Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. LettersCharles LambMary Lamb Markup and editing by David Hill Radcliffe Completed January 2012 ChLamb.1905 Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities Virginia Tech
Published under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
License
Lord Byron and his Times: http://lordbyron.org
The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. LettersCharles LambMary LambMethuen and Co.London1905
Any dashes occurring in line breaks have been removed.
Obvious and unambiguous compositors’ errors have been silently corrected.
NINES categories for Genre and Material Form at
http://www.performantsoftware.com/nines_wiki/index.php/Submitting_RDF#.3Cnines:genre.3E on
2009-02-26BibliographyBook HistoryCollectionCriticismDramaEphemeraFictionHumorLawLettersLife WritingHistoryManuscriptNonfictionPeriodicalPoliticsReference WorksPoetryReligionReviewTranslationTravel
THE WORKS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB EDITED BY E. V. LUCAS VOLUME VI. LETTERS 1796-1820 METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET W. C. LONDON PREFACE
IN this edition of the correspondence of Charles Lamb, that of his sister, Mary Lamb, is for the first time included. In it also
appear for the first time between seventy and eighty letters, many of them of the highest
importance; and it is the first edition to take note in chronological order of those
letters printed by other editors that are not available for the present volumes: a step
which should, I think, add to the biographical value of the work.
In these two volumes I have, after much consideration, placed my notes at
the end of each letter, rather than, as in the five preceding volumes, at the end of the
book. My reason for doing so was twofold: in the first place, to serve the convenience of
the reader, to whom annotation or the correspondence is often a necessity, and not, as in
the case of the other writings, a luxury; and in the second place, because by joining the
letters with a few words of commentary they can be made practically into a consecutive
Life. The self-conscious deliberate construction of Lamb’s essays and poems, each a work of art, forbade the introduction
of footnotes that might distract the attention from the true matter of the text: hence, in
the preceding five volumes, such remarks as the editor had to make will be found sharply
separated from the author’s part of the book. But here, where
Lamb is often writing without premeditation, with a running pen,
and writing moreover for a single reader, it seemed to me that the impropriety of
interrupting the correspondence by elucidatory comments was so slight as to be almost
non-existent. (I say “running pen,” but there is, however, I think very little
doubt that Lamb also now and then made a rough
draft of a letter first, afterwards polishing it and adding to it from time to time before
he made a fair copy for his correspondent. It is unlikely, as the late Mr. Dykes Campbell has pointed out, that he could have
written some of these letters off-hand as neatly and cleanly as in their existing state.)
Many of my notes, I am greatly afraid, will be thought a superfluity. But having begun this
edition with the determination to make it as complete and illustrative as I could, I have
continued, in the Letters, to trace the sources of quotations, and to attend to other
minutiæ.
Owing to the curious operations of the law of copyright, it will not for at
least forty-two years be possible for any one edition of Lamb’s correspondence to contain all the letters. To-day, in order to
possess a set complete down to the present time, one must purchase at least nine, and
possibly more, works, amounting to many volumes—among them Charles Lamb and the Lloyds, of
which I was the editor, but which I am debarred from using. It is in order, to some extent,
to meet the difficulty thus set up, and to cover the whole ground of the correspondence,
that I have in the notes drawn attention to every important letter distributed over these
many other volumes. I am, however, perfectly aware that only for a brief period will this
list be exhaustive, since new letters continually come to light, while there are, I
understand, at this moment in private collections in America many letters that have not yet
been printed, forty-two years’ copyright in which may date from the day they are
published—for the benefit not of any descendants of the Lambs (for
they left none) but of those who happen to possess them.
That we have the Lamb correspondence
in a very imperfect state will be patent to any one who looks at the dates in the Table of
Contents to this book. It is incredible that Lamb wrote only seventy
letters between the years 1807 and 1820, and only four in 1811-13. It is incredible also
that he wrote altogether only three letters to Leigh
Hunt, and only four to Hood. The many
letters that he must have written to other friends—Martin
Burney, for example—have entirely vanished. At any minute, however, others
may be discovered; and there is no call for despair, especially when we recollect that the
two letters of July 20, 1819, to Miss Kelly, in some ways the most interesting of the whole correspondence, came
to light only last year. That Lamb’s correspondence should be
incomplete is but natural: the wonder rather is that it is so full as we have it; for we
are only gradually coming to understand how great a national treasure
Lamb is, and how valuable is almost every sentence that he penned.
Private owners of Lamb MSS. in this
country have been cheerfully willing that copies should be made; but I regret to say that
my request for co-operation printed in the American literary papers met with no response.
The view that the temporary owner of an original document of an author so peculiarly the
world’s friend as Lamb is rather a steward of the property than
absolute possessor, seems as yet not to have obtained any great measure of popularity
across the Atlantic. Since almost without exception the best MSS. that now come into the
market are bought for America, future editions, by conscientious editors, of the
correspondence of great Englishmen promise to be arduous enterprises.
By the kindness of Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth I have been enabled to print for the first time a considerable
number of letters from the Lambs to members of the
Wordsworth family, and for the first time to give the true text of
many that have been printed before. These, with the new Moxon correspondence, which Mr. Locker-Lampson has
kindly allowed me to copy, constitute the finest body of new material in the present
edition. But I have also obtained new copies of the many letters to Coleridge that are now in Mrs. Alfred
Morrison’s possession; of the letters to J. B. Dibdin, by kind permission of Mr. R. W. Dibdin;
of the letters preserved at Dr. Williams’ Library, several of
which are now printed for the first time, by kind permission of the Trustees; of some new
letters to Ayrton, by kind permission of the late
W. S. Ayrton; and of several notes in the possession of Sir Charles Dilke. Other owners of originals who have
kindly allowed copies to be made are Sir Edmund Elton, Mr.
H. Yates-Thomson, Mr. A. M. S. Methuen, Mr. B. B. Macgeorge, Mr. Henry
Poulton, Mr. R A. Potts, Mr. R. B.
Adam of Buffalo, N.Y., and the Librarian of the Gluck Library. Mr.
Gordon Wordsworth has allowed me to make reduced facsimiles of letters in
his possession. The reproduction of the very interesting portrait of Milton, opposite page 460, is made
by permission of the Lenox Library, New York; and of the Bellows portrait of Shakespeare by permission of Mr. B. B.
Macgeorge.
The Barton letters and all other
letters at the British Museum have been copied afresh, and so have those in the
Dyce and Forster collection at South
Kensington, at the Bodleian and National Portrait Gallery. But although great care has been
taken, I am not prepared, in the face of the fatality that indissolubly associates editors
of Lamb with inaccuracy, to guarantee a single line.
In printing, from the original documents I have sometimes altered the punctuation—but only
as little as might be to assist the sense at the first reading. In great part I have left
the letters as Lamb wrote them, often retaining his peculiarities of
spelling and punctuation, unexpected capitals and still more unexpected small initials. I
trust that no one will resent this literalness. Now and then, very reluctantly, I have had
to omit a sentence or paragraph on account of a freedom beyond modern taste, while on two
or three occasions a reference of a personal character has been deleted as possibly hurtful
to the susceptibilities of living people. But the total amount of omissions from the
letters available for the present edition does not equal one quite short missive; and a
number of round epithets and passages will be discovered in it that other editors, with
more courage than I can muster, have suppressed.
The letters of which I have no new transcripts are printed in the present
edition, by permission of Messrs. Bell & Sons, for the most part
from the text of Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, in the Bohn
Library edition of the correspondence, in Mary and Charles Lamb, and, by arrangement with Mr. Elkin Mathews, from the same editor’s text in
The Lambs and
Lamb and
Hazlitt. Talfourd often omitted, without
warning, many names and passages that Mr. Hazlitt has wisely restored:
the reason for Talfourd’s caution in the thirties and forties
having ceased to be operative in our day. Other old letters are reprinted from the
Cowden Clarkes’ Recollections of Writers,
by permission of the late Miss Mary Sabilla Novello;
from Fraser’s
Magazine, by permission of Miss M. Betham Edwards; from the Century Magazine, by
permission of Messrs. Scribner; from William Godwin: His Friends and
Ac-quaintances, by permission of the late Mr. Kegan Paul; from Rogers and His Contemporaries, by permission of the late
Mr. P. W. Clayden; and one from the late
Canon Ainger’sedition, by permission of Messrs.
Macmillan. Others come from the sources indicated in the Table of
Contents.
Certain notes to Hone concerning the
Garrick Plays, and one to Novello concerning the setting of George
Peele’s “Paris and Œnone” to
music, will be found in Vol. IV. of this edition. A letter to Hone
about Moxon’s hoax is in Vol. V.
The frontispiece to this volume is a reproduction from a new photograph of
the portrait of Lamb by Henry Meyer, painted when Lamb was fifty-one, in 1826,
and now preserved at the India Office, by whose permission it is given here. The portrait
which serves as frontispiece to Vol. VII. is a reproduction from the original pencil
drawing made by Thomas Wageman for Barron Field about 1825. It is reproduced by permission of
Mr. Halsey of New York, in whose possession it remains.
At the end of Vol. VII. will be found certain Appendices containing a few
letters and passages of letters omitted from the body of the book, and now supplied from
various sources, principally the collections of the late Mr.
Dykes Campbell; the text of various poems referred to in the letters; and a
number of notes on the earlier volumes of this edition of the
Lambs’ writings, together with some new material both authentic
and conjectural.
E. V. L.November 20, 1904
CONTENTS ** New Letter. * New Collation, or Addition to
Text.
PAGE LETTER 1796 1. 1 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the original in
the possession Morrison. May 27 5. 2 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the original
(Morrison Collection). End of May? 13. 3 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the original
(Morrison Collection). June 10 26. 4 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn’s edition). June 13 32. 5 *Charles Lamb to S, T. Coleridge From the original
(Morrison Collection). July 1 35. 6 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the facsimile of
the original (Mr. E. H. Coleridge). July 5 36. 7 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the original
(Morrison Collection). July 6 41. 8 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the original
(Morrison Collection). Sept. 27 43. 9 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the original
(Morrison Collection). Oct. 3 48. 10 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the original
(Morrison Collection). Oct. 17 49. 11 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Oct. 24 51. 12 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Oct. 28 54. 13 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Nov. 8 57. 14 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Nov. 14 60. 15 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the original
(Morrison Collection). Dec. 2 64. 16 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the original
(Morrison Collection). Dec. 5
PAGE LETTER 1796 67. 17 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlit’s
text (The Lambs). Dec. 9 72. 18 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Dec. 10 1797 75. 19 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the original
(Morrison Collection). Jan. 2 80. 20 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the original
(Morrison Collection). Jan. 10 87. 21 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the original
(Morrison Collection). Jan. 18 89. 22 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the original
(Morrison Collection). Feb. 5 95. 23 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Feb. 13 99. 24 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). April 7 101. 25 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). April 15 103. 26 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). June 13 106. 27 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). June 24 107. 28 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). (?) June 29 108. 29 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Late July 110. 30 **Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the original
(Morrison Collection). Aug. 24 111. 31 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). About Sept. 20 1798 114. 32 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Jan. 28 117. 33 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the original in
the Gluck Collection at Buffalo, U.S.A. Early summer 121. 34 *Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. July 28 124. 35 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Oct. 18 125. 36 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Oct. 29 128. 37 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Nov. 3 129. 38 *Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Nov. 8
PAGE LETTER 1798 132. 39 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (The Lambs). ? Nov. 134. 40 *Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Mr. Hazlitt s text
(Bohn) with alterations. Nov. 28 137 41 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Dec. 27 1799 139 42 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Jan. 21 141. 43 *Charles Lamb to Robert Southey From the
original. Jan. or Feb. 143. 44 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). March 15 145. 45 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). March 20 149. 46 *Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Oct. 31 151. 47 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Dec. 152. 48 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Dec. 28 1800 154. 49 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). ? Jan. 23 155. 50 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). March 1 157. 51 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations, Feb. 13 159. 52 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. March 17 160. 53 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. April 5 161. 54 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). ? April 16 or 17 165 55 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s text (Bohn) with
alterations. ? Spring 166. 56 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). May 12 167. 57 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). May 20 168. 58 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning ? May 25 169. 59 *Charles Lamb to J. M. Gutch From Mr. G. A.
Gutch’s original. No date 170. 60 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). ? Late July
PAGE LETTER 1800 171. 61 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr, Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Aug. 6 175. 62 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. HazHtt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Aug. 9 176. 63 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Aug. 11 177. 64 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Aug. 14 180. 65 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Aug. 24 183. 66 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Aug. 26 186. 67 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Aug. 28 188. 68 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Sept. 22 189 69 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Oct. 16 191. 70 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Nov. 3 194. 71 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Nov. 28 196. 72 Charles Lamb to William Godwin Mr. Kegan Paul’s
text ( William Godwin: His Friends, etc.). Dec. 4 196. 73 Charles Lamb to William Godwin Mr. Kegan Paul’s
text (William Godwin: His Friends, etc.). No date 198 74 Charles Lamb to William Godwin Mr. Kegan Paul’s
text (William Godwin: His Friends, etc.). Dec. 10 199. 75 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Dec. 13 201. 76 Charles Lamb to William Godwin Mr. Kegan Paul’s
text (William Godwin: His Friends, etc.). Dec 14 203. 77 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Dec. 16 205. 78, 79 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning From The
Athenaeum. End of year 206. 80 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Dec. 27 1801 208. 81 *Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Jan. 30 212. 82 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Canon Ainger’s
text. Feb. 15
PAGE LETTER 1801 215. 83 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Late Feb. 217. 84 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). April 219. 85 Charles Lamb to William Godwin Mr. Kegan Paul’s
text (William Godwin: His Friends, etc.). June 29 219. 86 Charles Lamb to Walter Wilson Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Aug. 14 220. 87 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). ? Aug. 223. 88 *Charles Lanib to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Aug, 31 225. 89 Charles Lamb to William Godwin Mr. Kegan Paul’s
text (William Godwin: His Friends, etc.). Sept. 9 228. 90 Charles Lamb to William Godwin (fragment) Mr. Kegan
Paul’s text (William Godwin: His Friends, etc.). Sept. 17 230. 91 **Charles Lamb to John Rickman From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original ? Nov. 1802 233. 92 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. ? Feb. 15 239. 93 Charles Lamb to John Rickman Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). April 10 240. 94 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. ? Early April 242. 95 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge (fragment) Mr.
Hazlitt’s text (Bohn). Sept. 8 243. 96 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Sept. 24 246. 97 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Oct. 9 250. 98 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Oct. 11 252. 99 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge (fragment) Mr.
Hazlitt’s text (Bohn) with alterations. Oct. 23 255. 100 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Nov. 4 256. 101 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) and Talfourd, with alterations. Nov 1803 258. 102 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (The Lambs) with alterations. Feb. 19 261. 103 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). March
PAGE LETTER 1803 262. 104 **Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. March 5 268. 105 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. April 13 270. 106 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. May 272. 107 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). May 27 274. 108 **Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. July 9 277. 109 Charles Lamb to John Rickman Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). July 16 278. 110 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Mary and Charles Lamb). Sept. 21 281. 111 Charles Lamb to William Godwin Mr. Kegan Paul’s text (William
Godwin: His Friends, etc.). Nov. 8 281. 112 Charles Lamb to William Godwin Mr. Kegan Paul’s
text (William Godwin: His Friends, etc.). Nov. 10 283. 113 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Godwin Mr. Kegan Paul’s
text (William Godwin: His Friends, etc.). No date 1804 283. 114 **Charles Lamb to Thomas Poole From original in
British Museum. Feb. 14 284. 115 **Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. March 10 285. 116 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Mary and Charles Lamb). ? March 287. 117 **Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the original
(Morrison Collection). April 5 287. 118 **Charles Lamb to Thomas Poole From original in
British Museum. May 4 287. 119 **Charles Lamb to Thomas Poole From original in
British Museum. May 5 288. 120 **Charles Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. June 2 291. 121 Mary Lamb (and Charles Lamb) to Sarah Stoddart Mr.
Hazlitt’s text (Mary and Charles Lamb). Late July 294. 122 **Part I., Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr.
Gordon Wordsworth’s original. Oct. 13 295. 123 **Part II., Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth From Mr.
Gordon Wordsworth’s original. Oct. 13 297. 124 **Part III., Mary Lamb to Mrs. S. T. Coleridge From
Mr. Gordon Wordsworth’s original. Oct. 13 298. 125 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Nov. 7
PAGE LETTER 1805 299. 126 **Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Feb. 18 301. 127 **Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Feb. 19 302. 128 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Feb. 23 304. 129 **Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. March 5 306. 130 **Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. March 21 307. 131 **Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. April 5 308. 132 **Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. May 7 311. 133 *Charles Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. June 14 313. 134 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). July 27 314. 135 *Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart From the original. ? Sept. 18 316. 136 *Charles Lamb to William and Dorothy Wordsworth From
Mr. Gordon Wordsworth’s original. Sept. 28 321. 137 Mary Lamb to Saraih Stoddart Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Mary and Charles Lamb). Early Nov. 323. 138 *Charles Lamb to William Hazlitt From the
original. Nov. 10 327. 139 *Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart From the original. Nov. 9 and 14 328. 140 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Nov. 15 328. 141 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). No date 1806 329. 142 *Charles Lamb to William Hazlitt From the
original. Jan. 15 332. 143 Charles Lamb to John Rickman Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Jan. 25 332. 144 *Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From the original,
recently in the possession of Mr. Gordon Wordsworth. Feb. 1 336. 145 Charles Lamb to William Hazlitt From the
original. Feb. 19 338. 146 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Mary and Charles Lamb). Feb. 20, 21 and 22
PAGE LETTER 1806 342. 147 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart Mr. Hazlitt’s ten
(Mary and Charles Lamb). March 345. 148 Charles Lamb to John Rickman Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). March 346. 149 Charles Lamb to William Hazlitt Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). March 15 348. 150 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (The Lambs). May 10 350. 151 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Mary and Charles Lamb). June 2 353. 152 *Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. June 26 356. 153 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Mary and Charles Lamb).? July 4 359. 154 **Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Aug. 29 361. 155 **Mary Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the original
(Morrison Collection). No date 362. 156 *Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart From the original. Oct 23 364. 157 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning From the
original. Dec. 5 369. 158 *Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Dec. 11 370. 159 Charles Lamb to Sarah Stoddart Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Dec. 11 371. 160 Charles Lamb to William Godwin Mr. Kegan Paul’s
text (William Godwin: His Friends, etc.). No date 1807 372. 161 **Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From the original
in Dr. Williams’ Library. Jan 29 373. 162 *Charles Lamb to T. and C. Clarkson From the original
in the possession of Mr. A. M. S. Methuen. June 374. 163 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Mary and Charles Lamb). Oct. 376. 164 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Mary and Charles Lamb). Dec. 21 1808 379. 165 *Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart From the original. Feb 12 380. 166 Charles Lamb to the Rev. W. Hazlitt Mr.
Hazlitt’s text (Bohn). Feb. 18 381. 167 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning From the
original. Feb 26
PAGE LETTER 1808 386. 168 Charles Lamb to William Godwin Mr. Kegan Paul’s
text (William Godwin His Friends, etc.). March 11 388. 169 **Charles Lamb to Henry Crabb Robinson From the
original in Dr. Williams’ Library March 12 389. 170 *Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart From the original. March 16 391. 171 Mary Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Mary and Charles Lamb). Dec. 10 393. 172 *Mary and Charles Lamb to Mrs. Clarkson From the
original in the possession of Mr. A. M. S. Methuen. Dec. 10 1809 395. 173 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations March 28 398. 174 **Charles Lamb to Henry Crabb Robinson From the
original in Dr. Williams’ Library May 398. 175 Mary Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Mary and Charles Lamb). June 2 400. 176 Charles Lamb to S.T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). June 7 403. 177 Charles Lamb to S.T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Oct. 30 405. 178 Mary Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Mary and Charles Lamb). Nov. 7 1810 408. 179 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Jan. 2 411. 180 *Charles Lamb to Henry Crabb Robinson From the
original in Dr. Williams’ Library. Feb. 7 413. 181 Charles Lamb to the J. M. Gutch Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). April 9 415. 182 Charles Lamb to Basil Montagu Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). July 12 416. 183 Charles Lamb to William Hazlitt Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Aug. 9 417. 184 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Oct. 19 419. 185 **Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth *Charles Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth’s original. Nov. 13 422. 186 Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth Charles Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth’s original. Nov. 23 424. 187 Charles Lamb to William Hazlitt Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Nov. 28
PAGE LETTER 1810 425. 188 Charles Lamb to William Godwin Mr. Kegan Paul’s
text (William Godwin: His Friends, etc.). No date 426. 189 Mary Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Mary and Charles Lamb). ? End of year 1811 428. 190 Mary Lamb to Matilda Betham Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(The Lambs). No date 429. 191 **Charles Lamb to John Morgan (fragment) From the
original (Duchess of Albany). March 2 430. 192 Mary Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt Charles Lamb to William Hazlitt. Mr. Hazlitt’s text (Mary and Charles Lamb) and Bohn. Oct. 2 1812 432. 193 Charles Lamb to John Dyer Collier J. P.
Collier’s text (An Old Man’s Diary).No date 433. 194 Mary Lamb to Mrs. John Dyer Collier J. P.
Collier’s text (An Old Man’s Diary). No year [1813—no letters.] 1814 433. 195 “Charles Lamb to John Scott From facsimile
(Birkbeck Hill’s Talks about Autographs). ? Feb. 434. 196 *Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Aug. 9 438. 197 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Aug. 13 440. 198 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Aug. 26 443. 199 *Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Sept. 19 446. 200 Mary Lamb to Barbara Betham Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(The Lambs). Nov. 2 449 201 Charles Lamb to John Scott From Mr. R. B. Adam’s
original. Dec. 12 449. 202 *Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Dec. 28 1815 452. 203 *Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. ? Early Jan. 454. 204 *Charles Lamb to Mr. Sargus From the original in the
possession of Mr. Thomas Greg. Feb. 23 455. 205 Charles Lamb to Joseph Hume Mr. Kegan Paul’s
text (William Godwin: His Friends, etc.). No date 456. 206 *Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. April 7 460. 207 *Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. April 28
PAGE LETTER 1815 465. 208 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). May 6 467. 209 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Aug 9 469. 210 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Aug 9 472. 211 **Mary and Charles Lamb to Sarah Hutchinson From Mr.
Gordon Wordsworth’s original. Aug 20 476. 212 Mary Lamb to Matilda Betham From Fraser’s
Magazine. ? Late summer 478. 213 Charles Lamb to Matilda Betham Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (The Lambs). No date 479. 214 *Charles Lamb to Sarah Hutchinson From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Oct 19 480. 215 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Dec. 25 482. 216 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Dec. 26 1816 484. 217 *Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. April 9 486. 218 *Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. April 26 489. 219 Charles Lamb to Matilda Betham From Fraser’s
Magazine. June 1 490. 220 **Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Sept. 23 494. 221 **Mary Lamb to Sarah Hutchinson From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Middle of Nov. 496. 222 **Mary Lamb to Sarah Hutchinson From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Late in year 1817 497. 223 *Charles Lamb to William Ayrton From Ayrton’s
transcript in Lamb’s Works, Vol. III. May 12 500 224 Charles Lamb to Barron Field Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Aug. 31 503. 225 Charles Lamb to James and Louisa Kenney Text from Mr.
Samuel Davey. Oct. 505. 226 *Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth *Charles Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth’s original. Nov. 21 508. 227 Charles Lamb to John Payne Collier Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Dec. 10 509. 228 Charles Lamb to Benjamin Robert Haydon From Tom
Taylor’s Life of Haydon. Dec. 26
PAGE LETTER 1818 510. 229 *Charles Lamb to Mrs. William Wordsworth From Mr.
Gordon Wordsworth’s original. Feb. 18 515. 230 Charles Lamb to Charles and James Ollier From the
original (Morrison Collection). June 18 516. 231 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Oct. 26 517. 232 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). Dec. 24 1819 518. 233 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. April 26 522. 234 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. May 28 524. 235 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. June 7 527. 236 Charles Lamb to Fanny Kelly Mr. John
Hollingshead’s text (Harper’s Magazine). July 20 529. 237 Charles Lamb to Fanny Kelly Mr. John
Hollingshead’s text (Harper’s Magazine). [For Letter 237A — Charles
Lamb to S.J. Arnold — see Appendix II., page 973.] July 20 530. 238 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the original
(Morrison Collection). ? Summer 531. 239 **Charles Lamb to Thomas Holcroft, Jr. From the
original (Morrison Collection). Autumn 531. 240 Charles Lamb to Joseph Cottle Mr. Hazlitt’s
text. Nov. 5 532. 241 Charles Lamb to Joseph Cottle (incomplete) Mr.
Hazlitt’s text. Late in year 534. 242 Charles Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Nov. 25 1820 536. 243 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn) with alterations. Jan. 10 538. 244 Mary Lamb to Mrs. Vincent Novello From the Cowden
Clarkes’ Recollections of Writers. Spring 540. 245 Charles Lamb to Joseph Cottle Mr. Hazlitt’s
text. May 26 541. 246 Charles Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth From Professor
Knight’s Life of Wordsworth. (For Letter 246A — Charles Lamb to Thomas
Allsop — see Appendix II., page 973.] May 25 542. 247 Charles Lamb to Barron Field Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(The Lambs). Aug. 16 544. 248 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (Bohn). ? Autumn
PAGE LETTER 1821 546. 249 Charles Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Jan. 8 548 250 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s
Magazine. No date 548 251 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s
Magazine. No date
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Charles Lamb, Aged 51. From the picture by Henry Meyer
in 1826; reproduced by permission of the India Office FrontispiecePlate from Wither’s Emblems, 1635 To face page 124Reduced Facsimile of Letter from Lamb to William
Wordsworth. From the original in the possession of Mr. Gordon Wordsworth 354John Milton. The Portrait which once belonged to Lamb
and his brother; reproduced from the original in the Lenox Library, New York 460
THE LETTERS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB 1796—1820 LETTER 1 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Postmark May 27, 1796.]
DEAR C—— make
yourself perfectly easy about May. I paid his bill, when I
sent your clothes. I was flush of money, and am so still to all the purposes of
a single life, so give yourself no further concern about it. The money would be
superfluous to me, if I had it.
With regard to Allen,—the woman he has married has some money, I have heard about
£200 a year, enough for the maintenance of herself & children, one of whom
is a girl nine years old! so Allen has dipt betimes into
the cares of a family. I very seldom see him, & do not know whether he has
given up the Westminster hospital.
When Southey becomes
as modest as his predecessor Milton, and
publishes his Epics in duodecimo, I will read ’em,—a Guinea a book is
somewhat exorbitant, nor have I the opportunity of borrowing the Work. The extracts from it in
the Monthly Review and the short
passages in your Watchman
seem to me much superior to any thing in his partnership account with Lovell.
Your poems I shall procure forthwith. There were noble lines in what you
inserted in one of your Numbers from Religious Musings, but I thought
them elaborate. I am somewhat glad you have given up that Paper—it must have been dry,
unprofitable, and of “dissonant mood” to your disposition. I wish
you success in all your undertakings, and am glad to hear you are employed
about the Evidences of Religion. There is need of multiplying such books an
hundred fold in this philosophical age to prevent converts to Atheism, for they
seem too tough disputants to meddle with afterwards. I am sincerely sorry for
Allen, as a family man particularly.
Le Grice is gone to make puns in
Cornwall. He has got a tutorship to a young boy, living with his Mother, a
widow Lady. He will of course initiate him quickly in “whatsoever
things are lovely, honorable, and of good report.” He has cut
Miss Hunt com- pleatly,—the
poor Girl is very ill on the Occasion, but he laughs at it, and justifies
himself by saying, “she does not see him laugh.” Coleridge, I know not what suffering scenes
you have gone through at Bristol—my life has been somewhat diversified of late.
The 6 weeks that finished last year and began this your very humble servant
spent very agreeably in a mad house at Hoxton—I am got somewhat rational now,
and don’t bite any one. But mad I was—and many a vagary my imagination
played with me, enough to make a volume if all told.
My Sonnets I have extended to the number of nine since I saw
you, and will some day communicate to you.
I am beginning a poem in blank verse, which if I finish I
publish.
White is on the eve of publishing (he
took the hint from Vortigern) Original
letters of Falstaff, Shallow &c—, a copy you shall have when it
comes out. They are without exception the best imitations I ever saw.
Coleridge, it may convince you of my
regards for you when I tell you my head ran on you in my madness, as much
almost as on another Person, who I am inclined to think was the more immediate
cause of my temporary frenzy.
The sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry but you will be curious
to read it when I tell you it was written in my prison-house in one of my lucid
Intervals.
TO MY SISTER If from my lips some angry accents fell, Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind, ’Twas but the error of a sickly mind, And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well, And waters clear, of Reason; and for me, Let this my verse the poor atonement be, My verse, which thou to praise wast ever inclined Too highly, and with a partial eye to see No blemish: thou to me didst ever shew Fondest affection, and woud’st oftimes lend An ear to the desponding love sick lay, Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay But ill the mighty debt of love I owe, Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend.
With these lines, and with that sister’s kindest remembrances to C——, I conclude—
Yours sincerely Lamb.
Your Conciones ad populum are the most eloquent politics that ever
came in my way.
Write, when convenient—not as a task, for there is
nothing in this letter to answer.
You may inclose under cover to me at the India house
what letters you please, for they come post free.
We cannot send our remembrances to Mrs. C not having seen her, but believe me
our best good wishes attend you both.
My civic and poetic compts to Southey if at Bristol.—Why, he is a very
Leviathan of Bards—the small minnow I—
Note
[This is the earliest letter of Lamb’s that has come down to us. On February 10, 1796, he was just
twenty-one years old, and was now living at 7 Little Queen Street (since demolished) with
his father, mother, Aunt Sarah Lamb (known as
Aunt Hetty), Mary Lamb and,
possibly, John Lamb. John
Lamb, senior, was doing nothing and had, I think, already begun to break up:
his old master, Samuel Salt, had died in February,
1792. John Lamb, the son (born June 5, 1763), had a clerkship at the
South-Sea House; Charles Lamb had begun his long period of service in
the India House; and Mary Lamb (born December 3, 1764) was occupied as
a mantua-maker.
At this time Coleridge was
twenty-three; he would be twenty-four on October 21. His military experiences over, he had
married Sara Fricker on October 4, 1795 (a month
before Southey married her sister Edith), and was living at Bristol, on Redcliffe Hill. The
first number of The
Watchman was dated on March 1, 1796; on May 13, 1796, it came to an
end. On April 16, 1796, Cottle had issued
Coleridge’sPoems on Various Subjects,
containing also four “effusions” by Charles
Lamb (Nos. VII., XL, XII. and XIII.), and the “Religious Musings.”
Southey, on bad terms with Coleridge, partly
on account of Southey’s abandonment of Pantisocracy, was in
Lisbon. His Joan of
Arc had just been published by Cottle in quarto at a
guinea. Previously he had collaborated in The Fall of Robespierre, 1794, with
Coleridge and Robert
Lovell. Each, one evening, had set forth to write an act by the next.
Southey and Lovell did so, but
Coleridge brought only a part of his.
Lovell’s being useless, Southey rewrote
his act, Coleridge finished his at leisure, and the result was
published. Robert Lovell (1770?-1796) had also been associated with
Coleridge and Southey in Pantisocracy and was
their brother-in-law, having married Mary Fricker,
another of the sisters. When, in 1795, Southey and Lovell had published a joint volume of
Poems,
Southey took the pseudonym of Bion and Lovell of Moschus.
May was probably the landlord of the Salutation and Cat. The London
Directory for 1808 has “William May, Salutation Coffee House,
17 Newgate Street.” We must suppose that when Coleridge quitted the Salutation and Cat in January,
1795, he was unable to pay his bill, and therefore had to leave his luggage behind.
Cottle’s story of
Coleridge being offered free lodging by a London inn-keeper, if he
would only talk and talk, must then either be a pretty invention or apply to another
landlord, possibly the host of the Angel in Butcher Hall Street
Allen was Robert Allen, a
schoolfellow of Lamb and Coleridge, and Coleridge’s first friend. He was
born on October 18, 1772. Both Lamb and Leigh
Hunt tell good stories of him at Christ’s Hospital, Lamb in Elia and
Hunt in his Autobiography. From Christ’s Hospital he went to
University College, Oxford, and it was he who introduced Coleridge and
Hucks to Southey in 1794.
Probably, says Mr. E. H. Coleridge, it was he who
brought Coleridge and Stoddart
(afterwards Sir John and Hazlitt’s brother-in-law) together. On leaving Oxford he seems to
have gone to Westminster to learn surgery, and in 1797 he was appointed Deputy-Surgeon to
the 2nd Royals, then in Portugal. He married a widow with children; at some time later took
to journalism, as Lamb’s reference in the Elia essay on “Newspapers” tells us; and he died of apoplexy
in 1805.
The phrase “dissonant mood” (Samson Agonistes, line 662) had
been used by Coleridge in line 6 of his Effusion 22,
“To a Friend with an Unfinished
Poem,” the friend being Lamb.
Coleridge’s employment on the Evidences of Religion, whatever it may have
been, did not reach print.
Le Grice was Charles Valentine Le
Grice (1773-1858), an old Christ’s Hospitaller and Grecian (see
Lamb’sElia essays on “Christ’s Hospital” and “Grace before Meat”). Le
Grice passed to Trinity College, Cambridge. He left in 1796 and became tutor
to William John Godolphin Nicholls of Trereife, near
Penzance, the only son of a widowed mother. Le Grice was ordained in
1798 and married Mrs. Nicholls in 1799. Young
Nicholls died in 1815 and Mrs. Le Grice in
1821, when Le Grice became sole owner of the Trereife property. He was
incumbent of St. Mary’s, Penzance, for some years. Le Grice was
a witty, rebellious character, but he never fulfilled the promise of his early days. It has
been conjectured that his skill in punning awakened Lamb’s
ambition in that direction. Le Grice saw Lamb
next in 1834, at the Bell at Edmonton. His recollections of Lamb were
included by Talfourd in the Memorials, and his recollections of
Coleridge were printed in the Gentleman’s Magazine, December,
1834. I know nothing of Miss Hunt.
“Whatsoever things are honest . . .” See Philippians iv. 8.
Of Lamb’s confinement in a
madhouse we know no more than is here told. It is conjectured that the “other
person” to whom Lamb refers a few lines later was Ann
Simmons, a girl at Widford for whom he had an attachment that had been
discouraged, if not forbidden, by her friends. This is the only attack of the kind that
Lamb is known to have suffered. He once told Coleridge that during his illness he had sometimes
believed himself to be Young Norval in Home’s “Douglas.”
The poem in blank verse was, we learn in a subsequent letter,
“The Grandame,” or
possibly an autobiographical work of which “The
Grandame” is the only portion that survived.
White was James White
(1775-1820), an old Christ’s Hospitaller and a friend and almost exact contemporary
of Lamb. Lamb, who first kindled
his enthusiasm for Shakespeare, was, I think, to
some extent involved in the Original Letters, &c., of Sir John Falstaff and his Friends, which
appeared in 1796. The dedication—to Master Samuel Irelaunde, meaning
William Henry Ireland (who sometimes took his
fathers name Samuel), the forger of the pretended Shakespearian play
“Vortigern,” produced
at Drury Lane earlier in the year—is quite in Lamb’s manner (see
Vol. I. of this edition, page 465). White’s immortality,
however, rests not upon this book, but upon his portrait in the Elia essay on “Chimney-Sweepers.”
The sonnet “To my
Sister” was printed, with slight alterations, by Lamb in Coleridge’s Poems, second edition, 1797, and again in
Lamb’sWorks, 1818.
Coleridge’sConciones ad Populum; or, Addresses to
the People, had been published at Bristol in November, 1795.
Close students of Lamb’s
Letters will observe that this, together with many of the early letters to Coleridge which follow, differs from the text of the other
editions, new copies having been made from the originals in the Morrison Collection.]
LETTER 2 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Probably begun either on Tuesday, May 24, or Tuesday, May 31,
1796. Postmark? June 1.]
I AM in such violent pain with the head ach that I
am fit for nothing but transcribing, scarce for that. When I get your poems,
and the Joan of Arc, I will
exercise my presumption in giving you my opinion of ’em. The mail does
not come in before tomorrow (Wednesday) morning. The following sonnet was composed during
a walk down into Hertfordshire early in last Summer.
* Drowsyhed I have met with I think in
Spencer. Tis an old
thing, but it rhymes with led & rhyming covers a multitude
of licences.
The lord of light shakes off his drowsyhed.* Fresh from his couch up springs the lusty Sun, And girds himself his mighty race to run. Meantime, by truant love of rambling led, I turn my back on thy detested walls, Proud City, and thy sons I leave behind, A selfish, sordid, money-getting kind, Who shut their ears when holy Freedom calls. I pass not thee so lightly, humble spire, That mindest me of many a pleasure gone, Of merriest days, of love and Islington, Kindling anew the flames of past desire; And I shall muse on thee, slow journeying on, To the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. The last line is a copy of Bowles’s, “to the green hamlet in the peaceful
plain.” Your ears are not so very fastidious—many people would
not like words so prosaic and familiar in a sonnet as Islington and
Hertfordshire. The next was written within a day or two of the last, on
revisiting a spot where the scene was laid of my 1st sonnet that “mock’d my
step with many a lonely glade.” When last I roved these winding wood-walks green, Green winding walks, and pathways shady-sweet, Oftimes would Anna seek the silent scene, Shrouding her beauties in the lone retreat. No more I hear her footsteps in the shade; Her image only in these pleasant ways Meets me self-wandring where in better days I held free converse with my fair-hair’d maid. I pass’d the little cottage, which she loved, The cottage which did once my all contain: It spake of days that ne’er must come again, Spake to my heart and much my heart was moved. “Now fair befall thee, gentle maid,”
said I, And from the cottage turn’d me, with a sigh.
The next retains a few lines from a sonnet of mine, which
you once remarked had no “body of thought” in it. I agree
with you, but have preserved a part or it, and it runs thus. I flatter myself
you will like it. A timid grace sits trembling in her Eye, As loth to meet the rudeness of men’s sight, Yet shedding a delicious lunar light, That steeps in kind oblivious extacy The care-craz’d mind, like some still melody; Speaking most plain the thoughts which do possess Her gentle sprite, peace and meek quietness,
* Cowley uses this phrase with a somewhat
different meaning: I meant loves of relatives friends, &c.
And innocent loves,* and maiden purity. A look whereof might heal the cruel smart Of changed friends, or fortune’s wrongs
unkind; Might to sweet deeds of mercy move the heart Of him, who hates his brethren of mankind. Turned are those beams from me, who fondly yet Past joys, vain loves, and buried hopes regret.
The next and last I value most of all. ’Twas composed
close upon the heels of the last in that very wood I had in mind when I wrote
“Methinks how dainty sweet.” We were two pretty babes, the youngest she, The youngest and the loveliest far, I ween, And Innocence her name. The time has been, We two did love each other’s company; Time was, we two had wept to have been apart. But when, with shew of seeming good beguil’d, I left the garb and manners of a child, And my first love for man’s society, Defiling with the world my virgin heart, My loved companion dropt a tear, and fled, And hid in deepest shades her awful head. Beloved, who can tell me where Thou art, In what delicious Eden to be found, That I may seek thee the wide world around. Since writing it, I have found in a poem by Hamilton of Bangour, these 2 lines to happiness Nun sober and devout, where art thou fled To hide in shades thy meek contented head. Lines eminently beautiful, but I do not remember having re’d
’em previously, for the credit of my 10th and 11th lines. Parnell has 2 lines (which probably suggested
the above) to Contentment Whither ah! whither art thou fled,
* an odd epithet for contentment in a poet so
poetical as Parnell.
To hide thy meek contented head.*
Cowley’s exquisite Elegy on the death of his friend
Harvey suggested the phrase of “we two” “Was there a tree that did not know The love betwixt us two?——”
So much for acknowledged plagiarisms, the confession of
which I know not whether it has more of vanity or modesty in it. As to my blank
verse I am so dismally slow and steril of ideas (I speak from my heart) that I
much question if it will ever come to any issue. I have hitherto only hammered
out a few indepen[den]t unconnected snatches, not in a capacity to be sent. I
am very ill, and will rest till I have read your poems—for which I am very
thankful. I have one more favour to beg of you, that you never mention
Mr. May’s affair in any sort, much less think of repaying. Are we not
flocci-nauci-what-d’ye-call-em-ists?
We have just learnd, that my poor brother has had a sad accident: a large stone blown down by
yesterday’s high wind has bruised bis leg in a most shocking manner—he is
under the care of Cruikshanks. Coleridge, there are 10,000 objections against
my paying you a visit at Bristol—it cannot be,
else—but in this world ’tis better not to think too much of pleasant
possibles, that we may not be out of humour with present insipids. Should any
thing bring you to London, you will recollect No. 7, Little Queen St. Holborn.
I shall be too ill to call on Wordsworth myself but will take care to transmit him his poem, when I have read it. I
saw Le Grice the day before his
departure, and mentioned incidentally his “teaching the young idea how
to shoot”—knowing him and the probability there is of people
having a propensity to pun in his company you will not wonder that we both
stumbled on the same pun at once, he eagerly anticipating me,—“he
would teach him to shoot!”—Poor Le Grice! if
wit alone could entitle a man to respect, &c. He has written a very witty
little pamphlet lately,
satirical upon college declamations; when I send White’s book, I will add that.
I am sorry there should be any difference between you and
Southey.
“Between you two there should be peace,” tho’ I
must say I have borne him no good will since he spirited you away from among
us. What is become of Moschus? You
sported some of his sublimities, I see, in your Watchman. Very decent things. So much for
to night from your afflicted headachey sorethroatey, humble Servant C. Lamb——Tuesday night——.
Of your Watchmen, the Review of Burke was the best prose. I
augurd great things from the 1st number. There is some exquisite poetry
interspersed. I have re-read the extract from the Religious musings and retract
whatever invidious there was in my censure of it as elaborate. There are
times when one is not in a disposition thoroughly to relish good writing. I
have re-read it in a more favourable moment and hesitate not to pronounce
it sublime. If there be any thing in it approachgto
tumidity (which I meant not to infer in elaborate: I meant simply labord)
it is the Gigantic hyperbole by which you describe the Evils of existing
society. Snakes, Lions, hyenas and behemoths, is carrying your resentment
beyond bounds. The pictures of the Simoom, of frenzy and ruin, of the whore
of Babylon and the cry of the foul spirits disherited of Earth and the
strange beatitude which the good man shall recognise in heaven—as well as
the particularizing of the children of wretchedness—(I have unconsciously
included every part of it) form a variety of uniform excellence. I hunger
and thirst to read the poem complete. That is a capital line in your 6th no.:
“this dark freeze-coated, hoarse, teeth-chattering
Month”—they are exactly such epithets as Burns would have stumbled on, whose poem on the ploughd up
daisy you seem to have had in mind. Your complaint that
[of] your readers some thought there was too much, some too little,
original matter in your Nos., reminds me of poor dead Parsons in the Critic—“too little
incident! Give me leave to tell you, Sir, there is too much
incident.” I had like to have forgot thanking you for that
exquisite little morsel the
1st Sclavonian Song. The expression in the 2d “more
happy to be unhappy in hell”—is it not very quaint? Accept my
thanks in common with those of all who love good poetry for the Braes of Yarrow. I
congratulate you on the enemies you must have made by your splendid
invective against the barterers in “human flesh and
sinews.” Coleridge, you
will rejoice to hear that Cowper is
recovered from his lunacy, and is employ’d on his translation of the
Italian &c. poems of Milton, for
an edition where
Fuseli presides as designer.
Coleridge, to an idler like myself to write and
receive letters are both very pleasant, but I wish not to break in upon
your valuable time by expecting to hear very frequently from you. Reserve
that obligation for your moments of lassitude, when you have nothing else
to do; for your loco-restive and all your idle propensities of course have
given way to the duties of providing for a family. The mail is come in but
no parcel, yet this is Tuesday. Farewell then till to morrow, for a nich
and a nook I must leave for criticisms. By the way I hope you do not send
your own only copy of Joan of
Arc; I will in that case return it immediately.
Your parcel is come, you have
been lavish of your presents. Wordsworth’spoem I have hurried thro not without
delight. Poor Lovell! my heart
almost accuses me for the light manner I spoke of him above, not dreaming
of his death. My heart bleeds for your accumulated troubles, God send you
thro’ ’em with patience. I conjure you dream not that I will
ever think of being repaid! the very word is galling to the ears. I have
read all your Rel:
Musings with uninterrupted feelings of profound admiration. You
may safely rest your fame on it. The best remaing
things are what I have before read, and they lose nothing by my
recollection of your manner of reciting ’em, for I too bear in mind
“the voice, the look” of absent friends, and can
occasionally mimic their manner for the amusement of those who have seen
’em. Your impassioned manner of recitation I can recall at any time
to mine own heart, and to the ears of the bystanders. I rather wish you had
left the monody on C.
concluding as it did abruptly. It had more of unity.—The conclusion of your
R Musings I fear will entitle you to the
reproof of your Beloved woman, who wisely will not suffer your fancy to run
riot, but bids you walk humbly with your God. The very last words
“I exercise my young noviciate thot in
ministeries of heart-stirring song,” tho’ not now new
to me, cannot be enough admired. To speak
politely, they are a well turnd compliment to Poetry. I hasten to read
Joan of Arc, &c. I
have read your lines at the beging of 2d book, they
are worthy of Milton, but in my mind
yield to your Rel Musgs. I shall read the whole
carefully and in some future letter take the liberty to particularize my
opinions of it. Of what is new to me among your poems next to the Musings, that beginning “My Pensive Sara” gave me most
pleasure: the lines in it I just alluded to are most exquisite—they made my
sister and self smile, as conveying a pleasing picture of Mrs. C. chequing your wild wandrings,
which we were so fond of hearing you indulge when among us. It has endeared
us more than any thing to your good Lady; and your own self-reproof that
follows delighted us. ’Tis a charming poem throughout. (You have well
remarked that “charming, admirable, exquisite” are words
expressive of feelings, more than conveying of ideas, else I might plead
very well want of room in my paper as excuse for generalizing.) I want room
to tell you how we are charmed with your verses in the manner of Spencer,
&c. &c. &c. &c. &c. I am glad you resume the Watchman—change the
name, leave out all articles of News, and whatever things are peculiar to
News Papers, and confine yourself to Ethics, verse, criticism, or, rather
do not confine yourself. Let your plan be as diffuse as the Spectator, and I’ll answer
for it the work prospers. If I am vain enough to think I can be a
contributor, rely on my inclinations. Coleridge, in
reading your Rs Musings I felt a transient
superiority over you: I have seen Priestly. I love to see his name repeated in your writings.
I love and honor him almost profanely. You would be charmed with his
sermons, if you never read ’em.—You have doubtless read his books,
illustrative of the doctrine of Necessity. Prefixed to a late work of his, in answer to
Paine, there is a preface, given
[? giving] an account of the Man and his services to Men, written by
Lindsey, his dearest
friend,—well worth your reading.
Tuesday Eve.—Forgive my prolixity, which is yet too
brief for all I could wish to say.—God give you comfort and all that are of
your household.—Our loves and best good wishes to Mrs. C.
C. Lamb.
Note
[The postmark of this letter looks like June 1, but it might be June 7.
It was odd to date it “Tuesday night” half way through, and “Tuesday
eve” at the end. Possibly Lamb began it on Tuesday, May 24, and finished it on
Tuesday, May 31; possibly he began it on Tuesday, May 31, and finished it and posted it on
Tuesday, June 7.
The Hertfordshire
sonnet was printed in the Monthly Magazine for December, 1797, and not reprinted by Lamb. The last line, which he says here is from Bowles (the last line of the sonnet “To a Friend”), has a nearer
counterpart in William Vallan’sTale of Two Swans (1590), quoted in Leland’s
Itinerary, Hearne’s
edition:— About this time the Lady Venus views The fruitful fields of pleasant Hertfordshire. This interesting discovery was made by Mr. W. J.
Craig.
The sonnet that
“mock’d my step with many a lonely glade” is that beginning— Was it some sweet device of Faery, which had been printed in Coleridge’s Poems, 1796. The second, third and
fourth of the sonnets that are copied in this letter were printed in the second edition of
Coleridge’s Poems, 1797. Anna is generally supposed to be
Ann Simmons, referred to in the previous note.
The lines from Hamilton of Bangor
are in his “Epistle to the Countess of
Eglintoun (with ‘The Gentle Shepherd’)”: “where”
should be “why.” Parnell’s lines
are in his “Hymn to
Contentment”: “ah” should be “O” and
“hide” “lay.” In Cowley’s poem the first of the quoted lines runs:— Was there a tree about which did not know The love, &c.
Concerning
“Flocci-nauci-what-d’ye-call-’em-ists,” Canon Ainger has the following interesting note: “‘Flocci,
nauci’ is the beginning of a rule in the old Latin grammars, containing a list of
words signifying ‘of no account,’ floccus being a
lock of wool, and naucus a trifle. Lamb was recalling a sentence in one of Shenstone’s Letters:—‘I loved him for nothing so much as
his floccinauci-nihili-pili-fication of money.’” But
“Pantisocratists” was, of course, the word that Lamb was shadowing.
