51

Then let old winter take his course,
And roar abroad till he be hoarse,
And his lungs crack with ruthless ire,
It shall but serve to blow our fire.

52

Let him our little castle ply
With all his loud artillery,

Whilst sack and claret man the fort,
His fury shall become our sport.

53

Or let him Scotland take, and there
Confine the plotting Presbyter;

His zeal may freeze, whilst we kept warm
With love and wine can know no harm.

How could Burns miss the series of lines from 42 to 49? There is also a long poem from the Latin on the inconveniences of old age. I can't set down the whole, tho' right worthy, having dedicated the remainder of my sheet to something else. I just excerp here and there, to convince you, if after this you need it, that Cotton was a first rate. Tis old Gallus speaks of himself, once the delight of the Ladies and Gallants of Rome :

The beauty of my shape & face are fled,
And my revolted form bespeaks me dead,
For fair, and shining age, has now put on
A bloodless, funeral complexion.

My skin's dry'd up, my nerves unpliant are,
And my poor limbs my nails plow up and tear.
My chearful eyes now with a constant spring
Of tears bewail their own sad suffering;
And those soft lids, that once secured my eye
Now rude, and bristled grown, do drooping lie,
Bolting mine eyes, as in a gloomy cave,
Which there on furies, and grim objects, rave.
'Twould fright the full-blown Gallant to behold
The dying object of a man so old.

And can you think, that once a man he was,
Of human reason who no portion has.
The letters split, when I consult my book,
And every leaf I turn does broader look.
In darkness do I dream I see the light,
When light is darkness to my perishd sight.

1803

The Royal George"

Is it not hard we may not from men's eyes
Cloak and conceal Age's indecencies.
Unseeming spruceness th' old man discommends,
And in old men, only to live, offends.

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

How can I him a living man believe,

Whom light, and air, by whom he panteth, grieve;
The gentle sleeps, which other mortals ease,

Scarce in a winter's night my eyelids seize.

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

275

A song written by Cowper, which in stile is much above his usual, and emulates in noble plainness any old balad I have seen. Hayley has just published it &c. with a Life. not think Cowper up to it :

:

SONG

ON THE LOSS OF THE ROYAL GEORGE

I

Toll for the Brave!

The Brave, that are no more!

All sunk beneath the wave,

Fast by their native shore.—

2

Eight hundred of the Brave,
Whose courage well was tried,

Had made the vessel heel,

And laid her on her side.

3

A Land breeze shook the shrouds,
And she was over set;

Down went the Royal George,
With all her sails complete.

4

Toll for the Brave!

Brave Kempenfelt is gone:
His last sea-fight is fought;
His work of glory done.

5

It was not in the battle,

No tempest gave the shock;

She sprang no fatal leak ;

She ran upon no rock.

I did

6

His sword was in its sheath;
His fingers held the pen,
When Kempenfelt went down,
With twice four hundred men.

7

Weigh the vessel up!

Once dreaded by our foes!

And mingle with the cup

The tear that England owes.

8

Her timbers yet are sound,

And she may float again,

Full charg'd with England's thunder,
And plow the distant main.

9

But Kempenfelt is gone,

His victories are o'er;

And he, and his eight hundred,

Shall plow the wave no more.

In your obscure part of the world, which I take to be Ultima Thule, I thought these verses out of Books which cannot be accessible would not be unwelcome. Having room, I will put in an Epitaph I writ for a real occasion, a year or two back.

ON MARY DRUIT WHO DIED AGED 19

Under this cold marble stone

Sleep the sad remains of One,

Who, when alive, by few or none

2

Was lov'd, as lov'd she might have been,

If she prosp'rous days had seen,

Or had thriving been, I ween.

3

Only this cold funeral stone

Tells, she was belov'd by One,

Who on the marble graves his moan.

I conclude with Love to your Sister and Mrs. W.

Mary sends Love, &c.

5th March, 1803.

Yours affecty,

C. LAMB.

1803

Mary Druitt

277

On consulting Mary, I find it will be foolish inserting the Note as I intended, being so small, and as it is possible you may have to trouble us again e'er long; so it shall remain to be settled hereafter. However, the verses shan't be lost.

N.B.—All orders executed with fidelity and punctuality by C. & M. Lamb.

[On the outside is written :] I beg to open this for a minute to add my remembrances to you all, and to assure you I shall ever be happy to hear from or see, much more to be useful to any of my old friends at Grasmere.

A lean paragraph of the Doctor's.

J. STODDART.

C. LAMB.

[Charles Cotton (1630-1687). Wordsworth praises the poem on Winter in his preface to the 1815 edition of his works, and elsewhere sets up a comparison between the character of Cotton and that of Burns.

Hayley's Life of Cowper appeared first in 1803.

Lamb's epitaph was written at the request of Rickman. See also the letter to Manning of April, 1802. Rickman seems to have supplied Lamb with a prose epitaph and asked for a poetical version. Canon Ainger prints an earlier version in a letter to Rickman, dated February 1, 1802. Lamb printed the epitaph in the Morning Post for February 7, 1804, over his initials (see Vol. IV. of this edition). Mary Druit, or Druitt, lived at Wimborne, and according to John Payne Collier, in An Old Man's Diary, died of small-pox at the age of nineteen. He says that Lamb's lines were cut on her tomb, but correspondence in Notes and Queries has proved this to

be incorrect.

"The Doctor." Stoddart, having taken his D.C.L. in 1801, was now called Dr. Stoddart.

Soon after this letter Mary Lamb was taken ill again.]

MY

LETTER 107

CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE

April 13th, 1803.

Y 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