Selected Prose

by Charles Lamb

  The Lady at this Mad house assures me that I may dismiss immediately both Doctor & Apothecary, retaining occasionally an opening draught or so for a while, & there is a less expensive establishment in her house, where she will only not have a room & nurse to herself for £50 or guineas a year – the outside would be 60 –. You know by œconomy how much more, even, I shall be able to spare for her comforts –

  She will, I fancy, if she stays, make one of the family, rather than of the patients, & the old & young ladies I like exceedingly, & she loves dearly, & they, as the saying is take to her very extraordinaryily, if it is extraordinary that people who see my sister should love her. Of all the people I ever saw in the world my poor sister was most & throughly devoi[d] of the least tincture of selfishness –. I will enlarge upon her qualities, poor dear dearest soul, in a future letter for my own comfort, for I understood her throughly; & if I mistake not in the most trying situation that a human being can be found in, she will be found (I speak not with sufficient humility, I fear, but humanly & foolishly speaking) she will be found, I trust, uniformly great & amiable; God keep her in her present Mind, to whom be thanks & praise for all his dispensations to mankind –

  LAMB

  Coleridge, continue to write, but do not for ever offend me by talking of sending me cash; sincerely & on my soul we do not want it. God love you both –

  Send me word, how it fares with Sara.4 I repeat it, your letter was & will be an inestimable treasure to me; you have a view of what my situation demands of me like my own view; & I trust a just one –

  These mentioned good fortunes & change of prospects had almost brought my mind over to the extreme the very opposite to Despair; I was in danger of making myself too happy; your letter brought me back to a view of things which I had entertained from the beginning; I hope (for Mary I can answer) but I hope that I shall thro’ life never have less recollection nor a fainter impression of what has happened than I have now; tis not a light thing, nor meant by the Almighty to be received lightly; I must be serious, circumspect, & deeply religious thro’ lif[e;] & by such means may both of us escape madness in future if it so pleases the Almighty –

  I will write again very Soon; do you directly –

  4. To Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  [17 October 1796]

  My dearest friend,

  I grieve from my very soul to observe you in your plans of life, veering about from this hope to the other, & settling no where. Is it an untoward fatality (speaking humanly) that does this for you?, a stubborn irresistible concurrence of events? or lies the fault, as I fear it does, in your own mind? You seem to be taking up splendid schemes of fortune only to lay them down again, & your fortunes are an ignis fatuus that has been conducting you, in thought, from Lancaster Court, Strand, to somewhere near Matlock, then jumping across to Dr Somebody’s whose sons’ tutor you were likely to be, & would to God, the dancing demon may conduct you at last in peace & comfort to the ‘life & labors of a cottager.’ You see from the above awkward playfulness of fancy that my spirits are not quite depress’d; I should ill deserve God’s blessings, which since the late terrible event have come down in Mercy upon us, if I indulged regret or querulousnes, – Mary continues serene & chearful, – I have not by me a little letter she wrote to me, for tho’ I see her almost every day yet we delight to write to one another (for we can scarce see each other but in company with some of the people of the house), I have not the letter by me but will quote from memory what she wrote in it. ‘I have no bad terrifying dreams. At midnight when I happen to awake, the nurse sleeping by the side of me, with the noise of the poor mad people around me, I have no fear. The spirit of my mother seems to descend, & smile upon me, & bid me live to enjoy the life & reason which the Almighty has given me –. I shall see her again in heaven; she will then understand me better, my Grandmother too will understand me better, & will then say no more as she used to Do, ‘Polly, what are those poor crazy moyther’d brains of yours thinkg. of always?’ – Poor Mary, my mother indeed never understood her right. She loved her, as she loved us all with a Mother’s love, but in opinion, in feeling, & sentiment, & disposition, bore so distant a resemblance to her daughter, that she never understood her right. Never could believe how much she loved her – but met her caresses, her protestations of filial affection, too frequently with coldness & repulse, – Still she was a good mother, God forbid I should think of her but most respectfully, most affectionately. Yet she would always love my brother above Mary, who was not worthy of one tenth of that affection, which Mary had a right to claim. But it is my Sister’s gratifying recollection, that every act of duty & of love she could pay, every kindness (& I speak true, when I say to the hurting of her health, & most probably in great part to the derangement of her senses) thro’ a long course of infirmities & sickness, she could shew her, she ever did. I will some day, as I promised enlarge to you upon my Sister’s excellencies; twill seem like exaggeration, but I will do it. At present short letters suit my state of mind best. So take my kindest wishes for your comfort and establishment in life [an]d for Sara’s welfare and comforts with you. God love you; God love us all –

