Volume 5 — LETTER 240

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN PAYNE COLLIER The Garden of England, December 10, 1817.

Dear J. P. C.,—I know how zealously you feel for our friend S. T. Coleridge; and I know that you and your family attended his lectures four or five years ago. He is in bad health and worse mind: and unless something is done to lighten his mind he will soon be reduced to his extremities; and even these are not in the best condition. I am sure that you will do for him what you can; but at present he seems in a mood to do for himself. He projects a new course, not of physic, nor of metaphysic, nor a new course of life, but a new course of lectures on Shakspear and Poetry. There is no man better qualified (always excepting number one); but I am pre-engaged for a series of dissertations on India and India-pendence, to be completed at the expense of the Company, in I know not (yet) how many volumes foolscap folio. I am busy getting up my Hindoo mythology; and for the purpose I am once more enduring Southey's Curse. To be serious, Coleridge's state and affairs make me so; and there are particular reasons just now, and have been any time for the last twenty years, why he should succeed. He will do so with a little encouragement. I have not seen him lately; and he does not know that I am writing.

Yours (for Coleridge's sake) in haste, C. LAMB.

[The "Garden of England" of the address stands, of course, for Covent Garden.

This is the first letter to Collier that has been preserved. John Payne Collier (1789-1883), known as a Shakespearian critic and editor of old plays and poems, was then a reporter on The Times. He had recently married. Wordsworth also wrote to Collier on this subject, Coleridge's lectures were delivered in 1818, beginning on January 27, in Flower-de-Luce Court. Their preservation we owe to Collier's shorthand notes.

"My Hindoo mythology … Southey's Curse"—The Curse of Kehama.]