"Voice of the Night! had I the power."
"This Lime-tree Bower my Prison; a Poem, addressed to Charles Lamb of the India House, London," was also in the Annual Anthology. Lamb objected to the phrase "My gentle-hearted Charles" (see above). Lamb says "five years ago"; he means three. Coleridge did not alter the phrase. It was against this poem that he wrote in pencil on his deathbed in 1834: "Ch. and Mary Lamb—dear to my heart, yea, as it were, my heart.—S. T. C. Aet. 63, 1834. 1797-1834 = 37 years!"
"I have hit off the following"—"A Ballad Denoting the Difference between the Rich and the Poor," first printed among the Imitations of Burton in the John Woodvil volume, 1802, see Vol. IV.
"And wisest Stewart"—Stuart of the Morning Post. Adapted from
Milton's "Hymn on the Nativity"—
"But wisest Fate says no."
"W.'s (Wordsworth's) tragedy" was "The Borderers." The second edition of Lyrical Ballads was just ready.]
LETTER 62
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[P.M. August 9, 1800.]
Dear Manning,—I suppose you have heard of Sophia Lloyd's good fortune, and paid the customary compliments to the parents. Heaven keep the new-born infant from star-blasting and moon-blasting, from epilepsy, marasmus, and the devil! May he live to see many days, and they good ones; some friends, and they pretty regular correspondents, with as much wit as wisdom as will eat their bread and cheese together under a poor roof without quarrelling; as much goodness as will earn heaven! Here I must leave off, my benedictory powers failing me. I could curse the sheet full; so much stronger is corruption than grace in the Natural Man.
And now, when shall I catch a glimpse of your honest face-to-face countenance again—your fine dogmatical sceptical face, by punch-light? O! one glimpse of the human face, and shake of the human hand, is better than whole reams of this cold, thin correspondence—yea, of more worth than all the letters that have sweated the fingers of sensibility from Madame Sévigné and Balzac (observe my Larning!) to Sterne and Shenstone.