LETTER 12


CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Oct. 28th, 1796.

My dear Friend, I am not ignorant that to be a partaker of the Divine
Nature is a phrase to be met with in Scripture: I am only apprehensive,
lest we in these latter days, tinctured (some of us perhaps pretty
deeply) with mystical notions and the pride of metaphysics, might be apt
to affix to such phrases a meaning, which the primitive users of them,
the simple fishermen of Galilee for instance, never intended to convey.
With that other part of your apology I am not quite so well satisfied.
You seem to me to have been straining your comparing faculties to bring
together things infinitely distant and unlike; the feeble narrow-sphered
operations of the human intellect and the everywhere diffused mind of
Deity, the peerless wisdom of Jehovah. Even the expression appears to me
inaccurate--portion of omnipresence--omnipresence is an attribute whose
very essence is unlimitedness. How can omnipresence be affirmed of
anything in part? But enough of this spirit of disputatiousness. Let us
attend to the proper business of human life, and talk a little together
respecting our domestic concerns. Do you continue to make me acquainted
with what you were doing, and how soon you are likely to be settled once
for all.

I have satisfaction in being able to bid you rejoice with me in my
sister's continued reason and composedness of mind. Let us both be
thankful for it. I continue to visit her very frequently, and the people
of the house are vastly indulgent to her; she is likely to be as
comfortably situated in all respects as those who pay twice or thrice