The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume IV Part 72

Page 5. _Methinks how dainty sweet it were, reclin'd._

When this sonnet was printed by Coleridge in 1796 the sestet was made to run thus:--

But ah! sweet scenes of fancied bliss, adieu!

On rose-leaf beds amid your faery bowers I all too long have lost the dreamy hours!

Beseems it now the sterner Muse to woo, If haply she her golden meed impart, To realise the vision of the heart.

Lamb remonstrated: "I had rather have seen what I wrote myself, though they bear no comparison with your exquisite lines--

"On rose-leaf'd beds, amid your faery bowers, etc.

I love my sonnets because they are the reflected images of my Own feelings at different times." This sonnet was printed by Lamb three times--in 1796, 1797 and 1798.

Page 5. _O! I could laugh to hear the midnight wind,_

This sonnet, written probably at Margate, was ent.i.tled, in 1796, "Written at Midnight, by the Seaside, after a Voyage." The last lines then ran:--

And almost wish'd it were no crime to die!

How Reason reel'd! What gloomy transports rose!

Till the rude das.h.i.+ngs rock'd them to repose.

The couplet was Coleridge's, and Lamb protested (June 10, 1796), describing them as good lines, but adding that they "must spoil the whole with me who know it is only a fiction of yours and that the rude das.h.i.+ngs did in fact not rock me to repose."

When reprinted in 1797, the final couplet was omitted, asterisks standing instead. The present sonnet was probably the earliest of Lamb's printed poems. In the Elia essay "The Old Margate Hoy," Lamb states that the first time he saw the sea was on a visit to Margate as a boy, by water--probably the voyage that suggested this sonnet. Lamb printed the sonnet three times--in 1796, 1797 and 1818.

Page 6. LLOYD'S _POEMS ON THE DEATH OF PRISCILLA FARMER_, 1796.

Charles Lloyd (1775-1839), the son of Charles Lloyd, of Birmingham (a cultured and philanthropical Quaker banker), joined Coleridge at Bristol late in 1796 as his private pupil, and moved with the family to Nether Stowey. Priscilla Farmer was Lloyd's maternal grandmother, to whom he was much attached, and on her death he composed the sonnets that form this costly quarto, published for Lloyd by Coleridge's friend, Joseph Cottle, of Bristol, in the winter of 1796.

Page 6. _The Grandame._

Lamb sent these lines in their first state to Coleridge in June, 1796, at, which time they were, I conjecture, part of a long blank-verse poem which he was then meditating, and of which "Childhood," "Fancy Employed on Divine Subjects," and "The Sabbath Bells" (see pages 9 and 10) were probably other portions. The poem was never finished. On June 13, 1796, he writes to Coleridge:--

"Of the blank verses I spoke of, the following lines are the only tolerably complete ones I have writ out of not more than one hundred and fifty. That I get on slowly you may fairly impute to want of practice in composition, when I declare to you that (the few verses which you have seen excepted) I have not writ fifty lines since I left school. It may not be amiss to remark that my grandmother (on whom the verses are written) lived housekeeper in a family the fifty or sixty last years of her life--that she was a woman of exemplary piety and goodness--and for many years before her death was terribly afflicted with a cancer in her breast, which she bore with true Christian patience. You may think that I have not kept enough apart the ideas of her heavenly and her earthly master; but recollect I have designedly given into her own way of feeling; and if she had a failing 'twas that she respected her master's family too much, not reverenced her Maker too little. The lines begin imperfectly, as I may probably connect 'em if I finish at all: and if I do, Biggs shall print 'em (in a more economical way than you yours), for, Sonnets and all, they won't make a thousand lines as I propose completing 'em, and the substance must be wire-drawn."

When Charles Lloyd joined Coleridge later in the year, and was preparing his _Poems in Memory of Priscilla Farmer_, Coleridge obtained Lamb's permission for "The Grandame" to be included with them. The lines were introduced by Lloyd in these words: "The following beautiful fragment was written by CHARLES LAMB, of the India-House.--Its subject being the same with that of my Poems, I was solicitous to have it printed with them: and I am indebted to a Friend of the Author's for the permission."

The poem differed then very slightly from its present form. When the book was sent to Lamb he remarked (in December, 1796) on "the odd coincidence of two young men, in one age, carolling their grandmothers.... I cannot but smile to see my Granny so gayly deck'd forth [the book was expensively produced by Lloyd], tho', I think, whoever altered 'thy' praises to 'her' praises--'thy' honoured memory to 'her' honoured memory [lines 27 and 28], did wrong--they best exprest my feelings. There is a pensive state of recollection, in which the mind is disposed to apostrophise the departed objects of its attachment; and, breaking loose from grammatical precision, changes from the 1st to the 3rd, and from the 3rd to the 1st person, just as the random fancy or feeling directs."

