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　　LETTER 7

　　CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE

　　the 6th July [P.M. July 7, 1796].

　　Substitute in room of that last confused & incorrect Paragraph, following the words "disastrous course," these lines

　　[Sidenote: Vide 3d page of this epistle.]

　　{ With better hopes, I trust, from Avon's vales

　　{ This other "minstrel" cometh Youth endear'd

　　no { God & good Angels guide thee on thy road,

　　{ And gentler fortunes wait the friends I love.

　　[Lamb has crossed through the above lines.]

　　Let us prose.

　　What can I do till you send word what priced and placed house you should like? Islington (possibly) you would not like, to me 'tis classical ground. Knightsbridge is a desirable situation for the air of the parks. St. George's Fields is convenient for its contiguity to the Bench. Chuse! But are you really coming to town? The hope of it has entirely disarmed my petty disappointment of its nettles. Yet I rejoice so much on my own account, that I fear I do not feel enough pure satisfaction on yours. Why, surely, the joint editorship of the Chron: must be a very comfortable & secure living for a man. But should not you read French, or do you? & can you write with sufficient moderation, as 'tis called, when one suppresses the one half of what one feels, or could say, on a subject, to chime in the better with popular luke-warmness?—White's "Letters" are near publication. Could you review 'em, or get 'em reviewed? Are you not connected with the Crit: Rev:? His frontispiece is a good conceit: Sir John learning to dance, to please Madame Page, in dress of doublet, etc., from [for] the upper half; & modern pantaloons, with shoes, etc., of the 18th century, from [for] the lower half—& the whole work is full of goodly quips & rare fancies, "all deftly masqued like hoar antiquity"—much superior to Dr. Kenrick's Falstaff's Wedding, which you may have seen. Allen sometimes laughs at Superstition, & Religion, & the like. A living fell vacant lately in the gift of the Hospital. White informed him that he stood a fair chance for it. He scrupled & scrupled about it, and at last (to use his own words) "tampered" with Godwin to know whether the thing was honest or not. Godwin said nay to it, & Allen rejected the living! Could the blindest Poor Papish have bowed more servilely to his Priest or Casuist? Why sleep the Watchman's answers to that Godwin? I beg you will not delay to alter, if you mean to keep, those last lines I sent you. Do that, & read these for your pains:—

　　TO THE POET COWPER

　　Cowper, I thank my God that thou art heal'd!

　　Thine was the sorest malady of all;

　　And I am sad to think that it should light

　　Upon the worthy head! But thou art heal'd,

　　And thou art yet, we trust, the destin'd man,

　　Born to reanimate the Lyre, whose chords

　　Have slumber'd, and have idle lain so long,

　　To the immortal sounding of whose strings

　　Did Milton frame the stately-pacèd verse;

　　Among whose wires with lighter finger playing,

　　Our elder bard, Spenser, a gentle name,

　　The Lady Muses' dearest darling child,

　　Elicited the deftest tunes yet heard

　　In Hall or Bower, taking the delicate Ear

　　Of Sydney, & his peerless Maiden Queen.

　　Thou, then, take up the mighty Epic strain,

　　Cowper, of England's Bards, the wisest & the best.

　　1796.

　　I have read your climax of praises in those 3 reviews. These mighty spouters-out of panegyric waters have, 2 of 'em, scattered their spray even upon me! & the waters are cooling & refreshing. Prosaically, the Monthly Reviewers have made indeed a large article of it, & done you justice. The Critical have, in their wisdom, selected not the very best specimens, & notice not, except as one name on the muster-roll, the "Religious Musings." I suspect Master Dyer to have been the writer of that article, as the substance of it was the very remarks & the very language he used to me one day. I fear you will not accord entirely with my sentiments of Cowper, as exprest above, (perhaps scarcely just), but the poor Gentleman has just recovered from his Lunacies, & that begets pity, & pity love, and love admiration, & then it goes hard with People but they lie! Have you read the Ballad called "Leonora," in the second Number of the "Monthly Magazine"? If you have !!!!!!!!!!!!!! There is another fine song, from the same author (Berger), in the 3d No., of scarce inferior merit; & (vastly below these) there are some happy specimens of English hexameters, in an imitation of Ossian, in the 5th No. For your Dactyls I am sorry you are so sore about 'em—a very Sir Fretful! In good troth, the Dactyls are good Dactyls, but their measure is naught. Be not yourself "half anger, half agony" if I pronounce your darling lines not to be the best you ever wrote—you have written much.

