1796 COLERIDGE IN 1796 3 You may inclose under cover to me at the India house what letters you please, for they come post free. 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 compts to Southey if at Bristol.—Why, he is a very Leviathan of Bards-the small minnow I NOTE [This is the earliest letter of Lamb's that has come down to us. On February 10, 1796, he was just twenty-one years old, and was now living at 7 Little Queen Street (since demolished) with his father, mother, Aunt Sarah Lamb (known as Aunt Hetty), Mary Lamb and, possibly, John Lamb. John Lamb, senior, was doing nothing and had, I think, already begun to break up: his old master, Samuel Salt, had died in February, 1792. John Lamb, the son (born June 5, 1763), had a clerkship at the South-Sea House; Charles Lamb had begun his long period of service in the India House; and Mary Lamb (born December 3, 1764) was occupied as a mantua-maker. At this time Coleridge was twenty-three; he would be twentyfour on October 21. His military experiences over, he had married Sara Fricker on October 4, 1795 (a month before Southey married her sister Edith), and was living at Bristol, on Redcliffe Hill. The first number of The Watchman was dated on March 1, 1796; on May 13, 1796, it came to an end. On April 16, 1796, Cottle had issued Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects, containing also four "effusions" by Charles Lamb (Nos. VII., XI., XII. and XIII.), and the "Religious Musings." Southey, on bad terms with Coleridge, partly on account of Southey's abandonment of Pantisocracy, was in Lisbon. His Joan of Arc had just been published by Cottle in quarto at a guinea. Previously he had collaborated in The Fall of Robespierre, 1794, with Coleridge and Robert Lovell. Each, one evening, had set forth to write an act by the next. Southey and Lovell did so, but Coleridge brought only a part of his. Lovell's being useless, Southey rewrote his act, Coleridge finished his at leisure, and the result was published. Robert Lovell (1770 P-1796) had also been associated with Coleridge and Southey in Pantisocracy and was their brother-in-law, having married Mary Fricker, another of the sisters. When, in 1795, Southey and Lovell had published a joint volume of Poems, Southey took the pseudonym of Bion and Lovell of Moschus. May was probably the landlord of the Salutation and Cat. The London Directory for 1808 has "William May, Salutation Coffee House, 17 Newgate Street." We must suppose that when Coleridge quitted the Salutation and Cat in January, 1795, he was unable to pay his bill, and therefore had to leave his luggage behind. Cottle's story of Coleridge being offered free lodging by a London inn-keeper, if he would only talk and talk, must then either be a pretty invention or apply to another landlord, possibly the host of the Angel in Butcher Hall Street. Allen was Robert Allen, a schoolfellow of Lamb and Coleridge, and Coleridge's first friend. He was born on October 18, 1772. Both Lamb and Leigh Hunt tell good stories of him at Christ's Hospital, Lamb in Elia and Hunt in his Autobiography. From Christ's Hospital he went to University College, Oxford, and it was he who introduced Coleridge and Hucks to Southey in 1794. Probably, says Mr. E. H. Coleridge, it was he who brought Coleridge and Stoddart (afterwards Sir John and Hazlitt's brotherin-law) together. On leaving Oxford he seems to have gone to Westminster to learn surgery, and in 1797 he was appointed Deputy-Surgeon to the 2nd Royals, then in Portugal. He married a widow with children; at some time later took to journalism, as Lamb's reference in the Elia essay on "Newspapers" tells us; and he died of apoplexy in 1805. The phrase "dissonant mood" (Samson Agonistes, line 662) had been used by Coleridge in line 6 of his Effusion 22, "To a Friend with an Unfinished Poem," the friend being Lamb. Coleridge's employment on the Evidences of Religion, whatever it may have been, did not reach print. Le Grice was Charles Valentine Le Grice (1773-1858), an old Christ's Hospitaller and Grecian (see Lamb's Elia essays on "Christ's Hospital" and "Grace before Meat"). Le Grice passed to Trinity College, Cambridge. He left in 1796 and became tutor to William John Godolphin Nicholls of Trereife, near Penzance, the only son of a widowed mother. Le Grice was ordained in 1798 and married Mrs. Nicholls in 1799. Young Nicholls died in 1815 and Mrs. Le Grice in 1821, when Le Grice became sole owner of the Trereife property. He was incumbent of St. Mary's, Penzance, for some years. Le Grice was a witty, rebellious character, but he never fulfilled the promise of his early days. It has been conjectured that his skill in punning awakened Lamb's ambition in that direction. Le Grice saw Lamb next in 1834, at the Bell at Edmonton. His recollections of Lamb were included by Talfourd in the Memorials, and his