The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 2

which had been printed in Coleridge's _Poems_, 1796. The second, third and fourth of the sonnets that are copied in this letter were printed in the second edition of Coleridge's _Poems_, 1797. Anna is generally supposed to be Ann Simmons, referred to in the previous note.

Concerning "Flocci-nauci-what-d'ye-call-'em-ists," Canon Ainger has the following interesting note: "'Flocci, nauci' is the beginning of a rule in the old Latin grammars, containing a list of words signifying 'of no account,' _floccus_ being a lock of wool, and _naucus_ a trifle. Lamb was recalling a sentence in one of Shenstone's Letters:--'I loved him for nothing so much as his flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication of money.'"

But "Pantisocratists" was, of course, the word that Lamb was shadowing.

Pantisocracy, however--the new order of common living and high thinking, to be established on the banks of the Susquehanna by Coleridge, Southey, Favell, Burnett and others--was already dead.

William c.u.mberland Cruikshank, the anatomist, who attended Lamb's brother, had attended Dr. Johnson in his last illness.

Le Grice's pamphlet was _A General Theorem for A******* Coll.

Declamation_, by Gronovius, 1796.

Southey and Coleridge had been on somewhat strained terms for some time; possibly, as I have said in the previous note, owing to Southey's abandonment of Pantisocratic fervour, which antic.i.p.ated Coleridge's by some months. Also, to marry sisters does not always lead to serenity.

The spiriting away of Coleridge had been effected by Southey in January, 1795, when he found Coleridge at the Angel in Butcher Hall Street (_vice_ the Salutation in Newgate Street) and bore him back to Bristol and the forlorn Sara Fricker, and away from Lamb, journalism and egg-hot.

Moschus was, as we have seen, Robert Lovell. No. V. of _The Watchman_ contained sonnets by him.

The review of Burke's _Letter to a n.o.ble Lord_ was in No. I. of _The Watchman._--The pa.s.sage from "Religious Musings," under the t.i.tle "The Present State of Society," was in No. II.--extending from line 260 to 357. [These lines were 279-378 1st ed.; 264-363 2nd ed.] The capital line in No. VI. is in the poem, "Lines on Observing a Blossom on the First of February, 1796."--Poor dead Parsons would be William Parsons (1736-1795), the original Sir Fretful Plagiary in Sheridan's "Critic."

Lamb praises him in his essay on the Artificial Comedy.--In No. IX. of _The Watchman_ were prose paraphrases of three Sclavonian songs, the first being "Song of a Female Orphan," and the second, "Song of the Haymakers."--John Logan's "Braes of Yarrow" had been quoted in No. III.

as "the most exquisite performance in our language."--The invective against "the barterers" refers to the denunciation of the slave trade in No. IV. of _The Watchman_.

Cowper's recovery was only partial; and he was never rightly himself after 1793. The edition of Milton had been begun about 1790. It was never finished as originally intended; but Fuseli completed forty pictures, which were exhibited in 1799. An edition of Cowper's translations, with designs by Flaxman, was published in 1808, and of Cowper's complete Milton in 1810.

Wordsworth's poem would be "Guilt and Sorrow," of which a portion was printed in _Lyrical Ballads,_ 1798, and the whole published in 1842.

Coleridge's "Monody on Chatterton," the first poem in his _Poems on Various Subjects_, 1796, had been written originally at Christ's Hospital, 1790: it continued to be much altered before the final version.

The two lines from "Religious Musings" are not the last, but the beginning of the last pa.s.sage.

Coleridge contributed between three and four hundred lines to Book II.

of Southey's _Joan of Arc_, as we shall see later. The poem beginning "My Pensive Sara" was Effusion 35, afterwards called "The aeolian Harp,"

and the lines to which Lamb refers are these, following upon Coleridge's description of how flitting phantasies traverse his indolent and pa.s.sive brain:--

But thy more serious eye a mild reproof Darts, O beloved Woman! nor such thoughts Dim and unhallow'd dost thou not reject, And biddest me walk humbly with my G.o.d.

The plan to resume _The Watchman_ did not come to anything.

Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), the theologian, at this time the object of Lamb's adoration, was one of the fathers of Unitarianism, a creed in which Lamb had been brought up under the influence of his Aunt Hetty.

