even so far back as to those old suppers at our old ********* Inn, -when life was fresh, and topics exhaustless,-and you first kindled in me, if not the power, yet the love of poetry, and beauty, and kindliness - What words have I heard The world has given you many a shrewd nip and gird since that time, but either my eyes are grown dimmer, or my old friend is the same, who stood before me three-and-twenty years ago --his hair a little confessing the hand of time, but still shrouding the same capacious brain, his heart not altered, scarcely where it "alteration finds.' " One piece, Coleridge, I have ventured to publish in its original form, though I have heard you complain of a certain over-imitation of the antique in the style. If I could see any way of getting rid of the objection, without re-writing it entirely, I would make some sacrifices. But when I wrote John Woodvil, never proposed to myself any distinct deviation from common English. I had been newly initiated in the writings of our elder dramatists; Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger, were then a first love; and from what I was so freshly conversant in, what wonder if my language imperceptibly took a tinge? The very time, which I had chosen for my story, that which immediately followed the Restoration, seemed to require, in an English play, that the English should be of rather an older cast, than that of the precise year in which it happened to be written. I wish it had not some faults, which I can less vindi cate than the language. I remain, my dear Coleridge, Yours, with unabated esteem, CHARLES LAMB. THE WORKS OF CHARLES LAMB. Poetical Works. EARLIEST AND LATER SONNETS. [The four sonnets immediately subjoined were the first poems, the first writings, in fact, Charles Lamb ever published. They originally appeared in 1796, as printed by the Robinsons of London, and published by Joseph Cottle of Bristol, in an insignificant-looking volume entitled "Poems on Various Subjects," by his friend and schoolfellow Samuel Taylor Coleridge, late of Jesus College, Cambridge. The latter touched up many of them unjustifiably in spite of their author's remonstrance "I charge you, Coleridge, spare my ewe lambs!" The last six lines of the second, as first printed, were entirely Coleridge's own. They are all now given, these first four sonnets of Charles Lamb, exactly as he wrote them, and with a scrupulous regard to his own reiterated emendations.] I. WAS it some sweet device of Faëry That mock'd my steps with many a lonely glade, In those fine eyes? methought they spake the while II. METHINKS how dainty sweet it were, reclined D Aught envying. And, O Anna! mild-eyed maid! III. As when a child on some long winter's night IV. WRITTEN AT MIDNIGHT, BY THE SEA-SIDE AFTER A VOYAGE. O, I could laugh to hear the midnight wind, Or take my portion with the winds that rave. [Charles Lamb having begun his career in authorship as a sonneteer, and having written to Coleridge with effusion, "I love my sonnets!" the four first are in this Centenary Edition of his Writings followed immediately by those he afterwards produced at various times. They are all arranged as nearly as possible in chronological order, being succeeded by the miscellaneous poems, which are also arranged chronologically.] V. WHEN last I roved these winding wood-walks green, Green winding walks, and shady pathways sweet, Ofttimes would Anna seek the silent scene, Shrouding her beauties in the lone retreat. No more I hear her footsteps in the shade: Meets me self-wandering, where in happier days VI. A TIMID grace sits trembling in her eye, The care-crazed mind, like some still melody: VII. IF from my lips some angry accents fell, 'Twas but the error of a sickly mind And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well, Let this my verse the poor atonement be- My verse, which though to praise wert ever inclined VIII. We were two pretty babes, the youngest she, We two did love each other's company; Time was, we two had wept to have been apart. HARMONY IN UNLIKENESS. By Enfield lanes, and Winchmore's verdant hill, And Emma brown, exuberant in talk. X. TO MARTIN CHARLES BURNEY. [A dedicatory sonnet originally published at the beginning of the second volume of the Those humorous clouds, that flit o'er brightest days, (And I have watch'd thee almost from a child,) I have not found a whiter soul than thine. XI. WRITTEN AT CAMBRIDGE ON THE 15TH AUGUST, 1819. I WAS not train'd in Academic bowers, And to those learned streams I nothing owe Which copious from those twin fair founts do flow; My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap, |