which Lamb had been brought up under the influence of his Aunt Hetty.
Coleridge, as a supporter of one of Priestley's allies, William Frend of
Cambridge, and as a convinced Unitarian, was also an admirer of
Priestley, concerning whom and the Birmingham riots of 1791 is a fine
passage in "Religious Musings," while one of the sonnets of the 1796
volume was addressed to him: circumstances which Lamb had in mind when
mentioning him in this letter. Lamb had probably seen Priestley at the
Gravel Pit Chapel, Hackney, where he became morning preacher in
December, 1791, remaining there until March, 1794. Thenceforward he
lived in America. His _Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion_
appeared between 1772 and 1774. The other work referred to is _Letters
to the Philosophers and Politicians of France_, newly edited by
Theophilus Lindsey, the Unitarian, as _An Answer to Mr. Paine's "Age of
Reason_," 1795.]




LETTER 3


CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE

[Begun Wednesday, June 8. Dated on address: "Friday 10th June," 1796.]

With Joan of Arc I have been delighted, amazed. I had not presumed to
expect any thing of such excellence from Southey. Why the poem is alone
sufficient to redeem the character of the age we live in from the
imputation of degenerating in Poetry, were there no such beings extant
as Burns and Bowles, Cowper and----fill up the blank how you please, I