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 Hills. John Henderson (1757-1788) was an eccentric scholar of Bristol. The lines praised by Lamb are the 4th, 12th and 64th. 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 entitled "Composed while Climbing the Left Ascent of Brockley Coomb." The 35th Effusion is known as "The Eolian Harp." The letter from Shurton Bars is the poem beginning— Nor travels my meand'ring eye. The 4th Epistle is that to Joseph Cottle, Coleridge's publisher and the author of the "Monody on Henderson," referred to in Coleridge's verses. The lines which Lamb quotes are Cottle's. The poem by Sara Coleridge is "The Silver Thimble." The passage in the "Religious Musings," for which Lamb is thankful as a "child of fancy," is the last paragraph : Contemplant Spirits! ye that hover o'er And ye of plastic power, that interfused I discipline my young noviciate thought Sheds on the frost-bound waters-The glad stream "You came to Town . . ." Soon after his engagement with Sara Fricker, his heart being still not wholly healed of its passion for Mary Evans, Coleridge had gone to London from Bristol, nominally to arrange for the publication of his Fall of Robespierre, and had resumed intercourse with Lamb and other old Christ's Hospital friends. There he remained until Southey forcibly took him back in January, 1795. From what Lamb says of the loss of two friends we must suppose, in default of other information, that he had to give up his Anna at the same time. The loss of reason, however, to which he refers did not come until the end of the year 1795. The 19th Effusion, afterwards called "On a Discovery Made Too Late; the 28th, "The Kiss;" the 29th, "Imitated from Ossian." "Your monody." This, not to be confounded with Cottle's "Monody on Henderson," was Coleridge's "Monody on Chatterton." Lamb's emendations were not accepted. As regards "The Man of Ross," the couplet beginning "Friend to the friendless " ultimately had a place both in that poem and in the Monody, but the couplet" and o'er the dowried virgin was never replaced in either. The lines on spring, page 28, are "Lines to a Beautiful Spring." Dr. Forster (Faustus) was the hero of the nursery rhyme, whose scholars danced out of England into France and Spain and back again. The epitaph on an infant was in The Watchman, No. IX. (see note on page 62). The poem "Edmund" is called "Lines on a Friend who died of a frenzy fever induced by calumnious reports." The lines in "Absence" are those in the second stanza of the poem. They run thus: Ah fair Delights! that o'er my soul But cease, fond Heart! this bootless moan: Shall yet return, by ABSENCE crowned, The 19th Effusion, beginning “Thou bleedest, my poor heart," is known as "On a Discovery Made Too Late." The 20th Effusion is the sonnet to Schiller. The lines which were sent to Lamb, written in December, 1794, are called "To a Friend, together with an unfinished poem ("Religious Musings "). Coleridge's "Restless Gale" is the imitation of Ossian, beginning, "The stream with languid murmur creeps.' "Foodful" occurs thus in the lines "To an Infant": Alike the foodful fruit and scorching fire Awake thy eager grasp and young desire. Coleridge did not alter the phrase. Lamb contributed four effusions to this volume of Coleridge's: the 7th, to Mrs. Siddons (written in conjunction with Coleridge), the 11th, 12th and 13th. All were signed C. L. Coleridge had permitted himself to make various alterations. The following parallel will show the kind of treatment to which Lamb objected :-- 1796 Coleridge's Liberties LAMB'S ORIGINAL EFFUSION (II) And fancied wanderings with a Have these things been? or what rare witchery, Impregning with delights the charmed air, Enlighted up the semblance of a smile In those fine eyes? methought they spake the while Soft soothing things, which might enforce despair To drop the murdering knife, and let go by 25 AS ALTERED BY COLERIDGE Was it some sweet device of faery land That mock'd my steps with many a lonely glade, And fancied wand'rings with a fairhair'd maid? Have these things been? Or did the wizard wand Of Merlin wave, impregning vacant air, And kindle up the vision of a smile In those blue eyes, that seem'd to speak the while Such tender things, as might enforce Despair To drop the murth'ring knife, and let go by His foul resolve. And does the His fell resolve? Ah me! the In Effusion 12 Lamb had written : Or we might sit and tell some tender tale A tale of true love, or of friend forgot; Coleridge made it :- But ah! sweet scenes of fancied bliss, adieu ! Again in the 13th Effusion, "Written at Midnight, by the Seaside, after a Voyage," Lamb had dotted out the last two lines. Coleridge substituted the couplet :— How Reason reel'd! What