The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb
Chapter 300 : Presuming on our long habits of friends.h.i.+p and emboldened further by your late lib

Presuming on our long habits of friends.h.i.+p and emboldened further by your late liberal permission to avail myself of your correspondence, in case I want any knowledge, (which I intend to do when I have no Encyclopaedia or Lady's Magazine at hand to refer to in any matter of science,) I now submit to your enquiries the above Theological Propositions, to be by you defended, or oppugned, or both, in the Schools of Germany, whither I am told you are departing, to the utter dissatisfaction of your native Devons.h.i.+re and regret of universal England; but to my own individual consolation if thro' the channel of your wished return, Learned Sir, my Friend, may be transmitted to this our Island, from those famous Theological Wits of Leipsic and Gottingen, any rays of illumination, in vain to be derived from the home growth of our English Halls and Colleges. Finally, wis.h.i.+ng, Learned Sir, that you may see Schiller and swing in a wood (_vide_ Poems) and sit upon a Tun, and eat fat hams of Westphalia,

I remain, Your friend and docile Pupil to instruct CHARLES LAMB.

1798.

To S. T. Coleridge.

[Lamb's last letter to Coleridge for two years. See note to the next letter.

Lamb's reading of Thomas Aquinas probably was at the base of his theses.

William G.o.dwin, in his "History of Knowledge, Learning and Taste in Great Britain," which had run through some years of the _New Annual Register_, cited, in 1786, a number of the more grotesque queries of the old Schoolmen. Mr. Kegan Paul suggested that Lamb went to G.o.dwin for his examination paper; but I should think this very unlikely. Some of the questions. .h.i.t Coleridge very hard.

This letter was first printed by Joseph Cottle in his _Early Recollections_, 1837, with the remark: "Mr. Coleridge gave me this letter, saying, 'These young visionaries will do each other no good.'"

It marks an epoch in Lamb's life, since it brought about, or, at any rate, clinched, the only quarrel that ever subsisted between Coleridge and himself.

The story is told in _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_. Briefly, Lloyd had left Coleridge in the spring of 1797; a little later, in a state of much perplexity, he had carried his troubles to Lamb, and to Southey, between whom and Coleridge no very cordial feeling had existed for some time, rather than to Coleridge himself, his late mentor. That probably fanned the flame. The next move came from Coleridge. He printed in the _Monthly Magazine_ for November, 1797, three sonnets signed Nehemiah Higginbottom, burlesquing instances of "affectation of unaffectedness,"

and "puny pathos" in the poems of himself, of Lamb, and of Lloyd, the humour of which Lamb probably did not much appreciate, since he believed in the feelings expressed in his verse, while Lloyd was certainly unfitted to esteem it. Coleridge effected even more than he had contemplated, for Southey took the sonnet upon Simplicity as an attack upon himself, which did not, however, prevent him, a little later, from a similar exercise in ponderous humour under the too similar name of Abel Shufflebottom.

In March, 1798, when a new edition of Coleridge's 1797 _Poems_ was in contemplation, Lloyd wrote to Cottle, the publisher, asking that he would persuade Coleridge to omit his (Lloyd's) portion, a request which Coleridge probably resented, but which gave him the opportunity of replying that no persuasion was needed for the omission of verses published at the earnest request of the author.

Meanwhile a worse offence than all against Coleridge was perpetrated by Lloyd. In the spring of 1798 was published at Bristol his novel, Edmund Oliver, dedicated to Lamb, in which Coleridge's experiences in the army, under the alias of Silas Tomkyn Comberback, in 1793-1794, and certain of Coleridge's peculiarities, including his drug habit, were utilised.

Added to this, Lloyd seems to have repeated both to Lamb and Southey, in distorted form, certain things which Coleridge had said of them, either in confidence, or, at any rate, with no wish that they should be repeated; with the result that Lamb actually went so far as to take sides with Lloyd against his older friend. The following extracts from a letter from Coleridge to Lamb, which I am permitted by Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge to print, carries the story a little farther:--

[Spring of 1798.]

Dear Lamb,--Lloyd has informed me through Miss Wordsworth that you intend no longer to correspond with me. This has given me little pain; not that I do not love and esteem you, but on the contrary because I am confident that your intentions are pure. You are performing what you deem a duty, and humanly speaking have that merit which can be derived from the performance of a painful duty. Painful, for you would not without struggles abandon me in behalf of a man [Lloyd] who, wholly ignorant of all but your name, became attached to you in consequence of my attachment, caught _his_ from _my_ enthusiasm, and learned to love you at my fireside, when often while I have been sitting and talking of your sorrows and afflictions I have stopped my conversations and lifted up wet eyes and prayed for you. No! I am confident that although you do not think as a wise man, you feel as a good man.

From you I have received little pain, because for you I suffer little alarm. I cannot say this for your friend; it appears to me evident that his feelings are vitiated, and that his ideas are in their combination merely the creatures of those feelings. I have received letters from him, and the best and kindest wish which, as a Christian, I can offer in return is that he may feel remorse....

When I wrote to you that my Sonnet to Simplicity was not composed with reference to Southey, you answered me (I believe these were the words): "It was a lie too gross for the grossest ignorance to believe;" and I was not angry with you, because the a.s.sertion which the grossest ignorance would believe a lie the Omniscient knew to be truth. This, however, makes me cautious not too hastily to affirm the falsehood of an a.s.sertion of Lloyd's that in Edmund Oliver's love-fit, leaving college, and going into the army he had no sort of allusion to or recollection of my love-fit, leaving college, and going into the army, and that he never thought of my person in the description of Oliver's person in the first letter of the second volume. This cannot appear stranger to me than my a.s.sertion did to you, and therefore I will suspend my absolute faith....

