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 right 'Fortunate 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. 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 favourite: 'No after friendship e'er can raise The endearments of our early days; 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-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 "Lloyd has kindly left me, for a keep-sake, from writing till you invent some more 'John Woolman.' You have read it, he says, reasonable mode of conveyance. Well may and like it. Will you excuse one short ex- the 'ragged followers of the Nine!' set up tract? I think it could not have escaped for flocci-nauci-what-do-you-call-'em-ists! and you. Small treasure to a resigned mind is I do not wonder that in their splendid visions sufficient. How happy is it to be content of Utopias in America, they protest against with a little, to live in humility, and feel that the admission of those yellow-complexioned, in us, which breathes out this language― | copper-coloured, white-livered gentlemen, who Abba! Father!'- - I am almost ashamed never prove themselves their friends! Don't to patch up a letter in this miscellaneous sort you think your verses on a 'Young Ass' -but I please myself in the thought, that too trivial a companion for the Religious anything from me will be acceptable to you. Musings?'-scoundrel monarch,' alter that; I am rather impatient, childishly so, to see and the 'Man of Ross' is scarce admissible, our names affixed to the same common as it now stands, curtailed of its fairer half : 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? -there would be room for imagination. Or the description (from a Vision or Dream, suppose) of an Utopia in one of the planets (the moon for instance.) Or a Five Days' Dream, which shall illustrate, in sensible 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 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 she left the asylum and took up her abode 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! somewhat hurt, Dyer says, by the accusation was given; at all events, the result was, that 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? 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, "C. LAMB." CHAPTER III. LETTERS TO COLERIDGE AND MANNING IN LAMB'S FIRST [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. 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 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 not ascertain, was derived, that a communication took place, on which a similar pledge TO MR. COLERIDGE. "1797. worth, I should wish to make a part of our little volume. I shall be sorry if that volume comes out, as it necessarily must do, Lloyd takes up his abode at the Bull and Mouth Inn; the Cat and Salutation would have had a charm more forcible for me. O noctes cœnæque Deûm! AngliceWelch rabbits, punch, and poesy. Should you be induced to publish those very schoolboy-ish verses, print 'em as they will occur, if at all, in the Monthly Magazine; yet I should feel ashamed that to you I wrote nothing better: but they are too personal, and almost trifling and obscure withal. Some lines of mine to Cowper were in last Monthly Magazine; they have not body of thought enough to plead for the retaining of 'em. My sister's kind love to you all. unless you print those very schoolboy-ish you all. 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. To cheerless, friendless solitude 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 nearest 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, And heal our cleansed bosoms of the wounds 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 I pray not for myself: I pray for him 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 former of these poems I wrote with unusual celerity t'other morning at office. I expect you to like it better than anything of mine; Lloyd does, and I do myself. "You use Lloyd very ill, never writing to him. I tell you again that his is not a mind with which you should play tricks. He deserves more tenderness from you. "For myself, I must spoil a little passage of Beaumont and Fletcher to adapt it to my feelings : 'I am prouder That I was once your friend, tho' now forgot, Than to have had another true to me.' If you don't write to me now, as I told Lloyd, I shall get angry, and call you hard names-Manchineel and I don't know what else. I wish you would send me my greatcoat. The snow and the rain season is at hand, and I have but a wretched old coat, once my father's, to keep 'em off, and that is transitory. When time drives flocks from field to fold, I shall remember where I left my coat. Meet emblem wilt thou be, old Winter, of a friend's neglect-cold, cold, cold! "C. LAMB." 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; And yet, in all our little bickerings, 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. |