gloomy transports rose ! Effusion 2, which Lamb would omit, was the sonnet "To Burke ; "Effusion 3, "To Mercy" (on Pitt); Effusion 5, "To Erskine; " Effusion 7, Lamb and Coleridge's joint sonnet, "To Mrs. Siddons; and Effusion 8, "To Koskiusko." The "Lines Written in Early Youth " were afterwards called "Lines on an Autumnal Evening." The poem called "Recollection," in The Watchman, was reborn as "Sonnet to the River Otter." The lines on the early blossom were praised by Lamb in a previous letter. The 10th Effusion was the sonnet to Earl Stanhope. Godwin was William Godwin, the philosopher. We shall later see much of him. It was Allen's wife, not Stoddart's, who had a grown-up daughter. Ned Evans was a novel in four volumes, published in 1796, an imitation of Tom Jones, which presumably Coleridge was reviewing for the Critical Review. Young W. Evans is said by Mr. Dykes Campbell to have been the only son of the Mrs. Evans who befriended Coleridge when he was at Christ's Hospital, the mother of his first love, Mary Evans. Evans was at school with Coleridge and Lamb. We shall meet with him again. William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850), the sonneteer, who had exerted so powerful a poetical influence on Coleridge's mind, was at this time rector of Cricklade in Wiltshire (1792-1797), but had been ill at Bath. The elegy in question was "Elegiac Stanzas written during sickness at Bath, December, 1795.' The lines quoted by Lamb are respectively in the 6th, 4th, 5th and 19th Stanzas. Sophia Pringle. Probably the subject of a Catnach or other popular broadside. I have not found it. Izaak Walton. Lamb returns to praises of The Compleat Angler in his letter to Robert Lloyd referred to on page 215. The reference to the Unitarian chapel bears probably upon an offer of a pulpit to Coleridge. The tutorship was probably that offered to Coleridge by Mrs. Evans of Darley Hall (no relation to Mary Evans) who wished him to teach her sons. Neither project was carried through.] LETTER 4 (Apparently a continuation of a letter the first part of which is missing) U wise. CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE [Begun] Monday Night [June 13, 1796]. NFURNISHED at present with any sheet-filling subject, I shall continue my letter gradually and journalMy second thoughts entirely coincide with your 1796 Re-commencing Poet 27 comments on "Joan of Arc," and I can only wonder at my childish judgment which overlooked the 1st book and could prefer the 9th: not that I was insensible to the soberer beauties of the former, but the latter caught me with its glare of magic, the former, however, left a more pleasing general recollection in my mind. Let me add, the 1st book was the favourite of my sister-and I now, with Joan, often "think on Domremi and the fields of Arc." I must not pass over without acknowledging my obligations to your full and satisfactory account of personifications. I have read it again and again, and it will be a guide to my future taste. Perhaps I had estimated Southey's merits too much by number, weight, and measure. I now agree completely and entirely in your opinion of the genius of Southey. Your own image of melancholy is illustrative of what you teach, and in itself masterly. I conjecture it is "disbranched" from one of your embryo "hymns." When they are mature of birth (were I you) I should print 'em in one separate volume, with “ 'Religious Musings " and your part of the "Joan of Arc.” Birds of the same soaring wing should hold on their flight in company. Once for all (and by renewing the subject you will only renew in me the condemnation of Tantalus), I hope to be able to pay you a visit (if you are then at Bristol) some time in the latter end of August or beginning of September for a week or fortnight; before that time, office business puts an absolute veto on my coming. "And if a sigh that speaks regret of happier times appear, A glimpse of joy that we have met shall shine and dry the tear.' Of the blank verses I spoke of, the following lines are the only tolerably complete ones I have writ out of not more than one hundred and fifty. That I get on so slowly you may fairly impute to want of practice in composition, when I declare to you that (the few verses which you have seen excepted) I have not writ fifty lines since I left school. It may not be amiss to remark that my grandmother (on whom the verses are written) lived housekeeper in a family the fifty or sixty last years of her life-that she was a woman of exemplary piety and goodness-and for many years before her death was terribly afflicted with a cancer in her breast which she bore with true Christian patience. You may think that I have not kept enough apart the ideas of her heavenly and her earthly |