The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 13

[Coleridge intended to print in his new edition the lines that he had contributed to Southey's _Joan of Arc_, 1796, with certain additions, under the t.i.tle "The Progress of Liberty; or, The Visions of the Maid of Orleans." Writing to Cottle Coleridge had said: "I much wish to send _My Visions of the Maid of Arc_ and my corrections to Wordsworth ... and to Lamb, whose taste and _judgment_ I see reason to think more correct and philosophical than my own, which yet I place pretty high." Lamb's criticisms are contained in this letter. Coleridge abandoned his idea of including the poem in the 1797 edition, and the lines were not separately published until 1817, in _Sibylline Leaves_, under the t.i.tle "The Destiny of Nations."

"Montauban ... Roubigne." An ill.u.s.tration from Henry Mackenzie's novel _Julia de Roubigne_, 1777, from which Lamb took hints, a little later, for the structure of part of his story _Rosamund Gray_.

This is the pa.s.sage in "Religious Musings" that Lamb particularly praises:--

There is one Mind, one omnipresent Mind, Omnific. His most holy name is Love.

Truth of subliming import! with the which Who feeds and saturates his constant soul, He from his small particular orbit flies With blest outstarting! From himself he flies, Stands in the sun, and with no partial gaze Views all creation; and he loves it all, And blesses it, and calls it very good!

This is indeed to dwell with the Most High!

Cherubs and rapture-trembling Seraphim Can press no nearer to the Almighty's throne.

Southey's new volume, which Coleridge had noticed, was his _Poems_, second edition, Vol. I., 1797. The poem in question was "On My Own Miniature Picture taken at Two Years of Age."

Edward Fairfax's "Ta.s.so" (_G.o.dfrey of Bulloigne, or the Recoverie of Jerusalem_) was published in 1600. John Hoole, a later translator, became princ.i.p.al auditor at the India House, and resigned in 1786. He died in 1803.

Coleridge's dream was the poem called "The Raven."

Citizen John Thelwall (1764-1834), to whom many of Coleridge's early letters are written, was a Jacobin enthusiast who had gone to the Tower with Thomas Hardy and Home Tooke in 1794, but was acquitted at his trial. At this time he was writing and lecturing on political subjects.

When, in 1818, Thelwall acquired _The Champion_ Lamb wrote squibs for it against the Regent and others.

Colson was perhaps Thomas Coulson, a friend of Sir Humphry Davy and the father of Walter Coulson (born? 1794) who was called "The Walking Encyclopaedia," and was afterwards a friend of Hazlitt.

"To discipline your young noviciate soul." A line from "Religious Musings," 1796:--

I discipline my young noviciate thought.

"My poor old aunt." Lamb's lines on his Aunt Hetty repeat some of this praise; as also does the _Elia_ essay on "Christ's Hospital."

John Woolman (1720-1772), an American Quaker. His _Works_ comprise _A Journal of the Life, Gospel, Labours, and Christian Experiences of that Faithful Minister of Jesus Christ, John Woolman_, and _His Last Epistle and other Writings_. Lamb often praised the book.

"A London letter, 9-1/2." A word on the postal system of those days may not be out of place. The cost of the letter when a frank had not been procured was borne by the recipient. The rate varied with the distance.

The charge from London to Bridgewater in 1797 was sevenpence. Later it was raised to ninepence and tenpence. No regular post was set up between Bridgewater and Nether Stowey until 1808, when the cost of the carriage of a letter for the intervening nine miles was twopence.

"Flocci." See note on page II.

"The Young a.s.s," early versions, ended thus:--

Soothe to rest The tumult of some Scoundrel Monarch's breast.

Coleridge changed the last line to--

The aching of pale Fashion's vacant breast.

Coleridge had a.s.serted, in a 1796 note, that Rogers had taken the story of Florio in the _Pleasures of Memory_ from Michael Bruce's _Loch Leven_ (not _Loch Lomond_). In the 1797 edition another note made apology for the mistake.

Cowper's "Lines on the Receipt of my Mother's Picture out of Norfolk"

had been written in the spring of 1790. It is interesting to find Lamb reading them just now, for his own _Blank Verse_ poems, shortly to be written, have much in common with Cowper's verses, not only in manner but in matter.]

LETTER 23

CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE

Feb. 13th, 1797.

