sober people ought to be a-bed.
Between you and me, the L. Ballads are but drowsy performances.

C. LAMB (as you may guess).

[1] The child in Wordsworth's "The Pet Lamb."

XXXVII.

TO MANNING.

_February_ 15, 1801.

I had need be cautious henceforward what opinion I give of the "Lyrical
Ballads." All the North of England are in a turmoil. Cumberland and
Westmoreland have already declared a state of war. I lately received
from Wordsworth a copy of the second volume, accompanied by an
acknowledgment of having received from me many months since a copy of a
certain tragedy, with excuses for not having made any acknowledgment
sooner, it being owing to an "almost insurmountable aversion from
letter-writing." This letter I answered in due form and time, and
enumerated several of the passages which had most affected me, adding,
unfortunately, that no single piece had moved me so forcibly as the
"Ancient Mariner," "The Mad Mother," or the "Lines at Tintern Abbey."
The Post did not sleep a moment. I received almost instantaneously a
long letter of four sweating pages from my Reluctant Letter-Writer, the
purport of which was that he was sorry his second volume had not given
me more pleasure (Devil a hint did I give that it had _not pleased me_),
and "was compelled to wish that my range of sensibility was more
extended, being obliged to believe that I should receive large influxes
of happiness and happy thoughts" (I suppose from the L. B.),--with a
deal of stuff about a certain Union of Tenderness and Imagination,
which, in the sense he used Imagination, was not the characteristic of
Shakspeare, but which Milton possessed in a degree far exceeding other
Poets; which union, as the highest species of poetry, and chiefly
deserving that name, "he was most proud to aspire to;" then illustrating
the said union by two quotations from his own second volume (which I had
been so unfortunate as to miss.) First specimen; A father addresses
his son:--

"When thou
First camest into the World, as it befalls
To new-born infants, thou didst sleep away
Two days; _and blessings from thy father's tongue
Then fell upon thee_."

The lines were thus undermarked, and then followed, "This passage, as
combining in an extraordinary degree that union of tenderness and
imagination which I am speaking of, I consider as one of the best I
ever wrote."

Second specimen: A youth, after years of abse