afflictions are considered in association with one | the following account of the calamity, and of his single frailty—will be found in the sudden claim own state under it, to his friend Coleridge :— made on his moral and intellectual nature by a My dearest Friend-White, or some of my terrible exigency, and by his generous answer to friends, or the public papers, by this time, may have that claim; so that a life of self-sacrifice was re-informed you of the terrible calamities that have warded by the preservation of unclouded reason. fallen on our family. I will only give you the outSome allusions to his attack occur in letters to lines: my poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of insanColeridge in the course of the same year, after ity, has been the death of her own mother. I was which he was never known to speak or write of it at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of to his dearest friends. Immediately after his res-whence, I fear, she must be moved to an hospital. her grasp. She is at present in a madhouse, from toration to reason he writes thus : Coleridge, I know not what suffering scenes you have gone through at Bristol. My life has been somewhat diversified of late. The six weeks that finished last year and began this, your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a madhouse at HoxI am got somewhat rational now, and don't bite any one. But mad I was, and many a vagary my imagination played me The sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry, but you will be curious to read it when I tell you it was written in my prison-house in one of my lucid intervals. ton. We quote it, not simply for its poetical merits, but as an example of the sincerity which marks his character of the dependence that might be placed on his professions. Though many acknowledge "a mighty debt of love," and think they mean what they say, how few are ready to pay it in such true heart's coin as his : TO MY SISTER. If from my lips some angry accents fell, God has preserved me my senses-I eat, and drink, feel. God Almighty have us well in His keeping. C. LAMB. Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed you please, but if you publish, publish mine (I give every vestige of past vanities of that kind. Do as 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. LAME. The letter which Coleridge wrote on this occasion will be read with interest, as that for which Lamb so warmly expresses his gratitude. Although often seen in MS., we are not aware whether Serjeant Talfourd has met with it. We take it from the affectionate, though not very artistic, work, "Gillman's Life of Coleridge"-p. 338. Your letter, my friend, struck me with a mighty horror. It rushed upon me and stupified my feelings. You bid me write you a religious letter; I It was in the autumn of the following year am not a man who would attempt to insult the (1796) that the terrible event occurred which from greatness of your anguish by any other consolation. henceforth separated this brother and sister from Heaven knows that in the easiest fortunes there is all the common hopes and wishes belonging to that calls for the exercise of patience and resignamuch dissatisfaction and weariness of spirit; much their age, to bind them by sad and indissoluble tion; but in storms, like these, that shake the bonds to each other. Their mother was suffering dwelling and make the heart tremble, there is no from ill-health and infirmity, and Miss Lamb de- middle way between despair and the yielding up of voted herself to her with the most affectionate and the whole spirit unto the guidance of faith. And constant attention. Her days were spent in needle- surely it is a matter of joy, that your faith in Jesus work, by which she wearied herself to add to her has been preserved; the Comforter that should refamily's small means, while her nights were broken Christian, in the name of that Saviour who was lieve you is not far from you. But as you are a by incessant watchings, and the needful attentions filled with bitterness and made drunken with wormwhich her mother's infirmities required. It is no wood, I conjure you to have recourse in frequent wonder that, thus tried by anxiety and over-fatigue, prayer to "his God and your God," the God of the dreadful malady inherent in her constitution mercies, and Father of all comfort. Your poor should break out. She suddenly lost her senses, father is, I hope, almost senseless of the calamity; and in a fit of frenzy, seizing a knife which unhap-knows it not, and your mother is in heaven. It is the unconscious instrument of Divine Providence pily lay at hand, killed her mother with her own hand. The newspapers of the time contain the report of the inquest. Her miserable brother writes sweet to be roused from a frightful dream by the song of birds, and the gladsome rays of the morning. Ah, how infinitely more sweet to be awakened As to what regards yourself, I approve altogether of your abandoning what you justly call vanities. I look upon you as a man called by sorrow and anguish, and a strange desolation of hopes, into quiet-loved him no less dearly-my mother a dead and ness, and a soul set apart and made peculiar to God. We cannot arrive at any portion of heavenly bliss without in some measure imitating Christ; and they arrive at the largest inheritance who imitate the most difficult parts of his character, and, bowed down and crushed under foot, cry in fulness of faith, "Father, thy will be done." I wish above measure to have you for a little while here; no visitants shall blow on the nakedness