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　　LETTER 34

　　CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY

　　Saturday, July 28th, 1798.

　　I am ashamed that I have not thanked you before this for the "Joan of Arc," but I did not know your address, and it did not occur to me to write through Cottle. The poem delighted me, and the notes amused me, but methinks she of Neufchatel, in the print, holds her sword too "like a dancer." I sent your notice to Phillips, particularly requesting an immediate insertion, but I suppose it came too late. I am sometimes curious to know what progress you make in that same "Calendar:" whether you insert the nine worthies and Whittington? what you do or how you can manage when two Saints meet and quarrel for precedency? Martlemas, and Candlemas, and Christmas, are glorious themes for a writer like you, antiquity-bitten, smit with the love of boars' heads and rosemary; but how you can ennoble the 1st of April I know not. By the way I had a thing to say, but a certain false modesty has hitherto prevented me: perhaps I can best communicate my wish by a hint,—my birthday is on the 10th of February, New Style; but if it interferes with any remarkable event, why rather than my country should lose her fame, I care not if I put my nativity back eleven days. Fine family patronage for your "Calendar," if that old lady of prolific memory were living, who lies (or lyes) in some church in London (saints forgive me, but I have forgot what church), attesting that enormous legend of as many children as days in the year. I marvel her impudence did not grasp at a leap-year. Three hundred and sixty-five dedications, and all in a family—you might spit in spirit on the oneness of Maecenas' patronage!

　　Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to the eternal regret of his native Devonshire, emigrates to Westphalia—"Poor Lamb (these were his last words), if he wants any knowledge, he may apply to me,"—in ordinary cases, I thanked him, I have an "Encyclopaedia" at hand, but on such an occasion as going over to a German university, I could not refrain from sending him the following propositions, to be by him defended or oppugned (or both) at Leipsic or Gottingen.

　　THESES QUAEDAM THEOLOGICAE

　　I

　　"Whether God loves a lying angel better than a true man?"

　　II

　　"Whether the archangel Uriel could knowingly affirm an untruth, and whether, if he could, he would?"

　　III

　　"Whether honesty be an angelic virtue, or not rather belonging to that class of qualities which the schoolmen term 'virtutes minus splendidæ et hominis et terræ nimis participes?'"

　　IV

　　"Whether the seraphim ardentes do not manifest their goodness by the way of vision and theory? and whether practice be not a sub-celestial, and merely human virtue?"

　　V

　　"Whether the higher order of seraphim illuminati ever sneer?"

　　VI

　　"Whether pure intelligences can love, or whether they love anything besides pure intellect?"

　　VII

　　"Whether the beatific vision be anything more or less than a perpetual representment to each individual angel of his own present attainments, and future capabilities, something in the manner of mortal looking-glasses?"

　　VIII

　　"Whether an 'immortal and amenable soul' may not come to be damned at last, and the man never suspect it beforehand?"

　　Samuel Taylor C. had not deigned an answer; was it impertinent of me to avail myself of that offered source of knowledge? Lloyd is returned to town from Ipswich where he has been with his brother. He has brought home three acts of a Play which I have not yet read. The scene for the most part laid in a Brothel. O tempora, O mores! but as friend Coleridge said when he was talking bawdy to Miss —— "to the pure all things are pure."

　　Wishing "Madoc" may be born into the world with as splendid promise as the second birth or purification of the Maid of Neufchatel,—I remain yours sincerely,

　　C. LAMB.

　　I hope Edith is better; my kindest remembrances to her. You have a good deal of trifling to forgive in this letter.

　　[This is Lamb's first letter to Southey that has been preserved. Probably others came before it. Southey now becomes Lamb's chief correspondent for some months. In Canon Ainger's transcript the letter ends with "Love and remembrances to Cottle."

　　Southey's Joan of Arc, second edition, had been published by Cottle in 1798. It has no frontispiece: the print of Joan of Arc must have come separately.

　　Phillips was Sir Richard Phillips (1767-1840), editor of the Monthly

　　Magazine and the publisher satirised in Sorrow's Lavengro.

　　The Calendar ultimately became the Annual Anthology. Southey had at first an idea of making it a poetical calendar or almanac.

　　"That old lady of prolific memory." Lamb is thinking, I imagine, of the story in Howell's Familiar Letters (also in Evelyn's Diary) of the "Wonder of Nature" near the Hague. "That Wonder of Nature is a Church-monument, where an Earl and a Lady are engraven with 365 Children about them, which were all deliver'd at one Birth." The story tells that a beggar woman with twins asked alms of the Countess, who denying that it was possible for two children to be born at once and vilifying the beggar, that woman cursed her and called upon God to show His judgment upon her by causing her to bear "at one birth as many Children as there are days in the year, which she did before the same year's end, having never born Child before." Howell seems to have been convinced of the authenticity of the story by the spectacle of the christening basin used by the family. The beggar, who spoke on the third day of the year, meant as many days as had been in that year—three.

　　Edith was Southey's wife.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5