finally of moving from Bristol to settle down in a cottage at Nether
Stowey, and support himself by husbandry and literature.]




LETTER 11


CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE

Oct. 24th, 1796. [Monday.]

Coleridge, I feel myself much your debtor for that spirit of confidence
and friendship which dictated your last letter. May your soul find peace
at last in your cottage life! I only wish you were but settled. Do
continue to write to me. I read your letters with my sister, and they
give us both abundance of delight. Especially they please us two, when
you talk in a religious strain,--not but we are offended occasionally
with a certain freedom of expression, a certain air of mysticism, more
consonant to the conceits of pagan philosophy, than consistent with the
humility of genuine piety. To instance now in your last letter--you say,
"it is by the press [sic], that God hath given finite spirits both evil
and good (I suppose you mean simply bad men and good men), a portion as
it were of His Omnipresence!" Now, high as the human intellect
comparatively will soar, and wide as its influence, malign or salutary,
can extend, is there not, Coleridge, a distance between the Divine Mind
and it, which makes such language blasphemy? Again, in your first fine
consolatory epistle you say, "you are a temporary sharer in human
misery, that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine Nature." What