39

There under ground a magazine
Of sovran juice is cellar'd in,
Liquor that will the siege maintain,
Should Phoebus ne'er return again.

40

'Tis that, that gives the poet rage,
And thaws the gelly'd blood of age,
Matures the young, restores the old,
And makes the fainting coward bold.

41

It lays the careful head to rest,
Calms palpitations in the breast,
Renders our live's misfortunes sweet,
And Venus frolic in the sheet.

42

Then let the chill Scirocco blow,

And gird us round with hills of snow,

Or else go whistle to the shore,

And make the hollow mountains roar.

43

Whilst we together jovial sit,

Careless, and crown'd with mirth and wit, Where tho' bleak winds confine us home, Our fancies thro' the world shall roam.

44

We'll think of all the friends we know, And drink to all, worth drinking to; When, having drunk all thine and mine, We rather shall want health than wine!

45

But, where friends fail us, we'll supply
Our friendships with our Charity.
Men that remote in sorrows live,
Shall by our lusty bumpers thrive.

46

We'll drink the wanting into wealth,
And those that languish into health,
Th' afflicted into joy, th' opprest
Into security & rest.

47

The worthy in disgrace shall find
Favour return again more kind,
And in restraint who stifled lye,
Shall taste the air of liberty.

48

The brave shall triumph in success,
The lovers shall have mistresses,
Poor unregarded virtue praise,
And the neglected Poet bays.

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 ?

265

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.

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. I did 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.

6

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

1803 "THE LOSS OF THE ROYAL GEORGE" 267

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.

Yours affecty,

C. LAMB.

5th March, 1803.

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 old friends at Grasmere.

A lean paragraph of the Doctor's.

NOTE

any
of my

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.

See

Lamb's epitaph was written at the request of Rickman. also the letter to Manning of April (or thereabouts), 1802, page 241. Rickman seems to have supplied Lamb with a prose epitaph and asked for a poetical version. Canon Ainger prints what I take to be an earlier version from an unpublished letter to Rickman, dated February 1, 1802. Lamb printed the epitaph in the Morning Post for February 7, 1804, over his initials (see Vol. V. of this edition, pages 80 and 322). 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.]

LETTER 105

CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE

April 13th, 1803.

MY

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 that Montero cap. I have left off cayenned eggs and such bolsters to discomfort. There was death in that cap. I mischievously wished that by some inauspicious jolt the whole contents might be shaken, and the coach set on fire. For you said they had that property. How the old Gentleman, who joined you at Grantham, would have clappt his hands to his knees, and not knowing but it was an immediate visitation of God that burnt him, how pious it would have made