of your feelings-you shall be quiet, and your spirit may be healed. I see no possible objection, unless your father's helplessness prevent you, and unless you are necessary to him. If this be not the case, I charge you write me that you will come. I charge you, my dearest friend, not to dare to encourage gloom or despair; you are a temporary sharer in human miseries, that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine nature. I charge you, if by any means it be possible, come to me. Í remain, your affectionate, from the blackness and amazement of a sudden hor- | to other favorable circumstances. I felt that I had ror, by the glories of God manifest, and the halle- something else to do than to regret. On that first lujahs of angels! evening my aunt was lying insensible, to all appearance like one dying-my father with his poor forehead plastered over, from a wound he had received from a daughter dearly loved by him, and who murdered corpse in the next room-yet was I wonderfully supported. I closed not my eyes in sleep that night, but lay without terrors and without despair. I have lost no sleep since. I had been long used not to rest on things of sense-had endeavored after a comprehension of mind, unsatisfied with the "ignorant present time," and this kept me up. I had the whole weight of the family thrown on me; for my brother, little disposed (I speak not without tenderness for him) at any time to take care of old age and infirmities, had now, with his bad leg, an exemption from such duties, and I was now left alone. One little incident may serve to make you understand my way of managing my mind. Within a day or two after the fatal one, we dressed for dinner a tongue which we had had salted for some weeks in the house. As I sat down a feeling like remorse struck me;—this tongue poor Mary got for me, and I can partake of it now when she is far away! A thought occurred and relieved me-if I give in to this way of feeling, there is not a chair, a room, an object in our rooms, that will not awaken the keenest griefs; I must rise above such weaknesses. I hope this was not want of true feeling. I did not let this carry me, though, too far. On the very second day, (I date from the day of horrors,) as is usual in such cases, there were a matter of twenty people, I do think, supping in our room; they prevailed with me to eat with them, (for to eat I never refused.) They were all making merry in the room! Some had come from friendship, some from busy curiosity, and some from interest; I was going to partake with them, when my recollection came that my poor dead mother was lying in the next room-the very next room;-a mother who, through life, wished nothing but her children's welfare. Indignation, the rage of grief, something like remorse, rushed upon my mind. In an agony of emotion, I found my way mechanically to the adjoining room, and fell on my knees by the side of her coffin, asking forgiveness of Heaven, and sometimes of her, for forgetting her so soon. Tranquillity returned, and it was the only violent emotion that mastered me, and I think it did me good. I mention these things because I hate concealment, and love to give a faithful journal of what passes within me. S. T. COLERidge. A verdict of lunacy had, of course, been returned on the inquest, and Miss Lamb was immediately removed to an asylum, where she soon recovered her reason. The following are extracts from Lamb's next letter to Coleridge on this "brightening of their prospects," as he terms it. For there was no selfishness in his grief; from the first he thought most of Mary, felt for her, identified himself with her, and in such a spirit prepared solemnly to devote his life to save her from the dreary fate which was the natural consequence of her misfortune. 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 upon our house, is restored to her senses; to a dreadful sense and recollection of what has passed, 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 It seems cold-blooded to dwell on the force of murder. I have seen her. I found her this morn-such a passage as this, but it is not often that real ing calm and serene; far, very far, from an inde- grief is so piercingly described. We read ficticent, forgetful serenity; she has a most affection- tious scenes, highly wrought and exciting, and we ate and tender concern for what has happened. Indeed, from the beginning, frightful and hopeless say, How true to nature! from vague impressions as her disorder seemed, I had confidence enough in of what might be ;-but this is nature itself. It her strength of mind, and religious principle to look was an alleviation to such a mind to analyze senforward to a time when even she might recover sations, to live them over again, and, as it were, tranquillity. God be praised, Coleridge, wonderful to face them; he threw himself upon his friend in as it is to tell, I have never once been otherwise intense desire for his sympathy, and painted his than collected and calm; even on the dreadful day, sufferings in vivid truthful colors that he might and in the midst of the terrible scene, I preserved a win it. The busy, thoughtless crowd of friends, tranquillity which bystanders may have construed into indifference-a tranquillity not of despair. Is the homely supper, the "making merry,"—who it folly or sin in me to say that it was a religious has not recollections of that dreary mirth and sad principle that most supported me? I allow much festivity, which, in some form or other, seem the inevitable accompaniment of mourning? as Shaks- | most and thoroughly