Pantisocracy, however—the new order of common living and high thinking, to be established
on the banks of the Susquehanna by Coleridge,
Southey, Lovell, Burnett and others—was
already dead.
William Cumberland Cruikshank, the anatomist, who
attended Lamb’s brother, had a great
reputation. He had attended Dr. Johnson in his last
illness.
Le Grice’s pamphlet was A General Theorem for A ******* Coll.
Declamation, by Gronovius, 1796.—The phrase
“teaching the young idea how to shoot” is from Thomson’sSeasons.
Southey and Coleridge had been on somewhat strained terms for some time; possibly, as I
have said in the previous note, owing to Southey’s abandonment of Pantisocratic fervour, which
anticipated Coleridge’s by some months. Also, to marry sisters
does not always lead to serenity. The spiriting away of Coleridge had
been effected by Southey in January, 1795, when he found
Coleridge at the Angel in Butcher Hall Street (vice the Salutation in Newgate Street) and bore him back to Bristol and the
forlorn Sara Fricker, and away from Lamb, journalism and egg-hot.
“Between you two there should be peace”— Between us two let there be peace. Paradise
Lost, X., 924.
Moschus was, as we have seen, Robert
Lovell. No. V. of The Watchman contained sonnets by him.
The review of Burke’sLetter to a Noble Lord was in No. I. of The Watchman.—The
passage from “Religious
Musings,” under the title “The Present State of
Society,” was in No. II.—extending from line 260 to 357.1—The capital line in No. VI. is in the poem, “Lines on Observing a Blossom on the First of February,
1796.”—Poor dead Parsons would be William Parsons (1736-1795), the original Sir Fretful Plagiary in Sheridan’s “Critic.” Lamb praises him in his
essay on the Artificial Comedy.—In
No. IX. of The Watchman were prose paraphrases of three Sclavonian songs, the first being
“Song of a Female
Orphan,” and the second, “Song of the Haymakers.”—John
Logan’s “Braes of
Yarrow” had been quoted in No. III. as “the most exquisite
performance in our language.”—The invective against “the
barterers” refers to the denunciation of the slave trade in No. IV. of The Watchman.
Cowper’s recovery was only partial; and he was
never rightly himself after 1793. The edition of
Milton had been begun about 1790. It was never finished as originally intended;
but Fuseli completed forty pictures, which were
exhibited in 1799. An edition of Cowper’s translations, with
designs by Flaxman, was published in 1808, and of
Cowper’scomplete Milton in 1810.
Wordsworth’s poem would be “Guilt and Sorrow,” of which a portion
was printed in Lyrical
Ballads, 1798, and the whole published in 1842.
“The voice, the look.” Possibly a phrase in Coleridge’s letter, to which Lamb is replying. In one of Lloyd’s sonnets in Coleridge’sPoems, 1797
(page 205), are the words “That look, those accents.”
Coleridge’s “Monody on Chatterton,” the first poem in his
Poems on Various
Subjects, 1796, had been written originally at Christ’s Hospital,
1790: it continued to be much altered before the final version.
The two lines from “Religious Musings” are not the last,
but the beginning of the last passage.
1 These lines were 279-378 1st ed.; 264-363 2nd ed.
Coleridge contributed between three and four hundred
lines to Book II. of Southey’sJoan of Arc, as we shall see
later. The poem beginning “My Pensive Sara” was Effusion 35, afterwards called “The Æolian Harp,” and the lines to which
Lamb refers are these, following upon
Coleridge’s description of how flitting phantasies traverse
his indolent and passive brain:— But thy more serious eye a mild reproof Darts, O beloved Woman! nor such thoughts Dim and unhallow’d dost thou not reject, And biddest me walk humbly with my God.
The plan to resume The Watchman did not come to anything.
Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), the theologian, at
this time the object of Lamb’s adoration, was
one of the fathers of Unitarianism, a creed in which Lamb had been
brought up under the influence of his Aunt Hetty.
Coleridge, as a supporter of one of
Priestley’s allies, William
Frend of Cambridge, and as a convinced Unitarian, was also an admirer of
Priestley, concerning whom and the Birmingham riots of 1791 is a
fine passage in “Religious
Musings,” while one of the sonnets of the 1796 volume was addressed to
him: circumstances which Lamb had in mind when mentioning him in this
letter. Lamb had probably seen Priestley at the
Gravel Pit Chapel, Hackney, where he became morning preacher in December, 1791, remaining
there until March, 1794. Thenceforward he lived in America. His Institutes of Natural and Revealed
Religion appeared between 1772 and 1774. The other work referred to is
Letters to the
Philosophers and Politicians of France, newly edited by Theophilus Lindsey, the Unitarian, as An Answer to Mr. Paine’s “Age of
Reason,” 1795.]
LETTER 3 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Begun Wednesday, June 8. Dated on address: “Friday 10th
June,” 1796.]
WITH Joan
of Arc I have been delighted, amazed. I had not presumed to expect
any thing of such excellence from Southey. Why the poem is alone sufficient to redeem the
character of the age we live in from the imputation of degenerating in Poetry,
were there no such beings extant as Burns and Bowles,
Cowper and——fill up the
blank how you please, I say nothing. The subject is well chosen. It opens well.
To become more particular, I will notice in their order a few passages that
chiefly struck me on perusal. Page 26 “Fierce and terrible
Benevolence!” is a phrase full of grandeur and originality. The whole context made me feel possess’d, even like Joan herself. Page 28, “it is most horrible with the
keen sword to gore the finely fibred human frame” and what
follows pleased me mightily. In the 2d Book the first forty lines, in
particular, are majestic and high-sounding. Indeed the whole vision of the
palace of Ambition and what follows are supremely excellent. Your simile of the
Laplander “by Niemi’s lake Or Balda Zhiok, or the mossy stone Of
Sol far Kapper”—will bear comparison with any in Milton for fullness of circumstance and
lofty-pacedness of Versification. Southey’s similes,
tho’ many of ’em are capital, are all inferior. In one of his books
the simile of the Oak in the Storm occurs I think four times! To return, the
light in which you view the heathen deities is accurate and beautiful.
Southey’s personifications in this book are so
many fine and faultless pictures. I was much pleased with your manner of
accounting for the reason why Monarchs take delight in War. At the 447th line
you have placed Prophets and Enthusiasts cheek by jowl, on too intimate a
footing for the dignity of the former. Necessarian-like-speaking it is corect.
Page 98 “Dead is the Douglas, cold
thy warrior frame, illustrious Buchan” &c are of kindred excellence with
Gray’s “Cold is
Cadwallo’s tongue”
&c. How famously the Maid baffles the Doctors, Seraphic and Irrefragable,
“with all their trumpery!” 126 page, the procession, the
appearances of the Maid, of the Bastard son of Orleans and of Tremouille, are
full of fire and fancy, and exquisite melody of versification. The
personifications from line 303 to 309 in the heat of the battle had better been
omitted, they are not very striking and only encumber. The converse which Joan
and Conrade hold on the Banks of the Loire is altogether beautiful. Page 313,
the conjecture that in Dreams “all things are that seem” is
one of those conceits which the Poet delights to admit into his creed—a creed,
by the way, more marvellous and mystic than ever Athanasius dream’d of. Page 315, I need only mention those lines ending with “She saw a
serpent gnawing at her heart”!!! They are good imitative lines
“he toild and toild, of toil to reap no end, but endless toil and
never ending woe.” 347 page, Cruelty is such as Hogarth might have painted her. Page 361, all
the passage about Love (where he seems to confound conjugal love with Creating
and Preserving love) is very confused and sickens me with a load of useless
personifications. Else that 9th Book is the finest in the volume, an exquisite
combination of the ludicrous and the terrible,—I have never read either, even
in translation, but such as I conceive to be the manner of Dante and Ariosto. The 10th book is the most languid. On the whole,
considering the celerity wherewith the poem was finish’d, I was
astonish’d at the infrequency of weak lines. I had expected to find it
verbose. Joan, I think, does too little in Battle—Dunois, perhaps, the same—Conrade too much. The anecdotes interspersed
among the battles refresh the mind very agreeably, and I am delighted with the
very many passages of simple pathos abounding throughout the poem—passages
which the author of “Crazy
Kate” might have written. Has not Master
Southey spoke very slightingly in his preface and disparagingly
of Cowper’s Homer?—what
makes him reluctant to give Cowper his fame? And does not
Southey use too often the expletives “did”
and “does?” they have a good effect at times, but are too
inconsiderable, or rather become blemishes, when they mark a style. On the
whole, I expect Southey one day to rival
Milton. I already deem him equal to
Cowper, and superior to all living Poets Besides. What
says Coleridge? The “Monody on Henderson” is
immensely good; the rest of that little volume is
readable and above mediocrity. I proceed to a more
pleasant task,—pleasant because the poems are yours, pleasant because you
impose the task on me, and pleasant, let me add, because it will confer a
whimsical importance on me to sit in judgment upon your rhimes. First
tho’, let me thank you again and again in my own and my sister’s
name for your invitations. Nothing could give us more pleasure than to come,
but (were there no other reasons) while my Brother’s leg is so bad it is out of the question. Poor
fellow, he is very feverish and light headed, but Cruikshanks has pronounced the symptoms favorable, and gives us
every hope that there will be no need of amputation. God send, not. We are
necessarily confined with him the afternoon and evening till very late, so that
I am stealing a few minutes to write to you. Thank you for your frequent
letters, you are the only correspondent and I might add the only friend I have
in the world. I go no where and have no acquaintance. Slow of speech, and
reserved of manners, no one seeks or cares for my society and I am left alone.
Allen calls only occasionally, as
tho’ it were a duty rather, and seldom stays ten minutes. Then judge how
thankful I am for your letters. Do not, however, burthen yourself with the
correspondence. I trouble you again so soon, only in obedience to your
injunctions. Complaints apart, proceed we to our task. I am called away to tea,
thence must wait upon my brother, so must delay till to-morrow.
Farewell—Wednesday.
Thursday. I will first notice what is new to me. 13th page.
“The thrilling tones that concentrate the soul” is a
nervous line, and the 6 first lines of page 14 are very pretty. The 21st effusion a perfect
thing. That in the manner of
Spencer is very sweet, particularly at the close. The 35th effusion is most
exquisite—that line in particular, “And tranquil muse upon
tranquillity.” It is the very
reflex pleasure that distinguishes the tranquillity of a thinking being from
that of a shepherd—a modern one I would be understood to mean—a Dametas; one that keeps other people’s
sheep. Certainly, Coleridge, your letter from Shurton Bars
has less merit than most things in your volume; personally, it may chime in
best with your own feelings, and therefore you love it best. It has however
great merit. In your 4th
Epistle that is an exquisite paragraph and fancy-full of “A
stream there is which rolls in lazy flow” &c. &c.
“Murmurs sweet undersong ’mid jasmine bowers” is a
sweet line and so are the 3 next. The concluding simile is far-fetch’d.
“Tempest-honord” is a quaint-ish phrase. Of the Monody on H., I will here only
notice these lines, as superlatively excellent. That energetic one,
“Shall I not praise thee, Scholar, Christian, friend,”
like to that beautiful climax of Shakspeare “King, Hamlet, Royal Dane,
Father.” “Yet memory turns from little men to
thee!” “and sported careless round their fellow
child.” The whole, I repeat it, is immensely good. Yours is a
Poetical family. I was much surpriz’d and pleased to see the signature of
Sara to that elegant composition,
the 5th Epistle. I dare not
criticise the Relig
Musings, I like not to select any part where all is excellent. I can
only admire; and thank you for it in the name of a Christian as well as a Lover
of good Poetry. Only let me ask, is not that thought and those words in
Young, “Stands in the
Sun”? or is it only such as Young in one of
his better moments might have writ? “Believe,
thou, O my Soul, Life is a vision, shadowy of truth, And vice and anguish
and the wormy grave, Shapes of a dream!” I thank you for these
lines, in the name of a Necessarian, and for what follows in next paragraph in
the name of a child of fancy. After all you can[not] nor ever will write any
thing, with which I shall be so delighted as what I have heard yourself repeat.
You came to Town, and I saw you at a time when your heart was yet bleeding with
recent wounds. Like yourself, I was sore galled with disappointed Hope. You had
“many an holy lay, that mourning, soothed the mourner on his
way.” I had ears of sympathy to drink them in, and they yet
vibrate pleasant on the sense. When I read in your little volume, your 19th Effusion, or the
28th or 29th, or what you call the “Sigh,” I think I hear you again. I image to myself the little smoky room at
the Salutation and Cat, where we have sat together thro’ the winter
nights, beguiling the cares of life with Poesy. When you left London, I felt a
dismal void in my heart, I found myself cut off at one and the same time from
two most dear to me. “How blest with Ye the Path could I have trod of
Quiet life.” In your conversation you had blended so many
pleasant fancies, that they cheated me of my grief. But in your absence, the
tide of melancholy rushd in again, and did its worst Mischief by overwhelming
my Reason. I have recoverd. But feel a stupor that makes me indifferent to the
hopes and fears of this life. I sometimes wish to introduce a religious turn of
mind, but habits are strong things, and my religious fervors are confined alas
to some fleeting moments of occasional solitary devotion—A correspondence,
opening with you, has roused me a little from my lethargy, and made me
conscious of existence. Indulge me in it. I will not be very troublesome. At
some future time I will amuse you with an account as full as my memory will
permit of the strange turn my phrensy took. I look back upon it at times with a
gloomy kind of Envy. For while it lasted I had many many hours of pure
happiness. Dream not Coleridge, of having tasted all the
grandeur and wildness of Fancy, till you have gone mad. All now seems to me
vapid; comparatively so. Excuse this selfish digression.
Your monody is so superlatively excellent, that I can only wish it
perfect, which I can’t help feeling it is not quite. Indulge me in a few
conjectures. What I am going to propose would make it more compress’d and
I think more energic, tho’ I am sensible at the expence of many beautiful
lines. Let it begin “Is this the land of song-ennobled
line,” and proceed to “Otway’s famish’d form.” Then
“Thee Chatterton,” to “blaze of Seraphim.”
Then “clad in nature’s rich array,” to
“orient day;” then “but soon the scathing
lightning,” to “blighted land.” Then
“Sublime of thought” to “his bosom
glows.” Then “but soon upon his poor unshelterd head Did
Penury her sickly Mildew shed, and soon are fled the charms of vernal
Grace, and Joy’s wild gleams that lightend o’er his
face!” Then “Youth of tumultuous soul” to
“sigh” as before. The rest may all stand down to
“gaze upon the waves below.” What follows now may come
next, as detached verses, suggested by the Monody, rather than a part of it.
They are indeed in themselves very sweet “And we at sober eve would
round thee throng, Hanging enraptured on thy stately song”—in
particular perhaps. If I am obscure you may understand me by counting lines. I
have proposed omitting 24 lines. I feel that thus comprest it would gain
energy, but think it most likely you will not agree with me, for who shall go
about to bring opinions to the Bed of Procrustes and introduce among the Sons of Men a monotony of
identical feelings. I only propose with diffidence. Reject, you, if you please,
with as little remorse as you would the color of a coat or the pattern of a
buckle where our fancies differ’d. The lines “Friend to the
friendless” &c. which you may think “rudely
disbranched” from the Chatterton will patch
in with the Man of Ross,
where they were once quite at Home, with 2 more which I recollect “and
o’er the dowried virgin’s snowy cheek bad bridal love suffuse his blushes meek!” very
beautiful. The Pixies
is a perfect thing, and so are the lines on the spring, page 28. The
Epitaph on an Infant,
like a Jack of lanthorn, has danced about (or like Dr.
Forster’s scholars) out of the Morn Chron into the Watchman, and thence back into your
Collection. It is very pretty, and you seem to think so, but, may be o’er
looked its chief merit, that of filling up a whole page. I had once deemd
Sonnets of unrivalled use that way, but your epitaphs, I find, are the more
diffuse. Edmund still
holds its place among your best verses. “Ah! fair delights” to
“roses round” in your Poem called Absence recall (none more forcibly) to my
mind the tones in which you recited it. I will not
notice in this tedious (to you) manner verses which have been so long
delightful to me, and which you already know my opinion of. Of this kind are
Bowles, Priestly, and that most
exquisite and most Bowles-like of all, the 19th Effusion. It would have better
ended with “agony of care.” The last 2 lines are obvious and
unnecessary and you need not now make 14 lines of it, now it is rechristend
from a Sonnet to an Effusion. Schiller
might have written the 20
Effusion. ’Tis worthy of him in any sense. I was glad to meet
with those lines you sent me, when my Sister was so ill. I had lost the Copy,
and I felt not a little proud at seeing my name in your verse. The complaint of
Ninathoma (1st stanza in particular) is the best, or only good imitation, of
Ossian I ever saw—your restless gale
excepted. “To an infant” is most sweet—is
not “foodful,” tho’, very harsh! would not
“dulcet” fruit be less harsh, or some other friendly bi-syllable?
In Edmund, “Frenzy fierce-eyed child,” is not so well as
frantic—tho’ that is an epithet adding nothing to the meaning. Slander
couching was better than squatting. In the Man of Ross it was a better line thus
“If ’neath this roof thy wine-chear’d moments
pass” than as it stands now. Time nor nothing can reconcile me to the
concluding 5 lines of Kosciusko: call it any thing you will but sublime. In my 12th Effusion I had rather
have seen what I wrote myself, tho’ they bear no comparison with your
exquisite lines “On rose-leaf’d beds amid your faery
bowers,” &c.—I love my sonnets because they are the reflected
images of my own feelings at different times. To instance, in the 13th
“How reason reel’d,” &c.—are good lines but
must spoil the whole with Me who know it is only a fiction of yours and that
the rude dashings did in fact not rock me to repose. I grant the same objection applies not to
the former sonnet, but still I love my own feelings. They are dear to memory,
tho’ they now and then wake a sigh or a tear. “Thinking on
divers things foredone,” I charge you, Col.,
spare my ewe lambs, and tho’ a Gentleman may borrow six lines in an epic
poem (I should have no objection to borrow 500 and without acknowledging) still
in a Sonnet—a per-sonal poem—I do not “ask my friend the aiding verse.” I
would not wrong your feelings by proposing any improvements (did I think myself
capable of suggesting ’em) in such personal poems as “Thou
bleedest my poor heart”—“od so, I am catchd, I have already
done it—but that simile I propose abridging would not change the feeling or
introduce any alien ones. Do you understand me? In the 28th however, and in the
“Sigh” and that composed at Clevedon, things that come from the
heart direct, not by the medium of the fancy, I would not suggest an
alteration. When my blank verse is finished, or any long fancy poems,
“propino tibi alterandum, cut-up-andum,
abridg-andum,” just what you will with it—but spare my ewe lambs! That to Mrs. Siddons now you were welcome to
improve, if it had been worth it. But I say unto you again,
Col., spare my ewe lambs. I
must confess were they mine I should omit, in Editione secundâ, Effusions 2-3,
because satiric, and below the dignity of the poet of Religious Musings, 5-7, half of
the 8th, that written in early Youth, as far as “Thousand
eyes,”—tho’ I part not unreluctantly with that lively line
“Chaste Joyance dancing in her bright-blue eyes” and one
or 2 more just thereabouts. But I would substitute for it that sweet poem
called “Recollection” in the 5th No. of the Watchman, better I think than the remainder of this poem,
tho’ not differing materially. As the poem now stands it looks altogether
confused. And do not omit those lines upon the “early blossom,” in your 6th No.
of the Watchman, and I would omit the 10th
Effusion—or what would do better, alter and improve the last 4 lines. In fact,
I suppose if they were mine I should not omit ’em. But your verse is for
the most part so exquisite, that I like not to see aught of meaner matter mixed
with it. Forgive my petulance and often, I fear, ill founded criticisms, and
forgive me that I have, by this time, made your eyes and head ach with my long
letter. But I cannot forego hastily the pleasure and pride of thus conversing
with you.
You did not tell me whether I was to include the Conciones ad Populum in my
remarks on your poems. They are not unfrequently sublime, and I think you could
not do better than to turn ’em into verse,—if you have nothing else to
do. Allen I am sorry to say is a confirmed Atheist. Stodart, or Stothard, a cold hearted well bred conceited
disciple of Godwin, does him no good.
His wife has several daughters (one of
’em as old as himself). Surely there is something unnatural in such a
marriage. How I sympathise with you on the dull duty of a reviewer, and
heartily damn with you Ned
Evans and the Prosodist. I shall however wait impatiently for the
articles in the Crit. Rev., next
month, because they are yours. Young Evans (W. Evans, a branch of a family you were once so intimate with) is come into our
office, and sends his love to you. Coleridge, I devoutly wish that Fortune, who has made sport
with you so long, may play one freak more, throw you into London, or some spot
near it, and there snug-ify you for life. ’Tis a selfish but natural wish
for me, cast as I am “on life’s wide plain,
friend-less.” Are you acquainted with Bowles? I see, by is last Elegy (written at Bath), you are near
neighbours. “And I can think I can see the groves again—was it the
voice of thee—Twas not the voice of thee, my buried friend—who dries with
her dark locks the tender tear”—are touches as true to nature as
any in his other Elegy, written at
the hot wells, about poor Russell, &c.— You are doubtless acquainted with
it.—Thursday.
I do not know that I entirely agree with you in your
stricture upon my Sonnet to
Innocence. To men whose hearts are not quite deadend by their
commerce with the world, Innocence (no longer familiar) becomes an awful idea.
So I felt when I wrote it. Your other censures (qualified and sweeten’d,
tho’, with praises somewhat extravagant) I perfectly coincide with. Yet I
chuse to retain the word “lunar”—indulge a “lunatic” in
his loyalty to his mistress the moon. I have just been reading a most pathetic
copy of verses on Sophia Pringle, who
was hanged and burn’d for coining. One of the strokes of pathos (which
are very many, all somewhat obscure) is “She lifted up her guilty
forger to heaven.” A note explains by forger her right hand with
which she forged or coined the base metal! For pathos read bathos. You have put
me out of conceit with my blank verse by your Religious Musings. I think it
will come to nothing. I do not like ’em enough to send ’em. I have
just been reading a book, which I may be too partial to, as it was the delight
of my childhood; but I will recommend it to you—it is “Izaak Walton’s Complete
Angler!” All the scientific part you may omit in reading. The
dialogue is very simple, full of pastoral beauties, and will charm you. Many
pretty old verses are interspersed. This letter, which would be a week’s
work reading only, I do not wish you to answer in less than a month. I shall be
richly content with a letter from you some day early in July—tho’ if you
get any how settled before then pray let me know it
immediately—’twould give me such satisfaction. Concerning the unitarian
chapel, the salary is the only scruple that the most rigid moralist would admit
as valid. Concerning the tutorage—is not the salary low, and absence from your
family unavoidable? London is the only fostering soil for Genius.
Nothing more occurs just now, so I will leave you in mercy
one small white spot empty below, to repose your eyes upon, fatigued as they
must be with the wilderness of words they have by this time painfully
travell’d thro’. God love you, Coleridge, and prosper you thro’ life,
tho’ mine will be loss if your lot is to be cast at Bristol or at
Nottingham or any where but London. Our loves to Mrs. C——
C. L.
Note
[Southey’sJoan of Arc, with
contributions to Book II. by Coleridge, had been
published in quarto by Cottle.
Coleridge contributed to Book II. the first 450 lines, with the
exception of 141-143, 148-222, 266-272 and 286-291. He subsequently took out his lines and
gave them new shape as the poem “The
Destiny of Nations,” printed in Sibylline Leaves, 1817. All
subsequent editions of Southey’s poem appeared without
Coleridge’s portion. The passages on page 26 and page 28
were Southey’s. Those at the beginning of the second book were
Coleridge’s. The simile of the Laplander may be read in
“The Destiny of Nations” (lines 63-79). These
were the reasons given by Coleridge for monarchs making war:— When Luxury and Lust’s exhausted stores No more can rouse the appetites of Kings; When the low Flattery of their reptile Lords Falls flat and heavy on the accustomed ear; When Eunuchs sing, and Fools buffoon’ry make, And Dancers writhe their harlot limbs in vain: Then War and all its dread vicissitudes Pleasingly agitate their stagnant hearts. . . .
The 447th line was Coleridge’s. This is the passage:— Whether thy Law with unrefracted Ray Beam on the Prophet’s purged Eye, or if Diseasing Realms the Enthusiast, wild of thought, Scatter new frenzies on the infected Throng, Thou, Both inspiring and foredooming, Both Fit Instruments and best of perfect End. Lines 446-451. With page 98 we come to Southey again, the
remaining references being to him. “Cold is Cadwallo’s tongue” is from Gray’sBard; “with all their trumpery” is from Paradise Lost,
III., 475. The maid baffles the doctors in Book III.; page 126 is in Book IV.; the
personifications are in Book VI.; the converse between Joan and Conrade is in Book IV.; page
313 is at the beginning of Book IX.; and pages 315, 347 and 361 are also in Book IX.
Southey in the preface to Joan of
Arc, speaking of Homer, says:
“Pope has isguised him in fop-finery
and Cowper has stripped him naked.”
“Crazy Kate” is an episode in The Task (“The
Sofa”).
The “Monody on John
Henderson,” by Joseph Cottle, was
printed anonymously in a volume of poems in 1795, and again in The Malvern Hills. John Henderson (1757-1788) was an eccen-tric scholar of Bristol. The lines praised by Lamb are the 4th, 12th and 64th. The poem must not be confused with the
Monody on Henderson, the actor, by
G. D. Harley. Lamb
misquotes the line in “Hamlet”: see Act I., Sc. 4, 44, 45. Lamb now turns again
to Coleridge’sPoems. The poem on the 13th
and 14th pages of this little volume was “To the Rev. W. J. H.” The 21st Effusion was that entitled “Composed while Climbing the Left Ascent of
Brockley Coomb.” The 35th Effusion is known as “The Æolian Harp.” The letter from Shurton Bars is the poem beginning— Nor travels my meand’ring eye. The 4th Epistle is that to Joseph
Cottle, Coleridge’s publisher and the author of the
“Monody on Henderson,” referred to in
Coleridge’s verses. The lines which
Lamb quotes are Cottle’s. The poem by Sara Coleridge is “The Silver Thimble.” The passage in the
“Religious
Musings,” for which Lamb is thankful as a “child
of fancy,” is the last paragraph:— Contemplant Spirits! ye that hover o’er With untired gaze the immeasurable fount Ebullient with creative Deity! And ye of plastic power, that interfused Roll through the grosser and material mass In organising surge! Holies of God! (And what if Monads of the infinite mind?) I haply journeying my immortal course Shall sometime join your mystic choir! Till then I discipline my young noviciate thought In ministeries of heart-stirring song, And aye on Meditation’s heaven-ward wing Soaring aloft I breathe the empyreal air Of Love, omnific, omnipresent Love, Whose day-spring rises glorious in my soul As the great Sun, when he his influence Sheds on the frost-bound waters—The glad stream Flows to the ray and warbles as it flows.
“You came to Town . . .” Soon after his engagement
with Sara Fricker, his heart being still not wholly
healed of its passion for Mary Evans, Coleridge had gone to London from Bristol, nominally to
arrange for the publication of his Fall of Robespierre, and had resumed intercourse with
Lamb and other old Christ’s Hospital
friends. There he remained until Southey forcibly
took him back in January, 1795. From what Lamb says of the loss of two
friends we must suppose, in default of other information, that he had to give up his
Anna at the same time. The loss of reason,
however, to which he refers did not come until the end of the year 1795.
“Many an holy lay . . .” The lines of which Lamb is thinking are these— Holy be the Lay, Which mourning soothes the mourner on his way! quoted by Coleridge in the preface to his Poems, 1796.
The 19th Effusion, afterwards called “On a Discovery Made Too Late;” the 28th,
“The Kiss;” the 29th,
“Imitated from
Ossian.”
“How blest with Ye the Path . . .” Lines 1 and 2 of Bowles’ sonnet “In Memoriam.”
“Your monody.” This, not to be confounded with
Cottle’s “Monody on Henderson,” was Coleridge’s “Monody on Chatterton.” Lamb’s emendations were not accepted. As regards “The Man of Ross,” the couplet
beginning “Friend to the friendless” ultimately had a place both in that
poem and in the Monody, but the couplet “and o’er
the dowried virgin” was never replaced in either. The lines on spring, page
28, are “Lines to a Beautiful
Spring.” Dr. Forster (Faustus) was the hero of the nursery rhyme, whose scholars
danced out of England into France and Spain and back again. The epitaph on an infant was in
The
Watchman, No. IX. (see note on page 63). The poem
“Edmund” is called “Lines on a Friend who died of a frenzy fever induced by
calumnious reports.” The lines in “Absence” are those in the second stanza of the
poem. They run thus:— Ah fair Delights! that o’er my soul On Memory’s wing, like shadows fly! Ah Flowers! which Joy from Eden stole While Innocence stood smiling by!— But cease, fond Heart! this bootless moan: Those Hours on rapid Pinions flown Shall yet return, by Absence crowned, And scatter livelier roses round. The 19th Effusion, beginning, “Thou bleedest, my poor heart,” is
known as “On a Discovery Made Too
Late.” The 20th Effusion is the sonnet to Schiller. The lines which were sent to
Lamb, written in December, 1794, are called “To a Friend, together with an unfinished
poem” (“Religious Musings”). Coleridge’s
“Restless Gale” is the imitation of Ossian, beginning, “The
stream with languid murmur creeps.” “Foodful” occurs thus
in the lines “To an
Infant”:— Alike the foodful fruit and scorching fire Awake thy eager grasp and young desire. Coleridge did not alter the phrase.
Lamb contributed four effusions to this volume of
Coleridge’s: the 7th, to Mrs. Siddons (written in conjunction with
Coleridge), the 11th, 12th and 13th.
All were signed C. L.Coleridge had permitted himself to make various alterations. The
following parallel will show the kind of treatment to which Lamb
objected:— Lamb’s Original Effusion
(ii) Was it some sweet device of Faery That mock’d my steps with many a lonely glade, And fancied wanderings with a fair-hair’d maid? Have these things been? or what rare witchery, Impregning with delights the charmed air, Enlighted up the semblance of a smile In those fine eyes? methought they spake the while Soft soothing things, which might enforce despair To drop the murdering knife, and let go by His foul resolve. And does the lonely glade Still court the foot-steps of the fair hair’d maid? Still in her locks the gales of summer sigh? While I forlorn do wander reckless where, And ’mid my wanderings meet no Anna there. As Altered by Coleridge Was it some sweet device of faery land That mock’d my steps with many a lonely glade, And fancied wand’rings with a fair hair’d maid? Have these things been? Or did the wizard wand Of Merlin wave, impregning vacant air, And kindle up the vision of a smile In those blue eyes, that seem’d to speak the while Such tender things, as might enforce Despair To drop the murth’ring knife, and let go by His fell resolve? Ah me! the lonely glade Still courts the footsteps of the fair hair’d maid, Among whose locks the west-winds love to sigh: But I forlorn do wander, reckless where, And mid my wand’rings find no Anna there!
In Effusion
12Lamb had written: Or we might sit and tell some tender tale Of faithful vows repaid by cruel scorn, A tale of true love, or of friend forgot; And I would teach thee, lady, how to rail In gentle sort, on those who practise not Or Love or pity, though of woman born. Coleridge made it:— But ah! sweet scenes of fancied bliss, adieu! On rose-leaf beds amid your faery bowers I all too long have lost the dreamy hours! Beseems it now the sterner Muse to woo, If haply she her golden meed impart To realize the vision of the heart.
Again in the 13th Effusion, “Written at Midnight, by the Seaside, after a
Voyage,” Lamb had dotted out the last
two lines. Coleridge substituted the couplet:— How Reason reel’d! What gloomy transports rose! Till the rude dashings rock’d them to repose.
“Thinking on divers things foredone.” Adapted from Burton’s “Author’s
Abstract of Melancholy,” prefixed to the Anatomy: When I go musing all alone, Thinking of divers things fore-known.
“Ask my friend the aiding verse.” From Coleridge’s lines “To a Friend” (Lamb), line 4:— I ask not now, my friend! the aiding verse.
“Propino tibi
alterandum . . .”—“I pass it on to you for
alteration,” etc. Probably a modification of Terence (Eun., V., 9, 57), “hunc comedendum et deridendum vobis
propino.”
Effusion 2, which Lamb would omit,
was the sonnet “To Burke;”
Effusion 3, “To Mercy” (on
Pitt); Effusion 5, “To Erskine;” Effusion 7,
Lamb and Coleridge’s
joint sonnet “To Mrs.
Siddons;” and Effusion 8, “To Koskiusko.” The “Lines Written in Early Youth” were afterwards
called “Lines on an Autumnal Evening.” The poem
called “Recollection,”
in The
Watchman, was reborn as “Sonnet to the River
Otter.” The lines on the
early blossom were praised by Lamb in a previous letter
(see page 8). The 10th Effusion was the sonnet to Earl Stanhope.
Godwin was William Godwin, the
philosopher. We shall later see much of him. It was Allen’s wife, not Stoddart’s, who had a grown-up daughter.
I have not identified the prosodist, but Ned Evans was a novel in four
volumes, published in 1796, an imitation of Tom Jones, which presumably Coleridge was reviewing for the Critical Review. A notice, a very short one,
appeared in the November number.
Young W. Evans is said by
Mr. Dykes Campbell to have been the only son of
the Mrs. Evans who befriended Coleridge when he was at Christ’s Hospital, the mother of his first
love, Mary Evans. Evans was at
school with Coleridge and Lamb.
We shall meet with him again.
“On life’s wide plain, friendless.” From
Bowles’ sonnet “At Oxford, 1786”:— Yet on life’s wide plain Left fatherless, where many a wanderer sighs Hourly, and oft our road is lone and long.
William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850), the sonneteer, who
had exerted so powerful a poetical influence on Coleridge’s mind, was at this time rector of Cricklade in Wiltshire
(1792-1797), but had been ill at Bath. The elegy in question was “Elegiac Stanzas written during sickness at Bath, December,
1795.” The lines quoted by Lamb are
respectively in the 6th, 4th, 5th and 19th Stanzas.
This was Lamb’ssonnet to Innocence:— We were two pretty babes, the youngest she, The youngest, and the loveliest far, I ween, And Innocence her name. The time has been, We two did love each other’s company; Time was, we two had wept to have been apart. But when by show of seeming good beguiled, I left the garb and manners of a child, And my first love for man’s society, Defiling with the world my virgin heart— My loved companion dropped a tear, and fled, And hid in deepest shades her awful head. Beloved, who shall tell me where thou art— In what delicious Eden to be found— That I may seek thee the wide world around? Coleridge’s strictures upon it no longer
exist. In a footnote to the pamphlet of sonnets which he compiled during this year (see
page 69) he praised it.
Sophia Pringle. Probably the subject of a Catnach or
other popular broadside. I have not found it.
Izaak Walton. Lamb returns to praises of The Compleat Angler in his letter to Robert Lloyd referred to on page 212.
The reference to the Unitarian chapel bears probably upon an offer of a
pulpit to Coleridge, who at that time occasionally
preached. The tutorship was probably that offered to Coleridge by
Mrs. Evans of Darley Hall (no relation to
Mary Evans) who wished him to teach her sons.
Neither project was carried through.]
LETTER 4 (Apparently a continuation of a letter the first part of
which is missing) CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Begun] Monday Night [June 13, 1796].
UNFURNISHED at present with any sheet-filling
subject, I shall continue my letter gradually and journal-wise. My second
thoughts entirely coincide with your comments on “Joan of Arc,” and I can only wonder at
my childish judgment which overlooked the 1st book and could prefer the 9th:
not that I was insensible to the soberer beauties of the former, but the latter
caught me with its glare of magic,—the former, however, left a more pleasing
general recollection in my mind. Let me add, the 1st book was the favourite of
my sister—and I now, with Joan, often
“think on Domremi and the fields of Arc.” I must not
pass over without acknowledging my obligations to your full and satisfactory
account of personifications. I have read it
again and again, and it will be a guide to my future taste. Perhaps I had
estimated Southey’s merits too
much by number, weight, and measure. I now agree completely and entirely in
your opinion of the genius of Southey. Your own image of
melancholy is illustrative of what you teach, and in itself masterly. I
conjecture it is “disbranched” from one of your embryo
“hymns.” When they are mature of birth (were I you) I should print
’em in one separate volume, with “Religious Musings” and your
part of the “Joan of Arc.” Birds of the
same soaring wing should hold on their flight in company. Once for all (and by
renewing the subject you will only renew in me the condemnation of Tantalus), I hope to be able to pay you a visit
(if you are then at Bristol) some time in the latter end of August or beginning
of September for a week or fortnight; before that time, office business puts an
absolute veto on my coming. “And if a sigh that speaks regret of happier times appear, A glimpse of joy that we have met shall shine and dry the
tear.” Of the blank verses I spoke of, the following lines are the only tolerably
complete ones I have writ out of not more than one hundred and fifty. That I
get on so slowly you may fairly impute to want of practice in composition, when
I declare to you that (the few verses which you have seen excepted) I have not
writ fifty lines since I left school. It may not be amiss to remark that my
grandmother (on whom the verses are written) lived housekeeper in a family the fifty or
sixty last years of her life—that she was a woman of exemplary piety and
goodness—and for many years before her death was terribly afflicted with a
cancer in her breast which she bore with true Christian patience. You may think
that I have not kept enough apart the ideas of her heavenly and her earthly
master but recollect I have designedly given in to her own way of feeling—and
if she had a failing, ’twas that she respected her master’s family
too much, not reverenced her Maker too little. The lines begin imperfectly, as
I may probably connect ’em if I finish at all,—and if I do, Biggs shall print ’em in a more
economical way than you yours, for (Sonnets and all) they won’t make a
thousand lines as I propose completing ’em, and the substance must be
wire-drawn.
Tuesday Evening, June 14, 1796.
I am not quite satisfied now with the Chatterton, and with your leave will
try my hand at it again. A master joiner, you know, may leave a cabinet to
be finished, when his own hands are full. To your list of illustrative
personifications, into which a fine imagination enters, I will take leave
to add the following from Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Wife for a Month;” ’tis the
conclusion of a description of a sea-fight;—“The game of death was
never played so nobly; the meagre thief grew wanton in his mischiefs,
and his shrunk hollow eyes smiled on his ruins.” There is
fancy in these of a lower order from “Bonduca;”—“Then did I
see these valiant men of Britain, like boding owls creep into tods of
ivy, and hoot their fears to one another nightly.” Not that
it is a personification; only it just caught my eye in a little extract
book I keep, which is full of quotations from B. and F. in particular, in
which authors I can’t help thinking there is a greater richness of
poetical fancy than in any one, Shakspeare excepted. Are you acquainted with Massinger? At a hazard I will trouble you
with a passage from a play of his called “A Very Woman.” The lines are spoken
by a lover (disguised) to his faithless mistress. You will remark the fine
effect of the double endings. You will by your ear distinguish the lines,
for I write ’em as prose. “Not far from where my father lives,
a lady, a neighbour by, blest with as great a beauty as nature durst bestow without undoing, dwelt, and most happily, as I thought then,
and blest the house a thousand times she dwelt in.
This beauty, in the blossom of my youth, when my first fire knew no
adulterate incense, nor I no way to flatter but my
fondness; in all the bravery my friends could
show me, in all the faith my innocence could give me, in the best language my true tongue could
tell me, and all the broken sighs my sick heart
lend me, I sued and served; long did I serve
this lady, long was my travail, long my trade to win her; with all the duty of my soul I served her.” “Then she must
love.” “She did, but never me: she could not love me; she would not love, she hated,—more, she scorn’d me; and in so poor and base a way abused me for all my services, for all my bounties, so bold neglects flung on
me”—“What out of love, and worthy love, I gave her (shame to her most unworthy mind,) to fools, to girls,
to fiddlers and her boys she flung, all in disdain of me.” One more
passage strikes my eye from B. and
F.’s “Palamon and Arcite.” One of
’em complains in prison: “This is all our world; we shall
know nothing here but one another, hear nothing but the clock that
tells our woes; the vine shall grow, but we shall never see
it,” &c. Is not the last circumstance exquisite? I mean not
to lay myself open by saying they exceed Milton, and perhaps Collins, in sublimity. But don’t you conceive all
poets after Shakspeare yield to ’em in variety
of genius? Massinger treads close on their heels; but
you are most probably as well acquainted with his writings as your humble
servant. My quotations, in that case, will only serve to expose my
barrenness of matter. Southey in
simplicity and tenderness, is excelled decidedly only, I think, by
Beaumont and F. in his
[their] “Maid’s Tragedy”
and some parts of “Philaster” in particular, and elsewhere occasionally; and
perhaps by Cowper in his
“Crazy Kate,” and in parts of his
translation, such as
the speeches of Hecuba and Andromache. I long to know your opinion of
that translation. The Odyssey especially is
surely very Homeric. What nobler than the appearance of Phœbus at the beginning of the Iliad—the lines ending with “Dread
sounding, bounding on the silver bow!”
I beg you will give me your opinion of the translation;
it afforded me high pleasure. As curious a specimen of translation as ever fell
into my hands, is a young
man’s in our office, of a French novel. What in the
original was literally “amiable delusions of the fancy,”
he proposed to render “the fair frauds of the imagination!” I
had much trouble in licking the book into any meaning at all. Yet did the
knave clear fifty or sixty pounds by subscription and selling the
copyright. The book itself not a week’s work! To-day’s portion
of my journalising epistle has been very dull and poverty-stricken. I will
here end.
Tuesday Night.
I have been drinking egg-hot and smoking Oronooko
(associated circumstances, which ever forcibly recall to my mind our
evenings and nights at the Salutation); my eyes and brain are heavy and
asleep, but my heart is awake; and if words came as ready as ideas, and
ideas as feelings, I could say ten hundred kind things. Coleridge, you know not my supreme
happiness at having one on earth (though counties separate us) whom I can
call a friend. Remember you those tender lines of Logan?— “Our broken friendships we deplore, And loves of youth that are no more; No after friendships e’er can raise Th’ endearments of our early days, And ne’er the heart such fondness prove, As when we first began to love.”
I am writing at random, and half-tipsy, what you may not
equally understand, as you will be sober when
you read it; but my sober and my half-tipsy hours you are alike a sharer
in. Good night. “Then up rose our bard, like a prophet in drink, Craigdoroch, thou’lt soar when creation shall
sink.” Burns.
Thursday [June 16, 1796].
I am now in high hopes to be able to visit you, if
perfectly convenient on your part, by the end of next month—perhaps the
last week or fortnight in July. A change of scene and a change of faces would do me good, even if that scene were
not to be Bristol, and those faces Coleridge’s and his friends. In the words of
Terence, a little altered,
“Tædet me hujus quotidiani mundi.” I am
heartily sick of the every-day scenes of life. I shall half wish you
unmarried (don’t show this to Mrs.
C.) for one evening only, to have the pleasure of smoking
with you, and drinking egg-hot in some little smoky room in a pot-house,
for I know not yet how I shall like you in a decent room, and looking quite
happy. My best love and respects to Sara
notwithstanding.
Yours sincerely, Charles Lamb.
Note
[Coleridge’s image of
melancholy will be found in the lines “Melancholy—a fragment.” It was published in
Sibylline
Leaves, 1817, and in a note Coleridge said that the
verses were printed in the Morning
Chronicle in 1794. They were really printed in the Morning Post, December 12, 1797.
Coleridge had probably sent them to Lamb in MS. The “hymns” came to nothing.
“Disbranched” is a quotation from “Religious Musings”:— From the tree Of Knowledge, ere the vernal sap had risen, Rudely disbranch’d! Lines 283-285 (1796).
“And if a sigh that speaks . . .” Cowper, “To the Rev. Mr. Newton: an Invitation into the
Country.” From the last stanza, incorrectly quoted.
“The following lines.” Lamb’s poem “The
Grandame” was presumably included in this letter. I give the text as it
was printed in Charles Lloyd’sPoems on the Death of
Priscilla Farmer later in the year:—
THE GRANDAME On the hill top green Hard by the house of prayer (an humble roof, In nought distinguish’d from its neighbour barn Save by a slender tapering length of spire), The Grandam sleeps. A plain stone barely tells Her name and date to the chance passenger: For lowly born was she, and long had eat Well-earn’d the bread of service; hers was else A mounting spirit; one that entertain’d Scorn of base action, deed dishonourable, Or aught unseemly. I remember well Her reverend image; I remember too With what a zeal she serv’d her master’s house; And how the prattling tongue of garrulous age Delighted to recount the oft-told tale, Or anecdote domestic: wise she was, And wond’rous skill’d in genealogies, And could in apt and voluble terms discourse Of births, of titles, and alliances; Of marriages and intermarriages; Relationships remote or near of kin; Of friends offended, family disgrac’d, Maiden high-born but wayward, disobeying Parental strict injunction, and regardless Of unmix’d blood, and ancestry remote, Stooping to wed with one of low degree. But these are not thy praises, and I wrong Her honour’d memory, recording chiefly Things light or trivial. Better ’twere to tell, How with a nobler zeal and warmer love She serv’d her heavenly Master. I have seen That reverend form bent down with age and pain, And rankling malady—yet not for that Ceas’d she to praise her Maker, or withdrew Her trust from him, her faith, and humble hope: So meekly had she learn’d to bear her cross. For she had studied patience in the school Of Christ; much comfort she had thence deriv’d, And was a follower of the Nazarene.
Mary Field, Lamb’s grandmother, died July 31, 1792, aged seventy-nine, and was
buried in Widford churchyard. She had been for many years housekeeper in the
Plumer family at Blakesware. On William
Plumer’s moving to Gilston, a neighbouring seat, in 1767, she had sole
charge of the Blakesware mansion, where her grandchildren used to visit her. Compare
Lamb’sElia essays “Blakesmoor in H——shire” and “Dream-Children.”
N. Biggs was the printer of Coleridge’sPoems, 1797.
Lamb had begun his amendment of Coleridge’s “Monody on the Death of Chatterton” in his letter
of June 10. Coleridge’s illustrative personifications, here
referred to, are in that poem. The extract book from which Lamb copied
his quotations from Beaumont and Fletcher and Massinger was, he afterwards tells us,
destroyed; but similar volumes, which he filled later, are preserved at Rowfant by
Mr. Godfrey Locker-Lampson. The extract from “A Wife for a Month“ is in Act VI.,
Scene 1. The extract from “Bonduca” is from Act I., Scene 1; the whole passage was included in
Lamb’sDramatic Specimens, 1808. The extract from Palamon and Arcite (“The Two Noble Kinsmen”) is in Dramatic Specimens in full: from Act II., Scene 2. The passage from
Massinger, which is also in Dramatic Specimens, we shall meet again as the motto
to Lamb’s part in
Coleridge’sPoems, second edition, 1797.
Cowper’s translation.—Writing to Charles Lloyd, sen., in 1809, Lamb
says of Cowper as a translator of Homer that he “delays you . . . walking over a Bowling Green.”
Canon Ainger possessed a copy of the book translated
by Lamb’sfellow-clerk. It was called Sentimental Tablets of the Good Pamphile.
“Translated from the French of M. Gorjy by P. S. Dupuy of the East India
House, 1795.” Among the subscribers’ names were Thomas Bye (5 copies), Ball, Evans,
Savory (2 copies), and Lamb himself.
Logan’s lines are in the “Ode on the Death of a Young Lady,”
8th Stanza, lines 3 and 4, and 9th Stanza, lines 1-4; Burns’ in “The
Whistle,” Stanza 17.
“Tædet me hujus quotidiani
munndi.” Terence’s words are (Eunuchus, II., 3, 6): “Taedet quotidianarum harum
formarum”—“I am aweary of these everyday shapes.” Lamb was very fond of this quotation.]
LETTER 5 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Probably begun on Wednesday, June 29. p.m. July 1, 1796.]
THE first moment I can come I will, but my hopes of
coming yet a while yet hang on a ticklish thread. The coach I come by is
immaterial as I shall so easily by your direction find ye out. My mother is
grown so entirely helpless (not having any use of her limbs) that Mary is necessarily confined from ever sleeping
out, she being her bed fellow. She thanks you tho’ and will accompany me
in spirit. Most exquisite are the lines from Withers. Your own lines introductory to your poem on Self run
smoothly and pleasurably, and I exhort you to continue ’em. What shall I
say to your Dactyls? They
are what you would call good per se, but a parody on some of ’em is just
now suggesting itself, and you shall have it rough and unlicked. I mark with
figures the lines parodied. 4—Sórely your Dáctyls do drág along límp-footed. 5—Sád is the méasure that hángs a clod roúnd ’em so, 6—Méagre, and lánguid, procláiming its wrétchedness. 1—Wéary, unsátisfied, nót little síck of ’em, 11—Cóld is my tíred heart, Í have no chárity. 2—Paínfully tráveling thus óver the rúgged road. 7—Ó begone, Méasure, half Látin, half Énglish, then. 12—Dísmal your Dáctyls are, Gód help ye, rhýming Ones. I possibly may not come this fortnight—therefore
all thou hast to do is not to look for me any particular day, only to write
word immediately if at any time you quit Bristol, lest I come and
Taffy be not at home. I hope I can come in a day or
two. But young Savory of my office is suddenly taken ill
in this very nick of time and I must officiate for him till he can come to work
again. Had the knave gone sick and died
and putrefied at any other time, philosophy might have afforded one comfort,
but just now I have no patience with him. Quarles I am as great a stranger to as I was to
Withers. I wish you would try and do something to
bring our elder bards into more general fame. I writhe with indignation when in
books of Criticism, where common place quotation is heaped upon quotation, I
find no mention of such men as Massinger, or B. and
Fl, men with whom succeeding
Dramatic Writers (Otway alone excepted)
can bear no manner of comparison. Stupid Knox hath noticed none of ’em among his extracts.
