1796 THE "RELIGIOUS MUSINGS" 9 mind. Your complaint that [of] your readers some thought there was too much, some too little, original matter in your Nos., reminds me of poor dead Parsons in the Critic-"too little incident! Give me leave to tell you, Sir, there is too much incident." I had like to have forgot thanking you for that exquisite little morsel the 1st Sclavonian Song. The expression in the 2d "more happy to be unhappy in hell"—is it not very quaint? Accept my thanks in common with those of all who love good poetry for the Braes of Yarrow. I congratulate you on the enemies you must have made by your splendid invective against the barterers in "human flesh and sinews." Coleridge, you will rejoice to hear that Cowper is recovered from his lunacy, and is employ'd on his translation of the Italian &c. poems of Milton, for an edition where Fuseli presides as designer. Coleridge, to an idler like myself to write and receive letters are both very pleasant, but I wish not to break in upon your valuable time by expecting to hear very frequently from you. Reserve that obligation for your moments of lassitude, when you have nothing else to do; for your loco-restive and all your idle propensities of course have given way to the duties of providing for a family. The mail is come in but no parcel, yet this is Tuesday. Farewell then till to morrow, for a nich and a nook I must leave for criticisms. By the way I hope you do not send your own only copy of Joan of Arc; I will in that case return it immediately. Your parcel is come, you have been lavish of your presents. Wordsworth's poem I have hurried thro not without delight. Poor Lovell! my heart almost accuses me for the light manner I spoke of him above, not dreaming of his death. My heart bleeds for your accumulated troubles, God send you thro' 'em with patience. I conjure you dream not that I will ever think of being repaid! the very word is galling to the ears. I have read all your Rel: Musings with uninterrupted feelings of profound admiration. You may safely rest your fame on it. The best remains things are what I have before read, and they lose nothing by my recollection of your manner of reciting 'em, for I too bear in mind "the voice, the look" of absent friends, and can occasionally mimic their manner for the amusement of those who have seen 'em. Your impassioned manner of recitation I can recall at any time to mine own heart, and to the ears of the bystanders. I rather wish you had left the monody on C. concluding as it did abruptly. It had more of unity. The conclusion of your R Musings I fear will entitle you to the reproof of your Beloved woman, who wisely will not suffer your fancy to run riot, but bids you walk humbly with your God. The very last words "I exercise my young noviciate thot in ministeries of heart-stirring song," tho' not now new to me, cannot be enough admired. To speak politely, they are a well turnd compliment to Poetry. I hasten to read Joan of Arc, &c. I have read your lines at the beging of 2d book, they are worthy of Milton, but in my mind yield to your Rel Musgs. I shall read the whole carefully and in some future letter take the liberty to particularize my opinions of it. Of what is new to me among your poems next to the Musings, that beginning "My Pensive Sara" gave me most pleasure the lines in it I just alluded to are most exquisite-they made my sister and self smile, as conveying a pleasing picture of Mrs. C. chequing your wild wandrings, which we were so fond of hearing you indulge when among us. It has endeared us more than any thing to your good Lady; and your own self-reproof that follows delighted us. "Tis a charming poem throughout. (You have well remarked that "charming, admirable, exquisite" are words expressive of feelings, more than conveying of ideas, else I might plead very well want of room in my paper as excuse for generalizing.) I want room to tell you how we are charmed with your verses in the manner of Spencer, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. I am glad you resume the Watchman change the name, leave out all articles of News, and whatever things are peculiar to News Papers, and confine yourself to Ethics, verse, criticism, or, rather do not confine yourself. Let your plan be as diffuse as the Spectator, and I'll answer for it the work prospers. If I am vain enough to think I can be a contributor, rely on my inclinations. Coleridge, in reading your Rs Musings I felt a transient superiority over you: I have seen Priestly. I love to see his name repeated in your writings. I love and honor him almost profanely. You would be charmed with his sermons, if you never read 'em.-You have doubtless read his books, illustrative of the doctrine of Necessity. Prefixed to a late work of his, in answer to Paine, there is a preface, given [? giving] an account of the Man and his services to Men, written by Lindsey, his dearest friend,well worth your reading. Tuesday Eve.-Forgive my prolixity, which is yet too brief for all I could wish to say.-God give you comfort and all that are of your household.-Our loves and best good wishes to Mrs. C. C. LAMB. NOTE [The postmark of this letter looks like June 1, but it might be June 7. It was odd to date it "Tuesday night " half way through, and "Tuesday eve" at the end. Possibly Lamb began it on Tuesday, May 24, and finished it on Tuesday, May 31; possibly he began it on Tuesday, May 31, and finished it and posted it on Tuesday, June 7. 1796 COLERIDGE AND SOUTHEY 11 The Hertfordshire sonnet was printed in the Monthly Magazine for December, 1797, and not reprinted by Lamb. The last line, which he says here is from Bowles (the last line of the sonnet "To a Friend"), has a nearer counterpart in William Vallan's Tale of Two Swans (1590), quoted in Leland's Itinerary, Hearne's edition : About this time the Lady Venus views The fruitful fields of pleasant Hertfordshire. This interesting discovery was made by Mr. W. J. Craig. The sonnet that "mock'd my step with many a lonely glade" is that beginning Was it some sweet device of Faery, 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. The lines from Hamilton of Bangor are in his "Epistle to the Countess of Eglintoun (with "The Gentle Shepherd")": "where" should be "why." Parnell's lines are in his "Hymn to Contentment":"ah" should be "O" and "hide" "lay." In Cowley's poem the first of the quoted lines runs :— Was there a tree about which did not know 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 floccinauci-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 Cumberland Cruikshank, the anatomist, who attended Lamb's brother, had a great reputation. He had attended Dr. Johnson in his last illness. Le Grice's pamphlet was A General Theorem for A******* Coll. Declamation, by Gronovius, 1796.-The phrase "teaching the young idea how to shoot" is from Thomson's Seasons. 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 anticipated 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. "Between you two there should be peace❞— Between us two let there be peace. Paradise Lost, X., 924. 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 Noble Lord was in No. I. of The Watchman. The passage from "Religious Musings," under the title "The Present State of Society," was in No. II.-extending from line 260 to 357.-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. "The voice, the look." Possibly a phrase in Coleridge's letter, to which Lamb is replying. In one of Lloyd's sonnets in Coleridge's Poems, 1797 (page 205), are the words "That look, those accents." 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 passage. 1 These lines were 279-378 1st ed.; 264-363 2nd ed. 1796 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 13 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 Eolian Harp," and the lines to which Lamb refers are these, following upon Coleridge's description of how flitting phantasies traverse his indolent and passive brain : But thy more serious eye a mild reproof And biddest me walk humbly with my God. 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 passage in "Religious Musings," while one of the sonnets of the 1796 volume was addressed to him: circumstances 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 Institutes 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.] Wr ITH 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 passages that chiefly struck me on perusal. Page 26 "Fierce and terrible Benevolence!" is a phrase full of grandeur |