BOOK I.-1796-1799

FAMILY HISTORY AND LITERARY

BEGINNINGS

I.

CHAPTER I

EARLY CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE

MAY 1796-JUNE 1798

TO SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

May 27, 1796. DEAR COLERIDGE,-Make yourself perfectly easy about May. I paid his bill when I sent your clothes. I was flush of money, and am so still to all the purposes of a single life; so give yourself no further concern about it. The money would be superfluous to me if I had it.

When Southey becomes as modest as his predecessor, Milton, and publishes his Epics in duodecimo, I will read 'em; a guinea a book is somewhat exorbitant, nor have I the opportunity of borrowing the work. The extracts from it in the Monthly Review, and the short passages in your Watchman, seem to me much superior to any thing in his partnership account with Lovell. Your poems I shall procure forthwith. There were noble lines in what you inserted in one of your Numbers from Religious Musings; but I thought them elaborate. I am somewhat glad you have given up that paper it must have been dry, unprofitable, and of "dissonant mood" to your disposition. I wish you success in all your undertakings, and am glad to hear you are employed about the Evidences of Religion. There is need of multiplying such books a hundredfold in this philosophical age, to prevent converts to atheism, for they seem too tough disputants to meddle with afterwards.

He

Le Grice is gone to make puns in Cornwall. has got a tutorship to a young boy living with his mother, a widow lady. He will, of course, initiate him quickly in "whatsoever things are honest, lovely, and of good report." He has cut Miss Hunt completely the poor girl is very ill on the occasion ; but he laughs at it, and justifies himself by saying "she does not see me laugh." Coleridge, I know not what suffering scenes you have gone through at Bristol. My life has been somewhat diversified of late. The six weeks that finished last year and began this, your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a madhouse, at Hoxton. I am got somewhat rational now, and don't bite any one. But mad I was; and many a vagary my imagination played with me, enough to make a volume, if all were told. My Sonnets I have extended to the number of nine since I saw you, and will some day communicate to you. I am beginning a poem in blank verse, which, if I finish, I publish.

White is on the eve of publishing (he took the hint from Vortigern) "Original letters of Falstaff, Shallow," &c. ; a copy you shall have when it comes out. They are without exception the best imitations I ever saw. Coleridge, it may convince you of my regards for you when I tell you my head ran on you in my madness, as much almost as on another person, who I am inclined to think was the more immediate cause of my temporary frenzy.

The Sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry; but you will be curious to read it when I tell you it was written in my prison-house in one of my lucid intervals.

TO MY SISTER

If from my lips some angry accents fell,

Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind,
'Twas but the error of a sickly mind

And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well
And waters clear of Reason; and for me,
Let this my verse the poor atonement be—

My verse, which thou to praise wert e'er inclined
Too highly, and with a partial eye to see

No blemish. Thou to me didst ever show
Kindest affection: and would'st oft-times lend
An ear to the desponding love-sick lay,
Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay
But ill the mighty debt of love I owe,

Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend.

With these lines, and with that sister's kindest remembrances to C, I conclude.

Yours sincerely,

LAMB.

Your Conciones ad Populum are the most eloquent politics that ever came in my way.

Write when convenient-not as a task, for here is nothing in this letter to answer.

We cannot send our remembrances to Mrs C., not having seen her, but believe me our best good wishes attend you both.

My civic and poetic compliments to Southey if at Bristol. Why, he is a very Leviathan of Bards!-the small minnow, I!

II.

TO THE SAME

[No Month] 1796.

I am in such violent pain with the headache, that I am fit for nothing but transcribing, scarce for that. When I get your poems, and the Joan of Arc, I will exercise my presumption in giving you my opinion of 'em. The mail does not come in before to-morrow (Wednesday) morning. The following Sonnet was composed during a walk down into Hertfordshire early in last Summer :

The Lord of Light shakes off his drowsyhed.
Fresh from his couch up springs the lusty sun,
And girds himself his mighty race to run;
Meantime, by truant love of rambling led,
I turn my back on thy detested walls,

Proud City, and thy sons I leave behind,
A selfish, sordid, money-getting kind,
Who shut their ears when holy Freedom calls.
I pass not thee so lightly, humble spire,

That mindest me of many a pleasure gone,
Of merrier days, of Love and Islington,
Kindling anew the flames of past desire;

And I shall muse on thee, slow journeying on,
To the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire.

The last line is a copy of Bowles's, "To the green Hamlet in the peaceful Plain." Your ears are not so very fastidious; many people would not like words so prosaic and familiar in a Sonnet as Islington and Hertfordshire. The next was written within a day or two of the last, on revisiting a spot where the scene was laid of my first Sonnet that "mock'd my step with many a lonely glade."

When last I roved these winding wood-walks green,
Green winding walks, and shady pathways sweet,
Oft-times would Anna seek the silent scene,
Shrouding her beauties in the lone retreat.
No more I hear her footsteps in the shade;
Her image only in these pleasant ways

Meets me self-wandering, where in happier days
I held free converse with my fair-hair'd maid,

I pass'd the little cottage which she loved,
The cottage which did once my all contain:
It spake of days that ne'er must come again;

Spake to my heart, and much my heart was moved.
Now "Fair befall thee, gentle maid," said I;

And from the cottage turn'd me with a sigh.

The next retains a few lines from a Sonnet of mine which you once remarked had no "body of thought" in it. I agree with you, but have preserved a part of it, and it runs thus. I flatter myself you will like it :

A timid grace sits trembling in her eye,

As loth to meet the rudeness of men's sight
Yet shedding a delicious lunar light,

That steeps in kind oblivious ecstacy

The care-crazed mind, like some still melody:

Speaking most plain the thoughts which do possess
Her gentle sprite, peace and meek quietness,
And innocent loves, and maiden purity:

A look whereof might heal the cruel smart
Of changed friends, or Fortune's wrongs unkind;
Might to sweet deeds of mercy move the heart
Of him who hates his brethren of mankind.
Turn'd are those beams from me, who fondly yet
Past joys, vain loves, and buried hopes regret.

'Twas

The next and last I value most of all. composed close upon the heels of the last, in that very wood I had in mind when I wrote "Methinks how dainty sweet."

We were two pretty babes, the youngest she,
The youngest, and the loveliest far, I ween,
And Innocence her name. The time has been

We two did love each other's company;

Time was, we two had wept to have been apart :
But when, with show of seeming good-beguiled,
I left the garb and manners of a child,

And my first love for man's society,

Defiling with the world my virgin heart,
My loved companion dropp'd a tear and fled,
And hid in deepest shades her awful head.

Beloved! who can tell me where thou art-
In what delicious Eden to be found-

That I may seek thee the wide world around?