(Now hear Ithamore, the other gentle I have seen. nature.)

'So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be!'-&c., &c.

whose custom it is, without any deserving, is too metaphysical, and your taste too to importune authors to give unto them correct; at least I must allege something their books.' I am sorry 'tis imperfect, as against you both, to excuse my own dotage— the lottery board annexed to it also is. Methinks you might modernise and elegantise this Supersedeas, and place it in front of your Joan of Arc, as a gentle hint to Messrs. Parke, &c. One of the happiest emblems, and comicalest cuts, is the owl and little chirpers, page 63.

"Wishing you all amusement, which your true emblem-fancier can scarce fail to find in even bad emblems, I remain your caterer to command, "C. LAMB.

"Love and respects to Edith. I hope she is well. How does your Calendar prosper?"

TO MR. SOUTHEY.

"Nov. 8th, 1798.

"I perfectly accord with your opinion of old Wither; Quarles is a wittier writer, but Wither lays more hold of the heart. Quarles

But

you

allow some elaborate beauties-you should have extracted 'em. "The Ancient Marinere' plays more tricks with the mind than that last poem, which is yet one of the finest written. But I am getting too dogmatical; and before I degenerate into abuse, I will conclude with assuring you that I am Sincerely yours,

"C. LAMB.

I am going to meet Lloyd at Ware on Saturday, to return on Sunday. Have you any commands or commendations to the

metaphysician? I shall be very happy if you will dine or spend any time with me in your way through the great ugly city; but I know you have other ties upon you in these parts.

"Love and respects to Edith, and friendly remembrances to Cottle."

thinks of his audience when he lectures ; Wither soliloquises in company with a full heart. What wretched stuff are the 'Divine Fancies' of Quarles! Religion appears to him no longer valuable than it furnishes matter for quibbles and riddles; he turns In this year, Mr. Cottle proposed to publish God's grace into wantonness. Wither is like an annual volume of fugitive poetry by an old friend, whose warm-heartedness and various hands, under the title of the "Annual estimable qualities make us wish he possessed Anthology;" to which Coleridge and Southey more genius, but at the same time make us were principal contributors, the first volume willing to dispense with that want. I always of which was published in the following year. love W., and sometimes admire Q. Still that To this little work Lamb contributed a short portrait poem is a fine one; and the extract religious effusion in blank verse, entitled from 'Shepherds' Hunting' places him in a Living without God in the World." The starry height far above Quarles. If you following letter to Southey refers to this wrote that review in 'Crit. Rev.,' I am sorry poem by its first words, "Mystery of God," you are so sparing of praise to the 'Ancient and recurs to the rejected sonnet to his Marinere ;'-so far from calling it as you sister; and alludes to an intention, afterdo, with some wit, but more severity, 'Awards changed, of entitling the proposed Dutch Attempt,' &c., I call it a right English collection "Gleanings." attempt, and a successful one, to dethrone German sublimity. You have selected a passage fertile in unmeaning miracles, but have passed by fifty passages as miraculous as the miracles they celebrate. I never so deeply felt the pathetic as in that part,

'A spring of love gush'd from my heart,
And I bless'd them unaware-'

It stung me into high pleasure through
sufferings. Lloyd does not like it; his head

TO MR. SOUTHEY

"Nov. 28th, 1798.

"I can have no objection to your printing 'Mystery of God' with my name, and all due acknowledgments for the honour and favour of the communication; indeed, 'tis a poem that can dishonour no name. Now, that is in the true strain of modern modesto

vanitas. . . . . But for the sonnet, I heartily wish it, as I thought it was, dead and

:

forgotten. If the exact circumstances under by a caricature of Gilray's, in which Colewhich I wrote could be known or told, it ridge and Southey were introduced with would be an interesting sonnet; but, to an asses' heads, and Lloyd and Lamb as toad indifferent and stranger reader, it must and frog. In the number for July appeared appear a very bald thing, certainly inadmis- the well-known poem of the " New Morality," sible in a compilation. I wish you could in which all the prominent objects of the affix a different name to the volume; there hatred of these champions of religion and is a contemptible book, a wretched assort-order were introduced as offering homage to ment of vapid feelings, entitled Pratt's Glean- Lepaux, a French charlatan, of whose ings, which hath damned and impropriated existence Lamb had never even heard. the title for ever. Pray think of some other. The gentleman is better known (better had he remained unknown) by an Ode to Benevolence, written and spoken for and at the annual dinner of the Humane Society, who walk in procession once a-year, with all the objects of their charity before them, to return God thanks for giving them such benevolent hearts."

"Couriers and Stars, sedition's evening host,
Thou Morning Chronicle, and Morning Post,
Whether ye make the Rights of Man' your theme,
Your country libel, and your God blaspheme,
Or dirt on private worth and virtue throw,
Still blasphemous or blackguard, praise Lepaux.
And ye five other wandering bards, that move
In sweet accord of harmony and love,

C

-dge and S-th-y, L-d, and L-b and Co., Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux ! "

Not content with thus confounding persons of the most opposite opinions and the most various characters in one common libel, the party returned to the charge in the number for September, and thus denounced the young poets, in a parody on the "Ode

At this time Lamb's most intimate associates were Lloyd and Jem White, the author of the Falstaff Letters. When Lloyd was in town, he and White lodged in the same house, and were fast friends, though no two men could be more unlike, Lloyd having no to the Passions," under the title of "The drollery in his nature, and White nothing Anarchists."

else. "You will easily understand,” observes | Mr. Southey, in a letter with which he favoured the publisher, "how Lamb could sympathise with both.”

