The "'scapes" of the great god Pan who appeared among your mountains some dozen years since, and his narrow chance of being submerged by the swains, afforded me much pleasure. I can conceive the water nymphs pulling for him. He would have been another Hylas. W. Hylas. In a mad letter which Capel Loft wrote to M.M. Phillips (now S'r. Rich'd.) I remember his noticing a metaphysical article by Pan, signed H. and adding "I take your correspondent to be the same with Hylas." Hylas has [? had] put forth a pastoral just before. How near the unfounded conjecture of the certainly inspired Loft (unfounded as we thought it) was to being realized! I can conceive him being "good to all that wander in that perilous flood." One J. Scott (I know no more) is edit'r of Champ.
Where is Coleridge?
That Review you speak of, I am only sorry it did not appear last month. The circumstances of haste and peculiar bad spirits under which it was written, would have excused its slightness and inadequacy, the full load of which I shall suffer from its lying by so long as it will seem to have done from its postponement. I write with great difficulty and can scarce command my own resolution to sit at writing an hour together. I am a poor creature, but I am leaving off Gin. I hope you will see good will in the thing. I had a difficulty to perform not to make it all Panegyrick; I have attempted to personate a mere stranger to you; perhaps with too much strangeness. But you must bear that in mind when you read it, and not think that I am in mind distant from you or your Poem, but that both are close to me among the nearest of persons and things. I do but act the stranger in the Review. Then, I was puzzled about extracts and determined upon not giving one that had been in the Examiner, for Extracts repeated give an idea that there is a meagre allow'ce, of good things. By this way, I deprived myself of Sr. W. Irthing and the reflections that conclude his story, which are the flower of the Poem. H. had given the reflections before me. Then it is the first Review I ever did, and I did not know how long I might make it. But it must speak for itself, if Giffard and his crew do not put words in its mouth, which I expect. Farewell. Love to all. Mary keeps very bad.
C. LAMB.
[Lamb seems to have sent Wordsworth a copy of The Champion containing his essay, signed Burton, Junior, "On the Melancholy of Tailors." Wordsworth's letter of reply, containing the examples of other tailors, is no longer in existence. "A greater hell" is a pun: the receptacle into which tailors throw scraps is called a hell. See Lamb's "Satan in Search of a Wife" and notes (Vol. IV.) for more on this topic.
"W. H."—Hazlitt: referring again to his review of The Excursion in The Examiner.
"The melancholy Jew"—Mr. Lyon Levy, a diamond merchant, who jumped off the Monument commemorating the Fire of London, on January 18, 1810.
"The ''scapes' of the great god Pan." A reference to Hazlitt's flirtation with a farmer's daughter in the Lake country, ending almost in immersion (see above). Hylas, seeking for water with a pitcher, so enraptured the nymphs of the river with his beauty that they drew him in.
Capell Lofft (1751-1824) was a lawyer and philanthropist of independent means who threw himself into many popular discussions and knew many literary men. He was the patron of Robert Bloomfield. Lamb was amused by him, but annoyed that his initials were also C. L. "M. M. Phillips"—for Monthly Magazine, which Phillips published.
"One J. Scott." See note above.