LXXXVIII — To Bernard Barton
July 2, 1825.
I am hardly able to appreciate your volume now;1 but I liked the dedication much, and the apology for your bald burying grounds. To Shelley—but that is not new, To the young Vesper-singer, Great Bealings, Playford, and what not.
If there be a cavil, it is that the topics of religious consolation, however beautiful, are repeated till a sort of triteness attends them. It seems as if you were forever losing Friends’ children by death, and reminding their parents of the Resurrection. Do children die so often and so good in your parts? The topic taken from the consideration that they are snatched away from possible vanities seems hardly sound; for to an Omniscient eye their conditional failings must be one with their actual. But I am too unwell for theology.
Such as I am,
I am yours and A.K.’s truly,
C. Lamb
Notes
1 “Barton’s volume of Poems.”