This joint volume was published without much success. In the same year
Lamb and his sister paid a visit to Coleridge, then living at Stowey, in
Somersetshire; after which Coleridge, for what purpose does not very
clearly appear, migrated to Germany. This happened in the year 1798.
Charles Lloyd, one of the triumvirate of 1797, was the son of a banker at Birmingham. He was educated as a Quaker, but seceded from that body, and afterwards became "perplexed in mind," and very desponding. He often took up his residence in London, but did not mingle much with society. An extreme melancholy darkened his latter days; and, as I believe, he died insane. He published various poems, and translated, from the Italian into English blank verse, the tragedies of Alfieri. His poems are distinguished rather by a remarkable power of intellectual analysis than by the delicacy or fervor of the verse.
The last time I saw Charles Lloyd was in company with Hazlitt. We heard that he had taken lodgings at a working brazier's shop in Fetter Lane, and we visited him there, and found him in bed, much depressed, but very willing to discuss certain problems with Hazlitt, who carried on the greater part of the conversation. We understood that he had selected these noisy apartments in order that they might distract his mind from the fears and melancholy thoughts which at that time distressed him.
It was soon after the publication of the joint volume that Charles chronicles the different tastes of himself and his friend. "Burns," he says, "is the god of my idolatry, as Bowles of yours." Posterity has universally joined in the preference of Lamb. Burns, indeed, was always one of his greatest favorites. He admired and sometimes quoted a line or two from the last stanza of the "Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn," "The bridegroom may forget his bride," &c.; and I have more than once heard him repeat, in a fond, tender voice, when the subject of poets or poetry came under discussion, the following beautiful lines from the Epistle to Simpson of Ochiltree:
"The Muse, nae poet ever fand her,
Till by himsel he learn'd to wander,
Adown some trotting burn's meander
An' no think't lang."
These he would press upon the attention of any one present (chanting them aloud), and would bring down the volume of Burns, and open it, in order that the page might be impressed on the hearer's memory. Sometimes—in a way scarcely discernible—he would kiss the volume; as he would also a book by Chapman or Sir Philip Sidney, or any other which he particularly valued. I have seen him read out a passage from the Holy Dying and the Urn Burial, and express in the same way his devotion and gratitude.
Lamb had been brought up a Unitarian; but he appears to have been occasionally fluctuating in a matter as to which boys are not apt to entertain very rigid opinions. At one time he longed to be with superior thinkers. "I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself," are his words. At another time he writes, "I have had thoughts of turning Quaker lately." A visit, however, to one of the Quaker meetings in 1797, decides him against such conversion: "This cured me of Quakerism. I love it in the books of Penn and Woodman; but I detest the vanity of man, thinking he speaks by the Spirit." A similar story is told of Coleridge. Mr. Justice Coleridge's statement is, "He told us a humorous story of his enthusiastic fondness for Quakers when at Cambridge, and his attending one of their meetings, which had entirely cured him."
In 1797 Charles Lamb (who had been introduced to Southey by Coleridge two years previously) accompanied Lloyd to a little village near Christchurch, in Hampshire, where Southey was at that time reading. This little holiday (of a fortnight) seems to have converted the acquaintanceship between Southey and Lamb into something like intimacy. He then paid another visit (which he had long meditated) to Coleridge, who was residing at Stowey.
It must have been shortly after this first visit (for Lamb went again to Stowey, and met Wordsworth there in 1801) that Coleridge undertook the office of minister to a Unitarian congregation at Shrewsbury, and preached there, as detailed by Hazlitt in the manner already set forth. In 1798 he took his departure for Germany, and this led to a familiar correspondence between Lamb and Southey. The opening of Lamb's humor may probably be referred to this friendship with a congenial humorist, and one, like himself, taking a strong interest in worldly matters. Coleridge, between whom and Lamb there was not much similarity of feeling, beyond their common love for poetry and religious writings, was absent, and Lamb was enticed by the kindred spirit of Southey into the accessible regions of humor. These two friends never arrived at that close friendship which had been forming between Coleridge and Lamb ever since their school-days at Christ's Hospital. But they interchanged ideas on poetical and humorous topics, and did not perplex themselves with anything speculative or transcendental.
The first letter to Southey, which has been preserved (July, 1798), announces that Lamb is ready to enter into any jocose contest. It includes a list of queries to be defended by Coleridge at Leipsic or Gottingen; the first of which was, "Whether God loves a lying angel better than a true man?" Some of these queries, in all probability, had relation to Coleridge's own infirmities: at all events, they were sent over to him in reply to the benediction which he had thought proper to bequeath to Charles on leaving England. "Poor Lamb, if he wants any knowledge he may apply to me." I must believe that this message was jocose, otherwise it would have been insolent in the extreme degree. Coleridge's answers to the queries above adverted to are not known; I believe that the proffered knowledge was not afforded so readily as it was demanded.