the confession of which I know not whether augured great things from the first number. it has more of vanity or modesty in it. As to There is some exquisite poetry interspersed. my blank verse, I am so dismally slow and I have re-read the extract from the 'Religious sterile of ideas (I speak from my heart) that Musings,' and retract whatever invidious I much question if it will ever come to any there was in my censure of it as elaborate. issue. I have hitherto only hammered out a There are times when one is not in a disposifew independent, unconnected snatches, not tion thoroughly to relish good writing. I in a capacity to be sent. I am very ill, and have re-read it in a more favourable mowill rest till I have read your poems, for ment, and hesitate not to pronounce it which I am very thankful. I have one more sublime. If there be anything in it apfavour to beg of you, that you never mention proaching to tumidity (which I meant not Mr. May's affair in any sort, much less think to infer; by elaborate I meant simply laof repaying. Are we not flocci-nauci-what- boured), it is the gigantic hyperbole by d'ye-call-'em-ists? We have just learned which you describe the evils of existing that my poor brother has had a sad accident, society; 'snakes, lions, hyenas, and behea large stone blown down by yesterday's moths,' is carrying your resentment beyond high wind has bruised his leg in a most bounds. The pictures of 'The Simoom,' of shocking manner; he is under the care of Frenzy and Ruin,' of 'The Whore of Cruikshanks. Coleridge! there are 10,000 Babylon,' and 'The Cry of Foul Spirits disobjections against my paying you a visit at herited of Earth,' and 'the strange beatitude' Bristol; it cannot be else; but in this world which the good man shall recognise in heaven, 'tis better not to think too much of pleasant as well as the particularising of the children possibles, that we may not be out of humour of wretchedness (I have unconsciously inwith present insipids. Should anything bring cluded every part of it), form a variety of you to London, you will recollect No. 7, uniform excellence. I hunger and thirst to Little Queen Street, Holborn. read the poem complete. That is a capital line in your sixth number.

'This dark, frieze-coated, hoarse, teeth-chattering

month.'

"I shall be too ill to call on Wordsworth myself, but will take care to transmit him his poem, when I have read it. I saw Le Grice the day before his departure, and mentioned incidentally his 'teaching the young idea how to shoot.' Knowing him and the probability there is of people having a propensity to pun in his company, you will not wonder that we both stumbled on the same pun at once, he eagerly anticipating me, 'he would teach him to shoot!' Poor Le Grice! if wit alone could entitle a man to respect, &c., he has written a very witty little pamphlet lately, satirical upon college declamations. When I send White's book, I will add that. I am sorry there should be any difference between you and Southey. 'Between you two there should be peace,' tho' I must say I have borne him no good will since he spirited you away from among us. What is become of Moschus? You sported some of his sublimities, I see, in your Watchman. Very decent things. So much for to-human flesh and sinews. Coleridge! you night from your afflicted, headachey, sorethroatey, humble servant, C. LAMB."

They are exactly such epithets as Burns would have stumbled on, whose poem on the ploughed-up daisy you seem to have had in mind. Your complaint that of your readers some thought there was too much, some too little original matter in your numbers, reminds me of poor dead Parsons in the 'Critic.' 'Too little incident! Give me leave to tell you, sir, there is too much incident.' I had like to have forgot thanking you for that exquisite little morsel, the first Sclavonian Song. The expression in the second,-'more happy to be unhappy in hell;' is it not very quaint? Accept my thanks, in common with those of all who love good poetry, for "The Braes of Yarrow.' I congratulate you on the enemies you must have made by your splendid invective against the barterers in

will rejoice to hear that Cowper is recovered from his lunacy, and is employed on his translation of the Italian, &c., poems of Tuesday night.—Of your Watchman, the Milton for an edition where Fuseli presides Review of Burke was the best prose. I as designer. Coleridge! to an idler like

