Have a care, good Master poet, of the Statute de Contumelia. What do you mean by calling Madame Mara harlot & naughty things? The goodness of the verse would not save you in a court of Justice. But are you really coming to town?
Coleridge, a gentleman called in London lately from Bristol, inquired whether there were any of the family of a Mr. Chambers living—this Mr. Chambers he said had been the making of a friend's fortune who wished to make some return for it. He went away without seeing her. Now, a Mrs. Reynolds, a very intimate friend of ours, whom you have seen at our house, is the only daughter, & all that survives, of Mr. Chambers—& a very little supply would be of service to her, for she married very unfortunately, & has parted with her husband. Pray find out this Mr. Pember (for that was the gentleman's friend's name), he is an attorney, & lives at Bristol. Find him out, & acquaint him with the circumstances of the case, & offer to be the medium of supply to Mrs. Reynolds, if he chuses to make her a present. She is in very distrest circumstances. Mr. Pember, attorney, Bristol—Mr. Chambers lived in the Temple. Mrs. Reynolds, his daughter, was my schoolmistress, & is in the room at this present writing. This last circumstance induced me to write so soon again—I have not further to add—Our loves to Sara.
Thursday.
C. LAMB.
[The passage at the beginning, before "Let us prose," together with the later passages in the same manner, refers to the poem in the preceding letter, which in slightly different form is printed in editions of Lamb as "Lines to Sara and Her Samuel." To complete the sense of the letter one should compare the text of the poem in Vol. IV.
Coleridge had just received a suggestion, through Dr. Beddoes of
Bristol, that he should replace Grey, the late co-editor (with James
Perry) of the Morning Chronicle. It came to nothing; but Coleridge had
told Lamb and had asked him to look out a house in town for him.
Dr. Kenrick's "Falstaff's Wedding," 1760, was a continuation of
Shakespeare's "Henry IV."
We do not know what were the last lines that Lamb had sent to Coleridge. The lines to Cowper were printed in the Monthly Magazine for December, 1796.
Coleridge's Poems were reviewed in the Monthly Review, June, 1796, with no mention of Lamb. The Critical Review for the same month said of Lamb's effusions: "These are very beautiful."
Burger's "Leonora," which was to have such an influence upon English literature (it was the foundation of much of Sir Walter Scott's poetry), was translated from the German by William Taylor of Norwich in 1790 and printed in the Monthly Magazine in March, 1796. Scott at once made a rival version. The other fine song, in the April Monthly Magazine, was "The Lass of Fair Wone."
The mention of the Statute de Contumeliâ seems to refer to the "Lines Composed in a Concert-Room," which were first printed in the Morning Post, September 24, 1799, but must have been written earlier. Madame Mara (1749-1833) is not mentioned by name in the poem, but being one of the principal singers of the day Lamb probably fastened the epithet upon her by way of pleasantry; or she may have been referred to in the version of the lines which Lamb had seen.