Thursday.—Mrs. C. can
scarce guess how she has gratified me by her very kind letter and sweet little
poem. I feel that I should thank her in rhyme, but she
must take my acknowledgment at present in plain honest prose. The uncertainty
in which I yet stand whether I can come or no damps my spirits, reduces me a
degree below prosaical, and keeps me in a suspense that fluctuates between hope
and fear. Hope is a charming, lively, blue-eyed wench, and I am always glad of
her company, but could dispense with the visitor she brings with her, her
younger sister, Fear, a white-liver’d, lilly-cheeked, bashful,
palpitating, awkward hussey, that hangs like a green girl at her sister’s
apronstrings, and will go with her whithersoever she
goes. For the life and soul of me I could not improve those lines in your poem
on the Prince and Princess, so I changed them to what you bid me and left
’em at Perry’s. I think
’em altogether good, and do not see why you were sollicitous about any alteration. I have not yet seen, but will make it my
business to see, to-day’s Chronicle, for your verses on Horne Took. Dyer stanza’d him in one of the papers t’other day,
but I think unsuccessfully. Tooke’s friends’
meeting was I suppose a dinner of condolence. I am
not sorry to find you (for all Sara) immersed in clouds of
smoke and metaphysic. You know I had a sneaking kindness for this last noble
science, and you taught me some smattering of it. I look to become no mean
proficient under your tuition. Coleridge, what do you mean by saying you wrote to me about
Plutarch and Porphyry—I received no such letter, nor remember a syllable of
the matter, yet am not apt to forget any part of your epistles, least of all an
injunction like that. I will cast about for ’em, tho’ I am a sad
hand to know what books are worth, and both those worthy gentlemen are alike
out of my line. To-morrow I shall be less suspensive and in better cue to
write, so good bye at present
Friday Evening.—That execrable aristocrat and knave
Richardson has given me an absolute
refusal of leave! The poor man cannot guess at my disappointment. Is it not
hard, “this dread dependance on the low bred mind?” Continue
to write to me tho’, and I must be content—— Our loves and best good
wishes attend upon you both.
Lamb
Savory did return, but there are 2 or 3 more ill and
absent, which was the plea for refusing me. I will never commit my peace of
mind by depending on such a wretch for a favor in future, so shall never
have heart to ask for holidays again. The man next him in office, Cartwright, furnished him with the
objections.
C. Lamb.
Note
[The Dactyls were Coleridge’s only in the third stanza; the remainder were
Southey’s. The poem is known as “The Soldier’s Wife,” printed in Southey’sPoems, 1797,
running thus:—
Weary way-wanderer languid and sick at heart Travelling painfully over the rugged road, Wild-visag’d Wanderer! ah for thy heavy chance! Sorely thy little one drags by thee bare-footed, Cold is the baby that hangs at thy bending back, Meagre and livid and screaming its wretchedness. Woe-begone mother, half anger, half agony, As over thy shoulder thou lookest to hush the babe, Bleakly the blinding snow beats in thy hagged face. Thy husband will never return from the war again, Cold is thy hopeless heart even as Charity— Cold are thy famish’d babes—God help thee, widow’d One Bristol, 1795.
Later Southey revised the verses.
The Anti-Jacobin had
the following parody of them:—
THE SOLDIER’S FRIEND Come, little drummer boy, lay down your knapsack here: I am the soldier’s friend—here are some books for you; Nice clever books, by TOM PAINE, the
philanthropist. Here’s half-a-crown for you—here are some hand-bills too— Go to the barracks, and give all the soldiers some. Tell them the sailors are all in a mutiny. [Exit drummer boy, with hand-bills and
half-crown.—Manet soldier’s friend. Liberty’s friends thus all learn to amalgamate, Freedom’s volcanic explosion prepares itself, Despots shall bow to the fasces of liberty, Reason, philosophy, “fiddledum piddledum,” Peace and fraternity, higgledy, piggledy, Higgledy, piggledy, “fiddledum diddledum.” Et caetera, et caetera, et caetera.
Young Savory was probably a relative of Hester Savory, whom we shall meet on page 261. He entered
the East India House on the same day that Lamb did.
We do not know what were the lines from Wither which Coleridge had sent to
Lamb; but Lamb himself
eventually did much to bring him and the elder bards into more general fame—in the Dramatic
Specimens, 1808, and in the essay “On the Poetical Works of George
Wither,” in the Works, 1818.
Stupid Knox was Vicesimus
Knox (1752-1821), the editor of Elegant Extracts in many forms.
“Her . . . sweet little poem.” Sara Coleridge’s verses no longer exist. See
Lamb’s next letter for his poetical reply.
“Like a green girl.” See “Hamlet,” I., 3, 101.
Coleridge’s poem on the Prince and Princess,
“On a Late Connubial Rupture in
High Life,” was not accepted by Perry, of the Morning Chronicle. It appeared in the Monthly Magazine, September, 1796. The
“Verses addressed to J. Horne
Tooke and the company who met on June 28, 1796, to celebrate his poll at the
Westminster Election” were not printed in the Morning Chronicle. Tooke had opposed Charles James Fox,
who polled 5,160 votes, and Sir Alan Gardner, who
polled 4,814, against his own 2,819.
Dyer was George Dyer
(1755-1841), an old Christ’s Hospitaller (but before Lamb and Coleridge’s time), of whom we shall see
much—Lamb’s famous G. D.
William Richardson was Accountant-General of the
East India House at that time; Charles Cartwright,
his Deputy.
“The dread dependance on the low-bred mind.” From the
first version (1790) of Coleridge’s
“Monody on Chatterton.”]
LETTER 6 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
The 5th July, 1796. [p.m. Same date.]
TO SARA AND HER SAMUEL WAS it so hard a thing? I did but ask A fleeting holy day. One little week, Or haply two, had bounded my request. What if the jaded Steer, who all day long Had borne the heat and labour of the plough, When Evening came and her sweet cooling hour, Should seek to trespass on a neighbour copse, Where greener herbage waved, or clearer streams Invited him to slake his burning thirst? That Man were crabbed, who should say him Nay: That Man were churlish, who should drive him thence! A blessing light upon your heads, ye good, Ye hospitable pair. I may not come, To catch on Clifden’s heights the summer gale: I may not come, a pilgrim, to the “Vales Where Avon winds,” to taste th’ inspiring waves Which Shakespere drank, our
British Helicon: Or, with mine eye intent on Redcliffe towers, To drop a tear for that Mysterious
youth, Cruelly slighted, who to London Walls, In evil hour, shap’d his disastrous course. Complaints, begone; begone, ill-omen’d thoughts— For yet again, and lo! from Avon banks Another “Minstrel” cometh! Youth beloved, God and good angels guide thee on thy way, And gentler fortunes wait the friends I love. C. L.
LETTER 7 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
the 6th July [p.m. July 7, 1796.]
SUBSTITUTE in room of that last confused &
incorrect Paragraph, following the words “disastrous course,” these
lines
Vide 3d page of this epistle. No
With better hopes, I trust, from Avon’s vales This other “minstrel” cometh. Youth endear’d, God & Angels guide thee on thy road, And gentler fortunes wait the friends I love.
[Lamb has crossed
through the above lines.]
Let us prose.
What can I do till you send word what priced and placed
house you should like? Islington (possibly) you would not like, to me
’tis classical ground. Knightsbridge is a desirable situation for the air
of the parks. St. George’s Fields is convenient for its contiguity to the Bench. Chuse! But are you
really coming to town? The hope of it has entirely disarmed my petty
disappointment of its nettles. Yet I rejoice so much on my own account, that I
fear I do not feel enough pure satisfaction on yours. Why, surely, the joint
editorship of the Chron: must be a
very comfortable & secure living for a man. But should not you read French,
or do you? & can you write with sufficient moderation, as ’tis
call’d, when one suppresses the one half of what one feels, or could say,
on a subject, to chime in the better with popular lukewarmness?—White’s “Letters” are near publication.
Could you review ’em, or get ’em reviewed? Are you not connected
with the Crit: Rev:? His
frontispiece is a good conceit: Sir John
learning to dance, to please Madame Page,
in dress of doublet, etc., from [for] the upper half; & modern pantaloons,
with shoes, etc., of the 18th century, from [for] the lower half—& the
whole work is full of goodly quips & rare fancies, “all deftly
masqued like hoar antiquity”—much superior to Dr. Kenrick’sFalstaff’s Wedding, which you may
have seen. Allen sometimes laughs at
Superstition, & Religion, & the like. A living fell vacant lately in
the gift of the Hospital. White informed him that he stood
a fair chance for it. He scrupled & scrupled about it, and at last (to use
his own words) “tampered” with Godwin to know whether the thing was
honest or not. Godwin said nay to
it, & Allen rejected the living! Could the blindest
Poor Papish have bowed more servilely to his Priest or Casuist? Why sleep the
Watchman’s answers to that Godwin? I beg you will not delay to alter, if you mean to
keep, those last lines I sent you. Do that, & read these for your pains:— TO THE POET COWPERCowper, I thank my God that
thou art heal’d! Thine was the sorest malady of all; And I am sad to think that it should light Upon the worthy head! But thou art heal’d, And thou art yet, we trust, the destin’d man, Born to reanimate the Lyre, whose chords Have slumber’d, and have idle lain so long, To the immortal sounding of whose strings Did Milton frame the
stately-paced verse; Among whose wires with lighter finger playing, Our elder bard, Spenser, a
gentle name, The Lady Muses’ dearest darling child, Elicited the deftest tunes yet heard In Hall or Bower, taking the delicate Ear Of Sydney, & his
peerless Maiden Queen. Thou, then, take up the mighty Epic strain, Cowper, of England’s Bards, the wisest
& the best. 1796
I have read your climax of praises in those 3 reviews. These
mighty spouters-out of panegyric waters have, 2 of ’em, scattered their
spray even upon me! & the waters are cooling & refreshing. Prosaically,
the Monthly Reviewers have made
indeed a large article of it, & done you justice. The Critical have, in their wisdom, selected not the
very best specimens, & notice not, except as one name on the muster-roll,
the “Religious
Musings.” I suspect Master
Dyer to have been the writer of that article, as the substance
of it was the very remarks & the very language he used to me one day. I
fear you will not accord entirely with my sentiments of Cowper, as exprest above, (perhaps scarcely
just), but the poor Gentleman has just recovered from his Lunacies, & that
begets pity, & pity love, and love admiration, & then it goes hard with
People but they lie! Have you read the Ballad called “Leonora,” in the second Number of
the “Monthly Magazine”?
If you have!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There is another fine song, from the same author (Berger), in the 3d No., of scarce inferior
merit; & (vastly below these) there are some happy specimens of English
hexameters, in an imitation
of Ossian, in the 5th No. For your Dactyls I am sorry you are so
sore about ’em—a very Sir Fretful! In
good troth, the Dactyls are good Dactyls, but their measure is naught. Be not
yourself “half anger, half agony” if I pronounce your
darling lines not to be the best you ever wrote—you have written much.
For the alterations in those lines, let ’em run thus:
I may not come a pilgrim, to the Banks
(inspiring wave) was too common place.
of Avon, lucid stream, to taste the wave which Shakspere drank, our
British Helicon; or with mine eye, &c., &c.
(better than “drop a tear ”)
To muse, in tears, on that mysterious Youth,
&c.
Then the last paragraph alter thus
better refer to my own “complaint”
solely than half to that and half to Chatterton, as in your copy, which creates a
confusion—“ominous fears “&c.
Complaint begone, begone unkind reproof Take up, my song, take up a merrier strain, For yet again, & lo! from Avon’s vales, Another minstrel cometh! youth endeared, God & good angels &c, as before.
Have a care, good Master poet, of the Statute de Contumelia.
What do you mean by calling Madame Mara
harlot & naughty things? The goodness of the verse would not save you in a
court of Justice. But are you really coming to town?
Coleridge, a gentleman called in London
lately from Bristol, & inquired whether there were any of the family of a
Mr. Chambers living—this
Mr. Chambers he said had been the making of a
friend’s fortune who wished to make some return for it. He went away without seeing her.
Now, a Mrs. Reynolds, a very intimate
friend of ours, whom you have seen at our house, is the only daughter, &
all that survives, of Mr. Chambers—& a very little
supply would be of service to her, for she married very unfortunately, &
has parted with her husband. Pray find out this Mr. Pember
(for that was the gentleman’s friend’s name), he is an attorney,
& lives at Bristol. Find him out, & acquaint him with the circumstances
of the case, & offer to be the medium of supply to Mrs.
Reynolds, if he chuses to make her a present. She is in very
distrest circumstances. Mr. Pember, attorney,
Bristol—Mr. Chambers lived in the Temple.
Mrs. Reynolds, his daughter, was my schoolmistress,
& is in the room at this present writing. This last circumstance induced me
to write so soon again—I have not further to add—Our loves to Sara.
C. Lamb. Thursday.
Note
[The passage at the beginning, before “Let us prose,”
together with the later passages in the same manner, refers to the poem in the preceding
letter, which in slightly different form is printed in editions of
Lamb as “Lines
to Sara and Her Samuel.” In order to complete the letter I have copied the
version printed in the Monthly
Magazine, January, 1797:—
LINES ADDRESSED, FROM LONDON, TO SARA AND S. T. C. AT BRISTOL,
IN THE SUMMER OF 1796 Was it so hard a thing? I did but ask A fleeting holiday, a little week. What, if the jaded steer, who, all day long, Had borne the heat and burthen of the plough, When ev’ning came, and her sweet cooling hour, Should seek to wander in a neighbour copse, Where greener herbage wav’d, or clearer streams Invited him to slake his burning thirst? The man were crabbed who should say him nay; The man were churlish who should drive him thence. A blessing light upon your worthy heads, Ye hospitable pair! I may not come To catch, on Clifden’s heights, the summer gale; I may not come to taste the Avon wave; Or, with mine eye intent on Redcliffe tow’rs, To muse in tears on that mysterious youth, Cruelly slighted, who, in evil hour, Shap’d his advent’rous course to London walls! Complaint, be gone! and, ominous thoughts, away! Take up, my Song, take up a merrier strain; For yet again, and lo! from Avon’s vales, Another Minstrel1 Cometh. Youth endear’d, God and good Angels guide thee on thy road, And gentler fortunes ’wait the friends I love!
Coleridge had just received a suggestion, through
Dr. Beddoes of Bristol, that he should replace
Grey, the late co-editor (with James Perry) of the Morning Chronicle. It came to nothing; but
Coleridge had told Lamb and
had asked him to look out a house in town for him.
“All deftly masqued like [as] hoar antiquity.” From
Coleridge’s “Monody on Chatterton.”
Dr. Kenrick’s “Falstaff’s Wedding,” 1760, was a
continuation of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV.”
We do not know what were the last lines that Lamb had sent to Coleridge. The
lines to Cowper were printed in the
Monthly Magazine for
December, 1796.
Coleridge’sPoems were reviewed in the
Monthly Review, June,
1796, with no mention of Lamb. The Critical Review for the same month said
of Lamb’s effusions: “These are very
beautiful.”
Burger’s “Leonora,” which was to have such an influence
upon English literature (it was the foundation of much of Sir
Walter Scott’s poetry), was translated from the German by William Taylor of Norwich in 1790 and printed in the Monthly Magazine in March,
1796. Scott at once made a rival version. The other fine song, in the
April Monthly Magazine, was “The Lass of Fair Wone.”
“Sir Fretful.” Sir Fretful
Plagiary in Sheridan’s
“Critic.”
“Half anger, half agony.” See the Dactyls, on page 34.
The mention of the Statute de Contumeliâ seems to refer to the
“Lines Composed in a
Concert-Room,” which were first printed in the Morning Post, September 24, 1799, but
must have been written earlier. Madame Mara
(1749-1833) is not mentioned by name in the poem, but being one of the principal singers of
the day Lamb probably fastened the epithet upon her
by way of pleasantry; or she may have been referred to in the version of the lines which
Lamb had seen.
The passage about Mr. Chambers is
not now explicable; but we know that Mrs. Reynolds
was Lamb’s schoolmistress, probably when he was
very small, and before he went to William Bird’s Academy, and
that in later life he allowed her a pension of £30 a year until her death.
Between this and the next letter came, in all probability, a number of
letters to Coleridge which have been lost. It is incredible that Lamb kept silence, at this
period, for eleven weeks.]
1 “From vales where Avon winds, the Minstrel
came.” Coleridge’s ‘Monody on Chatterton.’
LETTER 8 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[p.m. September 27, 1796.]
MY dearest friend—White or some of my friends or the public papers by this time
may have informed you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on our
family. I will only give you the outlines. My poor dear dearest sister in a fit of insanity has been the death
of her own mother. I was at hand only
time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a mad
house, from whence I fear she must be moved to an hospital. God has preserved
to me my senses,—I eat and drink and sleep, and have my judgment I believe very
sound. My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him
and my aunt. Mr. Norris of the Bluecoat
school has been very very kind to us, and we have no other friend, but thank
God I am very calm and composed, and able to do the best that remains to do.
Write,—as religious a letter as possible—but no mention of what is gone and
done with.—With me “the former things are passed away,” and
I have something more to do that [than] to feel——
God almighty have us all in his keeping.——
C. Lamb.
Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every
vestige of past vanities of that kind. Do as you please, but if you
publish, publish mine (I give free leave) without name or initial, and
never send me a book, I charge you.
You [your] own judgment will convince you not to take
any notice of this yet to your dear wife.—You look after your family,—I
have my reason and strength left to take care of mine. I charge you,
don’t think of coming to see me. Write. I will not see you if you
come. God almighty love you and all of us—
Note
[This letter tells its own story.
The following is the report of the inquest upon Mrs. Lamb which appeared in the Morning Chronicle for September 26,
1796. The tragedy had occurred on Thursday, September 22:—
On Friday afternoon the Coroner and a respectable Jury sat
on the body of a Lady in the neighbourhood of Holborn, who died in consequence of a wound
from her daughter the preceding day. It appeared by the evidence adduced, that while the
family were preparing for dinner, the young lady seized a case knife laying on the table, and in a menacing manner pursued a little girl,
her apprentice, round the room; on the eager calls of her helpless infirm mother to
forbear, she renounced her first object, and with loud shrieks approached her parent.
The child by her cries quickly brought up the landlord of
the house, but too late—the dreadful scene presented to him the mother lifeless, pierced to
the heart, on a chair, her daughter yet wildly standing over her with the fatal knife, and
the venerable old man, her father, weeping by her side, himself bleeding at the forehead
from the effects of a severe blow he received from one of the forks she had been madly
hurling about the room.
For a few days prior to this the family had observed some
symptoms of insanity in her, which had so much increased on the Wednesday evening, that her
brother early the next morning went in quest of Dr.
Pitcairn—had that gentleman been met with, the fatal catastrophe had, in all
probability, been prevented.
It seems the young Lady had been once before, in her earlier
years, deranged, from the harassing fatigues of too much business.—As her carriage towards
her mother was ever affectionate in the extreme, it is believed that to the increased
attentiveness, which her parents’ infirmities called for by day and night, is to be
attributed the present insanity of this ill-fated young woman.
It has been stated in some of the Morning Papers, that she
has an insane brother also in confinement-this is without foundation.
The Jury of course brought in their Verdict, Lunacy.
In the Whitehall Evening Post the first part of the account is the same, but
the end is as follows:—
The above unfortunate young person is a Miss Lamb, a mantua-maker, in Little Queen-street,
Lincoln’s-inn-fields. She has been, since, removed to Islington madhouse.
Mr. Norris of the Blue-Coat School has been
confounded with Randal Norris of the Inner Temple,
another friend of the Lambs, but is not, I think, the same.
“The former things . . .” See Revelation xxi. 4.
The reference to the poetry and Coleridge’s publication of it shows that Lamb had already been invited to contribute to the second edition of
Coleridge’sPoems. The words
“and never” in the original have a line through them which might
mean erasure, but, I think, does not.
“Your own judgment . . .” Mrs. Coleridge had just become a mother: David
Hartley Coleridge was born on September 19.
This was Coleridge’s reply
to Lamb’s letter, as given in Gillman’sLife of
Coleridge:—
“[September 28, 1796.]
“Your letter, my friend, struck me with a mighty
horror. It rushed upon me and stupified my feelings. You bid me write you a
religious letter; I am not a man who would attempt to insult the greatness of
your anguish by any other consolation. Heaven knows that in the easiest
fortunes there is much dissatisfaction and weariness of spirit; much that calls
for the exercise of patience and resignation; but in storms, like these, that
shake the dwelling and make the heart tremble, there is no middle way between
despair and the yielding up of the whole spirit unto the guidance of faith. And surely it is a
matter of joy, that your faith in Jesus has been
preserved; the Comforter that should relieve you is not far from you. But as
you are a Christian, in the name of that Saviour, who was filled with
bitterness and made drunken with wormwood, I conjure you to have recourse in
frequent prayer to ‘his God and your God,’ the God of mercies, and
father of all comfort. Your poor father is, I hope, almost senseless of the
calamity; the unconscious instrument of Divine Providence knows it not, and
your mother is in heaven. It is sweet to
be roused from a frightful dream by the song of birds, and the gladsome rays of
the morning. Ah, how infinitely more sweet to be awakened from the blackness
and amazement of a sudden horror, by the glories of God manifest, and the
hallelujahs of angels.
“As to what regards yourself, I approve altogether of
your abandoning what you justly call vanities. I look upon you as a man, called
by sorrow and anguish and a strange desolation of hopes into quietness, and a
soul set apart and made peculiar to God; we cannot arrive at any portion of
heavenly bliss without in some measure imitating Christ. And they arrive at the
largest inheritance who imitate the most difficult parts of his character, and
bowed down and crushed under foot, cry in fulness of faith, ‘Father,
thy will be done.’
“I wish above measure to have you for a little while
here—no visitants shall blow on the nakedness of your feelings—you shall be
quiet, and your spirit may be healed. I see no possible objection, unless your
father’s helplessness prevent you, and unless you are necessary to him.
If this be not the case, I charge you write me that you will come.
“I charge you, my dearest friend, not to dare to
encourage gloom or despair—you are a temporary sharer in human miseries, that
you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine nature. I charge you, if by any
means it be possible, come to me.
“I remain, your affectionate, “S. T. Coleridge.”]
LETTER 9 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[p.m. October 3, 1796.]
MY dearest friend, your letter was an inestimable
treasure to me. It will be a comfort to you, I know, to know that our prospects
are somewhat brighter. My poor dear dearest sister, the unhappy and
unconscious instrument of the Almighty’s judgments to our house, is
restored to her senses; to a dreadful sense and recollection of what has past,
awful to her mind, and impressive (as it must be to the end of life) but
temper’d with religious resignation, and the reasonings of a sound
judgment, which in this early stage knows how to distinguish between a deed
committed in a transient fit of frenzy, and the terrible guilt of a Mother’s murther. I have seen her. I
found her this morning calm and serene, far very very far from an indecent
forgetful serenity; she has a most affectionate and tender concern for what has
happend. Indeed from the beginning, frightful and hopeless as her disorder
seemed, I had confidence enough in her strength of mind, and religious
principle, to look forward to a time when even she might recover tranquillity.
God be praised, Coleridge, wonderful as
it is to tell, I have never once been otherwise than collected, and calm; even
on the dreadful day and in the midst of the terrible scene I preserved a
tranquillity, which bystanders may have construed into indifference, a
tranquillity not of despair; is it folly or sin in me to say that it was a
religious principle that most supported me? I allow much
to other favorable circumstances. I felt that I had something else to do than
to regret; on that first evening my Aunt
was lying insensible, to all appearance like one dying,—my father, with his poor forehead plaisterd over
from a wound he had received from a daughter dearly loved by him, and who loved
him no less dearly,—my mother a dead and murder’d corpse in the next
room—yet was I wonderfully supported. I closed not my eyes in sleep that night,
but lay without terrors and without despair. I have lost no sleep since. I had
been long used not to rest in things of sense, had endeavord after a
comprehension of mind, unsatisfied with the “ignorant present
time,” and this kept me up. I had the whole weight of the family thrown
on me, for my brother, little disposed (I
speak not without tenderness for him) at any time to take care of old age and
infirmities, had now, with his bad leg, an exemption from such duties, and I
was now left alone. One little incident may serve to make you understand my way
of managing my mind. Within a day or 2 after the fatal one, we drest for dinner a tongue, which we had had salted for some
weeks in the house. As I sat down a feeling like remorse struck me,—this tongue
poor Mary got for me, and can I partake of it now, when
she is far away—a thought occurrd and relieved me,—if I give in to this way of
feeling, there is not a chair, a room, an object in our rooms, that will not
awaken the keenest griefs, I must rise above such weaknesses.—I hope this was
not want of true feeling. I did not let this carry me, tho’, too far. On
the very 2d day (I date from the day of horrors) as is usual in such cases
there were a matter of
20 people I do think supping in our room. They prevailed on me to eat with them (for to eat I never refused). They were all
making merry! in the room,—some had come from friendship, some from busy
curiosity, and some from Interest; I was going to partake with them, when my
recollection came that my poor dead mother was lying in the next room, the very
next room, a mother who thro’ life wished nothing but her
children’s welfare—indignation, the rage of grief, something like
remorse, rushed upon my mind in an agony of emotion,—I found my way
mechanically to the adjoining room, and fell on my knees by the side of her
coffin, asking forgiveness of heaven, and sometimes of her, for forgetting her
so soon. Tranquillity returned, and it was the only violent emotion that
mastered me, and I think it did me good.
I mention these things because I hate concealment, and love
to give a faithful journal of what passes within me. Our friends have been very
good. Sam Le Grice who was then in town
was with me the first 3 or 4 first days, and was as a brother to me, gave up
every hour of his time, to the very hurting of his health and spirits, in
constant attendance and humouring my poor father. Talk’d with him, read
to him, play’d at cribbage with him (for so short is the old man’s
recollection, that he was playing at cards, as tho’ nothing had happened,
while the Coroner’s Inquest was sitting over the way!)
Samuel wept tenderly when he went away, for his mother
wrote him a very severe letter on his loitering so long in town, and he was
forced to go. Mr. Norris of Christ
Hospital has been as a father to me, Mrs. Norris as a
mother; tho’ we had few claims on them. A Gentleman, brother to my
Godmother, from whom we never had right or reason to expect any such
assistance, sent my father twenty pounds,—and to crown all these God’s
blessings to our family at such a time, an old Lady, a cousin of my father and
Aunt’s, a Gentlewoman of fortune, is to take my Aunt and make her comfortable for the short
remainder of her days.
My Aunt is
recover’d and as well as ever, and highly pleased at thoughts of
going,—and has generously given up the interest of her little money (which was
formerly paid my Father for her board)
wholely and solely to my Sister’s use. Reckoning this we have, Daddy and
I, for our two selves and an old maid servant to look after him, when I am out,
which will be necessary, £170 or £180 (rather) a year, out of which we can
spare 50 or 60 at least for Mary, while
she stays at Islington, where she must and shall stay during her father’s
life for his and her comfort. I know John
will make speeches about it, but she shall not go into an hospital. The good
Lady of the mad house, and her daughter, an elegant sweet behaved young Lady,
love her and are taken with her amazingly, and I
know from her own mouth she loves them, and longs to be with them as much.—Poor
thing, they say she was but the other morning saying, she knew she must go to
Bethlem for life; that one of her brothers would have it so, but the other
would wish it not, but be obliged to go with the stream; that she had often as
she passed Bedlam thought it likely “here it may be my fate to end my
days—”conscious of a certain flightiness in her poor head
oftentimes, and mindful of more than one severe illness of that nature before.
A Legacy of £100, which my father will have at Xmas, and this 20 I mentioned
before, with what is in the house will much more than set us Clear;—if my
father, an old servant maid, and I, can’t live and live comfortably on
£130 or £120 a year we ought to burn by slow fires, and I almost would, that
Mary might not go into an hospital. Let me not leave
one unfavourable impression on your mind respecting my Brother. Since this has
happened he has been very kind and brotherly; but I fear for his mind,—he has
taken his ease in the world, and is not fit himself to struggle with
difficulties, nor has much accustomed himself to throw himself into their
way,—and I know his language is already, “Charles, you must take care of yourself, you must not
abridge yourself of a single pleasure you have been used to,”
&c &c and in that style of talking. But you, a necessarian, can respect
a difference of mind, and love what is amiable in a character not perfect. He
has been very good, but I fear for his mind. Thank God, I can unconnect myself
with him, and shall manage all my father’s monies in future myself, if I
take charge of Daddy, which poor John has not even hinted
a wish, at any future time even, to share with me. The Lady at this mad house
assures me that I may dismiss immediately both Doctor and apothecary, retaining occasionally an opening
draught or so for a while, and there is a less expensive establishment in her
house, where she will only not have a room and nurse to herself for £50 or
guineas a year—the outside would be 60—You know by œconomy now much more, even,
I shall be able to spare for her comforts.
She will, I fancy, if she stays, make one of the family,
rather than of the patients, and the old and young ladies I like exceedingly,
and she loves dearly, and they, as the saying is, take to her very
extraordinarily, if it is extraordinary that people who see my sister should
love her. Of all the people I ever saw in the world my poor sister was most and
thoroughly devoid of the least tincture of selfishness—I will enlarge upon her
qualities, poor dear dearest soul, in a future letter for my own comfort, for I
understand her throughly; and if I mistake not, in the most trying situation
that a human being can be found in, she will be found (I speak not with
sufficient humility, I fear, but humanly and foolishly speaking) she will be found, I trust, uniformly
great and amiable; God keep her in her present mind, to whom be thanks and
praise for all His dispensations to mankind.
Lamb.
Coleridge, continue to write; but do
not for ever offend me by talking of sending me cash. Sincerely, and on my
soul, we do not want it. God love you both!
I will write again very soon. Do you write directly.
These mentioned good fortunes and change of prospects
had almost brought my mind over to the extreme the very opposite to
Despair; I was in danger of making myself too happy; your letter brought me
back to a view of things which I had entertained from the beginning; I hope
(for Mary I can answer) but I hope
that I shall thro’ life never have less
recollection nor a fainter impression of what has happened than I have now;
’tis not a light thing, nor meant by the Almighty to be received
lightly. I must be serious, circumspect, and deeply religious thro’
life; by such means may both of us escape madness in
future, if it so please the Almighty.
Send me word, how it fares with Sara. I repeat it, your
letter was and will be an inestimable treasure to me; you have a view of
what my situation demands of me like my own view; and I trust a just one.
Note
[A word perhaps on Lamb’s
salary might be fitting here. For the first three years, from joining the East India House
on April 5, 1792, he received nothing. This probationary period over, he was given £40 for
the year 1795-1796. This, however, was raised to £70 in 1796 and there were means of adding
to it a little, by extra work and by a small holiday grant. In 1797 it was £80, in 1799
£90, and from that time until 1814 it rose by £10 every second year.
“Ignorant present time” (“Macbeth,” I., 5, 58).
Samuel Le Grice was the younger brother of Valentine Le Grice. Both were at Christ’s Hospital
with Lamb and Coleridge and are mentioned in the Eliaessay on the school. Sam Le
Grice afterwards had a commission in the 60th Foot, and died in Jamaica in
1802, as we shall see.
I have not the name of Lamb’s godmother, nor of the old lady of fortune.]
LETTER 10 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[p.m. October 17, 1796.]
MY dearest friend, I grieve from my very soul to
observe you in your plans of life veering about from this hope to the other,
and settling no where. Is it an untoward fatality (speaking humanly) that does
this for you, a stubborn irresistible concurrence of events? or lies the fault,
as I fear it does, in your own mind? You seem to be taking up splendid schemes
of fortune only to lay them down again, and your fortunes are an ignis fatuus
that has been conducting you, in thought, from Lancaster Court, Strand, to
somewhere near Matlock, then jumping across to Dr. Somebody’s whose
son’s tutor you were likely to be, and would to God the dancing demon may conduct you at last in peace and comfort to the
“life and labors of a cottager.” You see from the above
awkward playfulness of fancy, that my spirits are not quite depressed; I should
ill deserve God’s blessings, which since the late terrible event have
come down in mercy upon us, if I indulged regret or querulousness,—Mary continues serene and chearful,—I have not
by me a little letter she wrote to me, for, tho’ I see her almost every
day yet we delight to write to one another (for we can scarce see each other
but in company with some of the people of the house), I have not the letter by
me but will quote from memory what she wrote in it. “I have no bad
terrifying dreams. At midnight when I happen to awake, the nurse sleeping by
the side of me, with the noise of the poor mad people around me, I have no
fear. The spirit of my mother seems to descend, and smile upon me, and bid me
live to enjoy the life and reason which the Almighty has given me—I shall see
her again in heaven; she will then understand me better; my Grandmother too
will understand me better, and will then say no more, as she used to do,
‘Polly, what are those poor crazy moyther’d brains of yours
thinking of always?’”—Poor Mary, my Mother indeed never understood her right. She
loved her, as she loved us all, with a Mother’s love; but in opinion, in
feeling, and sentiment, and disposition, bore so distant a resemblance to her
daughter, that she never understood her right. Never could believe how much she
loved her—but met her caresses, her protestations of filial affection, too
frequently with coldness and repulse.—Still she was a good mother, God forbid I
should think of her but most respectfully, most affectionately. Yet she would always love my
brother above Mary, who was not worthy of one tenth of that affection, which
Mary had a right to claim. But it is my sister’s
gratifying recollection, that every act of duty and of love she could pay,
every kindness (and I speak true, when I say to the hurting of her health, and,
most probably, in great part to the derangement of her senses) thro’ a
long course of infirmities and sickness, she could shew her, she ever did. I will some day, as I promised,
enlarge to you upon my Sister’s excellencies; ’twill seem like
exaggeration; but I will do it. At present short letters suit my state of mind
best. So take my kindest wishes for your comfort and establishment in life, and
for Sara’s welfare and comforts
with you. God love you; God love us all—
C. Lamb.
Note
[This letter is the only one in which Lamb speaks freely of his mother. He dwells on her memory in Blank Verse, 1798,
but in later years he mentioned her in his writings only twice, in the Elia essays “New Year’s Eve” and
“My First Play,” and
then very indirectly: probably from the wish to spare his sister pain, although Talfourd tells us that Mary
Lamb spoke of her mother often. Compare the poem on page 112.
In Letter 110, written by Mary
Lamb to Sarah Stoddart (afterwards
Mrs. William Hazlitt), printed on page 279, there is further light
on Mrs. Lamb’s want of sympathetic
understanding of certain characters.
The references at the beginning are to Coleridge’s idea of joining Perry on the Morning Chronicle; of teaching Mrs.
Evans’ children; of establishing a school at Derby, on the suggestion
of Dr. Crompton; and finally of moving from Bristol
to settle down in a cottage at Nether Stowey, and support himself by husbandry and
literature.
“Life and labors of a cottager” sounds like Coleridge’s own phrase (see note on page 86).]
LETTER 11 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Oct. 24th, 1796. [Monday.]
COLERIDGE, I
feel myself much your debtor for that spirit of confidence and friendship which
dictated your last letter. May your soul find peace at last in your cottage
life! I only wish you were but settled. Do continue to
write to me. I read your letters with my sister, and they give us both
abundance of delight. Especially they please us
two, when you talk in a religious strain,—not but we are offended occasionally
with a certain freedom of expression, a certain air of mysticism, more
consonant to the conceits of pagan philosophy, than consistent with the
humility of genuine piety. To instance now in your last letter—you say,
“it is by the press [sic], that God hath
given finite spirits both evil and good (I suppose you mean simply bad men and good men), a portion as it were
of His Omnipresence!” Now, high as the human intellect
comparatively will soar, and wide as its influence, malign or salutary, can
extend, is there not, Coleridge, a distance between the
Divine Mind and it, which makes such language blasphemy? Again, in your first
fine consolatory epistle you say, “you are a temporary sharer in human
misery, that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine
Nature.” What more than this do those men say, who are for exalting
the man Christ Jesus into the second person of an unknown Trinity,—men, whom
you or I scruple not to call idolaters? Man, full of imperfections, at best,
and subject to wants which momentarily remind him of dependence; man, a weak
and ignorant being, “servile” from his birth “to all the
skiey influences,” with eyes sometimes open to discern the right
path, but a head generally too dizzy to pursue it; man, in the pride of
speculation, forgetting his nature, and hailing in himself the future God, must
make the angels laugh. Be not angry with me, Coleridge; I
wish not to cavil; I know I cannot instruct you; I only wish to remind you of
that humility which best becometh the Christian character. God, in the New
Testament (our best guide), is represented to us in the
kind, condescending, amiable, familiar light of a parent: and in my poor mind
’tis best for us so to consider of Him, as our heavenly Father, and our best Friend, without
indulging too bold conceptions of His nature. Let us learn to think humbly of
ourselves, and rejoice in the appellation of “dear children,”
“brethren,” and “co-heirs with Christ of the promises,”
seeking to know no further.
I am not insensible, indeed I am not, of the value of that
first letter of yours, and I shall find reason to thank you for it again and
again long after that blemish in it is forgotten. It will be a fine lesson of
comfort to us, whenever we read it; and read it we often shall, Mary and I.
Accept our loves and best kind wishes for the welfare of
yourself and wife, and little one. Nor let me forget to wish you joy on your
birthday so lately past; I thought you had been older. My kind thanks and
remembrances to Lloyd.
God love us all, and may He continue to be the father and
the friend of the whole human race!
C. Lamb. Sunday Evening.
Note
[It is interesting to notice that with these letters Lamb suddenly assumes a gravity, independence and sense of
authority that hitherto his correspondence has lacked. The responsibility of the household
seems to have awakened his extraordinary common sense and fine understanding sense of
justice. Previously he had ventured to criticise only Coleridge’s literary exercises; he places his finger now on conduct
too.
Coleridge’s “last letter “has not
been preserved; but the “first fine consolatory epistle” is printed on
page 42.
“Servile . . . to all the skiey influences” (“Measure for Measure,” III., 1, 9).
“Dear children . . . brethren . . . co-heirs with Christ of the
promises ...” A memory of Ephesians v. 1; Romans viii. 15-17; and Ephesians iii. 6.
This letter contains the first mention of Charles Lloyd (1775-1839), who was afterwards to be for a while so
intimately associated with Lamb. Charles
Lloyd was the son of a Quaker banker of Birmingham. He had published a
volume of poems the year before and had met Coleridge when that magnetic visionary had visited Birmingham to solicit
subscribers for The
Watchman early in 1796. The proposition that Lloyd
should live with Coleridge and become in a way his pupil was agreed to
by his parents, and in September he accompanied the philosopher to Nether Stowey a day or
so after David Hartley’s birth, all eager to
begin domestication and tutelage. Lloyd was a sensitive, delicate
youth, with an acute power of analysis and considerable grasp of metaphysical ideas. No
connection ever began more amiably. He was, I might add, by only two days
Lamb’s junior.]
LETTER 12 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Oct. 28th, 1796.
MY dear Friend, I am not ignorant that to be a
partaker of the Divine Nature is a phrase to be met with in Scripture: I am
only apprehensive, lest we in these latter days, tinctured (some of us perhaps
pretty deeply) with mystical notions and the pride of metaphysics, might be apt
to affix to such phrases a meaning, which the primitive users of them, the
simple fishermen of Galilee for instance, never intended to convey. With that other part of your apology I am not quite so
well satisfied. You seem to me to have been straining your comparing faculties
to bring together things infinitely distant and unlike; the feeble
narrow-sphered operations of the human intellect and the everywhere diffused
mind of Deity, the peerless wisdom of Jehovah. Even the
expression appears to me inaccurate—portion of omnipresence—omnipresence is an
attribute whose very essence is unlimitedness. How can omnipresence be affirmed
of anything in part? But enough of this spirit of disputatiousness. Let us
attend to the proper business of human life, and talk a little together
respecting our domestic concerns. Do you continue to make me acquainted with
what you were doing, and how soon you are likely to be settled once for all.
I have satisfaction in being able to bid you rejoice with
me in my sister’s continued reason and composedness of mind. Let us both
be thankful for it. I continue to visit her very frequently, and the people of
the house are vastly indulgent to her; she is likely to be as comfortably
situated in all respects as those who pay twice or thrice the sum. They love
her, and she loves them, and makes herself very useful to them. Benevolence
sets out on her journey with a good heart, and puts a good face on it, but is
apt to limp and grow feeble, unless she calls in the aid of self-interest by
way of crutch. In Mary’s case, as
far as respects those she is with, ’tis well that these principles are so
likely to co-operate. I am rather at a loss sometimes for books for her,—our
reading is somewhat confined, and we have nearly exhausted our London library.
She has her hands too full of work to read much, but a little she must read;
for reading was her daily bread.
Have you seen Bowles’s new poem on “Hope?” What character does it bear? Has
he exhausted his stores of tender plaintiveness? or is he the same in this last
as in all his former pieces? The duties of the day call me off from this
pleasant intercourse with my friend—so for the present adieu.
Now for the truant borrowing of a few minutes from
business. Have you met with a new poem called the “Pursuits of Literature?” From the
extracts in the “British Review” I judge
it to be a very humorous thing; in particular I remember what I thought a very
happy character of Dr. Darwin’s
poetry. Among all your quaint readings did you ever light upon Walton’s “Complete Angler?” I asked you the
question once before; it breathes the very spirit of innocence, purity, and
simplicity of heart; there are many choice old verses interspersed in it; it
would sweeten a man’s temper at any time to read it; it would
Christianise every discordant angry passion; pray make yourself acquainted with
it. Have you made it up with Southey
yet? Surely one of you two must have been a very silly fellow, and the other not much
better, to fall out like boarding-school misses; kiss, shake hands, and make it
up?
When will he be delivered of his new epic? Madoc I think, is to be the
name of it; though that is a name not familiar to my ears. What progress do you
make in your hymns? What Review are you connected with? If with any, why do you
delay to notice White’s
book? You are justly offended at its profaneness; but surely you
have undervalued its wit, or you would have been more loud in its praises. Do
not you think that in Slender’s death
and madness there is most exquisite humour, mingled with tenderness, that is
irresistible, truly Shakspearian? Be more full in your mention of it. Poor
fellow, he has (very undeservedly) lost by it; nor do I see that it is likely
ever to reimburse him the charge of printing, etc. Give it a lift, if you can.
I suppose you know that Allen’s
wife is dead, and he, just situated as he was, never the better, as the worldly
people say, for her death, her money with her children being taken off his
hands. I am just now wondering whether you will ever come to town again,
Coleridge; ’tis among the
things I dare not hope, but can’t help wishing. For myself, I can live in
the midst of town luxury and superfluity, and not long for them, and I
can’t see why your children might not hereafter do the same. Remember,
you are not in Arcadia when you are in the west of England, and they may catch
infection from the world without visiting the metropolis. But you seem to have
set your heart upon this same cottage plan; and God prosper you in the
experiment! I am at a loss for more to write about; so ’tis as well that
I am arrived at the bottom of my paper.
God love you, Coleridge!—Our best loves and tenderest wishes await on you,
your Sara, and your little one.
C. L.
Note
[Bowles’s poem was
“Hope, an allegorical sketch on slowly
recovering from sickness.” See note on pages 79 and 80.
The Pursuits of
Literature was a literary satire in the form of dialogues in verse,
garnished with very outspoken notes, by Thomas James
Mathias (1754?-18S5), which appeared between 1794 and 1797.
Southey had returned from Portugal in the summer,
when the quarrel between Coleridge and himself
revived; but about the time of Hartley’s birth
some kind of a reconciliation was patched up. Madoc, as it happened, was not published until 1805,
although in its first form it was completed in 1797.
“What Review are you connected with?” Writing to
Charles Lloyd, sen., in December, 1796,
Coleridge says that he gives his evenings to his engagements with the Critical Review and New Monthly Magazine.
This is the passage in Falstaff’s Letters describing Slender’s
death:—
DAVY TO SHALLOW
Master Abram is dead, gone, your Worship—dead!
Master Abram! Oh! good your Worship, a’s
gone.—A’ never throve, since a’ came from Windsor—’twas his death. I
call’d him a rebel, your Worship—but a’ was all subject—a’ was subject to
any babe, as much as a King—a’ turn’d, like as it were the latter end of a
lover’s lute—a’ was all peace and resignment—a’ took delight in nothing
but his book of songs and sonnets—a’ would go to the Stroud side under the large
beech tree, and sing, till ’twas quite pity of our lives to mark him; for his chin
grew as long as a muscle—Oh! a’ sung his soul and body quite away—a’ was lank
as any greyhound, and had such a scent! I hid his love-songs among your Worship’s
law-books; for I thought if a’ could not get at them, it might be to his quiet; but
a’ snuff’d ’em out in a moment.—Good your Worship, have the wise woman of
Brentford secured—Master Abram may have been
conjured—Peter Simple says, a’ never
look’d up, after a’ sent to the wise woman—Marry, a’ was always given to
look down afore his elders; a’ might do it, a’ was given to it—your Worship
knows it; but then ’twas peak and pert with him—a’ was a man again, marry, in
the turn of his heel.—A’ died, your Worship, just about one, at the crow of the
cock.—I thought how it was with him; for a’ talk’d as quick, aye, marry, as
glib as your Worship; and a’ smiled, and look’d at his own nose, and
call’d “Sweet Ann Page.” I
ask’d him if a’ would eat—so a’ bad us commend him to his Cousin Robert (a’ never call’d your Worship so
before) and bade us get hot meat, for a’ would not say nay to Ann again.1—But a’ never
liv’d to touch it—a’ began all in a moment to sing “Lovers all, a
Madrigal.” ’Twas the only song Master Abram
ever learnt out of book, and clean by heart, your Worship—and so a’ sung, and smiled,
and look’d askew at his own nose, and sung, and sung on, till his breath waxed
shorter, and shorter, and shorter, and a’ fell into a struggle and died. I beseech
your Worship to think he was well tended—I look’d to him, your Worship, late and
soon, and crept at his heel all day long, an it had been any fallow dog—but I thought
a’ could never live, for a’ did so sing, and then a’ never drank with
it—I knew ’twas a bad sign—yea, a’ sung, your Worship, marry, without drinking
a drop.]
LETTER 13 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Nov. 8th, 1796.
MY Brother, my Friend,—I am distrest for you,
believe me I am; not so much for your painful, troublesome complaint, which, I
trust, is only for a time, as for those anxieties which brought it on, and
perhaps even now may be nursing its malignity. Tell me, dearest of my friends,
is your mind at peace, or has anything, yet unknown to me, happened to give you
fresh disquiet, and steal from you all the pleasant dreams of future rest? Are
you still (I
1 [Vide “Merry Wives of Windsor.”
Latter part of the 1st Scene, 1st Act.]
fear you are) far from being
comfortably settled? Would to God it were in my power to contribute towards the
bringing of you into the haven where you would be! But you are too well skilled
in the philosophy of consolation to need my humble tribute of advice; in pain
and in sickness, and in all manner of disappointments, I trust you have that
within you which shall speak peace to your mind. Make it, I entreat you, one of
your puny comforts, that I feel for you, and share all your griefs with you. I
feel as if I were troubling you about little things; now
I am going to resume the subject of our last two letters, but it may divert us
both from unpleasanter feelings to make such matters, in a manner, of
importance. Without further apology, then, it was not that I did not relish,
that I did not in my heart thank you for, those little pictures of your
feelings which you lately sent me, if I neglected to mention them. You may
remember you had said much the same things before to me on the same subject in
a former letter, and I considered those last verses as only the identical
thoughts better clothed; either way (in prose or verse) such poetry must be
welcome to me. I love them as I love the Confessions of Rousseau, and for the same reason: the same
frankness, the same openness of heart, the same disclosure of all the most
hidden and delicate affections of the mind: they make me proud to be thus
esteemed worthy of the place of friend-confessor, brother-confessor, to a man
like Coleridge. This last is, I
acknowledge, language too high for friendship; but it is also, I declare, too
sincere for flattery. Now, to put on stilts, and talk magnificently about
trifles—I condescend, then, to your counsel, Coleridge,
and allow my first Sonnet
(sick to death am I to make mention of my sonnets, and I blush to be so taken
up with them, indeed I do)—I allow it to run thus, “Fairy Land,” &c. &c., as I [? you] last wrote
it.
The Fragments I now send you I want printed to get rid of
’em; for, while they stick burr-like to my memory, they tempt me to go on
with the idle trade of versifying, which I long—most sincerely I speak it—I
long to leave off, for it is unprofitable to my soul; I feel it is; and these
questions about words, and debates about alterations, take me off, I am
conscious, from the properer business of my life. Take my sonnets once for all,
and do not propose any re-amendments, or mention them again in any shape to me,
I charge you. I blush that my mind can consider them as things of any worth.
