'So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be?'- &c., &c.

whose custom it is, without any deserving, is too metaphysical and your taste too to importune authors to give unto them correct; at least I must allege something their books.' I am sorry 'tis imperfect, as against you both, to excuse my own dotage— the lottery board annexed to it also is. Methinks you might modernise and elegantise this Supersedeas, and place it in front of your Joan of Arc, as a gentle hint to Messrs. Parke, &c. One of the happiest emblems, and comicalest cuts, is the owl and little chirpers, page 63.

Fancies' of Quarles! Religion appears to him no longer valuable than it furnishes matter for quibbles and riddles; he turns God's grace into wantonness. Wither is like an old friend, whose warm-heartedness and estimable qualities make us wish he possessed more genius, but at the same time make us willing to dispense with that want. I always love W., and sometimes admire Q. Still that portrait poem is a fine one; and the extract from Shepherds' Hunting' places him in a starry height far above Quarles. If you wrote that review in 'Crit. Rev.,' I am sorry you are so sparing of praise to the Ancient Marinere; so far from calling it as you do, with some wit, but more severity, 'A Dutch Attempt,' &c., I call it a right English attempt, and a successful one, to dethrone German sublimity. You have selected a passage fertile in unmeaning miracles, but have passed by fifty passages as miraculous as the miracles they celebrate. I never so deeply felt the pathetic as in that part,

A spring of love gush'd from my heart,
And I bless'd them unaware-

It stung me into high pleasure through sufferings. Lloyd does not like it; his head

But

you allow some elaborate beauties - you should have extracted 'em. The Ancient Marinere' plays more tricks with the mind than that last poem, which is yet one of the finest written. But I am getting too dogmatical; and before I degenerate into abuse, I will conclude with assuring you that I am Sincerely yours, "C. LAMB.

forgotten. If the exact circumstances under which I wrote could be known or told, it would be an interesting sonnet; but, to an indifferent and stranger reader, it must appear a very bald thing, certainly inadmissible in a compilation. I wish you could affix a different name to the volume; there is a contemptible book, a wretched assortment of vapid feelings, entitled, Pratt's Gleanings, which hath damned and impropriated the title for ever. Pray think of some other. The gentleman is better known (better had he remained unknown) by an Ode to Benevolence, written and spoken for and at the annual dinner of the Humane Society, who walk in procession once a-year, with all the objects of their charity before them, to return God thanks for giving them such benevolent hearts."

At this time Lamb's most intimate associates were Lloyd and Jem White, the author of the Falstaff Letters. When Lloyd was in town, he and White lodged in the same house, and were fast friends, though no two men could be more unlike, Lloyd having no drollery in his nature, and White nothing else. "You will easily understand," observes Mr. Southey, in a letter with which he favoured the publisher, "how Lamb could sympathise with both."

caricature of Gilray's, in which Coleridge and
Southey were introduced with asses' heads,
and Lloyd and Lamb as toad and frog. In
the number for July appeared the well-known
poem of the "New Morality," in which all
the prominent objects of the hatred of these
champions of religion and order were intro-
duced as offering homage to Lepaux, a French
charlatan,- of whose existence Lamb bad
never even heard.

"Couriers and Stars, sedition's evening host,
Thou Morning Chronicle, and Morning Post,
Whether ye make the Rights of Man' your theme,
Your country libel, and your God blaspheme,
Or dirt on private worth and virtue throw,
Still blasphemous or blackguard, praise Lepaux.

And ye five other wandering bards, that move
In sweet accord of harmony and love,
Cdge and S-th-y. L-d, and I—b and Co.,
Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux !"

Not content with thus confounding persons of the most opposite opinions and the most various characters in one common libel, the party returned to the charge in the number for September, and thus denounced the young poets, in a parody on the "Ode to the Passions," under the title of "The Anarchists."

"Next H-le-ft vow'd in doleful tone,

No more to fire a thankless age:
Oblivion mark'd his labours for her own,
Neglected from the press, and damn'd upon the
stage.

See! faithful to their mighty dam.
Cdge, S-th-y, L-d. and L-b

In splay-foot madrigals of love,

Soft moaning like the widow'd dove,
Pour, side-by-side, their sympathetic notes;

Of equal rights, and civic feasts.

