Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 13 June 1797
[Tuesday,] June 13th, 1797.
I STARED with wild wonderment to see thy well-known
hand again. It revived many a pleasing recollection of an epistolary
intercourse, of late strangely suspended, once the pride of my life. Before I
even opened thy letter, I figured to myself a sort of complacency which my
little hoard at home would feel at receiving the new-comer into the little
drawer where I keep my treasures of this kind. You have done well in writing to
me. The little room (was it not a little one?) at the Salutation was already in
the way of becoming a fading idea! it had begun to be classed in my memory ![]()
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with those “wanderings with a fair
hair’d maid,” in the recollection of which I feel I have no
property. You press me, very kindly do you press me, to come to Stowey;
obstacles, strong as death, prevent me at present; maybe I shall be able to
come before the year is out; believe me, I will come as soon as I can, but I
dread naming a probable time. It depends on fifty things, besides the expense,
which is not nothing. Lloyd wants me to
come and see him; but, besides that you have a prior claim on me, I should not
feel myself so much at home with him, till he gets a house of his own. As to
Richardson, caprice may grant what
caprice only refused, and it is no more hardship, rightly considered, to be
dependent on him for pleasure, than to lie at the mercy of the rain and
sunshine for the enjoyment of a holiday: in either case we are not to look for
a suspension of the laws of nature. “Grill will be Grill.”
Vide Spenser.
I could not but smile at the compromise you make with me for
printing Lloyd’s poems first; but
there is [are] in nature, I fear, too many tendencies to envy and jealousy not
to justify you in your apology. Yet, if any one is welcome to pre-eminence from
me, it is Lloyd, for he would be the last to desire it. So
pray, let his name uniformly precede mine, for it would be treating me like a
child to suppose it could give me pain. Yet, alas! I am not insusceptible of
the bad passions. Thank God, I have the ingenuousness to be ashamed of them. I
am dearly fond of Charles Lloyd; he is all goodness, and I
have too much of the world in my composition to feel myself thoroughly
deserving of his friendship.
Lloyd tells me that Sheridan put you upon writing your tragedy. I hope you are only
Coleridgeizing when you talk of finishing it in a few days. Shakspeare was a more modest man; but you best
know your own power.
Of my last
poem you speak slightingly; surely the longer stanzas were pretty
tolerable; at least there was one good line in it,
“Thick-shaded trees, with dark green leaf rich clad.”
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To adopt your own expression, I call this a “rich” line, a
fine full line. And some others I thought even beautiful. Believe me, my little
gentleman will feel some repugnance at riding behind in the basket; though, I
confess, in pretty good company. Your picture of idiocy, with the sugar-loaf
head, is exquisite; but are you not too severe upon our more favoured brethren
in fatuity? Lloyd tells me how ill your
wife and child have been. I rejoice that they are better. My kindest
remembrances and those of my sister. I send you a trifling letter; but you have
only to think ![]()
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that I have been skimming the superficies of my mind, and found it only froth.
Now, do write again; you cannot believe how I long and love always to hear
about you. Yours, most affectionately,
Charles Lamb.
Monday Night.
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.
William Richardson (d. 1798)
He joined the East India House in 1760 and was made accountant general in 1785.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816)
Anglo-Irish playwright, author of
The School for Scandal (1777),
Whig MP and ally of Charles James Fox (1780-1812).
Edmund Spenser (1552 c.-1599)
English poet, author of
The Shepheards Calender (1579) and
The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596).
