I
would fain think that this is "to consider too nicely." I am
certainly willing to bear the obloquy of never having been
struck by what is nevertheless obvious enough. {*}... Lamb's
letter _is_ a teazer. The three sonnets in _The Monthly
Magazine_ were signed "Nehemiah Higginbotham," and were
meant to banter good-humouredly the joint vol. issued by
Coleridge, Lamb, and Lloyd,--C. himself being, of course,
the most obviously ridiculed. I fancy you have really hit
the mark as regards Coleridge's epigram and Sir Vinegar
Sponge. He might have been worth two shillings after all....
_I_ also remember noting Lloyd's assertion of Lamb's
exceptional happiness just after that letter. It is a
puzzling affair. However C. and Lamb got over it (for I
certainly believe they were friends later in life) no one
seems to have recorded. The second vol. of Cottle, after the
raciness of the first, is very disappointing.

* In a note on this passage, Canon Dixon writes: What is
meant is that in cliffs, actual cliffs, the action of these
agents, heat, cold, thunder even, might have an obliterating
power; but in the severance of friendship, there is nothing
(heat of nature, frost of time, thunder of accident or
surprise) that can wholly have the like effect.

On one occasion Rossetti wrote, saying he had written a sonnet on
Coleridge, and I was curious to learn what note he struck in dealing
with so complex a subject. The keynote of a man's genius or character
should be struck in a poetic address to him, just as the expressional
individuality of a man's features (freed of the modifying or emphasising
effects of passing fashions of dress), should be reproduced in his
portrait; but Coleridge's mind had so many sides to it, and his
character had such varied aspects--from keen and beautiful sensibility
to every form of suffering, to almost utter disregard of the calls of
domestic duty--that it seemed difficult to think what kind of idea,
consistent with the unity of the sonnet and its simplicity of scheme,
would call up a picture of the entire man. It goes against the grain to
hint, adoring the man as we must, that Coleridge's personal character
was anything less than one of untarnished purity, and certainly the
persons chiefly concerned in the alleged neglect, Southey and his own
family, have never joined in the strictures commonly lev