The Life and Letters Author:Charles Lamb Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. The volume which was to combine the early poetry of the three friends was not completed in the year 1796, and proceeded... more » slowly through the press in the following year; Lamb occasionally submitting an additional sonnet, or correction of one already sent, to the judgment of Coleridge, and filling long letters with minute suggestions on Coleridge's share of the work, and high, but honest expressions of praise of particular images and thoughts. The eulogy is only interesting as indicative of the reverential feeling with which Lamb regarded the genius of Coleridge; but one or two specimens of the gentle rebuke which he ventured on, when the gorgeousness of Coleridge's language seemed to oppress his sense, are worthy of preservation. The following relates to a line in the noble Ode on the Departing Year, in which Coleridge had written of " Th' ethereal multitude, Whose purple locks with snow-white glories shone." " ' Purple locks, and snow-white glories;' these are things the muse talks about when, to borrow H. Walpole's witty phrase, she is not finely-frenzied, only a little light-headed, that's all— ' Purple locks !' They may manage things differently in fairyland ; but your ' golden tresses' are to my fancy." On this remonstrance Coleridge changed the " purple" into " golden," defending his original epithet; and Lamb thus gave up the point :— "'' Golden locks and snow-white glories' are as incongruousas your former; and if the great Italian painters, of whom my friend knows about as much as the man in the moon—if these great gentlemen be on your side, I see no harm in your retaining the purple. The glories that / have observed to encircle the heads of saints and madonnas in those old paintings, have been mostly of a dirty drab-co...« less