Mrs. Mary Field, _nee_ Bruton, Lamb's maternal grandmother, was housekeeper at Blakesware house, near Widford, the seat of the Plumer family for very many years, during the latter part of her life being left in sole charge, for William Plumer had moved to his other seat, Gilston, a few miles distant (see "Blakesmoor in H---- s.h.i.+re," and notes, Vol. II). Lamb and his brother and sister visited their grandmother at Blakesware as though in her own house. Mrs. Field died of cancer in the breast, July 31, 1792, aged seventy-nine, and was buried in Widford churchyard.

Approached from the east the churchyard seems to be anything but on the hilltop, for one descends to it; but it stands on a ridge, and seen from the north, or, as at the old Blakesware house, from the west, it appears to crown an eminence. The present spire, though slender and tapering, is not that which Lamb used to see. Mrs. Field's plain stone, whose legibility was not long since threatened by overhanging branches, has now been saved from danger and may still be read. It merely records the name "Mary Feild" (a mistake of the stone-cutter) and the bare dates.

This poem was printed by Lamb three times--in 1796 (in Lloyd's book), in 1797 (with Coleridge) and in 1818.

Page 8. COLERIDGE'S _POEMS_, 1797.

Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_, 1796, went into a second edition in 1797 under the t.i.tle, _Poems by S.T. Coleridge, Second Edition, to which are now added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd_. Coleridge invented a motto from Groscollius for the t.i.tle-page, bearing upon this poetical partners.h.i.+p: "Duplex n.o.bis vinculum, et amicitiae et similium junctarumque Camoenarum; quod utinam neque mors solvat, neque temporis longinquitas!" "Double is the bond which binds us--friends.h.i.+p, and a kindred taste in poetry. Would that neither death nor lapse of time could dissolve it!"

Lamb's contributions were thus referred to by Coleridge in the Preface: "There were inserted in my former Edition, a few Sonnets of my Friend and old School-fellow, CHARLES LAMB. He has now communicated to me a complete Collection of all his Poems; quae qui non prorsus amet, illum omnes et Virtutes et Veneres odore." (Which things, whoever is not unreservedly in love with, is detested by all the Virtues and the Graces.) Lamb's poems came last in the book, an arrangement insisted upon in a letter from him to Coleridge in November, 1796:--"Do you publish with Lloyd, or without him? In either case my little portion may come last; and after the fas.h.i.+on of orders to a country correspondent, I will give directions how I should like to have 'em done. The t.i.tle-page to stand thus:--

POEMS

BY

CHARLES LAMB, OF THE INDIA HOUSE

Under this leaf the following motto, which, for want of room, I put over leaf, I desire you to insert, whether you like it or no. May not a gentleman choose what arms, mottoes, or armorial bearings the Herald will give him leave, without consulting his republican friend, who might advise none? May not a publican put up the sign of the _Saracen's Head_, even though his undiscerning neighbour should prefer, as more genteel, the _Cat and Gridiron_?

"[MOTTO]

"This Beauty, in the blossom of my Youth, When my first fire knew no adulterate incense, Nor I no way to flatter but my fondness, In the best language my true tongue could tell me, And all the broken sighs my sick heart lend me, I sued and served. Long did I love this Lady.

"Ma.s.singer."

"THE DEDICATION _THE FEW FOLLOWING POEMS_, CREATURES OF THE FANCY AND THE FEELING IN LIFE'S MORE _VACANT_ HOURS, PRODUCED, FOR THE MOST PART, BY LOVE IN IDLENESS; ARE, WITH ALL A BROTHER'S FONDNESS, INSCRIBED TO MARY ANN LAMB, THE AUTHOR'S BEST FRIEND AND SISTER"

The dedication was printed as Lamb wished, in the form I have followed above, and the book appeared.

Page 8. _When last I roved these winding wood-walks green,_

This was sent to Coleridge on June 1, 1796, in a letter containing also the sonnets, "The Lord of Life," page 16; "A timid grace," page 8; and "We were two pretty babes," page 9. It was written, said Lamb, "on revisiting a spot, where the scene was laid of my 1st sonnet"--"Was it some sweet device," page 4. Lamb printed this sonnet twice--in 1797 and 1818. Page 8. _A timid grace sits trembling in her eye._

This, the last of the four love sonnets (see note on page 310), seems to be a survival of a discarded effort, for Lamb tells Coleridge, in the letter referred to in the preceding note, that it "retains a few lines from a sonnet of mine, which you once remarked had no 'body of thought'

in it." Lamb printed this sonnet twice--in 1797 and 1818.

Page 9. _If from my lips some angry accents fell,_

Lamb sent this sonnet, which is addressed to his sister, to Coleridge in May, 1796. "The Sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry, but you will be curious to read it when I tell you it was written in my prison-house [an asylum] in one of my lucid Intervals." It is dated 1795 in Coleridge's _Poems_. Lamb printed the sonnet twice--in 1797 and 1818.