Authors, English -- 19th century -- Correspondence; Lamb, Charles, 1775-1834 -- Correspondence
are good lines, but must spoil the whole with me, who know it is only a
fiction of yours, and that the "rude dashings" did in fact not "rock me
to repose." I grant the same objection applies not to the former sonnet;
but still I love my own feelings,--they are dear to memory, though they
now and then wake a sigh or a tear, "Thinking on divers things fordone,"
I charge you, Coleridge, spare my ewe-lambs; and though a gentleman may
borrow six lines in an epic poem (I should have no objection to borrow
five hundred, and without acknowledging), still, in a sonnet, a personal
poem, I do not ask my friend the aiding verse; I would not wrong your
feelings by proposing any improvements (did I think myself capable of
suggesting 'era) in such personal poems as "Thou bleedest, my poor
heart,"--'od so,--I am caught,--I have already done it; but that simile
I propose abridging would not change the feeling or introduce any alien
ones. Do you understand me? In the twenty-eighth, however, and in the
"Sigh," and that composed at Clevedon, things that come from the heart
direct, not by the medium of the fancy, I would not suggest an
alteration.
When my blank verse is finished, or any long fancy poem, "propino tibi
alterandum, cut-up-andum, abridgeandum," just what you will with, it:
but spare my ewe-lambs! That to "Mrs. Siddons' now, you were welcome to
improve, if it had been worth it; but I say unto you again, Coleridge,
spare my ewe-lambs! I must confess, were the mine, I should omit, _in
editione secunda_, effusions two and three, because satiric and below
the dignity of the poet of "Religious Musings," fifth, seventh, half of
the eighth, that "Written in early youth," as far as "thousand
eyes,"--though I part not unreluctantly with that lively line,--
"Chaste joyance dancing in her bright blue eyes,"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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