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　　LETTER 388

　　CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

　　[P.M. February 7, 1826.]

　　My kind remembrances to your daughter and A.K. always.

　　Dear B.B.—I got your book not more than five days ago, so am not so negligent as I must have appeared to you with a fortnight's sin upon my shoulders. I tell you with sincerity that I think you have completely succeeded in what you intended to do. What is poetry may be disputed. These are poetry to me at least. They are concise, pithy, and moving. Uniform as they are, and unhistorify'd, I read them thro' at two sittings without one sensation approaching to tedium. I do not know that among your many kind presents of this nature this is not my favourite volume. The language is never lax, and there is a unity of design and feeling, you wrote them with love—to avoid the cox-combical phrase, con amore. I am particularly pleased with the "Spiritual Law," page 34-5. It reminded me of Quarles, and Holy Mr. Herbert, as Izaak Walton calls him: the two best, if not only, of our devotional poets, tho' some prefer Watts, and some Tom Moore.

　　I am far from well or in my right spirits, and shudder at pen and ink work. I poke out a monthly crudity for Colburn in his magazine, which I call "Popular Fallacies," and periodically crush a proverb or two, setting up my folly against the wisdom of nations. Do you see the "New Monthly"?

　　One word I must object to in your little book, and it recurs more than once—FADELESS is no genuine compound; loveless is, because love is a noun as well as verb, but what is a fade?—and I do not quite like whipping the Greek drama upon the back of "Genesis," page 8. I do not like praise handed in by disparagement: as I objected to a side censure on Byron, etc., in the lines on Bloomfield: with these poor cavils excepted, your verses are without a flaw. C. LAMB.

　　[Barton's new book was Devotional Verses: founded on, and illustrative of Select Texts of Scripture, 1826. See the Appendix for "The Spiritual Law."

　　"Holy Mr. Herbert." Writing to Lady Beaumont in 1826 Coleridge says: "My dear old friend Charles Lamb and I differ widely (and in point of taste and moral feeling this is a rare occurrence) in our estimate and liking of George Herbert's sacred poems. He greatly prefers Quarles—nay, he dislikes Herbert."

　　Barton whipped the Greek drama on the back of Genesis in the following stanza, referring to Abraham's words before preparing to sacrifice Isaac:—

　　Brief colloquy, yet more sublime,

　　To every feeling heart,

　　Than all the boast of classic time,

　　Or Drama's proudest art:

　　Far, far beyond the Grecian stage,

　　Or Poesy's most glowing page.

　　For Lamb's reference to Byron, see above.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6