CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Nov. 8th, 1796.

My Brother, my Friend,--I am distrest for you, believe me I am; not so
much for your painful, troublesome complaint, which, I trust, is only
for a time, as for those anxieties which brought it on, and perhaps even
now may be nursing its malignity. Tell me, dearest of my friends, is
your mind at peace, or has anything, yet unknown to me, happened to give
you fresh disquiet, and steal from you all the pleasant dreams of future
rest? Are you still (I fear you are) far from being comfortably settled?
Would to God it were in my power to contribute towards the bringing of
you into the haven where you would be! But you are too well skilled in
the philosophy of consolation to need my humble tribute of advice; in
pain and in sickness, and in all manner of disappointments, I trust you
have that within you which shall speak peace to your mind. Make it, I
entreat you, one of your puny comforts, that I feel for you, and share
all your griefs with you. I feel as if I were troubling you about
_little_ things; now I am going to resume the subject of our last two
letters, but it may divert us both from unpleasanter feelings to make
such matters, in a manner, of importance. Without further apology, then,
it was not that I did not relish, that I did not in my heart thank you
for, those little pictures of your feelings which you lately sent me, if
I neglected to mention them. You may remember you had said much the same
things before to me on the same subject in a former letter, and I
considered those last verses as only the identical thoughts better
clothed; either way (in prose or verse) such poetry must be welcome to
me. I love them as I love the Confessions of Rousseau, and for the same
reason: the same frankness, the same openness of heart, the same