by Charles Lamb
[Sunday evening]
My sister, I thank God, is nigh recover’d. She was seriously ill. Do, in your next letter, & that right soon, give me some satisfaction respecting your present situation at Stowey. Is it a farm you have got? & what does your worship know about farming? Coleridge, I want you to write an Epic poem. Nothing short of it can satisfy the vast capacity of true poetic genius. Having one great End to direct all your poetical faculties to, & on which to lay out your hopes, your ambition, will shew you to what you are equal. By the sacred energies of Milton, by the dainty sweet & soothing phantasies of honey tongued Spencer, I adjure you to attempt the Epic –. Or do something, more ample, than the writing an occasional brief ode or sonnet; something ‘to make yourself for ever known, – to make the age to come your own’ – but I prate; doubtless, you meditate something. When you are exalted among the Lords of Epic fame, I shall recall with pleasure & exultingly, the days of your humility, when you disdaind not to put forth in the same volume with mine, your religious musings, & that other poem from the Joan of Arc, those promising first fruits of high renown to come –. You have learning, you have fancy, you have enthusiasm – you have strength & amplitude of wing enow for flights like those I recommend –
In the vast & unexplored regions of fairyland, there is ground enough unfound & uncultivated; search there, & realize your favorite Susquehanah scheme –.7 In all our comparisons of taste, I do not know whether I have ever heard your opinion of a poet, very dear to me, the now out of fashion Cowley – favor me with your judgment of him – & tell me if his prose essays, in particular, as well as no inconsiderable part of his verse, be not delicious. I prefer the graceful rambling of his essays, even to the courtly elegance & ease of Addison – abstracting from this latter’s exquisite humour. Why is not your poem on Burns in the Monthly magazine? I was much disappointed. I have a pleasurable but confused remembrance of it. When the little volume is printed, send me 3 or 4, at all events not more than 6 copies. & tell me if I put you to any additional expense, by printing with you. I have no thought of the kind, & in that case, must reimburse you –. My epistle is a model of unconnectedness, but I have no partic: subject to write on, & must proportion my scribble in some degree to the increase of postage. It is not quite fair, considering how burdensome your correspondence from different quarters must be, to add to it, with so little shew of reason. I will make an end for this evening. Sunday even: – Farewell –
[Monday evening]
Priestly, whom I sin in almost adoring, speaks of ‘such a choice of company, as tends to keep up that right bent, & firmness of mind, which a nec[e]ssary intercourse with the world would otherwise warp & relax. Such fellowship is the true ba[lsam] of life, it[s] cement is infinitely more durable than that of the friendships of the world, & it looks for its proper fruit, & complete gratification, to the life beyond the Grave.’ Is there a possible chance for such an one as me to realize in this world, such friendships? Where am I to look for ’em? what testimonials shall I bring of my being worthy of such friendship? Alas! the great & good go together in separate Herds, & leave such as me to lag far far behind in all intellectual, & far more grievous to say, in all moral accomplishments –. Coleridge, I have not one truly elevated character among my acquaintance: not one Christian: not one, but undervalues Christianity – singly what am I to do. Wesley (have you read his life?, was he not an elevated Character?) Wesley has said, ‘Religion is not a solitary thing.’ Alas! it necessarily is so with me, or next to solitary. Tis true, you write to me. But correspondence by letter, & personal intimacy, are very widely different. Do, do write to me, & do some good to my mind, already how much ‘warped & relaxed’ by the world! –’Tis the conclusion of another evening –. Goodnight. God have us all in his Keeping –
If you are sufficiently at leisure, oblige me with an account of your plan of life at Stowey – your literary occupations & prospects – in short make me acquainted with every circumstance, which, as relating to you, can be interesting to me. Are you yet a Berkleyan?8 Make me one. I rejoyce in being, speculatively, a necessarian. – Would to God, I were habitually a practical one. Confirm me in the faith of that great & glorious doctrine, & keep me steady in the contemplation of it. You sometime since exprest an intention you had of finishing some extensive work on the Evidences of Natural & Revealed Religion. Have you let that intention go? Or are you doing any thing towards it? Make to yourself other ten talents: My letter is full of nothingness. I talk of nothing. But I must talk. I love to write to you. I take a pride in it –. It makes me think less meanly of myself. It makes me think myself not totally disconnected from the better part of Mankind. I know, I am too dissatisfied with the beings around me, – but I cannot help occasionally exclaiming ‘Woe is me, that I am constrained to dwell with Mesheck, & to have my habitation among the tents of Kedar’9 – I know, I am no ways better in practice than my neighbors – but I have a taste for religion, an occasional earnest aspiration after perfection, which they have not. I gain nothing by being with such as myself – we encourage one another in mediocrity – I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself. All this must sound odd to you, but these are my predominant feelings, when I sit down to write to you, & I should put force upon my mind, were I to reject them. Yet I rejoyce, & feel my privilege with gratitude, when I have been reading some wise book, such as I have just been reading, Priestly on Philosophical necessity, in the thought that I enjoy a kind of Communion, a kind of friendship even, with the great & good. Books are to me instead of friends, – I wish they did not resemble the latter in their scarceness. – And how does little David Hartley? ‘Ecquid in antiquam virtutem?’10 – does his mighty name work wonders yet upon his little frame, & opening mind? I did not distinctly understand you, – you dont mean to make an actual plownman of him?! Mrs C— is no doubt well, – give my kindest respects to her –. Is Lloyd with you yet? – are you intimate with Southey? what poems is he about to publish – he hath a most prolific brain, & is indeed a most sweet poet. But how can you answer all the various mass of interrogation I have put to you in the course of the sheet –. Write back just what you like, only write something, however brief –. I have now nigh finished my page, & got to the end of another evening (Monday evening) – & my eyes are heavy & sleepy, & my brain unsuggestive –. I have just heart enough awake to say Good night once more, & God love you my dear friend, God love us all –. Mary bears an affectionate remembrance of you –
the 10th January
CHARLES LAMB
8. To Samuel Taylor Coleridge
[28 January 1798]
You have writ me Many kind letters, and I have answered none of them –. I do’nt 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 improveable 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 & 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 & heart-burnings – –. I had well nigh quarrelled with Charles Lloyd – & 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 & proper ben
t, 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 & 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, & many a social & 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 thin[k] more collectedly, to feel more properly & 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 & leaning-places.
