Of summer days and of delightful years—­

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
Spoke at the Mermaid!

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, I 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 have 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 vindicate than the language.

I remain,
  My dear Coleridge,
    Your’s,
      With unabated esteem,
        C. LAMB.

LAMB’S EARLIEST POEM

MILLE VIAE MORTIS

(1789)

What time in bands of slumber all were laid,
To Death’s dark court, methought I was convey’d;
In realms it lay far hid from mortal sight,
And gloomy tapers scarce kept out the night.

On ebon throne the King of Terrors sate;
Around him stood the ministers of Fate;
On fell destruction bent, the murth’rous band
Waited attentively his high command.

        Here pallid Fear & dark Despair were seen. 
        And Fever here with looks forever lean,
        Swoln Dropsy, halting Gout, profuse of woes,
        And Madness fierce & hopeless of repose,

        Wide-wasting Plague; but chief in honour stood
        More-wasting War, insatiable of blood;
        With starting eye-balls, eager for the word;
        Already brandish’d was the glitt’ring sword.

        Wonder and fear alike had fill’d my breast,
        And thus the grisly Monarch I addrest—­

        “Of earth-born Heroes why should Poets sing,
        And thee neglect, neglect the greatest King? 
        To thee ev’n Caesar’s self was forc’d to yield
        The glories of Pharsalia’s well-fought field.”