Coleridge, as a supporter of one of Priestley's allies, William Frend of Cambridge, and as a convinced Unitarian, was also an admirer of Priestley, concerning whom and the Birmingham riots of 1791 is a fine pa.s.sage in "Religious Musings," while one of the sonnets of the 1796 volume was addressed to him: circ.u.mstances which Lamb had in mind when mentioning him in this letter. Lamb had probably seen Priestley at the Gravel Pit Chapel, Hackney, where he became morning preacher in December, 1791, remaining there until March, 1794. Thenceforward he lived in America. His _Inst.i.tutes of Natural and Revealed Religion_ appeared between 1772 and 1774. The other work referred to is _Letters to the Philosophers and Politicians of France_, newly edited by Theophilus Lindsey, the Unitarian, as _An Answer to Mr. Paine's "Age of Reason_," 1795.]

LETTER 3

CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE

[Begun Wednesday, June 8. Dated on address: "Friday 10th June," 1796.]

With Joan of Arc I have been delighted, amazed. I had not presumed to expect any thing of such excellence from Southey. Why the poem is alone sufficient to redeem the character of the age we live in from the imputation of degenerating in Poetry, were there no such beings extant as Burns and Bowles, Cowper and----fill up the blank how you please, I say nothing. The subject is well chosen. It opens well. To become more particular, I will notice in their order a few pa.s.sages that chiefly struck me on perusal. Page 26 "Fierce and terrible Benevolence!" is a phrase full of grandeur and originality. The whole context made me feel _possess'd_, even like Joan herself. Page 28, "it is most horrible with the keen sword to gore the finely fibred human frame" and what follows pleased me mightily. In the 2d Book the first forty lines, in particular, are majestic and high-sounding. Indeed the whole vision of the palace of Ambition and what follows are supremely excellent. Your simile of the Laplander "by Niemi's lake Or Balda Zhiok, or the mossy stone Of Solfar Kapper"--will bear comparison with any in Milton for fullness of circ.u.mstance and lofty-pacedness of Versification. Southey's similes, tho' many of 'em are capital, are all inferior. In one of his books the simile of the Oak in the Storm occurs I think four times! To return, the light in which you view the heathen deities is accurate and beautiful. Southey's personifications in this book are so many fine and faultless pictures. I was much pleased with your manner of accounting for the reason why Monarchs take delight in War. At the 447th line you have placed Prophets and Enthusiasts cheek by jowl, on too intimate a footing for the dignity of the former. Necessarian-like-speaking it is correct. Page 98 "Dead is the Douglas, cold thy warrior frame, ill.u.s.trious Buchan" &c are of kindred excellence with Gray's "Cold is Cadwallo's tongue" &c. How famously the Maid baffles the Doctors, Seraphic and Irrefragable, "with all their trumpery!" 126 page, the procession, the appearances of the Maid, of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d son of Orleans and of Tremouille, are full of fire and fancy, and exquisite melody of versification. The personifications from line 303 to 309 in the heat of the battle had better been omitted, they are not very striking and only enc.u.mber. The converse which Joan and Conrade hold on the Banks of the Loire is altogether beautiful. Page 313, the conjecture that in Dreams "all things are that seem" is one of those conceits which the Poet delights to admit into his creed--a creed, by the way, more marvellous and mystic than ever Athanasius dream'd of. Page 315, I need only _mention_ those lines ending with "She saw a serpent gnawing at her heart"!!! They are good imitative lines "he toild and toild, of toil to reap no end, but endless toil and never ending woe." 347 page, Cruelty is such as Hogarth might have painted her. Page 361, all the pa.s.sage about Love (where he seems to confound conjugal love with Creating and Preserving love) is very confused and sickens me with a load of useless personifications. Else that 9th Book is the finest in the volume, an exquisite combination of the ludicrous and the terrible,--I have never read either, even in translation, but such as I conceive to be the manner of Dante and Ariosto. The 10th book is the most languid. On the whole, considering the celerity wherewith the poem was finish'd, I was astonish'd at the infrequency of weak lines. I had expected to find it verbose. Joan, I think, does too little in Battle--Dunois, perhaps, the same--Conrade too much. The anecdotes interspersed among the battles refresh the mind very agreeably, and I am delighted with the very many pa.s.sages of simple pathos abounding throughout the poem--pa.s.sages which the author of "Crazy Kate" might have written. Has not Master Southey spoke very slightingly in his preface and disparagingly of Cowper's Homer?--what makes him reluctant to give Cowper his fame? And does not Southey use too often the expletives "did" and "does"? They have a good effect at times, but are too inconsiderable, or rather become blemishes, when they mark a style. On the whole, I expect Southey one day to rival Milton. I already deem him equal to Cowper, and superior to all living Poets besides. What says Coleridge? The "Monody on Henderson" is _immensely good_; the rest of that little volume is _readable and above mediocrity_. I proceed to a more pleasant task,--pleasant because the poems are yours, pleasant because you impose the task on me, and pleasant, let me add, because it will confer a whimsical importance on me to sit in judgment upon your rhimes. First tho', let me thank you again and again in my own and my sister's name for your invitations.

