language he used to me one day. I fear you will not accord entirely with my sentiments of Cowper, as expressed above (perhaps scarcely just); but the poor gentleman has just recovered from his lunacies, and that begets pity, and pity love, and love admiration; and 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 (Bürger), in the third number, of scarce inferior merit; and (vastly below these) there are some happy specimens of English hexameters, in an imitation of Ossian, in the fifth number. 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 in all your life—you have written much. Have a care, good Master Poet, of the Statute de Contumeliâ. What do you mean by calling Madame Maras,harlots, and 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, and 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 away without seeing her. Now, a Mrs. Reynolds, a very intimate friend of ours, whom you have seen at our house, is the only daughter, and all that survives, of Mr. Chambers; and a very little supply would be of service to her, for she married very unfortunately, and has parted with her husband. Pray find out this Mr. Pember (for that was the gentleman's name); he is an attorney, and lives at Bristol. Find him out, and acquaint him with the circumstances of the case, and offer to be the medium of supply to Mrs. Reynolds, if he chooses to make her a present. These scented rooms, where, to a gaudy throng, In intricacies of laborious song." Lines composed in a Concert Room by S. T. C. She is in very distressed circumstances. Mr. Pember, attorney, Bristol. Mr. Chambers lived in the temple; Mrs. Reynolds, his daughter, was my schoolmistress, and is in the room at this present writing. This last circumstance induced me to write so soon again. I have not further to add, Our loves to Sara. Thursday. C. LAMB. CHAPTER II. LETTERS OF LAMB TO COLERIDGE, CHIEFLY RELATING TO THE DEATH OF MRS. LAMB, AND MISS LAMB'S SUBSEQUENT CONDITION. THE autumn of 1796 found Lamb engaged all the morning in task-work at the India House, and all the evening in attempting to amuse his father by playing cribbage; sometimes snatching a few minutes for his only pleasure, writing to Coleridge; while Miss Lamb was worn down to a state of extreme nervous misery, by attention to needlework by day, and to her mother by night, until the insanity, which had been manifested more than once, broke out into frenzy, which, on Thursday, 22nd of September, proved fatal to her mother. The following account of the proceedings on the inquest, copied from the Times of Monday, 26th September, 1796, supplies the details of this terrible calamity, doubtless with accuracy, except that it would seem, from Lamb's ensuing letter to Coleridge, that he, and not the landlord, took the knife from the unconscious hand. "On Friday afternoon, the coroner and a jury sat on the body of a lady in the neighborhood of Holborn, who died in consequence of a wound from her daughter the preceding day. It appeared, by the evidence adduced, that, while the family were preparing for dinner, the young lady seized a case-knife lying on the table, and in a menacing manner pursued a little girl, her apprentice, round the room. On the calls of her infirm mother to forbear, she renounced her first object, and, with loud shrieks, approached her parent. The child, by her cries, quickly brought up the landlord of the house, but too late. The dreadful scene presented to him the mother lifeless, pierced to the heart, on a chair, her daughter yet wildly standing over her with the fatal knife, and the old man, her father, weeping by her side, himself bleeding at the forehead from the effects of a severe blow he received from one of the forks she had been madly hurling about the room. "For a few days prior to this, the family had observed some symptoms of insanity in her, which had so much increased on Wednesday evening, that her brother, early the next morning, went to Dr. Pitcairn, but that gentleman was not at home. "It seems the young lady had been once before deranged. "The jury, of course, brought in their verdict-Lunacy. The following is Lamb's account of the event to Coleridge: MY DEAREST Friend, White, or some of my friends, or the public papers, by this time may have informed you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family. I will only give you the outlines:-My poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of insanity, has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a madhouse, from whence I fear she must be removed to an hospital. God has preserved me my senses, I eat, and drink, and sleep, and have my judgment I believe, very sound. My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris, of the Blue-coat School, has been very very kind to us, and we have no other friend; but, thank God, I am very calm and composed, and able to do the best that remains to * A statement nearly similar to this will be found in several other journals of the day, and in the Annual Register for the year. The "True Briton" adds:-" It appears she had been before, in the earlier part of her life, deranged, from the harassing fatigues of too much business. As her carriage towards her mother had always been affectionate in the extreme, it is believed her increased attachment to her, as her infirmities called for it by day and by night, caused her loss of reason at this time. It has been stated in some of the morning papers that she has an insane brother in confinement; but this is without foundation." None of the accounts give the names of the sufferers; but in the index to the Annual Register, the anonymous account is referred to with Mrs. Lamb's name. do. Write as religious a letter as possible, but no mention of what is gone and done with. With me "the former things are passed away," and I have something more to do than to feel. God Almighty have us well in His keeping. C. LAMB. Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every vestige of past vanities of that kind. Do as you please, but if you publish, publish mine (I give free leave) without name or initial, and never send me a book, I charge you. Your own judgment will convince you not to take any notice of this yet to your dear wife. You look after your family,—I have my reason and strength left to take care of mine. I charge you, don't think of coming to see mewrite. I will not see you if you come. God Almighty love you and all of us. C. LAMB. The fol After the inquest, Miss Lamb was placed in an Asylum where she was, in a short time, restored to reason. lowing is Lamb's next letter. TO MR. COLERIDGE. MY DEAREST FRIEND, Your letter was an inestimable treasure to me. It will be a comfort to you, I know, to know that our prospects are somewhat brighter. My poor dear, dearest sister, the unhappy and unconscious instrument of the Almighty's judgments on our house, is restored to her senses; to a dreadful sense and recollection of what has past, awful to her mind and impressive (as it must be to the end of life), but tempered with religious resignation and the reasonings of a sound judgment, which, in this early stage, knows how to distinguish between a deed committed in a transient fit of frenzy, and the terrible guilt of a mother's murderer. I have seen her. I found her, this morning, calm and serene; far, very far from an indecent forgetful serenity; she has a most af |