I am

immediately, if at any time you quit Bristol, what you bid me, and left 'em at Perry's.† lest I come and Taffy be not at home. II think 'em altogether good, and do not see hope I can come in a day or two; but young why you were solicitous about any alteration. S- of my office, is suddenly taken ill in I have not yet seen, but will make it my this very nick of time, and I must officiate business to see, to-day's Chronicle, for your for him till he can come to work again : had verses on Horne Tooke. Dyer stanza'd him the knave gone sick, and died, and been in one of the papers tother day, but, I think, buried at any other time, philosophy might unsuccessfully. Tooke's friends meeting was, have afforded one comfort, but just now II suppose, a dinner of condolence. have no patience with him. Quarles I am as not sorry to find you (for all Sara) immersed great a stranger to as I was to Withers. I wish you would try and do something to bring our elder bards into more general fame. I writhe with indignation when, in books of criticism, where common-place quotation is heaped upon quotation, I find no mention of such men as Massinger, or Beaumont and Fletcher, men with whom succeeding dramatic writers (Otway alone excepted)* can bear no manner of comparison. Stupid Knox hath noticed none of 'em among his extracts.

66

in clouds of smoke and metaphysics. You know I had a sneaking kindness for this last noble science, and you taught me some smattering of it. I look to become no mean proficient under your tuition. Coleridge, what do you mean by saying you wrote to me about Plutarch and Porphyry I received no such letter, nor remember a syllable of the matter, yet am not apt to forget any part of your epistles, least of all, an injunction like that. I will cast about for 'em, tho' I am a sad hand to know what books are worth, and both these worthy gentlemen are alike out of my line. To-morrow I shall be less suspensive, and in better cue to write, so good bye at present.

Friday Evening.-That execrable aristocrat and knave R has given me an abso

Thursday.-Mrs. C― can scarce guess how she has gratified me by her very kind letter and sweet little poem. I feel that I should thank her in rhyme, but she must take my acknowledgment, at present, in plain honest prose. The uncertainty in which I yet stand, whether I can come or no, damps my lute refusal of leave. The poor man cannot spirits, reduces me a degree below prosaical, guess at my disappointment. Is it not hard, and keeps me in a suspense that fluctuates this dread dependence on the low-bred between hope and fear. Hope is a charming, mind?' Continue to write to me tho', and lively, blue-eyed wench, and I am always I must be content. Our loves and best good wishes attend upon you both.

glad of her company, but could dispense with the visitor she brings with her her younger sister, Fear, a white-livered, lily-cheeked, bashful, palpitating, awkward hussy, that hangs, like a green girl, at her sister's apronstrings, and will go with her whithersoever she goes. For the life and soul of me, I could not improve those lines in your poem on the Prince and Princess, so I changed them to

An exception he certainly would not have made a few years afterwards; for he used to mention two pretty lines in the "Orphan,"

Sweet as the shepherd's pipe upon the mountains,
With all his fleecy flock at feed beside him,"

as a redeeming passage amidst mere stage trickeries.
The great merit which lies in the construction of
“Venice Preserved," was not in his line of appreciation;
and he thought Thomson's reference to Otway's ladies-
"poor Monimia moans,

And Belvidera pours her soul in love,"

worth both heroines.

LAMB."

"S did return, but there are two or three more ill and absent, which was the plea for refusing me. I shall never have heart to ask for holidays again. The man next him in office, C- furnished him with the objections. C. LAMB."

The little copy of verses in which Lamb commemorated and softened his disappointment, bearing date (a most unusual circumstance with Lamb), 5th July, 1796, was inclosed in a letter of the following day, which refers to a scheme Coleridge had formed of settling in London on an invitation to share

↑ Some" occasional" verses of Coleridge's written to order for the Morning Chronicle.