Nothing could give us more pleasure than to come, but (were there no other reasons) while my Brother's leg is so bad it is out of the question. Poor fellow, he is very feverish and light headed, but Cruikshanks has p.r.o.nounced the symptoms favorable, and gives us every hope that there will be no need of amputation. G.o.d send, not. We are necessarily confined with him the afternoon and evening till very late, so that I am stealing a few minutes to write to you. Thank you for your frequent letters, you are the only correspondent and I might add the only friend I have in the world. I go no where and have no acquaintance.

Slow of speech, and reserved of manners, no one seeks or cares for my society and I am left alone. Allen calls only occasionally, as tho' it were a duty rather, and seldom stays ten minutes. Then judge how thankful I am for your letters. Do not, however, burthen yourself with the correspondence. I trouble you again so soon, only in obedience to your injunctions. Complaints apart, proceed we to our task. I am called away to tea, thence must wait upon my brother, so must delay till to-morrow. Farewell--Wednesday.

Thursday. I will first notice what is new to me. 13th page. "The thrilling tones that concentrate the soul" is a nervous line, and the 6 first lines of page 14 are very pretty. The 21st effusion a perfect thing. That in the manner of Spencer is very sweet, particularly at the close. The 35th effusion is most exquisite--that line in particular, "And tranquil muse upon tranquillity." It is the very reflex pleasure that distinguishes the tranquillity of a thinking being from that of a shepherd--a modern one I would be understood to mean--a Dametas; one that keeps other people's sheep. Certainly, Coleridge, your letter from Shurton Bars has less merit than most things in your volume; personally, it may chime in best with your own feelings, and therefore you love it best. It has however great merit. In your 4th Epistle that is an exquisite paragraph and fancy-full of "A stream there is which rolls in lazy flow" &c. &c. "Murmurs sweet undersong 'mid jasmine bowers" is a sweet line and so are the 3 next. The concluding simile is far-fetch'd.

"Tempest-honord" is a quaint-ish phrase. Of the Monody on H., I will here only notice these lines, as superlatively excellent. That energetic one, "Shall I not praise thee, Scholar, Christian, friend," like to that beautiful climax of Shakspeare "King, Hamlet, Royal Dane, Father." "Yet memory turns from little men to thee!" "and sported careless round their fellow child." The whole, I repeat it, is immensely good. Yours is a Poetical family. I was much surpriz'd and pleased to see the signature of Sara to that elegant composition, the 5th Epistle. I dare not _criticise_ the Relig Musings, I like not to _select_ any part where all is excellent. I can only admire; and thank you for it in the name of a Christian as well as a Lover of good Poetry. Only let me ask, is not that thought and those words in Young, "Stands in the Sun"? or is it only such as Young in one of his _better moments_ might have writ?

"Believe, thou, O my Soul, Life is a vision, shadowy of truth, And vice and anguish and the wormy grave, Shapes of a dream!" I thank you for these lines, in the name of a Necessarian, and for what follows in next paragraph in the name of a child of fancy. After all you can[not] nor ever will write any thing, with which I shall be so delighted as what I have heard yourself repeat. You came to Town, and I saw you at a time when your heart was yet bleeding with recent wounds. Like yourself, I was sore galled with disappointed Hope. You had "many an holy lay, that mourning, soothed the mourner on his way." I had ears of sympathy to drink them in, and they yet vibrate pleasant on the sense. When I read in your little volume, your 19th Effusion, or the 28th or 29th, or what you call the "Sigh," I think I hear _you_ again. I image to myself the little smoky room at the Salutation and Cat, where we have sat together thro' the winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with Poesy. When you left London, I felt a dismal void in my heart, I found myself cut off at one and the same time from two most dear to me. "How blest with Ye the Path could I have trod of Quiet life." In your conversation you had blended so many pleasant fancies, that they cheated me of my grief.

