BURNS.

[1] Coleridge’s “Monody” on Chatterton.

V.

TO COLERIDGE.

September 27, 1796.

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 moved to an hospital.  God has preserved to 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 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 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 all 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 me.  Write.  I will not see you, if you come, God Almighty love you and all of us!

C. LAMB.

VI.

TO COLERIDGE.

October 3, 1796.

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 murder.  I have seen her.  I found her, this morning, calm and serene; far, very, very far, from an indecent, forgetful serenity.  She has a most affectionate and tender concern for what has happened.  Indeed, from the beginning, frightful and hopeless as her disorder seemed, I had confidence enough in her strength of mind and religious principle to look