Your poem is altogether admirable--parts of it are even exquisite--in particular your personal account of the Maid far surpa.s.ses any thing of the sort in Southey. I perceived all its excellences, on a first reading, as readily as now you have been removing a supposed film from my eyes. I was only struck with [a] certain faulty disproportion in the matter and the _style_, which I still think I perceive, between these lines and the former ones. I had an end in view; I wished to make you reject the poem, only as being discordant with the other; and, in subservience to that end, it was politically done in me to over-pa.s.s, and make no mention of merit which, could you think me capable of _overlooking_, might reasonably d.a.m.n for ever in your judgment all pretensions in me to be critical. There, I will be judged by Lloyd, whether I have not made a very handsome recantation. I was in the case of a man whose friend has asked him his opinion of a certain young lady; the deluded wight gives judgment against her _in toto_--don't like her face, her walk, her manners--finds fault with her eyebrows--can see no wit in her. His friend looks blank; he begins to smell a rat; wind veers about; he acknowledges her good sense, her judgment in dress, a certain simplicity of manners and honesty of heart, something too in her manners which gains upon you after a short acquaintance,--and then her accurate p.r.o.nunciation of the French language and a pretty uncultivated taste in drawing. The reconciled gentleman smiles applause, squeezes him by the hand, and hopes he will do him the honour of taking a bit of dinner with Mrs.--and him--a plain family dinner--some day next week. "For, I suppose, you never heard we were married! I'm glad to see you like my wife, however; you'll come and see her, ha?" Now am I too proud to retract entirely. Yet I do perceive I am in some sort straitened; you are manifestly wedded to this poem, and what fancy has joined let no man separate. I turn me to the Joan of Arc, second book.

The solemn openings of it are with sounds which, Lloyd would say, "are silence to the mind." The deep preluding strains are fitted to initiate the mind, with a pleasing awe, into the sublimest mysteries of theory concerning man's nature and his n.o.blest destination--the philosophy of a first cause--of subordinate agents in creation superior to man--the subserviency of Pagan worship and Pagan faith to the introduction of a purer and more perfect religion, which you so elegantly describe as winning with gradual steps her difficult way northward from Bethabra.

After all this cometh Joan, a _publican's_ daughter, sitting on an ale-house _bench_, and marking the _swingings_ of the _signboard_, finding a poor man, his wife and six children, starved to death with cold, and thence roused into a state of mind proper to receive visions emblematical of equality; which what the devil Joan had to do with, I don't know, or indeed with the French and American revolutions; though that needs no pardon, it is executed so n.o.bly. After all, if you perceive no disproportion, all argument is vain: I do not so much object to parts. Again, when you talk of building your fame on these lines in preference to the "Religious Musings," I cannot help conceiving of you and of the author of that as two different persons, and I think you a very vain man.

I have been re-reading your letter. Much of it I _could_ dispute; but with the latter part of it, in which you compare the two Joans with respect to their predispositions for fanaticism, I _toto corde_ coincide; only I think that Southey's strength rather lies in the description of the emotions of the Maid under the weight of inspiration,--these (I see no mighty difference between _her_ describing them or _you_ describing them), these if you only equal, the previous admirers of his poem, as is natural, will prefer his; if you surpa.s.s, prejudice will scarcely allow it, and I scarce think you will surpa.s.s, though your specimen at the conclusion (I am in earnest) I think very nigh equals them. And in an account of a fanatic or of a prophet the description of her _emotions_ is expected to be most highly finished. By the way, I spoke far too disparagingly of your lines, and, I am ashamed to say, purposely. I should like you to specify or particularise; the story of the "Tottering Eld," of "his eventful years all come and gone,"

is too general; why not make him a soldier, or some character, however, in which he has been witness to frequency of "cruel wrong and strange distress!" I think I should. When I laughed at the "miserable man crawling from beneath the coverture," I wonder I [? you] did not perceive it was a laugh of horror--such as I have laughed at Dante's picture of the famished Ugolino. Without falsehood, I perceive an hundred beauties in your narrative. Yet I wonder you do not perceive something out-of-the way, something unsimple and artificial, in the expression, "voiced a sad tale." I hate made-dishes at the muses'

banquet. I believe I was wrong in most of my other objections. But surely "hailed him immortal," adds nothing to the terror of the man's death, which it was your business to heighten, not diminish by a phrase which takes away all terror from it. I like that line, "They closed their eyes in sleep, nor knew 'twas death." Indeed, there is scarce a line I do not like. "_Turbid_ ecstacy," is surely not so good as what you _had_ written, "troublous." Turbid rather suits the muddy kind of inspiration which London porter confers. The versification is, throughout, to my ears unexceptionable, with no disparagement to the measure of the "Religious Musings," which is exactly fitted to the thoughts.

You were building your house on a rock, when you rested your fame on that poem. I can scarce bring myself to believe, that I am admitted to a familiar correspondence, and all the licence of friendship, with a man who writes blank verse like Milton. Now, this is delicate flattery, _indirect_ flattery. Go on with your "Maid of Orleans," and be content to be second to yourself. I shall become a convert to it, when 'tis finished.

