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　　LETTER 109

　　CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE 27th May, 1803.

　　My dear Coleridge,—The date of my last was one day prior to the receipt of your letter, full of foul omens. I explain, lest you should have thought mine too light a reply to such sad matter. I seriously hope by this time you have given up all thoughts of journeying to the green islands of the Blest—voyages in time of war are very precarious—or at least, that you will take them in your way to the Azores. Pray be careful of this letter till it has done its duty, for it is to inform you that I have booked off your watch (laid in cotton like an untimely fruit), and with it Condillac and all other books of yours which were left here. These will set out on Monday next, the 29th May, by Kendal waggon, from White Horse, Cripplegate. You will make seasonable inquiries, for a watch mayn't come your way again in a hurry. I have been repeatedly after Tobin, and now hear that he is in the country, not to return till middle of June. I will take care and see him with the earliest. But cannot you write pathetically to him, enforcing a speedy mission of your books for literary purposes? He is too good a retainer to Literature, to let her interests suffer through his default. And why, in the name of Beelzebub, are your books to travel from Barnard's Inn to the Temple, and then circuitously to Cripplegate, when their business is to take a short cut down Holborn-hill, up Snow do., on to Woodstreet, &c.? The former mode seems a sad superstitious subdivision of labour. Well! the "Man of Ross" is to stand; Longman begs for it; the printer stands with a wet sheet in one hand and a useless Pica in the other, in tears, pleading for it; I relent. Besides, it was a Salutation poem, and has the mark of the beast "Tobacco" upon it. Thus much I have done; I have swept off the lines about widows and orphans in second edition, which (if you remember) you most awkwardly and illogically caused to be inserted between two Ifs, to the great breach and disunion of said Ifs, which now meet again (as in first edition), like two clever lawyers arguing a case. Another reason for subtracting the pathos was, that the "Man of Ross" is too familiar to need telling what he did, especially in worse lines than Pope told it; and it now stands simply as "Reflections at an Inn about a known Character," and sucking an old story into an accommodation with present feelings. Here is no breaking spears with Pope, but a new, independent, and really a very pretty poem. In fact, 'tis as I used to admire it in the first volume, and I have even dared to restore

　　"If 'neath this roof thy wine-cheer'd moments pass,"

　　for

　　"Beneath this roof if thy cheer'd moments pass."

　　"Cheer'd" is a sad general word; "wine-cheer'd" I'm sure you'd give me, if I had a speaking-trumpet to sound to you 300 miles. But I am your factotum, and that (save in this instance, which is a single case, and I can't get at you) shall be next to a fac-nihil—at most, a fac-simile. I have ordered "Imitation of Spenser" to be restored on Wordsworth's authority; and now, all that you will miss will be "Flicker and Flicker's Wife," "The Thimble," "Breathe, dear harmonist" and, I believe, "The Child that was fed with Manna." Another volume will clear off all your Anthologic Morning-Postian Epistolary Miscellanies; but pray don't put "Christabel" therein; don't let that sweet maid come forth attended with Lady Holland's mob at her heels. Let there be a separate volume of Tales, Choice Tales, "Ancient Mariners," &c.

　　C. LAMB.

　　[Coleridge, who was getting more and more nervous about his health, had long been on the point of starting on some southern travels with Thomas Wedgwood, but Wedgwood had gone alone; his friend James Webbe Tobin, mentioned later in the letter, lived at Nevis, in the West Indies: possibly Coleridge had thoughts of returning with him. The Malta experiment, of which we are to hear later, had not, I think, yet been mooted.

　　"The Man of Ross." In the 1797 edition the poem had run thus, partly by Lamb's advice (see the letters of June 10, 1796, and February 5, 1797):—

　　LINES WRITTEN AT THE KING'S-ARMS, ROSS, FORMERLY THE HOUSE OF THE "MAN OF ROSS"

　　Richer than MISER o'er his countless hoards,

　　Nobler than KINGS, or king-polluted LORDS,

　　Here dwelt the MAN OF ROSS! O Trav'ller, hear!

　　Departed Merit claims a reverent tear.

　　Friend to the friendless, to the sick man health,

　　With generous joy he view'd his modest wealth;

　　He hears the widow's heaven-breath'd prayer of praise,

　　He marks the shelter'd orphan's tearful gaze,

　　Or where the sorrow-shrivel'd captive lay,

　　Pours the bright blaze of Freedom's noon-tide ray.

　　Beneath this roof if thy cheer'd moments pass,

　　Fill to the good man's name one grateful glass;

　　To higher zest shall MEM'RY wake thy soul,

　　And VIRTUE mingle in th' ennobled bowl.

　　But if, like me, thro' life's distressful scene

　　Lonely and sad thy pilgrimage hath been;

　　And if, thy breast with heart-sick anguish fraught,

　　Thou journeyest onward tempest-tost in thought;

　　Here cheat thy cares! in generous visions melt,

　　And dream of Goodness, thou hast never felt!

　　Lamb changed it by omitting lines 9 to 14, Coleridge agreeing. The poet would not, however, restore "wine-cheer'd" as in his earliest version, 1794. In the edition of 1828 the six lines were put back. "Breathe, dear Harmonist" was the poem "To the Rev. W. J. H.," and "The Child that was fed with Manna" was "On the Christening of a Friend's Child."

　　"Lady Holland's mob." Elizabeth Vassall Fox, third Lady Holland (1770-1845), was beginning her reign as a Muse. Lamb by his phrase means occasional and political verse generally. The reference to "Christabel" helps to controvert Fanny Godwin's remark in a letter to Mrs. Shelley, on July 20, 1816, that Lamb "says Christabel ought never to have been published; that no one understood it."

　　Canon Ainger's transcript adds: "A word of your health will be richly acceptable."] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5