I have been unfortunate in my connections. Both you and Lloyd became acquainted with me when your minds were far from being in a composed or natural state, and you clothed my image with a suit of notions and feelings which could belong to nothing human. You are restored to comparative saneness, and are merely wondering what is become of the Coleridge with whom you were so pa.s.sionately in love; _Charles Lloyd's_ mind has only changed his disease, and he is now arraying his ci-devant Angel in a flaming San Benito--the whole ground of the garment a dark brimstone and plenty of little devils flourished out in black. Oh, me!

Lamb, "even in laughter the heart is sad!"...

G.o.d bless you S. T. COLERIDGE.

One other pa.s.sage. In a letter from Lloyd at Birmingham to Cottle, dated June, 1798, Lloyd says, in response to Cottle's suggestion that he should visit Coleridge, "I love Coleridge, and can forget all that has happened. At present I could not well go to Stowey.... Lamb quitted me yesterday, after a fortnight's visit. I have been much interested in his society. I never knew him so happy in my life. I shall write to Coleridge to-day." Coleridge left for Germany in September.

"Schiller and swing in a wood." An allusion to Coleridge's sonnet to Schiller:--

Ah! Bard tremendous in sublimity!

Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood Wand'ring at eve with finely-frenzied eye Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood!

Here should perhaps come Lamb's first letter to Robert Lloyd, not available for this edition, but printed by Canon Ainger, and in _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_, where it is dated October. Lamb's first letter is one of advice, apparently in reply to some complaints of his position addressed to him by Lloyd. A second and longer letter which, though belonging to August, 1798, may be mentioned here, also counsels, commending the use of patience and humility. Lamb is here seen in the character of a spiritual adviser. The letter is unique in his correspondence.

Robert Lloyd was a younger brother of Charles Lloyd, and Lamb had probably met him when on his visit to Birmingham in the summer. The boy, then not quite twenty, was apprenticed to a Quaker draper at Saffron Walden in Ess.e.x.]

LETTER 34

CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY

Sat.u.r.day, July 28th, 1798.

I am ashamed that I have not thanked you before this for the "Joan of Arc," but I did not know your address, and it did not occur to me to write through Cottle. The poem delighted me, and the notes amused me, but methinks she of Neufchatel, in the print, holds her sword too "like a dancer." I sent your _notice_ to Phillips, particularly requesting an immediate insertion, but I suppose it came too late. I am sometimes curious to know what progress you make in that same "Calendar:" whether you insert the nine worthies and Whittington? what you do or how you can manage when two Saints meet and quarrel for precedency? Martlemas, and Candlemas, and Christmas, are glorious themes for a writer like you, antiquity-bitten, smit with the love of boars' heads and rosemary; but how you can enn.o.ble the 1st of April I know not. By the way I had a thing to say, but a certain false modesty has. .h.i.therto prevented me: perhaps I can best communicate my wish by a hint,--my birthday is on the 10th of February, New Style; but if it interferes with any remarkable event, why rather than my country should lose her fame, I care not if I put my nativity back eleven days. Fine family patronage for your "Calendar," if that old lady of prolific memory were living, who lies (or lyes) in some church in London (saints forgive me, but I have forgot _what_ church), attesting that enormous legend of as many children as days in the year. I marvel her impudence did not grasp at a leap-year.

Three hundred and sixty-five dedications, and all in a family--you might spit in spirit on the oneness of Maecenas' patronage!

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to the eternal regret of his native Devons.h.i.+re, emigrates to Westphalia--"Poor Lamb (these were his last words), if he wants any _knowledge_, he may apply to me,"--in ordinary cases, I thanked him, I have an "Encyclopaedia" at hand, but on such an occasion as going over to a German university, I could not refrain from sending him the following propositions, to be by him defended or oppugned (or both) at Leipsic or Gottingen.

THESES QUAEDAM THEOLOGICAE

I

"Whether G.o.d loves a lying angel better than a true man?"

II

"Whether the archangel Uriel _could_ knowingly affirm an untruth, and whether, if he _could_, he _would_?"

III

"Whether honesty be an angelic virtue, or not rather belonging to that cla.s.s of qualities which the schoolmen term 'virtutes minus splendidae et hominis et terrae nimis participes?'"

IV

"Whether the seraphim ardentes do not manifest their goodness by the way of vision and theory? and whether practice be not a sub-celestial, and merely human virtue?"

V

"Whether the higher order of seraphim illuminati ever _sneer_?"

VI

"Whether pure intelligences can _love_, or whether they love anything besides pure intellect?"

VII

"Whether the beatific vision be anything more or less than a perpetual representment to each individual angel of his own present attainments, and future capabilities, something in the manner of mortal looking-gla.s.ses?"

VIII

"Whether an 'immortal and amenable soul' may not come _to be d.a.m.ned at last, and the man never suspect it beforehand_?"

Samuel Taylor C. had not deigned an answer; was it impertinent of me to avail myself of that offered source of knowledge? Lloyd is returned to town from Ipswich where he has been with his brother. He has brought home three acts of a Play which I have not yet read. The scene for the most part laid in a Brothel. O tempora, O mores! but as friend Coleridge said when he was talking bawdy to Miss ---- "to the pure all things are pure."

Wis.h.i.+ng "Madoc" may be born into the world with as splendid promise as the second birth or purification of the Maid of Neufchatel,--I remain yours sincerely,