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you that any great alteration is probable in me; sudden converts are superficial and transitory; I only want you to believe that I have stamina of seriousness within me, and that I desire nothing more than a return of that friendly intercourse which used to subsist between us, but which my folly has suspended.

"Believe me, very affectionately, yours,

"C. LAMB."

In 1803 Coleridge visited London, and at his departure left the superintendence of a new edition of his poems to Lamb. The following letter, written in reply to one of Coleridge's, giving a mournful account of his journey to the north with an old man and his influenza, refers to a splendid smokingcap which Coleridge had worn at their evening meetings:

TO MR. COLERIDGE.

"April 13th, 1803.

Night is so bought over, that he can't be a very upright judge. May be the truth is, that one pipe is wholesome; two pipes toothsome; three pipes noisome; four pipes fulsome; five pipes quarrelsome, and that's the sum on't. But that is deciding rather upon rhyme than reason. . . . After all, our instincts may be best. Wine, I am sure, good, mellow, generous Port, can hurt nobody, unless those who take it to excess, which they may easily avoid if they observe the rules of temperance.

“ Bless you, old sophist, who next to human nature taught me all the corruption I was capable of knowing! And bless your Montero cap, and your trail (which shall come after you whenever you appoint), and your wife and children-Pipos especially.

"When shall we two smoke again? Last night I had been in a sad quandary of spirits, in what they call the evening, but a pipe, and some generous Port, and King Lear (being alone), had their effects as solacers. I went to bed pot-valiant. By the way, may not the Ogles of Somersetshire be remotely descended from King Lear.

C. L."

The next letter is prefaced by happy news.

TO MR. COLERIDGE.

"Mary sends love from home.

"1803.

"My dear Coleridge,-Things have gone on better with me since you left me. I expect to have my old housekeeper home again in a week or two. She has mended most rapidly. My health too has been better since you took away that Montero cap. I have left off cayenned eggs and such bolsters to discomfort. There was death in that cap. I mischievously wished that by some inauspicious jolt the whole contents might be shaken, and the coach set on fire; for you "Dear C.,-I do confess that I have not said they had that property. How the old sent your books as I ought to have done; gentleman, who joined you at Grantham, but you know how the human free-will is would have clapt his hands to his knees, and tethered, and that we perform promises to not knowing but it was an immediate visita- ourselves no better than to our friends. A tion of heaven that burnt him, how pious it watch is come for you. Do you want it soon, would have made him; him, I mean, that or shall I wait till some one travels your brought the influenza with him, and only way? You, like me, I suppose, reckon the took places for one-an old sinner; he must lapse of time from the waste thereof, as boys have known what he had got with him! | let a cock run to waste; too idle to stop it, However, I wish the cap no harm for the sake of the head it fits, and could be content to see it disfigure my healthy side-board again.

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and rather amused with seeing it dribble. Your poems have begun printing; Longman sent to me to arrange them, the old and the new together. It seems you have left it to him; so I classed them, as nearly as I could, according to dates. First, after the Dedication, (which must march first,) and which I have transplanted from before the Preface, (which stood like a dead wall of prose between,) to be the first poem-then comes 'The

Pixies,' and the things most juvenile then really, a wonderful man. He mixes public on 'To Chatterton,' &c.-on, lastly, to the and private business, the intricacies of dis'Ode on the Departing Year,' and 'Musings,' ordering life with his religion and devotion. -which finish. Longman wanted the Ode No one more rationally enjoys the romantic first, but the arrangement I have made is scenes of nature, and the chit-chat and little precisely that marked out in the Dedication, vagaries of his children; and, though surfollowing the order of time. I told Long-rounded with an ocean of affairs, the very man I was sure that you would omit a good neatness of his most obscure cupboard in the portion of the first edition. I instanced house passes not unnoticed. I never knew several sonnets, &c.-but that was not his any one view with such clearness, nor so plan, and, as you have done nothing in it, all well satisfied with things as they are, and I could do was to arrange 'em on the sup- make such allowance for things which must position that all were to be retained. A few appear perfect Syriac to him.' By the last I positively rejected; such as that of 'The he means the Lloydisms of the younger Thimble,' and that of 'Flicker and Flicker's branches. His portrait of Charles (exact as wife,' and that not in the manner of Spenser, far as he has had opportunities of noting which you yourself had stigmatised—and him) is most exquisite. 'Charles is become 'The Man of Ross,'-I doubt whether I steady as a church, and as straightforward should this last. It is not too late to save it. as a Roman Road. It would distract him to The first proof is only just come. I have mention anything that was not as plain as been forced to call that Cupid's Elixir, sense; he seems to have run the whole 'Kisses.' It stands in your first volume, as scenery of life, and now rests as the formal an Effusion, so that, instead of prefixing precisian of non-existence.' Here is genius The Kiss to that of 'One Kiss, dear Maid,' I think, and 'tis seldom a young man, a &c., I have ventured to entitle it 'To Sara.' Lloyd, looks at a father (so differing) with I am aware of the nicety of changing even such good nature while he is alive. Writeso mere a trifle as a title to so short a piece, "I am in post-haste, C. LAMB. and subverting old associations; but two "Love, &c., to Sara, P. and H." called "Kisses' would have been absolutely ludicrous, and Effusion' is no name, and these poems come close together. I promise you not to alter one word in any poem whatever, but to take your last text, where two

