SUBSTITUTE in room of that last confused & incorrect Paragraph, following the words “disastrous course,” these lines
With better hopes, I trust, from Avon’s vales
This other “minstrel” cometh. Youth endear’d,
God & Angels guide thee on thy road,
And gentler fortunes wait the friends I love.
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[Lamb has crossed through the above lines.]
Let us prose.
What can I do till you send word what priced and placed
house you should like? Islington (possibly) you would not like, to me
’tis classical ground. Knightsbridge is a desirable situation for the air
of the parks. St. George’s Fields is convenient for its contiguity
1796 | LINES TO COWPER | 37 |
TO THE POET COWPER
Cowper, I thank my God that
thou art heal’d! Thine was the sorest malady of all; And I am sad to think that it should light Upon the worthy head! But thou art heal’d, And thou art yet, we trust, the destin’d man, Born to reanimate the Lyre, whose chords Have slumber’d, and have idle lain so long, To the immortal sounding of whose strings Did Milton frame the
stately-paced verse; Among whose wires with lighter finger playing, Our elder bard, Spenser, a
gentle name, The Lady Muses’ dearest darling child, Elicited the deftest tunes yet heard In Hall or Bower, taking the delicate Ear Of Sydney, & his
peerless Maiden Queen. Thou, then, take up the mighty Epic strain, Cowper, of England’s Bards, the wisest
& the best. 1796 |
38 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | July |
I have read your climax of praises in those 3 reviews. These mighty spouters-out of panegyric waters have, 2 of ’em, scattered their spray even upon me! & the waters are cooling & refreshing. Prosaically, the Monthly Reviewers have made indeed a large article of it, & done you justice. The Critical have, in their wisdom, selected not the very best specimens, & notice not, except as one name on the muster-roll, the “Religious Musings.” I suspect Master Dyer to have been the writer of that article, as the substance of it was the very remarks & the very language he used to me one day. I fear you will not accord entirely with my sentiments of Cowper, as exprest above, (perhaps scarcely just), but the poor Gentleman has just recovered from his Lunacies, & that begets pity, & pity love, and love admiration, & then it goes hard with People but they lie! Have you read the Ballad called “Leonora,” in the second Number of the “Monthly Magazine”? If you have!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There is another fine song, from the same author (Berger), in the 3d No., of scarce inferior merit; & (vastly below these) there are some happy specimens of English hexameters, in an imitation of Ossian, in the 5th No. For your Dactyls I am sorry you are so sore about ’em—a very Sir Fretful! In good troth, the Dactyls are good Dactyls, but their measure is naught. Be not yourself “half anger, half agony” if I pronounce your darling lines not to be the best you ever wrote—you have written much.
For the alterations in those lines, let ’em run thus:
I may not come a pilgrim, to the Banks
(inspiring wave) was too common place.
of Avon, lucid stream, to taste the wave
which Shakspere drank, our
British Helicon;
or with mine eye, &c., &c.
(better than “drop a tear ”)
To muse, in tears, on that mysterious Youth,
&c.
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Then the last paragraph alter thus
better refer to my own “complaint”
solely than half to that and half to Chatterton, as in your copy, which creates a
confusion—“ominous fears “&c.
Complaint begone, begone unkind reproof
Take up, my song, take up a merrier strain,
For yet again, & lo! from Avon’s vales,
Another minstrel cometh! youth endeared,
God & good angels &c, as before.
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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
1796 | LAMB’S SCHOOLMISTRESS | 39 |