O! I do love thee, meek simplicity!
For of thy lays, the lulling simpleness
Goes to my heart, and soothes each small distress,
Distress, though small, yet haply great to me!
'Tis true, on lady fortune's gentlest pad,
I amble on; yet, though I know not why,
So sad I am!—but should a friend and I
Grow cool and miff, oh, I am very sad!
And then with sonnets, and with sympathy.
My dreamy bosom's mystic woes I pall;
Now of my false friend 'plaining plaintively,
Now raving at mankind in gener-al
But whether sad or fierce, 'tis simple all,
All very simple, meek SIMPLICITY!
NEHEMIAH HIGGINBOTHAM.
SONNET III.
ON A RUINED HOUSE WHICH JACK BUILT.
And this reft house is that, the which he built,
Lamented Jack! and here his malt he piled,
Cautious in vain! These rats that squeak'd so wild,
Squeak, not unconscious of their fathers' guilt.
Did ye not see her gleaming through the glade?
Belike 'twas she, the Maiden all forlorn.
What though she milk no cow with crumpled horn,
Yet, aye she haunts the dale where erst she stray'd:
And, aye beside her stalks her amorous knight!
Still on his thighs his wonted brogues are worn,
And through those brogues, still tatter'd and betorn,
His hindward charms gleam an unearthly white;
As when through broken clouds, at night's high moon.
Peeps in fair fragments forth—the full-orb'd harvest moon!
NEHEMIAH HIGGINBOTHAM.[44]
The moralist rightly says, "There is nothing permanent in this uncertain world;" and even most friendships do not partake of the "Munition of Rocks."
Alas! the spirit of impartiality now compels me to record, that the inseparable Trio; even the three "Groscolliases" themselves, had, somehow or other, been touched with the negative magnet, and their particles, in opposition, flew off "as far as from hence to the utmost pole." I never rightly understood the cause of this dissension, but shrewdly suspected that that unwelcome and insidious intruder, Mr. Nehemiah Higginbotham, had no inconsiderable share in it.
Mr. C. even determined in his third projected edition, (1798) that the production of his two late friends should be excluded. The three next letters refer to this unpleasant affair. It is hardly necessary to add, that the difference was of short continuance.
The Latin motto, prefixed to the second edition of Mr. C.'s poems, puzzled everybody to know from what author it was derived. One and another inquired of me, to no purpose, and expressed a wish that Mr. C. had been clearer in his citation, as "no one could understand it." On my naming this to Mr. Coleridge, he laughed heartily, and said, "It was all a hoax." "Not meeting" said he, "with a suitable motto, I invented one, and with references purposely obscure," as will be explained in the next letter.[45]