And tyrant kings, and knavish priests,
Swift through the land the tuneful mischief floats.
And now to softer strains they struck the lyre,
They sung the beetle or the mole,
The dying kid, or ass's foal,
By cruel man permitted to expire.'

The literary association of Lamb with Coleridge and Southey drew down upon him the hostility of the young scorners of the "Anti-Jacobin," who luxuriating in boyish pride and aristocratic patronage, tossed the arrows of their wit against all charged with innovation, whether in politics or poetry, and cared little whom they wounded. No one could be more innocent than Lamb of political heresy; no one more strongly opposed to new theories in morality, which he always regarded with disgust; and yet he not These effusions have the palliation which only shared in the injustice which accused the excess of sportive wit, impelled by youth his friends of the last, but was confounded ful spirits and fostered by the applause of in the charge of the first,-his only crime the great, brings with it; but it will be being that he had published a few poems difficult to palliate the coarse malignity of a deeply coloured with religious enthusiasm, in passage in the prose department of the same conjunction with two other men of genius, work, in which the writer added to a statewho were dazzled by the glowing phantoms ment that Mr. Coleridge was dishonoured at which the French Revolution had raised. Cambridge for preaching Deism: "Since then The very first number of the "Anti-Jacobin he has left his native country, commenced Magazine and Review" was adorned by a citizen of the world, left his poor children

fatherless, and his wife destitute. Ex his the future happiness of mankind, not with disce, his friends Lamb and Southey." It the inspiration of the poet, but with the was surely rather too much even for partisans, grave and passionless voice of the oracle. when denouncing their political opponents There was nothing better calculated at once as men who "dirt on private worth and to feed and to make steady the enthusiasm virtue threw," thus to slander two young of youthful patriots than the high speculamen of the most exemplary character - one, tions, in which he taught them to engage, on of an almost puritanical exactness of demea- the nature of social evils and the great nour and conduct—and the other, persevering destiny of his species. No one would have in a life of noble self-sacrifice, chequered suspected the author of those wild theories, only by the frailties of a sweet nature, which endeared him even to those who were not admitted to the intimacy necessary to appreciate the touching example of his severer virtues !

.

which startled the wise and shocked the prudent, in the calm, gentlemanly person who rarely said anything above the most gentle common-place, and took interest in little beyond the whist-table. His peculiar opinions were entirely subservient to his love of letters. He thought any man who had written a book had attained a superiority

CHAPTER V.
[1799, 1800.]

If Lamb's acquaintance with Coleridge and Southey procured for him the scorn of the more virulent of the Anti-Jacobin party, he showed by his intimacy with another dis-over his fellows which placed him in another tinguished object of their animosity, that he class, and could scarcely understand other was not solicitous to avert it. He was distinctions. Of all his works Lamb liked introduced by Mr. Coleridge to one of the his "Essay on Sepulchres" the best-a short most remarkable persons of that stirring development of a scheme for preserving in time-the author of Caleb Williams," and one place the memory of all great writers of the "Political Justice." The first meeting deceased, and assigning to each his proper between Lamb and Godwin did not wear a station, - quite chimerical in itself, but promising aspect. Lamb grew warm as the accompanied with solemn and touching conviviality of the evening advanced, and musings on life and death and fame, embodied indulged in some freaks of humour which in a style of singular refinement and beauty. had not been dreamed of in Godwin's philosophy; and the philosopher, forgetting the equanimity with which he usually looked on the vicissitudes of the world or the whisttable, broke into an allusion to Gilray's caricature, and asked, "Pray, Mr. Lamb, are you toad or frog?" Coleridge was apprehensive of a rupture; but calling the next morning on Lamb, he found Godwin seated at breakfast with him; and an interchange THE year 1799 found Lamb engaged during of civilities and card-parties was established, his leisure hours in completing his tragedy of which lasted through the life of Lamb, whom John Woodvil, which seems to have been Godwin only survived a few months. Indif- finished about Christmas, and transmitted to ferent altogether to the politics of the age, Mr. Kemble. Like all young authors, who Lamb could not help being struck with pro- are fascinated by the splendour of theatrical ductions of its new-born energies, so remark- representation, he longed to see his concepable as the works and the character of tions embodied on the stage, and to receive Godwin. He seemed to realise in himself his immediate reward in the sympathy of a what Wordsworth long afterwards described, crowd of excited spectators. The hope was "the central calm at the heart of all agita- vain; — but it cheered him in many a lonely tion." Through the medium of his mind the hour, and inspired him to write when stormy convulsions of society were seen exhausted with the business of the day, and "silent as in a picture." Paradoxes the when the less powerful stimulus of the press most daring wore the air of deliberate would have been insufficient to rouse him. wisdom as he pronounced them. He foretold In the mean time he continued to correspond

LETTERS TO SOUTHEY, COLERIDGE, MANNING AND

WORDSWORTH.

of the Sailor' is also imperfect. Any dissenting minister may say and do as much.

