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 rewriting 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 had 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,

Yours,

With unabated esteem,

C. LAMB.

POEMS

* * * * *

HESTER.

When maidens such as Hester die,
Their place ye may not well supply,
Though ye among a thousand try,
With vain endeavor.

A month or more hath she been dead,
Yet cannot I by force be led
To think upon the wormy bed,
And her together.

A springy motion in her gait,
A rising step, did indicate
Of pride and joy no common rate,
That flush'd her spirit.

I know not by what name beside
I shall it call:--if 'twas not pride,
It was a joy to that allied,
She did inherit.

Her parents held the Quaker rule,
Which doth the human feeling cool,
But she was train'd in Nature's school,
Nature had blest her.

A waking eye, a prying mind,
A heart that stirs, is hard to bind,
A hawk's keen sight