Bull and Mouth Inn; the Cat and Salutation 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 come down to Bristol last summer. I say I shall be sorry that I have addressed you in nothing which can appear in our joint volume; so frequently, so habitually, as you dwell in my thoughts, 'tis some wonder those thoughts came never yet in contact with a poetical mood. But you dwell in my heart of hearts, and I love you in all the naked honesty of prose. God bless you, and all your little domestic circle-my tenderest remembrances to your beloved Sara, and a smile and a kiss from me to your dear dear little David Hartley. The verses I refer to 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? 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 And sometimes prompt an honest rhyme. Long, long, within my aching heart That Lloyd will sometimes think on me. "O Coleridge, would to God you were in London with us, or we two at Stowey with "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 'Comus,' and Fletcher in that exquisite If so, say so. I long, I yearn, with all the thing ycleped the 'Faithful Shepherdess,' longings of a child do I desire to see you, to where they both use eight-syllable lines. But this latter half was finished in great baste, and as a task, not from that impulse which affects the name of inspiration. "By the way, I have lit upon Fairfax's 'Godfrey of Bullen,' for half-a-crown. Rejoice with me. "Poor dear Lloyd! I had a letter from him yesterday; his state of mind is truly alarming. He has, by his own confession, kept a letter of mine unopened three weeks, afraid, he says, to open it, lest I should speak upbraidingly to him; and yet this very letter of mine was in answer to one, wherein he informed me that an alarming illness had alone prevented him from writing. You will pray with me, I know, for his recovery, for surely, Coleridge, an exquisiteness of feeling like this must border on derangement. But I love him more and more, and will not give up the hope of his speedy recovery, as he tells me he is under Dr. Darwin's regimen.* "God bless us all, and shield us from insanity, which is 'the sorest malady of all.' "My kind love to your wife and child. "C. LAMB. "Pray write now." As summer advanced, Lamb discerned a hope of compensation for the disappointment of last year, by a visit to Coleridge, and thus expressed his wishes. TO MR. COLERIDGE. "I discern a possibility of my paying you come among you to see the young philosopher, to thank Sara for her last year's invitation in person-to read your tragedy -to read over together our little book-to breathe fresh air-to revive in me vivid images of 'Salutation scenery.' There is a sort of sacrilege in my letting such ideas slip out of my mind and memory. Still that R— remaineth—a thorn in the side of Hope, when she would lean towards Stowey. Here I will leave off, for I dislike to fill up this paper, which involves a question so connected with my heart and soul, with meaner matter or subjects to me less interesting. I can talk, as I can think, nothing else. Thursday. C. LAMB." The visit was enjoyed; the book was published; and Lamb was once more left to the daily labours of the India House and the unceasing anxieties of his home. His feelings, on the recurrence of the season, which had, last year, been darkened by his terrible calamity, will be understood from the first of two pieces of blank verse, which fill the two first sheets of a letter to Coleridge, written under an apprehension of some neglect on the part of his friend, which had its cause in no estrangement of Coleridge's affections, but in the vicissitudes of the imaginative philosopher's fortune and the constancy of his day-dreamings. WRITTEN A TWELVEMONTH AFTER THE EVENTS. a visit next week. May I, can I, shall I, [Friday next, Coleridge, is the day on which my mother come as soon ? Have you room for me, leisure for me, and are you all pretty well? Tell me all this honestly--immediately. And by what day-coach could I come soonest and Dearest to Stowey? A few months hence may suit you better; certainly me, as well. • Poor Charles Lloyd! These apprehensions were sadly realised. Delusions of the most melancholy kind thickened over his latter days-yet left his admirable intellect free for the finest processes of severe reasoning. At a time when, like Cowper, he believed himself the especial subject of Divine wrath, he could bear his part in the most subtle disquisition on questions of religion, morals, and poetry, with the nicest accuracy of perception and the most exemplary candour; and, after an argument of hours, revert, with a faint smile, to his own despair! died.] Alas! how am I chang'd! where be the tears, O' the valley all must tread. Lend us thy balms, Give us new flesh, new birth; Elect of heaven Thou and I, dear friend, Be witness for me, Lord, I do not ask Vain loves, and "wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid:" (Child of the dust as I am,) who so long My foolish heart steep'd in idolatry, And creature-loves. Forgive it, O my Maker! If in a mood of grief, I sin almost In sometimes brooding on the days long past, Of friend, or playmate dear, gone are ye now. "The following I wrote when I had returned from C. Lloyd, leaving him behind at Burton, with Southey. To understand some of it, you must remember that at that time he was very much perplexed in mind. A stranger, and alone, I past those scenes Whose soul is sore perplexed. Shine thou on him, [Note in the margin of MS.] "This is almost literal from a letter of my sister's-less than a year ago." ↑ [Note in the margin of MS.] "Alluding to some of my old play-fellows being, literally, 'on the town,' and some otherwise wretched." The following lines, which Lamb transmitted to his new friend Southey, bespeak the remarkable serenity with which, when the first shock was over and the duties of life-long love arranged, Lamb was able to contemplate the victim of his sister's frenzy:* Thou should'st have longer lived, and to the grave A wayward son oft-times was I to thee • These lines are now first introduced in this Edition; -becoming known to the Editor by their publication in the first volume of "Southey's Life and Correspondence," p. 325, where they appear in a letter from Southey to Mr. Wynn. The Biographer courteously adds, that they would have been sent to the Editor, but that they were not observed till after the publication of the First Edition of these Memorials. Domestic jars, there was I know not what become the minister of a Unitarian congre For this world's chilling friendships, and their smiles gation at Shrewsbury; a hope of short Familiar, whom the heart calls strangers still. A heavy lot hath he, most wretched man, An addition to Lamb's household-cares is thus mentioned in a letter TO MR. COLERIDGE. "December 10th, 1797. "In truth, Coleridge, I am perplexed, and at times almost cast down. I am beset with perplexities. The old hag of a wealthy relation, who took my aunt off our hands in the beginning of trouble, has found out that she is 'indolent and mulish,' I quote her own words, and that her attachment to us is so strong that she can never be happy apart. The lady, with delicate irony, remarks, that if I am not an hypocrite, I shall rejoice to receive her again; and that it will be a means of making me more fond of home to have so dear a friend to come home to! The fact is, she is jealous of my aunt's bestowing any kind recollections on us, while she enjoys the patronage of her roof. She says she finds it inconsistent with her own 'ease and tranquillity,' to keep her any longer; and, in fine, summons me to fetch her home. Now, much as I should rejoice to transplant poor old creature from the chilling air of such patronage, yet I know how straitened we are already, how unable already to answer any demand which sickness or any extraordinary expense may make. I know this, and all unused as I am to struggle with perplexities, I am somewhat nonplussed, to say no worse. This prevents me from a thorough relish of what Lloyd's kindness and your's have furnished me with. I thank you though from my heart, and feel myself not quite alone in the earth." the In 1798, Coleridge seemed to attain a settled home by accepting an invitation to duration. The following letter was addressed by Lamb to him at this time as "S. T. Coleridge "- —as if the Mr. were dropped and the "Reverend" not quite adopted-" at the Reverend A. Rowe's, Shrewsbury, Shropshire." The tables are turned here ;-Lamb, instead of accusing Coleridge of neglect, takes the charge to himself, in deep humility of spirit, and regards the effect of Miss Lamb's renewed illnesses on his mind as inducing indifference, with an affecting selfjealousy. TO MR. COLERIDGE. January 28th, 1798. "You have writ me many kind letters, and I have answered none of them. I don't deserve your attentions. An unnatural indifference has been creeping on me since my last misfortunes, or I should have seized the first opening of a correspondence with you. To you I owe much, under God. In my brief acquaintance with you in London, your conversations won me to the better cause, and rescued me from the polluting spirit of the world. I might have been a worthless character without you; as it is, I do possess a certain improvable portion of devotional feelings, tho' when I view myself in the light of divine truth, and not according to the common measures of human judgment, I am This is no altogether corrupt and sinful. cant. I am very sincere. "These last afflictions, Coleridge, have failed to soften and bend my will. They found me unprepared. My former calamities produced in me a spirit of humility and a spirit of prayer. I thought they had sufficiently disciplined me; but the event ought to humble me; if God's judgments now fail to take away from me the heart of stone, what more grievous trials ought I not to expect? I have been very querulous, impatient under the rod-full of little jealousies and heart burnings.