"These remarks, I know, are crude and unwrought, but I do not lay claim to much accurate thinking. I never judge systemwise of things, but fasten upon particulars. After all, there is a great deal in the book that I must, for time, leave unmentioned, to deserve my thanks for its own sake, as well as for the friendly remembrances implied in the gift. I again return you my thanks. "Pray present my love to Edith.

good a title to publication as the Witch,' clusion of our bills of lading. The finishing or the 'Sailor's Mother.' You call'd it the Last of the Family.' The Old Woman of Berkeley' comes next; in some humours I would give it the preference above any. But who the devil is Matthew of Westminster? You are as familiar with these antiquated monastics, as Swedenborg, or, as his followers affect to call him, the Baron, with his invisibles. But you have raised a very comic effect out of the true narrative of Matthew of Westminster. 'Tis surprising with how little addition you have been able to convert, with so little alteration, his incidents, meant for terror, into circumstances and food for the spleen. The Parody is not so successful; it has one famous line, indeed, which conveys the finest death-bed image I ever met with : The doctor whisper'd the nurse, and the surgeon knew

what he said.'

TO MR. SOUTHEY.

"C. L."

"March 20th, 1799.

"I am hugely pleased with your Spider,' your old freemason,' as you call him. The three first stanzas are delicious; they seem to me a compound of Burns and Old Quarles, those kind of home-strokes, where more is felt than strikes the ear; a terseness, a jocular

But the offering the bride three times bears not the slightest analogy or proportion to the fiendish noises three times heard! In Jas-pathos, which makes one feel in laughter. par,' the circumstance of the great light is very affecting. But I had heard you mention it before. The Rose' is the only insipid piece in the volume; it hath neither thorns Dor sweetness; and, besides, sets all chronology and probability at defiance.

"Cousin Margaret,' you know, I like. The allusions to the Pilgrim's Progress are particularly happy, and harmonise tacitly and delicately with old cousins and aunts. To familiar faces we do associate familiar scenes, and accustomed objects; but what hath Apollidon and his sea-nymphs to do in these affairs? Apollyon I could have borne, though he stands for the devil, but who is Apollidon? I think you are too apt to conclude faintly,

with some cold moral, as in the end of the poem called The Victory'

'Be thou her comforter, who art the widow's friend;'

The measure, too, is novel and pleasing. I could almost wonder, Rob. Burns, in his lifetime never stumbled upon it. The fourth stanza is less striking, as being less original. The fifth falls off. It has no felicity of phrase, no old-fashioned phrase or feeling.

"Young hopes, and love's delightful dreams,'

savour neither of Burns nor Quarles; they seem more like shreds of many a modern sentimental sonnet. The last stanza hath nothing striking in it, if I except the two I wish, if you concur with me, these things concluding lines, which are Burns all over.

could be looked to. I am sure this is a kind

of writing, which comes ten-fold better

recommended to the heart, comes there more like a neighbour or familiar, than thousands of Hamnels and Zillahs and Madelons. I beg you will send me the 'Holly-tree,' if it a single common-place line of comfort, which at all resemble this, for it must please me. bears no proportion in weight or number to I have never seen it. I love this sort of the many lines which describe suffering. poems, that open a new intercourse with the This is to convert religion into mediocre most despised of the animal and insect race. feelings, which should burn, and glow, and tremble. A moral should be wrought into the body and soul, the matter and tendency of a poem, not tagged to the end, like a 'God send the good ship into harbour,' at the con

I think this vein may be further opened. Peter Pindar hath very prettily apostrophised a fly; Burns hath his mouse and his louse; Coleridge less successfully hath made overtures of intimacy to a jackass, therein