CHAPTER II

SOUTHEY AND LLOYD: ENTER MANNING

JULY 1798-DECEMBER 1799

XXXII.

TO ROBERT LLOYD

[? July, 1798.]

My dear Robert,-I am a good deal occupied with a calamity near home, but not so much as to prevent my thinking about you with the warmest affection. You are among my very dearest friends. I know you will feel deeply, when you hear that my poor sister is unwell again,-one of her old disorders; but I trust it will hold no longer than her former illnesses have done. Do not imagine, Robert, that I sink under this misfortune,-I have been season'd to such events, and think I could bear any thing tolerably well. My own health is left me, and my good spirits, and I have some duties to perform— these duties shall be my object. I wish, Robert, you could find an object-I know the painfulness of vacuity, all its achings, and inexplicable longings. I wish to God I could recommend any plan to you. Stock your mind well with religious knowledge; discipline it to wait with patience for duties, that may be your lot in life; prepare yourself not to expect too much out of yourself; read and think

This is all common place advice, I know-I know too, that it is easy to give advice, which in like circumstances we might not follow ourselves. You must depend upon yourself-there will come a time, when

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you will wonder you were not more content know you will excuse my saying any more,— Be assur'd of my kindest warmest affection-C. LAMB.

XXXIII.

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 Ist of April I know not. By the 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 "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

Robert Southey, from

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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 " 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?"

ΠΙ

"Whether honesty be an angelic virtue, or not rather belonging to that class of qualities which the schoolmen term 'virtutes minus splendida 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?"

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