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　　LETTER 15

　　CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE

　　[P.M. December 2, 1796 (Friday).]

　　I have delay'd writing thus long, not having by me my copy of your poems, which I had lent. I am not satisfied with all your intended omissions. Why omit 40: 63: 84: above all, let me protest strongly against your rejecting the "Complaint of Ninathoma," 86. The words, I acknowledge, are Ossian's, but you have added to them the "Music of Caril." If a vicarious substitute be wanting, sacrifice (and 'twill be a piece of self-denial too) the Epitaph on an Infant, of which its Author seems so proud, so tenacious. Or, if your heart be set on perpetuating the four-line-wonder, I'll tell you what [to] do: sell the copywright of it at once to a country statuary; commence in this manner Death's prime poet laureat; and let your verses be adopted in every village round instead of those hitherto famous ones "Afflictions sore long time I bore, Physicians were in vain". I have seen your last very beautiful poem in the Monthly Magazine—write thus, and you most generally have written thus, and I shall never quarrel with you about simplicity. With regard to my lines "Laugh all that weep," etc.—I would willingly sacrifice them, but my portion of the volume is so ridiculously little, that in honest truth I can't spare them. As things are, I have very slight pretensions to participate in the title-page.—White's book is at length reviewed in the Monthly; was it your doing, or Dyer's to whom I sent him? Or rather do you not write in the Critical? for I observed, in an Article of this Month's a line "ed out of that sonnet on Mrs. Siddons "with eager wond'ring and perturb'd delight"—and a line from that sonnet would not readily have occurred to a stranger. That sonnet, Coleridge, brings afresh to my mind the time when you wrote those on Bowles, Priestly, Burke—'twas 2 Christmases ago, and in that nice little smoky room at the Salutation, which is even now continually presenting itself to my recollection, with all its associated train of pipes, tobacco, Egghot, welch Rabbits, metaphysics and Poetry.

　　Are we NEVER to meet again? How differently I am circumstanced now—I have never met with any one, never shall meet with any one, who could or can compensate me for the loss of your society—I have no one to talk all these matters about to—I lack friends, I lack books to supply their absence. But these complaints ill become me: let me compare my present situation, prospects, and state of mind, with what they were but 2 months back—but 2 months. O my friend, I am in danger of forgetting the awful lessons then presented to me—remind me of them; remind me of my Duty. Talk seriously with me when you do write. I thank you, from my heart I thank you, for your sollicitude about my Sister. She is quite well,—but must not, I fear, come to live with us yet a good while. In the first place, because at present it would hurt her, and hurt my father, for them to be together: secondly from a regard to the world's good report, for I fear, I fear, tongues will be busy whenever that event takes place. Some have hinted, one man has prest it on me, that she should be in perpetual confinement—what she hath done to deserve, or the necessity of such an hardship, I see not; do you? I am starving at the India house, near 7 o'clock without my dinner, and so it has been and will be almost all the week. I get home at night o'erwearied, quite faint,—and then to CARDS with my father, who will not let me enjoy a meal in peace—but I must conform to my situation, and I hope I am, for the most part, not unthankful.

　　I am got home at last, and, after repeated games at Cribbage have got my father's leave to write awhile: with difficulty got it, for when I expostulated about playing any more, he very aptly replied, "If you won't play with me, you might as well not come home at all." The argument was unanswerable, and I set to afresh.

　　I told you, I do not approve of your omissions. Neither do I quite coincide with you in your arrangements: I have not time to point out a better, and I suppose some self-associations of your own have determined their place as they now stand. Your beginning indeed with the Joan of Arc lines I coincide entirely with: I love a splendid Outset, a magnificent Portico; and the Diapason is Grand—the Religious Musings— when I read them, I think how poor, how unelevated, unoriginal, my blank verse is, "Laugh all that weep" especially, where the subject demanded a grandeur of conception: and I ask what business they have among yours—but Friendship covereth a multitude of defects. Why omit 73? At all events, let me plead for those former pages,—40. 63. 84. 86. I should like, for old acquaintance sake, to spare 62. 119 would have made a figure among Shenstone's Elegies: you may admit it or reject, as you please. In the Man of Ross let the old line stand as it used: "wine-cheer'd moments" much better than the lame present one. 94, change the harsh word "foodful" into "dulcet" or, if not too harsh, "nourishing." 91, "moveless": is that as good as "moping"?—8, would it not read better omitting those 2 lines last but 6 about Inspiration? I want some loppings made in the Chatterton; it wants but a little to make it rank among the finest irregular Lyrics I ever read. Have you time and inclination to go to work upon it—or is it too late—or do you think it needs none? Don't reject those verses in one of your Watchmen—"Dear native brook," &c.—nor, I think, those last lines you sent me, in which "all effortless" is without doubt to be preferred to "inactive." If I am writing more than ordinarily dully, 'tis that I am stupified with a tooth-ache. 37, would not the concluding lines of the 1st paragraph be well omitted—& it go on "So to sad sympathies" &c.? In 40, if you retain it, "wove" the learned Toil is better than "urge," which spoils the personification. Hang it, do not omit 48. 52. 53. What you do retain tho', call sonnets for God's sake, and not effusions,—spite of your ingenious anticipation of ridicule in your Preface. The last 5 lines of 50 are too good to be lost, the rest is not much worth. My tooth becomes importunate—I must finish. Pray, pray, write to me: if you knew with what an anxiety of joy I open such a long packet as you last sent me, you would not grudge giving a few minutes now and then to this intercourse (the only intercourse, I fear we two shall ever have), this conversation, with your friend—such I boast to be called.