  C. LAMB

  5. To Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Sunday Evening, October 24

  [23], 1796

  Coleridge,

  I feel myself much your debtor for that spirit of confidence and friendship which dictated your last letter. May your soul find peace at last in your cottage life! I only wish you were but settled. Do continue to write to me. I read your letters with my sister, and they give us both abundance of delight. Especially they please us two, when you talk in a religious strain, – not but we are offended occasionally with a certain freedom of expression, a certain air of mysticism, more consonant to the conceits of pagan philosophy, than consistent with the humility of genuine piety. To instance now in your last letter – you say, ‘it is by the press, that God hath given finite spirits both evil and good (I suppose you mean simply bad men and good men) a portion as it were of His Omnipresence!’ Now, high as the human intellect comparatively will soar, and wide as its influence, malign or salutary, can extend, is there not, Coleridge, a distance between the Divine Mind and it, which makes such language blasphemy? Again, in your first fine consolatory epistle you say, ‘you are a temporary sharer in human misery, that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine Nature.’ What more than this do those men say, who are for exalting the man Christ Jesus into the second person of an unknown Trinity, – men, whom you or I scruple not to call idolaters? Man, full of imperfections, at best, and subject to wants which momentarily remind him of dependence; man, a weak and ignorant being, ‘servile’ from his birth ‘to all the skiey influences,’ with eyes sometimes open to discern the right path, but a head generally too dizzy to pursue it; man, in the pride of speculation, forgetting his nature, and hailing in himself the future God, must make the angels laugh. Be not angry with me, Coleridge; I wish not to cavil; I know I cannot instruct you; I only wish to remind you of that humility which best becometh the Christian character. God, in the New Testament (our best guide), is represented to us in the kind, condescending, amiable, familiar light of a parent: and in my poor mind ’tis best for us so to consider of Him, as our heavenly Father, and our best Friend, without indulging too bold conceptions of His nature. Let us learn to think humbly of ourselves, and rejoice in the appellation of ‘dear children,’ ‘brethren,’ and ‘co-heirs with Christ of the promises,’ seeking to know no further.

  I am not insensible, indeed I am not, of the value of that first letter of yours, and I shall find reason to thank you for it again and again long after that blemish in it is forgotten. It will be a fine lesson of comfort to us, whenever we read it; and read it we often shall, Mary and I.

  Accept our loves and best kind wishes for the welfare of yourself and wife, and little one.1 Nor let me forget to wish you joy on your birthday so lately past; I thought you had been older. My kind thanks and remembrances to Lloyd.
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  God love us all, and may He continue to be the father and the friend of the whole human race!

  C. LAMB

  6. To Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  December 10, 1796

  I had put my letter into the post rather hastily, not expecting to have to acknowledge another from you so soon. This morning’s present has made me alive again: my last night’s epistle was childishly querulous; but you have put a little life into me, and I will thank you for your remembrance of me, while my sense of it is yet warm; for if I linger a day or two I may use the same phrase of acknowledgment, or similar; but the feeling that dictates it now will be gone. I shall send you a caput mortuum, not a cor vivens.1 Thy Watchman’s, thy bellman’s, verses,2 I do retort upon thee, thou libellous varlet, – why, you cried the hours yourself, and who made you so proud? But I submit, to show my humility, most implicitly to your dogmas. I reject entirely the copy of verses you reject. With regard to my leaving off versifying, you have said so many pretty things, so many fine compliments, ingeniously decked out in the garb of sincerity, and undoubtedly springing from a present feeling somewhat like sincerity, that you might melt the most un-muse-ical soul, – did you not (now for a Rowland compliment for your profusion of Olivers)3 – did you not in your very epistle, by the many pretty fancies and profusion of heart displayed in it, dissuade and discourage me from attempting anything after you. At present I have not leisure to make verses, nor anything approaching to a fondness for the exercise. In the ignorant present time, who can answer for the future man? ‘At lovers’ perjuries Jove laughs’ – and poets have sometimes a disingenuous way of forswearing their occupation. This though is not my case. The tender cast of soul, sombred with melancholy and subsiding recollections, is favourable to the Sonnet or the Elegy; but from

  The sainted growing woof,

  The teasing troubles keep aloof.

