Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 24 October 1796
Oct. 24th, 1796. [Monday.]
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. ![]()
| 50 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Oct. |
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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 [sic], 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. 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.
God love us all, and may He continue to be the father and
the friend of the whole human race!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of
Biographia Literaria (1817),
On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.
Mary Anne Lamb (1764-1847)
Sister of Charles Lamb with whom she wrote Tales from Shakespeare (1807). She lived with
her brother, having killed their mother in a temporary fit of insanity.
Charles Lloyd (1775-1839)
Quaker poet; a disciple of Coleridge and friend of Charles Lamb, he published
Poetical Essays on the Character of Pope (1821) and other
volumes.
