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1797

LAMB A NECESSARIAN

83

part of his verse, be not delicious. I prefer the graceful rambling of his essays, even to the courtly elegance and ease of Addisonabstracting from this the latter's exquisite humour. Why is not your poem on Burns in the Monthly Magazine? I was much disappointed. I have a pleasurable but confused remembrance of it. When the little volume is printed, send me 3 or 4, at all events not more than 6 copies, and tell me if I put you to any additional expence, by printing with you. I have no thought of the kind, and in that case, must reimburse you. My epistle is a model of unconnectedness, but I have no partic: subject to write on, and must proportion my scribble in some degree to the increase of postage. It is not quite fair, considering how burdensome your correspondence from different quarters must be, to add to it with so little shew of reason. I will make an end for this evening. Sunday Even :-Farewell.

Priestly, whom I sin in almost adoring, speaks of "such a choice of company, as tends to keep up that right bent, and firmness of mind, which a necessary intercourse with the world would otherwise warp and relax. Such fellowship is the true balsam of life, its cement is infinitely more durable than that of the friendships of the world, and it looks for its proper fruit, and complete gratification, to the life beyond the Grave." Is there a possible chance for such an one as me to realize in this world, such friendships? Where am I to look for 'em? What testimonials shall I bring of my being worthy of such friendship? Alas! the great and good go together in separate Herds, and leave such as me to lag far far behind in all intellectual, and far more grievous to say, in all moral, accomplishments. Coleridge, I have not one truly elevated character among my acquaintance: not one Christian: not one but undervalues Christianity. Singly what am I to do? Wesley (have you read his life? was he not an elevated character?) Wesley has said, "Religion is not a solitary thing." Alas! it necessarily is so with me, or next to solitary. "Tis true, you write to me. correspondence by letter, and personal intimacy, are very widely different. Do, do write to me, and do some good to my mind, already how much "warped and relaxed" by the world!"Tis the conclusion of another evening. Good night. Good night. God have us all in his keeping.

But

If you are sufficiently at leisure, oblige me with an account of your plan of life at Stowey-your literary occupations and prospects -in short make me acquainted with every circumstance, which, as relating to you, can be interesting to me. Are you yet a Berkleyan ? Make me one. I rejoice in being, speculatively, a necessarian. Would to God, I were habitually a practical one. Confirm me in the faith of that great and glorious doctrine, and keep me steady

in the contemplation of it. You sometime since exprest an intention you had of finishing some extensive work on the Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion. Have you let that intention go? Or are you doing any thing towards it? Make to yourself other ten talents. My letter is full of nothingness. I talk of nothing. But I must talk. I love to write to you. I take a pride in it. It makes me think less meanly of myself. It makes me think myself not totally disconnected from the better part of Mankind. I know, I am too dissatisfied with the beings around me,—but I cannot help occasionally exclaiming "Woe is me, that I am constrained to dwell with Meshech, and to have my habitation among the tents of Kedar"-I know I am no ways better in practice than my neighbours but I have a taste for religion, an occasional earnest aspiration after perfection, which they have not. I gain nothing by being with such as myself-we encourage one another in mediocrity-I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself. All this must sound odd to you; but these are my predominant feelings, when I sit down to write to you, and I should put force upon my mind, were I to reject them. Yet I rejoyce, and feel my privilege with gratitude, when I have been reading some wise book, such as I have just been reading-Priestley on Philosophical necessity-in the thought that I enjoy a kind of communion, a kind of friendship even, with the great and good. Books are to me instead of friends. I wish they did not resemble the latter in their scarceness.-And how does little David Hartley? Ecquid in antiquam virtutem?"-does his mighty name work wonders yet upon his little frame, and opening mind? I did not distinctly understand you, you don't mean to make an actual ploughman of him? Mrs. C is no doubt well,—give my kindest respects to her. Is Lloyd with you yet?-are you intimate with Southey? What poems is he about to publish-he hath a most prolific brain, and is indeed a most sweet poet. But how can you answer all the various mass of interrogation I have put to you in the course of this sheet. Write back just what you like, only write something, however brief. I have now nigh finished my page, and got to the end of another evening (Monday evening)—and my eyes are heavy and sleepy, and my brain unsuggestive. I have just heart enough awake to say Good night once more, and God love you my dear friend, God love us all. Mary bears an affectionate remembrance of you. CHARLES LAMB.

66

NOTE

[The criticisms contained in the first paragraph bear upon Coleridge's "Ode on the Departing Year," which had already

1797

COLERIDGE AT NETHER STOWEY

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appeared twice, in the Cambridge Intelligencer and in a quarto issued by Cottle, and was now being revised for the second edition of the Poems.

The personification of Madness was contained in the line, afterwards omitted:

For still does Madness roam on Guilt's black dizzy height.

Lamb's objection to this line, considering his home circumstances at the time, was very natural. In Antistrophe I. Coleridge originally said of the ethereal multitude in Heaven

Whose purple Locks with snow-white Glories shone.

In the 1797 Poems the line ran

Whose wreathed Locks with snow-white Glories shone;

and in the final version

Whose locks with wreaths, whose wreaths with glories shone. Coleridge must have supported his case, in the letter which Lamb is answering, by a reference to the Italian painters.