devoid of the least tincture of peare sets clowns and jesters beside his graves. The letter, after some minor domestic details, given with much feeling and simplicity, goes into the question of means. What an interest his calculations and plans of economy possess with us, when we bear in mind that it was for his unfortunate sister he formed them! They were plans and calculations for a life, and he never broke them, but uniformly made every expense defer to her wants present and in possibility. selfishness. I will enlarge upon her qualities, poor The postscript to this remarkable letter expresses a religious hope and confidence, as well as a devout acknowledgment and submission to the source of all our trials and blessings, which we look for, alas! in vain in our author's later years; not, we would trust, that he had wholly lost them, but they were commonly clouded over by the "false kind solaces and spells of earth" in which he took refuge from his troubles. I hope, (for Mary I can answer,) but I hope that I shall, through life, never have less recollection, nor a fainter impression, of what has happened than I have now. It is not a light thing, nor meant by the Almighty to be received lightly. I must be serious, circumspect, and deeply religious through life; and by such means may both of us escape madness in future, if it so please the Almighty! Reckoning this, we have, Daddy and I, for our two selves and an old maid-servant to look after him when I am out, which will be necessary, 170l., or 1807. rather, a year, out of which we can spare 501. or 601. at least for Mary while she stays at Islington, where she must and shall stay during her father's life, for his and her comfort. I know John will make speeches about it, but she shall not go into an hospital. The good lady of the madhouse and her daughter, an elegant sweet behaved young lady, love her and are taken with her amazingly; and I knew from her own mouth she loves them, and longs to be with them as much. Poor thing, they say she was but the other morning saying, she knew she must go to Bethlem for life; that one of her brothers would have it so, but the other would wish it not, but be obliged to go with the stream; that she had often as she passed Bethlem thought it likely, "here it may be my fate to end my days," conscious of a certain flightiIn the mean while he was unwearied in his duness in her poor head oftentimes, and mindful of tiful attendance on his father, now wholly dependmore than one severe illness of that nature before. ent on him for such needful cares. He tended A legacy of 1007. which my father will have at him with a patient indulgence which might have Christmas, and this 207. I mentioned before, with furnished the model for Emilia Wyndham. The what is in the house, will much more than set us clear. If my father, an old maid-servant, and I, poor old man was in his dotage, and needed concan't live, and live comfortably, on 1301. or 1207. stant humoring and attention. So short, it is said a year, we ought to burn by slow fires; and I was his memory, that a friend was occupied in almost would that Mary might not go into an hos-playing at cribbage with him to amuse him, at pital. Let me not leave an unfavorable impression the very time that the inquest over his wife was on your mind respecting my brother. Since this sitting; and his son deprived himself of the most has happened he has been very kind and brotherly; precious moments of his leisure, to enable him to pass the long evenings more pleasantly. “I am got home at last," he says, "and after repeated games at cribbage, have got my father's leave to write awhile with difficulty got it, for when I expostulated about playing any more, he aptly replied, 'If you won't play with me you might as well not come home at all.' The argument was unanswerable, and I set to afresh." seen how cheerfully he took the whole burden of his only remaining parent upon himself-his old aunt Hetty he feels for in the same way. "My poor old aunt," he says to Coleridge, "whom you have seen, the kindest, goodest creature to me when I was at school; who used to toddle there to bring me good things, when I, school-boy like, despised her for it, and used to be ashamed to see her come and sit herself down on the old coalhole steps as you went into the old grammay She will, I fancy, if she stays, make one of the school, and open her apron, and bring out her bafamily rather than of the patients; the old and sin, with some nice thing which she had caused young ladies I like exceedingly, and she loves dearly; and they, as the saying is, take to her to be saved for me; the good old creature is now very extraordinarily, if it is extraordinary that lying on her death-bed. I cannot bear to think ple who see my sister should love her. Of all the on her deplorable state. To the shock she repeople I ever saw in the world my poor sister was ceived on our evil day, from which she never com but I fear for his mind-he has taken his ease in the world, and is not fit himself to struggle with difficulties, nor has much accustomed himself to throw himself into their way; and I know his language is already, "Charles, you must take care of yourself, you must not abridge yourself of a single pleasure you have been used to," &c. &c. in that style of talking. But you, a necessarian, can respect a difference of mind, and love what is amiable in a character not perfect. He has been very good, but I fear for his mind. Thank God, I can unconnect myself with him, and shall manage all my father's moneys in future myself, if I take charge of