This afternoon I attend the funeral of my poor old aunt, who died on Thursday. I own I am thankful that the good creature has ended all her days of suffering and infirmity. She was to me the "cherisher of infancy," and one must fall on these occasions into reflections which it would be commonplace to enumerate, concerning death, "of chance and change, and fate in human life." Good G.o.d, who could have foreseen all this but four months back! I had reckoned, in particular, on my aunt's living many years; she was a very hearty old woman. But she was a mere skeleton before she died, looked more like a corpse that had lain weeks in the grave, than one fresh dead. "Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun; but let a man live many days and rejoice in them all, yet let him remember the days of darkness, for they shall be many." Coleridge, why are we to live on after all the strength and beauty of existence are gone, when all the life of life is fled, as poor Burns expresses it? Tell Lloyd I have had thoughts of turning Quaker, and have been reading, or am rather just beginning to read, a most capital book, good thoughts in good language, William Penn's "No Cross, no Crown;" I like it immensely. Unluckily I went to one of his meetings, tell him, in St. John Street, yesterday, and saw a man under all the agitations and workings of a fanatic, who believed himself under the influence of some "inevitable presence." This cured me of Quakerism; I love it in the books of Penn and Woolman, but I detest the vanity of a man thinking he speaks by the Spirit, when what he says an ordinary man might say without all that quaking and trembling. In the midst of his inspiration--and the effects of it were most noisy--was handed into the midst of the meeting a most terrible blackguard Wapping sailor; the poor man, I believe, had rather have been in the hottest part of an engagement, for the congregation of broad-brims, together with the ravings of the prophet, were too much for his gravity, though I saw even he had delicacy enough not to laugh out.

And the inspired gentleman, though his manner was so supernatural, yet neither talked nor professed to talk anything more than good sober sense, common morality, with now and then a declaration of not speaking from himself. Among other things, looking back to his childhood and early youth, he told the meeting what a graceless young dog he had been, that in his youth he had a good share of wit: reader, if thou hadst seen the gentleman, thou wouldst have sworn that it must indeed have been many years ago, for his rueful physiognomy would have scared away the playful G.o.ddess from the meeting, where he presided, for ever. A wit! a wit! what could he mean? Lloyd, it minded me of Falkland in the "Rivals," "Am I full of wit and humour? No, indeed you are not. Am I the life and soul of every company I come into? No, it cannot be said you are." That hard-faced gentleman, a wit! Why, Nature wrote on his fanatic forehead fifty years ago, "Wit never comes, that comes to all." I should be as scandalised at a _bon mot_ issuing from his oracle-looking mouth, as to see Cato go down a country-dance. G.o.d love you all. You are very good to submit to be pleased with reading my nothings. 'Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense re-spected.--Yours ever,

C. LAMB.

[Lamb's Aunt Hetty, Sarah Lamb, was buried at St. James's, Clerkenwell, on February 13, 1797.

"As poor Burns expresses it." In the "Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn," the Stanza:--

In weary being now I pine, For a' the life of life is dead, And hope has left my aged ken, On forward wing for ever fled.

"Turning Quaker." Lamb refers to the Peel meeting-house in John Street, Clerkenwell. Lamb afterwards used the story of the wit in the _Ella_ essay "A Quaker's Meeting." In his invocation to the reader he here foreshadows his Elian manner.

"Falkland" is in Sheridan's comedy "The Rivals" (see Act II., Scene i).]

LETTER 24

CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE

April 7th, 1797.

Your last letter was dated the 10th February; in it you promised to write again the next day. At least, I did not expect so long, so unfriend-like, a silence. There was a time, Col., when a remissness of this sort in a dear friend would have lain very heavy on my mind, but latterly I have been too familiar with neglect to feel much from the semblance of it. Yet, to suspect one's self overlooked and in the way to oblivion, is a feeling rather humbling; perhaps, as tending to self-mortification, not unfavourable to the spiritual state. Still, as you meant to confer no benefit on the soul of your friend, you do not stand quite clear from the imputation of unkindliness (a word by which I mean the diminutive of unkindness). Lloyd tells me he has been very ill, and was on the point of leaving you. I addressed a letter to him at Birmingham: perhaps he got it not, and is still with you, I hope his ill-health has not prevented his attending to a request I made in it, that he would write again very soon to let me know how he was. I hope to G.o.d poor Lloyd is not very bad, or in a very bad way. Pray satisfy me about these things. And then David Hartley was unwell; and how is the small philosopher, the minute philosopher? and David's mother?

Coleridge, I am not trifling, nor are these matter-of-fact [?course]

questions only. You are all very dear and precious to me; do what you will, Col., you may hurt me and vex me by your silence, but you cannot estrange my heart from you all. I cannot scatter friendship[s] like chuck-farthings, nor let them drop from mine hand like hour-gla.s.s sand.

I have two or three people in the world to whom I am more than indifferent, and I can't afford to whistle them off to the winds. 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, etc., 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. May that merciful G.o.d make tender my heart, and make me as thankful, as in my distress I was earnest, in my prayers. Congratulate me on an ever-present and never-alienable friend like her. And do, do insert, if you have not _lost_, my dedication. It will have lost half its value by coming so late. If you really are going on with that volume, I shall be enabled in a day or two to send you a short poem to insert. Now, do answer this. Friendship, and acts of friendship, should be reciprocal, and free as the air; a friend should never be reduced to beg an alms of his fellow. Yet I will beg an alms; I entreat you to write, and tell me all about poor Lloyd, and all of you.

G.o.d love and preserve you all.