This was just after the Westminster Election, in which Mr. Tooke was defeated.

the Editorship of the Morning Chronicle. Islington, possibly, you would not like; to The poem includes a lamentation over a me 'tis classical ground. Knightsbridge is a fantastical loss-that of a draught of the desirable situation for the air of the parks; Avon "which Shakespeare drank; some- St. George's Fields is convenient for its conwhat strangely confounding the Avon of tiguity to the Bench. Choose! But are you Stratford with that of Bristol. It may be really coming to town? The hope of it has doubted whether Shakespeare knew the entirely disarmed my petty disappointment taste of the waves of one Avon more than of of its nettles, yet I rejoice so much on my the other, or whether Lamb would not have own account, that I fear I do not feel enough found more kindred with the world's poet pure satisfaction on yours. Why, surely, the in a glass of sack, than in the water of either joint editorship of the Chronicle must be stream. Coleridge must have enjoyed the very comfortable and secure living for a man. misplaced sentiment of his friend, for he was But should not you read French, or do you? singularly destitute of sympathy with local and can you write with sufficient moderation, associations, which he regarded as interfering as 'tis called, when one suppresses the one with the pure and simple impression of great half of what one feels or could say on a subdeeds or thoughts; denied a special interest ject, to chime in the better with popular to the Pass of Thermopyla: and instead of lukewarmness? White's 'Letters' are near subscribing to purchase "Shakespeare's publication; could you review 'em or get 'em House," would scarcely have admitted the peculiar sanctity of the spot which enshrines his ashes.

TO SARA AND HER SAMUEL.

"Was it so hard a thing?—I did but ask
A fleeting holiday. One little week,
Or haply two, had bounded my request.

What, if the jaded steer, who all day long
Had borne the heat and labour of the plough,
When evening came, and her sweet cooling hour,
Should seek to trespass on a neighbour copse,
Where greener herbage waved, or clearer streams
Invited him to slake his burning thirst?
That man were crabbed, who should say him nay;
That man were churlish, who should drive him
thence!

A blessing light upon your heads, ye good,
Ye hospitable pair! I may not come,
To catch on Clifden's heights the summer gale;
I may not come, a pilgrim, to the banks
Of Avon, lucid stream, to taste the wave
Which Shakespeare drank, our British Helicon :
Or with mine eye intent on Redcliffe towers,
To muse in tears on that mysterious youth,
Cruelly slighted, who to London walls,
In evil hour, shaped his disastrous course.

Complaint begone; begone, unkind reproof:
Take up, my song, take up a merrier strain,
For yet again, and lo! from Avon's vales
Another minstrel' cometh ! Youth endear'd,
God and good angels guide thee on thy way,
And gentler fortunes wait the friends I love.

"C. L."

The letter accompanying these verses begins cheerfully thus:

"What can I do till you send word what priced and placed house you should like?

reviewed? Are you not connected with the Critical Review? His frontispiece is a good conceit-Sir John learning to dance to please Madam Page, in dress of doublet, &c., from the upper half, and modern pantaloons with shoes, &c., of the eighteenth century, from the lower half; and the whole work is full of goodly quips and rare fancies, 'all deftly masqued like hoar antiquity'-much superior to Dr. Kenrick's 'Falstaff's Wedding,' which you have seen. A- sometimes laughs at superstition, and religion, and the like. A living fell vacant lately in the gift of the Hospital: White informed him that he stood a fair chance for it. He scrupled and scrupled about it, and at last, to use ais own words, 'tampered' with Godwin to know whether the thing was honest or not. Godwin said nay to it, and A—— rejected the living! Could the blindest poor papist have bowed more servilely to his priest or casuist? Why sleep the Watchman's answers to that Godwin? I beg you will not delay to alter, if you mean to keep those last lines I sent you. Do that and read these for your pains :

TO THE POET COWPER.
"Cowper, I thank my God that thou art heal'd!
Thine was the sorest malady of all;
And I am sad to think that it should light
Upon the worthy head! But thou art heal'd,
And thou art yet, we trust, the destined man,
Born to reanimate the lyre, whose chords
Have slumber'd, and have idle lain so long;
To the immortal sounding of whose strings
Did Milton frame the stately-paced verse;

Among whose wires with light finger playing,
Our elder bard, Spenser, a gentle name,
The lady Muses' dearest darling child,
Elicited the deftest tunes yet heard
In hall or bower, taking the delicate ear
Of Sidney and his peerless Maiden Queen.