are.

Can you send any wishes about the book? Longman, I think, should have settled with you; but it seems you have left it to him. Write as soon as you possibly can; for, without making myself responsible,' I feel myself, in some sort, accessary to the selection, which I am to proof-correct; but I decidedly said to Biggs that I was sure you would omit more. Those I have positively rubbed off, I can swear to individually, (except the Man of Ross,' which is too familiar in Pope,) but no others-you have your cue. For my part, I had rather all the Juvenilia were kept-memoriæ causâ.

"Robert Lloyd has written me a masterly letter, containing a character of his father; -see how different from Charles he views the old man! (Literatim.) My father smokes, repeats Homer in Greek, and Virgil, and is learning, when from business, with all the vigour of a young man, Italian. He is,

The next letter, containing a further account of Lamb's superintendence of the new edition, bears the date of Saturday, 27th May, 1803.

TO MR. COLERIDGE.

"My dear Coleridge,―The date of my last was one day prior to the receipt of your letter, full of foul omens. I explain, lest you should have thought mine too light a reply to such sad matter. I seriously hope by this time you have given up all thoughts of journeying to the green Islands of the Blestvoyages in time of war are very precarious -or at least, that you will take them in your way to the Azores. Pray be careful of this letter till it has done its duty, for it is to inform you that I have booked off your watch (laid in cotton like an untimely fruit), and with it Condillac, and all other books of yours which were left here. These will set out on Monday next, the 29th May, by Kendal waggon, from White Horse,

of Spenser' to be restored on Wordsworth's authority; and now, all that you will miss will be Flicker and Flicker's Wife,''The Thimble,' 'Breathe, dear harmonist, and I believe, 'The Child that was fed with Manna.' Another volume will clear off all your Anthologic Morning-Postian Epistolary Miscellanies; but pray don't put 'Christabel' therein; don't let that sweet maid come forth attended with Lady Holland's mob at her heels. Let there be a separate volume of Tales, Choice Tales, 'Ancient Mariners,' &c. "C. LAMB."

addressed

TO MR. WORDSWORTH.

Cripplegate. You will make seasonable inquiries, for a watch mayn't come your way again in a hurry. I have been repeatedly after Tobin, and now hear that he is in the country, not to return till middle of June. I will take care and see him with the earliest. But cannot you write pathetically to him, enforcing a speedy mission of your books for literary purposes? He is too good a retainer to Literature, to let her interests suffer through his default. And why, in the name of Beelzebub, are your books to travel from Barnard's Inn to the Temple, and thence circuitously to Cripplegate, when their business is to take a short cut down Holbornhill, up Snow do., on to Wood-street, &c. ? The following is the fragment of a letter The former mode seems a sad superstitious (part being lost), on the re-appearance of subdivision of labour. Well! the 'Man of the Lyrical Ballads, in two volumes, and Ross' is to stand; Longman begs for it; the printer stands with a wet sheet in one hand, and a useless Pica in the other, in tears, pleading for it; I relent. Besides, it was a Salutation poem, and has the mark of the beast 'Tobacco' upon it. Thus much I have done; I have swept off the lines about widows and orphans in second edition, which (if you remember) you most awkwardly and illogically caused to be inserted between two Ifs, to the great breach and disunion of said Ifs, which now meet again (as in first edition), like two clever lawyers arguing a case. Another reason for subtracting the pathos was, that the 'Man of Ross' is too familiar, to need telling what he did, especially in worse lines than Pope told it, and it now stands simply as ' Reflections at an Inn about a known Character,' and sucking an old story into an accommodation with present feelings. Here is no breaking spears with Pope, but a new, independent, and really a very pretty poem. In fact 'tis as I used to admire it in the first volume, and I have even dared to restore

