1796 Coleridge 73 torted state of mind, I thought it a duty to read 'em hastily and burn 'em. I burned all my own verses, all my book of extracts from Beaumont and Fletcher and a thousand sources: I burned a little journal of my foolish passion which I had a long time kept I almost burned all your letters,—I did as bad, I lent 'em to a friend to keep out of my brother's sight, should he come and make inquisition into our papers, for, much as he dwelt upon your conversation while you were among us, and delighted to be with you, it has been his fashion ever since to depreciate and cry you down,-you were the cause of my madness—you and your damned foolish sensibility and melancholy—and he lamented with a true brotherly feeling that we ever met, even as the sober citizen, when his son went astray upon the mountains of Parnassus, is said to have “cursed wit and Poetry and Pope." I quote wrong, but no matter. These letters I lent to a friend to be out of the way for a season; but I have claimed them in vain, and shall not cease to regret their loss. Your packets, posterior to the date of my misfortunes, commencing with that valuable consolatory epistle, are every day accumulating-they are sacred things with me. Publish your Burns when and how you like, it will be new to me,—my memory of it is very confused, and tainted with unpleasant associations. Burns was the god of my idolatry, as Bowles of yours. I am jealous of your fraternising with Bowles, when I think you relish him more than Burns or my old favourite, Cowper. But you conciliate matters when you talk of the "divine chit-chat " of the latter: by the expression I see you thoroughly relish him. I love Mrs. Coleridge for her excuses an hundredfold more dearly than if she heaped "line upon line," out-Hannah-ing Hannah More, and had rather hear you sing "Did a very little baby" by your family fire-side, than listen to you when you were repeating one of Bowles's sweetest sonnets in your sweet manner, while we two were indulging sympathy, a solitary luxury, by the fireside at the Salutation. Yet have I no higher ideas of heaven. Your company was one "cordial in this melancholy vale the remembrance of it is a blessing partly, and partly a curse. When I can abstract myself from things present, I can enjoy it with a freshness of relish; but it more constantly operates to an unfavourable comparison with the uninteresting; converse I always and only can partake in. Not a soul loves Bowles here; scarce one has heard of Burns; few but laugh at me for reading my Testament-they talk a language I understand not I conceal sentiments that would be a puzzle to them. I can only converse with you by letter and with the dead in their books. My sister, indeed, is all I can wish in a companion; but our spirits are alike poorly, our reading and knowledge from the self-same sources, our communication with the scenes of the world alike narrow: never having kept separate company, or any company together" -never having read separate books, and few books together --what knowledge have we to convey to each other? In our little range of duties and connexions, how few sentiments can take place, without friends, with few books, with a taste for religion rather than a strong religious habit! We need some support, some leading-strings to cheer and direct us. You talk very wisely, and be not sparing of your advice. Continue to remember us, and to show us you do remember us : we will take as lively an interest in what concerns you and yours. All I can add to your happiness, will be sympathy. You can add to mine more; you can teach me wisdom. am indeed an unreasonable correspondent; but I was unwilling to let my last night's letter go off without this qualifier : you will perceive by this my mind is easier, and you will rejoice. I do not expect or wish you to write, till you are moved; and of course shall not, till you announce to me that event, think of writing myself. Love to Mrs. Coleridge and David Hartley, and my kind remembrance to Lloyd, if he is with you. C. LAMB. I I will get "Nature and Art,"-have not seen it yet-nor any of Jeremy Taylor's works. [The reference to the bellman's verses (the bellman, or watchman, used to leave verses at the houses on his beat at Easter as a reminder of his deserts) is not quite clear. Lamb evidently had submitted for the new volume some lines which Coleridge would not pass-possibly the poem in Letter No. 16. 66 Coleridge some time before had sent to Lamb the very sweet lines relative to Burns, under the title, To a Friend who had Declared His Intention of Writing no more Poetry." 