In connection with Lamb's other criticisms see the poem on page 947, in the Appendix. Coleridge in the 1797 edition of his Poems made no alteration to meet Lamb's strictures. The simile that Lamb hated is, I imagine, that of the soldier on the war field. "The history of child-bearing" referred to is the passage at the end of Strophe II. To the quarto Coleridge had appended various notes. In 1797 he had only three, and added an argument.

"I need not repeat my wishes." In Talfourd and other editions this letter has always begun with these words.

The reference to Merlin will be explained by a glance at the parallel sonnets on page 24. Merlin was entirely Coleridge's idea. A conjuror of that name was just then among London's attractions. The "last sonnet," which was not the last in the 1797 volume, but the 6th, was that beginning "If from my lips" (see page 2).

In connection with Lamb's question on the Stowey husbandry, the following quotation from a letter from Coleridge to the Rev. J. P. Estlin, belonging to this period, is interesting :

Our house is better than we expected-there is a comfortable bedroom and sitting-room for C. Lloyd, and another for us, a room for Nanny, a kitchen, and out-house. Before our door a clear brook runs of very soft water; and in the back yard is a nice well of fine spring water. We have a very pretty garden, and large enough to find us vegetables and employment, and I am already an expert gardener, and both my hands can exhibit a callum as testimonials of their industry. We have likewise a sweet orchard,

Writing a little before this to Charles Lloyd, senior, Coleridge had said: 66 My days I shall devote to the acquirement of practical husbandry and horticulture."

"To make yourself for ever known. . ." has::

What shall I do to be for ever known,

And make the age to come my own?

Cowley's "Motto "

The poem on Burns was that "To a Friend [Lamb] who had Declared His Intention of Writing no more Poetry." It was printed first in a Bristol paper and then in the Annual Anthology, 1800. Priestley's remark is in the Dedication to John Lee, Esq., of Lincoln's Inn, of " A Free Discussion of the Doctrines of Materialism and Philosophical Necessity in a Correspondence between Dr. Price and Dr. Priestley," etc., included in Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit, Vol. III., 1778. The discussion arose from the publication by Priestley of The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated, which itself is an appendage to Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit.

Three lives at least of John Wesley were published in the two years following his death in 1791. Coleridge later studied Wesley closely, for he added valuable notes to Southey's life (see the 1846 edition).

"Warped and relaxed." See the quotation from Priestley.

"A Berkleyan," i.e., a follower of Bishop Berkeley (1685-1753), who in his New Theory of Vision and later works maintained that "what we call matter has no actual existence, and that the impressions which we believe ourselves to receive from it are not, in fact, derived from anything external to ourselves, but are produced within us by a certain disposition of the mind, the immediate operation of God" (Benham's Dictionary of Religion).

Coleridge when sending Southey one version of his poem to Charles Lamb, entitled "This Lime-tree Bower my Prison" (to which we shall come later), in July, 1797, appended to the following passage the note, "You remember I am a Berkleian ” :—

Struck with joy's deepest calm, and gazing round

On the wide view, may gaze till all doth seem

Less gross than bodily; a living thing

That acts upon the mind, and with such hues

As clothe the Almighty Spirit, when He makes
Spirits perceive His presence!

"A Necessarian." We should now say a fatalist.

Coleridge's work on the "Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion," which has before been mentioned, was, if ever begun, never completed.

"Woe is me..." From Psalms cxx, 5.

1797

66

CHARLES LLOYD IN LONDON

87

Ecquid in antiquam virtutem." See Eneid, III., 342-343 :–

Ecquid in antiquam virtutem animosque viriles

Et pater Æneas et avunculus excitat Hector?

(Do his father Æneas and his uncle Hector rouse him [i.e., Ascanius, i.e., little Hartley] to anything of their ancient valour and manly spirits ?)]

LETTER 21

CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE

[Dated at end: January 18, 1797.]

DE

EAR Col,-You have learnd by this time, with surprise, no doubt, that Lloyd is with me in town. The emotions I felt on his coming so unlooked for are not ill expressed in what follows, & what, if you do not object to them as too personal, & to the world obscure, or otherwise wanting in worth, I should wish to make a part of our little volume.

I shall be sorry if that vol comes out, as it necessarily must do, unless you print those very schoolboyish verses I sent you on not getting leave to come down to Bristol last Summer. I say I shall be sorry that I have addrest you in nothing which can appear in our joint volume.

So frequently, so habitually as you dwell on my thoughts, 'tis some wonder those thoughts came never yet in Contact with a poetical mood-But you dwell in my heart of hearts, and I love you in all the naked honesty of prose. God bless you, and all your little domestic circle-my tenderest remembrances to your Beloved Sara, & a smile and a kiss from me to your dear dear little David Hartley-The verses I refer to above, slightly amended, I have sent (forgetting to ask your leave, tho' indeed I gave them only your initials) to the Month: Mag: where they may possibly appear next month, and where I hope to recognise your Poem on Burns.

TO CHARLES LLOYD, AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR

Alone, obscure, without a friend,

A cheerless, solitary thing,

Why seeks my Lloyd the stranger out?
What offring can the stranger bring

Of social scenes, home-bred delights,
That him in aught compensate may
For Stowey's pleasant winter nights,
For loves & friendships far away?

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