deviations from that simplicity which was your

aim.

"Hailed who might be near" (the "canvas-coverture moving," by the bye, is laughable); a woman and six children" (by the way,-why not nine children? It would have been just half as pathetic again): "statues of sleep they seemed": "frost-mangled wretch":"green putridity": "hailed him immortal" (rather ludicrous again): "voiced a sad and simple tale" (abominable !): "improvendered": "such his tale":"Ah! suffering to the height of what was suffered" (a most insufferable line): "amazement 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 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.

"Stands in the sun, and with no partial gaze,

Views all creation."

I wish I could have written those lines. I rejoice that I am able to relish them. The loftier walks of Pindus are your proper region. There you have no compeer in modern times. Leave the lowlands, unenvied, in possession of such men as Cowper and Southey. Thus am I pouring balsam into the wounds I may have been inflicting on my poor friend's vanity.

In your notice of Southey's new volume, you omit to mention the most pleasing of all, the "Miniature"

"There were those

Who formed high hopes and flattering ones of thee,
Young Robert!"

"Spirit of Spenser !-was the wanderer wrong?"

Fairfax I have been in quest of a long time. Johnson, in his "Life of Waller," gives a most delicious specimen of him, and adds, in the true manner of that delicate critic, as well as amiable man, "It may be pronounced that this old version will not be much read after the elegant translation of my friend, Mr. Hoole." I endeavored—I wished to gain some idea of Tasso from this Mr. Hoole, the great boast and ornament of the India House, but soon desisted. I found him more vapid than smallest small beer "sun-vinegared." Your "Dream," down to that exquisite line

"I can't tell half his adventures,"

is a most happy resemblance of Chaucer. The remainder is SO SO. The best line, I think, is, "He belongeth, 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 you please by me, 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 I 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 of science. Your proposed "Hymns" will be a fit preparatory study wherewith "to discipline your young no

viciate soul." I grow dull; I'll go walk myself out of my dullness.

Sunday night. You and Sara are very good to think so kindly and so favorably of poor Mary; I would to God all did so too. But I very much fear she must not think of coming home in my father's lifetime. It is very hard upon her; but our circumstances are peculiar, and we must submit to them. God be praised she is so well as she is. She bears her situation as one who has no right to complain. My poor old aunt, whom you have seen, the kindest, goodest creature to me when I was at school; she used to toddle there to bring me good things, when I, school-boy like, only despised her for it, and used to be ashamed to see her come and sit herself down on the old coal-hole steps as you went into the old grammar-school, and open her apron, and bring out her bason, with some nice thing she had caused to be saved for me; the good old creature is now lying on her death-bed. I cannot bear to think on her deplorable state. To the shock she 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 favorite:

"No after friendship e'er can raise

The endearments of our early days;
Nor e'er the heart such fondness prove,
As when it first began to love."

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 any thing 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 one-but 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 ?-there would be room for imagination. Or the description (from a Vision or Dream, suppose) of a Utopia in one of the planets (the moon for instance). Or a Five Days' Dream, which shall illustrate, in sensible imagery, Hartley's five Motives for Conduct :-1. Sensation; 2. Imagination; 3. Ambition; 4. Sympathy; 5. Theopathy:-First. Banquets, music, &c., effeminacy,and their insufficiency. Second. "Beds of hyacinths and roses, where young Adonis oft reposes;" "Fortunate Isles;" "The pagan Elysium," &c.; poetical pictures; antiquity as pleasing to the fancy ;-their emptiness; madness, &c. Third. Warriors, Poets; some famous, yet more forgotten; their fame or oblivion now alike indifferent; pride, vanity, &c. Fourth. All manner of pitiable stories, in Spenser-like verse; love; friendship, relationship, &c. Fifth. Hermits; Christ and his apostles; martyrs; heaven, &c. And an imagination like yours, from these scanty hints, may expand into a thousand great ideas, if indeed you at all comprehend my scheme, which I scarce do myself.

Monday morn.—' "A London letter-Nine-pence halfpenny!" 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-whatdo-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-colored, whitelivered 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 monarchs," alter that; and the "Man of Ross" is scarce admirable, as it now stands, curtailed of its fairer half: reclaim its property from the "Chatterton," which it does but encumber, 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 Rogers is indebted for his story to Locke and a poem by Bruce! I have read the letter. I scarce think you have. Scarce any thing is common to them both. The author of the "Pleasures of Memory" was sorely hurt, Dyer says, by the accusation of unoriginality; he never saw the poem. 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? Do 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? 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,

C. LAMB.

Soon after the date of this letter, death released the father from his state of imbecility, 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