Daddy, which poor John has not even hinted a wish, at any future time even, to share with me. He goes on with further arrangements for his sister, and how much he hopes to be able to spare for her comforts : pco We have pletely recovered, I impute her illness. She says, poor thing, she is glad she is come home to die with me. I was always her favorite." His father died in January, 1797, and with him ceased an annuity of £100 per year, an important part of their income. The aunt lingered on. Mary lived up to this time at the asylum, though perfectly calm and rational. Her brother, who was "passionately desirous" of obtaining her liberty, a measure opposed by John Lamb and other memhers of his family, had, as may be supposed, some difficulty in obtaining her discharge; it was only by his solemn promise to all parties to take her under his own charge for the remainder of his life, that he carried his point, and brought her home. "For her sake, at the same time, he abandoned all thoughts of love and marriage, and with an income of scarcely more than £100 a year, derived from his clerkship, set out on the journey of life at two-and-twenty, cheerfully with his beloved companion." Poor Mary had returned home to another sickbed; her attendance on her poor aunt was too much for her reason, and before long she had again to be placed under medical care and restraint. Soon after Lamb wrote the following letter: TO MR. COLERIDGE. My dear Coleridge-I don't know why I write, except from the propensity misery has to tell her griefs. Hetty died on Friday night, about eleven o'clock, after her long illness; Mary, in consequence of fatigue and anxiety, is fallen ill again, and I was obliged to remove her yesterday. I am left alone in the house, with nothing but Hetty's dead body to keep me company. To-morrow I bury her, and then I shall be quite alone, with nothing but a cat to remind me that the house has been full of living beings like myself. My heart is quite sunk, and I don't know where to look for relief. Mary will get better again, but her constantly being liable to such relapses is dreadful; nor is it the least of our evils, that her case, and all our story, is so well known all around us. We are in a manner marked. Excuse my troubling you, but I have nobody by me to speak to me. I slept out last night, not being able to endure the change and the stillness, but I did not sleep well, and I must come back to my own bed. I am going to try and get a friend to come to be with me to-morrow. I am completely shipwrecked; my head is quite bad. I almost wish that Mary were dead. God bless you. Love to Sara and Hartley. C. LAMB. Nothing is more striking than the humility of the misery here so keenly portrayed. It is the desolation of a child who has no thought of escaping from the sorrow that weighs it down further than hiding its face in its mother's lap. His sense of loneliness, his shrinking confession of fear, his heart-sinkings are all detailed so simply to his magnificent friend! Who knows but it may have been the entire absence of pride which preserved his reason untouched in the conflict of such severe suffering? But, indeed, this quality of humility, as contrasting with the proud self-dependent mind, comes out most admirably in his CCXXXVII. LIVING AGE. VOL. XIX. 26 whole view of his sister's insanity. It stirs up none of the common, selfish, natural emotions of shame with which men ordinarily regard such afflictions, and which so inconceivably add to their bitterness. "We are marked people," he says, and he feels for her under this aggravation of her calamity— never The general scorn of men which who can bear?— The object of such affection as this we feel can have been no common person; though we have not much to guide us in our estimate beyond her brother's letters, who speaks of her with a sort of enthusiasm of regard, not only when his mind was exalted by his recent devotion of himself to her, but throughout the forty years of their inseparable after-connection. Serjeant Talfourd, who enjoyed her friendship, tells us in his brief notice, that no one observing the habitual serenity of her manner would guess the calamity of which she had been the instrument, or the malady that so frightfully chequered her life. It seems that on the subsiding of the attack after her mother's death, she described herself as having experienced "such a conviction that she was absolved in heaven from all taint of the deed she had done-such an assurance that it was a dispensation of Providence for good, however terrible-such a sense that her mother knew her entire innocence—that she was not sorely afflicted at the remembrance." She never shrank from the mention of her mother's name, nor spoke of her as if her image were associated with any painful recollection; so that some even of her intimate friends believed her to be ignorant of her share in her death. Miss Lamb would have been remarkable for the sweetness of her disposition, the clearness of her * understanding, and the gentle wisdom of her acts | call the other, and the fervor of his respect was and words, even if these qualities had not been pre- spared any rude checks. It was thus that he could sented in marvellous contrast with the distraction write of her to Miss Wordsworth during one of under which she suffered for weeks, latterly for months, in every year. In all its estheir sad temporary separations :--sential sweetness her character was like her brother's; while, by a temper more placid, a spirit of enjoyment more serene, she was enabled to guide, to counsel, to cheer him. ** To a