Musings.' I shall read the whole carefully,
and in some future letter take the liberty to
particularise my opinions of it. Of what is
new to me among your poems next to the
'Musings,' that beginning 'My Pensive Sara'
gave me most pleasure: the lines in it I just
alluded to are most exquisite; they made
my sister and self smile, as conveying a
pleasing picture of Mrs. C. checking your
wild wanderings, which we were so fond of
hearing you indulge when among us. It has
endeared us more than anything to your
good lady, and your own self-reproof that
follows delighted us. "Tis a charming poem
throughout (you have well remarked that

myself, to write and receive letters are both very pleasant, but I wish not to break in upon your valuable time by expecting to hear very frequently from you. Reserve that obligation for your moments of lassitude, when you have nothing else to do; for your loco-restive and all your idle propensities, of course, have given way to the duties of providing for a family. The mail is come in, but no parcel; yet this is Tuesday. Farewell, then, till to-morrow, for a niche and a nook I must leave for criticisms. By the way I hope you do not send your own only copy of Joan of Arc; I will in that case return it immediately. "Your parcel is come; you have been charming, admirable, exquisite are the words lavish of your presents.

expressive of feelings more than conveying of ideas, else I might plead very well want of room in my paper as excuse for generalising). I want room to tell you how we are charmed with your verses in the manner of Spenser, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. I am glad you resume the 'Watchman.' Change the name; leave out all articles of news, and whatever things are peculiar to newspapers, and confine yourself to ethics, verse, criticism-or rather do not confine yourself. Let your plan be as diffuse as the 'Spectator,' and I'll answer for it the work prospers. If I am vain enough to think I can be a contributor, rely on my inclinations. Coleridge! in reading your 'Religious Musings,' I felt a transient superiority over you. I have seen Priestly. see his name repeated in your

"Wordsworth's poem I have hurried through, not without delight. Poor Lovell my heart almost accuses me for the light manner I spoke of him above, not dreaming of his death. My heart bleeds for your accumulated troubles; God send you through 'em with patience. I conjure you dream not that I will ever think of being repaid; the very word is galling to the ears. I have read all your 'Religious Musings' with uninterrupted feelings of profound admiration. You may safely rest your fame on it. The best remaining things are what I have before read, and they lose nothing by my recollection of your manner of reciting 'em, for I too bear in mind the voice, the look,' of absent friends, and can occasionally mimic their I love to manner for the amusement of those who writings. have seen 'em. Your impassioned manner of recitation I can recall at any time to mine own heart and to the ears of the bystanders. I rather wish you had left the monody on Chatterton concluding as it did abruptly. It had more of unity. The conclusion of your 'Religious Musings,' I fear will entitle you to the reproof of your beloved woman, who wisely will not suffer your fancy to run riot, but bids you walk humbly with your God. The very last words, 'I exercise my young noviciate thought in ministeries of heartstirring song,' though not now new to me, cannot be enough admired. To speak politely, they are a well-turned compliment to Poetry. I hasten to read ‘Joan of Arc,' The parcel mentioned in the last letter &c. I have read your lines at the beginning brought the "Joan of Arc," and a request of second book: they are worthy of Milton; from Coleridge, that Lamb would freely but in my mind yield to your 'Religious criticise his poems with a view to their

I love and honour him almost profanely. You would be charmed with his Sermons, if you never read 'em. You have doubtless read his books illustrative of the doctrine of Necessity. Prefixed to a late work of his in answer to Paine, there is a preface giving an account of the man, and his services to men, written by Lindsey, his dearest friend, well worth your reading.

"Tuesday eve. Forgive my prolixity, which is yet too brief for all I could wish to say. God give you comfort, and all that are of your household! Our loves and best good wishes to Mrs. C. C. LAMB."

selection and correction for the contemplated 'Dead is the Douglas! cold thy warrior volume. The reply is contained in the following letter which, written on several days, begins at the extreme top of the first page, without any ceremony of introduction, and is comprised in three sides and a bit of foolscap.

TO MR. COLERIDGE.

