LETTER 44


CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
March 15th, 1799.

Dear Southey,--I have received your little volume, for which I thank
you, though I do not entirely approve of this sort of intercourse, where
the presents are all one side. I have read the last Eclogue again with
great pleasure. It hath gained considerably by abridgment, and now I
think it wants nothing but enlargement. You will call this one of tyrant
Procrustes' criticisms, to cut and pull so to his own standard; but the
old lady is so great a favourite with me, I want to hear more of her;
and of "Joanna" you have given us still less. But the picture of the
rustics leaning over the bridge, and the old lady travelling abroad on a
summer evening to see her garden watered, are images so new and true,
that I decidedly prefer this "Ruin'd Cottage" to any poem in the book.
Indeed I think it the only one that will bear comparison with your "Hymn
to the Penates" in a former volume.

I compare dissimilar things, as one would a rose and a star for the
pleasure they give us, or as a child soon learns to choose between a
cake and a rattle; for dissimilars have mostly some points of
comparison. The next best poem, I think, is the First Eclogue; 'tis very
complete, and abounding in little pictures and realities. The remainder
Eclogues, excepting only the "Funeral," I do not greatly admire. I miss
_one_, which had at least as good a title to publication as the "Witch,"
or the "Sailor's Mother." You call'd it the "Last of the Family." The