friend in difficulty she was the most comfortable of advisers, the wisest of consolers. Hazlitt used to say that he never met with a woman who could reason, and had met with only one thoroughly reasonable the sole exception being Mary Lamb. She did not wish, however, to be made an exception, to a general disparagement of her sex; for in all her thoughts and feelings she was most womanlykeeping, under even undue subordination, to her notion of a woman's province, intellect of rare excellence, which flashed out when the restraints of gentle habit and humble manner were withdrawn by the terrible force of disease. * Her ram To say all that I know of her would be more than I think anybody could believe, or even understand; and when I hope to have her well again with me, it would be sinning against her feelings to go about to praise her; for I can conceal nothing that I do from her. She is oider, and wiser, and better than I, and all my wretched imperfections I cover to myself by resolutely thinking on her goodness. She would share life and death, heaven and hell, with me. She lives but for me; and I know I have been wasting and teasing her life for five years past incessantly with my cursed ways of going on. But even in this upbraiding of myself, I am offending against her, for I know that she has cleaved to me for better, for worse; and if the balance has been against her hitherto, it “was a noble trade.” blings (then) often sparkled with brilliant descripBut even in her aberrations, she was everything tion and shattered beauty. She would fancy her- to him. When in later years her attacks increased self in the days of Queen Anne or George I., and in length and frequency, he deliberately gave up describe the brocaded dames and courtly manners his home to live constantly with her, where she as though she had been bred among them, in the was placed under medical care, thinking changes best style of old comedy. As a mere and removals injurious for her. In writing to a physical instance of deranged intellect, her condition was, I believe, extraordinary; it was as if the lady, who seems to have expressed condolence finest elements of mind had been shaken into fan- with him under this painful arrangement, he tastic combinations like those in a kaleidoscope. The few letters given of hers are most pleasing, and there is a family likeness to her brother's in the style, though without his salient points. The following, from a letter to Miss Wordsworth, is a short example of what we mean : Charles has had all his Hogarths bound in a book; they were sent home yesterday, and now that I have them altogether, and perceive the advantage of peeping close at them through my spectacles, I am reconciled to the loss of them hanging round the room, which has been a great mortification to me-in vain I tried to console myself with dooking at our new chairs and carpets-for we have got new chairs, and carpets covering all over our two sitting-rooms; I missed my old friends, and could not be comforted-then I would resolve to learn to look out at the window, a habit I never could attain in my life, and I have given it up as a thing quite impracticable-yet when I was at Brighton last summer, the first week I never took my eyes off from the sea, not even to look in a book: I had not seen the sea for sixteen years. says: Be less uneasy about me; I bear my privations very well; I am not in the depths of desolation as heretofore. Your admonitions are not lost upon me. Your kindness has sunk into my heart. Have faith in me! It is no new thing for me to be left to my sister. When she is not violent, her rambling chat is better to me than the sense and sanity of this world. I could be nowhere happier than under the same roof with her. Throughout he made his dearest tastes defer to her welfare : : Mary is recovering, (he says to Coleridge ;) your invitation went to my very heart; but you have a power of exciting interest, leading all hearts captive, too forcible to admit of Mary's being with you. I consider her as perpetually on the brink of madwithin an inch of the precipice; she must be with ness. I think, you would almost make her dance duller fancies and cooler intellects. And throughout there are intimations of his giving up the precious intercourse of friends, which he of all valued so highly: I want to see the Wordsworths, but I do not much like to be all night away. It is dull enough to be here together, but it is duller to leave Mary; in short, it is painful. This gentleness and sedateness of manner for which she was distinguished, were peculiarly fitted to tranquillize and give a tone of serenity to their happier hours. No experience can quite neutralize the confidence inspired by a composed demeanor. So that while she was herself the relief and enjoy-tack : And, again, in speaking of an unusually bad at hear of anything in the world, out of her sick chamber. The mere hearing that Southey had called at our lodgings totally upset her. Pray see him, and excuse my not writing to him. I dare not receive or write a letter in her presence; every little talk so agitates her. ment may have been less tinctured by fears and Here she must be nursed, and neither see nor apprehensions than we can suppose, or than seem implied when he writes of her under her attacks: "Heaven," as he says, with a characteristic private application, "tempers the wind to the shorn Lambs." Her reasonable self being thus separated, as if altogether another existence, from her state of distraction, there was nothing in the one to re Here, in the excessive tenderness and consider |