  The music of poesy may charm for a while the importunate teasing cares of life; but the teased and troubled man is not in a disposition to make that music.

  You sent me some very sweet lines relative to Burns, but it was at a time when, in my highly agitated and perhaps distorted state of mind, I thought it a duty to read ’em hastily and burn ’em. I burned all my own verses, all my book of extracts from Beaumont and Fletcher and a thousand sources: I burned a little journal of my foolish passion which I had a long time kept:

  Noting ere they past away

  The little lines of yesterday.

  I almost burned all your letters, – I did as bad, I lent ’em to a friend to keep out of my brother’s sight, should he come and make inquisition into our papers, for, much as he dwelt upon your conversation while you were among us, and delighted to be with you, it has been his fashion ever since to depreciate and cry you down, – you were the cause of my madness – you and your damned foolish sensibility and melancholy – and he lamented with a true brotherly feeling that we ever met, even as the sober citizen, when his son went astray upon the mountains of Parnassus, is said to have ‘cursed wit and Poetry and Pope.’ I quote wrong, but no matter. These letters I lent to a friend to be out of the way for a season; but I have claimed them in vain, and shall not cease to regret their loss. Your packets, posterior to the date of my misfortunes, commencing with that valuable consolatory epistle, are every day accumulating – they are sacred things with me.

  Publish your Burns when and how you like, it will be new to me, – my memory of it is very confused, and tainted with unpleasant associations. Burns was the god of my idolatry, as Bowles of yours. I am jealous of your fraternising with Bowles, when I think you relish him more than Burns or my old favourite, Cowper. But you conciliate matters when you talk of the ‘divine chit-chat’ of the latter: by the expression I see you thoroughly relish him. I love Mrs Coleridge for her excuses an hundredfold more dearly than if she heaped ‘line upon line,’ out-Hannah-ing Hannah More,4 and had rather hear you sing ‘Did a very little baby’ by your family fire-side, than listen to you when you were repeating one of Bowles’s sweetest sonnets in your sweet manner, while we two were indulging sympathy, a solitary luxury, by the fire side at the Salutation. Yet have I no higher ideas of heaven. Your company was one ‘cordial in this melancholy vale’ – the remembrance of it is a blessing partly, and partly a curse. When I can abstract myself from things present, I can enjoy it with a freshness of relish; but it more constantly operates to an unfavourable comparison with the uninteresting; converse I always and only can partake in. Not a soul loves Bowles here; scarce one has heard of Burns; few but laugh at me for reading my Testament – they talk a language I understand not: I conceal sentiments that would be a puzzle to them. I can only converse with you by letter and with the dead in their books. My sister indeed, is all I can wish in a companion; but our spirits are alike poorly, our reading and knowledge from the self-same sources, our communication with the scenes of the world alike narrow: never having kept separate company, or any ‘company’ ‘together’ – never having read separate books, and few books together – what knowledge have we to convey to each other? In our little range of duties and connexions, how few sentiments can take place, without friends, with few books, with a taste for religion rather than a strong religious habit! We need some support, some leading-strings to cheer and direct us. You talk very wisely, and be not sparing of your advice. Continue to remember us, and to show us you do remember us: we will take as lively an interest in what concerns you and yours. All I can add to your happiness, will be sympathy. You can add to mine more; you can teach me wisdom. I am indeed an unreasonable correspondent; but I was unwilling to let my last night’s letter go off without this qualifier: you will perceive by this my mind is easier, and you will rejoice. I do not expect or wish you to write, till you are moved; and of course shall not, till you announce to me that event, think of writing myself. Love to Mrs Coleridge and David Hartley, and my kind remembrance to Lloyd, if he is with you.