And pray admit or reject these fragments, as you like or dislike them, without
ceremony. Call ’em Sketches, Fragments, or what you will, but do not
entitle any of my things Love Sonnets, as I told you to call ’em;
’twill only make me look little in my own eyes; for it is a passion of
which I retain nothing; ’twas a weakness, concerning which I may say, in
the words of Petrarch (whose life is now open before me), “if it drew me out
of some vices, it also prevented the growth of many virtues, filling me
with the love of the creature rather than the Creator, which is the death
of the soul.” Thank God, the folly has left me for ever; not even
a review of my love verses renews one wayward wish in me; and if I am at all
solicitous to trim ’em out in their best apparel, it is because they are
to make their appearance in good company. Now to my fragments. Lest you have
lost my Grandame, she shall
be one. ’Tis among the few verses I ever wrote (that to Mary is another) which profit me in the
recollection. God love her,—and may we two never love each other less!
These, Coleridge,
are the few sketches I have thought worth preserving; how will they relish thus
detached? Will you reject all or any of them? They are thine: do whatsoever
thou listest with them. My eyes ache with writing long and late, and I wax
wondrous sleepy; God bless you and yours, me and mine! Good night.
C. Lamb.
I will keep my eyes open reluctantly a minute longer to
tell you, that I love you for those simple, tender, heart-flowing lines
with which you conclude your last, and in my eyes best, sonnet (so you call
’em), “So, for the mother’s sake, the child was dear, And dearer was the mother for the child.”
Cultivate simplicity, Coleridge, or rather, I should say, banish elaborateness;
for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart, and carries into
daylight its own modest buds and genuine, sweet, and clear flowers of
expression. I allow no hot-beds in the gardens of Parnassus. I am unwilling
to go to bed, and leave my sheet unfilled (a good piece of night-work for
an idle body like me), so will finish with begging you to send me the
earliest account of your complaint, its progress, or (as I hope to God you
will be able to send me) the tale of your recovery, or at least amendment.
My tenderest remembrances to your Sara.
Once more good night.
Note
[Coleridge, on November 2, had
begun to suffer from his lifelong enemy, neuralgia, the result largely of worry concerning
his future, so many of his projects having broken down. He was subduing it with
laudanum—the beginning of that fatal habit.
“The haven where you would be.” See Psalms cvii. 30.
We do not know what were the verses which Coleridge had sent Lamb, possibly the
three sonnets on the birth of Hartley, the third of which is referred to below.
Lamb’s decision in September to say or hear no
more of his own poetry here breaks down. The reference to the Fairy Land sonnet is only partially explained by the
parallel version which I printed on page 24; for “Fairy Land” was
Coleridge’s version. Either
Lamb had made a new version, substituting “Fairy
Land” for “Faery,” or he wrote, “I allow it to run thus:
Fairy Land, &c., &c., as you last wrote it.” When reprinted, however,
it ran as Lamb originally wished. The other fragments were those
afterwards included in Coleridge’sPoems, second edition, 1797.
“Love Sonnets.” Lamb changed his mind again on this subject (see page 58) and yet again.
I nave not found the particular Life of Petrarch from which Lamb quotes.
Coleridge’s last of the three sonnets on the
birth of Hartley was entitled “Sonnet to a Friend [Charles Lloyd] who
asked how I felt when the Nurse first presented my Infant to me.” It
closed with the lines which Lamb copies.]
LETTER 14 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Nov. 14th, 1796.
COLERIDGE, I
love you for dedicating your poetry to Bowles. Genius of the sacred fountain of tears, it was he who
led you gently by the hand through all this valley of weeping, showed you the
dark green yew trees and the willow shades where, by the fall of waters, you
might indulge an uncomplaining melancholy, a delicious regret for the past, or
weave fine visions of that awful future, “When all the vanities of life’s brief day Oblivion’s hurrying hand hath swept away, And all its sorrows, at the awful blast Of the archangel’s trump, are but as shadows past.”
I have another sort of dedication in my head for my few
things, which I want to know if you approve of, and can insert. I mean to
inscribe them to my sister. It will be
unexpected, and it will give her pleasure; or do you think it will look
whimsical at all? As I have not spoke to her about it, I can easily reject the
idea. But there is a monotony in the affections, which people living together
or, as we do now, very frequently seeing each other, are apt to give in to: a
sort of indifference in the expression of kindness for each other, which demands that we should sometimes call to our aid
the trickery of surprise. Do you publish with Lloyd or without him? in either case my little portion may come
last, and after the fashion of orders to a country correspondent I will give
directions how I should like to have ’em done. The title-page to stand
thus:—
POEMS, CHIEFLY LOVE SONNETSBYCHARLES LAMB, OF THE INDIA HOUSE.
Under this title the following motto, which, for want of
room, I put over leaf, and desire you to insert, whether you like it or no. May
not a gentleman choose what arms, mottoes, or armorial bearings the herald will
give him leave, without consulting his republican friend, who might advise
none? May not a publican put up the sign of the Saracen’s Head, even
though his undiscerning neighbour should prefer, as more genteel, the Cat and
Gridiron?
(MOTTO.) “This beauty, in the blossom of my youth, When my first fire knew no adulterate incense, Nor I no way to flatter but my fondness, In the best language my true tongue could tell me, And all the broken sighs my sick heart lend me, I sued and served. Long did I love this lady.” Massinger. THE DEDICATION.THE FEW FOLLOWING POEMS,CREATURES OF THE FANCY AND THE FEELINGIN LIFE’S MORE VACANT HOURS,PRODUCED, FOR THE MOST PART, BYLOVE IN IDLENESS,ARE,WITH ALL A BROTHER’S FONDNESS,INSCRIBED TOMARY ANN LAMB,THE AUTHOR’S BEST FRIEND AND SISTER.
This is the pomp and paraphernalia of parting, with which I
take my leave of a passion which has reigned so royally (so long) within me;
thus, with its trappings of laureatship, I fling it off, pleased and satisfied
with myself that the weakness troubles me no longer. I am wedded, Coleridge, to the fortunes of my sister and my
poor old father. Oh! my friend, I think sometimes, could I recall the days that
are past, which among them should I choose? not those “merrier
days,” not the “pleasant days of hope,” not
“those wanderings with a fair hair’d maid,” which
I have so often and so feelingly regretted, but the days, Coleridge, of a mother’s fondness for
her school-boy. What would I give to call her back to
earth for one day, on my knees to ask her pardon for all those little
asperities of temper which, from time to time, have given her gentle spirit
pain; and the day, my friend, I trust will come; there will be “time
enough” for kind offices of love, if “Heaven’s
eternal year” be ours. Hereafter, her meek spirit shall not
reproach me. Oh, my friend, cultivate the filial feelings! and let no man think
himself released from the kind “charities” of relationship: these
shall give him peace at the last; these are the best foundation for every
species of benevolence. I rejoice to hear, by certain channels, that you, my
friend, are reconciled with all your relations. ’Tis the most kindly and
natural species of love, and we have all the associated train of early feelings
to secure its strength and perpetuity. Send me an account of your health;
indeed I am solicitous about you. God love you and yours.
C. Lamb.
Note
[It seems to have been Coleridge’s intention to dedicate the second edition of his Poems to
Bowles; but he changed his mind and dedicated it
to his brother, the Rev. George Coleridge. A sonnet to Bowles was included in the
volume, a kind of subdedication of the other sonnets, but it had appeared also in the 1796
volume.
Lamb’s instructions concerning his share in the
1797 volume were carried out, except that the sub-title (which I supply from an old
interleaved edition of Talfourd in my
possession) was omitted. For the passage from Massinger see note on page 31.
“When all the vanities of life’s brief day . .
.” This is a composite quotation. The first couplet, slightly altered, is from
Bowles’ “On Mr. Howard’s
Account of Lazarettos,” and the second from a companion poem, “The Grave of Howard.”
The quotations “merrier days” (“happier
days”) and “wanderings with a fair-hair’d maid” are
from Lamb’s own sonnets. I do not find
“pleasant days of hope.”
“Time enough . . . Heaven’s eternal year.” From
Dryden’s “Elegy on Mrs. Killigrew,” lines 14 and 15:— Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine, Since Heaven’s eternal year is thine.
“Charities . . .” Possibly from Cowper’sTask, “Winter Evening,” line 677:— The charities of domestic life.
Coleridge had paid in the summer a long-deferred
visit of reconciliation to his family at Ottery St. Mary.]
LETTER 15 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[p.m. December 2, 1796 (Friday).]
I HAVE delay’d writing thus long, not having
by me my copy of your poems, which I had lent. I am not satisfied with all your
intended omissions. Why omit 40: 63: 84: above all, let me protest strongly
against your rejecting the “Complaint of Ninathoma,” 86. The
words, I acknowledge, are Ossian’s,
but you have added to them the “Music of Caril.” If a vicarious substitute be wanting,
sacrifice (and ’twill be a piece of self-denial too) the Epitaph on an
Infant, of which its Author seems so proud, so tenacious. Or, if
your heart be set on perpetuating the four-line-wonder,
I’ll tell you what [to] do: sell the copy wright of it at once to a
country statuary; commence in this manner Death’s prime poet laureat; and
let your verses be adopted in every village round instead of those hitherto
famous ones “Afflictions sore long time I bore, Physicians were in
vain”. I have seen your last very beautiful poem in the Monthly Magazine—write thus, and you
most generally have written thus, and I shall never quarrel with you about
simplicity. With regard to my lines “Laugh all that weep,”
etc.—I would willingly sacrifice them, but my portion of the volume is so
ridiculously little, that in honest truth I can’t spare them. As things
are, I have very slight pretensions to participate in the title-page.—White’s book is at
length reviewed in the Monthly; was
it your doing, or Dyer’s to whom I
sent him? Or rather do you not write in the Critical? for I observed, in an Article of this
Month’s a line quoted out of thatsonnet on Mrs. Siddons
“with eager wond’ring and perturb’d delight”—and a line
from that sonnet would not readily have occurred to a
stranger. That sonnet,
Coleridge, brings afresh to my mind the time when you wrote those on Bowles, Priestly, Burke—’twas 2 Christmases ago, and
in that nice little smoky room at the Salutation, which is even now continually
presenting itself to my recollection, with all its associated train of pipes,
tobacco, Egghot, welch Rabbits, metaphysics and Poetry.
Are we never to meet again? How
differently I am circumstanced now—I have never met with any one, never shall
meet with any one, who could or can compensate me for the loss of your
society—I have no one to talk all these matters about to—I lack friends, I lack
books to supply their absence. But these complaints ill become me: let me
compare my present situation, prospects, and state of mind, with what they were
but 2 months back—but 2 months. O my friend, I am in
danger of forgetting the awful lessons then presented to me—remind me of them;
remind me of my Duty. Talk seriously with me when you do write. I thank you,
from my heart I thank you, for your sollicitude about my Sister. She is quite well,—but must not, I
fear, come to live with us yet a good while. In the first place, because at
present it would hurt her, and hurt my father, for them to be together:
secondly from a regard to the world’s good report, for I fear, I fear,
tongues will be busy whenever that event takes place. Some have hinted, one man
has prest it on me, that she should be in perpetual confinement—what she hath
done to deserve, or the necessity of such an hardship, I see not; do you? I am
starving at the India house, near 7 o’clock without my dinner, and so it
has been and will be almost all the week. I get home at night
o’erwearied, quite faint,—and then to cards
with my father, who will not let me enjoy a meal in peace—but I must conform to
my situation, and I hope I am, for the most part, not unthankful.
I am got home at last, and, after repeated games at
Cribbage have got my father’s leave to write awhile: with difficulty got
it, for when I expostulated about playing any more, he very aptly replied,
“If you won’t play with me, you might as well not come home
at all.” The argument was unanswerable, and I set to afresh.
I told you, I do not approve of your omissions. Neither do
I quite coincide with you in your arrangements: I have not time to point out a
better, and I suppose some self-associations of your own have determined their
place as they now stand. Your beginning indeed with the Joan of Arc lines I coincide entirely with: I
love a splendid Outset, a magnificent Portico; and the Diapason is Grand—the
Religious
Musings—when I read them, I think how poor, how unelevated,
unoriginal, my blank verse is, “Laugh all that weep”
especially, where the subject demanded a grandeur of conception: and I ask what
business they have among yours—but Friendship
covereth a multitude of defects. Why omit 73? At all events, let me plead for
those former pages,—40. 63. 84. 86. I should like, for old acquaintance sake,
to spare 62. 119 would have made a figure among Shenstone’s Elegies: you may admit
it or reject, as you please. In the Man of Ross let the old line stand as it
used: “wine-cheer’d moments” much better than the lame
present one. 94, change the harsh word “foodful” into
“dulcet” or, if not too harsh, “nourishing.” 91,
“moveless”: is that as good as “moping”?—8, would it
not read better omitting those 2 lines last but 6 about Inspiration? I want
some loppings made in the
Chatterton; it wants but a little to make it rank among the finest
irregular Lyrics I ever read. Have you time and inclination to go to work upon
it—or is it too late—or do you think it needs none? Don’t reject those
verses in one of your Watchmen—“Dear native brook,” &c.—nor, I
think, those last lines you sent me, in which “all
effortless” is without doubt to be preferred to
“inactive.” If I am writing more than ordinarily dully,
’tis that I am stupified with a tooth-ache. 37, would not the concluding
lines of the 1st paragraph be well omitted—& it go on “So to sad
sympathies” &c.? In 40, if you retain it, “wove”
the learned Toil is better than “urge,” which spoils the
personification. Hang it, do not omit 48. 52. 53. What you do retain
tho’, call sonnets for God’s sake, and not effusions,—spite of your
ingenious anticipation of ridicule in your Preface. The last 5 lines of 50 are
too good to be lost, the rest is not much worth. My tooth becomes importunate—I
must finish. Pray, pray, write to me: if you knew with what an anxiety of joy I
open such a long packet as you last sent me, you would not grudge giving a few
minutes now and then to this intercourse (the only intercourse, I fear we two
shall ever have), this conversation, with your friend—such I boast to be
called.
God love you and yours.
Write to me when you move, lest I direct wrong.
Has Sara no poems to
publish? Those lines 129 are probably too light for the volume where the Religious Musings
are—but I remember some very beautiful lines addrest by somebody at Bristol to
somebody at London.
God bless you once more.
C. Lamb. Thursday Night.
Note
[This letter refers to the preparation of Coleridge’s second edition of his Poems. “Why omit 40,
63, 84?”—these were “Absence,” “To the
Autumnal Moon” and the imitation from Ossian.
The “Music of Caril.” Carril was the bard of Cuhullin (see Ossian’sFingal).
The “Epitaph on an
Infant” ran thus:— Ere Sin could blight, or Sorrow fade, Death came with friendly care; The opening bud to Heaven conveyed And bade it blossom there.
Lamb applied the first two lines to a sucking pig in
his Elia essay on
“Roast Pig” many
years later. The old epitaph runs:— Afflictions sore long time I bore, Physicians were in vain; Till Heaven did please my woes to ease, And take away my pain.
Coleridge’s very beautiful poem in the Monthly Magazine (for
October) was “Reflections on
Entering into Active Life,” beginning, “Low was our pretty
cot.”
Lamb’s lines, “Laugh all that
weep,” I cannot find. We learn later that they were in blank verse.
Falstaff’s
Letters was reviewed in the Monthly Review for November, 1796, very
favourably. The article was quite possibly by Coleridge.
The sonnet on Mrs.
Siddons was written by Lamb and Coleridge together when Coleridge was
in London at the end of 1794, and it formed one of a series of sonnets on eminent persons
printed in the Morning
Chronicle, of which those on Bowles, Priestley and Burke were others. The quotation from it was in an
article in the November Critical
Review on the “Musae
Etonenses.”
“One man has prest it on me.” There is reason to
suppose that this was John Lamb, the brother.
As it happened Coleridge did not
begin his second edition with the “Joan of
Arc” lines, but with the “Ode to the New Year.” The “Religious Musings” brought
Coleridge’s part of the volume to a close.
The poem on page 73 was “In the Manner of Spenser.” The poems on
pages 40, 63, 84, we know; that on page 86 was “The Complaint of Ninathoma.” “To Genevieve” was on page 62.
That on page 119 was “To a Friend in
Answer to a Melancholy Letter.” Coleridge never restored the phrase “wine-cheer’d
moments” to “The Man of
Ross.” He did not change “foodful” to “dulcet” in
“To an Infant.” He did
not alter “moveless” to “moping” in “The Young Ass.” He left the Inspiration
passage as it was in the “Monody on
Chatterton.” Not that he disregarded all Lamb’s advice, as a comparison of the 1796 and 1797 editions of the
Poems will show.
The poem “Dear native brook” was the sonnet “To the River Otter.” Coleridge
took Lamb’s counsel. The poem containing the phrase “all effortless” was that
“Addressed to a Young Man of
Fortune” (Charles Lloyd).
Coleridge did not include it. The poem on page 37 was “To a Young Lady with a Poem on the French
Revolution.” Nos. 48, 52 and 53 were the sonnets to Priestley, Kosciusko and Fayette. The last five lines of 50 were in the sonnet to Sheridan. The lines on page
129 were Sara’s verses “The Silver Thimble.” None of these
were reprinted in 1797. The beautiful lines addressed from somebody at Bristol to somebody
at London were those from Sara Coleridge to Lamb,
referred to on page 33. Coleridge persisted in the use of the word
“effusion”.]
LETTER 16 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Dated at end: Dec. 5, 1796.] To a young Lady going out to IndiaHARD is the heart, that does not melt with
Ruth When care sits cloudy on the brow of Youth, When bitter griefs the female bosom swell And Beauty meditates a fond farewell To her loved native land, and early home, In search of peace thro’ “stranger climes to
roam.”1 The Muse, with glance prophetic, sees her stand, Forsaken, silent Lady, on the strand Of farthest India, sickening at the war Of waves slow-beating, dull upon the shore Stretching, at gloomy intervals, her eye O’er the wide waters vainly to espy The long-expected bark, in which to find Some tidings of a world she has left behind. In that sad hour shall start the gushing tear For scenes her childhood loved, now doubly dear, In that sad hour shall frantic memory awake Pangs of remorse for slighted England’s sake, And for the sake of many a tender tye Of Love or Friendship pass’d too lightly by. Unwept, unpitied, midst an alien race, And the cold looks of many a stranger face, How will her poor heart bleed, and chide the day, That from her country took her far away.
[Lamb has struck his pen through the foregoing
poem.]
1Bowles. [“The African,” line 27.]
Coleridge, the above has some few decent [lines in] it,
and in the paucity of my portion of your volume may as well be inserted; I
would also wish to retain the following if only to perpetuate the memory of so exquisite a
pleasure as I have often received at the performance of the tragedy of Douglas, when Mrs. Siddons has been the Lady Randolph. Both pieces may be inserted
between the sonnets and the sketches—in which latter, the last leaf but one of
them, I beg you to alter the words “pain and want” to
“pain and grief,” this last being a more familiar and
ear-satisfying combination. Do it I beg of you. To understand the following, if
you are not acquainted with the play, you should know that on the death of
Douglas his mother threw herself down a
rock; and that at that time Scotland was busy in repelling the Danes.
THE TOMB OF DOUGLASSee the Tragedy of that name When her son, her Douglas died, To the steep rock’s fearful side Fast the frantic mother hied. O’er her blooming warrior dead Many a tear did Scotland shed, And shrieks of long and loud lament From her Grampian hills she sent. Like one awakening from a trance, She met the shock of Lochlin’s lance. Denmark On her rude invader foe Return’d an hundred fold the blow. Drove the taunting spoiler home: Mournful thence she took her way To do observance at the tomb, Where the son of Douglas [lay]. Round about the tomb did go In solemn state and order slow, Silent pace, and black attire, Earl, or Knight, or good Esquire, Who e’er by deeds of valour done In battle had high honors won; Whoe’er in their pure veins could trace The blood of Douglas’ noble race. With them the flower of minstrels came, And to their cunning harps did frame In doleful numbers piercing rhimes, Such strains as in the olden times Had soothed the spirit of Fingal Echoing thro’ his fathers’ Hall. “Scottish maidens, drop a tear O’er the beauteous Hero’s bier. Brave youth and comely ’bove compare; All golden shone his burnish’d hair; Valor and smiling courtesy Played in the sunbeams of his eye. Closed are those eyes that shone so fair And stain’d with blood his yellow hair. Scottish maidens drop a tear O’er the beauteous Hero’s bier.” “Not a tear, I charge you, shed For the false Glenalvon dead; Unpitied let Glenalvon lie, Foul stain to arms and chivalry.”; “Behind his back the traitor came, And Douglas died
without his fame.”
[Lamb has struck his
pen through the lines against which I have put an asterisk.]
Is “morbid wantonness of woe” a good
and allowable phrase?
* “Scottish maidens, drop a tear, * O’er the beauteous hero’s bier.” * “Bending warrior, o’er thy grave, Young light of Scotland early spent!” Thy country thee shall long lament, * Douglas ‘Beautiful and Brave’! And oft to after times shall tell, In Hope’s sweet prime my Hero fell.”
[Lamb has struck his pen through the
remainder.]
“Thane or Lordling, think no scorn Of the poor and lowly-born. In brake obscure or lonely dell The simple flowret prospers well; The gentler virtues cottage-bred, omitted Thrive best beneath the humble shed. Low-born Hinds, opprest, obscure, Ye who patiently endure To bend the knee and bow the head, And thankful eat another’s bread Well may ye mourn your best friend dead, Till Life with Grief together end: He would have been the poor man’s friend.”
“Bending, warrior, o’er thy grave, Young light of Scotland early spent! omitted Thy country thee shall long lament, Douglas, ‘Beautiful and Brave’! And oft to after times shall tell, omittedIn life’s young prime my Hero fell.”
At length I have done with verse making. Not that I relish
other people’s poetry less,—theirs comes from ’em without effort,
mine is the difficult operation of a brain scanty of ideas, made more difficult
by disuse. I have been reading the “Task” with fresh delight. I am glad you
love Cowper. I could forgive a man for
not enjoying Milton, but I would not
call that man my friend, who should be offended with the “divine
chit-chat of Cowper.” Write to me.—God love
you and yours.
C. L.
Note
[The name of the young lady going out to India is not known; the verses were printed in the Monthly Magazine for March,
1797, but not in Coleridge’sPoems, 1797.
“The Tomb of Douglas” was
included in that volume. The poem in which the alteration “pain and
want” was to be made (but was not made, or was made and cancelled later) was
“Fancy Employed on Divine
Subjects.”
The “divine chit-chat of Cowper” was Coleridge’s own phrase. It is a pretty circumstance that Lamb and Cowper now share a memorial
in Edmonton church.]
LETTER 17 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Little Queen Street, Night of Dec. 9th,] 1796.
I AM sorry I cannot now relish your poetical present as
thoroughly as I feel it deserves; but I do not the less thank Lloyd and you for it.
In truth, Coleridge,
I am perplexed, & at times almost cast down. I am beset with perplexities.
The old hag of a wealthy relation, who took my aunt off our hands in the beginning of trouble, has found out
that she is “indolent and mulish”—I quote her own words—and
that her attachment to us is so strong that she can never be happy apart. The
Lady, with delicate Irony, remarks that, if I am not an Hypocrite, I shall
rejoyce to receive her again; and that it will be a means of making me more
fond of home to have so dear a friend to come home to! The fact is, she is
jealous of my aunt’s bestowing any kind recollections on us, while she
enjoys the patronage of her roof. She says she finds it inconsistent with her
own “ease and tranquility” to keep her any longer, & in
fine summons me to fetch her home. Now, much as I should rejoyce to transplant
the poor old creature from the chilling air of such patronage, yet I know how
straitend we are already, how unable already to answer any demand which
sickness or any extraordinary expence may make. I know this, and all unused as
I am to struggle with perplexities I am somewhat nonplusd, to say no worse.
This prevents me from a thorough relish of what Lloyd’s kindness and yours have furnished me with. I
thank you tho from my heart, and feel myself not quite alone in the earth.
Before I offer, what alone I have to offer, a few obvious
remarks on the poems you sent me, I can[not] but notice the odd coincidence of
two young men, in one age, carolling their grandmothers. Love—what L[loyd] calls “the feverish and
romantic tye”—hath too long domineerd over all the charities of
home: the dear domestic tyes of father, brother, husband. The amiable and
benevolent Cowper has a beautiful
passage in his “Task,”—some natural and painful reflections on his deceased
parents: and Hayley’s sweet lines to his mother are notoriously the best
things he ever wrote. Cowper’s lines, some of them,
are— “How gladly would the man recall to life The boy’s neglected sire; a mother, too, That softer name, perhaps more gladly still, Might he demand them at the gates of death.” I cannot but smile to see my Granny so gayly deck’d forth: tho’, I think, whoever
altered “thy” praises to “her” praises,
“thy” honoured memory to “her” honoured memory, did
wrong—they best exprest my feelings. There is a pensive state of recollection,
in which the mind is disposed to apostrophise the departed objects of its
attachment, and, breaking loose from grammatical precision, changes from the
1st to the 3rd, and from the 3rd to the 1st person, just as the random fancy or
the feeling directs. Among Lloyd’s sonnets, 6th,
7th, 8th, 9th, and 11th, are eminently beautiful. I think him too lavish of his
expletives; the do’s and did’s, when they occur too often, bring a
quaintness with them along with their simplicity, or rather air of antiquity
which the patrons of them seem desirous of conveying.
The lines
on Friday are very pleasing—“Yet calls itself in pride of
Infancy woman or man,” &c., “affection’s tottering
troop”—are prominent beauties. Another time, when my mind were
more at ease, I could be more particular in my remarks, and I would postpone
them now, only I want some diversion of mind. The Melancholy Man
is a charming piece of poetry, only the “whys” (with submission)
are too many. Yet the questions are too good to be any of ’em omitted.
For those lines of yours, page 18, omitted in magazine, I think the 3 first
better retain’d—the 3 last, which are somewhat simple in the most
affronting sense of the word, better omitted: to this my taste directs me—I
have no claim to prescribe to you. “Their slothful loves and dainty
sympathies” is an exquisite line, but you knew that when you wrote ’em, and I trifle in pointing such out. Tis
altogether the sweetest
thing to me you ever wrote—tis all honey. “No wish profaned
my overwhelmed heart, Blest hour, it was a Luxury to be”—I
recognise feelings, which I may taste again, if tranquility has not taken his flight for ever, and I will not
believe but I shall be happy, very happy again. The next poem to your friend is very beautiful:
need I instance the pretty fancy of “the rock’s collected
tears”—or that original line “pour’d all its
healthful greenness on the soul”?—let it be, since you asked me,
“as neighbouring fountains each reflect the
whole”—tho’ that is somewhat harsh; indeed the ending is not so
finish’d as the rest, which if you omit in your forthcoming edition, you
will do the volume wrong, and the very binding will cry out. Neither shall you
omit the 2 following poems. “The hour when we shall meet again,” is fine fancy, tis true,
but fancy catering in the Service of the feeling—fetching from her stores most
splendid banquets to satisfy her. Do not, do not omit it. Your sonnet to the River Otter excludes those equally beautiful lines, which
deserve not to be lost, “as the tired savage,” &c., and
I prefer that copy in your Watchman. I plead for its preference.
Another time, I may notice more particularly Lloyd’s, Southey’s, Dermody’s Sonnets. I shrink from them now: my teazing lot
makes me too confused for a clear judgment of things, too selfish for sympathy;
and these ill-digested, meaningless remarks I have imposed on myself as a task,
to lull reflection, as well as to show you I did not neglect reading your
valuable present. Return my acknowledgments to Lloyd; you two appear to be
about realising an Elysium upon earth, and, no doubt, I shall be happier. Take
my best wishes. Remember me most affectionately to Mrs. C., and give little David
Hartley—God bless its little heart!—a kiss for me. Bring him up
to know the meaning of his Christian name, and what that name (imposed upon
him) will demand of him.
C. Lamb.
God love you!
I write, for one thing, to say that I shall write no
more till you send me word where you are, for you are so soon to move.
My sister is pretty well, thank God. We think of you
very often. God bless you: continue to be my correspondent, and I will
strive to fancy that this world is not “all barrenness.”
Note
[The poetical present, Mr. Dykes
Campbell pointed out in The Athenæum, June 13, 1891, consisted of Lloyd’sPoems on the Death of Priscilla
Farmer, to which Lamb had
contributed “The Grandame,”
and of a little privately-printed collection of poems by Coleridge and Lloyd, which they had intended to
publish, but did not. The pamphlet has completely vanished. In addition to these two works
the poetical present also comprised another privately-printed collection, a little pamphlet
of twenty-eight sonnets which Coleridge
had arranged for the purpose of binding up with those of Bowles. It included three of Bowles’, four of
Coleridge’s, four of Lamb’s, four
of Southey’s, and the remainder by Dermody, Lloyd, Charlotte Smith, and others. A copy of this pamphlet is
preserved in the South Kensington Museum.
“The poems you sent me.” This would be Lloyd’sPoems on the Death of Priscilla
Farmer. When Lamb reprinted
“The Grandame” in
Coleridge’s second edition, 1797, he put back the original text.
Lloyd called Love “the fev’rish and romantic
tie” in the first sonnet on the death of Priscilla
Farmer.
The lines in The Task are in the “Winter Walk at
Noon,” 42-45.
Lloyd’s 6th sonnet begins:— When Thou that agonized Saint dost see, The 7th— Oft when I brood on what my heart has felt, The 8th— My Bible, scarcely dare I open thee! The 9th— When from my dreary home I first mov’d on. and the 11th— As o’er the dying embers oft I cower. In Lloyd’s part of the 1797 edition of Coleridge’sPoems these sonnets are
re-numbered V., VI., VII., VIII. and X.
The lines on Friday bore the title “Lines written on a Friday, the Day in each Week formerly devoted by the Author
and his Brothers and Sisters to the Society of their Grandmother.” The
passage which Lamb singled out runs thus:— . . . Faint-heard the rumbling wheels Proclaim the kind conveyance sent by her, The watchful Friend, to bear the feeble ones: Perchance some babe that still in helplessness Clings to its Mother’s breast, or one that left But now its Nurse’s lap, another yet That scarcely lisps its benefactress’ name, Yet calls itself in pride of infancy, Woman or Man! Ah, enviable state, When in simplicity of heart we’re pleas’d With misery-meaning names! The mother still With kisses fond, or smiles of anxious hope Tended affection’s tott’ring troop. . . .
I now take up Mr. Dykes
Campbell’s comments on the letter, where it branches off from the
Priscilla
Farmer volume to the vanished pamphlet of poems by Coleridge and Lloyd:—
Beginning with Lloyd’s “Melancholy Man” (first printed in the Carlisle volume of 1795), he [Lamb] passes to Coleridge’spoem on leaving the
honeymoon-cottage at Clevedon, “altogether the sweetest thing to me,”
says Lamb, “you ever wrote.” The verses had appeared in
the Monthly Magazine two
months before. . . . That Lamb’s counsel was followed to some
extent may be gathered from a comparison between the text of the magazine and that of
1797:—
“Once I saw (Hallowing his sabbath-day by quietness) A wealthy son of Commerce saunter by, Bristowa’s citizen: he paus’d, and look’d, With a pleas’d sadness, and gazed all around, Then ey’d our Cottage, and gaz’d round again, And said, it was a blessed little place! And we were blessed!” Monthly Magazine. “Once I saw (Hallowing his Sabbath-day by quietness) A wealthy son of Commerce saunter by, Bristowa’s citizen. Methought it calm’d His thirst of idle gold, and made him muse With wiser feelings: for he paus’d, and look’d With a pleas’d sadness, and gaz’d all around, Then ey’d our cottage, and gaz’d round again, And sigh’d and said, it was a blessed place. And we were blessed.” Poems, 1797.
It will be observed that Coleridge in 1797 inserted some lines which were not in the magazine. They
were probably restored from a MS. copy Lamb had
previously seen, and if Coleridge did not cancel all that
Lamb wisely counselled, he certainly drew the sting of the
“affronting simplicity” by removing the word “little.” The comical
ambiguity of the Bristol man’s exclamation as first reported could hardly have failed
to drive Lamb’s dull care away for a moment or two.
[In] “the next poem to your friend,” . .
. [Lamb is] speaking of Coleridge’s lines “To Charles Lloyd”—those beginning “A mount, not wearisome and bare and steep.” In the “forthcoming edition” the poet improved a little the barely
tolerated line, making it read,— “As neighb’ring fountains image, each the whole,” but did not take Lamb’s hint to omit the
five which closed the poem. Lamb, however, got his way—perhaps took
it—when the verses were reprinted in 1803, in the volume he saw through the press for
Coleridge.
“Neither shall you omit the 2 following poems.
‘The hour when we shall meet
again’ is [only?] a fine fancy, ’tis true, but fancy catering in
the service of the feeling—fetching from her stores most splendid banquets to satisfy
her. Do not, do not, omit it.”
So wrote Lamb of
these somewhat slender verses, but his friend had composed them “during illness
and in absence,” and Lamb in his own heart-sickness and
loneliness detected the reality which underlay the conventionality of expression. The
critic slept, and even when he was awake again in 1803 was fain to let the lines be
reprinted with only the concession of their worst couplet:— “While finely-flushing float her kisses meek, Like melted rubies, o’er my pallid cheek.”
The second of the “2 following poems”
was Coleridge’s “Sonnet to the River Otter.” The version then
before him “excludes,” complains Lamb, “those equally beautiful lines which deserve not to be lost,
‘as the tir’d savage,’ &c, and I prefer the copy in your Watchman. I
plead for its preference.” This pleading . . . was not responded to in the
way Lamb wanted, but in the appendix to the 1797 volume
Coleridge printed the whole of the poem on an “Autumnal Evening,” to which the
“tir’d savage” properly belonged. . . .
“Lloyd’s,
Southey’s, Dermody’s Sonnets.” Lamb here refers to the third portion of the poetical present—the
twenty-eight sonnets to be bound up with those of Bowles. Thomas Dermody (1775-1802) was an Irish poet
of squalidly dissolute life. A collection of his verses appeared in 1792.
“All barrenness.” From Southey’s poem “The
Pauper’s Funeral,” line 16:— And thine old age all barrenness and blast!]
LETTER 18 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Dec. 10th, 1796.
I HAD put my letter into the post rather hastily,
not expecting to have to acknowledge another from you so soon. This
morning’s present has made me alive again: my last night’s epistle
was childishly querulous; but you have put a little life into me, and I will
thank you for your remembrance of me, while my sense of it is yet warm; for if
I linger a day or two I may use the same phrase of acknowledgment, or similar;
but the feeling that dictates it now will be gone. I shall send you a
caput mortuum, not a
cor vivens. Thy
Watchman’s, thy bellman’s, verses, I do retort upon thee, thou
libellous varlet,—why, you cried the hours yourself, and who made you so proud?
But I submit, to show my humility, most implicitly to your dogmas. I reject
entirely the copy of verses you reject. With regard to my leaving off
versifying, you have said so many pretty things, so many fine compliments,
ingeniously decked out in the garb of sincerity, and undoubtedly springing from
a present feeling somewhat like sincerity, that you might melt the most
un-muse-ical soul,—did you not (now for a Rowland compliment for your profusion of Olivers)—did you not in your very epistle, by the
many pretty fancies and profusion of heart displayed in it, dissuade and
discourage me from attempting anything after you. At present I have not leisure
to make verses, nor anything
approaching to a fondness for the exercise. In the ignorant present time, who
can answer for the future man? “At lovers’ perjuries Jove laughs”—and poets have
sometimes a disingenuous way of forswearing their occupation. This though is
not my case. The tender cast of soul, sombred with melancholy and subsiding
recollections, is favourable to the Sonnet or the Elegy; but from “The sainted growing woof, The teasing troubles keep aloof.” The music of poesy may charm for a while the importunate teasing cares of
life; but the teased and troubled man is not in a disposition to make that
music.
You sent me some very sweet lines relative to Burns, but it was
at a time when, in my highly agitated and perhaps distorted state of mind, I
thought it a duty to read ’em hastily and burn ’em. I burned all my
own verses, all my book of extracts from Beaumont and Fletcher
and a thousand sources: I burned a little journal of my foolish passion which I
had a long time kept— “Noting ere they past away The little lines of yesterday.” I almost burned all your letters,—I did as bad, I lent ’em to a
friend to keep out of my brother’s
sight, should he come and make inquisition into our papers, for, much as he
dwelt upon your conversation while you were among us, and delighted to be with
you, it has been his fashion ever since to depreciate and cry you down,—you
were the cause of my madness—you and your damned foolish sensibility and
melancholy—and he lamented with a true brotherly feeling that we ever met, even
as the sober citizen, when his son went astray upon the mountains of Parnassus,
is said to have “cursed wit and Poetry and Pope.” I quote wrong, but no matter. These
letters I lent to a friend to be out of the way for a season; but I have
claimed them in vain, and shall not cease to regret their loss. Your packets,
posterior to the date of my misfortunes, commencing with that valuable
consolatory epistle, are every day accumulating—they are sacred things with me.
Publish your Burns when and
how you like, it will be new to me,—my memory of it is very confused, and
tainted with unpleasant associations. Burns was the god of my idolatry, as Bowles of yours. I am jealous of your
fraternising with Bowles, when I think you relish him more
than Burns or my old favourite, Cowper. But you conciliate matters when you
talk of the “divine chit-chat” of the latter: by the
expression I see you thoroughly relish him. I love Mrs. Coleridge for her excuses an hundredfold more dearly than
if she heaped “line upon line,” out-Hannah-ing Hannah More, and had rather hear you sing
“Did a very little baby”
by your family fire-side, than listen to you when you were repeating one of
Bowles’s sweetest sonnets in your sweet manner,
while we two were indulging sympathy, a solitary luxury, by the fire-side at
the Salutation. Yet have I no higher ideas of heaven. Your company was one
“cordial in this melancholy vale”—the remembrance of it
is a blessing partly, and partly a curse. When I can abstract myself from
things present, I can enjoy it with a freshness of relish; but it more
constantly operates to an unfavourable comparison with the uninteresting:
converse I always and only can partake in. Not a soul loves
Bowles here; scarce one has heard of
Burns; few but laugh at me for reading my
Testament—they talk a language I understand not: I conceal sentiments that
would be a puzzle to them. I can only converse with you by letter and with the
dead in their books. My sister, indeed,
is all I can wish in a companion; but our spirits are alike poorly, our reading
and knowledge from the self-same sources, our communication with the scenes of
the world alike narrow: never having kept separate company, or any
“company” “together”—never
having read separate books, and few books together—what
knowledge have we to convey to each other? In our little range of duties and
connexions, how few sentiments can take place, without friends, with few books,
with a taste for religion rather than a strong religious habit! We need some
support, some leading-strings to cheer and direct us. You talk very wisely, and
be not sparing of your advice. Continue to remember us,
and to show us you do remember us: we will take as lively an interest in what
concerns you and yours. All I can add to your happiness, will be sympathy. You
can add to mine more; you can teach me wisdom. I am indeed an unreasonable
correspondent; but I was unwilling to let my last night’s letter go off
without this qualifier: you will perceive by this my mind is easier, and you
will rejoice I do not expect or wish you to write, till you are moved; and of
course shall not, till you announce to me that event, think of writing myself.
Love to Mrs. Coleridge and David Hartley, and my kind remembrance to Lloyd, if he is with you.
C. Lamb.
I will get “Nature and Art,”—have not seen it
yet—nor any of Jeremy Taylor’s
works.
Note
[“Caput mortuum . . . cor
vivens.” Lamb contrasts the
thanks that come from a cold intellect (dead head) with those proceeding quick and warm
from the heart
The reference to the bellman’s verses (the bellman, or watchman,
used to leave verses at the houses on his beat at Easter as a re-minder of his deserts) is not quite clear.
Lamb evidently had submitted for the new volume
some lines which Coleridge would not pass—possibly
the poem in Letter No. 16.
Coleridge some time before had sent to Lamb the very sweet lines relative to Burns, under the title, “To a Friend who had Declared His Intention of Writing no
more Poetry.”
“At lovers’ perjuries, they say, Jove laughs” (“Romeo and Juliet,” II., 2, 92, 93).
“Ignorant present.” See note on page 47.
“The sainted growing woof,” etc. From Collins’ “Ode on the Poetical Character”:— The dangerous Passions kept aloof, Far from the sainted growing woof.
“Noting ere they past away . . .” From Rogers’ “Pleasures of Memory,” Part
II.—“past” for “fade.”
“Cursed wit and Poetry and Pope.” A slight confusion is in Lamb’s mind: the passage in Pope’s
“Epistle to
Arbuthnot” runs (23-26):— Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the laws, Imputes to me and my damn’d works the cause: Poor Cornus sees his frantic wife elope, And curses Wit, and Poetry, and Pope.
“Hannah More.” The
reference is to the prolixity of the author of Sacred Dramas. “Line upon line”
(Isaiah xxviii. 13).
“Did a very little baby.” In the Appendix to Vol. I.
of the 1847 edition of the Biog. Lit., Sara
Coleridge writes, concerning children and domestic evenings,
“‘Did a very little babby make a very great noise?’ is the first
line of a nursery song, in which Mr. Coleridge
recorded some of his experience on this recondite subject.” The song has
disappeared.
“Cordial in this melancholy vale.” From Burns’ “Cotter’s Saturday Night,” verse ix., line
6.
Nature and Art
was Mrs. Inchbald’s story, published in 1796.
Lamb later became an enthusiast for Jeremy Taylor (see page 218).]
LETTER 19 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Dated outside: Jan. 2, 1797.]
YOUR success in the higher species of the Ode is
such, as bespeaks you born for achievements of loftier enterprize than to
linger in the lowly train of songsters and sonneteurs. Sincerely I think your Ode one of the finest I have
read. The opening is in the spirit of the sublimest allegory. The idea of the
“skirts of the departing year, seen far onwards, waving on the
wind” is one of those noble Hints at which the Reader’s
imagination is apt to kindle into grand conceptions. Do the words
“impetuous” and “solemnize” harmonize well in the same
line? Think and judge. In the 2d strophe, there seems to be too much play of
fancy to be consistent with that continued elevation we are taught to expect
from the strain of the foregoing. The parenthized line (by the way I abominate
parentheses in this kind of poetry) at the beginng of
7th page, and indeed all that gradual description of the throes and pangs of
nature in childbirth, I do not much like, and those 4 first lines,—I mean
“tomb gloom anguish and languish”— rise not above mediocrity. In
the Epode, your mighty genius comes again: “I marked
ambition” &c. Thro’ the whole Epod indeed you carry along
our souls in a full spring tide of feeling and imaginatn. Here is the “Storm of Music,” as Cowper expresses it. Would it not be more
abrupt “Why does the northern Conqueress stay” or
“where does the northern Conqueress stay”?—this change
of measure, rather than the feebler “Ah! whither”.
“Foul her life and dark her tomb, mighty army of the dead, dance
like deathflies” &c.: here is genius, here is poetry, rapid,
irresistible. The concluding line, is it not a personif: without use?
“Nec deus intersit”—except indeed for rhyme
sake. Would the laws of Strophe and antistrophe, which, if they are as
unchangeable, I suppose are about as wise, [as] the Mede and Persian laws,
admit of expunging that line altogether, and changing the preceding one to
“and he, poor madman, deemd it quenchd in endless night?”—fond madman or proud madman if
you will, but poor is more contemptuous. If I offer
alterations of my own to your poetry, and admit not yours in mine, it is upon
the principle of a present to a rich man being graciously accepted, and the
same present to a poor man being considered as in insult. To return—The
Antistrophe that follows is not inferior in grandeur or original: but is I
think not faultless—e: g: How is Memory alone, when all
the etherial multitude are there? Reflect. Again “storiedst thy sad
hours” is harsh, I need not tell you, but you have gained your
point in expressing much meaning in few words: “Purple locks and snow
white glories” “mild Arcadians ever blooming”
“seas of milk and ships of amber” these are things the
Muse talks about when, to borrow H.
Walpole’s witty phrase, she is not finely-phrenzied, only
a little light-headed, that’s all. “Purple locks.”
They may manage things differently in fairy land, but your “golden
tresses” are more to my fancy. The spirit of the Earth is a most
happy conceit, and the last line is one of the luckiest I ever
heard—“and stood up beautiful before
the cloudy seat.” I
cannot enough admire it. ’Tis somehow picturesque in the very sound. The
2d Antistrophe (what is the meaning of these things?) is fine and faultless (or
to vary the alliteration and not diminish the affectation) beautiful and
blameless. I only except to the last line as meaningless after the preceding,
and useless entirely—besides, why disjoin “nature and the world”
here, when you had confounded both in their pregnancy: “the common
earth and nature,” recollect, a little before—And there is a
dismal superfluity in the unmeaning vocable “unhurld”—the
worse, as it is so evidently a rhyme-fetch.—“Death like he
dozes” is a prosaic conceit—indeed all the Epode as far as
“brother’s corse” I most heartily commend to
annihilation. The enthusiast of the lyre should not be so feebly, so tediously,
delineative of his own feelings; ’tis not the way to become
“Master of our affections.” The address to Albion is
very agreeable, and concludes even beautifully: “speaks safety to his
island child”—“Sworded”—epithet I would change for “cruel”. The immediately succeeding
lines are prosaic: “mad avarice” is an unhappy combination;
and “the coward distance yet with kindling pride” is not
only reprehensible for the antithetical turn, but as it is a quotation:
“safe distance” and “coward distance” you have more
than once had recourse to before—And the Lyric Muse, in her enthusiasm, should
talk the language of her country, something removed from common use, something
“recent,” unborrowed. The dreams of destruction “soothing
her fierce solitude,” are vastly grand and terrific: still you
weaken the effect by that superfluous and easily-conceived parenthesis that
finishes the page. The foregoing image, few minds could have conceived, few
tongues could have so cloath’d; “muttring
destempered triumph” &c. is vastly fine. I hate imperfect
beginnings and endings. Now your concluding stanza is worthy of so fine an ode.
The beginning was awakening and striking; the ending is soothing and solemn—Are
you serious when you ask whether you shall admit this ode? it would be strange
infatuation to leave out your
Chatterton; mere insanity to reject this. Unless you are fearful
that the splendid thing may be a means of “eclipsing many a softer
satellite” that twinkles thro’ the volume. Neither omit the
annex’d little poem. For my part, detesting alliterations, I should make
the 1st line “Away, with this fantastic pride of woe.” Well
may you relish Bowles’sallegory. I need only tell you,
I have read, and will only add, that I dislike ambition’s name gilded on his helmet-cap, and that I think, among the
more striking personages you notice, you omitted the most striking, Remorse!” He saw the trees—the sun—then hied him
to his cave again”!!! The 2d stanza of mania is superfl: the 1st was
never exceeded. The 2d is too methodic: for her. With
all its load of beauties, I am more affected with the 6
first stanzas of the Elegiac poem written during
sickness. Tell me your feelings. If the fraternal sentiment conveyed in the
following lines
will atone for the total want of anything like merit or genius in it, I desire
you will print it next after my other sonnet to my sister.
Friend of my earliest years, & childish days, My joys, my sorrows, thou with me hast shared Companion dear; & we alike have fared Poor pilgrims we, thro’ life’s unequal ways It were unwisely done, should we refuse To cheer our path, as featly as we may, Our lonely path to cheer, as travellers use With merry song, quaint tale, or roundelay. And we will sometimes talk past troubles o’er, Of mercies shewn, & all our sickness heal’d, And in his judgments God remembring love; And we will learn to praise God evermore For those “Glad tidings of great joy” reveal’d By that sooth messenger, sent from above. 1797.
If you think the epithet “sooth” quaint,
substitute “blest messenger.” I hope you are printing my sonnets,
as I directed you—particularly the 2d. “Methinks” &c. with my
last added 6 lines at ye end: and all of ’em as I last made ’em.
This has been a sad long letter of business, with no room in
it for what honest Bunyan terms
heart-work. I have just room left to congratulate you on your removal to
Stowey; to wish success to all your projects; to “bid fair peace”
be to that house; to send my love and best wishes, breathed warmly, after your
dear Sara, and her little David Hartley. If Lloyd be with you, bid him write to me: I feel to whom I am
obliged primarily for two very friendly letters I have received already from
him. A dainty sweet book that “Art and Nature“ is. I am at present
re-re-reading Priestley’sexaminat of the Scotch Drs: how the
Rogue strings ’em up! three together! You have no doubt read that clear,
strong, humorous, most entertaining piece of reasoning. If not, procure it, and
be exquisitely amused. I wish I could get more of
Priestley’s works. Can you recommend me to any
more books, easy of access, such as circulating shops afford? God bless you and
yours.
Poor Mary is very
unwell with a sore throat and a slight species of scarlet fever. God bless her
too.
Monday Morning, at Office.
Note
[Coleridge had just published in
quarto his Ode on the
Departing Year. In order that Lamb’s letter may be intelligible it is necessary, I think, to give
the text of this edition in full. It will
be found in the Appendix to Vol. VII. of this edition, page 947. Lamb
returns to his criticism in the letter on page 80.
“Storm of music.” In Cowper’s “Table
Talk,” line 491:— The storm of music shakes th’ astonish’d crowd.