'If 'neath this roof thy wine-cheer'd moments pass,' for

"Thanks for your letter and present. I had already borrowed your second volume. What most please me are, 'The Song of Lucy;' Simon's sickly daughter, in 'The Sexton' made me cry. Next to these are the description of the continuous echoes in the story of 'Joanna's Laugh,' where the mountains, and all the scenery absolutely seem alive; and that fine Shakspearian character of the 'happy man,' in the 'Brothers,'

-'that creeps about the fields,
Following his fancies by the hour, to bring
Tears down his cheek, or solitary smiles
Into his face, until the setting sun
Write Fool upon his forehead!'

I will mention one more― -the delicate and curious feeling in the wish for the 'Cumberland Beggar,' that he may have about him the melody of birds, altho' he hear them not. Here the mind knowingly passes a fiction upon herself, first substituting her own feelings for the Beggar's, and in the same breath detecting the fallacy, will not part with the wish. The 'Poet's Epitaph' is disfigured, to my taste, by the common 'Cheer'd' is a sad general word, 'wine-cheer'd' satire upon parsons and lawyers in the I'm sure you'd give me, if I had a speaking- beginning, and the coarse epithet of 'pintrumpet to sound to you 300 miles. But I point,' in the sixth stanza. All the rest is am your factotum, and that save in this eminently good, and your own. I will just instance, which is a single case, and I can't add that it appears to me a fault in the get at you, shall be next to a fac-nihil-at 'Beggar,' that the instructions conveyed in most, a fuc-simile. I have ordered 'Imitation it are too direct, and like a lecture: they

'Beneath this roof if thy cheer'd moments pass.'

don't slide into the mind of the reader while remarks, because I am hurt and vexed that you should think it necessary, with a prose apology, to open the eyes of dead men that cannot see.

he is imagining no such matter. An intelligent reader finds a sort of insult in being told, I will teach you how to think upon this subject.' This fault, if I am right, is in a ten-thousandth worse degree to be found in Sterne, and many many novelists and modern poets, who continually put a signpost up to show where you are to feel. They set out with assuming their readers to be stupid; very different from 'Robinson Crusoe,' 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' 'Roderick Random,' and other beautiful, bare narratives. There is implied an unwritten compact between author and reader; "I will tell you a story, and I suppose you will understand Modern novels, 'St. Leons' and the like, are full of such flowers as these-Let not my reader suppose,' 'Imagine, if you can, modest!' &c. I will here have done with praise and blame. I have written so much, only that you may not think I have passed over your book without observation. . . . . I am sorry that Coleridge has christened his 'Ancient Marinere' 'a Poet's Reverie;' it is as bad as Bottom the Weaver's declaration that he is not a lion, but only the scenical representation of a lion. What new idea is gained by this title but one subversive of all credit which the tale should force upon us, -of its truth!

it.'

For me, I was never so affected with any human tale. After first reading it, I was totally possessed with it for many days. I dislike all the miraculous part of it, but the feelings of the man under the operation of such scenery, dragged me along like Tom Pipes's magic whistle. I totally differ from your idea that the 'Marinere' should have had a character and profession. This is a beauty in 'Gulliver's Travels,' where the mind is kept in a placid state of little wonderments; but the 'Ancient Marinere' undergoes such trials as overwhelm and bury all individuality or memory of what he waslike the state of a man in a bad dream, one terrible peculiarity of which is, that all consciousness of personality is gone. Your other observation is, I think as well, a little unfounded: the Marinere,' from being conversant in supernatural events, has acquired a supernatural and strange cast of phrase, eye, appearance, &c., which frighten the 'wedding-guest.' You will excuse my

"To sum up a general opinion of the second volume, I do not feel any one poem in it so forcibly as the 'Ancient Marinere,' the 'Mad Mother,' and the Lines at Tintern Abbey' in the first."

