The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, vol 5 | Page 7

has dipt betimes into the cares of a family. I very seldom see him, & do not know whether he has given up the Westminster hospital.
When Southey becomes as modest as his predecessor Milton, and publishes his Epics in duodecimo, I will read 'em,--a Guinea a book is somewhat exorbitant, nor have I the opportunity of borrowing the Work. The extracts from it in the Monthly Review and the short passages in your Watchman seem to me much superior to any thing in his partnership account with Lovell.
Your poems I shall procure forthwith. There were noble lines in what you inserted in one of your Numbers from Religious Musings, but I thought them elaborate. I am somewhat glad you have given up that Paper--it must have been dry, unprofitable, and of "dissonant mood" to your disposition. I wish you success in all your undertakings, and am glad to hear you are employed about the Evidences of Religion. There is need of multiplying such books an hundred fold in this philosophical age to prevent converts to Atheism, for they seem too tough disputants to meddle with afterwards. I am sincerely sorry for Allen, as a family man particularly.
Le Grice is gone to make puns in Cornwall. He has got a tutorship to a young boy, living with his Mother, a widow Lady. He will of course initiate him quickly in "whatsoever things are lovely, honorable, and of good report." He has cut Miss Hunt compleatly,--the poor Girl is very ill on the Occasion, but he laughs at it, and justifies himself by saying, "she does not see him laugh." Coleridge, I know not what suffering scenes you have gone through at Bristol--my life has been somewhat diversified of late. The 6 weeks that finished last year and began this your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a mad house at Hoxton--I am got somewhat rational now, and don't bite any one. But mad I was--and many a vagary my imagination played with me, enough to make a volume if all told.
My Sonnets I have extended to the number of nine since I saw you, and will some day communicate to you.
I am beginning a poem in blank verse, which if I finish I publish.
White is on the eve of publishing (he took the hint from Vortigern) Original letters of Falstaff, Shallow &c--, a copy you shall have when it comes out. They are without exception the best imitations I ever saw.
Coleridge, it may convince you of my regards for you when I tell you my head ran on you in my madness, as much almost as on another Person, who I am inclined to think was the more immediate cause of my temporary frenzy.
The sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry but you will be curious to read it when I tell you it was written in my prison-house in one of my lucid Intervals.
TO MY SISTER
If from my lips some angry accents fell, Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind, 'Twas but the error of a sickly mind, And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well, And waters clear, of Reason; and for me, Let this my verse the poor atonement be, My verse, which thou to praise wast ever inclined Too highly, and with a partial eye to see No blemish: thou to me didst ever shew Fondest affection, and woud'st oftimes lend An ear to the desponding love sick lay, Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay But ill the mighty debt of love I owe, Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend.
With these lines, and with that sister's kindest remembrances to C----, I conclude--
Yours sincerely
LAMB.
Your Conciones ad populum are the most eloquent politics that ever came in my way.
Write, when convenient--not as a task, for there is nothing in this letter to answer.
You may inclose under cover to me at the India house what letters you please, for they come post free.
We cannot send our remembrances to Mrs. C---- not having seen her, but believe me our best good wishes attend you both.
My civic and poetic compts to Southey if at Bristol.--Why, he is a very Leviathan of Bards--the small minnow I--
[This is the earliest letter of Lamb's that has come down to us. On February 10, 1796, he was just twenty-one years old, and was now living at 7 Little Queen Street (since demolished) with his father, mother, Aunt Sarah Lamb (known as Aunt Hetty), Mary Lamb and, possibly, John Lamb. John Lamb, senior, was doing nothing and had, I think, already begun to break up: his old master, Samuel Salt, had died in February, 1792. John Lamb, the son (born June 5, 1763), had a clerkship at the South-Sea House; Charles Lamb had begun his long period of service in the India House;