But in your absence, the tide of melancholy rushd in again, and did its worst Mischief by overwhelming my Reason. I have recoverd. But feel a stupor that makes me indifferent to the hopes and fears of this life. I sometimes wish to introduce a religious turn of mind, but habits are strong things, and my religious fervors are confined alas to some fleeting moments of occasional solitary devotion--A correspondence, opening with you, has roused me a little from my lethargy, and made me conscious of existence. Indulge me in it. I will not be very troublesome. At some future time I will amuse you with an account as full as my memory will permit of the strange turn my phrensy took. I look back upon it at times with a gloomy kind of Envy. For while it lasted I had many many hours of pure happiness. Dream not Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of Fancy, till you have gone mad. All now seems to me vapid; comparatively so. Excuse this selfish digression.

Your monody is so superlatively excellent, that I can only wish it perfect, which I can't help feeling it is not quite. Indulge me in a few conjectures. What I am going to propose would make it more compress'd and I think more energic, tho' I am sensible at the expence of many beautiful lines. Let it begin "Is this the land of song-enn.o.bled line,"

and proceed to "Otway's famish'd form." Then "Thee Chatterton," to "blaze of Seraphim." Then "clad in nature's rich array," to "orient day;" then "but soon the scathing lightning," to "blighted land." Then "Sublime of thought" to "his bosom glows." Then "but soon upon _his_ poor unsheltered head Did Penury her sickly Mildew shed, and soon are fled the charms of vernal Grace, and Joy's wild gleams that lightend o'er his face!" Then "Youth of tumultuous soul" to "sigh" as before. The rest may all stand down to "gaze upon the waves below." What follows now may come next, as detached verses, suggested by the Monody, rather than a part of it. They are indeed in themselves very sweet "And we at sober eve would round thee throng, Hanging enraptured on thy stately song"--in particular perhaps. If I am obscure you may understand me by counting lines. I have proposed omitting 24 lines. I feel that thus comprest it would gain energy, but think it most likely you will not agree with me, for who shall go about to bring opinions to the Bed of Procrustes and introduce among the Sons of Men a monotony of identical feelings. I only propose with diffidence. Reject, you, if you please, with as little remorse as you would the color of a coat or the pattern of a buckle where our fancies differ'd. The lines "Friend to the friendless" &c.

which you may think "rudely disbranched" from the Chatterton will patch in with the Man of Ross, where they were once quite at Home, with 2 more which I recollect "and o'er the dowried virgin's snowy cheek bad bridal love suffuse his blushes meek!" very beautiful. The Pixies is a perfect thing, and so are the lines on the spring, page 28. The Epitaph on an Infant, like a Jack of lanthorn, has danced about (or like Dr. Forster's scholars) out of the Morn Chron into the Watchman, and thence back into your Collection. It is very pretty, and you seem to think so, but, may be o'er looked its chief merit, that of filling up a whole page. I had once deemd Sonnets of unrivalled use that way, but your epitaphs, I find, are the more diffuse. Edmund still holds its place among your best verses. "Ah! fair delights" to "roses round" in your Poem called Absence recall (none more forcibly) to my mind the tones in which _you recited it_. I will not notice in this tedious (to you) manner verses which have been so long delightful to me, and which you already know my opinion of.

Of this kind are Bowles, Priestly, and that most exquisite and most Bowles-like of all, the 19th Effusion. It would have better ended with "agony of care." The last 2 lines are obvious and unnecessary and you need not now make 14 lines of it, now it is rechristend from a Sonnet to an Effusion. Schiller might have written the 20 Effusion. 'Tis worthy of him in any sense. I was glad to meet with those lines you sent me, when my Sister was so ill. I had lost the Copy, and I felt not a little proud at seeing my name in your verse. The complaint of Ninathoma (1st stanza in particular) is the best, or only good imitation, of Ossian I ever saw--your restless gale excepted. "To an infant" is most sweet--is not "foodful," tho', very harsh! would not "dulcet" fruit be less harsh, or some other friendly bi-syllable? In Edmund, "Frenzy fierce-eyed child,"