The following letter was addressed, on 28th September, 1805, when Lamb was bidding his generous farewell to Tobacco, to Wordsworth, then living in noble poverty with his sister in a cottage by Grasmere, which is as sacred to some of his old admirers as even Shakspeare's House.

TO MR. WORDSWORTH.

"My dear Wordsworth (or Dorothy rather, for to you appertains the biggest part of this answer by right), I will not again deserve reproach by so long a silence. I have kept deluding myself with the idea that Mary would write to you, but she is so lazy (or I believe the true state of the case, so diffident), that it must revert to me as usual: though she writes a pretty good style, and has some notion of the force of words, she is not always so certain of the true orthography of them; and that, and a poor handwriting (in this age of female calligraphy), often deters her, where no other reason does.*

"We have neither of us been very well for some weeks past. I am very nervous, and she most so at those times when I am; so that a merry friend, adverting to the noble consolation we were able to afford each other, denominated us, not unaptly, GumBoil and Tooth-Ache, for they used to say that a gum-boil is a great relief to a toothache.

"We have been two tiny excursions this summer for three or four days each, to a place near Harrow, and to Egham, where Cooper's Hill is: and that is the total history of our rustications this year. Alas! how poor a round to Skiddaw and Helvellyn, and Borrowdale, and the magnificent sesquipedalia of the year 1802. Poor old Molly! to have lost her pride, that last infirmity of This is mere banter; Miss Lamb wrote a very good hand.

TO MR. HAZLITT.

"Dear H.-I am a little surprised at no letter from you. This day week, to wit, Saturday,

noble minds,' and her cow. Fate need not scarcely conscious of his own literary powers, have set her wits to such an old Molly. I was striving hard to become a painter. At am heartily sorry for her. Remember us the period of the following letter (which is lovingly to her; and in particular remember dated 15th March, 1806) Hazlitt was residing us to Mrs. Clarkson in the most kind manner. with his father, an Unitarian minister, at "I hope, by 'southwards,' you mean that Wem. she will be at or near London, for she is a great favourite of both of us, and we feel for her health as much as possible for any one to do. She is one of the friendliest, comfortablest women we know, and made our the 8th of March, 1806, I book'd off by the little stay at your cottage one of the pleasantest times we ever past. We were quite strangers to her. Mr. C. is with you too; our kindest separate remembrances to him. As to our special affairs, I am looking about me. I have done nothing since the beginning of last year, when I lost my newspaper job, and having had a long idleness, I must do something, or we shall get very poor. Sometimes I think of a farce, but hitherto all schemes have gone off; an idle brag or two of an evening, vapouring out of a pipe, and going off in the morning; but now I have bid farewell to my 'sweet enemy,' Tobacco, as you will see in my next page,* I shall perhaps set nobly to work. Hang work!

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Wem coach, Bull and Mouth Inn, directed to you, at the Rev. Mr. Hazlitt's, Wem, Shropshire, a parcel containing, besides a book, &c., a rare print, which I take to be a Titian; begging the said W. H. to acknowledge the receipt thereof; which he not having done, I conclude the said parcel to be lying at the inn, and may be lost; for which reason, lest you may be a Wales-hunting at this instant, I have authorised any of your family, whosoever first gets this, to open it, that so precious a parcel may not moulder away for want of looking after. What do you in Shropshire when so many fine pictures are a-going a-going every day in London ? Monday I visit the Marquis of Lansdowne's, in Berkeley Square. Catalogue 2s. 6d. Leonardos in plenty. Some other day this week, I go to see Sir Wm. Young's, in Stratford Place. Hulse's, of Blackheath, are also to be sold this month, and in May, the first private collection in Europe, Welbore Ellis Agar's. And there are you perverting Nature in lying landscapes, filched from old rusty Titians, such as I can scrape up here to send you, with an additament from Shropshire nature thrown in to make the whole look unnatural. I am afraid of your mouth watering when I tell you that Manning and I got into Angerstein's on Wednesday. Mon Dieu! Such Claudes! Four Claudes bought for more than 10,000l. (those who talk of Wilson being equal to Claude are either mainly ignorant or stupid); one of these was perfectly miraculous. What colours short of bona fide sunbeams it could be painted in, I am not earthly colourman enough to say; but I did not think it had been in the possibility of things. Then, a music-piece by Titian-a thousand-pound picture-five figures standing behind a piano, the sixth playing; none of the heads, as M. observed, indicating great men, or affecting it, but so

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