  C. LAMB

  I will get ‘Nature and Art,’5 – have not seen it yet – nor any of Jeremy Taylor’s works.

  7. To Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  London

  Saturday [7 January–

  Tuesday, 10 January 1797]

  I am completely reconciled to that second strophe,1 & wave all objection. In spite of the Grecian Lyrists, I persist in thinking your brief personification of Madness useless; reverence forbids me to say, impertinent. Golden locks & snow white glories are as incongruous as your former, & if the great Italian painters, of whom my friend knows about as much as the man in the moon, if these great gentlemen be on your side, I see no harm in retaining the purple – the glories, that I have observed to encircle the heads of saints & madonnas, in those old paintings, have been mostly of a dirty drab-color’d yellow – a dull gambogium.2 Keep your old line: it will excite a confused kind of pleasurable idea in the reader’s mind, not clear enough to be call’d a conception, nor just enough, I think, to reduce to painting. It is a rich line, you say; & riches hide a many faults. I maintain, that in the 2d antist: you do disjoin Nature & the world, & contrary to your conduct in the 2d strophe. ‘Nature joins her groans’ joins with whom, a god’s name, but the world or earth in line preceding? but this is being over curious, I acknowledge. Nor did I call the last line useless, I only objected to ‘unhur[l’d’]. I cannot be made to like the former part of that 2d Epode; I cannot be made to feel it, as I do the parallel places in Isaiah, Jeremy, & Daniel. Whether it is that in the pr[e]sent case the rhyme impairs the efficacy – or that the circumstances are feigned, & we are conscious of a made up lye in the case, & the narrative is too long winded to preserve the semblance of truth; or that lines 8. 9. 10. 14 in partic: 17 & 18 are mean & unenthusiastic – or that lines 5 to 8 in their change of rhyme shew like art – I dont know, but it strikes me as something meant to affect, & failing in its purpose. Remember, my waywardness of feeling is single, & singly stands opposed to all your friends, & what is one among many! This I know, that your quotations from the prophets
have never escaped me, & never fail’d to affect me strongly –. I hate that simile, –. – I am glad you have amended that parenthesis in the account of Destruction. I like it well now. only alter that history of child bearing, & all will do well. let the obnoxious Epode remain, to terrify such of your friends, as are willing to be terrified. I think, I would omit the Notes, not as not good per se, but as uncongenial with the dignity of the Ode. I need not repeat my wishes to have my little sonnets printed verbatim my last way; In particular, I fear lest you should prefer printing my first sonnet, as you have done more than once, ‘did the wand of Merlin wave?’3 it looks so like Mr Merlin4 the ingenius successor of the immortal Merlin, now living in good health & spirits, & flourishing in Magical Reputation, in Oxford Street & on my life, one half who read it, would understand it so. – Do put ’em forth finally as I have, in various letters, settled it, – for first a man’s self is to be pleased, & then his friends, – & of course, the greater number of his friends, if they differ inter se.5 Thus taste may safely be put to the vote – I do long to see our names together – not for vanity’s-sake, & naughty pride of heart altogether, for not a living soul, I know or am intimate with, will scarce read the book – so I shall gain nothing quoad famam,6 – & yet there is a little vanity mixes in it, I cannot help denying. –. I am aware of the unpoetical cast of the 6 last lines of my last sonnet, & think myself unwarranted in smuggling so tame a thing into the book; only the sentiments of those 6 lines are throughly conginial to me in my state of mind, & I wish to accumulate perpetuating tokens of my affection to poor Mary – that it has no originality in its cast, nor anything in the feelings, but what is common & natural to thousands, nor aught properly called poetry, I see; stil[l] it will tend to keep present to my mind a view of things which I ought to indulge –. These 6 lines, too have not, to a reader, a connectedness with the foregoing. omit it if you like –. What a treasure it is to my poor indolent & unemployed mind, thus to lay hold on a subject to talk about, tho’ tis but a sonnet & that of the lowest order. How mournfully inactive I am! – Tis night: good night –