"With 'Joan of Arc' I have been delighted, amazed; I had not presumed to expect anything of such excellence from Southey. Why the poem is alone sufficient to redeem the character of the age we live in from the imputation of degenerating in Poetry, were there no such beings extant as Burns, and Bowles, Cowper, and ; fill up the blank how you please; I say nothing. The subject is well chosen. It opens well. To become more particular, I will notice in their order a few passages that chiefly struck me on perusal. Page 26, 'Fierce and terrible Benevolence!' is a phrase full of grandeur and originality. The whole context made me feel possessed, even like Joan herself. Page 28, 'It is most horrible with the keen sword to gore the finely-fibred human frame,' and what follows, pleased me mightily. In the 2nd Book, the first forty lines in particular are majestic and high-sounding. Indeed the whole vision of the Palace of Ambition and what follows are supremely excellent. Your simile of the Laplander, 'By Niemi's lake, or Balda Zhiok, or the mossy stone of Solfar-Kapper,' ,'* will bear comparison with any in Milton for fulness of circumstance and lofty-pacedness of versification. Southey's similes, though many of 'em are capital, are all inferior. In one of his books, the simile of the oak in the storm occurs, I think, four times. To return; the light in which you view the heathen deities is accurate and beautiful. Southey's personifications in this book are so many fine and faultless pictures. I was much pleased with your manner of accounting for the reason why monarchs take delight in war. At the 447th line you have placed Prophets and Enthusiasts cheek by jowl, on too intimate a footing for the dignity of the former. Necessarian-like-speaking, it is correct. Page 98,

Lapland mountains. The verses referred to are

The

frame, illustrious Buchan,' &c., are of kindred excellence with Gray's 'Cold is Cadwallo's tongue,' &c. How famously the Maid baffles the Doctors, Seraphic and Irrefragable, 'with all their trumpery!' Page 126, the procession, the appearances of the Maid, of the Bastard Son of Orleans and of Tremouille, are full of fire and fancy, and exquisite melody of versification. The personifications from line 303 to 309, in the heat of the battle, had better been omitted; they are not very striking, and only encumber. converse which Joan and Conrade hold on the banks of the Loire is altogether beautiful. Page 313, the conjecture that in dreams all things are that seem,' is one of those conceits which the Poet delights to admit into his creed-a creed, by the way, more marvellous and mystic than ever Athanasius dreamed of. Page 315, I need only mention those lines ending with 'She saw a serpent gnawing at her heart!' They are good imitative lines, 'he toiled and toiled, of toil to reap no end, but endless toil and neverending woe.' Page 347, Cruelty is such as Hogarth might have painted her. Page 361, all the passage about Love (where he seems to confound conjugal love with creating and preserving love) is very confused, and sickens me with a load of useless personifications; else that ninth Book is the finest in the volume- an exquisite combination of the ludicrous and the terrible: I have never read either, even in translation, but such I conceive to be the manner of Dante or Ariosto. The tenth Book is the most languid. On the whole, considering the celerity wherewith the poem was finished, I was astonished at the unfrequency of weak lines. I had expected to find it verbose. Joan, I think, does too little in battle; Dunois perhaps the same; Conrade too much. The anecdotes interspersed among the battles refresh the mind very agreeably, and I am delighted with the very many passages of simple pathos abounding throughout the poem, passages which the author of 'Crazy Kate' might have written. Has not Master Southey spoke very slightingly, in his preface, and disparagingly of Cowper's Homer? What makes him reluctant to give Cowper his

published in Mr. Coleridge's Poem entitled "The Destiny fame? And does not Southey use too often the expletives 'did,' and 'does?' They have

of Nations: a Vision."

