CHAPTER II

SOUTHEY ENTER MANNING

JULY 1798-DECEMBER 1799

XXXII.

TO ROBERT SOUTHEY

July 28th, 1798.

Dear Southey,-I am ashamed that I have not thanked you before this for the Joan of Arc, but I did not know your address, and it did not occur to me to write through Cottle. The poem delighted me, and the notes amused me; but methinks she of Neufchatel, in the print, holds her sword too "like a dancer." I sent your notice to Phillips, particularly requesting an immediate insertion, but I suppose it came too late. I am sometimes curious to know what progress you make in that same "Calendar" : whether you insert the nine worthies and Whittington? what you do or how you can manage when two Saints meet and quarrel for precedency? Martlemas, and Candlemas, and Christmas, are glorious themes for a writer like you, antiquity-bitten, smit with the love of boars' heads and rosemary; but how you can ennoble the 1st of April I know not. By the way, I had a thing to say, but a certain false modesty has hitherto prevented me: perhaps I can best communicate my wish by a hint. My birthday is on the 10th of February, New Style; but if it interferes with any remarkable event, why rather than my country should lose her fame, I care not if I put my nativity back eleven days. Fine family patronage for your

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"Calendar," if that old lady of prolific memory were living, who lies (or lyes) in some church in London, (saints forgive me, but I have forgot what church,) attesting that enormous legend of as many children as days in the year. I marvel her impudence did not grasp at a leap-year. Three hundred and sixty-five dedications, and all in a family! You might spit in spirit, on the oneness of Mæcenas's patronage!

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to the eternal regret of his native Devonshire, emigrates to Westphalia: "Poor Lamb," (these were his last words,) "if he wants any knowledge, he may apply to me." In ordinary cases I thanked him. I have an "Encyclopædia" at hand; but on such an occasion as going over to a German university, I could not refrain from sending him the following propositions, to be by him defended or oppugned (or both) at Leipsic or Gottingen.

THESES QUÆDAM THEOLOGICE

I

"Whether God loves a lying angel better than a true man?"

II

"Whether the archangel Uriel could knowingly affirm an untruth, and whether, if he could, he would?”

III

"Whether honesty be an angelic virtue, or not rather belonging to that class of qualities which the schoolmen term 'virtutes minus splendidæ et hominis et terræ nimis participes'?"

IV

"Whether, the seraphim ardentes do not manifest their goodness by the way of vision and theory? and whether practice be not a sub-celestial, and merely human virtue?"

V

"Whether the higher order of seraphim illuminati ever sneer?"

VI

"Whether pure intelligence can love, or whether they can love any thing besides pure intellect?"

VII

"Whether the beatific vision be any thing more or less than a perpetual representment to each individual angel of his own present attainments, and future capabilities, something in the manner of mortal looking glasses?"

VIII

"Whether an 'immortal and amenable soul' may not come to be damned at last, and the man never suspect it beforehand?"

Samuel Taylor (Coleridge) hath not deigned an answer. Was it impertinent of me to avail myself of that offered source of knowledge?

Wishing Madoc may be born into the world with as splendid promise as the second birth, or purification, of the Maid of Neufchatel,-I remain yours sincerely, C. LAMB.

I hope Edith is better; my kindest remembrances to her. You have a good deal of trifling to forgive in this letter.

"Love and remembrances to Cottle."

XXXIII.

TO THE SAME

Oct. 18th, 1798.

Dear Southey,-I have at last been so fortunate as to pick up Wither's Emblems for you, that “old book and quaint," as the brief author of Rosamund Gray hath it; it is in a most detestable state of preservation, and the cuts are of a fainter impression than I have seen. Some child, the curse of antiquaries and bane of bibliopical rarities, hath been dabbling in some of them with its paint and dirty fingers; and, in particular, hath a little sullied the author's own portraiture, which I think valuable, as the poem that accompanies it is no common one; this last excepted, the Emblems are far inferior to old Quarles. I once told you otherwise, but I had not then read old