"The title of the play." Writing to Lamb on December 15, 1799, Manning had said: "I had some conversation the other day with Sophia concerning your tragedy; and she made some very sensible observations (as I thought) with respect to the unfitness of its title, 'The Folly,' whose consequences humble the pride and ambition of John's heart, does not originate in the workings of those passions, but from an underpart in his character, and as it were accidentally, viz., from the ebullitions of a drunken mind and from a rash confidence."
"You will understand what I mean, without my explaining myself any further. God bless you, and keep you from all evil things, that walk upon the face of the earth—I mean nightmares, hobgoblins and spectres."
Lamb refers in this letter particularly to Act III. of his play. "I have not seen Coleridge since." Since when is not clear. Possibly Coleridge had been at Cambridge when Lamb was there.]
LETTER 49
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
? Jan. 23, 1800.
Dear Coleridge,—Now I write, I cannot miss this opportunity of acknowledging the obligations myself, and the readers in general of that luminous paper, the "Morning Post," are under to you for the very novel and exquisite manner in which you combined political with grammatical science, in your yesterday's dissertation on Mr. Wyndham's unhappy composition. It must have been the death-blow to that ministry. I expect Pitt and Grenville to resign. More especially the delicate and Cottrellian grace with which you officiated, with a ferula for a white wand, as gentleman usher to the word "also," which it seems did not know its place.
I expect Manning of Cambridge in town to-night—will you fulfil your promise of meeting him at my house? He is a man of a thousand. Give me a line to say what day, whether Saturday, Sunday, Monday, &c., and if Sara and the Philosopher can come. I am afraid if I did not at intervals call upon you, I should never see you. But I forget, the affairs of the nation engross your time and your mind.
Farewell. C.L.
[The first letter that has been preserved of the second period of Lamb's correspondence with Coleridge, which was to last until the end.
In the Morning Post of January 7, 1800, had appeared the correspondence between Buonaparte and Lord Grenville, in which Buonaparte made an offer of peace. Lord Grenville's Note, it was pointed out in the Morning Post for January 16, was really written by William Windham, Secretary for War, and on January 22 appeared an article closely criticising its grammar.