244. To William Wordsworth

Address: Mr Wordsworth | Allfoxden
"MS. Dove Cottage. Pub. E. L. Griggs, 'Wordsworth through Coleridge's Eyes",
Wordsworth, ed. by G. T. Dunklin, 1951, p. 48.

May 10th, 1798

    In stale blank verse a subject stale May 10th, 1798
    I send per post my Nightingale; 1
    And like an honest bard, dear Wordsworth,
    You'll tell me what you think, my Bird's worth.
    My own opinion's briefly this --
    His bill he opens not amiss;
    And when he has sung a stave or so,
    His breast, & some small space below,
    So throbs & swells, that you might swear
    No vulgar music's working there.
    So far, so good; but then, 'od rot him!
    There's something falls off at his bottom.
    Yet, sure, no wonder it should breed,
    That my Bird's Tail's a tail indeed
    And makes it's own inglorious harmony
    AEolio crepitû, non carmine.

S.T. Coleridge
____________________
	considerable correspondence, now lost, among Coleridge, Lamb, and Lloyd. Some time after receiving it Lamb, on hearing that Coleridge was going to Germany, sent him a sarcastic letter containing eight burlesque scholastic theses, and on 28 July he included these theses in a note to Southey ( Lamb Letters, i. 123-7). Lucas suggests that Lamb and Lloyd may have concocted this letter while they were together in Birmingham from 23 May to 6 June, a suggestion borne out by Coleridge's remark to Cottle on showing it to him: 'These young visionaries will do each other no good' ( ibid. i. 125 n. and Early Rec. i. 301). Coleridge wisely refrained from replying to Lamb, but the friendship was not renewed until early 1800.
1 	The Nightingale; a Conversation Poem, April, 1798, Poems, i. 264.

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