Thus I wind myself
Into this willow garland, and am prouder
That I was once your love (though now refus'd)
Than to have had another true to me.
The scene is in Lamb's Dramatic Specimens.
The reference to Manchineel is explained by a passage in Coleridge's dedication of his 1797 volume, then just published, to his brother, the Rev. George Coleridge, where, speaking of the friends he had known, he says:—
and some most false, False and fair-foliag'd as the Manchineel, Have tempted me to slumber in their shade
—the manchineel being a poisonous West Indian tree.
Between this and the next letter probably came correspondence that has now been lost.]
LETTER 32
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
January 28th, 1798.
You have writ me many kind letters, and I have answered none of them. I don't deserve your attentions. An unnatural indifference has been creeping on me since my last misfortunes, or I should have seized the first opening of a correspondence with you. To you I owe much under God. In my brief acquaintance with you in London, your conversations won me to the better cause, and rescued me from the polluting spirit of the world. I might have been a worthless character without you; as it is, I do possess a certain improvable portion of devotional feelings, tho' when I view myself in the light of divine truth, and not according to the common measures of human judgment, I am altogether corrupt and sinful. This is no cant. I am very sincere.