CHAPTER III.

[1797 to 1800.]

LETTERS TO COLERIDGE AND MANNING IN LAMB'S FIRST YEARS OF LIFE WITH HIS SISTER.

THE anxieties of Lamb's new position were assuaged during the spring of 1797, by frequent communications with Coleridge respecting the anticipated volume, and by some additions to his own share in its pages. He was also cheered by the company of Lloyd, who, having resided for a few months with Coleridge, at Stowey, came to London in some perplexity as to his future course. Of this visit Lamb speaks in the following letter, probably written in January. It contains some verses expressive of his delight at Lloyd's visit, which, although afterwards inserted in the volume, are so well fitted to their framework of prose, and so indicative of the feelings of the writer at this crisis of his life, that I may be excused for presenting them with the context.

TO MR. COLERIDGE.

"1797.

"Dear Col,-You have learned 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, and what, if you do not object to them as too personal, and 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 volume comes out, as it necessarily must do, unless you print those very school-boy-ish verses I sent you on not getting leave to come down to Bristol last summer. I say I shall be sorry that I have addressed you in nothing which can appear in our joint volume; so frequently, so habitually, as you dwell in 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, and 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 Monthly Magazine,' where they may possibly appear next month, and where I hope to recognize 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 offering can the stranger bring

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

In brief oblivion to forego

Friends, such as thine, so justly dear,
And be awhile with me content
To stay, a kindly loiterer, here?

For this a gleam of random joy

Hath flush'd my unaccustom'd cheek;

"O Coleridge, would to God you were in London with us, or we two at Stowey with you all. Lloyd takes up his abode at the Bull and Mouth Inn; the Cat and Salutation would have had a charm more forcible for me. O noctes cœnæque Deum! Anglice -Welch rabbits, punch, and poesy. Should you be induced to publish those very school-boy-ish verses, print 'em as they will occur, if at all, in the Monthly Magazine;' yet I should feel ashamed that to you I wrote nothing better: but they are too personal, and almost trifling and obscure withal. Some lines of mine to Cowper were in last Monthly Magazine;' they have not body of thought enough to plead for the retaining of 'em. My sister's kind love to you all. "C. LAMB."

It would seem, from the following fragment of a

letter of 7th April, 1797, that Lamb, at first, took a small lodging for his sister apart from his own — but soon to be for life united.

TO MR. COLERIDGE.

"By the way, Lloyd may have told you about my sister. I told him. If not, I have taken her out of her confinement, and taken a room for her at Hackney, and spend my Sundays, holidays, &c., with her. She boards herself. In one little half year's illness, and in such an illness of such a nature and of such consequences to get her out into the world again, with a prospect of her never being so ill again this is to be ranked not among the common blessings of Providence."

The next letter to Coleridge begins with a transcript of Lamb's Poem, entitled "A Vision of Repentance," which was inserted in the Addenda to the volume, and is preserved among his collected poems, and thus proceeds:

TO MR. COLERIDGE.

"April 15th, 1797.

"The above you will please to print immediately before the blank verse fragments. Tell me if you like it. I fear the latter half is unequal to the former, in parts of which I think you will discover a delicacy of pencilling not quite un-Spenser-like. The latter half aims at the measure, but has failed to attain the poetry of Milton in his 'Comus,' and Fletcher in that exquisite thing ycleped the Faithful Shepherdess,' where

they both use eight-syllable lines. But this latter half was finished in great haste, and as a task, not from that impulse which affects the name of inspiration.

"By the way, I have lit upon Fairfax's 'Godfrey of Bullen,' for half-a-crown. Rejoice with me.

"Poor dear Lloyd! I had a letter from him yesterday; his state of mind is truly alarming. He has, by his own confession, kept a letter of mine unopened three weeks, afraid, he says, to open it lest I should speak upbraidingly to him; and yet this very letter of mine was in answer to one, wherein he informed me that an alarming illness had alone prevented him from writing. You will pray with me, I know, for his recovery, for surely, Coleridge, an exquisiteness of feeling like this must border on derangement. But I love him more and more, and will not give up the hope of his speedy recovery, as he tells me he is under Dr. Darwin's regimen."

*

“God bless us all, and shield us from insanity, which is the sorest malady of all.'

66

My kind love to your wife and child.

"Pray write now."

"C. LAMB.

As summer advanced, Lamb discerned a hope of compensation for the disappointment of last year, by a visit to Coleridge, and thus expressed his wishes.

De

*Poor Charles Lloyd! These apprehensions were sadly realized. lusions of the most melancholy kind thickened over his latter days — yet left his admirable intellect free for the finest processes of severe reasoning. At a time when, like Cowper, he believed himself the especial subject of Divine wrath, he could bear his part in the most subtle disquisition on questions of religion, morals, and poetry, with the nicest accuracy of perception and the most exemplary candor; and, after an argument of hours revert, with a faint smile, to his own despair!