you will discover a delicacy of pencilling not quite un-Spenser-like. The latter half aims at the measure, but has failed to attain the poetry of Milton in his |