　　God love you and yours.

　　Write to me when you move, lest I direct wrong.

　　Has Sara no poems to publish? Those lines 129 are probably too light for the volume where the Religious Musings are—but I remember some very beautiful lines addrest by somebody at Bristol to somebody at London.

　　God bless you once more.

　　C. LAMB.

　　Thursday Night.

　　[This letter refers to the preparation of Coleridge's second edition of his Poems. "Why omit 40, 63, 84?"—these were "Absence," "To the Autumnal Moon" and the imitation from Ossian.

　　The "Epitaph on an Infant" ran thus:—

　　Ere Sin could blight, or Sorrow fade,

　　Death came with friendly care;

　　The opening bud to Heaven conveyed

　　And bade it blossom there.

　　Lamb applied the first two lines to a sucking pig in his Elia essay on

　　"Roast Pig" many years later. The old epitaph runs:—

　　Afflictions sore long time I bore,

　　Physicians were in vain;

　　Till Heaven did please my woes to ease,

　　And take away my pain.

　　Coleridge's very beautiful poem in the Monthly Magazine (for October) was "Reflections on Entering into Active Life," beginning, "Low was our pretty cot."

　　Lamb's lines, "Laugh all that weep," I cannot find. We learn later that they were in blank verse.

　　Falstaff's Letters was reviewed in the Monthly Review for November, 1796, very favourably. The article was quite possibly by Coleridge.

　　The sonnet on Mrs. Siddons was written by Lamb and Coleridge together when Coleridge was in London at the end of 1794, and it formed one of a series of sonnets on eminent persons printed in the Morning Chronicle, of which those on Bowles, Priestley and Burke were others. The "ation from it was in an article in the November Critical Review on the "Musae Etonenses."

　　"One man has prest it on me." There is reason to suppose that this was

　　John Lamb, the brother.

　　As it happened Coleridge did not begin his second edition with the "Joan of Arc" lines, but with the "Ode to the New Year." The "Religious Musings" brought Coleridge's part of the volume to a close.

　　The poem on page 73 was "In the Manner of Spenser." The poems on pages 40, 63, 84, we know; that on page 86 was "The Complaint of Ninathoma." "To Genevieve" was on page 62. That on page 119 was "To a Friend in Answer to a Melancholy Letter." Coleridge never restored the phrase "wine-cheer'd moments" to "The Man of Ross." He did not change "foodful" to "dulcet" in "To an Infant." He did not alter "moveless" to "moping" in "The Young Ass." He left the Inspiration passage as it was in the "Monody on Chatterton." Not that he disregarded all Lamb's advice, as a comparison of the 1796 and 1797 editions of the Poems will show.

　　The poem "Dear native brook" was the sonnet "To the River Otter." Coleridge took Lamb's counsel. The poem containing the phrase "all effortless" was that "Addressed to a Young Man of Fortune" (Charles Lloyd). Coleridge did not include it. The poem on page 37 was "To a Young Lady with a Poem on the French Revolution." Nos. 48, 52 and 53 were the sonnets to Priestley, Kosciusko and Fayette. The last five lines of 50 were in the sonnet to Sheridan. The lines on page 129 were Sara's verses "The Silver Thimble." None of these were reprinted in 1797. The beautiful lines addressed from somebody at Bristol to somebody at London were those from Sara Coleridge to Lamb, referred to on page 33. Coleridge persisted in the use of the word "effusion".] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5