“Nec deus intersit.” HoraceArs Poet, 191, “Nor let a god interfere.”
“Mild Arcadians ever blooming.” From Pope’s “Song. By a Person of Quality,” verse 2, line 1.
“Seas of milk and ships of amber.” From Otway’s “Venice Preserved,” Act V., Scene 2, last line:— Lutes, Laurels, Seas of Milk and Ships of Amber. Horace Walpole’s remark was that when
Otway’s heroine, Belvidera, thus rambled she was not mad but light-headed.
“They may manage things differently in fairy land.”
Lamb may have had in mind Sterne’s sentence in the Sentimental
Journey—“They order, said I, this matter better in
France.”
The “annexed little poem” was that “Addressed to a Young Man of
Fortune,” which began, and still begins, “Hence that fantastic
wantonness of woe.”
Bowles’ allegory was the poem, “Hope, An Allegorical Sketch,” recently
published. Stanza XVI. begins:— Suddenly, lifting high his pond’rous spear, A mailed man came forth with scornful pride, I saw him tow’ring in his dark career Along the valley like a giant stride: Upon his helm, in letters of bright gold, That to the sun’s meridian splendour shone, Ambition’s name far off I might behold. This is part of Stanza XXV.:— Came grim Remorse: as fixt in thought he stood, His senses pierc’d by the unwonted tone He heard—the blood drops from his locks he shook— He saw the trees that wav’d, the sun that shone, He cast around an agonized look; Then with a ghastly smile that spoke his pain, He hied him to his cave in thickest shades again. And this is the first stanza describing mania:— Next to the gleamy glen, poor Mania stray’d: Most pale and wild, yet gentle was her look, A slender garland she of straw had made, Of flow’rs, and rushes from the running brook; But as she sadly pass’d, the tender sound Of its sharp pang her wounded heart beguil’d, She dropp’d her half-made garland on the ground, And then she sigh’d, and then in tears she smil’d, But smiled so, that Pity would have said, “O God, be merciful to that poor hapless maid!”
These are the first six of the “Elegiac Stanzas Written During Sickness at Bath, December,
1795”:—
When I lie musing on my bed alone, And listen to the wintry waterfall; And many moments that are past and gone, (Moments of sunshine and of joy) recall; Though the long night is dark and damp around, And no still star hangs out its friendly flame; And the winds sweep the sash with sullen sound, And freezing palsy creeps o’er all my frame; I catch consoling phantasies that spring From the thick gloom, and as the night-airs beat, They touch my heart, like the wild wires that ring In mournful modulations, strange and sweet. Was it the voice of thee, my bury’d friend? Was it the whisper’d vow of faithful love? Do I in ****** green shades thy steps attend, And hear the high pines murmur thus above? ’Twas not thy voice, my bury’d friend!—O, no: ’Twas not, O ******, the murmur of thy trees; But at the thought I feel my bosom glow, And woo the dream whose air-drawn shadows please. And I can think I see the groves again, The larches that yon peaceful roof embow’r, The airy down, the cattle speckl’d plain, And the grey sunshine on the village tow’r.
The portion of the letter beginning with “If the fraternal
sentiment,” is all of this letter that hitherto has been published. The poem was not included in the 1797
volume, but was printed in the Monthly Magazine, October, 1797. Coleridge had moved to his cottage at Nether Stowey on the last day of
1796.
“Bid fair peace” (Lycidas, line 22).
Priestley’s book would be An Examination of Dr. Reid’s
Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, Dr. Beattie’s
Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, and Dr. Oswald’s Appeal to
Common Sense in Behalf of Religion, 1774.]
LETTER 20 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[p.m. Jan. 10, 1797.] Saturday.
I AM completely reconciled to that second strophe, and wa[i]ve all
objection. In spite of the Grecian Lyrists, I persist on [in] thinking your
brief personification of Madness useless; reverence forbids me to say, impertinent. Golden
locks and snow white glories are as incongruous as 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 retaining the
purple—the glories that I have observed to encircle the heads of saints and
madonnas in those old paintings have been mostly of a dirty drab-color’d
yellow—a dull gambogium. Keep your old line: it will excite a confused kind of
pleasurable idea in the reader’s mind, not clear enough to be called a
conception, nor just enough, I think, to reduce to painting. It is a rich line,
you say, and riches hide a many faults. I maintain, that in the 2d antist: you
do disjoin Nature and the world, and contrary to
your conduct in the 2d strophe. “Nature joins her
groans”—joins with whom, a God’s name,
but the world or earth in line preceding? But this is being over curious, I
acknowledge. Nor did I call the last line useless, I only objected to “unhurld.” I cannot
be made to like the former part of that 2d Epode; I cannot be made to feel it,
as I do the parallel places in Isaiah, Jeremy and Daniel. Whether it
is that in the present case the rhyme impairs the efficacy; or that the
circumstances are feigned, and we are conscious of a made up lye in the case,
and the narrative is too long winded to preserve the semblance of truth; or
that lines 8. 9. 10. 14 in partic: 17 and 18 are mean and unenthusiastic; or
that lines 5 to 8 in their change of rhyme shew like art—I don’t know,
but it strikes me as something meant to affect, and failing in its purpose.
Remember my waywardness of feeling is single, and singly stands opposed to all
your friends, and what is one among many! This I know, that your quotations
from the prophets have never escaped me, and never fail’d to affect me
strongly. I hate that simile. I am glad you have amended that parenthesis in
the account of Destruction. I like it well now. Only utter [? omit] that
history of child-bearing, and all will do well. Let the obnoxious Epode remain,
to terrify such of your friends as are willing to be terrified. I think I would
omit the Notes, not as not good per se, but as uncongenial with the dignity of
the Ode. I need not repeat my wishes to have my little sonnets printed verbatim
my last way. In particular, I fear lest you should prefer printing my first
sonnet, as you have done more than once, “did the wand of Merlin
wave”? It looks so like Mr. Merlin, the
ingenious successor of the immortal Merlin,
now living in good health and spirits, and flourishing in magical reputation in
Oxford Street; and on my life, one half who read it would understand it so. Do
put ’em forth finally as I have, in various letters, settled it; for
first a man’s self is to be pleased, and then his friends,—and, of course
the greater number of his friends, if they differ inter se.
Thus taste may safely be put to the vote. I do
long to see our names together—not for vanity’s sake, and naughty pride
of heart altogether, for not a living soul, I know or am intimate with, will
scarce read the book—so I shall gain nothing quoad
famam,—and yet there is a little vanity mixes in it, I cannot help
denying. I am aware of the unpoetical cast of the 6 last lines of my last
sonnet, and think myself unwarranted in smuggling so tame a thing into the
book; only the sentiments of those 6 lines are thoroughly congenial to me in my
state of mind, and I wish to accumulate perpetuating tokens of my affection to
poor Mary; that it has no originality in
its cast, nor anything in the feelings, but what is common and natural to
thousands, nor aught properly called poetry, I see; still it will tend to keep
present to my mind a view of things which I ought to indulge. These 6 lines,
too, have not, to a reader, a connectedness with the foregoing. Omit it, if you
like.—What a treasure it is to my poor indolent and unemployed mind, thus to
lay hold on a subject to talk about, tho’ ’tis but a sonnet and
that of the lowest order. How mournfully inactive I am!—’Tis night:
good-night.
My sister, I thank
God, is nigh recovered. She was seriously ill. Do, in your next letter, and
that right soon, give me some satisfaction respecting your present situation at
Stowey. Is it a farm you have got? and what does your worship know about
farming? Coleridge, I want you to write
an Epic poem. Nothing short of it can satisfy the vast capacity of true poetic
genius. Having one great End to direct all your poetical faculties to, and on
which to lay out your hopes, your ambition, will shew you to what you are
equal. By the sacred energies of Milton,
by the dainty sweet and soothing phantasies of honeytongued Spenser, I adjure you to attempt the Epic. Or
do something more ample than writing an occasional brief ode or sonnet;
something “to make yourself for ever known,—to make the age to come
your own”. But I prate; doubtless you meditate something. When
you are exalted among the Lords of Epic fame, I shall recall with pleasure, and
exultingly, the days of your humility, when you disdained not to put forth in
the same volume with mine, your religious musings, and that other poem from the Joan of Arc,
those promising first fruits of high renown to come. You have learning, you
have fancy, you have enthusiasm—you have strength and amplitude of wing enow
for flights like those I recommend. In the vast and unexplored regions of
fairyland, there is ground enough unfound and uncultivated; search there, and
realize your favourite Susquehanah scheme. In all our comparisons of taste, I
do not know whether I have ever heard your opinion of a poet, very dear to me,
the now out of fashion Cowley—favor me
with your judgment of him, and tell me if his prose essays, in particular, as well as no
inconsiderable part of his verse,
be not delicious. I prefer the graceful rambling of his essays, even to the
courtly elegance and ease of Addison—
abstracting from this the latter’s exquisite humour. Why is not your
poem on Burns in
the Monthly Magazine? I was much
disappointed. I have a pleasurable but confused remembrance of it.
When the little volume is printed, send me 3 or 4, at all events not more
than 6 copies, and tell me if I put you to any additional expence, by printing
with you. I have no thought of the kind, and in that case, must reimburse you.
My epistle is a model of unconnectedness, but I have no partic: subject to
write on, and must proportion my scribble in some degree to the increase of
postage. It is not quite fair, considering how burdensome your correspondence
from different quarters must be, to add to it with so little shew of reason. I
will make an end for this evening. Sunday Even:—Farewell.
Priestly, whom I sin in almost adoring,
speaks of “such a choice of company, as tends to keep up that right
bent, and firmness of mind, which a necessary intercourse with the world
would otherwise warp and relax. Such fellowship is the true balsam of life,
its cement is infinitely more durable than that of the friendships of the
world, and it looks for its proper fruit, and complete gratification, to
the life beyond the Grave.” Is there a possible chance for such
an one as me to realize in this world, such friendships? Where am I to look for
’em? What testimonials shall I bring of my being worthy of such
friendship? Alas! the great and good go together in separate Herds, and leave
such as me to lag far far behind in all intellectual, and far more grievous to
say, in all moral, accomplishments. Coleridge, I have not one truly elevated character among my
acquaintance: not one Christian: not one but undervalues Christianity. Singly
what am I to do? Wesley (have you read
his life? was he not an elevated character?) Wesley has
said, “Religion is not a solitary thing.” Alas! it
necessarily is so with me, or next to solitary. ’Tis true, you write to
me. But correspondence by letter, and personal intimacy, are very widely
different. Do, do write to me, and do some good to my mind, already how much
“warped and relaxed” by the world!—’Tis the
conclusion of another evening. Good night. God have us all in his keeping.
If you are sufficiently at leisure, oblige me with an
account of your plan of life at Stowey—your literary occupations and
prospects—in short make me acquainted with every circumstance, which, as
relating to you, can be interesting to me. Are you yet a Berkleyan? Make me one. I rejoice in being,
speculatively, a necessarian. Would to God, I were habitually a practical one.
Confirm me in the faith of that great and glorious doctrine, and keep me steady
in the contemplation of it. You sometime
since exprest an intention you had of finishing some extensive work on the
Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion. Have you let that intention go? Or
are you doing any thing towards it? Make to yourself other ten talents. My
letter is full of nothingness. I talk of nothing. But I must talk. I love to
write to you. I take a pride in it. It makes me think less meanly of myself. It
makes me think myself not totally disconnected from the better part of Mankind.
I know, I am too dissatisfied with the beings around me,—but I cannot help
occasionally exclaiming “Woe is me, that I am constrained to dwell
with Meshech, and to have my habitation among the
tents of Kedar”—I know I am no ways better in practice than my
neighbours—but I have a taste for religion, an occasional earnest aspiration
after perfection, which they have not. I gain nothing by being with such as
myself—we encourage one another in mediocrity—I am always longing to be with
men more excellent than myself. All this must sound odd to you; but these are
my predominant feelings, when I sit down to write to you, and I should put
force upon my mind, were I to reject them. Yet I rejoyce, and feel my privilege
with gratitude, when I have been reading some wise book, such as I have just
been reading—Priestley on Philosophical
necessity—in the thought that I enjoy a kind of communion, a kind of friendship
even, with the great and good. Books are to me instead of friends. I wish they
did not resemble the latter in their scarceness.—And how does little David Hartley? “Ecquid in
antiquam virtutem?”—does his mighty name work
wonders yet upon his little frame, and opening mind? I did not distinctly
understand you,—you don’t mean to make an actual ploughman of him?
Mrs. C is no doubt well,—give my
kindest respects to her. Is Lloyd with
you yet?—are you intimate with Southey?
What poems is he about to publish—he hath a most prolific brain, and is indeed
a most sweet poet. But how can you answer all the various mass of interrogation
I have put to you in the course of this sheet. Write back just what you like,
only write something, however brief. I have now nigh finished my page, and got
to the end of another evening (Monday evening)—and my eyes are heavy and
sleepy, and my brain unsuggestive. I have just heart enough awake to say Good
night once more, and God love you my dear friend, God love us all. Mary bears an affectionate remembrance of you.
Charles Lamb.
Note
[The criticisms contained in the first paragraph bear upon
Coleridge’s “Ode on the
Departing Year,” which had already appeared twice, in the Cambridge Intelligencer and in a
quarto issued by Cottle, and was now being revised for the second edition of the Poems.
The personification of Madness was contained in the line, afterwards
omitted:— For still does Madness roam on Guilt’s black dizzy height. Lamb’s objection to this line, considering his
home circumstances at the time, was very natural. In Antistrophe I. Coleridge originally said of the ethereal multitude in
Heaven— Whose purple Locks with snow-white Glories shone. In the 1797 Poems the line ran— Whose wreathed Locks with snow-white Glories shone; and in the final version— Whose locks with wreaths, whose wreaths with glories shone. Coleridge must have supported his case, in the letter which
Lamb is answering, by a reference to the Italian painters.
In connection with Lamb’s
other criticisms see the poem on page 947, in the Appendix. Coleridge in the 1797 edition of his Poems made no alteration to meet
Lamb’s strictures. The simile that Lamb
hated is, I imagine, that of the soldier on the war field. “The history of
child-bearing” referred to is the passage at the end of Strophe II. To the
quarto Coleridge had appended various notes. In 1797 he had only
three, and added an argument.
“I need not repeat my wishes.” In Talfourd and other editions this letter has always
begun with these words.
The reference to Merlin will be
explained by a glance at the parallel sonnets on page 24. Merlin was entirely Coleridge’s idea. A conjuror of that name was just then among
London’s attractions.
The “last sonnet,” which was not the last in the 1797
volume, but the 6th, was that beginning “If from my lips” (see page 2).
In connection with Lamb’s
question on the Stowey husbandry, the following quotation from a letter from Coleridge to the Rev. J. P.
Estlin, belonging to this period, is interesting:—
Our house is better than we expected—there is a comfortable
bedroom and sitting-room for C. Lloyd, and another
for us, a room for Nanny, a kitchen, and out-house. Before our door a
clear brook runs of very soft water; and in the back yard is a nice well of fine spring
water. We have a very pretty garden, and large enough to find us vegetables and employment,
and I am already an expert gardener, and both my hands can exhibit a callum as testimonials
of their industry. We have likewise a sweet orchard.
Writing a little before this to Charles Lloyd, senior, Coleridge had said: “My days I shall devote to the acquirement of
practical husbandry and horticulture.”
“To make yourself for ever known . . .” Cowley’s “Motto” has:— What shall I do to be for ever known, And make the age to come my own?
The poem on Burns was that “To a Friend [Lamb] who had Declared His Intention of
Writing no more Poetry.” It was printed first in a Bristol paper and then
in the Annual Anthology,
1800.
Priestley’s remark is in the Dedication to
John Lee, Esq., of Lincoln’s Inn, of “A Free Discussion of the Doctrines of Materialism and Philosophical Necessity in a
Correspondence between Dr. Price and Dr. Priestley,” etc., included in
Disquisitions Relating to Matter and
Spirit, Vol. III., 1778. The discussion arose from the publication by
Priestley of The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated,
which itself is an appendage to Disquisitions Relating to Matter
and Spirit.
Three lives at least of John
Wesley were published in the two years following his death in 1791.
Coleridge later studied
Wesley closely, for he added valuable notes to Southey’slife (see the 1846 edition).
“Warped and relaxed.” See the quotation from
Priestley.
“A Berkleyan,” i.e., a
follower of Bishop Berkeley (1685-1753), who in his
New Theory of
Vision and later works maintained that “what we call matter has no
actual existence, and that the impressions which we believe ourselves to receive from
it are not, in fact, derived from anything external to ourselves, but are produced
within us by a certain disposition of the mind, the immediate operation of
God” (Benham’sDictionary of
Religion).
Coleridge when sending Southey one version of his poem to Charles
Lamb, entitled “This
Lime-tree Bower my Prison” (to which we shall come later), in July, 1797,
appended to the following passage the note, “You remember I am a Berkleian”:— Struck with joy’s deepest calm, and gazing round On the wide view, may gaze till all doth seem Less gross than bodily; a living thing That acts upon the mind, and with such hues As clothe the Almighty Spirit, when He makes Spirits perceive His presence!
“A Necessarian.” We should now say a fatalist.
Coleridge’s work on the “Evidences of Natural and Bevealed Religion,” which has before
been mentioned, was, if ever begun, never completed.
“Woe is me . . .” From Psalms cxx. 5.
“Ecquid in antiquam
virtutem.” See Æneid, III., 342-343:— Ecquid in antiquam virtutem animosque viriles Et pater Æneas et avunculus excitat
Hector?
(Do his father Æneas and his uncle
Hector rouse him [i.e., Ascanius, i.e., little Hartley] to
anything of their ancient valour and manly spirits?)]
LETTER 21 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Dated at end: January 18, 1797.]
DEAR Col,—You
have learnd by this time, with surprise, no doubt, that Lloyd is with me in town. The emotions I felt
on his coming so unlooked for are not ill expressed in what follows, & what, if you do not
object to them as too personal, & to the world obscure, or otherwise
wanting in worth, I should wish to make a part of our little volume.
I shall be sorry if that vol comes out, as it necessarily
must do, unless you print those very schoolboyish verses I sent you on not
getting leave to come down to Bristol last Summer. I say I shall be sorry that
I have addrest you in nothing which can appear in our joint volume.
So frequently, so habitually as you dwell on my thoughts,
’tis some wonder those thoughts came never yet in Contact with a poetical
mood—But you dwell in my heart of hearts, and I love you in all the naked
honesty of prose. God bless you, and all your little domestic circle—my
tenderest remembrances to your Beloved Sara, & a smile and a kiss from me to your dear dear little
David Hartley—The verses I refer to above, slightly
amended, I have sent (forgetting to ask your leave, tho’ indeed I gave
them only your initials) to the Month:
Mag: where they may possibly appear next month, and where I hope to
recognise your Poem on
Burns.
TO CHARLES LLOYD, AN UNEXPECTED
VISITOR Alone, obscure, without a friend, A cheerless, solitary thing, Why seeks my Lloyd the stranger
out? What offring can the stranger bring Of social scenes, home-bred delights, That him in aught compensate may For Stowey’s pleasant winter nights, For loves & friendships far away? In brief oblivion to forego Friends, such as thine, so justly dear, And be awhile with me content To stay, a kindly loiterer, here— For this a gleam of random joy, Hath flush’d my unaccustom’d cheek, And, with an o’er-charg’d bursting heart, I feel the thanks, I cannot speak. O! sweet are all the Muses’ lays, And sweet the charm of matin bird— ’Twas long, since these estranged ears The sweeter voice of friend had heard. The voice hath spoke: the pleasant sounds In memory’s ear, in after time Shall live, to sometimes rouse a tear, And sometimes prompt an honest rhyme. For when the transient charm is fled, And when the little week is o’er, To cheerless, friendless solitude When I return, as heretofore— Long, long, within my aching heart, The grateful sense shall cherishd be; I’ll think less meanly of myself, That Lloyd will sometimes think on
me. 1797.
O Col: would to God
you were in London with us, or we two at Stowey with you all. Lloyd takes up his abode at the Bull &
Mouth Inn,—the Cat & Salutation would have had a charm more forcible for
me. O noctes cœnæque Deûm!
Anglice—Welch rabbits, punch, & poesy.
Should you he induced to publish those very schoolboyish verses, print
’em as they will occur, if at all, in the Month: Mag: yet I should feel ashamed that to you I
wrote nothing better. But they are too personal, & almost trifling and
obscure withal. Some lines of
mine to Cowper were in last
Month: Mag: they have not body of thought enough
to plead for the retaining of ’em.
My sister’s kind love to you all.
C. Lamb.
Note
[The verses to Lloyd
were included in Coleridge’s 1797 volume; but
the verses concerning the frustrated
Bristol holiday (see pages 35 and 39) were omitted. Concerning this visit to London
Charles Lloyd wrote to his brother Robert: “I left Charles Lamb very warmly interested in his favour, and have kept up a
regular correspondence with him ever since; he is a most interesting young
man.” Only two letters from Lamb to Charles
Lloyd have survived (see pages 150 and 623).
“We two”—Lamb
and Lloyd. Not Lamb and his sister.
The Bull and Mouth, afterwards the Queen’s Hotel, was in St.
Martin’s Le Grand. It was destroyed to make room for the Post Office buildings. The
site of the old Bull and Mouth Quakers’ meeting was close by, but Lloyd can hardly have found that an attraction.
“O noctes cœnæque
Deûm!” (Horace, Satire II., 6, 65)—“O nights and feasts divine!”
For the lines to
Cowper see page 37.
“Body of thought”—a phrase of Coleridge’s.]
LETTER 22 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Begun Sunday, February 5, 1797. Dated on address by mistake:
January 5, 1797.]
SUNDAY MORNING.—You cannot
surely mean to degrade the Joan of Arc into a pot girl.
You are not going, I hope, to annex to that most splendid ornament of Southey’spoem all this cock and a bull story of Joan
the publican’s daughter of Neufchatel, with the lamentable episode of a
waggoner, his wife, and six children; the texture will be most lamentably
disproportionate. The first forty or fifty lines of these addenda are, no
doubt, in their way, admirable, too; but many would prefer the Joan of Southey.
“On mightiest deeds to brood Of shadowy vastness,
such as made my heart Throb fast. Anon I paused, and in a state Of half
expectance listen’d to the wind;” “They
wonder’d at me, who had known me once A chearful careless
damsel;” “The eye, That of the circling throng and of the
visible world Unseeing, saw the shapes of holy phantasy;” I see
nothing in your description of the Maid equal to these. There is a fine
originality certainly in those lines—“For she had lived in this bad
world as in a place of tombs, And touch’d not the pollutions of the
Dead”—but your “fierce vivacity” is a faint
copy of the “fierce & terrible benevolence” of Southey. Added to this, that it will look like
rivalship in you, & extort a comparison with S,—I
think to your disadvantage. And the lines, consider’d in themselves as an
addition to what you had before written (strains of a far higher mood), are but
such as Madame Fancy loves in some of her more familiar moods, at such times as
she has met Noll Goldsmith, &
walk’d and talk’d with him, calling him old acquaintance.
Southey certainly has no pretensions to vie with you
in the sublime of poetry; but he tells a plain tale better than you. I will
enumerate some woeful blemishes, some of ’em sad deviations from that
simplicity which was your aim.
“Hail’d who might be near” (the canvas-coverture
moving, by the by, is laughable); “a woman & six
children” (by the way,—why not nine children, it would have been just
half as pathetic again): “statues of sleep they
seem’d.” “Frost-mangled wretch:”
“green putridity:” “hail’d him
immortal” (rather ludicrous again): “voiced a sad and
simple tale” (abominable!):
“unprovender’d:” “such his tale:”
“Ah! suffering to the height of what was suffer’d” (a most
insufferable line): “amazements of
affright:” “the hot sore brain attributes its own hues
of ghastliness and torture” (what shocking confusion of ideas!)
In these delineations of common & natural feelings, in the familiar walks
of poetry, you seem to resemble Montauban
dancing with Roubigné’s tenants,
“much of his native loftiness remained in the
execution.” I was reading your Religious Musings the other day,
& sincerely I think it the noblest poem in the language, next after the
Paradise lost; &
even that was not made the vehicle of such grand truths. “There is one
mind,” &c., down to “Almighty’s
Throne,” are without a rival in the whole compass of my poetical
reading. “Stands in the sun, & with no partial gaze Views all
creation”—I wish I could have written those lines. I rejoyce that
I am able to relish them. The loftier walks of Pindus are your proper region.
There you have no compeer in modern times. Leave the lowlands, unenvied, in
possession of such men as Cowper &
Southey. Thus am I pouring balsam into the wounds I
may have been inflicting on my poor friend’s vanity. In your notice of
Southey’snew volume you omit to mention the most
pleasing of all, the
Miniature “There were Who form’d high hopes and
flattering ones of thee, Young Robert. Spirit of Spenser!—was the wanderer
wrong?” Fairfax I have been in
quest of a long time. Johnson in his
life of Waller gives a
most delicious specimen of him, & adds, in the true manner of that delicate
critic, as well as amiable man, “it may be presumed that this old
version will not be much read after the elegant translation of my friend, Mr. Hoole.” I
endeavour’d—I wish’d to gain some idea of Tasso from this Mr.
Hoole, the great boast and ornament of the India House, but soon
desisted. I found him more vapid than smallest small beer sun-vinegared. Your
dream, down to that
exquisite line—“I can’t tell half his adventures,” is
a most happy resemblance of Chaucer. The
remainder is so so. The best line, I think, is, “He belong’d, I
believe, to the witch Melancholy.” By the way, when will our
volume come out?
Don’t delay it till you have written a new Joan of
Arc. Send what letters you please by me, & in any way you
choose, single or double. The India Co. is better adapted to answer the cost
than the generality of my friend’s correspondents,—such poor & honest
dogs as John Thelwall, particularly. I
can not say I know
Colson, at least intimately. I once
supped with him & Allen. I think his
manners very pleasing. I will not tell you what I think of Lloyd, for he may by chance come to see this
letter, and that thought puts a restraint on me. I cannot think what subject
would suit your epic genius; some philosophical subject, I conjecture, in which
shall be blended the Sublime of Poetry & of Science. Your proposed Hymns
will be a fit preparatory study wherewith “to discipline your young
noviciate soul.” I grow dull; I’ll go walk myself out of my
dulness.
Sunday Night.—You & Sara are very good to think so kindly & so favourably of
poor Mary. I would to God all did so too.
But I very much fear she must not think of coming home in my father’s
lifetime. It is very hard upon her. But our circumstances are peculiar, &
we must submit to them. God be praised she is so well as she is. She bears her
situation as one who has no right to complain. My poor old aunt, whom you have seen, the kindest, goodest
creature to me when I was at school; who used to toddle there to bring me fag,
when I, school-boy like, only despised her for it, & used to be ashamed to
see her come & sit herself down on the old coal hole steps as you went into
the old grammar school, & opend her apron & bring out her bason, with
some nice thing she had caused to be saved for me—the good old creature is now
lying on her death bed. I cannot bear to think on her deplorable state. To the
shock she received on that our evil day, from which she never completely
recovered, I impute her illness. She says, poor thing, she is glad she is come
home to die with me. I was always her favourite: “No after friendship
e’er can raise The endearments of our early days, Nor e’er the
heart such fondness prove, As when it first began to love.”
Lloyd has kindly left me for a
keep-sake, John Woolman.
You have read it, he says, & like it. Will you excuse one short extract? I
think it could not have escaped you:—“Small treasure to a resigned
mind is sufficient. How happy is it to be content with a little, to live in
humility, & feel that in us which breathes out this language—Abba!
Father!” I am almost ashamed to patch up a letter in this
miscellaneous sort; but I please myself in the thought, that anything from me
will be acceptable to you. I am rather impatient, childishly so, to see our
names affixed to the same common volume. Send me two, when it does come out; 2
will be enough—or indeed 1—but 2 better. I have a dim recollection that, when
in town, you were talking of the Origin of Evil as a most prolific subject for
a long poem. Why not adopt it, Coleridge? there would be room for imagination. Or the description
(from a Vision or Dream, suppose) of an Utopia in one of the planets (the Moon,
for instance). Or a Five Days’ Dream,
which shall illustrate, in 1 sensible imagery, Hartley’s 5 motives to conduct:—1 sensation, 2
imagination, 3 ambition, 4 sympathy, 5 Theopathy. 1st banquets, music, etc.,
effeminacy,—and their insufficiency. 2d “beds or hyacinth & roses,
where young Adonis oft reposes;”
“fortunate Isles;” “The pagan Elysium,” &c.,
&c.; poetical pictures; antiquity as pleasing to the fancy;—their
emptiness, madness, etc. 3d warriors, poets; some famous, yet more forgotten,
their fame or oblivion now alike indifferent, pride, vanity, &c. 4th all
manner of pitiable stories, in Spenser-like verse—love—friendship, relationship, &c. 5th
Hermits—Christ and his apostles—martyrs—heaven—&c., &c. An imagination
like yours, from these scanty hints, may expand into a thousand great Ideas—if
indeed you at all comprehend my scheme, which I scarce do myself.
Monday Morn.—“A London letter. 9½.” Look
you, master poet, I have remorse as well as another man, & my bowels can
sound upon occasion. But I must put you to this charge, for I cannot keep back
my protest, however ineffectual, against the annexing your latter lines to
those former—this putting of new wine into old bottles. This my duty done, I
will cease from writing till you invent some more reasonable mode of
conveyance. Well may the “ragged followers of the nine” set
up for flocci-nauci-what-do-you-call-’em-ists! And I do not wonder that
in their splendid visions of Utopias in America they protest against the
admission of those yellow-complexioned, copper-color’d, white-liver’d Gentlemen, who never proved themselves their friends.
Don’t you think your verses on a Young Ass too trivial a companion for the Religious Musings?
“Scoundrel monarch,” alter that; and the Man of Ross is scarce admissible as
it now stands curtailed of its fairer half: reclaim its property from the Chatterton, which it does but
encumber, & it will be a rich little poem. I hope you expunge great part of
the old notes in the new edition. That, in particular, most barefaced unfounded
impudent assertion, that Mr. Rogers is
indebted for his story to Loch
Lomond, a poem by Bruce! I
have read the latter. I scarce think you have. Scarce anything is common to
them both. The poor author of the Pleasures of Memory was sorely hurt,
Dyer says, by the accusation of
unoriginality. He never saw the Poem. I long to read your Poem on Burns; I retain so indistinct
a memory of it. In what shape and how does it come into public? As you leave
off writing poetry till you finish your Hymns, I suppose you print now all you
have got by you. You have scarce enough unprinted to make a 2d volume with
Lloyd. Tell me all about it. What is
become of Cowper?
Lloyd told me of some verses on his mother. If you have them by you, pray send ’em
me. I do so love him! Never mind their merit. May be I
may like ’em—as your taste and mine do not always exactly indentify. Yours,
Lamb.
Note
[Coleridge intended to print in
his new edition the lines that he had contributed to Southey’sJoan of Arc, 1796, with certain additions, under the
title “The Progress of Liberty; or, The Visions of the Maid of
Orleans.” Writing to CottleColeridge had said: “I much wish
to send My Visions of the Maid of Arc and my corrections to
Wordsworth . . . and to Lamb, whose taste and judgment I see reason to think
more correct and philosophical than my own, which yet I place pretty high.”
Lamb’s criticisms are contained in this letter.
Coleridge abandoned his idea of including the poem in the 1797
edition, and the lines were not separately published until 1817, in Sibylline Leaves, under the
title “The Destiny of
Nations.”
“Montauban . . . Roubigné” An illustration from Henry Mackenzie’s novel Julia de Roubigné, 1777, from
which Lamb took hints, a little later, for the
structure of part of his story Rosamund Gray.
This is the passage in “Religious Musings” that Lamb particularly praises:— There is one Mind, one omnipresent Mind, Omnific. His most holy name is Love. Truth of subliming import! with the which Who feeds and saturates his constant soul, He from his small particular orbit flies With blest outstarting! From himself he flies, Stands in the sun, and with no partial gaze Views all creation; and he loves it all, And blesses it, and calls it very good! This is indeed to dwell with the Most High! Cherubs and rapture-trembling Seraphim Can press no nearer to the Almighty’s throne.
Southey’s new volume, which Coleridge had noticed, was his Poems, second edition, Vol.
I., 1797. The poem in question was “On
My Own Miniature Picture taken at Two Years of Age.”
Edward Fairfax’s “Tasso” (Godfrey of Bulloigne, or the
Recoverie of Jerusalem) was published in 1600. John Hoole, a later translator, became principal auditor
at the India House, and resigned in 1786. He died in 1803.
Coleridge’s dream was the poem called
“The Raven.”
Citizen John Thelwall (1764-1834), to whom many of
Coleridge’s early letters are written, was
a Jacobin enthusiast who had gone to the Tower with Thomas Hardy and Horne
Tooke in 1794, but was acquitted at his trial. At this time he was writing
and lecturing on political subjects. When, in 1818, Thelwall acquired The ChampionLamb wrote squibs for it against the Regent and others.
Colson I have not identified. Probably Thomas Coulson, a friend of Sir
Humphry Davy and the father of Walter
Coulson (born ?1794) who was called “The Walking Encyclopaedia,”
and was afterwards a friend of Hazlitt.
“To discipline your young noviciate soul.” A line from
“Religious
Musings,” 1796:— I discipline my young noviciate thought.
“My poor old aunt.” Lamb’s lines on his Aunt Hetty
repeat some of this praise; as also does the Elia essay on “Christ’s Hospital.”
“No after friendship e’er can raise . . .”
Lamb quotes this on page 29—from Logan.
John Woolman (1720-1772), an American Quaker. His
Works comprise A Journal of
the Life, Gospel, Labours, and Christian Experiences of that Faithful Minister of
Jesus Christ, John Woolman, and His Last Epistle and other
Writings. Lamb often praised the book.
“A London letter. 9½.” A word on the postal system of
those days may not be out of place. The cost of the letter when a frank had not been
procured was borne by the recipient. The rate varied with the distance. The charge from
London to Bridgewater in 1797 was sevenpence. Later it was raised to ninepence and
tenpence. No regular post was set up between Bridgewater and Nether Stowey until 1808, when
the cost of the carriage of a letter for the intervening nine miles was twopence.
“Ragged followers of the nine.” From Burns’ “Second Epistle to J. L*****k, an old Scotch
Bard,” verse xvi., line 2:— The ragged followers o’ the Nine.
“Flocci.” See note on page 11.
“The Young
Ass,” early versions, ended thus:— Soothe to rest The tumult of some Scoundrel Monarch’s breast. Coleridge changed the last line to— The aching of pale Fashion’s vacant breast.
Coleridge had asserted, in a 1796 note, that
Rogers had taken the story of Florio in the Pleasures of Memory from Michael Bruce’sLoch Leven (not Loch Lomond). In the 1797 edition another note made apology for the
mistake.
Cowper’s “Lines on the Receipt of my Mother’s Picture out of
Norfolk” had been written in the spring of 1790. It is interesting to find
Lamb reading them just now, for his own Blank Verse poems,
shortly to be written, have much in common with Cowper’s verses,
not only in manner but in matter.]
LETTER 23 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Feb. 13th, 1797.
YOUR poem is altogether admirable—parts of it are
even exquisite—in particular your personal account of the Maid far surpasses
any thing of the sort in Southey. I
perceived all its excellences, on a first reading, as readily as now you have
been removing a supposed film from my eyes. I was only struck with [a] certain
faulty disproportion in the matter and the style, which I still think I
perceive, between these lines and the former ones. I had an end in view; I
wished to make you reject the poem, only as being discordant with the other;
and, in subservience to that end, it was politically done in me to over-pass,
and make no mention of merit which, could you think me capable of overlooking,
might reasonably damn for ever in your judgment all pretensions in me to be
critical. There, I will be judged by Lloyd, whether I have not made a very handsome recantation. I
was in the case of a man whose friend has asked him his opinion of a certain
young lady; the deluded wight gives judgment against her in
toto—don’t like her face, her walk, her manners—finds fault with
her eyebrows—can see no wit in her. His friend looks blank; he begins to smell
a rat; wind veers about; he acknowledges her good sense, her judgment in dress,
a certain simplicity of manners and honesty of heart, something too in her
manners which gains upon you after a short acquaintance,—and then her accurate
pronunciation of the French language and a pretty uncultivated taste in
drawing. The reconciled gentleman smiles applause, squeezes him by the hand,
and hopes he will do him the honour of taking a bit of dinner with Mrs.
—— and him—a plain family dinner—some day next week. “For,
I suppose, you never heard we were married! I’m glad to see you like
my wife, however; you’ll come and see her, ha?” Now am I
too proud to retract entirely. Yet I do perceive I am in some sort straitened;
you are manifestly wedded to this poem, and what
fancy has joined let no man separate. I turn me to the Joan of Arc, second book.
The solemn openings of it are with sounds which, Lloyd would say, “are silence to the
mind.” The deep preluding strains are fitted to initiate the
mind, with a pleasing awe, into the sublimest mysteries of theory concerning
man’s nature and his noblest destination—the philosophy of a first
cause—of subordinate agents in creation superior to man—the subserviency of
Pagan worship and Pagan faith to the introduction of a purer and more perfect
religion, which you so elegantly describe as winning with gradual steps her
difficult way northward from Bethabra. After all this cometh Joan, a publican’s
daughter, sitting on an ale-house bench, and marking the swingings of the signboard, finding a poor
man, his wife and six children, starved to death with cold, and thence roused
into a state of mind proper to receive visions emblematical of equality; which
what the devil Joan had to do with, I
don’t know, or indeed with the French and American revolutions; though
that needs no pardon, it is executed so nobly. After all, if you perceive no
disproportion, all argument is vain: I do not so much object to parts. Again,
when you talk of building your fame on these lines in preference to the
“Religious
Musings,” I cannot help conceiving of you and of the author of
that as two different persons, and I think you a very vain man.
I have been re-reading your letter. Much of it I could dispute; but with the latter part of it, in which
you compare the two Joans with respect to their
predispositions for fanaticism, I toto
corde coincide; only I think that Southey’s strength rather lies in the
description of the emotions of the Maid under the weight of inspiration,—these
(I see no mighty difference between her describing them
or you describing them), these if you only equal, the previous admirers of his
poem, as is natural, will prefer his; if you surpass, prejudice will scarcely
allow it, and I scarce think you will surpass, though your specimen at the
conclusion (I am in earnest) I think very nigh equals them. And in an account
of a fanatic or of a prophet the description of her emotions is expected to be most highly finished. By the way, I spoke
far too disparagingly of your lines, and, I am ashamed to say, purposely. I
should like you to specify or particularise; the story of the
“Tottering Eld,” of “his eventful years all
come and gone,” is too general; why not make him a soldier, or
some character, however, in which he has been witness to frequency of
“cruel wrong and strange distress!” I think I should.
When I laughed at the “miserable man crawling from beneath the
coverture,” I wonder I [?you] did not perceive it was a laugh of
horror—such as I have laughed at Dante’s picture of the famished Ugolino. Without falsehood, I perceive an hundred beauties in your
narrative. Yet I wonder you do not perceive something out-of-the-way, something
unsimple and artificial, in the expression, “voiced a sad
tale.” I hate made-dishes at the muses’ banquet. I believe I
was wrong in most of my other objections. But surely “hailed him
immortal,” adds nothing to the terror of the man’s death,
which it was your business to heighten, not diminish by a phrase which takes
away all terror from it I like that line, “They closed their eyes in
sleep, nor knew ’twas death.” Indeed, there is scarce a
line I do not like. “Turbid ecstacy,”
is surely not so good as what you had written,
“troublous.” Turbid rather suits the muddy kind of
inspiration which London porter confers. The versification is, throughout, to
my ears unexceptionable, with no disparagement to the measure of the
“Religious
Musings,” which is exactly fitted to the thoughts.
You were building your house on a rock, when you rested your
fame on that poem. I can scarce bring myself to believe, that I am admitted to
a familiar correspondence, and all the licence of friendship, with a man who
writes blank verse like Milton. Now,
this is delicate flattery, indirect flattery. Go on with
your “Maid of Orleans,” and be content to
be second to yourself. I shall become a convert to it, when ’tis
finished.
This afternoon I attend the funeral of my poor old aunt, who died on Thursday. I own I am thankful
that the good creature has ended all her days of suffering and infirmity. She
was to me the “cherisher of infancy,” and one must fall on
these occasions into reflections which it would be common-place to enumerate,
concerning death, “of chance and change, and fate in human
life.” Good God, who could have foreseen all this but four months
back! I had reckoned, in particular, on my aunt’s living many years; she
was a very hearty old woman. But she was a mere skeleton before she died,
looked more like a corpse that had lain weeks in the grave, than one fresh
dead. “Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the
eyes to behold the sun; but let a man live many days and rejoice in them
all, yet let him remember the days of darkness, for they shall be
many.” Coleridge, why are we to live on after all the strength and
beauty of existence are gone, when all the life of life is fled, as poor Burns
expresses it? Tell Lloyd I have had
thoughts of turning Quaker, and have been reading, or am rather just beginning
to read, a most capital book, good thoughts in good language, William Penn’s “No Cross, no
Crown;” I like it immensely. Unluckily I went to one of his
meetings, tell him, in St. John Street, yesterday, and saw a man under all the
agitations and workings of a fanatic, who believed himself under the influence
of some “inevitable presence.” This cured me of Quakerism; I
love it in the books of Penn and Woolman, but I
detest the vanity of a man thinking he speaks by the Spirit, when what he says
an ordinary man might say without all that quaking and trembling. In the midst
of his inspiration—and the effects of it were most noisy—was handed into the
midst of the meeting a most terrible blackguard Wapping sailor; the poor man, I
believe, had rather have been in the hottest part of an engagement, for the
congregation of broad-brims, together with the ravings of the prophet, were too
much for his gravity, though I saw even he had delicacy enough not to laugh
out. And the inspired gentleman, though his manner was so supernatural, yet
neither talked nor professed to talk anything more than good sober sense,
common morality, with now and then a declaration of not speaking from himself.
Among other things, looking back to his childhood and early youth, he told the
meeting what a graceless young dog he had been, that in his youth he had a good
share of wit: reader, if thou hadst seen the gentleman, thou wouldst have sworn
that it must indeed have been many years ago, for his rueful physiognomy would
have scared away the playful goddess from the meeting, where he presided, for
ever. A wit! a wit! what could he mean? Lloyd, it minded
me of Falkland in the “Rivals,” “Am I
full of wit and humour? No, indeed you are not. Am I the life and soul of
every company I come into? No, it cannot be said you are.” That
hard-faced gentleman, a wit! Why, Nature wrote on his fanatic forehead fifty
years ago, “Wit never comes, that comes to all.” I should be
as scandalised at a bon mot issuing
from his oracle-looking mouth, as to see Cato go down a country-dance. God love you all. You are very
good to submit to be pleased with reading my nothings. ’Tis the privilege
of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.—Yours ever,
C. Lamb.
Note
[“Silence to the mind”—in Lloyd’s “Lines on
the Death of an Infant,” in Coleridge’s second edition, 1797. First called “Dirge occasioned by an Infant’s Death” in Lloyd’sPoems on Various Subjects,
1795.
“Dante’s picture of the
famished Ugolino.” See the Inferno, Canto xxxiii.
Lamb’sAunt Hetty,
Sarah Lamb, was buried at St. James’s,
Clerkenwell, on February 13, 1797.
“Cherisher of infancy.” From Lloyd’s first sonnet in his Priscilla Farmer volume
(also, later, in Coleridge’sPoems), line
13:— I mourn the Cherisher of Infancy.
“Of chance and change, and fate in human life” (Paradise
Regained, IV., 265, slightly altered).
“Truly the light is sweet.” See Ecclesiastes xi. 7 and 8.
“As poor Burns expresses
it.” In the “Lament for
James, Earl of Glencairn,” 6th Stanza:— In weary being now I pine. For a’ the life of life is dead, And hope has left my aged ken, On forward wing for ever fled.
“Turning Quaker.” Lamb refers to the Peel meeting-house in John Street, Clerkenwell.
Lamb afterwards used the story of the wit in the Elia essay
“A Quaker’s
Meeting.” In his invocation to the reader he here foreshadows his Elian
manner.
“Inevitable presence.” From Coleridge’s “Destiny of Nations,” line 264.
“Falkland” is in
Sheridan’s comedy “The Rivals” (see Act II., Scene 1).
“Wit never comes, that comes to all” (Paradise Lost,
I., 66, 67, reading “Hope” for “Wit”).]
LETTER 24 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
April 7th, 1797.
YOUR last letter was dated the 10th February; in it
you promised to write again the next day. At least, I did not expect so long,
so unfriend-like, a silence. There was a time, Col., when a remissness of this sort in a dear friend would
have lain very heavy on my mind, but latterly I have been too familiar with
neglect to feel much from the semblance of it. Yet, to suspect one’s self
overlooked and in the way to oblivion, is a feeling rather humbling; perhaps,
as tending to self-mortification, not unfavourable to the spiritual state.
Still, as you meant to confer no benefit on the soul of your friend, you do not
stand quite clear from the imputation of unkindliness (a word by which I mean
the diminutive of unkindness). Lloyd
tells me he has been very ill, and was on the point of leaving you. I addressed
a letter to him at Birmingham: perhaps he got it not, and is still with you. I
hope his ill-health has not prevented his attending to a request I made in it,
that he would write again very soon to let me know how he was. I hope to God
poor Lloyd is not very bad, or in ft very bad way. Pray
satisfy me about these things. And then David
Hartley was unwell; and how is the small philosopher, the minute philosopher? and
David’s mother? Coleridge,
I am not trifling, nor are these matter-of-fact [? course] questions only. You
are all very dear and precious to me; do what you will,
Col., you may hurt me and vex me by your silence, but
you cannot estrange my heart from you all. I cannot scatter friendship[s] like
chuckfarthings, nor let them drop from mine hand like hour-glass sand. I have
two or three people in the world to whom I am more than indifferent, and I
can’t afford to whistle them off to the winds.
By the way, Lloyd may
have told you about my sister. I told
him. If not, I have taken her out of her confinement, and taken a room for her
at Hackney, and spend my Sundays, holidays, &c., with her. She boards
herself. In one little half year’s illness, and in such an illness of
such a nature and of such consequences! to get her out into the world again,
with a prospect of her never being so ill again—this is to be ranked not among
the common blessings of Providence. May that merciful God make tender my heart,
and make me as thankful, as in my distress I was earnest, in my prayers.
Congratulate me on an ever-present and never-alienable friend like her. And do,
do insert, if you have not lost, my dedication. It will have lost half its
value by coming so late. If you really are going on with that volume, I shall
be enabled in a day or two to send you a short poem to insert. Now, do answer
this. Friendship, and acts of friendship, should be reciprocal, and free as the
air; a friend should never be reduced to beg an alms of his fellow. Yet I will
beg an alms; I entreat you to write, and tell me all about poor
Lloyd, and all of you. God love and preserve you all.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Lloyd’s domestication with Coleridge had been intermittent. It began in September,
1796; in November Lloyd was very ill; in December Coleridge told
Mr. Lloyd that he would retain his son no longer
as pupil but merely as a lodger and friend; at Christmas Charles Lloyd
was at Birmingham; in January he was in London; in March he was ill again and his
experiment with Coleridge ended.
“The minute philosopher.” A joking reference to Bishop
Berkeley’sAlciphron; or, The Minute
Philosopher.
“Whistle them off.” See “Othello,” III., 3, 262:— I’d whistle her off, and let her down the wind.
For the dedication to which Lamb refers see page 58.]
LETTER 25 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
April 15th, 1797. A VISION OF REPENTANCEI SAW a famous fountain in my dream, Where shady pathways to a valley led; A weeping willow lay upon that stream, And all around the fountain brink were spread Wide branching trees, with dark green leaf rich clad, Forming a doubtful twilight desolate and sad. The place was such, that whoso enter’d in Disrobed was of every earthly thought, And straight became as one that knew not sin, Or to the world’s first innocence was brought; Enseem’d it now, he stood on holy ground, In sweet and tender melancholy wrapt around. A most strange calm stole o’er my soothed sprite; Long time I stood, and longer had I staid, When lo! I saw, saw by the sweet moonlight, Which came in silence o’er that silent shade, Where near the fountain Something like Despair Made of that weeping willow garlands for her hair. And eke with painful fingers she inwove Many an uncouth stem of savage thorn— “The willow garland, that was for her Love, And these her bleeding temples would adorn.” With sighs her heart nigh burst—salt tears fast fell, As mournfully she bended o’er that sacred well. To whom when I addrest myself to speak, She lifted up her eyes, and nothing said; The delicate red came mantling o’er her cheek, And gathering up her loose attire, she fled To the dark covert of that woody shade And in her goings seem’d a timid gentle maid. Revolving in my mind what this should mean, And why that lovely Lady plained so; Perplex’d in thought at that mysterious scene, And doubting if ’twere best to stay or go, I cast mine eyes in wistful gaze around, When from the shades came slow a small and plaintive sound: “Psyche am I, who love to dwell In these brown shades, this woody dell, Where never busy mortal came, Till now, to pry upon my shame. “At thy feet what thou dost see The Waters of Repentance be, Which, night and day, I must augment With tears, like a true penitent, If haply so my day of grace Be not yet past; and this lone place, O’er-shadowy, dark, excludeth hence All thoughts but grief and penitence.” “Why dost thou weep, thou
gentle maid!And wherefore in this barren shadeThy hidden thoughts with sorrow feed?Can thing so fair repentance need?” “O! I have done a deed of shame, And tainted is my virgin fame, And stain’d the beauteous maiden white In which my bridal robes were dight.” “And who the promis’d
spouse declare,And what those bridal garments were?” “Severe and saintly righteousness Compos’d the clear white bridal dress; Jesus, the son of Heaven’s high King Bought with his blood the marriage ring. “A wretched sinful creature, I Deem’d lightly of that sacred tye, Gave to a treacherous World my heart, And play’d the foolish wanton’s part. “Soon to these murky shades I came To hide from the Sun’s light my shame— And still I haunt this woody dell, And bathe me in that healing well, Whose waters clear have influence From sin’s foul stains the soul to cleanse; And night and day I them augment With tears, like a true Penitent, Until, due expiation made, And fit atonement fully paid, The Lord and Bridegroom me present Where in sweet strains of high consent, God’s throne before, the Seraphim Shall chaunt the extatic marriage hymn.” “Now Christ restore thee
soon”—I said, And thenceforth all my dream was fled.