Thou, then, take up the mighty epic strain, Cowper, of England's Bards, the wisest and the best.

1796.

would not save you in a court of justice. But are you really coming to town? Coleridge, a gentleman called in London lately from Bristol, and inquired whether there were any of the family of a Mr. Chambers living: this Mr. Chambers, he said, had been the making of a friend's fortune, who wished to make some return for it. He went away without seeing her. Now, a Mrs. Reynolds, "I have read your climax of praises in a very intimate friend of ours, whom you have seen at our house, is the only daughter, those three Reviews. These mighty spouters and all that survives, of Mr. Chambers; and out of panegyric waters have, two of 'em, scattered their spray even upon me, and the a very little supply would be of service to waters are cooling and refreshing. Prosaically, her, for she married very unfortunately, and has parted with her husband. Pray find out the Monthly reviewers have made indeed a this Mr. Pember (for that was the gentleman's large article of it, and done you justice. The Critical have, in their wisdom, selected not friend's name); he is an attorney, and lives at Bristol. Find him out, and acquaint him the very best specimens, and notice not, except as one name on the muster-roll, the with the circumstances of the case, and offer to be the medium of supply to Mrs. Reynolds, 'Religious Musings.' I suspect Master Dyer to have been the writer of that article, as the if he chooses to make her a present. She is in very distressed circumstances. Mr. Pember, substance of it was the very remarks and the very language he used to me one day. I attorney, Bristol. Mr. Chambers lived in the Temple; Mrs. Reynolds, his daughter, fear you will not accord entirely with my was my schoolmistress, and is in the room at sentiments of Cowper, as expressed above (perhaps scarcely just); but the poor gentle-induced me to write so soon again. I have this present writing. This last circumstance man has just recovered from his lunacies, and that begets pity, and pity love, and love admiration; and then it goes hard with people but they lie! Have you read the Ballad called 'Leonora,' in the second number of the Monthly Magazine! If you have!!!! There is another fine song, from the same author (Bürger), in the third number, of scarce inferior merit; and (vastly below

not further to add. Our loves to Sara.
Thursday.
C. LAMB."

CHAPTER II.

THE DEATH OF MRS. LAMB, AND MISS LAMB'S SUBSE-
QUENT CONDITION.

these) there are some happy specimens of LETTERS OF LAMB TO COLERIDGE, CHIEFLY RELATINg to English hexameters, in an imitation of Ossian, in the fifth number. For your Dactyls—I am sorry you are so sore about 'em-a very Sir Fretful! In good troth, the Dactyls are good Dactyls, but their measure is naught. Be not yourself 'half anger, half agony,' if I pronounce your darling lines not to be the best you ever wrote in all your life—you have

written much.

"Have a care, good Master Poet, of the Statute de Contumelia. What do you mean by calling Madame Mara, - harlot and naughty things? The goodness of the verse

"I detest

These scented rooms, where, to a gaudy throng,
Heaves the proud harlot her distended breast
In intricacies of laborious song."

Lines composed in a Concert Room, by S. T. C.

all the morning in task-work at the India THE autumn of 1796 found Lamb engaged House, and all the evening in attempting to amuse his father by playing cribbage; sometimes snatching a few minutes for his only pleasure, writing to Coleridge; while Miss

Lamb was worn down to a state of extreme

nervous misery, by attention to needlework by day, and to her mother by night, until the insanity, which had been manifested more than once, broke out into frenzy, which, on Thursday, 22nd of September, proved fatal to her mother. The following account of the proceedings on the inquest, copied from the "Times" of Monday, 26th September, 1796, supplies the details of this terrible calamity,