O, Amos Cottle!—Phoebus! what a name.
and so forth. Mr. Evans, however, dispensed with Amos. Another grangerised edition of the same satire, also in the British Museum, compiled by W.M. Tartt, has an engraving of Amos Cottle and two portraits of Lamb—the Hancock drawing, and the Brook Pulham caricature. Byron's lines touching Lamb ran thus:—
Yet let them not to vulgar Wordsworth stoop,
The meanest object of the lowly group,
Whose verse, of all but childish prattle void,
Seems blessed harmony to Lambe and Lloyd.
A footnote states that Lamb and Lloyd are the most ignoble followers of
Southey & Co.
Cottle's Messiah, of which the earlier portion had been published long since, was completed in 1815. Canon Ainger says that lines 71 and 72 in Lamb's copy (not that of 1815), following upon the couplet quoted, were:—
(While sorrow gave th' involuntary tear)
Had ceased to vibrate on our listening ear.
Coleridge's friend Morgan had just come upon evil times. Subsequently Lamb and Southey united in helping him to the extent of £10 a year each.]
LETTER 256
CHARLES LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
[P.M. 25 Nov., 1819.]