I have now nigh
finished my page, and got to the end of another evening (Monday
evening), and my eyes are heavy and sleepy, and my brain unsuggestive. I
have just heart enough awake to say good night once more, and God love
you, my dear friend; God love us all! Mary bears an affectionate
remembrance of you.
CHARLES LAMB.
[1] A well-known conjuror of the time.
XIII.
TO COLERIDGE.
_February_ 13, 1797.
Your poem is altogether admirable--parts of it are even exquisite; in
particular your personal account of the Maid far surpasses anything of
the sort in Southey. [1] I perceived all its excellences, on a first
reading, as readily as now you have been removing a supposed film from
my eyes. I was only struck with a certain faulty disproportion in the
matter and the _style_, which I still think I perceive, between these
lines and the former ones. I had an end in view,--I wished to make you
reject the poem, only as being discordant with the other; and, in
subservience to that end, it was politically done in me to over-pass,
and make no mention of, merit which, could you think me capable of
_overlooking_, might reasonably damn forever in your judgment all
pretensions in me to be critical. There, I will be judged by Lloyd
whether I have not made a very handsome recantation. I was in the case
of a man whose friend has asked him his opinion of a certain young lady;
the deluded wight gives judgment against her _in toto_,--don't like her
face, her walk, her manners; finds fault with her eyebrows; can see no
wit in her.
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