LETTER 257
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Jan. 10th, 1820.
Dear Coleridge,—A Letter written in the blood of your poor friend would indeed be of a nature to startle you; but this is nought but harmless red ink, or, as the witty mercantile phrase hath it, Clerk's Blood. Damn 'em! my brain, guts, skin, flesh, bone, carcase, soul, TIME, is all theirs. The Royal Exchange, Gresham's Folly, hath me body and spirit. I admire some of Lloyd's lines on you, and I admire your postponing reading them. He is a sad Tattler, but this is under the rose. Twenty years ago he estranged one friend from me quite, whom I have been regretting, but never could regain since; he almost alienated you (also) from me, or me from you, I don't know which. But that breach is closed. The dreary sea is filled up. He has lately been at work "telling again," as they call it, a most gratuitous piece of mischief, and has caused a coolness betwixt me and (not a friend exactly, but) [an] intimate acquaintance. I suspect, also, he saps Manning's faith in me, who am to Manning more than an acquaintance. Still I like his writing verses about you. Will your kind host and hostess give us a dinner next Sunday, and better still, not expect us if the weather is very bad. Why you should refuse twenty guineas per sheet for Blackwood's or any other magazine passes my poor comprehension. But, as Strap says, you know best. I have no quarrel with you about præprandial avocations—so don't imagine one. That Manchester sonnet I think very likely is Capel Lofft's. Another sonnet appeared with the same initials in the same paper, which turned out to be Procter's. What do the rascals mean? Am I to have the fathering of what idle rhymes every beggarly Poetaster pours forth! Who put your marine sonnet and about Browne into "Blackwood"? I did not. So no more, till we meet.
Ever yours,
C. L.
[Charles Lloyd, returned to health, had written Desultory Thoughts in
London, in which both Coleridge and Lamb appeared, Coleridge as *** and
Lamb as **. The poem was published in 1821. Lloyd probably had sent it
in manuscript or proof to Lamb and Coleridge. Some of Lloyd's lines on
Coleridge run thus:—
How shall I fitly speak on such a theme?
He is a treasure by the world neglected,
Because he hath not, with a prescience dim,
Like those whose every aim is self-reflected,
Pil'd up some fastuous trophy, that of him
Might tell, what mighty powers the age rejected,
But taught his lips the office of a pen—
By fools he's deem'd a being lost to men.
* * * * *
No! with magnanimous self-sacrifice,
And lofty inadvertency of fame,
He felt there is a bliss in being wise,
Quite independent of the wise man's name.
Who now can say how many a soul may rise
To a nobility of moral aim
It ne'er had known, but for that spirit brave,
Which, being freely gifted, freely gave?