Am I right in assuming this as the cause? or is it that, as years come upon us (except with some more healthyhappy spirits), life itself loses much of its poetry for us? we transcribe but what we read in the great volume of Nature; and, as the characters grow dim, we turn off, and look another way. You yourself write no Christabels, nor Ancient Mariners, now. Some of the Sonnets, which shall be carelessly turned over by the general reader, may happily awaken in you remembrances, which I should be sorry should be ever totally extinct-the memory - Of summer days and of delightful years even so far back as to those old suppers at our old * * *1 Inn, when life was fresh, and topics exhaustless,-and you first kindled in me, if not the power, yet the love of poetry, and beauty, and kindliness What words have I heard The world has given you many a shrewd nip and gird since that time, but either my eyes are grown dimmer, or my old friend is the same, who stood before me three-andtwenty years ago—his hair a little confessing the hand of time, but still shrouding the same capacious brain,-his heart not altered, scarcely where it "alteration finds." One piece, Coleridge, I have ventured to publish in its original form, though I have heard you complain of a certain over-imitation of the antique in the style. If I could see any way of getting rid of the objection, without rewriting it entirely, I would make some sacrifices. But when I wrote John Woodvil, I never proposed to myself any distinct deviation from common English. I had been newly initiated in the writings of our elder dramatists ; Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger, were then a first 1 The Salutation and Cat, a tavern near Smithfield, where Lamb and Coleridge were fond of meeting in early days. love; and from what I was so freshly conversant in, what wonder if my language imperceptibly took a tinge? The very time, which I had chosen for my story, that which immediately followed the Restoration, seemed to require, in an English play, that the English should be of rather an older cast, than that of the precise year in which it happened to be written. I wish it had not some faults, which I can less vindicate than the language.— I remain, My dear Coleridge, With unabated esteem, b C. LAMB. 'O, I could laugh to hear the midnight wind' 5 'As when a child' 5 TO SARA AND HER SAMUEL 6 TO THE POET COWPER CHILDHOOD THE GRANDAME THE SABBATH BELLS FANCY EMPLOYED ON DIVINE SUBJECTS THE TOMB OF DOUGLAS 7 7 9 10 TO CHARLES LLOYD WRITTEN ON THE DAY OF MY AUNT'S FUNERAL WRITTEN A YEAR AFTER THE EVENTS WRITTEN SOON AFTER THE PRECEDING POEM WRITTEN ON CHRISTMAS DAY 1797 THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES COMPOSED AT MIDNIGHT LIVING WITHOUT GOD IN THE WORLD JOHN WOODVIL (A Tragedy in Five Acts) THE WITCH (A Dramatic Sketch of the Seventeenth Cen tury). A BALLAD (Noting the difference of rich and poor) BALLAD (From the German) HESTER A FAREWELL TO TOBACCO LINES ON THE CELEBRATED PICTURE (By Leonardo da Vinci) THE THREE FRIENDS 75 75 TO JOHN LAMB, ESQ., OF THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 86 To MARTIN CHARLES BURNEY WRITTEN AT CAMBRIDGE ON THE 15TH AUGUST, 1819 TO THE AUTHOR OF POEMS, PUBLISHED UNDER THE NAME OF BARRY CORNWALL SONNET: WORK. 88888 87 |