Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton, [5 December 1828]
DEAR B. B.—I
am ashamed to receive so many nice Books from you, and to have none to send you
in return; You are always sending me some fruits or wholesome potherbs, and
mine is the garden of the Sluggard, nothing but weeds or scarce they.
Nevertheless if I knew how to transmit it, I would send you Blackwood’s of this month, which contains a
little Drama, to have your
opinion of it, and how far I have improved, or otherwise, upon its prototype.
Thank you for your kind Sonnet. It does me good to see the Dedication to a
Christian Bishop. I am for a Comprehension, as Divines call it, but so as that
the Church shall go a good deal more than halfway over to the Silent Meeting
house. I have ever said that the Quakers are the only Professors of Christianity as I read it in the Evangiles; I say Professors—marry, as to practice, with their gaudy hot
types and poetical vanities, they are much at one with the sinful. Martin’s frontispiece is a very fine
thing, let C. L. say what he please to the contrary. Of
the Poems, I like them as a volume better than any one of the preceding;
particularly, Power and Gentleness; The Present; Lady Russell—with the
exception that I do not like the noble act of Curtius, true or false, one of the grand foundations of old
Roman patriotism, to be sacrificed to Lady R.’s taking notes on her
husband’s trial. ![]()
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If a thing is good, why
invidiously bring it into light with something better? There are too few heroic
things in this world to admit of our marshalling them in anxious etiquettes of
precedence. Would you make a poem on the Story of Ruth
(pretty Story!) and then say, Aye, but how much better is the story of Joseph
and his Brethren! To go on, the Stanzas to “Chalon” want the name of Clarkson in the body of them; it is left to inference. The
Battle of Gibeon is spirited again—but you sacrifice it in last stanza to the
Song at Bethlehem. Is it quite orthodox to do so. The first was good, you
suppose, for that dispensation. Why set the word against the word? It puzzles a
weak Christian. So Watts’s Psalms
are an implied censure on David’s. But as long as
the Bible is supposed to be an equally divine Emanation with the Testament, so
long it will stagger weaklings to have them set in opposition. Godiva is
delicately touch’d. I have always thought it a beautiful story
characteristic of old English times. But I could not help amusing myself with
the thought—if Martin had chosen this subject for a
frontispiece, there would have been in some dark corner a white Lady, white as
the Walker on the waves—riding upon some mystical quadruped—and high above
would have risen “tower above tower a massy structure high”
the Tenterden steeples of Coventry, till the poor Cross would scarce have known
itself among the clouds, and far above them all, the distant Clint hills
peering over chimney pots, piled up, Ossa-on-Olympus fashion, till the admiring
Spectator (admirer of a noble deed) might have gone look for the Lady, as you
must hunt for the other in the Lobster. But M. should be
made Royal Architect. What palaces he would pile—but then what parliamentary
grants to make them good! ne’ertheless I like the frontispiece. The
Elephant is pleasant; and I am glad you are getting into a wider scope of
subjects. There may be too much, not religion, but too many good words into a book, till it becomes, as Sh. says of religion, a rhapsody of words. I
will just name that you have brought in the Song to the Shepherds in four or
five if not six places. Now this is not good economy. The
Enoch is fine; and here I can sacrifice
Elijah to it, because ’tis illustrative only,
and not disparaging of the latter prophet’s departure. I like this best
in the Book. Lastly, I much like the Heron, ’tis exquisite: know you
Lord Thurlow’s Sonnet to a Bird of that sort on Lacken
water? If not, ’tis indispensable I send it you, with my Blackwood, if you tell me how best to send them.
Fludyer is pleasant. You are getting gay and Hood-ish. What is the Enigma?
money—if not, I fairly confess I am foiled—and sphynx must [here are words crossed through] 4 times I’ve tried to write
eat—eat me—and the blotting pen turns it into cat me. And now I will take my
leave with saying I esteem thy verses, like thy present, honour thy frontis-![]()
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picer, and right-reverence thy
Patron and Dedicatee, and am, dear B. B.
Yours heartily,
Our joint kindest Loves to A. K. and your Daughter.
Bernard Barton (1784-1849)
Prolific Quaker poet whose verse appeared in many of the literary annuals; he was an
acquaintance of Charles Lamb.
Alfred Edward Chalon (1780-1860)
Portrait painter born in Switzerland and educated at the Royal Academy Schools; he was
appointed painter in watercolour to Queen Victoria.
Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846)
English abolitionist educated at St Paul's School and St John's, Cambridge; he was an
associate of William Wilberforce.
Anne Knight [née Waspe] (1792-1860)
Quaker writer for children, the daughter of Jonathan Waspe; in 1818 she married James
Knight. She was a Woodbridge friend and of Bernard Barton, not the Quaker abolitionist of
the same name (1786-1862).
John Martin (1789-1854)
English landscape and historical painter who illustrated
Paradise
Lost in mezzotint (1825-27).
Isaac Watts (1674-1748)
English dissenting clergyman, hymn-writer, and author of the long-reprinted
Logic, or The Right Use of Reason (1724).
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. (1817-1980). Begun as the
Edinburgh Monthly Magazine,
Blackwood's assumed the name of its proprietor, William Blackwood after the sixth
number. Blackwood was the nominal editor until 1834.