　　For the alterations in those lines, let 'em run thus:

　　I may not come a pilgrim, to the Banks of Avon, lucid stream, to taste the wave (inspiring wave) was too which Shakspere drank, our British Helicon; common place. or with mine eye, &c., &c. To muse, in tears, on that mysterious Youth, &c. (better than "drop a tear")

　　Then the last paragraph alter thus

　　better refer to my own Complaint begone, begone unkind reproof, "complaint" solely than Take up, my song, take up a merrier strain, half to that and half to For yet again, & lo! from Avon's vales, Chatterton, as in your Another mistrel cometh! youth endeared, copy, which creates a God & good angels &c., as before confusion—"ominous fears" &c.

　　Have a care, good Master poet, of the Statute de Contumelia. What do you mean by calling Madame Mara harlot & naughty things? The goodness of the verse would not save you in a court of Justice. But are you really coming to town?

　　Coleridge, a gentleman called in London lately from Bristol, inquired whether there were any of the family of a Mr. Chambers living—this Mr. Chambers he said had been the making of a friend's fortune who wished to make some return for it. He went away without seeing her. Now, a Mrs. Reynolds, a very intimate friend of ours, whom you have seen at our house, is the only daughter, & all that survives, of Mr. Chambers—& a very little supply would be of service to her, for she married very unfortunately, & has parted with her husband. Pray find out this Mr. Pember (for that was the gentleman's friend's name), he is an attorney, & lives at Bristol. Find him out, & acquaint him with the circumstances of the case, & offer to be the medium of supply to Mrs. Reynolds, if he chuses to make her a present. She is in very distrest circumstances. Mr. Pember, attorney, Bristol—Mr. Chambers lived in the Temple. Mrs. Reynolds, his daughter, was my schoolmistress, & is in the room at this present writing. This last circumstance induced me to write so soon again—I have not further to add—Our loves to Sara.

　　Thursday.

　　C. LAMB.

　　[The passage at the beginning, before "Let us prose," together with the later passages in the same manner, refers to the poem in the preceding letter, which in slightly different form is printed in editions of Lamb as "Lines to Sara and Her Samuel." To complete the sense of the letter one should compare the text of the poem in Vol. IV.

　　Coleridge had just received a suggestion, through Dr. Beddoes of

　　Bristol, that he should replace Grey, the late co-editor (with James

　　Perry) of the Morning Chronicle. It came to nothing; but Coleridge had

　　told Lamb and had asked him to look out a house in town for him.

　　Dr. Kenrick's "Falstaff's Wedding," 1760, was a continuation of

　　Shakespeare's "Henry IV."

　　We do not know what were the last lines that Lamb had sent to Coleridge. The lines to Cowper were printed in the Monthly Magazine for December, 1796.

　　Coleridge's Poems were reviewed in the Monthly Review, June, 1796, with no mention of Lamb. The Critical Review for the same month said of Lamb's effusions: "These are very beautiful."

　　Burger's "Leonora," which was to have such an influence upon English literature (it was the foundation of much of Sir Walter Scott's poetry), was translated from the German by William Taylor of Norwich in 1790 and printed in the Monthly Magazine in March, 1796. Scott at once made a rival version. The other fine song, in the April Monthly Magazine, was "The Lass of Fair Wone."

　　The mention of the Statute de Contumeliâ seems to refer to the "Lines Composed in a Concert-Room," which were first printed in the Morning Post, September 24, 1799, but must have been written earlier. Madame Mara (1749-1833) is not mentioned by name in the poem, but being one of the principal singers of the day Lamb probably fastened the epithet upon her by way of pleasantry; or she may have been referred to in the version of the lines which Lamb had seen.

　　The passage about Mr. Chambers is not now explicable; but we know that Mrs. Reynolds was Lamb's schoolmistress, probably when he was very small, and before he went to William Bird's Academy, and that in later life he allowed her a pension of £30 a year until her death.

　　Between this and the next letter came, in all probability, a number of letters to Coleridge which have been lost. It is incredible that Lamb kept silence, at this period, for eleven weeks.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5