The above you will please to print immediately before the
blank verse fragments. Tell me if you like it. I fear the latter half is
unequal to the former, in parts of which I think you will discover a delicacy
of pencilling not quite un-Spenser-like.
The latter half aims at the measure, but has failed to attain the poetry, of
Milton in his “Comus” and Fletcher in that exquisite thing ycleped the
“Faithful
Shepherdess,” where they both use eight-syllable lines. But
this latter half was finished in great haste, and as a task, not from that
impulse which affects the name of inspiration.
By the way, I have lit upon Fairfax’s “Godfrey of Bullen” for half-a-crown.
Rejoice with me.
Poor dear Lloyd! I
had a letter from him yesterday; his state of mind is truly alarming. He has,
by his own confession, kept a letter of mine unopened three weeks, afraid, he
says, to open it, lest I should speak upbraidingly to him; and yet this very
letter of mine was in answer to one, wherein he informed me that an alarming
illness had alone prevented him from writing. You will pray with me, I know,
for his recovery; for surely, Coleridge,
an exquisiteness of feeling like this must border on derangement. But I love
him more and more, and will not give up the hope of his speedy recovery, as he
tells me he is under Dr. Darwin’s
regimen.
God bless us all, and shield us from insanity, which is
“the sorest malady of all.”
My kind love to your wife and child.
C. Lamb.
Pray write, now.
Note
[I have placed the poem at the head from the text of Coleridge’sPoems, 1797, where it was
relegated to the Appendix; but the version of the letter very likely differed (see next
letter for at least one alteration).
Fairfax’sGodfrey of Bullen was his
translation of Tasso, which is mentioned on page 93.
Lloyd, who was undergoing one of those attacks of
acute melancholia to which he was subject all his life, had been sent to Lichfield, where
Erasmus Darwin had established a sanatorium.
“The sorest malady of all.” From Lamb’slines to Cowper (see page 37).]
LETTER 26 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Tuesday,] June 13th, 1797.
I STARED with wild wonderment to see thy well-known
hand again. It revived many a pleasing recollection of an epistolary
intercourse, of late strangely suspended, once the pride of my life. Before I
even opened thy letter, I figured to myself a sort of complacency which my
little hoard at home would feel at receiving the new-comer into the little
drawer where I keep my treasures of this kind. You have done well in writing to
me. The little room (was it not a little one?) at the Salutation was already in
the way of becoming a fading idea! it had begun to be classed in my memory with those “wanderings with a fair
hair’d maid,” in the recollection of which I feel I have no
property. You press me, very kindly do you press me, to come to Stowey;
obstacles, strong as death, prevent me at present; maybe I shall be able to
come before the year is out; believe me, I will come as soon as I can, but I
dread naming a probable time. It depends on fifty things, besides the expense,
which is not nothing. Lloyd wants me to
come and see him; but, besides that you have a prior claim on me, I should not
feel myself so much at home with him, till he gets a house of his own. As to
Richardson, caprice may grant what
caprice only refused, and it is no more hardship, rightly considered, to be
dependent on him for pleasure, than to lie at the mercy of the rain and
sunshine for the enjoyment of a holiday: in either case we are not to look for
a suspension of the laws of nature. “Grill will be Grill.”
Vide Spenser.
I could not but smile at the compromise you make with me for
printing Lloyd’s poems first; but
there is [are] in nature, I fear, too many tendencies to envy and jealousy not
to justify you in your apology. Yet, if any one is welcome to pre-eminence from
me, it is Lloyd, for he would be the last to desire it. So
pray, let his name uniformly precede mine, for it would be treating me like a
child to suppose it could give me pain. Yet, alas! I am not insusceptible of
the bad passions. Thank God, I have the ingenuousness to be ashamed of them. I
am dearly fond of Charles Lloyd; he is all goodness, and I
have too much of the world in my composition to feel myself thoroughly
deserving of his friendship.
Lloyd tells me that Sheridan put you upon writing your tragedy. I hope you are only
Coleridgeizing when you talk of finishing it in a few days. Shakspeare was a more modest man; but you best
know your own power.
Of my last
poem you speak slightingly; surely the longer stanzas were pretty
tolerable; at least there was one good line in it, “Thick-shaded trees, with dark green leaf rich clad.”
To adopt your own expression, I call this a “rich” line, a
fine full line. And some others I thought even beautiful. Believe me, my little
gentleman will feel some repugnance at riding behind in the basket; though, I
confess, in pretty good company. Your picture of idiocy, with the sugar-loaf
head, is exquisite; but are you not too severe upon our more favoured brethren
in fatuity? Lloyd tells me how ill your
wife and child have been. I rejoice that they are better. My kindest
remembrances and those of my sister. I send you a trifling letter; but you have
only to think
that I have been skimming the superficies of my mind, and found it only froth.
Now, do write again; you cannot believe how I long and love always to hear
about you. Yours, most affectionately,
Charles Lamb. Monday Night.
Note
[“Little drawer where I keep . . .” Lamb soon lost the habit of keeping any letters, except
Manning’s.
“Wanderings with a fair-hair’d maid.” Lamb’s own line. See sonnet quoted on page 24.
Lamb’s visit to Stowey was made in July, as we
shall see.
“Grill will be Grill.” See the Faerie Queene, Book II., Canto
12, Stanzas 86 and 87. “Let Gryll be Gryll” is the right text.
Lloyd had joined the poetical partnership, and his
poems were to precede Lamb’s in the 1797
volume. “Lloyd’s connections,” Coleridge had written to Cottle, “will take off a great many [copies], more than a
hundred.”
Coleridge’s tragedy was “Osorio,” of which we hear first in
March, 1797, when Coleridge tells Cottle that Sheridan has asked him to write a play for Drury Lane. It was
finished in October, and rejected. In 1813, much altered, it was performed under its new
title, “Remorse,” and published in book form.
Lamb wrote the Prologue.
The “last poem” of which Lamb speaks was “The Vision of Repentance.” The good
line was altered to— Wide branching trees, with dark green leaf rich clad, when the poem appeared in the Appendix (“the basket,” as Lamb calls it) of the 1797 volume.
“Your picture of idiocy.” Compare S. T. Coleridge to Thomas
Poole, dated “Greta Hall, Oct. 5, 1801” (Thomas Poole and His Friends):
“We passed a poor ideot boy, who exactly answered my description; he ‘Stood in the sun, rocking his sugar-loaf head, And staring at a bough from morn to sunset, See-sawed his voice in inarticulate noises.’” See this passage, much altered, in “Remorse,” II., 1, 186-191. The lines do not occur in “Osorio,” yet they, or something like them, must have been
copied out by Coleridge for Lamb
in June, 1797.]
LETTER 27 (Possibly only a fragment) CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Saturday,] June 24th, 1797.
DID you seize the grand opportunity of seeing
Kosciusko while he was at Bristol? I
never saw a hero; I wonder how they look. I have been reading a most curious
romance-like work, called the “Life of John Buncle, Esq.” ’Tis
very interesting, and an extraordinary compound of all manner of subjects, from
the depth of the ludicrous to the heights of sublime religious truth. There is
much abstruse science in it above my cut and an infinite fund of pleasantry.
John Buncle is a famous fine man,
formed in nature’s most eccentric hour. I am ashamed of what I write. But
I have no topic to talk of. I see nobody, and sit, and read or walk, alone, and
hear nothing. I am quite lost to conversation from disuse; and out of the
sphere of my little family, who, I am thankful, are dearer and dearer to me
every day, I see no face that brightens up at my approach. My friends are at a
distance; worldly hopes are at a low ebb with me, and unworldly thoughts are
not yet familiarised to me, though I occasionally indulge in them. Still I feel
a calm not unlike content. I fear it is sometimes more akin to physical
stupidity than to a heaven-flowing serenity and peace. What right have I to
obtrude all this upon you? what is such a letter to you? and if I come to
Stowey, what conversation can I furnish to compensate my friend for those
stores of knowledge and of fancy, those delightful treasures of wisdom, which I
know he will open to me? But it is better to give than to receive; and I was a
very patient hearer and docile scholar in our winter evening meetings at
Mr. May’s; was I not, Col.? What I have owed to thee, my heart can
ne’er forget.
God love you and yours.
C. L. Saturday.
Note
[Thaddeus Kosciusko (1746-1817),
the Polish patriot, to whom Coleridge had a sonnet
in his Poems,
1796, visited England and America after being liberated from prison on the accession of
Paul I., and settled in France in 1798.
The Life of John Buncle,
Esq., a book which Lamb (and also
Hazlitt) frequently praised, is a curious
digressive novel, part religious, part roystering, and wholly eccentric and individual, by
Thomas Amory, published, Vol. I., in 1766, and
Vol. II., in 1766.
“Mr. May’s.” See note on
page 3.
“What I have owed to thee . . .” These words are a
quotation—the last line of Bowles’ sonnet
“Oxford Revisited.”]
LETTER 28 (Possibly only a fragment) CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[No date. ? June 29, 1797.]
I DISCERN a possibility of my paying you a visit
next week. May I, can I, shall I, come so soon? Have you room for me, leisure
for me, and are you all pretty well? Tell me all this honestly—immediately. And
by what day-coach could I come soonest and nearest to Stowey? A few months
hence may suit you better; certainly me as well. If so, say so. I long, I
yearn, with all the longings of a child do I desire to see you, to come among
you—to see the young philosopher, to thank Sara for her last year’s invitation in person—to read
your tragedy—to read over together our little book—to breathe fresh air—to
revive in me vivid images of “Salutation scenery.” There is
a sort of sacrilege in my letting such ideas slip out of my mind and memory.
Still that knave Richardson remaineth—a
thorn in the side of Hope, when she would lean towards Stowey. Here I will
leave off, for I dislike to fill up this paper, which involves a question so
connected with my heart and soul, with meaner matter or subjects to me less
interesting. I can talk, as I can think, nothing else.
C. Lamb. Thursday.
Note
[“Our little book.” Coleridge’sPoems, second
edition.
“Salutation scenery.” See note on pages 3 and 4.
“Richardson.” See
note on page 35.]
LETTER 29 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[No date. Probably July 19 or 26, 1797.]
I AM scarcely yet so reconciled to the loss of you,
or so subsided into my wonted uniformity of feeling, as to sit calmly down to
think of you and write to you. But I reason myself into the belief that those
few and pleasant holidays shall not have been spent in vain. I feel improvement
in the recollection of many a casual conversation. The names of Tom Poole, of Wordsworth and his good sister, with thine and Sara’s, are become “familiar in my mouth as
household words.” You would make me very happy, if you think
W. has no objection, by transcribing for me that
inscription of his. I have some scattered sentences ever floating on my memory,
teasing me that I cannot remember more of it. You may believe I will make no
improper use of it. Believe me I can think now of many subjects on which I had
planned gaining information from you; but I forgot my
“treasure’s worth” while I possessed it. Your leg
is now become to me a matter of much more importance—and many a little thing,
which when I was present with you seemed scarce to indent my notice, now
presses painfully on my remembrance. Is the Patriot come yet? Are
Wordsworth and his sister gone yet? I was looking out
for John Thelwall all the way from
Bridgewater, and had I met him, I think it would have moved almost me to tears.
You will oblige me too by sending me my great-coat, which I left behind in the
oblivious state the mind is thrown into at parting—is it not ridiculous that I
sometimes envy that great-coat lingering so cunningly behind?—at present I have
none—so send it me by a Stowey waggon, if there be such a thing, directing for
C. L., No. 45, Chapel-Street, Pentonville, near
London. But above all, that Inscription!—it will recall to me the tones of all
your voices—and with them many a remembered kindness to one who could and can
repay you all only by the silence of a grateful heart. I could not talk much,
while I was with you, but my silence was not sullenness, nor I hope from any
bad motive; but, in truth, disuse has made me awkward at it. I know I behaved
myself, particularly at Tom Poole’s, and at
Cruikshank’s, most like a
sulky child; but company and converse are strange to me. It was kind in you all
to endure me as you did.
Are you and your dear Sara—to me also very dear, because very kind—agreed yet about
the management of little Hartley? and
how go on the little
rogue’s teeth? I will see White to-morrow, and he
shall send you information on that matter; but as perhaps I can do it as well
after talking with him, I will keep this letter open.
My love and thanks to you and all of you.
C. L. Wednesday Evening.
Note
[Lamb spent a week at Nether
Stowey in July, 1797. Coleridge tells Southey of this visit in a letter written in that month:
“Charles Lamb has been with me for a week. He left me
Friday morning. The second day after Wordsworth
[who had just left Racedown, near Crewkerne, for Alfoxden, near Stowey] came to me,
dear Sara accidentally emptied a skillet of
boiling milk on my foot, which confined me during the whole time of C.
Lamb’s stay and still prevents me from all walks longer than a
furlong.” This is the cause of Lamb’s allusion to
Coleridge’s leg, and it also produced
Coleridge’s poem beginning “This lime-tree bower my prison,” addressed to
Lamb, which opens as follows, the friends in the fourth line being
Lamb, Wordsworth and Dorothy Wordsworth. (Wordsworth was
then twenty-seven. The Lyrical
Ballads were to be written in the next few months.) Well, they are gone, and here must I remain, Lam’d by the scathe of fire, lonely and faint, This lime-tree bower my prison! They, meantime My Friends, whom I may never meet again, On springy heath, along the hill-top edge Wander delighted, and look down, perchance, On that same rifted Dell, where many an ash Twists its wild limbs beside the ferny rock Whose plumy ferns forever nod and drip, Spray’d by the waterfall. But chiefly thou My gentle-hearted Charles! thou who had pin’d And hunger’d after Nature many a year, In the great City pent, winning thy way With sad yet bowed soul, through evil and pain And strange calamity!
Tom Poole was Thomas Poole
(1765-1837), a wealthy tanner, and Coleridge’s
friend, correspondent and patron, who lived at Stowey.
“Familiar in my mouth as household words”
(“Henry V.,” IV., 3,
52).
“Treasure’s worth.” I do not trace this
quotation.
The Patriot and John Thelwall
were one. See note on page 93.
“That inscription.” The “Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew Tree,” written
in 1795. Lamb refers to it again in 1815. Letter 206,
pages 457, 459.
The address at Pentonville is the first indication given by Lamb that he has left Little Queen Street. We last saw him
there for certain in Letter 17 on December 9. The removal had been made probably at the end
of 1796.
John Cruikshank, a neighbour of Coleridge, had
married a Miss Budé on the same day that Coleridge married Sara Fricker.
Of the business connected with White we know
nothing.]
LETTER 30 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[p.m. August 24, 1797.]
POOR Charles
Lloyd came to me about a fortnight ago. He took the opportunity
of Mr. Hawkes coming to London, and I think at his
request, to come with him. It seemed to me, and he acknowledged it, that he had
come to gain a little time and a little peace, before he made up his mind. He
was a good deal perplexed what to do—wishing earnestly that he had never
entered into engagements which he felt himself unable to fulfill, but which on
Sophia’s account he could not
bring himself to relinquish. I could give him little advice or comfort, and
feeling my own inability painfully, eagerly snatched at a proposal he made me
to go to Southey’s with him for a
day or two. He then meant to return with me, who could stay only one night.
While there, he at one time thought of going to consult you, but changed his
intention and stayed behind with Southey, and wrote an
explicit letter to Sophia. I came away on the Tuesday, and
on the Saturday following, last Saturday, receiv’d a letter dated Bath,
in which he said he was on his way to Birmingham,—that
Southey was accompanying him,—and that he went for the
purpose of persuading Sophia to a Scotch marriage—
I greatly feared, that she would never consent to this,
from what Lloyd had told me of her
character. But waited most anxiously the result. Since then I have not had one
letter. For God’s sake, if you get any intelligence of or from
Chas Lloyd, communicate it, for I am much alarmed.
C. Lamb.
I wrote to Burnett what I write now to you,—was it from him you heard,
or elsewhere?—
He said if he had come to you,
he could never have brought himself to leave you. In all his distress he
was sweetly and
exemplarily calm and master of himself,—and seemed perfectly free from his
disorder.— How do you all at?
Note
[This letter is unimportant, except in showing Lamb’s power of sharing his friends’ troubles.
Charles Lloyd was not married to Sophia Pemberton, of Birmingham, until 1799; nothing rash
being done, as Lamb seems to think possible. The reference to
Southey, who was at this time living at Burton,
in Hampshire, throws some light on De
Quincey’s statement, in his “Autobiography,” that owing to
the objection of Miss Pemberton’s parents to the match,
Lloyd secured the assistance of Southey to carry the lady off.
Burnett would be George Burnett
(1776?-1811), one of Coleridge’s fellow
Pantisocratists, whom we shall meet later.
The “he” of the second postscript is not Burnett, but Lloyd.]
LETTER 31 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[About September 20, 1797.] WRITTEN A TWELVEMONTH AFTER THE EVENTS[Friday next,
Coleridge, is the day on which my mother
died.]ALAS! how am I changed! where be the tears, The sobs and forced suspensions of the breath, And all the dull desertions of the heart With which I hung o’er my dear mother’s corse? Where be the blest subsidings of the storm Within; the sweet resignedness of hope Drawn heavenward, and strength of filial love, In which I bow’d me to my Father’s will? My God and my Redeemer, keep not thou My heart in brute and sensual thanklessness Seal’d up, oblivious ever of that dear grace, And health restor’d to my long-loved friend. Long loved, and worthy known! Thou didst not keep Her soul in death. O keep not now, my Lord, Thy servants in far worse—in spiritual death And darkness—blacker than those feared shadows O’ the valley all must tread. Lend us thy balms, Thou dear Physician of the sin-sick soul, And heal our cleansed bosoms of the wounds With which the world hath pierc’d us thro’ and thro’! Give us new flesh, new birth; Elect of heaven May we become, in thine election sure Contain’d, and to one purpose steadfast drawn— Our souls’ salvation. Thou and I, dear friend, With filial recognition sweet, shall know One day the face of our dear mother in heaven, And her remember’d looks of love shall greet With answering looks of love, her placid smiles Meet with a smile as placid, and her hand With drops of fondness wet, nor fear repulse. Be witness for me, Lord, I do not ask Those days of vanity to return again, (Nor fitting me to ask, nor thee to give). Vain loves, and “wanderings with a fair-hair’d maid;” (Child of the dust as I am), who so long My foolish heart steep’d in idolatry, And creature-loves. Forgive it, O my Maker! If in a mood of grief, I sin almost In sometimes brooding on the days long past, (And from the grave of time wishing them back), Days of a mother’s fondness to her child— Her little one! Oh, where be now those sports And infant play-games? Where the joyous troops Of children, and the haunts I did so love? O my companions! O ye loved names Of friend, or playmate dear, gone are ye now. Gone divers ways; to honour and credit some: And some, I fear, to ignominy and shame! I only am left, with unavailing grief One parent dead to mourn, and see one live Of all life’s joys bereft, and desolate: Am left, with a few friends, and one above The rest, found faithful in a length of years, Contented as I may, to bear me on, T’ the not unpeaceful evening of a day Made black by morning storms.
The following I wrote when I had returned from C. Lloyd, leaving him behind at Burton with
Southey. To understand some of it,
you must remember that at that time he was very much perplexed in mind.
A stranger and alone, I past those scenes We past so late together; and my heart Felt something like desertion, as I look’d Around me, and the pleasant voice of friend Was absent, and the cordial look was there No more, to smile on me. I thought on Lloyd— All he had been to me! And now I go Again to mingle with a world impure; With men who make a mock of holy things, Mistaken, and of man’s best hope think scorn. The world does much to warp the heart of man; And I may sometimes join its idiot laugh: Of this I now complain not. Deal with me. Omniscient Father, as Thou judgest best. And in Thy season soften thou my heart. I pray not for myself: I pray for him Whose soul is sore perplexed. Shine thou on him, Father of Lights! and in the difficult paths Make plain his way before him: his own thoughts May he not think—his own ends not pursue— So shall he best perform Thy will on earth. Greatest and Best, Thy will be ever ours!
The former of these poems I wrote with unusual celerity
t’other morning at office. I expect you to like it better than anything
of mine; Lloyd does, and I do myself.
You use Lloyd very
ill, never writing to him. I tell you again that his is not a mind with which
you should play tricks. He deserves more tenderness from you.
For myself, I must spoil a little passage of Beaumont and Fletcher to adapt it to my feelings:— “I am prouder That I was once your friend, tho’ now forgot, Than to have had another true to me.” If you don’t write to me now, as I told Lloyd, I shall get angry, and call you hard names—Manchineel
and I don’t know what else. I wish you would send me my great-coat. The
snow and the rain season is at hand, and I have but a wretched old coat, once
my father’s, to keep ’em off, and that is transitory. “When time drives flocks from field to fold, When ways grow foul and blood gets cold,” I shall remember where I left my coat. Meet emblem wilt thou be, old
Winter, of a friend’s neglect—cold, cold, cold! Remembrance where
remembrance is due.
C. Lamb.
Note
[The two poems included in this letter were printed in Blank Verse, a volume
which Lamb and Lloyd issued in 1798.
Coleridge had written to Lloyd, we know, as late as July, because he sent him a version of the poem
“This Lime-tree Bower, my
Prison;” but a coolness that was to ripen into positive hostility had
already begun. Of this we shall see more later.
The passage from Beaumont and Fletcher is in “The Maid’s Tragedy” (Act II., Scene 1),
where Aspatia says to Amintor:— Thus I wind myself Into this willow garland, and am prouder That I was once your love (though now refus’d) Than to have had another true to me. The scene is in Lamb’sDramatic
Specimens.
The reference to Manchineel is explained by a passage in Coleridge’s dedication of his 1797 volume, then just
published, to his brother, the Rev. George
Coleridge, where, speaking of the friends he had known, he says:— and some most false, False and fair-foliag’d as the Manchineel, Have tempted me to slumber in their shade The manchineel being a poisonous West Indian tree.
“When time drives flocks . . .” This couplet seems to
have been ingeniously compiled by Lamb from two
sources. The first line is in Raleigh’s
“Nymph’s Reply to the
Passionate Shepherd”:— But Time drives flocks from field to fold. The second line is probably a compact version of the third stanza in the song at the
end of “Love’s Labour’s Lost”:— When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipp’d, and ways be foul. Then nightly sings the staring owl.
Between this and the next letter probably came correspondence that has
now been lost.]
LETTER 32 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
January 28th, 1798.
YOU have writ me many kind letters, and I have
answered none of them. I don’t deserve your attentions. An unnatural
indifference has been creeping on me since my last misfortunes, or I should
have seized the first opening of a correspondence with you. To you I owe much
under God. In my brief acquaintance with you in London, your conversations won
me to the better cause, and rescued me from the polluting spirit of the world.
I might have been a worthless character without you; as it is, I do possess a
certain improvable portion of devotional feelings, tho’ when I view
myself in the light of divine truth, and not according to the common measures
of human judgment, I am altogether corrupt and sinful. This is no cant. I am
very sincere.
These last afflictions, Coleridge, have failed to soften and bend my will. They found
me unprepared. My former calamities
produced in me a spirit of humility and a spirit of prayer. I thought they had
sufficiently disciplined me; but the event ought to humble me. If God’s
judgments now fail to take away from me the heart of stone, what more grievous
trials ought I not to expect? I have been very querulous, impatient under the
rod—full of little jealousies and heartburnings.—I had well nigh quarrelled
with Charles Lloyd; and for no other
reason, I believe, than that the good creature did all he could to make me
happy. The truth is, I thought he tried to force my mind from its natural and
proper bent; he continually wished me to be from home; he was drawing me from the consideration of my poor dear Mary’s situation, rather than assisting
me to gain a proper view of it with religious consolations. I wanted to be left
to the tendency of my own mind in a solitary state which, in times past, I knew
had led to quietness and a patient bearing of the yoke. He was hurt that I was
not more constantly with him; but he was living with White, a man to whom I had never been
accustomed to impart my dearest feelings, tho’
from long habits of friendliness, and many a social and good quality, I loved
him very much. I met company there sometimes—indiscriminate company. Any
society almost, when I am in affliction, is sorely painful to me. I seem to
breathe more freely, to think more collectedly, to feel more properly and
calmly, when alone. All these things the good creature did with the kindest
intentions in the world, but they produced in me nothing but soreness and
discontent. I became, as he complained, “jaundiced” towards him . .
. but he has forgiven me—and his smile, I hope, will draw all such humours from
me. I am recovering, God be praised for it, a healthiness of mind, something
like calmness—but I want more religion—I am jealous of human helps and
leaning-places. I rejoice in your good fortunes. May God at the last settle
you!—You have had many and painful trials; humanly speaking they are going to
end; but we should rather pray that discipline may attend us thro’ the
whole of our lives. . . . A careless and a dissolute spirit has advanced upon
me with large strides—pray God that my present afflictions may be sanctified to
me! Mary is recovering, but I see no opening yet of a
situation for her; your invitation went to my very heart, but you have a power
of exciting interest, of leading all hearts captive, too forcible to admit of
Mary’s being with you. I consider her as
perpetually on the brink of madness. I think you would almost make her dance
within an inch of the precipice: she must be with duller fancies and cooler
intellects, know a young man of this description, who has suited her these
twenty years, and may live to do so still, if we are one day restored to each
other. In answer to your suggestions of occupation for me, I must say that I do not think my capacity altogether suited
for disquisitions of that kind. . . . I have read little, I have a very weak
memory, and retain little of what I read; am unused to composition in which any
methodising is required; but I thank you sincerely for the hint, and shall
receive it as far as I am able: that is, endeavour to engage my mind in some
constant and innocent pursuit. I know my capacities better than you do.
Accept my kindest love, and believe me yours, as ever.
C. L
Note
[The first letter that has been preserved since September of the previous
year. In the meantime Lamb had begun to work on Rosamund Gray,
probably upon an impulse gained from the visit to Stowey, and was also arranging to join
Lloyd, who was living in London with
White, in the volume of poems to be called Blank Verse. Southey, writing many years later to Edward Moxon, said of Lloyd and
White: “No two men could be imagined
more unlike each other; Lloyd had no drollery in his nature;
White seemed to have nothing else. You will easily understand
how Lamb could sympathise with both.”
The new calamity to which Lamb
refers in this letter was probably a relapse in Mary
Lamb’s condition. When he last mentioned her she was so far better as
to be able to be moved into lodgings at Hackney: all that good was now undone. Coleridge seems to have suggested that she should visit
Stowey.
It was about this time that Lamb
wrote the poem “The Old Familiar
Faces,” which I quote below in its original form, afterwards changed by
the omission of the first four lines:—
THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES Where are they gone, the old familiar faces? I had a mother, but she died, and left me, Died prematurely in a day of horrors— All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. I have had playmates, I have had companions, In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days— All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. I have been laughing, I have been carousing, Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies— All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. I loved a love once, fairest among women. Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her— All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man. Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly; Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces. Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood. Earth seem’d a desert I was bound to traverse, Seeking to find the old familiar faces. Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother! Why wert not thou born in my father’s dwelling? So might we talk of the old familiar faces. For some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me; all are departed; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. January, 1798.
It is conjectured by Mr. J. A. Rutter, and there is
much reason to believe it a right theory, especially when taken into connection with the
present letter, that Lloyd was the friend of the
fifth stanza and Coleridge the friend of the
seventh. The italicised half line might refer to “Anna,” but, since she is mentioned in the fourth stanza, it more
probably, I think, refers to Mary Lamb, who, as we
have seen, had been so ill as to necessitate removal from Hackney into more special
confinement again. (This, however, is largely conjecture.)
The letter was addressed to Coleridge at the Reverend A.
Rowe’s, Shrewsbury. Coleridge had been offered
the Unitarian pulpit at Shrewsbury and was on the point of accepting when he received news
of the annuity of £150 which Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood had settled upon him.
Between this letter and the next certainly came other letters to
Coleridge, now lost, one of which is referred to
by Coleridge in the letter to Lamb quoted below.]
LETTER 33 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[No date. Early Summer, 1798.] Theses Quædam Theologicæ
1. “WHETHER God loves a lying Angel better than a true Man?
2. Whether the Archangel Urielcould affirm an untruth? and if he could whether he would?
3. Whether Honesty be an angelic virtue? or not rather to be
reckoned among those qualities which the Schoolmen term ‘Virtutes minus splendidæ et terræ et hominis
participes’?
4. Whether the higher order of Seraphim Illuminati ever
sneer?
5. Whether pure intelligences can love?
6. Whether the Seraphim Ardentes do not manifest their
virtues by the way of vision and theory? and whether practice be not a
sub-celestial and merely human virtue?
7. Whether the Vision Beatific be anything more or less than
a perpetual representment to each individual Angel of his own present
attainments and future capabilities, somehow in the manner of mortal
looking-glasses, reflecting a perpetual complacency and self-satisfaction?
8 and last. Whether an immortal and amenable soul may not
come to be damned at last, and the man never suspect it beforehand?
Learned Sir, my Friend,
Presuming on our long habits of friendship and emboldened
further by your late liberal permission to avail myself of your correspondence,
in case I want any knowledge, (which I intend to do when I have no Encyclopædia
or Lady’s Magazine at hand to refer to in any matter of science,) I now
submit to your enquiries the above Theological Propositions, to be by you
defended, or oppugned, or both, in the Schools of Germany, whither I am told
you are departing, to the utter dissatisfaction of your native Devonshire and
regret of universal England; but to my own individual consolation if
thro’ the channel of your wished return, Learned Sir, my Friend, may be
transmitted to this our Island, from those famous Theological Wits of Leipsic
and Gottingen, any rays of illumination, in vain to be derived from the home
growth of our English Halls and Colleges. Finally, wishing, Learned Sir, that
you may see Schiller and swing in a wood
(videPoems) and sit upon a
Tun, and eat fat hams of Westphalia,
I remain, Your friend and docile Pupil to instruct Charles Lamb. To S. T. Coleridge. 1798.
Note
[Lamb’s last letter to
Coleridge for two years. See note to Letter 34.
Lamb’s reading of Thomas Aquinas probably was at the base of his theses. William Godwin, in his “History
of Knowledge, Learning and Taste in Great Britain,” which had run through
some years of the New Annual
Register, cited, in 1786, a number of the more grotesque queries of the
old Schoolmen. Mr. Kegan Paul suggests that Lamb went to Godwin for his
examination paper; out I should think this very unlikely. Some of the questions hit
Coleridge very hard.
This letter was first printed by Joseph
Cottle in his Early Recollections, 1837, with the remark: “Mr. Coleridge gave me this letter, saying,
‘These young visionaries will do each other no good.’” It marks
an epoch in Lamb’s life, since it brought
about, or, at any rate, clinched, the only quarrel that ever subsisted between
Coleridge and himself.
The story is told in Charles Lamb and the Lloyds. Briefly, Lloyd had left Coleridge in the spring of 1797; a little later, in a state of much
perplexity, he had carried his troubles to Lamb, and
to Southey, between whom and
Coleridge no very cordial feeling had existed for some time,
rather than to Coleridge himself, his late mentor. That probably
fanned the flame. The next move came from Coleridge. He printed in the Monthly Magazine for November, 1797,
three sonnets signed Nehemiah
Higginbottom, burlesquing instances of “affectation of
unaffectedness,” and “puny pathos” in the
poems of himself, of Lamb, and of Lloyd, the
humour of which Lamb probably did not much appreciate, since he
believed in the feelings expressed in his verse, while Lloyd was
certainly unfitted to esteem it. Coleridge effected even more than he had contemplated, for
Southey took the sonnet upon Simplicity as an attack upon himself,
which did not, however, prevent him, a little later, from a similar exercise in ponderous humour under the too
similar name of Abel Shufflebottom.
In March, 1798, when a new edition of Coleridge’s 1797 Poems was in contemplation, Lloyd wrote to Cottle, the
publisher, asking that he would persuade Coleridge to omit his
(Lloyd’s) portion, a request which
Coleridge probably resented, but which gave him the opportunity of
replying that no persuasion was needed for the omission of verses published at the earnest
request of the author.
Meanwhile a worse offence than all against Coleridge was perpetrated by Lloyd.
In the spring of 1798 was published at Bristol his novel, Edmund Oliver, dedicated to
Lamb, in which
Coleridge’s experiences in the army, under the alias of Silas Tomkyn Comberback, in 1793-1794,
and certain of Coleridge’s peculiarities, including his drug
habit, were utilised. Added to this, Lloyd seems to have repeated both
to Lamb and Southey, in
distorted form, certain things which Coleridge had said of them,
either in confidence, or, at any rate, with no wish that they should be repeated; with the
result that Lamb actually went so far as to take sides with
Lloyd against his older friend. The following extracts from a
letter from Coleridge to Lamb, which I am
permitted by Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge to print,
carries the story a little farther:—
[Spring of 1798.]
Dear Lamb,—Lloyd has
informed me through Miss Wordsworth that
you intend no longer to correspond with me. This has given me little pain; not
that I do not love and esteem you, but on the contrary because I am confident
that your intentions are pure. You are performing what you deem a duty, and
humanly speaking have that merit which can be derived from the performance of a
painful duty. Painful, for you would not without struggles abandon me in behalf
of a man [Lloyd] who, wholly ignorant of all but your
name, became attached to you in consequence of my attachment, caught his from
my enthusiasm, and learned to love you at my fireside, when often while I have
been sitting and talking of your sorrows and afflictions I have stopped my
conversations and lifted up wet eyes and prayed for you. No! I am confident
that although you do not think as a wise man, you feel as a good man.
From you I have received little pain, because for you I
suffer little alarm. I cannot say this for your friend; it appears to me
evident that his feelings are vitiated, and that his ideas are in their
combination merely the creatures of those feelings. I have received letters
from him, and the best and kindest wish which, as a Christian, I can offer in
return is that he may feel remorse. . . .
When I wrote to you that my Sonnet to Simplicity was not composed
with reference to Southey, you answered
me (I believe these were the words): “It was a lie too gross for the
grossest ignorance to believe;” and I was not angry with you,
because the assertion which the grossest ignorance would believe a lie the
Omniscient knew to be truth. This, however, makes me cautious not too hastily
to affirm the falsehood of an assertion of Lloyd’s that in Edmund Oliver’s love-fit, leaving
college, and going into the army he had no sort of allusion to or recollection
of my love-fit, leaving college, and going into the army, and that he never
thought of my person in the description of Oliver’s person in the first letter of the second volume.
This cannot appear stranger to me than my assertion did to you, and therefore I
will suspend my absolute faith.
I have been unfortunate in my connections. Both you and
Lloyd became acquainted with me when
your minds were far from being in a composed or natural state, and you clothed
my image with a suit of notions and feelings which could belong to nothing
human. You are restored to comparative saneness, and are merely wondering what
is become of the Coleridge with whom you
were so passionately in love; Charles
Lloyd’s mind has only changed his disease, and he
is now arraying his ci-devant Angel in a flaming San Benito—the whole ground of
the garment a dark brimstone and plenty of little devils flourished out in black. Oh, me! Lamb, “even in laughter the heart is
sad!” . . .
God bless you and
S. T. Coleridge.
One other passage. In a letter from Lloyd at Birmingham to Cottle, dated
June, 1798, Lloyd says, in response to
Cottle’s suggestion that he should visit Coleridge, “I love Coleridge, and can forget all
that has happened. At present I could not well go to Stowey. . . . Lamb quitted me yesterday, after a fortnight’s
visit. I have been much interested in his society. I never knew him so happy in my
life. I shall write to Coleridge to-day.”
Coleridge left for Germany in September.
“Schiller and swing in a wood.” An allusion to
Coleridge’ssonnet to Schiller:— Ah! Bard tremendous in sublimity! Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood Wand’ring at eve with finely-frenzied eye Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood!
Here should perhaps come Lamb’s first letter to Robert
Lloyd, not available for this edition, but printed by Canon Ainger, and in Charles Lamb and the Lloyds,
where it is dated October. Lamb’s first letter is one of advice,
apparently in reply to some complaints of his position addressed to him by
Lloyd. A second and longer letter which, though belonging to
August, 1798, may be mentioned here, also counsels, commending the use of patience and
humility. Lamb is here seen in the character of a spiritual adviser.
The letter is unique in his correspondence.
Robert Lloyd was a younger brother of Charles Lloyd, and Lamb had probably met him when on his visit to Birmingham in the summer.
The boy, then not quite twenty, was apprenticed to a Quaker draper at Saffron Walden in
Essex.]
LETTER 34 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Saturday, July 28th, 1798.
I AM ashamed that I have not thanked you before this
for the “Joan of
Arc,” but I did not know your address, and it did not occur to me
to write through Cottle. The poem
delighted me, and the notes amused me, but methinks she of Neufchatel, in the
print, holds her sword too “like a dancer.” I sent your notice to Phillips, particularly requesting an immediate insertion, but I suppose it came too late. I am
sometimes curious to know what progress you make in that same “Calendar:” whether you insert the nine worthies
and Whittington? what you do or how you can manage when two Saints meet and
quarrel for precedency? Martlemas, and Candlemas, and Christmas, are glorious
themes for a writer like you, antiquity-bitten, smit with the love of
boars’ heads and rosemary; but how you can ennoble the 1st of April I
know not. By the way I had a thing to say, but a certain false modesty has
hitherto prevented me: perhaps I can best communicate my wish by a hint,—my
birthday is on the 10th of February, New Style; but if it interferes with any
remarkable event, why rather than my country should lose her fame, I care not
if I put my nativity back eleven days. Fine family patronage for your
“Calendar,” if that old lady of
prolific memory were living, who lies (or lyes) in some church in London
(saints forgive me, but I have forgot what church), attesting that enormous
legend of as many children as days in the year. I marvel her impudence did not
grasp at a leap-year. Three hundred and sixty-five dedications, and all in a
family—you might spit in spirit on the oneness of Mæcenas’ patronage!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to the eternal
regret of his native Devonshire, emigrates to Westphalia—“Poor
Lamb (these were his last words),
if he wants any knowledge, he may apply to
me,”—in ordinary cases, I thanked him, I have an
“Encyclopædia” at hand, but on such an occasion as going over to a
German university, I could not refrain from sending him the following
propositions, to be by him defended or oppugned (or both) at Leipsic or
Gottingen.
Theses Quædam Theologicæ I
“Whether God loves a lying angel better than a true
man?”
II
“Whether the archangel
Urielcould knowingly
affirm an untruth, and whether, if he could, he would?”
III
“Whether honesty be an angelic virtue, or not rather
belonging to that class of qualities which the schoolmen term
‘virtutes minus splendidæ et hominis et terræ nimis
participes?’”
IV
“Whether the seraphim ardentes do not manifest their
goodness by the way of vision and theory? and whether practice be not a
sub-celestial, and merely human virtue?”
V
“Whether the higher order of seraphim illuminati ever
sneer?”
VI
“Whether pure intelligences can love, or whether they can love anything besides pure
intellect?”
VII
“Whether the beatific vision be anything more or less
than a perpetual representment to each individual angel of his own present
attainments, and future capabilities, something in the manner of mortal
looking-glasses?”
VIII
“Whether an ‘immortal and amenable soul’
may not come to be damned at last, and the man never suspect
it beforehand?”
Samuel Taylor C. hath not deigned an
answer; was it impertinent of me to avail myself of that offered source of
knowledge? Lloyd is returned to town
from Ipswich where he has been with his brother. He has brought home three acts
of a Play which I have not yet read. The scene for the most part laid in a
Brothel. O tempore, O mores! but as friend Coleridge said
when he was talking bawdy to Miss —— “to the pure
all things are pure.”
Wishing “Madoc” may be born into the world with as splendid promise as
the second birth or purification of the Maid of Neufchatel,—I remain yours
sincerely,
C. Lamb.
I hope Edith is
better; my kindest remembrances to her. You have a good deal of trifling to
forgive in this letter.
Note
[This is Lamb’s first letter to Southey that has been preserved. Probably others came before it.
Southey now becomes Lamb’s chief correspondent for some months. In Canon Ainger’s transcript the letter ends with
“Love and remembrances to Cottle.”
Southey’sJoan of Arc, second edition, had
been published by Cottle in 1798. It has no
frontispiece: the print of Joan of Arc must have come
separately. Octavius was said (in “Antony and Cleopatra,” III., 11, 85,
36) to have “kept His sword e’en like a dancer.” Lamb was fond of this phrase: he uses it twice in the Elia essays.
Phillips was Sir Richard
Phillips (1767-1840), editor of the Monthly Magazine and the publisher satirised in Borrow’sLavengro.
The Calendar ultimately became the Annual Anthology. Southey had at first an idea of making it a poetical
calendar or almanac.
“That old lady of prolific memory.” Lamb is thinking, I imagine, of the story in Howell’sFamiliar Letters (also in
Evelyn’sDiary) of the “Wonder of Nature” near the Hague. “That
Wonder of Nature is a Church-monument, where an Earl and a Lady are engraven with 365
Children about them, which were all deliver’d at one Birth.” The story
tells that a beggar woman with twins asked alms of the Countess, who denying that it was
possible for two children to be born at once and vilifying the beggar, that woman cursed
her and called upon God to show His judgment upon her by causing her to bear “at
one birth as many Children as there are days in the year, which she did before the same
year’s end, having never born Child before.”
Howell seems to have been convinced of the authenticity of the
story by the spectacle of the christening basin used by the family. The beggar, who spoke
on the third day of the year, meant as many days as had been in that year—three. Edith was Southey’s wife.]
LETTER 35 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Oct. 18th, 1798.
DEAR Southey,—I have at last been so fortunate as to pick up Wither’sEmblems for you, that “old book
and quaint,” as the brief author of “Rosamund Gray” hath it; it is in a
most detestable state of preservation, and the cuts are of a fainter impression
than I have seen. Some child, the curse of antiquaries and bane of
bibliopolical rarities, hath been dabbling in some of them with its paint and
dirty fingers, and in particular hath a little sullied the author’s own
portraiture, which I think valuable, as the poem that accompanies it is no
common one; this last excepted, the Emblems
are far inferior to old Quarles. I once
told you otherwise, but I had not then read old Q. with attention. I
have picked up, too, another copy of Quarles for ninepence!!! O
tempora! O lectores!—so that if you have lost or parted with your
own copy, say so, and I can furnish you, for you prize these things more than I
do. You will be amused, I think, with honest
Wither’s “Supersedeas to all them whose custom it is,
without any deserving, to importune authors to give unto them their
books.” I am sorry ’tis imperfect, as the lottery board
annexed to it also is. Methinks you might modernise and elegantise this
Supersedeas, and place it in front of your “Joan of Arc,” as a gentle hint to
Messrs. Park, &c. One of the happiest
emblems and comicalest cuts is the owl and little chirpers, page 63.
Wishing you all amusement, which your true emblem-fancier
can scarce fail to find in even bad emblems, I remain your caterer to command,
C Lamb.
Love and respects to Edith. I hope she is well. How does your Calendar prosper?
Note
[This letter contains Lamb’s
first reference to Rosamund
Gray, his only novel, which had been published a little earlier in the
year. “Wither’s Emblems,
an ‘old book and quaint,’” was one of the few volumes belonging
to old Margaret, Rosamund’s grandmother (Chapter I.). See next letter and note.
Wither’sEmblems was published in 1635;
Quarles’ in the same year.
Wither’s “Supersedeas” will be found in the Appendix,
page 950. I reproduce the owl and little chirpers from the edition of 1635.]
LETTER 36 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
[October 29, 1798.]
DEAR Southey,—I thank you heartily for the Eclogue; it pleases me mightily, being so
full of picture-work and circumstances. I find no fault in it, unless perhaps
that Joanna’s ruin is a catastrophe
too trite: and this is not the first or second time you have clothed your
indignation, in verse, in a tale of ruined innocence. The old lady, spinning in
the sun, I hope would not disdain to claim some kindred with old Margaret. I could almost wish you to vary some
circumstances in the conclusion. A gentleman seducer has so often been
described in prose and verse; what if you had accomplished Joanna’s ruin by the clumsy arts and rustic
gifts of some countryfellow? I am thinking, I believe, of the song, “An old woman clothed in grey, Whose daughter was charming and young, And she was deluded away By Roger’s false flattering tongue.” A Roger-Lothario would be a novel
character: I think you might paint him very well. You may think this a very
silly suggestion, and so, indeed, it is; but, in good truth, nothing else but
the first words of that foolish ballad put me upon scribbling my “Rosamund.” But I thank
you heartily for the poem. Not having anything of my own to send you in
return—though, to tell truth, I am at work upon something, which if I were to
cut away and garble, perhaps I might send you an extract or two that might not
displease you; but I will not do that; and whether it will come to anything, I
know not, for I am as slow as a Fleming
painter when I compose anything. I will crave leave to put down a few lines of
old Christopher Marlow’s; I take
them from his tragedy, “The Jew
of Malta.” The Jew is a famous character, quite out of nature;
but, when we consider the terrible idea our simple ancestors had of a Jew, not
more to be discommended for a certain discolouring (I think Addison calls it) than the witches and fairies
of Marlow’s mighty successor. The scene is betwixt
Barabas, the Jew, and Ithamore, a Turkish captive exposed to sale for a
slave.
BARABAS(A precious rascal.) “As for myself, I walk abroad a-nights, And kill sick people groaning under walls: Sometimes I go about, and poison wells; And now and then, to cherish Christian thieves, I am content to lose some of my crowns, That I may, walking in my gallery, See ’m go pinioned along by my door. Being young, I studied physic, and began To practise first upon the Italian: There I enriched the priests with burials, And always kept the sexton’s arms in ure With digging graves and ringing dead men’s knells; And, after that, was I an engineer, And in the wars ’twixt France and Germany, Under pretence of serving [helping] Charles
the Fifth, Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems. Then after that was I an usurer, And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting, And tricks belonging unto brokery, I fill’d the jails with bankrupts in a year, And with young orphans planted hospitals, And every moon made some or other mad; And now and then one hang’d himself for grief, Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll, How I with interest tormented him.”
Now hear Ithamore, the
other gentle nature, explain how he spent his time:—
ITHAMORE(A comical dog.) “Faith, master, in setting Christian villages on fire, Chaining of eunuchs, binding galley-slaves. One time I was an hostler at [in] an inn, And in the night-time secretly would I steal To travellers’ chambers, and there cut their throats. Once at Jerusalem, where the pilgrims kneel’d, I strowed powder on the marble stones, And therewithal their knees would rankle so, That I have laugh’d a-good to see the cripples Go limping home to Christendom on stilts.” BARABAS “Why, this is something”—
There is a mixture of the ludicrous and the terrible in
these lines, brimful of genius and antique invention, that at first reminded me
of your old description of cruelty in hell, which was in the true Hogarthian
style. I need not tell you that Marlow
was author of that pretty madrigal, “Come live with me, and be my Love,” and
of the tragedy of “Edward
II.,” in which are certain lines
unequalled in our English tongue. Honest Walton mentions the said madrigal under the denomination of
“certain smooth verses made long since by Kit
Marlow.”
I am glad you have put me on the scent after old Quarles. If I do not put up those eclogues,
and that shortly, say I am no true-nosed hound. I have had a letter from
Lloyd; the young metaphysician of
Caius is well, and is busy recanting the new heresy, metaphysics, for the old
dogma, Greek. My sister, I thank you, is
quite well. She had a slight attack the other day, which frightened me a good
deal; but it went off unaccountably. Love and respects to Edith.
Yours sincerely,
C. Lamb.
Note
[The eclogue was “The
Ruined Cottage,” in which Joanna and
her widowed mother are at first as happy as Rosamund
Gray and old blind Margaret. As in
Lamb’s story so in Southey’s poem, this state of felicity is overturned
by a seducer.
“An old woman clothed in gray.” This ballad still
eludes research. Lamb says that the first line put
him upon writing Rosamund
Gray, but he is generally supposed to have taken his heroine’s
name from a song by Charles Lloyd, entitled
“Rosamund Gray,”
published among his Poems in 1795. At the end of the novel Matravis, the seducer, in his ravings, sings the ballad.