is not so well as frantic--tho' that is an epithet adding nothing to the meaning. Slander _couching_ was better than squatting. In the Man of Ross it _was_ a better line thus "If 'neath this roof thy wine-chear'd moments pa.s.s" than as it stands now. Time nor nothing can reconcile me to the concluding 5 lines of Kosciusko: call it any thing you will but sublime. In my 12th Effusion I had rather have seen what I wrote myself, tho' they bear no comparison with your exquisite lines "On rose-leaf'd beds amid your faery bowers," &c.--I love my sonnets because they are the reflected images of my own feelings at different times. To instance, in the 13th "How reason reel'd," &c.--are good lines but must spoil the whole with ME who know it is only a fiction of yours and that the rude dashings did in fact NOT ROCK me to REPOSE, I grant the same objection applies not to the former sonnet, but still I love my own feelings. They are dear to memory, tho' they now and then wake a sigh or a tear.

"Thinking on divers things foredone," I charge you, Col., spare my ewe lambs, and tho' a Gentleman may borrow six lines in an epic poem (I should have no objection to borrow 500 and without acknowledging) still in a Sonnet--a personal poem--I do not "ask my friend the aiding verse."

I would not wrong your feelings by proposing any improvements (did I think myself capable of suggesting 'em) in such personal poems as "Thou bleedest my poor heart"--'od so, I am catchd, I have already done it--but that simile I propose abridging would not change the feeling or introduce any alien ones. Do you understand me? In the 28th however, and in the "Sigh" and that composed at Clevedon, things that come from the heart direct, not by the medium of the fancy, I would not suggest an alteration. When my blank verse is finished, or any long fancy poems, "_propino tibi alterandum, cut-up-andum, abridg-andum_," just what you will with it--but spare my EWE LAMBS! That to Mrs. Siddons now you were welcome to improve, if it had been worth it. But I say unto you again, Col., spare my EWE LAMBS. I must confess were they mine I should omit, in Editione secunda, Effusions 2-3, because satiric, and below the dignity of the poet of Religious Musings, 5-7, half of the 8th, that written in early Youth, as far as "Thousand eyes,"--tho' I part not unreluctantly with that lively line "Chaste Joyance dancing in her bright-blue eyes" and one or 2 more just thereabouts. But I would subst.i.tute for it that sweet poem called "Recollection" in the 5th No.

of the Watchman, better I think than the remainder of this poem, tho'

not differing materially. As the poem now stands it looks altogether confused. And do not omit those lines upon the "early blossom," in your 6th No. of the Watchman, and I would omit the 10th Effusion--or what would do better, alter and improve the last 4 lines. In fact, I suppose if they were mine I should _not_ omit 'em. But your verse is for the most part so exquisite, that I like not to see aught of meaner matter mixed with it. Forgive my petulance and often, I fear, ill founded criticisms, and forgive me that I have, by this time, made your eyes and head ach with my long letter. But I cannot forego hastily the pleasure and pride of thus conversing with you.

You did not tell me whether I was to include the Conciones ad Populum in my remarks on your poems. They are not unfrequently sublime, and I think you could not do better than to turn 'em into verse,--if you have nothing else to do. Allen I am sorry to say is a _confirmed_ Atheist.

Stodart, or Stothard, a cold hearted well bred conceited disciple of G.o.dwin, does him no good. His wife has several daughters (one of 'em as old as himself). Surely there is something unnatural in such a marriage.

How I sympathise with you on the dull duty of a reviewer, and heartily d.a.m.n with you Ned Evans and the Prosodist. I shall however wait impatiently for the articles in the Crit. Rev., next month, because they are _yours_. Young Evans (W. Evans, a branch of a family you were once so intimate with) is come into our office, and sends his love to you.

Coleridge, I devoutly wish that Fortune, who has made sport with you so long, may play one freak more, throw you into London, or some spot near it, and there snug-ify you for life. 'Tis a selfish but natural wish for me, cast as I am "on life's wide plain, friend-less." Are you acquainted with Bowles? I see, by his last Elegy (written at Bath), you are near neighbours. "And I can think I can see the groves again--was it the voice of thee--Twas not the voice of thee, my buried friend--who dries with her dark locks the tender tear"--are touches as true to nature as any in his other Elegy, written at the hot wells, about poor Russell, &c.--You are doubtless acquainted with it.--Thursday.

