1798 ROBERT LLOYD 121 devils flourished out in black. Oh, me! Lamb, "even in laughter the heart is sad!" God bless you and S. T. COLERIDGE. One other passage. In a letter from Lloyd at Birmingham to Cottle, dated June, 1798, Lloyd says, in response to Cottle's suggestion that he should visit Coleridge, "I love Coleridge, and can forget all that has happened. At present I could not well go to Stowey. .. Lamb quitted me yesterday, after a fortnight's visit. I have been much interested in his society. I never knew him so happy in my life. I shall write to Coleridge to-day." Coleridge left for Germany in September. "Schiller and swing in a wood." An allusion to Coleridge's sonnet to Schiller Ah! Bard tremendous in sublimity! Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood! Here should perhaps come Lamb's first letter to Robert Lloyd, not available for this edition, but printed by Canon Ainger, and in Charles Lamb and the Lloyds, where it is dated October. Lamb's first letter is one of advice, apparently in reply to some complaints of his position addressed to him by Lloyd. A second and longer letter which, though belonging to August, 1798, may be mentioned here, also counsels, commending the use of patience and humility. Lamb is here seen in the character of a spiritual adviser. The letter is unique in his correspondence. Robert Lloyd was a younger brother of Charles Lloyd, and Lamb had probably met him when on his visit to Birmingham in the summer. The boy, then not quite twenty, was apprenticed to a Quaker draper at Saffron Walden in Essex.] LETTER 34 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY Saturday, July 28th, 1798. 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 66 " 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 "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' patronage! 66 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?” 1798 FIRST LETTER TO SOUTHEY VI 123 "Whether pure intelligences can love, or whether they can love anything besides pure intellect?" VII "Whether the beatific vision be anything 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 C. hath not deigned an answer; was it impertinent of me to avail myself of that offered source of knowledge? Lloyd is returned to town from Ipswich where he has been with his brother. He has brought home three acts of a Play which I have not yet read. The scene for the most part laid in a Brothel. O tempora, O mores! but as friend Coleridge said when he was talking bawdy to Miss "to the pure all things are pure." 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. NOTE [This is Lamb's first letter to Southey that has been preserved. Probably others came before it. Southey now becomes Lamb's chief correspondent for some months. In Canon Ainger's transcript the letter ends with "Love and remembrances to Cottle." Southey's Joan of Arc, second edition, had been published by Cottle in 1798. It has no frontispiece: the print of Joan of Arc must have come separately. Octavius was said (in "Antony and Cleopatra," III., 11, 35, 36) to have "kept His sword e'en like a dancer." Lamb was fond of this phrase: he uses it twice in the Elia essays. Phillips was Sir Richard Phillips (1767-1840), editor of the Monthly Magazine and the publisher satirised in Borrow's Lavengro. The Calendar ultimately became the Annual Anthology. Southey had at first an idea of making it a poetical calendar or almanac. "That old lady of prolific memory." Lamb is thinking, I imagine, of the story in Howell's Familiar Letters (also in Evelyn's Diary) of the "Wonder of Nature" near the Hague. "That Wonder of Nature is a Church-monument, where an Earl and a Lady are engraven with 365 Children about them, which were all deliver'd at one Birth." The story tells that a beggar woman with twins asked alms of the Countess, who denying that it was possible for two children to be born at once and vilifying the beggar, that woman cursed her and called upon God to show His judgment upon her by causing her to bear "at one birth as many Children as there are days in the year, which she did before the same year's end, having never born Child before." Howell seems to have been convinced of the authenticity of the story by the spectacle of the christening basin used by the family. The beggar, who spoke on the third day of the year, meant as many days as had been in that year-three. Edith was Southey's wife.] LETTER 35 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY Oct. 18th, 1798. EAR 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 bibliopolical 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 Q. with attention. I have picked up, too, another copy of Quarles for ninepence!!! O tempora! O lectores!-so that if you have lost or parted with your own copy, say so, and I can furnish you, for you prize these things more than I do. You will be amused, I think, with honest Wither's "Supersedeas to all them whose custom it is, without any deserving, to importune authors to give unto them their books." I am sorry 'tis imperfect, as the lottery board annexed to it also is. Methinks you might modernise and elegantise this Supersedeas, and place it in front of your "Joan of Arc," as a gentle hint to Messrs. Park, &c. One of the happiest emblems and comicalest cuts is the owl and little chirpers, page 63. Wishing you all amusement, which your true emblem-fancier can scarce fail to find in even bad emblems, I remain your caterer to command, C. LAMB. |