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　　LETTER 101

　　CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE

　　Oct. 23rd, 1802.

　　Your kind offer I will not a second time refuse. You shall send me a packet and I will do them into English with great care. Is not there one about W'm. Tell, and would not that in the present state of discussions be likely to tell? The Epigrams I meant are to be found at the end of Harrington's Translation of Orlando Furioso: if you could get the book, they would some of them answer your purpose to modernize. If you can't, I fancy I can. Baxter's Holy Commonwealth I have luckily met with, and when I have sent it, you shall if you please consider yourself indebted to me 3s. 6d. the cost of it: especially as I purchased it after your solemn injunctions. The plain case with regard to my presents (which you seem so to shrink from) is that I have not at all affected the character of a DONOR, or thought of violating your sacred Law of Give and Take: but I have been taking and partaking the good things of your House (when I know you were not over-abounding) and I now give unto you of mine; and by the grace of God I happen to be myself a little super-abundant at present. I expect I shall be able to send you my final parcel in about a week: by that time I shall have gone thro' all Milton's Latin Works. There will come with it the Holy Commonwealth, and the identical North American Bible which you helped to dogs ear at Xt's.—I call'd at Howell's for your little Milton, and also to fetch away the White Cross Street Library Books, which I have not forgot: but your books were not in a state to be got at then, and Mrs. H. is to let me know when she packs up. They will be sent by sea; and my little præcursor will come to you by the Whitehaven waggon accompanied with pens, penknife &c.—Mrs. Howell was as usual very civil; and asked with great earnestness, if it were likely you would come to Town in the winter. She has a friendly eye upon you.

　　I read daily your political essays. I was particularly pleased with "Once a Jacobin:" though the argument is obvious enough, the style was less swelling than your things sometimes are, and it was plausible ad populum. A vessel has just arrived from Jamaica with the news of poor Sam Le Grice's death. He died at Jamaica of the yellow fever. His course was rapid and he had been very foolish; but I believe there was more of kindness and warmth in him than in almost any other of our schoolfellows. The annual meeting of the Blues is to-morrow, at the London Tavern, where poor Sammy dined with them two years ago, and attracted the notice of all by the singular foppishness of his dress. When men go off the stage so early, it scarce seems a noticeable thing in their epitaphs, whether they had been wise or silly in their lifetime.

　　I am glad the snuff and Pi-pos's Books please. "Goody Two Shoes" is almost out of print. Mrs. Barbauld's stuff has banished all the old classics of the nursery; and the shopman at Newbery's hardly deigned to reach them off an old exploded corner of a shelf, when Mary asked for them. Mrs. B.'s and Mrs. Trimmer's nonsense lay in piles about. Knowledge insignificant and vapid as Mrs. B.'s books convey, it seems, must come to a child in the shape of knowledge, and his empty noddle must be turned with conceit of his own powers when he has learnt that a Horse is an animal, and Billy is better than a Horse, and such like; instead of that beautiful Interest in wild tales which made the child a man, while all the time he suspected himself to be no bigger than a child. Science has succeeded to Poetry no less in the little walks of children than with men. Is there no possibility of averting this sore evil? Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with Tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history?

　　Damn them!—I mean the cursed Barbauld Crew, those Blights and Blasts of all that is Human in man and child.

　　As to the Translations, let me do two or three hundred lines, and then do you try the Nostrums upon Stuart in any way you please. If they go down I will bray more. In fact, if I got or could but get 50 l. a year only, in addition to what I have, I should live in affluence.

　　Have you anticipated it, or could not you give a Parallel of Bonaparte with Cromwell, particularly as to the contrast in their deeds affecting foreign states? Cromwell's interference for the Albigenses, B[uonaparte]'s against the Swiss. Then Religion would come in; and Milton and you could rant about our countrymen of that period. This is a hasty suggestion, the more hasty because I want my Supper. I have just finished Chapman's Homer. Did you ever read it?—it has most the continuous power of interesting you all along, like a rapid original, of any, and in the uncommon excellence of the more finished parts goes beyond Fairfax or any of 'em. The metre is fourteen syllables, and capable of all sweetness and grandeur. Cowper's damn'd blank verse detains you every step with some heavy Miltonism; Chapman gallops off with you his own free pace. Take a simile for an example. The council breaks up—

　　"Being abroad, the earth was overlaid

　　With flockers to them, that came forth; as when of frequent bees

　　Swarms rise out of a hollow rock, repairing the degrees

　　Of their egression endlessly, with ever rising new

　　From forth their sweet nest; as their store, still as it faded, grew,

　　And never would cease sending forth her clusters to the spring,

　　They still crowd out so: this flock here, that there, belabouring

　　The loaded flowers. So," &c. &c.

　　[Iliad, Book II., 70-77.]

　　What endless egression of phrases the dog commands!

　　Take another: Agamemnon wounded, bearing his wound heroically for the sake of the army (look below) to a woman in labour.

　　"He, with his lance, sword, mighty stones, poured his heroic wreak

　　On other squadrons of the foe, whiles yet warm blood did break

　　Thro' his cleft veins: but when the wound was quite exhaust and crude,

　　The eager anguish did approve his princely fortitude.

　　As when most sharp and bitter pangs distract a labouring dame,

　　Which the divine Ilithiæ, that rule the painful frame

　　Of human childbirth, pour on her; the Ilithiæ that are

　　The daughters of Saturnia; with whose extreme repair

　　The woman in her travail strives to take the worst it gives;

　　With thought, it must be, 'tis love's fruit, the end for which she lives;

　　The mean to make herself new born, what comforts will redound:

　　So," &c.

　　[Iliad, Book XI., 228-239.]

　　I will tell you more about Chapman and his peculiarities in my next. I am much interested in him.

　　Yours ever affectionately, and Pi-Pos's.

　　C.L.

　　[Coleridge was just now contributing political essays as well as verse to the Morning Post. "Once a Jacobin always a Jacobin" appeared on October 21, 1802. These were afterwards reprinted in Essays on His Own Times. Ad populum is a reminder of Coleridge's first political essays, the Conciones ad Populum of 1795.

　　"Goody Two Shoes"—One of Newbery's most famous books for children, sometimes attributed to Goldsmith, though, I think, wrongly.

　　Mrs. Barbauld (1743-1825) was the author of Hymns in Prose for

　　Children, and she contributed to her brother John Aikin's Evenings at

　　Home, both very popular books. Lamb, who afterwards came to know Mrs.

　　Barbauld, described her and Mrs. Inchbald as the two bald women. Mrs.

　　Sarah Trimmer (1741-1810) was the author of many books for children; she

　　lives by the Story of the Robins.

　　The translation for Stuart either was not made or not accepted; nor did

　　Coleridge carry out the project of the parallel of Buonaparte with

　　Cromwell. Hallam, however, did so in his Constitutional History of

　　England, unfavourably to Cromwell.

　　George Chapman's Odyssey was paraphrased by Lamb in his Adventures of

　　Ulysses, 1808. Lamb either did not return to the subject with

　　Coleridge, or his "next letter" has been lost.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5