1796 The "Ode on the Departing Year 75 "Did a very little baby." In the Appendix to Vol. I. of the 1847 edition of the Biog. Lit., Sara Coleridge writes, concerning children and domestic evenings, "Did a very little babby make a very great noise?' is the first line of a nursery song, in which Mr. Coleridge recorded some of his experience on this recondite subject." The song has disappeared. Nature and Art was Mrs. Inchbald's story, published in 1796. Lamb later became an enthusiast for Jeremy Taylor.] LETTER 19 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE [Dated outside: Jan. 2, 1797.] YOUR success in the higher species of the Ode is such, enterprize than to linger in the lowly train of songsters and sonneteurs. Sincerely I think your Ode one of the finest I have read. The opening is in the spirit of the sublimest allegory. The idea of the "skirts of the departing year, seen far onwards, waving on the wind" is one of those noble Hints at which the Reader's imagination is apt to kindle into grand conceptions. Do the words "impetuous" and "solemnize" harmonize well in the same line? Think and judge. In the 2d strophe, there seems to be too much play of fancy to be consistent with that continued elevation we are taught to expect from the strain of the foregoing. The parenthized line (by the way I abominate parentheses in this kind of poetry) at the beginng of 7th page, and indeed all that gradual description of the throes and pangs of nature in childbirth, I do not much like, and those 4 first lines,-I mean "tomb gloom anguish and languish "-rise not above mediocrity. In the Epode, your mighty genius comes again: "I marked ambition " &c. Thro' the whole Epod indeed you carry along our souls in a full spring tide of feeling and imaginat". is the "Storm of Music," as Cowper expresses it. Would it not be more abrupt "Why does the northern Conqueress stay or "where does the northern Conqueress stay "?—this change of measure, rather than the feebler "Ah! whither ". "Foul her life and dark her tomb, mighty army of the dead, dance like deathflies" &c. here is genius, here is poetry, rapid, irresistible. The concluding line, is it not a personif: without use? "Nec deus intersit "—except indeed for rhyme Here seas sake. Would the laws of Strophe and antistrophe, which, if they are as unchangeable, I suppose are about as wise, [as] the Mede and Persian laws, admit of expunging that line altogether, and changing the preceding one to "and he, poor madman, deemd it quenchd in endless night?". -fond madman or proud madman if you will, but poor is more contemptuous. If I offer alterations of my own to your poetry, and admit not yours in mine, it is upon the principle of a present to a rich man being graciously accepted, and the same present to a poor man being considered as in insult. To return-The Antistrophe that follows is not inferior in grandeur or original: but is I think not faultless-e: g: How is Memory alone, when all the etherial multitude are there? Reflect. Again "storiedst thy sad hours" is harsh, I need not tell you, but you have gained your point in expressing much meaning in few words: "Purple locks and ""mild Arcadians ever blooming snow white glories of milk and ships of amber" these are things the Muse talks about when, to borrow H. Walpole's witty phrase, she is not finely-phrenzied, only a little light-headed, that's all. "Purple locks." They may manage things differently in fairy land, but your "golden tresses are more to my fancy. The spirit of the Earth is a most happy conceit, and the last line is one of the luckiest I ever heard-" and stood up beautiful before the cloudy seat." I cannot enough admire it. 'Tis somehow picturesque in the very sound. The 2d Antistrophe (what is the meaning of these things?) is fine and faultless (or to vary the alliteration and not diminish the affectation) beautiful and blameless. I only except to the last line as meaningless after the preceding, and useless entirely-besides, why disjoin "nature and the world" here, when you had confounded both in their pregnancy: "the common earth and nature," recollect, a little before—And there is a dismal superfluity in the unmeaning vocable "unhurld "-the worse, as it is so evidently a rhyme-fetch.-" Death like he dozes" is a prosaic conceit—indeed all the Epode as far as “brother's corse” I most heartily commend to annihilation. The enthusiast of the lyre should not be so feebly, so tediously, delineative of his own feelings; 'tis not the way to become "Master of our affections." The address to Albion is very agreeable, and concludes even beautifully: "speaks safety to his island child "—"Sworded "-epithet I would change for "cruel". 1797 Still the "Ode" 77 วง The immediately succeeding lines are prosaic: "mad avarice" Friend of my earliest years, & childish days, |