The “something” upon which Lamb was then at work was his play “John Woodvil,” in those early days known as
“Pride’s Cure.”
The passage from Marlowe’s
“The Rich Jew of Malta” is
in Act II. Lamb included other passages in his Dramatic
Specimens, 1808, and also passages from “Edward II.” Walton quotes the madrigal in The Complete Angler.
“Your old description of cruelty in hell.” In
“Joan of Arc.” See Letter
3, page 14.
“If I do not put up those eclogues.” Lamb does not return to this subject.
Lloyd had just gone to Cambridge, to Caius College.]
LETTER 37 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Nov. 3, 1798.
I HAVE read your Eclogue [“The Wedding”] repeatedly, and cannot
call it bald, or without interest; the cast of it, and the design are
completely original, and may set people upon thinking: it is as poetical as the
subject requires, which asks no poetry; but it is defective in pathos. The
woman’s own story is the tamest part of it—I should like you to remould
that—it too much resembles the young maid’s history: both had been in
service. Even the omission would not injure the poem; after the words
“growing wants,” you might, not unconnectedly, introduce
“look at that little chub” down to “welcome
one.” And, decidedly, I would have you end it somehow thus, “Give them at least this evening a good meal. [Gives her money. Now, fare thee well; hereafter you have taught me To give sad meaning to the village-bells,” &c., which would leave a stronger impression (as well as more pleasingly recall
the beginning of the Eclogue), than the present common-place reference to a
better world, which the woman “must have heard at church.” I
should like you, too, a good deal to enlarge the most striking part, as it
might have been, of the poem—“Is it idleness?” &c., that
affords a good field for dwelling on sickness and inabilities, and old age. And
you might also a good deal enrich the piece with a picture of a country
wedding: the woman might very well, in a transient fit of oblivion, dwell upon
the ceremony and circumstances of her own nuptials six years ago, the smugness
of the bridegroom, the feastings, the cheap merriment, the welcomings, and the
secret envyings of the maidens—then dropping all this, recur to her present
lot. I do not know that I can suggest anything else, or that I have suggested
anything new or material.
I shall be very glad to see some more poetry, though I fear
your trouble in transcribing will be greater than the service my remarks may do
them.
Yours affectionately,
C. Lamb.
I cut my letter short because I am called off to
business.
LETTER 38 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Nov. 8th, 1798.
I DO not know that I much prefer this Eclogue [Lamb
has received ‘The Last of the
Flock’] to the last [‘The Wedding’]; both are inferior to
the former [‘The Ruined
Cottage’]. “And when he came to shake me by the hand, And spake as kindly to me as he used, I hardly knew his voice—” is the only passage that affected me.
Servants speak, and their language ought to be plain, and
not much raised above the common, else I should find fault with the bathos of
this passage: “And when I heard the bell strike out, I thought (what?) that I had never heard it toll So dismally before.”
I like the destruction of the martens’ old nests
hugely, having just such a circumstance in my memory.1
I should be very glad to see your remaining Eclogue, if not too much trouble,
as you give me reason to expect it will be the second best.
I perfectly accord with your opinion of old Wither. Quarles is a wittier writer, but Wither
lays more hold of the heart. Quarles thinks of his
audience when he lectures; Wither soliloquises in company
with a full heart. What wretched stuff are the “Divine Fancies” of
Quarles! Religion appears to him no longer valuable
than it furnishes matter for quibbles and riddles; he turns God’s grace
into wantonness. Wither is like an old friend, whose
warm-heartedness and estimable qualities make us wish he possessed more genius,
but at the same time make us willing to dispense with that want. I always love
W., and sometimes admire Q. Still
that
1 [The destruction of the martens’ nests,
in “The Last of the
Family,” runs thus:— I remember, Eight months ago, when the young Squire began To alter the old mansion, they destroy’d The martins’ nests, that had stood undisturb’d Under that roof, . . . ay! long before my memory, I shook my head at seeing it, and thought No good could follow.]
portrait poem is a fine one;
and the extract from “The
Shepherds’ Hunting” places him in a starry height far
above Quarles. If you wrote that review in “Crit. Rev.,” I am sorry you are so sparing
of praise to the “Ancient
Marinere;”—so far from calling it, as you do, with some wit,
but more severity, “A Dutch Attempt,” &c., I call it a
right English attempt, and a successful one, to dethrone German sublimity. You
have selected a passage fertile in unmeaning miracles, but have passed by fifty
passages as miraculous as the miracles they celebrate. I never so deeply felt
the pathetic as in that part, “A spring of love gush’d from my heart, And I bless’d them unaware—” It stung me into high pleasure through sufferings. Lloyd does not like it; his head is too
metaphysical, and your taste too correct; at least I must allege something
against you both, to excuse my own dotage— “So lonely ’twas, that God himself Scarce seemed there to be!”—&c., &c.
But you allow some elaborate beauties—you should have extracted ’em.
“The Ancient Marinere” plays more
tricks with the mind than that last poem, which is yet one of the
finest written. But I am getting too dogmatical; and before I degenerate into
abuse, I will conclude with assuring you that I am
Sincerely yours, C. Lamb.
I am going to meet Lloyd at Ware on Saturday, to return on Sunday. Have you
any commands or commendations to the metaphysician? I shall be very happy
if you will dine or spend any time with me in your way through the great
ugly city; but I know you have other ties upon you in these parts.
Love and respects to Edith, and friendly remembrances to Cottle.
Note
[Lamb’s ripe judgment of Wither will be found in his essay
“On the Poetical Works of George
Wither,” in the Works, 1818 (see Vol. I. of this edition, page 181).
“The portrait poem” would be “The Author’s Meditation upon Sight of His Picture,” prefixed to
Emblems,
1635.
Lyrical Ballads,
by Wordsworth and Coleridge, had just been published by Cottle. “The Ancient
Mariner” stood first. “That last poem” was
Wordsworth’s “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern
Abbey.” Southey(?) reviewed the book in
the Critical Review for
October, 1798. Of the “Ancient Mariner” he said:
“It is a Dutch attempt at German sublimity. Genius has here been employed in
producing a poem of little merit.”
Here should come a letter from Lamb
to Robert Lloyd, dated November 13, 1798, not
available for this edition. Robert Lloyd seems to have said in his
last letter that the world was drained of all its sweets. Lamb sends
him a beautiful passage in praise of the world’s good things—the first foretaste in
the correspondence of his later ecstatic manner.
Here also should come a letter from Lamb to Southey, which apparently
does not now exist, containing “The Dying Lover,” an
extract from Lamb’s play. I have taken the text from the version
of the play sent to Manning late in 1800 (see page
205). Lamb did not include “The Dying Lover” in John Woodvil when he printed it in 1802; but he
sent it, slightly altered, to Dr. Anderson’s
magazine (see page 187) for November, 1800, and to the London Magazine for January, 1822.
THE DYING LOVER Margaret. . . . I knew a youth who died For grief, because his Love proved so, And married to another. I saw him on the wedding day, For he was present in the church that day, And in his best apparel too, As one that came to grace the ceremony. I mark’d him when the ring was given, His countenance never changed; And when the priest pronounced the marriage blessing, He put a silent prayer up for the bride, For they stood near who saw his lips move. He came invited to the marriage-feast With the bride’s friends, And was the merriest of them all that day; But they, who knew him best, call’d it feign’d mirth; And others said, He wore a smile like death’s upon his face. His presence dash’d all the beholders’ mirth, And he went away in tears. Simon. What followed
then? Marg. Oh! then He did not as neglected suitors use Affect a life of solitude in shades, But lived, In free discourse and sweet society, Among his friends who knew his gentle nature best. Yet ever when he smiled, There was a mystery legible in his face, That whoso saw him said he was a man Not long for this world.— And true it was, for even then The silent love was feeding at his heart Of which he died: Nor ever spake word of reproach, Only he wish’d in death that his remains Might find a poor grave in some spot, not far From his mistress’ family vault, “being the place Where one day Anna should herself be
laid.”
The line in italics Lamb crossed
through in the Manning copy. The last four lines he
crossed through and marked “very bad.” I have reproduced
them here because of the autobiographical hint contained in the word
Anna, which was the name given by Lamb to his “fair-haired maid” in his love sonnets.]
LETTER 39 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
[Probably November, 1798.]
THE following is a second Extract from my Tragedy that is to be,—’tis
narrated by an old Steward to Margaret,
orphan ward of Sir Walter Woodvil;—this,
and the Dying Lover I gave
you, are the only extracts I can give without mutilation. I expect you to like
the old woman’s curse:
Old Steward.—One summer night, Sir Walter, as it chanc’d, Was pacing to & fro in the avenue That westward fronts our house, Among those aged oaks, said to have been planted Three hundred years ago By a neighb’ring Prior of the Woodvil name, But so it was, Being overtask’t in thought, he heeded not The importune suitor who stood by the gate, And beg’d an alms. Some say he shov’d her rudely from the gate With angry chiding; but I can never think (Sir Walter’s nature hath a
sweetness in it) That he would use a woman—an old woman— With such discourtesy; For old she was who beg’d an alms of him. Well, he refus’d her; Whether for importunity, I know not, Or that she came between his meditations. But better had he met a lion in the streets Than this old woman that night; For she was one who practis’d the black arts, And served the devil—being since burn’d for witchcraft. She look’d at him like one that meant to blast him, And with a frightful noise (’Twas partly like a woman’s voice, And partly like the hissing of a snake) She nothing said but this (Sir
Walter told the words): “A mischief, mischief, mischief, And a nine-times killing curse, By day and by night, to the caitive wight Who shakes the poor like snakes from his door, And shuts up the womb of his purse; And a mischief, mischief, mischief, And a nine-fold withering curse,— For that shall come to thee, that will render thee Both all that thou fear’st, and worse.”
These words four times repeated, she departed, Leaving Sir Walter like a man
beneath Whose feet a scaffolding had suddenly fal’n: So he describ’d it. Margaret.—A
terrible curse! Old Steward.—O Lady, such bad things are told of
that old woman, As, namely, that the milk she gave was sour, And the babe who suck’d her shrivel’d like a mandrake; And things besides, with a bigger horror in them, Almost, I think, unlawful to be told! Margaret.—Then must I never hear them. But proceed, And say what follow’d on the witch’s curse. Old Steward.—Nothing immediate; but some nine
months after, Young Stephen Woodvil suddenly fell
sick, And none could tell what ail’d him: for he lay, And pin’d, and pin’d, that all his hair came off; And he, that was full-flesh’d, became as thin As a two-months’ babe that hath been starved in the nursing;— And sure, I think, He bore his illness like a little child, With such rare sweetness of dumb melancholy He strove to clothe his agony in smiles, Which he would force up in his poor, pale cheeks, Like ill-tim’d guests that had no proper business there;— And when they ask’d him his complaint, he laid His hand upon his heart to show the place Where Satan came to him a nights, he said, And prick’d him with a pin.— And hereupon Sir Walter
call’d to mind The Beggar Witch that stood in the gateway, And begg’d an alms— Margaret.—I
do not love to credit Tales of magic. Heav’n’s music, which is order, seems unstrung; And this brave world, Creation’s beauteous work, unbeautified, Uisorder’d, marr’d, where such strange things are acted.
This is the extract I brag’d of, as superior to that I
sent you from Marlow. Perhaps you smile; but I should like your remarks on the
above, as you are deeper witch-read than I.
Note
[The passage quoted in this letter, with certain alterations, became
afterwards “The Witch,” a
dramatic sketch independent of “John
Woodvil.” By the phrase “without mutilation,” Lamb possibly means to suggest that Southey should print this sketch and “The Dying
Lover” in the Annual
Anthology. That was not, however, done. “The Witch” was
first printed in the Works, 1818.
Here should come a letter from Lamb
to Robert Lloyd, postmarked November 20, 1798, not
available for this edition. In this letter Lamb sends
Lloyd the extract from “The Witch” that was sent to Southey.]
LETTER 40 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Nov. 28th, 1798.
I CAN have no objection to your printing
“Mystery of
God” with my name and all due acknowledgments for the honour and
favour of the communication; indeed, ’tis a poem that can dishonour no
name. Now, that is in the true strain of modern modesto-vanitas. . . . But for
the sonnet, I heartily wish it, as I thought it was, dead and forgotten. If the
exact circumstances under which I wrote could be known or told, it would be an
interesting sonnet; but to an indifferent and stranger reader it must appear a
very bald thing, certainly inadmissible in a compilation. I wish you could
affix a different name to the volume; there is a contemptible book, a wretched
assortment of vapid feelings, entitled “Pratt’s Gleanings,” which
hath damned and impropriated the title for ever. Pray think of some other. The
gentleman is better known (better had he remained unknown) by an Ode to Benevolence, written
and spoken for and at the annual dinner of the Humane Society, who walk in
procession once a-year, with all the objects of their charity before them, to
return God thanks for giving them such benevolent hearts.
I like “Bishop Bruno;” but not so abundantly as your “Witch Ballad,” which is
an exquisite thing of its kind.
I showed my “Witch” and “Dying Lover” to Dyer last night; but
George could not comprehend how that could be poetry
which did not go upon ten feet, as George and his
predecessors had taught it to do; so George read me some
lectures on the distinguishing qualities of the Ode, the Epigram, and the Epic,
and went home to illustrate his doctrine by correcting a proof sheet of his own
Lyrics. George writes odes where the rhymes, like
fashionable man and wife, keep a comfortable distance of six or eight lines
apart, and calls that “observing the laws of verse.”
George tells you, before he recites, that you must
listen with great attention, or
you’ll miss the rhymes. I did so, and found them pretty exact.
George, speaking of the dead Ossian, exclaimeth, “Dark are the poet’s
eyes.” I humbly represented to him that his own eyes were dark
[?light], and many a living bard’s besides, and recommended
“Clos’d are the poet’s eyes.” But that would
not do. I found there was an antithesis between the darkness of his eyes and
the splendour of his genius; and I acquiesced.
Your recipe for a Turk’s poison is invaluable and
truly Marlowish. . . . Lloyd objects to “shutting up the
womb of his purse” in my Curse (which for a Christian witch in a
Christian country is not too mild, I hope); do you object? I think there is a
strangeness in the idea, as well as “shaking the poor like snakes from
his door,” which suits the speaker. Witches illustrate, as fine
ladies do, from their own familiar objects, and snakes and the shutting up of
wombs are in their way. I don’t know that this last charge has been
before brought against ’em, nor either the sour milk or the mandrake
babe; but I affirm these be things a witch would do if she could.
My Tragedy will be a medley (as [? and] I intend it to be a medley) of
laughter and tears, prose and verse, and in some places rhyme, songs, wit,
pathos, humour, and, if possible, sublimity; at least, it is not a fault in my
intention, if it does not comprehend most of these discordant colours. Heaven
send they dance not the “Dance of Death!” I hear that the Two Noble
Englishmen have parted no sooner than they set foot on German earth, but I have
not heard the reason—possibly, to give novelists an handle to exclaim,
“Ah me! what things are perfect?” I think I shall adopt your
emendation in the “Dying
Lover,” though I do not myself feel the objection against
“Silent Prayer.”
My tailor has brought me home a new coat lapelled, with a
velvet collar. He assures me everybody wears velvet collars now. Some are born
fashionable, some achieve fashion, and others, like your humble servant, have
fashion thrust upon them. The rogue has been making inroads hitherto by modest
degrees, foisting upon me an additional button, recommending gaiters; but to
come upon me thus in a full tide of luxury, neither becomes him as a tailor nor
the ninth of a man. My meek gentleman was robbed the other day, coming with his
wife and family in a one-horse shay from Hampstead; the villains rifled him of
four guineas, some shillings and half-pence, and a bundle of customers’
measures, which they swore were bank-notes. They did not shoot him, and when
they rode off he addrest them with profound gratitude, making a congee:
“Gentlemen, I wish you good night, and we are very much obliged to
you that you have not used us ill!” And this is the cuckoo that
has had the audacity to foist upon me ten
buttons on a side and a black velvet collar—A damn’d ninth of a
scoundrel!
When you write to Lloyd, he wishes his Jacobin correspondents to address him as
Mr. C. L. Love and respects to Edith. I hope she is well.
Yours sincerely, C. Lamb.
Note
[The poem “Mystery of God” was,
when printed in the Annual
Anthology for 1799, entitled “Living without God in the World.” Lamb never reprinted it. It is not clear to what sonnet
Lamb refers, possibly that to his sister, printed on page 78,
which he himself never reprinted. It was at that time intended to call Southey’s collection Gleanings; Lamb refers to the Gleanings of Samuel Jackson Pratt
(1749-1814), a very busy maker of books, published in 1795-1799. His Triumph of Benevolence was
published in 1786.
Southey’s witch ballad was “The Old Woman of Berkeley.”
George Dyer’s principal works in verse are
contained in his Poems, 1802, and Poetics, 1812. He retained the epithet “dark”
for Ossian’s eyes.
Southey’s recipe for a Turk’s poison I
do not find. It may have existed only in a letter.
A reference to the poem on page 132 will explain the remarks about
witches’ curses.
The Two Noble Englishmen (a sarcastic reference drawn, I imagine, from
Palamon and Arcite) were Coleridge and Wordsworth, then in Germany. Nothing definite is known,
but they seem quite amicably to have decided to take independent courses.
“Some are born fashionable.” After Malvolio (“Twelfth Night,” II., 5, 157, etc.).
“Lloyd’s Jacobin
correspondents.” This is Lamb’s
only allusion to the attack which had been made by The Anti-Jacobin upon himself, Lloyd and their friends, particularly Coleridge and Southey. In “The New
Morality,” in the last number of Canning’s paper, they had been thus grouped:— And ye five other wandering Bards that move In sweet accord of harmony and love, C—dge and S—th—y, L—d, and
L—be & Co. Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux! —Lepaux being the high-priest of
Theophilanthropy. When “The New Morality” was
reprinted in The Beauties
of “The Anti-Jacobin” in 1799, a
savage footnote on Coleridge was appended, accusing him of hypocrisy
and the desertion of his wife and children, and adding
“Ex uno disce his associates
Southey and Lamb.” Again, in the first number of the Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine,
August, 1798, was a picture by Gilray, representing
the worshippers of Lepaux, wherein Lloyd and
Lamb appeared as a toad and a frog reading their own Blank Verse, and
Coleridge and Southey, as donkeys, flourish
“Dactylics” and “Saphics.” In September the federated poets were
again touched upon in a parody of the
“Ode to the
Passions”:— See! faithful to their mighty dam, C—dge, S—th—y, L—d, and
L—b In splay-foot madrigals of love, Soft moaning like the widow’d dove, Pour, side-by-side, their sympathetic notes; Of equal rights, and civic feasts, And tyrant kings, and knavish priests, Swift through the land the tuneful mischief floats. And now to softer strains they struck the lyre, They sung the beetle or the mole, The dying kid, or ass’s foal, By cruel man permitted to expire.
Lloyd took the caricature and the verses with his
customary seriousness, going so far as to indite a “Letter to The Anti-Jacobin
Reviewers,” which was printed in Birmingham in 1799. Therein he defended
Lamb with some vigour: “The person you
have thus leagued in a partnership of infamy with me is Mr. Charles
Lamb, a man who, so far from being a democrat, would be the first person
to assent to the opinions contained in the foregoing pages: he is a man too much
occupied with real and painful duties—duties of high personal self-denial—to trouble
himself about speculative matters.”]
LETTER 41 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Dec. 27, 1798.
DEAR Southey,—Your friend John May has formerly made kind offers to Lloyd of serving me in the India house by the
interest of his friend Sir Francis
Baring—It is not likely that I shall ever put his goodness to
the test on my own account, for my prospects are very comfortable. But I know a
man, a young man, whom he could serve thro’ the same channel, and I think
would be disposed to serve if he were acquainted with his case. This poor
fellow (whom I know just enough of to vouch for his strict integrity &
worth) has lost two or three employments from illness, which he cannot regain; he was once insane, & from
the distressful uncertainty of his livelihood has reason to apprehend a return
of that malady—He has been for some time dependant on a woman whose lodger he
formerly was, but who can ill afford to maintain him, and I know that on
Christmas night last he actually walk’d about the streets all night,
rather than accept of her Bed, which she offer’d him, and offer’d
herself to sleep in the kitchen, and that in consequence of that severe cold he
is labouring under a bilious disorder, besides a depression of spirits, which
incapacitates him from exertion when he most needs it—For God’s sake,
Southey, if it does not go against
you to ask favors, do it now—ask it as for me—but do not do a violence to your
feelings, because he does not know of this application, and will suffer no
disappointment—What I meant to say was this—there are in the India house what
are called Extra Clerks, not on the Establishment, like
me, but employed in Extra business, by-jobs—these get about £50 a year, or
rather more, but never rise—a Director can put in at any time a young man in
this office, and it is by no means consider’d so great a favor as making
an establish’d Clerk. He would think himself as rich as an Emperor if he
could get such a certain situation, and be relieved from those disquietudes
which I do fear may one day bring back his distemper—
You know John May
better than I do, but I know enough to believe that he is a good man—he did
make me that offer I have mention’d, but you will perceive that such an
offer cannot authorize me in applying for another Person.
But I cannot help writing to you on the subject, for the
young man is perpetually before my eyes, and I should feel it a crime not to
strain all my petty interest to do him service, tho’ I put my own
delicacy to the question by so doing—I have made one other unsuccessful attempt
already—
At all events I will thank you to write, for I am tormented
with anxiety—
I suppose you have somewhere heard that poor Mary
Dollin has poisoned herself, after some interviews with
John Reid, the ci-devant Alphonso of her days of hope.
How is Edith?
C. Lamb.
Note
[John May was a friend and
correspondent of Southey whom he had met at Lisbon: not to be confounded with Coleridge’s inn-keeping May.
Sir Francis Baring was a director of the East India
Company. I have no knowledge as to who the young man was; nor have I any regarding
Mary Dollin and John Reid.]
LETTER 42 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Jan. 21st, 1799.
I AM requested by Lloyd to excuse his not replying to a kind letter received from
you. He is at present situated in most distressful family perplexities, which I
am not at liberty to explain; but they are such as to demand all the strength
of his mind, and quite exclude any attention to foreign objects. His brother
Robert (the flower of his family)
hath eloped from the persecutions of his father, and has taken shelter with me.
What the issue of his adventure will be, I know not. He hath the sweetness of
an angel in his heart, combined with admirable firmness of purpose: an
uncultivated, but very original, and, I think, superior genius. But this step
of his is but a small part of their family troubles.
I am to blame for not writing to you before on my own
account; but I know you can dispense with the expressions of gratitude, or I
should have thanked you before for all May’s kindness. He has liberally supplied the person I
spoke to you of with money, and had procured him a situation just after himself
had lighted upon a similar one and engaged too far to recede. But
May’s kindness was the same, and my thanks to
you and him are the same. May went about on this business
as if it had been his own. But you knew John May before
this: so I will be silent.
I shall be very glad to hear from you when convenient. I do
not know how your Calendar and other affairs thrive;
but, above all, I have not heard a great while of your “Madoc”—the opus magnum. I would willingly send you something to
give a value to this letter; but I have only one slight passage to send you,
scarce worth the sending, which I want to edge in somewhere into my play,
which, by the way, hath not received the addition of ten lines, besides, since
I saw you. A father, old Walter Woodvil,
(the witch’s Protégé) relates this of his son
John, who “fought in adverse
armies,” being a royalist, and his father a parliamentary man:—
“I saw him in the day of Worcester fight, Whither he came at twice seven years, Under the discipline of the Lord
Falkland (His uncle by the mother’s side, Who gave his youthful politics a bent Quite from the principles of his father’s house;) There did I see this valiant Lamb of Mars, This sprig of honour, this unbearded John, This veteran in green years, this sprout, this Woodvil, (With dreadless ease guiding a fire-hot steed, Which seem’d to scorn the manage of a boy), Prick forth with such a mirth into the field, To mingle rivalship and acts of war Even with the sinewy masters of the art,— You would have thought the work of blood had been A play-game merely, and the rabid Mars Had put his harmful hostile nature off, To instruct raw youth in images of war, And practice of the unedged players’ foils. The rough fanatic and blood-practised soldiery Seeing such hope and virtue in the boy, Disclosed their ranks to let him pass unhurt, Checking their swords’ uncivil injuries, As loth to mar that curious workmanship Of Valour’s beauty pourtray’d in his face.”
Lloyd objects to “pourtrayed in
his face,”—do you? I like the line.
I shall clap this in somewhere. I think there is a spirit
through the lines; perhaps the 7th, 8th, and 9th owe their origin to Shakspeare, though no image is borrowed.
He says in “Henry the Fourth”— “This infant Hotspur, Mars in swathing clothes.” [See Pt. I., III., 2, 111, 112.] But pray did Lord Falkland die before
Worcester fight? In that case I must make bold to unclify some other nobleman.
Kind love and respects to Edith.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Charles Lloyd’s
perplexities turned probably once again on the question of his marriage. How long Robert Lloyd was with Lamb we do not know; nor of what nature were the “persecutions”
to which he was subjected. According to the evidence at our disposal, Charles Lloyd, sen., was a good father.
Southey’sMadoc was not published until
1805.
The passage from the play was not printed in John Woodvil. This, together
with “The Dying Lover” on page
131, are to be found only in the discarded version, printed in the Notes to Poems and
Plays, Vol. V. of the present edition of Lamb’s
works. Lord Falkland had been killed at Newbury eight
years before Worcester fight. Lamb altered the names to
Ashley and Naseby, although Sir Anthony
Cooper was not made Lord Ashley until sixteen years
after Naseby was fought.]
LETTER 43 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
[Late January or early February, 1799.]
DR Southey,—Lloyd will now
be able to give you an account of himself, so to him I leave you for
satisfaction. Great part of his troubles are lightened by the partial recovery
of his sister, who had been alarmingly ill with similar diseases to his own.
The other part of the family troubles sleeps for the present, but I fear will
awake at some future time to confound and disunite. He will probably tell you all about it.
Robert still continues here with me,
his father has proposed nothing, but would willingly lure him back with fair
professions. But Robert is endowed with a wise fortitude,
and in this business has acted quite from himself, and wisely acted. His
parents must come forward in the End. I like reducing parents to a sense of
undutifulness. I like confounding the relations of life. Pray let me see you
when you come to town, and contrive to give me some of your company.
I thank you heartily for your intended presents, but do by
no means see the necessity you are under of burthening yourself thereby. You
have read old Wither’sSupersedeas to small
purpose. You object to my pauses being at the end of my lines. I do not know
any great difficulty I should find in diversifying or changing my blank verse;
but I go upon the model of Shakspere in
my Play, and endeavour after a colloquial ease and spirit, something like him.
I could so easily imitate Milton’s
versification; but my ear & feeling would reject it, or any approaches to
it, in the drama. I do not know whether to be glad or sorry that witches have
been detected aforetimes in shutting up of wombs. I certainly invented that
conceit, and its coincidence with fact is incidental [?accidental], for I never
heard it. I have not seen those verses on Col.
Despard—I do not read any newspapers. Are they short, to copy
without much trouble? I should like to see them.
I just send you a few rhymes from my play, the only rhymes
in it—a forest-liver giving an account of his amusements:—
What sports have you in the forest? Not many,—some few,—as thus, To see the sun to bed, and see him rise, Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes, Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him: With all his fires and travelling glories round him: Sometimes the moon on soft night-clouds to rest, Like beauty nestling in a young man’s breast, And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep Admiring silence, while those lovers sleep: Sometimes outstretch’d in very idleness, Nought doing, saying little, thinking less, To view the leaves, thin dancers upon air, Go eddying round; and small birds how they fare, When mother Autumn fills their beaks with corn, Filch’d from the careless Amalthea’s horn; And how the woods berries and worms provide, Without their pains, when earth hath nought beside To answer their small wants; To view the graceful deer come trooping by, Then pause, and gaze, then turn they know not why, Like bashful younkers in society; To mark the structure of a plant or tree; And all fair things of earth, how fair they be! &c. &c.
I love to anticipate charges of unoriginality: the first
line is almost Shakspere’s:— “To have my love to bed & to
arise.” Midsummer Night’s Dream [III., I, 174].
I think there is a sweetness in the versification not unlike
some rhymes in that exquisite play, and the last line but three is yours: “An eye That met the gare, or turn’d it knew not why.” Rosamund’s Epistle.
I shall anticipate all my play, and have nothing to shew
you.
An idea for Leviathan:—
Commentators on Job have been
puzzled to find out a meaning for Leviathan,—’tis a whale, say some; a
crocodile, say others. In my simple conjecture, Leviathan is neither more nor
less than the Lord Mayor of London for the time being.
“Rosamund “sells well in London, maugre the non-reviewal of
it.
I sincerely wish you better health, & better health to
Edith. Kind remembrances to her.
C. Lamb.
If you come to town by Ash Wensday [February 6], you
will certainly see Lloyd here—I
expect him by that time.
My sister Mary
was never in better health or spirits than now.
Note
[Writing in June, 1799, to Robert
Lloyd, Priscilla, his sister, says:
“Lamb would not I think by any means
be a person to take up your abode with. He is too much like yourself—he would encourage
those feelings which it certainly is your duty to suppress. Your station in life—the
duties which are pointed out by that
rank in society which you are destined to fill—differ widely from his.” When
next we hear of Robert Lloyd he has returned to Birmingham, where his
father soon afterwards bought him a partnership in a bookselling and printing business.
“Col. Despard.” I have not found the verses. Colonel Edward Marcus Despard, after a career that began
brilliantly, was imprisoned in the spring of 1798 and executed for High Treason in 1803.
The rhymed passage from John Woodvil is that which is best known. Hazlitt relates that Godwin was so taken with it when he first read it that he asked every one
he met to tell him the author and play, and at last applied to Lamb himself.
The quotation from Southey (“Rosamund to Henry”) is not correctly given. It
should run (lines 67, 68):— The modest eye That met the glance, or turn’d, it knew not why.]
LETTER 44 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
March 15th, 1799.
DEAR Southey,—I have received your little volume, for which I thank you, though I
do not entirely approve of this sort of intercourse, where the presents are all
one side. I have read the last
Eclogue again with great pleasure. It hath gained considerably by
abridgment, and now I think it wants nothing but enlargement. You will call
this one of tyrant Procrustes’ criticisms, to cut and pull so to his own
standard; but the old lady is so great a favourite with me, I want to hear more
of her; and of “Joanna” you
have given us still less. But the picture of the rustics leaning over the
bridge, and the old lady travelling abroad on a summer evening to see her
garden watered, are images so new and true, that I decidedly prefer this
“Ruin’d Cottage” to any poem in
the book. Indeed I think it the only one that will bear comparison with your
“Hymn to the
Penates” in a former volume.
I compare dissimilar things, as one would a rose and a star
for the pleasure they give us, or as a child soon learns to choose between a
cake and a rattle; for dissimilars have mostly some points of comparison. The
next best poem, I think, is the First Eclogue; ’tis very complete, and abounding in little
pictures and realities. The remainder Eclogues, excepting only the “Funeral,” I do not
greatly admire. I miss one, which had at least as good a title to publication as the “Witch,” or the “Sailor’s Mother.”
You call’d it the “Last
of the Family.” The “Old Woman of Berkeley” comes next; in
some humours I would give it the preference above any. But who the devil is
Matthew of Westminster? You are as
familiar with these antiquated monastics, as Swedenborg, or, as his followers affect to call him, the Baron,
with his invisibles. But you have raised a very comic effect out of the true
narrative of Matthew of Westminster.
’Tis surprising with how little addition you have been able to convert
with so little alteration his incidents, meant for terror, into circumstances
and food for the spleen. The Parody is not so successful; it has one famous line indeed, which
conveys the finest death-bed image I ever met with: “The doctor whisper’d the nurse, and the surgeon knew
what he said.” But the offering the bride three times bears not the slightest analogy or
proportion to the fiendish noises three times heard! In “Jaspar,” the
circumstance of the great light is very affecting. But I had heard you mention
it before. The “Rose” is the only insipid piece in the volume; it hath neither
thorns nor sweetness, and, besides, sets all chronology and probability at
defiance.
“Cousin Margaret,” you know, I like. The allusions to the
“Pilgrim’s
Progress” are particularly happy, and harmonise tacitly and
delicately with old cousins and aunts. To familiar faces we do associate
familiar scenes and accustomed objects; but what hath Apollidon and his sea-nymphs to do in these affairs? Apollyon I could have borne, though he stands for
the devil; but who is Apollidon? I think
you are too apt to conclude faintly, with some cold moral, as in the end of the
poem called “The
Victory”— “Be thou her comforter, who art the widow’s
friend;” a single common-place line of comfort, which bears no proportion in weight
or number to the many lines which describe suffering. This is to convert
religion into mediocre feelings, which should burn, and glow, and tremble. A
moral should be wrought into the body and soul, the matter and tendency, of a
poem, not tagged to the end, like a “God send the good ship into
harbour,” at the conclusion of our bills of lading. The finishing
of the “Sailor” is also imperfect. Any dissenting minister may say and do
as much.
These remarks, I know, are crude and unwrought; but I do not
lay claim to much accurate thinking. I never judge system-wise of things, but
fasten upon particulars. After all, there is a great deal in the book that I
must, for time, leave unmentioned, to deserve my thanks for its own sake, as
well as for the friendly remembrances implied in the
gift. I again return you my thanks.
Pray present my love to Edith.
C. L.
Note
[Southey’s little volume was
Vol. II. of the second edition of his Poems, published in 1799. The last of the English Eclogues included in it was
“The Ruined Cottage,”
slightly altered from the version referred to in the letter on page 129. The “Hymn to the Penates” brought the first
volume of this edition to a close. The first Eclogue was “The Old Mansion House.” “The Old Woman of Berkeley” was
called “A Ballad showing how an Old Woman rode double and who rode
before her.” It was preceded by a long quotation in Latin from Matthew of Westminster. Matthew of
Westminster is the imaginary name given to the unknown authors of a
chronicle called Flores
Historiarum, belonging probably to the fifteenth century. The Parody
was “The Surgeon’s
Warning,” which begins with the two lines that Lamb prints as one:— The Doctor whisper’d to the Nurse, And the Surgeon knew what he said. “The Rose” was blank
verse, addressed to Edith Southey. “Cousin
Margaret” was a “Metrical Letter Written from London,” in which there are allusions to
Bunyan. The reference to Apollidon is explained by these lines:— The Sylphs should waft us to some goodly isle, Like that where whilome old Apollidon Built up his blameless spell.]
LETTER 45 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
March 20th, 1799.
I AM hugely pleased with your “Spider,” “your
old freemason,” as you call him. The three first stanzas are
delicious; they seem to me a compound of Burns and Old Quarles,
those kind of home-strokes, where more is felt than strikes the ear; a
terseness, a jocular pathos, which makes one feel in laughter. The measure,
too, is novel and pleasing. I could almost wonder Rob.
Burns in his lifetime never stumbled upon it. The fourth stanza
is less striking, as being less original. The
fifth falls off. It has no felicity of phrase, no old-fashioned phrase or
feeling. “Young hopes, and love’s delightful dreams,” savour neither of Burns nor
Quarles; they seem more like shreds of many a modern
sentimental sonnet. The last stanza hath nothing striking in it, if I except
the two concluding lines, which are Burns all over. I
wish, if you concur with me, these things could be looked to. I am sure this is
a kind of writing, which comes tenfold better recommended to the heart, comes
there more like a neighbour or familiar, than thousands of Hamuels and Zillahs
and Madelons. I beg you will send me the “Holly-tree,” if it at all resemble
this, for it must please me. I have never seen it. I love this sort of poems,
that open a new intercourse with the most despised of the animal and insect
race. I think this vein may be further opened; Peter Pindar hath very prettily apostrophised a fly; Burns hath
his mouse and his louse; Coleridge, less
successfully, hath made overtures of intimacy to a jackass, therein only
following at unresembling distance Sterne and greater Cervantes. Besides these, I know of no other examples of breaking
down the partition between us and our “poor earthborn
companions.” It is sometimes revolting to be put in a track of
feeling by other people, not one’s own immediate thoughts, else I would
persuade you, if I could (I am in earnest), to commence a series of these
animal poems, which might have a tendency to rescue some poor creatures from
the antipathy of mankind. Some thoughts come across me;—for instance—to a rat,
to a toad, to a cockchafer, to a mole—People bake moles alive by a slow
oven-fire to cure consumption. Rats are, indeed, the most despised and
contemptible parts of God’s earth. I killed a rat the other day by
punching him to pieces, and feel a weight of blood upon me to this hour. Toads
you know are made to fly, and tumble down and crush all to pieces. Cockchafers
are old sport; then again to a worm, with an apostrophe to anglers, those
patient tyrants, meek inflictors of pangs intolerable, cool devils; to an owl;
to all snakes, with an apology for their poison; to a cat in boots or bladders.
Your own fancy, if it takes a fancy to these hints, will suggest many more. A
series of such poems, suppose them accompanied with plates descriptive of
animal torments, cooks roasting lobsters, fishmongers crimping skates, &c.,
&c., would take excessively. I will willingly enter into a partnership in
the plan with you: I think my heart and soul would go with it too—at least,
give it a thought. My plan is but this minute come into my head; but it strikes
me instantaneously as something new, good and useful, full of pleasure and full
of moral. If old Quarles and Wither could live again, we would invite them into our firm.
Burns hath done his part. [See Appendix II., page
965.]
Poor Sam. Le Grice! I
am afraid the world, and the camp, and the university, have spoilt him among
them. ’Tis certain he had at one time a strong capacity of turning out
something better. I knew him, and that not long since, when he had a most warm
heart. I am ashamed of the indifference I have sometimes felt towards him. I
think the devil is in one’s heart. I am under obligations to that man for
the warmest friendship and heartiest sympathy, even for an agony of sympathy
exprest both by word and deed, and tears for me, when I was in my greatest
distress. But I have forgot that! as, I fear, he has nigh forgot the awful
scenes which were before his eyes when he served the office of a comforter to
me. No service was too mean or troublesome for him to perform. I can’t
think what but the devil, “that old spider,” could have
suck’d my heart so dry of its sense of all gratitude. If he does come in
your way, Southey, fail not to tell him
that I retain a most affectionate remembrance of his old friendliness, and an
earnest wish to resume our intercourse. In this I am serious. I cannot
recommend him to your society, because I am afraid whether he be quite worthy
of it. But I have no right to dismiss him from my regard. He was at one time,
and in the worst of times, my own familiar friend, and great comfort to me
then. I have known him to play at cards with my father, meal-times excepted,
literally all day long, in long days too, to save me from being teased by the
old man, when I was not able to bear it.
God bless him for it, and God bless you, Southey.
C. L.
Note
[Southey’s poem “The Spider” begins thus:—
TO A SPIDER Spider! thou need’st not run in fear about To shun my curious eyes; I won’t humanely crush thy bowels out Lest thou should’st eat the flies; Nor will I roast thee with a damn’d delight Thy strange instinctive fortitude to see, For there is One who might One day roast me. Thou art welcome to a Rhymer sore perplext, The subject of his verse; There’s many a one who on a better text Perhaps might comment worse. Then shrink not, old Free-Mason, from my view, But quietly like me spin out the line; Do thou thy work pursue As I will mine. Weaver of snares, thou emblemest the ways Of Satan, Sire of lies; Hell’s huge black Spider, for mankind he lays His toils, as thou for flies. When Betty’s busy eye runs round the
room, Woe to that nice geometry, if seen! But where is He whose broom The earth shall clean?
“Hamuels and Zillahs . . .” Names in “The Rose.”
Southey’s “Holly Tree” begins— O reader! hast thou ever stood to see The Holly Tree? The eye that contemplates it well perceives Its glossy leaves Order’d by an intelligence so wise As might confound the Atheist’s sophistries.
Peter Pindar (Dr. John Wolcot)
has an ode “To a Fly, taken out of a Bowl
of Punch.” He also wrote “The Lousiad.”
“Poor earth-born companions.” From Burns’ “Lines to a Mouse,” 2nd Stanza, line 5.
“Toads are made to fly.” Filliping the toad was an old
pastime. A toad was placed on one end of a piece of wood, laid crosswise over a stone. The
other end was struck with a beetle (i.e., a mallet), and the toad flew into the air.
Falstaff says: “Fillip me with a three-man
beetle.” As to worms and fishermen, the late Mrs.
Coe, who as a girl had known Lamb at
Widford, told me that he could rarely, if ever, be tempted to join the anglers. Affixing
the worm was too much for him. “Barbarous, barbarous,” he used to say.
Lamb’s project for a series of animal poems has
to some extent been carried out by a living poet, Mr. A. C.
Benson. Neither Lamb nor Southey pursued it.
We met Sam Le Grice in the letter
of October 3, 1796 (see page 4S). To what escapade Lamb refers I do not know, but he was addicted to folly. It was
Sam Le Grice of whom Leigh Hunt
in his Autobiography tells the excellent tale that he excused himself to his
master for not having performed a task, by the remark that he had had a
“lethargy.”
In April of this year died John
Lamb, the father. Charles Lamb
probably at once moved from 45 Chapel Street to No. 36, where Mary Lamb joined him.
Between this and the next letter should probably come two letters from
Lamb to Robert
Lloyd, not available for this edition. One, which is undated, seems to
follow upon Robert Lloyd’s departure from
Lamb’s house. The letter remarks that
Lamb knows but one being that he could ever consent to live
perpetually with, and that is
Robert—but Robert must go whither prudence
and paternal regulations dictate. Lamb also refers to a poem of an
intimate character by Charles Lloyd in the Annual Anthology
(“Lines to a Brother and
Sister”), remarking that, in his opinion, these domestic addresses should
not always be made public. There is also a reference to Charles
Lloyd’s novel, which Lamb says he wants to read
if he may be permitted a sight of it. This would be Isabel.
The other letter, which may be earlier in date, treats of obedience to
parental wish. Robert Lloyd seems to have objected
to attend the meetings of the Society of Friends, of which he was a birthright member.
Lamb bids him go; adding that, if his own parents
were to live again, he would do more things to please them than merely sitting still a few
hours in a week.
See Appendix II., page 965, for rest of the Letter 45.]
LETTER 46 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Oct. 31st, 1799.
DEAR Southey,—I have but just got your letter, being returned from
Herts, where I have passed a few red-letter days with much pleasure. I would
describe the county to you, as you have done by Devonshire, but alas! I am a
poor pen at that same. I could tell you of an old house with a tapestry
bed-room, the “judgment of Solomon”
composing one pannel, and “Actæon spying Diana
naked” the other. I could tell of an old marble hall, with
Hogarth’s prints and the Roman
Cæsars in marble hung round. I could tell of a wilderness, and of a village church, and where the bones of my
honoured grandam lie; but there are feelings which refuse to be translated,
sulky aborigines, which will not be naturalised in another soil. Of this nature
are old family faces and scenes of infancy.
I have given your address, and the books you want, to the
Arches; they will send them as soon
as they can get them, but they do not seem quite familiar to [? with] their
names. I have seen Gebor!
Gebor aptly so denominated from Geborish, quasi Gibberish. But Gebor hath some lucid intervals. I remember darkly one
beautiful simile veiled in uncouth phrases about the youngest daughter of the
Ark. I shall have nothing to communicate, I fear, to the Anthology. You shall
have some fragments of my play, if you desire them, but I think I would rather
print it whole. Have you seen it, or shall I lend you a copy? I want your
opinion of it.
I must get to business, so farewell. My kind remembrances to
Edith.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Lamb had probably been staying at
Widford. Many years later he described his Hertfordshire days in more than one essay
(see the Elia essays “Mackery
End” and “Blakesmoor
in H——shire” and “Dream-Children”). The old house was, of course, Blakesware (see note on
page 746). The wilderness, which lay at the back of the house, is, with Widford, mentioned
in Rosamund
Gray.
The Arches were the brothers Arch, the booksellers of Ludgate Hill.
Gebor stands for Gebir, Landor’s poem, published in 1798. The simile
in question would be this: from Book VII., lines 248-251:— Never so eager, when the world was waves, Stood the less daughter of the ark, and tried (Innocent this temptation) to recall With folded vest and casting arm the dove. Lamb quoted from Gebir, many years
later, in his Elia
essay “The Old Margate Hoy.”
The reference to Southey’sAnthology is to Vol. II., then in preparation. The play was now
finished: it circulated in manuscript before being published in 1802.
In a letter to Robert Lloyd, dated
December 17, 1799, Lamb thanks him for a present of
porter, adding that wine makes him hot, and brandy drunk, but porter warms without
intoxication.
Here should come an unpublished letter, in the possession of Mr. Bertram Dobell, from Lamb to Charles Lloyd at Cambridge,
asking for the return of his play. Kemble, he says,
had offered to put it in the hands of the proprietor of Drury Lane, and therefore
Lamb wishes to have a second copy in the house.
Kemble, as it turned out, returned no answer for a year, and then
he stated that he had lost the copy.
Lamb mentions Coleridge’s settlement with his family in lodgings in the Adelphi.
Coleridge, having returned from Germany and undertaken work for
the Morning Post, took
lodgings at 21 Buckingham Street, Strand, close to the Adelphi, in November, 1799.
The letter is interesting in containing the first mention of Manning, whom we are now to meet.]
LETTER 47 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
Dec. 1799.
DEAR Manning,—The particular kindness, even up to a degree of
attachment, which I have experienced from you, seems to claim some distinct
acknowledgment on my part. I could not content myself with a bare remembrance
to you, conveyed in some letter to Lloyd.
Will it be agreeable to you, if I occasionally recruit your
memory of me, which must else soon fade, if you consider the brief intercourse
we have had. I am not likely to prove a troublesome correspondent. My
scribbling days are past. I shall have no sentiments to communicate, but as
they spring up from some living and worthy occasion.
I look forward with great pleasure to the performance of
your promise, that we should meet in London early in the ensuing year. The
century must needs commence auspiciously for me, that brings with it Manning’s friendship as an earnest of
its after gifts.
I should have written before, but for a troublesome
inflammation in one of my eyes, brought on by night travelling with the coach
windows sometimes up.
What more I have to say shall be reserved for a letter to
Lloyd. I must not prove tedious to
you in my first outset, lest I should affright you by my ill-judged loquacity.
I am, yours most sincerely,
C. Lamb.
Note
[This is the first letter that has been preserved in the correspondence
between Lamb and Manning. Lamb first met Manning
at Cambridge, in the autumn of 1799, when on a visit to Charles
Lloyd. Much of Manning’s history will be unfolded
as the letters proceed, but here it should be stated that he was born on November 8, 1772,
and was thus a little more than two years older than Lamb. He was at
this time acting as private tutor in mathematics at Cambridge, among his pupils being
Charles Lloyd, of Caius, Manning’s own
college. Manning, however, did not take his degree, owing to an
objection to oaths and tests.
Lamb’s reference to the beginning of the
century shows that he shared with many other non-mathematically-minded persons the belief
that the century begins with the hundredth, and not the hundred and first, year. He says of
Manning, in the Elia essay “The Old and the New Schoolmaster”:
“My friend M., with great painstaking, got me to think I
understood the first proposition in Euclid, but
gave me over in despair at the second.”]
LETTER 48 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
Dec. 28th, 1799.
DEAR Manning,—Having suspended my correspondence a decent interval, as
knowing that even good things may be taken to satiety, a wish cannot but recur
to learn whether you be still well and happy. Do all things continue in the
state I left them in Cambridge?
Do your night parties still flourish? and do you continue to
bewilder your company with your thousand faces running down through all the
keys of idiotism (like Lloyd over his
perpetual harpsicord), from the smile and the glimmer of half-sense and
quarter-sense to the grin and hanging lip of Betty
Foy’s own Johnny? And
does the face-dissolving curfew sound at twelve? How unlike the great originals
were your petty terrors in the postscript, not fearful enough to make a fairy
shudder, or a Lilliputian fine lady, eight months full of child, miscarry. Yet
one of them, which had more beast than the rest, I thought faintly resembled
one of your brutifications. But, seriously, I long to see your own honest
Manning-face again. I did not mean a pun,—your
man’s face, you will be apt to say, I know your wicked will to pun. I
cannot now write to Lloyd and you too, so you must convey
as much interesting intelligence as this may contain, or be thought to contain,
to him and Sophia, with my dearest love
and remembrances.
By the by, I think you and Sophia both incorrect with regard to the title of the play. Allowing your objection (which is not
necessary, as pride may be, and is in real life often, cured by misfortunes not
directly originating from its own acts, as Jeremy
Taylor will tell you a naughty desire is sometimes sent to cure
it—I know you read these practical divines). But
allowing your objection, does not the betraying of his father’s secret
directly spring from pride?—from the pride of wine and a full heart, and a
proud over-stepping of the ordinary rules of morality, and con-tempt of the prejudices of
mankind, which are not to bind superior souls—“as trust in the matter of secret all ties of blood, &c., &c., keeping of promises, the feeble mind’s religion, binding our morning knowledge to the performance of what last night’s ignorance spake”—does
he not prate, that “Great Spirits”
must do more than die for their friend—does not the pride of wine incite him to
display some evidence of friendship, which its own irregularity shall make
great? This I know, that I meant his punishment not alone to be a cure for his
daily and habitual pride, but the direct consequence and appropriate punishment
of a particular act of pride.
