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　　LETTER 32

　　CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE

　　January 28th, 1798.

　　You have writ me many kind letters, and I have answered none of them. I don't deserve your attentions. An unnatural indifference has been creeping on me since my last misfortunes, or I should have seized the first opening of a correspondence with you. To you I owe much under God. In my brief acquaintance with you in London, your conversations won me to the better cause, and rescued me from the polluting spirit of the world. I might have been a worthless character without you; as it is, I do possess a certain improvable portion of devotional feelings, tho' when I view myself in the light of divine truth, and not according to the common measures of human judgment, I am altogether corrupt and sinful. This is no cant. I am very sincere.

　　These last afflictions, Coleridge, have failed to soften and bend my will. They found me unprepared. My former calamities produced in me a spirit of humility and a spirit of prayer. I thought they had sufficiently disciplined me; but the event ought to humble me. If God's judgments now fail to take away from me the heart of stone, what more grievous trials ought I not to expect? I have been very querulous, impatient under the rod—full of little jealousies and heartburnings.—I had well nigh quarrelled with Charles Lloyd; and for no other reason, I believe, than that the good creature did all he could to make me happy. The truth is, I thought he tried to force my mind from its natural and proper bent; he continually wished me to be from home; he was drawing me from the consideration of my poor dear Mary's situation, rather than assisting me to gain a proper view of it with religious consolations. I wanted to be left to the tendency of my own mind in a solitary state which, in times past, I knew had led to quietness and a patient bearing of the yoke. He was hurt that I was not more constantly with him; but he was living with White, a man to whom I had never been accustomed to impart my dearest feelings, tho' from long habits of friendliness, and many a social and good quality, I loved him very much. I met company there sometimes—indiscriminate company. Any society almost, when I am in affliction, is sorely painful to me. I seem to breathe more freely, to think more collectedly, to feel more properly and calmly, when alone. All these things the good creature did with the kindest intentions in the world, but they produced in me nothing but soreness and discontent. I became, as he complained, "jaundiced" towards him … but he has forgiven me—and his smile, I hope, will draw all such humours from me. I am recovering, God be praised for it, a healthiness of mind, something like calmness—but I want more religion—I am jealous of human helps and leaning-places. I rejoice in your good fortunes. May God at the last settle you!—You have had many and painful trials; humanly speaking they are going to end; but we should rather pray that discipline may attend us thro' the whole of our lives … A careless and a dissolute spirit has advanced upon me with large strides—pray God that my present afflictions may be sanctified to me! Mary is recovering, but I see no opening yet of a situation for her; your invitation went to my very heart, but you have a power of exciting interest, of leading all hearts captive, too forcible to admit of Mary's being with you.

　　I consider her as perpetually on the brink of madness. I think you would almost make her dance within an inch of the precipice: she must be with duller fancies and cooler intellects. I know a young man of this description, who has suited her these twenty years, and may live to do so still, if we are one day restored to each other. In answer to your suggestions of occupation for me, I must say that I do not think my capacity altogether suited for disquisitions of that kind…. I have read little, I have a very weak memory, and retain little of what I read; am unused to composition in which any methodising is required; but I thank you sincerely for the hint, and shall receive it as far as I am able: that is, endeavour to engage my mind in some constant and innocent pursuit. I know my capacities better than you do.

　　Accept my kindest love, and believe me yours, as ever.

　　C. L.

　　[The first letter that has been preserved since September of the previous year. In the meantime Lamb had begun to work on Rosamund Gray, probably upon an impulse gained from the visit to Stowey, and was also arranging to join Lloyd, who was living in London with White, in the volume of poems to be called Blank Verse. Southey, writing many years later to Edward Moxon, said of Lloyd and White: "No two men could be imagined more unlike each other; Lloyd had no drollery in his nature; White seemed to have nothing else. You will easily understand how Lamb could sympathise with both."

　　The new calamity to which Lamb refers in this letter was probably a relapse in Mary Lamb's condition. When he last mentioned her she was so far better as to be able to be moved into lodgings at Hackney: all that good was now undone. Coleridge seems to have suggested that she should visit Stowey.

　　It was about this time that Lamb wrote the poem "The Old Familiar Faces," which I "e below in its original form, afterwards changed by the omission of the first four lines:—

　　THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES

　　Where are they gone, the old familiar faces?

　　I had a mother, but she died, and left me,

　　Died prematurely in a day of horrors—

　　All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

　　I have had playmates, I have had companions,

　　In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days—

　　All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

　　I have been laughing, I have been carousing,

　　Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies—

　　All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

　　I loved a love once, fairest among women.

　　Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her—

　　All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

　　I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man.

　　Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;

　　Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

　　Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood.

　　Earth seem'd a desert I was bound to traverse,

　　Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

　　Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother!

　　Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling?

　　So might we talk of the old familiar faces.

　　For some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me; all are departed; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

　　January, 1798.

　　It is conjectured by Mr. J. A. Rutter, and there is much reason to believe it a right theory, especially when taken into connection with the present letter, that Lloyd was the friend of the fifth stanza and Coleridge the friend of the seventh. The italicised half line might refer to "Anna," but, since she is mentioned in the fourth stanza, it more probably, I think, refers to Mary Lamb, who, as we have seen, had been so ill as to necessitate removal from Hackney into more special confinement again.

　　The letter was addressed to Coleridge at the Reverend A. Rowe's, Shrewsbury. Coleridge had been offered the Unitarian pulpit at Shrewsbury and was on the point of accepting when he received news of the annuity of £150 which Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood had settled upon him.

　　Between this letter and the next certainly came other letters to Coleridge, now lost, one of which is referred to by Coleridge in the letter to Lamb "ed below.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5