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　　LETTER 29

　　CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE

　　[No date. Probably July 19 or 26, 1797.]

　　I am scarcely yet so reconciled to the loss of you, or so subsided into my wonted uniformity of feeling, as to sit calmly down to think of you and write to you. But I reason myself into the belief that those few and pleasant holidays shall not have been spent in vain. I feel improvement in the recollection of many a casual conversation. The names of Tom Poole, of Wordsworth and his good sister, with thine and Sara's, are become "familiar in my mouth as household words." You would make me very happy, if you think W. has no objection, by transcribing for me that inscription of his. I have some scattered sentences ever floating on my memory, teasing me that I cannot remember more of it. You may believe I will make no improper use of it. Believe me I can think now of many subjects on which I had planned gaining information from you; but I forgot my "treasure's worth" while I possessed it. Your leg is now become to me a matter of much more importance—and many a little thing, which when I was present with you seemed scarce to indent my notice, now presses painfully on my remembrance. Is the Patriot come yet? Are Wordsworth and his sister gone yet? I was looking out for John Thelwall all the way from Bridgewater, and had I met him, I think it would have moved almost me to tears. You will oblige me too by sending me my great-coat, which I left behind in the oblivious state the mind is thrown into at parting—is it not ridiculous that I sometimes envy that great-coat lingering so cunningly behind?—at present I have none—so send it me by a Stowey waggon, if there be such a thing, directing for C. L., No. 45, Chapel-Street, Pentonville, near London. But above all, that Inscription!—it will recall to me the tones of all your voices—and with them many a remembered kindness to one who could and can repay you all only by the silence of a grateful heart. I could not talk much, while I was with you, but my silence was not sullenness, nor I hope from any bad motive; but, in truth, disuse has made me awkward at it. I know I behaved myself, particularly at Tom Poole's, and at Cruikshank's, most like a sulky child; but company and converse are strange to me. It was kind in you all to endure me as you did.

　　Are you and your dear Sara—to me also very dear, because very kind—agreed yet about the management of little Hartley? and how go on the little rogue's teeth? I will see White to-morrow, and he shall send you information on that matter; but as perhaps I can do it as well after talking with him, I will keep this letter open.

　　My love and thanks to you and all of you.

　　C. L.

　　Wednesday Evening.

　　[Lamb spent a week at Nether Stowey in July, 1797. Coleridge tells Southey of this visit in a letter written in that month: "Charles Lamb has been with me for a week. He left me Friday morning. The second day after Wordsworth [who had just left Racedown, near Crewkerne, for Alfoxden, near Stowey] came to me, dear Sara accidentally emptied a skillet of boiling milk on my foot, which confined me during the whole time of C. Lamb's stay and still prevents me from all walks longer than a furlong." This is the cause of Lamb's allusion to Coleridge's leg, and it also produced Coleridge's poem beginning "This lime-tree bower my prison," addressed to Lamb, which opens as follows, the friends in the fourth line being Lamb, Wordsworth and Dorothy Wordsworth. (Wordsworth was then twenty-seven. The Lyrical Ballads were to be written in the next few months.)

　　Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,

　　Lam'd by the scathe of fire, lonely and faint,

　　This lime-tree bower my prison! They, meantime

　　My Friends, whom I may never meet again,

　　On springy heath, along the hill-top edge

　　Wander delighted, and look down, perchance,

　　On that same rifted Dell, where many an ash

　　Twists its wild limbs beside the ferny rock

　　Whose plumy ferns forever nod and drip,

　　Spray'd by the waterfall. But chiefly thou

　　My gentle-hearted Charles! thou who had pin'd

　　And hunger'd after Nature many a year,

　　In the great City pent, winning thy way

　　With sad yet bowed soul, through evil and pain

　　And strange calamity!

　　Tom Poole was Thomas Poole (1765-1837), a wealthy tanner, and

　　Coleridge's friend, correspondent and patron, who lived at Stowey.

　　The Patriot and John Thelwall were one. See note on page 93.

　　"That inscription," The "Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew Tree," written in 1795. Lamb refers to it again in 1815.

　　The address at Pentonville is the first indication given by Lamb that he has left Little Queen Street. We last saw him there for certain in Letter 17 on December 9. The removal had been made probably at the end of 1796.

　　John Cruikshank, a neighbour of Coleridge, had married a Miss Budé on the same day that Coleridge married Sara Flicker.

　　Of the business connected with White we know nothing.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5