-I had well nigh quarrelled with Charles Lloyd-and for no other reason, I believe, than that the good creature did all he could to make me happy. The truth is, I thought he tried to force my mind from its natural and proper bent; he continually wished me to be from home, he was drawing me from the consideration of my compositions in which any methodising is required; but I thank you sincerely for the hint, and shall receive it as far as I am able, that is, endeavour to engage my mind in some constant and innocent pursuit. I know my capacities better than you do. 66 Accept my kindest love, and believe me yours, as ever. C. L." poor dear Mary's situation, rather than retain little of what I read; am unused to assisting me to gain a proper view of it with religious consolations. I wanted to be left to the tendency of my own mind, in a solitary state, which, in times past, I knew had led to quietness and a patient bearing of the yoke. He was hurt that I was not more constantly with him, but he was living with White, a man to whom I had never been accustomed to impart my dearest feelings, tho' from long habits of friendliness, and many a social and good quality, I loved him At this time, the only literary man whom very much. I met company there sometimes Lamb knew in London was George Dyer, -indiscriminate company. Any society who had been noted as an accomplished almost, when I am in affliction, is sorely scholar, in Lamb's early childhood, at Christ's painful to me. I seem to breathe more freely, Hospital. For him Lamb cherished all the to think more collectedly, to feel more pro- esteem that his guileless simplicity of characperly and calmly, when alone. All these ter and gentleness of nature could inspire; things the good creature did with the kindest in these qualities the friends were akin; but intentions in the world, but they produced in no two men could be more opposite than me nothing but soreness and discontent. I they were to each other, in intellectual qualibecame, as he complained, 'jaundiced' to- fications and tastes-Lamb, in all things wards him... but he has forgiven me and original, and rejoicing in the quaint, the his smile, I hope, will draw all such humours strange, the extravagant; Dyer, the quintfrom me. I am recovering, God be praised essence of learned commonplace; Lamb for it, a healthiness of mind, something like wildly catching the most evanescent spirit of calmness--but I want more religion-I am wit and poetry; Dyer, the wondering disjealous of human helps and leaning-places. ciple of their established forms. Dyer offiI rejoice in your good fortunes. May God ciated as a revering High Priest at the at the last settle you !-You have had many Altar of the Muses-such as they were in and painful trials; humanly speaking they the staid, antiquated trim of the closing years are going to end; but we should rather pray of the eighteenth century, before they formed that discipline may attend us thro' the whole sentimental attachments in Germany, -or of our lives..... A careless and a dissolute flirted with revolutionary France, or renewed spirit has advanced upon me with large their youth by drinking the Spirit of the strides-pray God that my present afflictions Lakes. Lamb esteemed and loved him so may be sanctified to me! Mary is recovering; well, that he felt himself entitled to make but I see no opening yet of a situation for sport with his peculiarities; but it was as her; your invitation went to my very heart, Fielding might sport with his own idea of but you have a power of exciting interest, of Parson Adams; or Goldsmith with his leading all hearts captive, too forcible to Dr. Primrose. The following passage occurs admit of Mary's being with you. I consider in a letter of 28th November, 1798, adher as perpetually on the brink of madness. I think, you would almost make her dance within an inch of the precipice; she must be with duller fancies, and cooler intellects. "I showed my 'Witch,' and 'Dying Lover,' I know a young man of this description, who to Dyer last night, but George could not has suited her these twenty years, and may comprehend how that could be poetry which live to do so still, if we are one day restored did not go upon ten feet, as George and his to each other. In answer to your suggestions predecessors had taught it to do; so George of occupation for me, I must say that I do read me some lectures on the distinguishing not think my capacity altogether suited for qualities of the Ode, the Epigram, and the disquisitions of that kind..... I have read Epic, and went home to illustrate his doctrine, little, I have a very weak memory, and by correcting a proof sheet of his own Lyrics. dressed TO MR. SOUTHEY. |