I rejoyce in your good fortunes – – may God at the last settle you – you have had many & 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, [o]f 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, & cooler intellects … I know a young man of this description, who has suited her these twenty years, & may live to do so still – if we are one day restor’d 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 disqui[si]tions of that kind … I have read little, I have a very weak memory & retain little of what I read, am unused to compositions in which any methodizing is required – – but I thank you sincerely for the hint, and shall receive it as far as I am able – that is, endeavor to engage my mind in some constant & innocent pursuit – – – –. I know my capacities better than you do –
Accept my kindest love – & believe me
Yours as ever
C L
9. To Samuel Taylor Coleridge
[The Lloyds’, Birmingham
ca. 23 May–6 June] 1798
Theses Quædam Theologicæ.1
Whether God loves a lying Angel better than a true Man?
Whether the Archangel Uriel could affirm an untruth? & if he could whether he would?
Whether Honesty be an angelic virtue? or not rather to be reckoned among those qualities which the Schoolmen term Virtutes minus splendidæ, et terræ et hominis participes?2
Whether the higher order of Seraphim Illuminati ever sneer?
Whether pure Intelligences can love?
Whether the Seraphim Ardentes do not manifest their virtues by the way of vision & theory? & whether practice be not a sub-celestial & merely human virtue?
Whether the Vision Beatific be anything more or less than a perpetual representment to each individual Angel of his own present attainments & future capabilities, somehow in the manner of mortal looking-glasses, reflecting a perpetual complacency & self-satisfaction?
& last.Whether an immortal & amenable soul may not come to be damned at last, & the man never suspect it beforehand?
Learned Sir, my Friend,
Presuming on our long habits of friendship, & emboldened further by your late liberal permission to avail myself of your correspondence, in case I want any knowledge, (which I intend to do when I have no Encyclopædia, or Lady’s Magazine at hand to refer to in any matter of science,) I now submit to your enquiries the above Theological Propositions, to be by you defended, or oppugned, or both, in the Schools of Germany, whither I am told you are departing, to the utter dissatisfaction of your native Devonshire, & regret of universal England; but to my own individual consolation, if thro the channel of your wished return, Learned Sir, my Friend, may be transmitted to this our Island, from those famous Theological Wits of Leipsic & Gottingen, any rays of illumination, in vain to be derived from the home growth of our English Halls and Colleges. Finally, wishing Learned Sir, that you may see Schiller, & swing in a wood (vide Poems)3, & sit upon a Tun, & eat fat hams of Westphalia,
I remain
Your friend and docile Pupil to instruct
CHARLES LAMB
To S. T. Coleridge
10. To Thomas Manning
[1 March 1800]
I hope by this time you are prepared to say, the Falstaff’s Letters1 are a bundle of the sharpest, queerest, profoundest humours, of any these juice-drained latter times have spawned. – I should have advertiz’d you, that the meaning is frequently hard to be got at; and so are the future Guineas, that now lie ripening & aurifying in the womb of some undiscoverd Potosi;2 but dig, dig, dig, dig, Manning. …
I set to, with an unconquerable propulsion to write, with a lamentable want of what to write. My private goings on are orderly as the movements of the spheres, and stale as their music to angel’s ears. Public affairs – except as they touch upon me, & so turn into private – I cannot whip my mind up to feel any interest in. – – I grieve indeed that War and Nature & Mr Pitt that hangs up in Lloyd’s best parlour, should have conspired to call up three necessaries, simple commoners as our fathers knew them, into the upper house of Luxuries – –. Bread, and Beer, and Coals,3 Manning. – But as to France and Frenchman, And the Abbe Sieyes4 & his constitutions, I cannot make these present times present to me. I read histories of the past, and I live in them; altho’ to abstract senses they are far less momentous, than the noises which keep Europe awake. I am reading Burnet’s Own Times.5 – Did you ever read that garrulous, pleasant history? He tells his story like an old man, past political service, bragging to his sons, on winter evenings, of the part he took in public transactions, when ‘his old cap was new.’ Full of scandal, which all true history is. No palliatives, but all the stark wickedness, that actually gives the momentum to national actors. Quite the prattle of age & out lived importance. Truth & sincerity staring out upon you perpetually in alto relievo. – Himself a party man, he makes you a party man. None of the Damned Philosophical Humeian indifference, so cold & unnatural & unhuman. None of the damned Gibbonian fine writing so fine & composite. None of Mr Robertson’s periods with three members. None of Mr Roscoe’s sage remarks, all so apposite & coming in so clever, lest the reader should have had the trouble of drawing an inference. Burnet’s good old prattle I can bring present to my mind; I can make the revolution present to me –. the French Revolution, by a converse perversity in my nature, I fling as far from me. –
To quit this damned subject, and to relieve you from two or three dismal yawns, which I hear in spirit, I here conclude my more than commonly obtuse letter; dull, up to the dullness of a Dutch commentator on Shakspere –
