K.'s truly,
C. LAMB.
[1] "Barton's volume of Poems."
LXXXIX.
TO BERNARD BARTON.
_August_ 10, 1825.
We shall be soon again at Colebrooke.
Dear B.B.,--You must excuse my not writing before, when I tell you we
are on a visit at Enfield, where I do not feel it natural to sit down to
a letter. It is at all times an exertion. I had rather talk with you and
Anne Knight quietly at Colebrooke Lodge over the matter of your last.
You mistake me when you express misgivings about my relishing a series
of Scriptural poems. I wrote confusedly; what I meant to say was, that
one or two consolatory poems on deaths would have had a more condensed
effect than many. Scriptural, devotional topics, admit of infinite
variety. So far from poetry tiring me because religious, I can read, and
I say it seriously, the homely old version of the Psalms in our
Prayer-books for an hour or two together sometimes, without sense of
weariness.
I did not express myself clearly about what I think a false topic,
insisted on so frequently in consolatory addresses on the death of
infants. I know something like it is in Scripture, but I think humanly
spoken. It is a natural thought, a sweet fallacy, to the survivors, but
still a fallacy. If it stands on the doctrine of this being a
probationary state, it is liable to this dilemma. Omniscience, to whom
possibility must be clear as act, must know of the child what it would
hereafter turn out: if good, then the topic is false to say it is
secured from falling into future wilfulness, vice, etc.
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