I do not know that I entirely agree with you in your stricture upon my Sonnet to Innocence. To men whose hearts are not quite deadened by their commerce with the world, Innocence (no longer familiar) becomes an awful idea. So I felt when I wrote it. Your other censures (qualified and sweeten'd, tho', with praises somewhat extravagant) I perfectly coincide with. Yet I chuse to retain the word "lunar"--indulge a "lunatic" in his loyalty to his mistress the moon. I have just been reading a most pathetic copy of verses on Sophia Pringle, who was hanged and burn'd for coining. One of the strokes of pathos (which are very many, all somewhat obscure) is "She lifted up her guilty forger to heaven." A note explains by forger her right hand with which she forged or coined the base metal!

For pathos read bathos. You have put me out of conceit with my blank verse by your Religious Musings. I think it will come to nothing. I do not like 'em enough to send 'em. I have just been reading a book, which I may be too partial to, as it was the delight of my childhood; but I will recommend it to you--it is "Izaak Walton's Complete Angler!" All the scientific part you may omit in reading. The dialogue is very simple, full of pastoral beauties, and will charm you. Many pretty old verses are interspersed. This letter, which would be a week's work reading only, I do not wish you to answer in less than a month. I shall be richly content with a letter from you some day early in July--tho' if you get any how _settled_ before then pray let me know it immediately-- 'twould give me such satisfaction. Concerning the Unitarian chapel, the salary is the only scruple that the most rigid moralist would admit as valid. Concerning the tutorage--is not the salary low, and absence from your family unavoidable? London is the only fostering soil for Genius.

Nothing more occurs just now, so I will leave you in mercy one small white spot empty below, to repose your eyes upon, fatigued as they must be with the wilderness of words they have by this time painfully travell'd thro'. G.o.d love you, Coleridge, and prosper you thro' life, tho' mine will be loss if your lot is to be cast at Bristol or at Nottingham or any where but London. Our loves to Mrs. C--.

C. L.

[Southey's _Joan of Arc_, with contributions to Book II. by Coleridge, had been published in quarto by Cottle. Coleridge contributed to Book II. the first 450 lines, with the exception of 141-143, 148-222, 266-272 and 286-291. He subsequently took out his lines and gave them new shape as the poem "The Destiny of Nations," printed in _Sibylline Leaves_, 1817. All subsequent editions of Southey's poem appeared without Coleridge's portion. The pa.s.sages on page 26 and page 28 were Southey's.

Those at the beginning of the second book were Coleridge's. The simile of the Laplander may be read in "The Destiny of Nations" (lines 63-79).

These were the reasons given by Coleridge for monarchs making war:--

When Luxury and l.u.s.t's exhausted stores No more can rouse the appet.i.tes of KINGS; When the low Flattery of their reptile Lords Falls flat and heavy on the accustomed ear; When Eunuchs sing, and Fools buffoon'ry make.

And Dancers writhe their harlot limbs in vain: Then War and all its dread vicissitudes Pleasingly agitate their stagnant hearts....

The 447th line was Coleridge's. This is the pa.s.sage:--

Whether thy LAW with unrefracted Ray Beam on the PROPHET'S purged Eye, or if Diseasing Realms the ENTHUSIAST, wild of thought, Scatter new frenzies on the infected Throng, THOU, Both inspiring and foredooming, Both Fit INSTRUMENTS and best of perfect END.

With page 98 we come to Southey again, the remaining references being to him. The maid baffles the doctors in Book III.; page 126 is in Book IV.; the personifications are in Book VI.; the converse between Joan and Conrade is in Book IV.; page 313 is at the beginning of Book IX.; and pages 315, 347 and 361 are also in Book IX. Southey in the preface to _Joan of Arc_, speaking of Homer, says: "Pope has disguised him in fop-finery and Cowper has stripped him naked." "Crazy Kate" is an episode in _The Task_ ("The Sofa").

The "Monody on John Henderson," by Joseph Cottle, was printed anonymously in a volume of poems in 1795, and again in _The Malvern Hill_. John Henderson (1757-1788) was an eccentric scholar of Bristol.

The lines praised by Lamb are the 4th, 12th and 14th. The poem must not be confused with the Monody on Henderson, the actor, by G. D. Harley.

Lamb now turns again to Coleridge's _Poems_. The poem on the 13th and 14th pages of this little volume was "To the Rev. W. J. H." The 21st Effusion was that ent.i.tled "Composed while Climbing the Left Ascent of Brockley Coomb." The 35th Effusion is known as "The AEolian Harp." The letter from Shurton Bars is the poem beginning--

Nor travels my meand'ring eye.