But a greater than Lamb, if one may so speak without offence to the votaries of that rare humorist and exquisite critic, had already made his appearance on the scene. Some time before this visit of Lamb's to Stowey Coleridge had made the acquaintance of the remarkable man who was destined to influence his literary career in many ways importantly, and in one way decisively. It was in the month of June 1797, and at the village of Racedown in Dorsetshire, that he first met William Wordsworth. FOOTNOTES 1. The volume contained also three sonnets by Charles Lamb, one of which was destined to have a somewhat curious history. 2. "Wherefore my bowels shall sound like an harp."--Is. xvi. 11. 3. Take for instance this sentence: "Our own sorrows, like the Princes of Hell in Milton's Pandemonium, sit enthroned 'bulky and vast;' while the miseries of our fellow-creatures dwindle into pigmy forms, and are crowded in an innumerable multitude into some dark corner of the heart." Both in character of imagery and in form of structure we have here the germ of such passages as this which one might confidently defy the most accomplished literary "taster" to distinguish from Jeremy Taylor: "Or like two rapid streams that at their first meeting within narrow and rocky banks mutually strive to repel each other, and intermix reluctantly and in tumult, but soon finding a wider channel and more yielding shores, blend and dilate and flow on in one current and with one voice."--_Biog. Lit._ p. 155. 4. Perhaps a "correspondence" of which only one side exists may be hardly thought to deserve that name. Lamb's letters to Coleridge are full of valuable criticism on their respective poetical efforts. Unfortunately in, it is somewhat strangely said, "a fit of dejection" he destroyed all Coleridge's letters to him. 5. Lamb's Correspondence with Coleridge, Letter XXXVII. CHAPTER III. Coleridge and Wordsworth--Publication of the _Lyrical Ballads_--The _Ancient Mariner_--The first part of _Christabel_--Decline of Coleridge's poetic impulse--Final review of his poetry. [1797-1799.]