The literary association of Lamb with Coleridge and Southey drew down upon him the hostility of the young scorners of the "Anti-Jacobin," who luxuriating in boyish pride and aristocratic patronage, tossed the arrows of their wit against all charged with innovation, whether in politics or poetry, and cared little whom they wounded. No one could be more innocent than Lamb of political heresy; no one more strongly opposed to new theories in morality, which he always regarded with disgust; and yet he not only shared in the injustice which accused his friends of the last, but was confounded in the charge of the first,-his only crime being that he had published a few poems deeply coloured with religious enthusiasm, in conjunction with two other men of genius, who were dazzled by the glowing phantoms which the French Revolution had raised. The very first number of the" AntiJacobin Magazine and Review" was adorned

"Next H-lc-ft vow'd in doleful tone,

No more to fire a thankless age:
Oblivion mark'd his labours for her own,
Neglected from the press, and damn'd upon
the stage.

See! faithful to their mighty dam,

C

dge, S-th-y, L-d, and L-b

In splay-foot madrigals of love,
Soft moaning like the widow'd dove,
Pour, side-by-side, their sympathetic notes;
Of equal rights, and civic feasts,
And tyrant kings, and knavish priests,
Swift through the land the tuneful mischief floats.

And now to softer strains they struck the lyre,
They sung the beetle or the mole,
The dying kid, or ass's foal,

By cruel man permitted to expire."

These effusions have the palliation which the excess of sportive wit, impelled by youthful spirits and fostered by the applause of the great, brings with it; but it will be difficult to palliate the coarse malignity of a passage in the prose department of the same work, in which the writer added to a statement that Mr. Coleridge was dishonoured at Cambridge for preaching Deism: "Since then he has left his native country, commenced citizen of the world, left his poor children

fatherless, and his wife destitute. Ex his the future happiness of mankind, not with disce, his friends Lamb and Southey." It the inspiration of the poet, but with the was surely rather too much even for partisans, grave and passionless voice of the oracle. when denouncing their political opponents There was nothing better calculated at once as men who "dirt on private worth and to feed and to make steady the enthusiasm virtue threw," thus to slander two young of youthful patriots than the high speculamen of the most exemplary character-one, tions, in which he taught them to engage on of an almost puritanical exactness of demea- the nature of social evils and the great nour and conduct--and the other, persevering destiny of his species. No one would have in a life of noble self-sacrifice, chequered suspected the author of those wild theories, only by the frailties of a sweet nature, which which startled the wise and shocked the endeared him even to those who were not prudent, in the calm, gentlemanly person admitted to the intimacy necessary to appre- who rarely said anything above the most ciate the touching example of his severer gentle common-place, and took interest in virtues ! little beyond the whist-table. His peculiar opinions were entirely subservient to his love of letters. He thought any man who had written a book had attained a superiority over his fellows which placed him in another class, and could scarcely understand other distinctions. Of all his works Lamb liked his "Essay on Sepulchres" the best-a short development of a scheme for preserving in one place the memory of all great writers deceased, and assigning to each his proper station, quite chimerical in itself, but accompanied with solemn and touching musings on life and death and fame, embodied in a style of singular refinement and beauty.

If Lamb's acquaintance with Coleridge and Southey procured for him the scorn of the more virulent of the Anti-Jacobin party, he showed by his intimacy with another distinguished object of their animosity, that he was not solicitous to avert it. He was introduced by Mr. Coleridge to one of the most remarkable persons of that stirring time-the author of "Caleb Williams," and of the "Political Justice." The first meeting between Lamb and Godwin did not wear a promising aspect. Lamb grew warm as the conviviality of the evening advanced, and indulged in some freaks of humour which had not been dreamed of in Godwin's philosophy; and the philosopher, forgetting the equanimity with which he usually looked on the vicissitudes of the world or the whisttable, broke into an allusion to Gilray's caricature, and asked, "Pray, Mr. Lamb, are you toad or frog?" Coleridge was apprehensive of a rupture; but calling the next morning on Lamb, he found Godwin seated at breakfast with him; and an interchange THE year 1799 found Lamb engaged during of civilities and card-parties was established, his leisure hours in completing his tragedy of which lasted through the life of Lamb, whom John Woodvil, which seems to have been Godwin only survived a few months. Indif- finished about Christmas, and transmitted to ferent altogether to the politics of the age, Mr. Kemble. Like all young authors, who Lamb could not help being struck with pro- are fascinated by the splendour of theatrical ductions of its new-born energies, so remark-representation, he longed to see his concepable as the works and the character of tions embodied on the stage, and to receive Godwin. He seemed to realise in himself his immediate reward in the sympathy of a what Wordsworth long afterwards described, the central calm at the heart of all agitation." Through the medium of his mind the stormy convulsions of society were seen "silent as in a picture." Paradoxes the most daring wore the air of deliberate wisdom as he pronounced them. He foretold

CHAPTER V.
[1799, 1800.]

LETTERS TO SOUTHEY, COLERIDGE, MANNING, AND

WORDSWORTH.

crowd of excited spectators. The hope was vain ;-but it cheered him in many a lonely hour, and inspired him to write when exhausted with the business of the day, and when the less powerful stimulus of the press would have been insufficient to rouse him. In the mean time he continued to correspond