recollections of Coleridge were printed in the Gentleman's Magazine, December, 1834. I know nothing of Miss Hunt. "Whatsoever things are honest. . .” See Philippians iv. 8. Of Lamb's confinement in a madhouse we know no more than is here told. It is conjectured that the "other person" to whom Lamb refers a few lines later was Ann Simmons, a girl at Widford for whom he had an attachment that had been discouraged, if not forbidden, by her friends. This is the only attack of the kind that Lamb is known to have suffered. He once told Coleridge that during his illness he had sometimes believed himself to be Young Norval in Home's "Douglas." The poem in blank verse was, we learn in a subsequent letter, "The Grandame," or possibly an autobiographical work of which "The Grandame" is the only portion that survived. White was James White (1775-1820), an old Christ's Hospitaller and a friend and almost exact contemporary of Lamb. Lamb, who first kindled his enthusiasm for Shakespeare, was, I think, to some extent involved in the Original Letters, &c., of Sir John Falstaff and his Friends, which appeared in 1796. The dedication-to Master Samuel Irelaunde, meaning William Henry Ireland (who sometimes took his father's name Samuel), the forger of the pretended Shakespearian play "Vortigern," produced at Drury Lane earlier in the year is quite in Lamb's manner (see Vol. I. of this edition, page 465). White's immortality, however, rests not upon this book, but upon his portrait in the Elia essay on ChimneySweepers." 66 The sonnet "To my Sister" was printed, with slight alterations, by Lamb in Coleridge's Poems, second edition, 1797, and again in Lamb's Works, 1818. Coleridge's Conciones ad Populum; or, Addresses to the People, had been published at Bristol in November, 1795. Close students of Lamb's Letters will observe that this, together with many of the early letters to Coleridge which follow, differs from the text of the other editions, new copies having been made from the originals in the Morrison Collection.] I LETTER 2 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE [Probably begun either on Tuesday, May 24, or Tuesday, May 31, 1796. Postmark? June 1.] AM in such violent pain with the head ach 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 tomorrow (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.* Proud City, and thy sons I leave behind, That mindest me of many a pleasure gone, And I shall muse on thee, slow journeying on, * Drowsyhed I have met with I think in Spencer. Tis an old thing, but it rhymes with led & rhyming covers a multitude of licences. 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 1st sonnet that "mock'd my step with many a lonely glade." When last I roved these winding wood-walks green, Green winding walks, and pathways shady-sweet, Oftimes would Anna seek the silent scene, The cottage which did once my all contain: 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, That steeps in kind oblivious extacy The care-craz'd mind, like some still melody; Speaking most plain the thoughts which do possess And innocent loves,* and maiden purity. Of changed friends, or fortune's wrongs unkind; Cowley uses this phrase with a somewhat different meaning: I meant loves of relatives friends &c. 1796 LAMB'S LOVE SONNETS 7 The next and last I value most of all. 'Twas 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, My loved companion dropt a tear, and fled, That I may seek thee the wide world around. Since writing it, I have found in a poem by Hamilton of Bangour, these 2 lines to happiness Nun sober and devout, where art thou fled Lines eminently beautiful, but I do not remember having re'd 'em previously, for the credit of my 10th and 11th lines. Parnell has 2 lines (which probably suggested the above) to Contentment Whither ah! whither art thou fled, * an odd epithet for contentment in a poet so poetical as Parnell. Cowley's exquisite Elegy on the death of his friend Harvey suggested the phrase of "we two" So much for acknowledged plagiarisms, the confession of which I know not whether it has more of vanity or modesty in it. As to my blank verse I am so dismally slow and steril of ideas (I speak from my heart) that I much question if it will ever come to any issue. I have hitherto only hammered out a few indepen[den]t unconnected snatches, not in a capacity to be sent. I am very ill, and will rest till I have read your poems-for which I am very thankful. I have one more favour to beg of you, that you never mention Mr. May's affair in any sort, much less think of repaying. Are we not flocci-nauci-what-d'ye-call-em-ists? We have just learnd, that my poor brother has had a sad accident: a large stone blown down by yesterday's high wind has bruised his leg in a most shocking manner-he is under the care of Cruikshanks. Coleridge, there are 10,000 objections against my paying |