The Wordsworths had moved to Rydal Mount in 1813.
"I am very sorry for Mr. De Quincey." Probably a reference to one of the opium-eater's illnesses.
It was at Littlehampton that Coleridge met Henry Francis Cary, the translator of Dante, afterwards one of Lamb's friends.
"Spot I like best in all this great city." See Vol. I. of this edition, for a little essay by Lamb on places of residence in London.
"Mr. * * *." One can but conjecture as to these asterisks. De Quincey, who was very small, married at the close of 1816.
"A princess dying"—Princess Charlotte of Saxe-Coburg. She was buried, amid national lamentation, on November 19, 1817.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Ayrton dated November 25, 1817, which Lamb holds is peculiarly neatly worded.]
LETTER 240
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN PAYNE COLLIER
The Garden of England,
December 10, 1817.
Dear J. P. C.,—I know how zealously you feel for our friend S. T. Coleridge; and I know that you and your family attended his lectures four or five years ago. He is in bad health and worse mind: and unless something is done to lighten his mind he will soon be reduced to his extremities; and even these are not in the best condition. I am sure that you will do for him what you can; but at present he seems in a mood to do for himself. He projects a new course, not of physic, nor of metaphysic, nor a new course of life, but a new course of lectures on Shakspear and Poetry. There is no man better qualified (always excepting number one); but I am pre-engaged for a series of dissertations on India and India-pendence, to be completed at the expense of the Company, in I know not (yet) how many volumes foolscap folio. I am busy getting up my Hindoo mythology; and for the purpose I am once more enduring Southey's Curse. To be serious, Coleridge's state and affairs make me so; and there are particular reasons just now, and have been any time for the last twenty years, why he should succeed. He will do so with a little encouragement. I have not seen him lately; and he does not know that I am writing.