a good effect at times, but are too incon- tranquillity.' It is the very reflex pleasure siderable, or rather become blemishes, when that distinguishes the tranquillity of a thinkthey mark a style. On the whole, I expect ing being from that of a shepherd, a modern Southey one day to rival Milton: I already one I would be understood to mean, a deem him equal to Cowper, and superior to Damætas, one that keeps other people's all living poets besides. What says Cole- sheep. Certainly, Coleridge, your letter from ridge? The 'Monody on Henderson' is Shurton Bars has less merit than most immensely good, the rest of that little volume things in your volume; personally it may is readable, and above mediocrity. I proceed chime in best with your own feelings, and to a more pleasant task; pleasant because therefore you love it best. It has, however, the poems are yours; pleasant because you great merit. In your fourth epistle that is impose the task on me; and pleasant, let me an exquisite paragraph, and fancy-full, of ́A add, because it will confer a whimsical im- stream there is which rolls in lazy flow,' portance on me, to sit in judgment upon your &c. &c. 'Murmurs sweet undersong 'mid rhymes. First, though, let me thank you jasmin bowers' is a sweet line, and so are again and again, in my own and my sister's the three next. The concluding simile is name, for your invitations; nothing could far-fetched-tempest-honoured' is a quaintgive us more pleasure than to come, but ish phrase. (were there no other reasons) while my brother's leg is so bad it is out of the question. Poor fellow! he is very feverish and light-headed, but Cruikshanks has pronounced the symptoms favourable, and gives us every hope that there will be no need of amputation: God send not! We are necessarily confined with him all the afternoon and evening till very late, so that I am stealing a few minutes to write to you.

"Thank you for your frequent letters; you are the only correspondent, and, I might add, the only friend I have in the world. I go nowhere, and have no acquaintance. Slow of speech, and reserved of manners, no one seeks or cares for my society; and I am left alone. Allen calls only occasionally, as though it were a duty rather, and seldom stays ten minutes. Then judge how thankful I am for your letters! Do not, however, burthen yourself with the correspondence. I trouble you again so soon, only in obedience to your injunctions. Complaints apart, proceed we to our task. I am called away to tea; thence must wait upon my brother; so must delay till to-morrow. Farewell. Wednesday.

"Yours is a poetical family. I was much surprised and pleased to see the signature of Sara to that elegant composition, the fifth epistle. I dare not criticise the 'Religious Musings;' I like not to select any part, where all is excellent. I can only admire, and thank you for it in the name of a Christian, as well as a lover of good poetry; only let me ask, is not that thought and those words in Young, 'stands in the sun,'-—or is it only such as Young, in one of his better moments, might have writ ?

'Believe thou, O my soul,
Life is a vision shadowy of truth;

And vice, and anguish, and the wormy grave,
Shapes of a dream!'

I thank you for these lines in the name of a
necessarian, and for what follows in next
paragraph, in the name of a child of fancy.
After all, you cannot, nor ever will, write
anything with which I shall be so delighted
as what I have heard yourself repeat. You
came to town, and I saw you at a time when
your heart was yet bleeding with recent
wounds. Like yourself, I was sore galled
with disappointed hope; you had

many an holy lay

That, mourning, soothed the mourner on his way;'

"Thursday. I will first notice what is new to me. Thirteenth page; "The thrilling tones that concentrate the soul' is a nervous "I had ears of sympathy to drink them in, line, and the six first lines of page 14 are very and they yet vibrate pleasant on the sense. pretty; the twenty-first effusion a perfect When I read in your little volume, your thing. That in the manner of Spenser is nineteenth effusion, or the twenty-eighth or very sweet, particularly at the close: the twenty-ninth, or what you call the 'Sigh,' I thirty-fifth effusion is most exquisite; that think I hear you again. I image to myself line in particular, 'And, tranquil, muse upon the little smoky room at the Salutation and

in particular, perhaps. If I am obscure, you may understand me by counting lines: I have proposed omitting twenty-four lines: II feel that thus compressed it would gain energy, but think it most likely you will not agree with me; for who shall go about to bring opinions to the bed of Procrustes, and introduce among the sons of men a monotony of identical feelings? I only propose with diffidence. Reject you, if you please, with as little remorse as you would the colour of a coat or the pattern of a buckle, where our fancies differed.