If you do not understand it so, it is my fault in not
explaining my meaning.
I have not seen Coleridge since, and scarcely expect to see him,—perhaps he has
been at Cambridge. [See page 965.]
Need I turn over to blot a fresh clean half-sheet? merely to
say, what I hope you are sure of without my repeating it, that I would have you
consider me, dear Manning, Your sincere
friend,
C. Lamb.
What is your proper address?
Note
[“Betty Foy’s own Johnny”—“The Idiot Boy,” in the Lyrical Ballads.
“In the postscript” A reference presumably to some
drawings of faces in one of Manning’s letters.
For a reference to Manning’s own power of acting and grimacing
see the note on page 175.
“The title of the play.” Writing to Lamb on December 15, 1799, Manning had said: “I had some conversation the other day with
Sophia concerning your tragedy; and she made
some very sensible observations (as I thought) with respect to the unfitness of its
title, ‘The Folly,’ whose consequences humble the
pride and ambition of John’s heart, does not
originate in the workings of those passions, but from an underpart in his character,
and as it were accidentally, viz., from the ebullitions of a drunken mind and from a
rash confidence.
“You will understand what I mean, without my explaining myself
any further. God bless you, and keep you from all evil things, that walk upon the face
of the earth—I mean nightmares, hobgoblins and spectres.” I take this and
other passages in Manning’s letters, from the
originals, by permission of their present owner, Mr. Bertram
Dobell.
Lamb refers in this letter particularly to Act III.
of his play.
“I have not seen Coleridge since.” Since when is not clear. Possibly
Coleridge had been at Cambridge when Lamb was there.]
LETTER 49 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
? Jan. 23, 1800.
DEAR Coleridge,—Now I write, I cannot miss this opportunity of
acknowledging the obligations myself, and the readers in general of that
luminous paper, the “Morning
Post,” are under to you for the very novel and exquisite
manner in which you combined political with grammatical science, in your
yesterday’s dissertation on Mr.
Wyndham’s unhappy composition. It must have been the
death-blow to that ministry. I expect Pitt and Grenville to
resign. More especially the delicate and Cottrellian grace with which you
officiated, with a ferula for a white wand, as gentleman usher to the word
“also,” which it seems did not know its place.
I expect Manning of
Cambridge in town to-night—will you fulfil your promise of meeting him at my
house? He is a man of a thousand. Give me a line to say what day, whether
Saturday, Sunday, Monday, &c., and if Sara and the Philosopher
can come. I am afraid if I did not at intervals call upon you, I should never see you. But I forget, the affairs of the nation
engross your time and your mind.
Farewell.
C. L.
Note
[The first letter that has been preserved of the second period of
Lamb’s correspondence with Coleridge, which was to last until the end.
In the Morning
Post of January 7, 1800, had appeared the correspondence between
Buonaparte and Lord
Grenville, in which Buonaparte made an offer of peace.
Lord Grenville’s Note, it was pointed out in the Morning Post for January 16, was really
written by William Windham, Secretary for War, and
on January 22 appeared an article closely criticising its grammar.
Here is the passage concerning “also,” to which Lamb particularly alludes a little later in the letter:—
. . . “The same system, to
the prevalence of which France justly ascribes all her present miseries, is that which
has also involved the rest of Europe in a long and destructive
warfare, of a nature long since unknown to the practice of
civilized nations.” Here the connective word “also” should have
followed the word “Europe.” As it at present stands, the sentence implies that
France, miserable as she may be, has, however, not been involved in a warfare. The word
“same” is absolutely expletive; and by appearing to refer the reader to some
foregoing clause, it not only loads the sentence, but renders it obscure. The word
“to” is absurdly used
for the word “in.” A thing may be unknown to practitioners, as humanity and
sincerity may be unknown to the practitioners of State-craft, and foresight, science, and
harmony may have been unknown to the planners and practitioners of Continental Expeditions;
but even “cheese-parings and candle-ends” cannot be known or unknown “to” a practice!!
Windham was destined to be attacked by another
stalwart in Lamb’s circle, for it was his
speech in opposition to Lord Erskine’s Cruelty to
Animals Bill in 1809 that inspired John Lamb to write
his fierce pamphlet (see page 412).
“Cottrellian grace.” The
Cotterells were Masters of the Ceremonies from 1641 to 1808.
The Philosopher was Hartley
Coleridge, aged three, so called after his great namesake, David Hartley. The Coleridges were
now, as we have seen, living at 21 Buckingham Street, Strand.]
LETTER 50 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[p.m. Feb. 13, 1800.]
DEAR Manning,—Olivia is a
good girl, and if you turn to my letter, you will find that this very plea you
set up to vindicate Lloyd I had made use
of as a reason why he should never have employed Olivia to
make a copy of such a letter—a letter I could not have sent to my enemy’s
b——h, if she had thought fit to seek me in the way of marriage. But you see it
in one view, I in another. Rest you merry in your opinion! Opinion is a species
of property; and though I am always desirous to share with my friend to a
certain extent, I shall ever like to keep some tenets and some property
properly my own. Some day, Manning, when we meet,
substituting Corydon and fair Amaryllis, for Charles Lloyd
and Mary Hayes, we will discuss together
this question of moral feeling, “In what cases and how far sincerity
is a virtue?” I do not mean Truth—a good
Olivia-like creature—God bless her, who, meaning no
offence, is always ready to give an answer when she is asked why she did so and
so; but a certain forward-talking half-brother of hers, Sincerity, that
amphibious gentleman, who is so ready to perk up his obnoxious sentiments
unasked into your notice, as Midas would
his ears into your face uncalled for. But I despair of doing anything by a
letter in the way of explaining or coming to explanations. A good wish, or a
pun, or a piece of secret history, may be well enough that way conveyed; nay,
it has been known that intelligence of a turkey hath been conveyed by that
medium without much ambiguity. Godwin I am a good deal pleased with. He is a
very well-behaved, decent man, nothing very brilliant about him, or imposing,
as you may suppose; quite another guess sort of gentleman from what your
Anti-Jacobin Christians imagine him. I was well pleased to find he has neither
horns nor claws; quite a tame creature, I assure you. A middle-sized man, both
in stature and in understanding; whereas, from his noisy fame, you would expect
to find a Briareus Centimanus, or a
Tityus tall enough to pull Jupiter from his heavens.
I begin to think you Atheists not quite so tall a species.
Coleridge inquires after you pretty
often. I wish to be the Pandar to bring you
together again once before I die. When we die, you and I must part; the sheep,
you know, take the right hand, and the goats the left. Stripped of its
allegory, you must know, the sheep are I and the
Apostles, and the Martyrs, and the Popes, and Bishop Taylor, and Bishop
Horsley, and Coleridge, &c., &c.;
the goats are the Atheists and the Adulterers, and dumb dogs, and Godwin and M.....g, and that Thyestaean crew—yaw! how my saintship sickens
at the idea!
You shall have my play and the Falstaff letters in a day or two. I will
write to Lloyd by this day’s post.
Pray, is it a part of your sincerity to show my letters to
Lloyd? for really, gentlemen ought
to explain their virtues upon a first acquaintance, to prevent mistakes.
God bless you, Manning. Take my trifling as trifling;
and believe me, seriously and deeply,
Your well-wisher and friend, C. L.
Note
[Mary Hayes was a friend of
Mary Wollstonecraft, and also of Southey and Coleridge. She wrote a novel, Memoirs of Emma Courtney, which Lloyd says contained her own love letters to Godwin and Froud,
and also Female Biography, or
Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women. Lloyd
and she had been very intimate. A passage from a letter of Coleridge
to Southey, dated January 25, 1800, bears upon the present situation:
“Miss Hayes I have seen. Charles
Lloyd’s conduct has been atrocious beyond what you stated.
Lamb himself confessed to me that during the time in which he
kept up his ranting, sentimental correspondence with Miss Hayes,
he frequently read her letters in company, as a subject for laughter, and then sate
down and answered them quite à laRousseau! Poor
Lloyd! Every hour new-creates him; he is his own posterity in
a perpetually flowing series, and his body unfortunately retaining an external
identity, their mutual contradictions and
disagreeings are united under one name, and of course are called lies, treachery, and
rascality!” See a further note in Appendix II., page 966.
“My enemy’s b——h.” A recollection, I fear, of
King Lear’s remark (IV., 7, 36).
Lamb had just met William
Godwin (1756-1836), probably having been introduced to him by Coleridge. Godwin, known chiefly by
his Political
Justice, 1793; Caleb Williams, 1794, and St. Leon, 1799, stood at that time for everything
that was advanced in thought and conduct. We shall meet with him often in the
correspondence of the next few years.
Briareus Centimanus, the giant with a hundred hands,
who defended Jupiter against Juno, Neptune and Minerva. Tityus covered
nine acres of ground when he slept.
Bishop Horsley (then of Rochester, afterwards St
Asaph’s) was probably included ironically, on account of his hostility to Priestley.]
LETTER 51 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[p.m. March 1, 1800.]
I HOPE by this time you are prepared to say the
“Falstaff’s
letters” are a bundle of the sharpest, queerest, profoundest
humours, of any these juice-drained latter times have spawned. I should have
advertised you, that the meaning is frequently hard to be got at; and so are
the future guineas, that now lie ripening and aurifying in the womb of some
undiscovered Potosi; but dig, dig, dig, dig, Manning! I set to with an unconquerable propulsion to write,
with a lamentable want of what to write. My private goings on are orderly as
the movements of the spheres, and stale as their music to angels’ ears.
Public affairs—except as they touch upon me, and so turn into private, I cannot
whip up my mind to feel any interest in. I grieve, indeed, that War and Nature,
and Mr. Pitt, that hangs up in Lloyd’s best parlour, should have
conspired to call up three necessaries, simple commoners as our fathers knew
them, into the upper house of Luxuries; Bread, and Beer, and Coals,
Manning. But as to France and Frenchmen, and the
Abbé Sièyes and his constitutions, I
cannot make these present times present to me. I read histories of the past,
and I live in them; although, to abstract senses, they are far less momentous
than the noises which keep Europe awake. I am reading Burnet’sOwn Times. Did you ever read that garrulous, pleasant history? He tells his story
like an old man past political service, bragging to his sons on winter evenings
of the part he took in public transactions, when his “old cap was
new.” Full of scandal, which all true history is. No palliatives,
but all the stark wickedness, that actually gives the momentum to national
actors. Quite the prattle of age and out-lived importance. Truth and sincerity
staring out upon you perpetually in alto
relievo. Himself a party man—he makes you a party man.
None of the Damned philosophical Humeian
indifference, so cold, and unnatural, and inhuman! None of the damned Gibbonian fine writing, so fine and composite.
None of Mr. Robertson’s periods
with three members. None of Mr.
Roscoe’s sage remarks, all so apposite, and coming in so
clever, lest the reader should have had the trouble of drawing an inference.
Burnet’s good old prattle I can bring present to
my mind—I can make the revolution present to me; the French Revolution, by a
converse perversity in my nature, I fling as far from me. To quit this
damn’d subject, and to relieve you from two or three dismal yawns, which
I hear in spirit, I here conclude my more than commonly obtuse letter; dull up
to the dulness of a Dutch commentator on Shakspeare.
My love to Lloyd and
Sophia.
C. L.
Note
[“War and Nature, and Mr. Pitt.”
The war had sent up taxation to an almost unbearable height Pitt was Chancellor of Exchequer, as well as Prime Minister.
Bishop Burnet’sHistory of His Own Times was
published in 1723, 1734, after his death. His times were 1643-1715.
“When this ‘old cap was new’” is the first
line of a quaint old ballad called “Time’s Alteration; or, The Old Man’s Rehearsal, What brave days he knew, A
great while agone, When his Old Cap was new.” It is by Martin Parker (d. 1656) and is reprinted in the British Anthology
(ed. Arber, published by Frowde), Vol. V., from the original broadside in the British Museum. It
consists of thirteen stanzas of eight lines each, every stanza ending with the line
“When this old cap was new.”
Hume, Gibbon
and Robertson were among the books which, in the
Elia essay
“Detached Thoughts on Books and
Reading,” Lamb described as biblia-a-biblia. William
Roscoe’s principal work was his Life of Lorenzo dé Medici,
1795.]
LETTER 52 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[p.m. March 17, 1800.]
DEAR Manning,—I am living in a continuous feast. Coleridge has been with me now for nigh three
weeks, and the more I see of him in the quotidian undress and relaxation of his
mind, the more cause I see to love him, and believe him a very good man, and
all those foolish impressions to the contrary fly off like morning slumbers. He
is engaged in translations, which I hope will keep him this month to come. He
is uncommonly kind and friendly to me. He ferrets me day and night to do something. He tends me, amidst all his own worrying
and heart-oppressing occupations, as a gardener tends his young tulip. Marry come up! what a pretty similitude, and how like
your humble servant! He has lugged me to the brink of engaging to a newspaper,
and has suggested to me for a first plan the forgery of a supposed manuscript
of Burton the anatomist of melancholy. I
have even written the introductory letter; and, if I can pick up a few guineas
this way, I feel they will be most refreshing, bread
being so dear. If I go on with it, I will apprise you of it, as you may like to
see my things! and the tulip, of all flowers, loves to
be admired most.
Pray pardon me, if my letters do not come very thick. I am
so taken up with one thing or other, that I cannot pick out (I will not say
time, but) fitting times to write to you. My dear love to Lloyd and Sophia, and pray split this thin letter into three parts, and
present them with the two biggest in my name.
They are my oldest friends; but ever the new friend driveth
out the old, as the ballad sings! God bless you all three! I would hear from
Lloyd, if I could.
C. L.
Flour has just fallen nine shillings a sack! we shall be
all too rich.
Tell Charles I
have seen his Mamma, and am almost
fallen in love with her, since I mayn’t with
Olivia. She is so fine and
graceful, a complete Matron-Lady-Quaker. She has given me two little books.
Olivia grows a charming girl—full of feeling, and
thinner than she was.
But I have not time to fall in love.
Mary presents her general compliments. She keeps in fine health!
Huzza! boys,
and down with the Atheists.
Note
[Coleridge, having sent his wife
and Hartley into the country, had, for a while,
taken up his abode with Lamb at Pentonville, and
given up the Morning
Post in order to proceed with his translation of Schiller’sWallenstein.
Lamb’s forgery of Burton, together with those mentioned in the next letter, which were never
printed by Stuart, for whom they were written, was
included in the John
Woodvil volume, 1802, among the “Curious
Fragments, extracted from a commonplace book, which belonged to Robert
Burton, the famous Author of The Anatomy of Melancholy.”
See the Miscellaneous Prose, Vol. I. of this edition.
“They are my oldest friends.” Coleridge and Southey were, of course, older. The ballad I have not found.
Mrs. Charles Lloyd, sen., néeMary Farmer, and Olivia, her second daughter, had been staying in London. Lamb had breakfasted with them.
The reference to Atheists is explained by a passage from Manning’s letter to Lamb in March, 1800: “One thing tho’ I must beg of you—that is
not to call me Atheist in your letters—for though it may be mere raillery in you, and not meant as a serious imputation on my Faith, yet, if the
Catholic or any other intolerant religion should [illegible] and become established in
England, (which [illegible] if the Bishop of R——r
may be the case) and if the post-people should happen to open and read your letters,
(which, considering the sometimes quaintness of their form, they may possibly be incited to
do) such names might send me to Smithfield on a hurdle,—and nothing upon
earth is more discordant to my wishes, than to become one of the Smithfield
Illuminati.”]
LETTER 53 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[p.m. April 5, 1800.]
C. L.’s moral sense
presents her compliments to Doctor
Manning, is very thankful for his medical advice, but is happy
to add that her disorder has died of itself.
Dr. Manning, Coleridge has left us, to go into the north, on a visit to his
god Wordsworth. With him have flown all
my splendid prospects of engagement with the “Morning Post,” all my
visionary guineas, the deceitful wages of unborn scandal. In truth, I wonder
you took
it up so seriously. All my intention was but to make a little sport with such
public and fair game as Mr. Pitt,
Mr. Wilberforce, Mrs. Fitzherbert, the Devil, &c.—gentry
dipped in Styx all over, whom no paper javelin-lings can touch. To have made
free with these cattle, where was the harm? ’twould have been but giving
a polish to lampblack, not nigrifying a negro primarily. After all, I cannot
but regret my involuntary virtue. Damn virtue that’s thrust upon us; it
behaves itself with such constraint, till conscience opens the window and lets
out the goose.
I had struck off two imitations of Burton, quite abstracted from any modern
allusions, which it was my intent only to lug in from time to time to make
’em popular. Stuart has got these,
with an introductory letter; but, not hearing from him, I have ceased from my
labours, but I write to him to-day to get a final answer. I am afraid they
won’t do for a paper. Burton is a scarce gentleman,
not much known; else I had done ’em pretty well.
I have also hit off a few lines in the name of Burton, being a conceit of “Diabolic
Possession.” Burton was a man often assoiled by
deepest melancholy, and at other times much given to laughing and jesting, as
is the way with melancholy men. I will send them you: they were almost
extempore, and no great things; but you will indulge them. Robert Lloyd is come to town. He is a good
fellow, with the best heart, but his feelings are shockingly unsane. Priscilla meditates
going to see Pizarro at
Drury Lane to-night (from her uncle’s) under cover of coming to dine with
me . . . heu! tempora! heu! mores!—I
have barely time to finish, as I expect her and Robin
every minute.—Yours as usual.
C. L.
Note
[For Coleridge’s movements
see note to the next letter.—“Pizarro” was Sheridan’s
drama. It was acted this season, 1799-1800, sixty-seven times.—“Heu tempora! heu mores!”—a reference to the new
Quaker and the old. See Appendix II., page 966, for Lamb’s next letter to Manning.]
LETTER 54 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Probably April 16 or 17, 1800.]
I SEND you, in this parcel, my play, which I beg you to present in my
name, with my respect and love, to Wordsworth and his sister. You blame us for giving your direction to Miss Wesley;
the woman has been ten times after us about it, and we gave it her at last,
under the idea that no further harm would ensue, but she would once write to you, and you would bite your lips and
forget to answer it, and so it would end. You read us a dismal homily upon
“Realities.” We know, quite as well as you do, what are shadows and
what are realities. You, for instance, when you are over your fourth or fifth
jorum, chirping about old school occurrences, are the best of realities.
Shadows are cold, thin things, that have no warmth or grasp in them.
Miss Wesley and her friend, and a tribe of authoresses
that come after you here daily, and, in defect of you, hive and cluster upon
us, are the shadows. You encouraged that mopsey, Miss
Wesley, to dance after you, in the hope of having her nonsense
put into a nonsensical Anthology. We have pretty well shaken her off, by that
simple expedient of referring her to you; but there are more burrs in the wind.
I came home t’other day from business, hungry as a hunter, to dinner,
with nothing, I am sure, of the author but hunger about
me, and whom found I closeted with Mary
but a friend of this Miss Wesley, one Miss Benje, or Benjey—I
don’t know how she spells her name. I just came in time enough, I
believe, luckily to prevent them from exchanging vows of eternal friendship. It
seems she is one of your authoresses, that you first foster, and then upbraid
us with. But I forgive you. “The rogue has given me potions to make me
love him.” Well; go she would not, nor step a step over our
threshold, till we had promised to come and drink tea with her next night. I
had never seen her before, and could not tell who the devil it was that was so
familiar. We went, however, not to be impolite. Her lodgings are up two pairs
of stairs in East Street. Tea and coffee, and macaroons—a kind of cake I much
love. We sat down. Presently Miss Benje broke the silence,
by declaring herself quite of a different opinion from D’Israeli, who supposes the differences
of human intellect to be the mere effect of organization. She begged to know my
opinion. I attempted to carry it off with a pun upon organ; but that went off
very flat. She immediately conceived a very low opinion of my metaphysics; and,
turning round to Mary, put some question to her in
French,—possibly having heard that neither Mary nor I
understood French. The explanation that took place occasioned some
embarrassment and much wondering. She then fell into an insulting conversation
about the comparative genius and merits of all modern languages, and concluded
with asserting that the Saxon was esteemed the purest dialect in Germany. From
thence she passed into the subject of poetry; where I, who had hitherto sat
mute and a hearer only, humbly hoped I might now put in a word to some
advantage, seeing that it was
my own trade in a manner. But I was stopped by a round assertion, that no good
poetry had appeared since Dr.
Johnson’s time. It seems the Doctor has suppressed many
hopeful geniuses that way by the severity of his critical strictures in his
“Lives of the
Poets.” I here ventured to question the fact, and was beginning to
appeal to names, but I was assured “it was certainly the
case.” Then we discussed Miss
More’s book on education, which I had never read. It seems
Dr. Gregory, another of
Miss Benjey’s friends, has found fault with one
of Miss More’s metaphors. Miss
More has been at some pains to vindicate herself—in the opinion
of Miss Benjey, not without success. It seems the Doctor
is invariably against the use of broken or mixed metaphor, which he reprobates
against the authority of Shakspeare
himself. We next discussed the question, whether Pope was a poet? I find Dr. Gregory is of
opinion he was not, though Miss Seward
does not at all concur with him in this. We then sat upon the comparative
merits of the ten translations of “Pizarro,” and Miss
Benjey or Benje advised
Mary to take two of them home; she thought it might
afford her some pleasure to compare them verbatim; which
we declined. It being now nine o’clock, wine and macaroons were again
served round, and we parted, with a promise to go again next week, and meet the
MissPorters, who, it seems, have heard much of Mr. Coleridge, and wish to meet us, because we
are his friends. I have been preparing for the occasion. I crowd cotton in my
ears. I read all the reviews and magazines of the past month against the
dreadful meeting, and I hope by these means to cut a tolerable second-rate
figure.
Pray let us have no more complaints about shadows. We are in
a fair way, through you, to surfeit sick upon them.
Our loves and respects to your host and hostess. Our dearest
love to Coleridge.
Take no thought about your proof-sheets; they shall be done
as if Woodfall himself did them. Pray
send us word of Mrs. Coleridge and
little David Hartley, your little
reality.
Farewell, dear Substance. Take no umbrage at any thing I
have written.
C. Lamb, Umbra. Land of Shadows, Shadow-month the 16th or
17th, 1800.
Coleridge, I find loose among your
papers a copy of “Christabel.” It wants about thirty
lines; you will very much oblige me by sending me the beginning as far as
that line,— “And the spring comes slowly up this way;” and the intermediate lines between— “The lady leaps up suddenly, The lovely Lady Christabel;” and the lines,— “She folded her arms beneath her cloak, And stole to the other side of the oak.”
The trouble to you will be small, and the
benefit to us very great! A pretty antithesis! A
figure in speech I much applaud.
Godwin has called upon us. He spent
one evening here. Was very friendly. Kept us up till midnight. Drank punch,
and talked about you. He seems, above all men, mortified at your going
away. Suppose you were to write to that good-natured heathen—“or is
he a shadow?” If I do not write, impute it to the long postage, of which you have so much
cause to complain. I have scribbled over a queer
letter, as I find by perusal; but it means no mischief.
I am, and will be, yours ever, in sober sadness,
C. L.
Write your German as plain as
sunshine, for that must correct itself. You know I am homo unius
linguæ: in English, illiterate, a dunce, a ninny.
Note
[Having left LambColeridge went to Grasmere, where he stayed at Dove
Cottage with Wordsworth and finished his
translation, which was ready for the printer on April 22. To what Lamb
alludes in his reference to the homily on “Realities” I cannot say, but
presumably Coleridge had written a metaphysical letter on this
subject. Lamb returns to the matter at the end of the first part of
his reply.
Miss Wesley was Sarah Wesley
(1760-1828), the daughter of Charles Wesley and,
therefore, niece of the great John and Samuel. She moved much in literary society. Miss
Benjay, or Benjé, was in reality Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger (1778-1827), a friend of Mrs. Inchbald, Mrs.
Barbauld and the Aikins, and other literary people.
Madame de Stael called her the most interesting
woman she had met in England. She wrote novels and poems and biographies. In those days
there were two East Streets, one leading from Red Lion Square to
Lamb’s Conduit Street, and one in the neighbourhood of Clare
Market.
“The rogue has given me potions . . .” Falstaff. “If the rascal have
not given me medicines to make me love him, I’ll be hanged” (1
“Henry IV.,” II., 2,
18, etc.).
D’Israeli was Isaac
Disraeli, the author of The Curiosities of Literature and other books about books
and authors; Miss More was Hannah More, and her
book, Strictures on the
Modern System of Female Education, 1799; Dr. Gregory I have not traced; Miss Seward was
Anna Seward, the Swan of Lichfield; and the
Miss Porters were Jane and
Anna Maria, authors (later) respectively of
The Scottish
Chiefs and Thaddeus of Warsaw, and The Hungarian Brothers.
The proof-sheets were those of Wallenstein. Henry Sampson Woodfall was the famous printer of the Letters ofJunius.
Christabel,
Coleridge’s poem, had been begun in 1797;
it was finished, in so far as it was finished, later in the year 1800. It was published
first in 1816.
“Homo unius
linguæ.” Lamb exaggerated here.
He had much Latin, a little Greek and apparently (see page 29) a little French (see,
however, also page 243). The sentence is in the manner of Burton, whom Lamb had been imitating.]
LETTER 55 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[? Spring, 1800.]
BY some fatality, unusual with me, I have mislaid
the list of books which you want. Can you, from memory, easily supply me with
another?
I confess to Statius, and
I detained him wilfully, out of a reverent regard to your style.
Statius, they tell me, is turgid. As to that other
Latin book, since you know neither its name nor subject, your wants (I crave
leave to apprehend) cannot be very urgent. Meanwhile, dream that it is one of
the lost Decades of Livy.
Your partiality to me has led you to form an erroneous
opinion as to the measure of delight you suppose me to take in obliging. Pray,
be careful that it spread no further. ’Tis one of those heresies that is
very pregnant. Pray, rest more satisfied with the portion of learning which you
have got, and disturb my peaceful ignorance as little as possible with such
sort of commissions.
Did you never observe an appearance well known by the name
of the man in the moon? Some scandalous old maids have set on foot a report
that it is Endymion. Dr. Stoddart talks of going out King’s
Advocate to Malta. He has studied the Civil and Canon Law just three canon
months, to my knowledge. Fiat justitia, ruat
cælum.
Your theory about the first awkward step a man makes being
the consequence of learning to dance, is not universal. We have known many
youths bred up at Christ’s, who never learned to dance, yet the world imputes to them no very graceful motions. I
remember there was little Hudson, the
immortal precentor of St. Paul’s, to teach us our quavers: but, to the
best of my recollection, there was no master of motions when we were at
Christ’s.
Farewell, in haste.
C. L.
Note
[Talfourd does not date this
letter, merely remarking that it belongs to the present period. Canon Ainger dated it June 22, 1800; but this I think cannot be right when
we take into consideration Letter 60 and what it says about Lamb’s last letter to Coleridge (clearly that of May 12), and the time that has since elapsed.
The birth of Charles Lloyd’s first child, July
31, gives us the latest date to which Letter 60 could belong.
Statius, the Latin poet, was the author of the Thebais and Sylvæ. Livy’s works have been divided in fourteen decades, of
which many are lost.
“Fiat justitia.”
Let justice be done though the heavens fall.
“Your theory . . .” This may have been contained in
one of Coleridge’s letters, now lost; I do not
find it in any of the known Morning
Post articles.]
LETTER 56 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Monday, May 12th, 1800.
MY dear Coleridge—I don’t know why I write, except from the
propensity misery has to tell her griefs. Hetty died on
Friday night, about eleven o’clock, after eight days’ illness;
Mary, in consequence of fatigue and
anxiety, is fallen ill again, and I was obliged to remove her yesterday. I am
left alone in a house with nothing but Hetty’s dead
body to keep me company. To-morrow I bury her, and then I shall be quite alone,
with nothing but a cat to remind me that the house has been full of living
beings like myself. My heart is quite sunk, and I don’t know where to
look for relief. Mary will get better again; but her
constantly being liable to such relapses is dreadful; nor is it the least of
our evils that her case and all our story is so well known around us. We are in
a manner marked. Excuse my troubling you; but I have nobody by me to speak to
me. I slept out last night, not being able to endure the change and the
stillness. But I did not sleep well, and I must come back to my own bed. I am
going to try and get a friend to come and be with me to-morrow. I am completely shipwrecked. My
head is quite bad. I almost wish that Mary were dead.—God
bless you! Love to Sara and Hartley.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Hetty was the Lambs’
aged servant.
Here should come a letter from Lamb
to Thomas Manning clearly written on May 12, 1800,
the same day as that to Coleridge, stating that
Lamb has given up his house, and is looking for
lodgings,—White (with whom he had stayed) having
“all kindness but not sympathy”.]
LETTER 57 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[p.m. May 20, 1800.]
DEAR Manning,—I feel myself unable to thank you sufficiently for your
kind letter. It was doubly acceptable to me, both for the choice poetry and the
kind honest prose which it contained. It was just such a letter as I should
have expected from Manning.
I am in much better spirits than when I wrote last. I have
had a very eligible offer to lodge with a friend in town. He will have rooms to
let at midsummer, by which time I hope my sister will be well enough to join
me. It is a great object to me to live in town, where we shall be much more private, and to quit a house and neighbourhood where
poor Mary’s disorder, so frequently
recurring, has made us a sort of marked people. We can be nowhere private
except in the midst of London. We shall be in a family where we visit very
frequently; only my landlord and I have not yet come to a conclusion. He has a
partner to consult. I am still on the tremble, for I do not know where we could
go into lodgings that would not be, in many respects, highly exceptionable.
Only God send Mary well again, and I hope all will be
well! The prospect, such as it is, has made me quite happy. I have just time to
tell you of it, as I know it will give you pleasure.—Farewell.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Manning’s letter containing
the choice poetry has not been preserved.
The friend in town was John Mathew
Gutch (1776-1861), with whom Lamb had
been at school at Christ’s Hospital, who was now a law stationer, in partnership with
one Anderson, at 27 Southampton Buildings, Chancery
Lane, since demolished.]
LETTER 58 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[No date. ? May 25, 1800.]
DEAR Manning,
I am a letter in your debt, but I am scarcely rich enough (in spirits) to pay
you.—I am writing at an inn on the Ware road, in the neighbourhood of which I
am going to pass two days, being Whitsuntide.—Excuse the pen, tis the best I
can get.—Poor Mary is very bad yet. I
went yesterday hoping I should see her getting well, then I might have come
into the country more chearful, but I could not get to see her. This has been a
sad damp. Indeed I never in my life have been more wretched than I was all day
yesterday. I am glad I am going away from business for a little while, for my
head has been hot and ill. I shall be very much alone where I am going, which
always revives me. I hope you will accept of this worthless memento, which I
merely send as a token that I am in your debt. I will write upon my return, on
Thursday at farthest. I return on Wednesday.—
God bless you.
I was afraid you would think me forgetful, and that made me
scribble this jumble.
Sunday.
Note
[Here probably also should come an unpublished letter (in the possession
of Mr. Dobell) from Lamb to Manning, in which
Lamb remarks that his goddess is Pecunia.
Mr. Dobell also has another letter to Manning belonging to the same period, in which Lamb returns to the subject of poverty:—
“You dropt a word whether in jest or earnest, as if you would join
me in some work, such as a review or series of papers, essays, or anything.—Were you
serious? I want home occupation, & I more want money. Had you any scheme, or was it, as
G. Dyer says, en passant? If I
don’t have a Legacy left me shortly I must get into pay with some newspaper for small
gains. Mutton is twelvepence a pound.”
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, in which he
describes a visit to Gutch’s family at Oxford,
and mentions his admiration for a fine head of Bishop
Taylor in All Souls’ Library, which was an inducement to the Oxford
visit. He refers to Charles Lloyd’s settlement
in the Lakes, and suggests that it may be the means of again uniting him and Coleridge; adding that such men as
Coleridge and Wordsworth
would exclude solitude in the Hebrides or Thule.
The following undated letter, which may be placed a little too soon in
its present position, comes with a certain fitness here:—]
LETTER 59 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN MATHEW GUTCH
[No date. 1800.]
DEAR Gutch,
Anderson is not come home, and I am
almost afraid to tell you what has happen’d, lest it should seem to have
happend by my fault in not writing for you home sooner.—
This morning Henry, the eldest lad,
was missing. We supposed he was only gone out on a morning’s stroll, and
that he would return, but he did not return & we discovered that he had
opened your desk before he went, & I suppose taken all the money he could
find, for on diligent search I could find none, and on opening your Letter to
Anderson, which I thought necessary
to get at the key, I learn that you had a good deal of money there.
Several people have been here after you to-day, & the
boys seem quite frightened, and do not know what to do. In particular, one
gentleman wants to have some writings finished by Tuesday—For God’s sake
set out by the first coach. Mary has been
crying all day about it, and I am now just going to some law stationer in the
neighbourhood, that the eldest boy has recommended, to get him to come and be
in the house for a day or so, to manage. I cannot think what detains Anderson. His sister is quite frightend about
him. I am very sorry I did not write yesterday, but Henry
persuaded me to wait till he could ascertain when some job must be done (at the
furthest) for Mr. Foulkes, and as nothing had occurrd
besides I did not like to disturb your pleasures. I now see my error, and shall
be heartily ashamed to see you.
[That is as far as the letter goes on the
first page. We then turn over, and find (as Gutch, to
his immense relief, found before us) written right across both pages:]
A Bite!!!
Anderson is come home, and the wheels of
thy business are going on as ever. The boy is honest, and I am thy friend.
And how does the coach-maker’s daughter? Thou art her
Phaeton, her Gig, and her Sociable. Commend me to Rob.
C. Lamb. Saturday.
Note
[This letter is the first example extant of Lamb’s tendency to
hoaxing. Gutch was at that time courting a
Miss Wheeley, the daughter of a
Birmingham coachbuilder. It was while he was in Birmingham that Lamb wrote the letter. Anderson was
his partner in business. Rob would be Robert Lloyd, then at Birmingham again. This, and one other, are the only
letters of Lamb to Gutch that escaped
destruction.]
LETTER 60 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[? Late July, 1800.]
DEAR Coleridge,—Soon after I wrote to you last, an offer was made me
by Gutch (you must remember him? at
Christ’s—you saw him, slightly, one day with Thomson at our house)—to come and lodge with him at his house
in Southampton Buildings, Chancery-Lane. This was a very comfortable offer to
me, the rooms being at a reasonable rent, and including the use of an old
servant, besides being infinitely preferable to ordinary lodgings in our case,
as you must perceive. As Gutch knew all our story and the
perpetual liability to a recurrence in my sister’s disorder, probably to
the end of her life, I certainly think the offer very generous and very
friendly. I have got three rooms (including servant) under £34 a year. Here I
soon found myself at home; and here, in six weeks after, Mary was well enough to join me. So we are once
more settled. I am afraid we are not placed out of the reach of future
interruptions. But I am determined to take what snatches of pleasure we can
between the acts of our distressful drama. . . . I have passed two days at
Oxford on a visit, which I have long put off, to
Gutch’s family. The sight of the Bodleian
Library and, above all, a fine bust of Bishop
Taylor at All Souls’, were particularly gratifying to me;
unluckily, it was not a family where I could take Mary
with me, and I am afraid there is something of dishonesty in any pleasures I
take without her. She never goes anywhere. I do not know
what I can add to this letter. I hope you are better by this time; and I desire
to be affectionately remembered to Sara
and Hartley.
I expected before this to have had tidings of another
little philosopher. Lloyd’s wife
is on the point of favouring the world.
Have you seen the new edition of Burns? his posthumous works
and letters? I have only been able to procure the first volume, which contains
his life—very confusedly and badly written, and interspersed with dull
pathological and medical discussions. It is written by a Dr. Currie. Do you know the well-meaning
doctor? Alas, ne sutor ultra
crepitum! [A few words omitted here.]
I hope to hear again from you very soon. Godwin is gone to Ireland on a visit to
Grattan. Before he went I passed
much time with him, and he has showed me particular attentions: N.B. A thing I
much like. Your books are all safe: only I have not thought it necessary to
fetch away your last batch, which I understand are at Johnson’s the bookseller, who has got
quite as much room, and will take as much care of them as myself—and you can
send for them immediately from him.
I wish you would advert to a letter I sent you at Grasmere
about “Christabel,” and comply with my request contained therein.
Love to all friends round Skiddaw.
C. Lamb.
Note
[The Coleridges had recently moved into Greta Hall,
Keswick.
Thomson would, I think, be Marmaduke
Thompson, an old Christ’s Hospitaller, to whom Lamb dedicated Rosamund Gray. He became a missionary.
“Another little philosopher.” Derwent Coleridge was born September 14, 1800. Lloyd’s eldest son, Charles Grosvenor Lloyd, was born July 31, 1800.
Dr. James Currie’sLife of Burns was prefixed to an edition of his poems in 1800. Dugald Stewart called it “a strong and faithful
picture.” It was written to raise funds for Burns’
widow and family.
“Ne sutor ultra
crepidam” is a phrase in Pliny,
Valerius Maximus, and possibly other Latin writers.
“Let the cobbler stick to his last.” The translation of Lamb’s version has to be omitted.
Godwin had gone to stay with Curran: he saw much of Grattan also.
Johnson, the publisher and bookseller, lived at 72
St. Paul’s Churchyard. He published Priestley’s works.]
LETTER 61 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Aug. 6th, 1800.
DEAR Coleridge,—I have taken to-day, and delivered to Longman and Co., Imprimis: your books, viz., three ponderous German dictionaries, one
volume (I can find no more) of German and French ditto, sundry other German
books unbound, as you left them, Percy’sAncient Poetry, and one volume of Anderson’s Poets. I
specify them, that you may not lose any. Secundo: a
dressing-gown (value, fivepence), in which you used to sit and look like a
conjuror, when you were translating “Wallenstein.” A case of two
razors and a shaving-box and strap. This it has cost me a severe struggle to
part with. They are in a brown-paper parcel, which also contains sundry papers
and poems, sermons, some few Epic Poems,—one about Cain and Abel, which came from
Poole, &c, &c., and also
your tragedy; with one or two small German books, and that drama in which
Got-fader performs. Tertio: a small oblong box
containing all your letters, collected from all your waste papers, and which
fill the said little box. All other waste papers, which I judged worth sending,
are in the paper parcel aforesaid. But you will find all your letters in the
box by themselves. Thus have I discharged my conscience and my lumber-room of
all your property, save and except a folio entitled Tyrrell’sBibliotheca Politica, which you used to learn your politics out of
when you wrote for the Post, mutatis mutandis,
i.e., applying past inferences to modern data. I retain
that, because I am sensible I am very deficient in the politics myself; and I
have torn up—don’t be angry, waste paper has risen forty per cent., and I
can’t afford to buy it—all Buonaparte’s Letters, Arthur
Young’sTreatise on Corn, and one or two more light-armed infantry, which I
thought better suited the flippancy of London discussion than the dignity of
Keswick thinking. Mary says you will be
in a damned passion about them when you come to miss them; but you must study
philosophy. Read Albertus Magnus de Chartis Amissis five times over after
phlebotomising,—’tis Burton’s recipe—and then be angry with an absent friend
if you can. I have just heard that Mrs.
Lloyd is delivered of a fine boy, and mother and boy are doing
well. Fie on sluggards, what is thy Sara
doing? Sara is obscure. Am I to understand by her letter,
that she sends a kiss to Eliza
Buckingham? Pray tell your wife that a note of interrogation on
the superscription of a letter is highly ungrammatical—she proposes writing my
name Lamb?Lambe is quite
enough. I have had the Anthology,
and like only one thing in it, Lewti; but of that the last stanza is
detestable, the rest most exquisite!—the epithet enviable would dash the finest poem. For God’s sake (I never
was more serious), don’t make me ridiculous any more by terming me
gentle-hearted in print, or do it in better verses. It did well enough five years ago
when I came to see you, and was moral coxcomb enough at the time you wrote the
lines, to feed upon such epithets; but, besides that, the meaning of gentle is
equivocal at best, and almost always means poor-spirited, the very quality of
gentleness is abhorrent to such vile trumpetings. My sentiment is long since vanished. I hope my virtues have done sucking. I can scarce think
but you meant it in joke. I hope
you did, for I should be ashamed to think that you could think to gratify me by
such praise, fit only to be a cordial to some green-sick sonneteer.
I have hit off the following in imitation of old English
poetry, which, I imagine, I am a dab at. The measure is unmeasureable; but it
most resembles that beautiful ballad of the “Old and
Young Courtier;” and in its feature of taking the extremes of
two situations for just parallel, it resembles the old poetry certainly. If I
could but stretch out the circumstances to twelve more verses, i.e., if I had as much genius as the writer of that old
song, I think it would be excellent. It was to follow an imitation of Burton in prose, which you have not seen. But
fate “and wisest Stewart”
say No.
I can send you 200 pens and six quires of paper immediately, if they will answer the carriage by coach.
It would be foolish to pack ’em up cum multia
libris et cæteris,—they would all spoil. I only wait
your commands to coach them. I would pay five-and-forty thousand carriages to
read W.’stragedy, of which I have heard so much
and seen so little—only what I saw at Stowey. Pray give me an order in writing
on Longman for “Lyrical Ballads.” I have the first
volume, and, truth to tell, six shillings is a broad shot. I cram all I can in,
to save a multiplying of letters—those pretty comets with swingeing tails.
I’ll just crowd in God bless you!
C. Lamb. Wednesday night.
Note
[The epic about Cain and Abel
was “The Wanderings of
Cain,” which Coleridge projected but
never finished. The drama in which Got-fader performs would be perhaps “Faust”—“Der Herr” in the Prologue—or some old
miracle play.
“’Tis Burton’s recipe.” Lamb was just now steeped in the Anatomy; but there is no need
to see if Burton says this.
“Eliza Buckingham.” Sara Coleridge’s message was probably intended for
Eliza, a servant at the Buckingham Street lodgings.
Lambe was The Anti-Jacobin’s idea of Lamb’s name; and indeed many persons adhered to it to the end.
Mrs. Coleridge, when writing to her husband
under care of Lamb at the India House, added “e” to
Lamb’s name to signify that the letter was for Coleridge. Wordsworth later also had some of his letters addressed in the same way.
Coleridge’s “Lewti” was reprinted, with alterations, from the Morning Post, in the Annual Anthology, Vol. II. Line 69 ran— Had I the enviable power; Coleridge changed this to— Voice of the Night! had I the power.
“This Lime-tree
Bower my Prison; a Poem, addressed to Charles Lamb of the India House,
London,” was also in the Annual Anthology. Lamb objected
to the phrase “My gentle-hearted Charles” (see page
98; see also Lamb’s letter of August 14, page 177).
Lamb says “five years ago”; he means three.
Coleridge did not alter the phrase. It was
against this poem that he wrote in pencil on his deathbed in 1834:
“Ch. and Mary
Lamb—dear to my heart, yea, as it were, my heart.— S. T.
C. Aet. 63, 1834. 1797-1884 = 37 years!”
“I have hit off the following”—“A Ballad Denoting the Difference between the Rich and the
Poor,” first printed among the Imitations of Burton in the John Woodvil volume, 1802:—
A BALLAD:NOTING THE DIFFERENCE OF RICH AND POOR, IN THE WAYS OF A RICH
MAN’S PALACE AND A POOR MAN’S WORKHOUSETo the tune of the “Old and Young Courtier” In a costly palace Youth goes clad in gold; In a wretched workhouse Age’s limbs are cold: There they sit, the old men, by a shivering fire, Still close and closer cowering, warmth is their desire. In a costly palace, when the brave gallants dine, They have store of good venison, with old Canary wine, With singing and music to heighten the cheer; Coarse bits, with grudging, are the pauper’s best fare. In a costly palace Youth is still carest By a train of attendants which laugh at my young Lord’s jest; In a wretched workhouse the contrary prevails: Does Age begin to prattle? No man heark’neth to his tales. In a costly palace, if the child with a pin Do but chance to prick a finger, straight the Doctor is called in; In a wretched workhouse, men are left to perish For want of proper cordials, which their old age might cherish. In a costly palace Youth enjoys his lust; In a wretched workhouse Age, in corners thrust, Thinks upon the former days, when he was well to do. Had children to stand by him, both friends and kinsmen too. In a costly palace Youth his temples hides With a new devised peruke that reaches to his sides; In a wretched workhouse Age’s crown is bare, With a few thin locks, just to fence out the cold air. In peace, as in war, ’tis our young gallants’ pride To walk, each one i’ the streets, with a rapier at his side, That none to do them injury may have pretence; Wretched Age, in poverty, must brook offence.
“And wisest Stewart”—Stuart of the Morning Post. Adapted from Milton’s “Hymn on
the Nativity”— But wisest Fate says no.
“W.’s [Wordsworth’s] tragedy” was “The Borderers.” The second edition of Lyrical Ballads
was just ready.]
LETTER 62 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[p.m. August 9, 1800.]
DEAR Manning,—I suppose you have heard of Sophia Lloyd’s good fortune, and paid the customary
compliments to the parents. Heaven keep the new-born infant from star-blasting
and moon-blasting, from epilepsy, marasmus, and the devil! May he live to see
many days, and they good ones; some friends, and they pretty regular
correspondents, with as much wit as wisdom as will eat their bread and cheese
together under a poor roof without quarrelling; as much goodness as will earn
heaven! Here I must leave off, my benedictory powers failing me. I could curse
the sheet full; so much stronger is corruption than grace in the Natural Man.
And now, when shall I catch a glimpse of your honest
face-to-face countenance again—your fine dogmatical
sceptical face, by punch-light? O! one glimpse of the human face, and
shake of the human hand, is better than whole reams of this cold, thin
correspondence—yea, of more worth than all the letters that have sweated the
fingers of sensibility from Madame
Sévigné and Balzac
(observe my Larning!) to Sterne and
Shenstone.
Coleridge is settled with his wife and
the young philosopher at Keswick with
the Wordsworths. They have contrived to
spawn a new volume of lyrical
ballads, which is to see the light in about a month, and causes no
little excitement in the literary world. George Dyer too, that good-natured heathen, is
more than nine months gone with his twin volumes of ode, pastoral, sonnet,
elegy, Spenserian, Horatian, Akensidish, and Masonic
verse—Clio prosper the birth! it will
be twelve shillings out of somebody’s pocket. I find he means to exclude
“personal satire,” so it appears by his truly original
advertisement. Well, God put it into the hearts of the English gentry to come
in shoals and subscribe to his poems, for He never put a kinder heart into
flesh of man than George Dyer’s!
Now farewell: for dinner is at hand.
C. L.
Note
[Southey’s letters contain
a glimpse (as Mr. J. A. Rutter has pointed out) of Lamb and Manning by
punch-light. Writing in 1824, describing a certain expression of Mrs. Coleridge’s face, Southey
says:—
First, then, it was an expression of dolorous alarm, such
as Le Brun ought to have painted: but such as
Manning never could have equalled, when, while Mrs. Lloyd was keeping her room in child-bed, he and
Charles Lamb sate drinking punch in the room
below till three in the morning—Manning acting
Le Brun’s passions (punchified at the time), and
Charles Lamb (punchified also) roaring aloud and swearing, while
the tears ran down his cheeks, that it required more genius than even Shakespeare possessed to personate them so well; Charles Lloyd the while (not punchified) praying and
entreating them to go to bed, and not disturb his wife by the uproar they were making.
Southey’s reminiscence, though interesting, is
very confusing. Lamb does not seem to have visited
Cambridge between the end of 1799 and January 5, 1800. At the latter date the
Lloyds were in the north. Possibly Southey
refers to an earlier illness of Mrs. Lloyd, which,
writing after a long interval, he confused with confinement.
“Balzac.” Not, of course, the novelist; but Jean Louis Guez
de Balzac (1594-1654) the letter-writer.
Two or three lines have been omitted from this letter.]
LETTER 63 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[p.m. August 11, 1800.]
MY dear fellow (N.B. mighty
familiar of late!) for me to come to Cambridge now is one of God
Almighty’s impossibilities. Metaphysicians tell us, even He can work
nothing which implies a contradiction. I can explain this by telling you that I
am engaged to do double duty (this hot weather!) for a man who has taken
advantage of this very weather to go and cool himself in “green retreats
all the month of August.
But for you to come to London instead!—muse upon it,
revolve it, cast it about in your mind. I have a bed at your command. You shall
drink rum, brandy, gin, aqua-vitæ, usquebaugh, or whiskey a’ nights; and
for the after-dinner trick I have eight bottles of genuine port, which, if
mathematically divided, gives 1/7 for every day you stay, provided you stay a
week. Hear John Milton sing, “Let Euclid rest and Archimedes pause.” Twenty-first Sonnet. And elsewhere,— “What neat repast shall feast us, light1 and choice, Of Attic taste, with wine,2 whence we may
rise To hear the lute well touch’d, or artful voice Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?” Indeed, the poets are full of this pleasing morality— “Veni cito, Domine Manning!” Think upon it. Excuse the paper: it is all I have.
N.B.—I lives at No. 27 Southampton Buildings, Holborn.
C. Lamb.
1 We poets generally give light dinners.
2 No doubt the poet here alludes to port wine at 38s. the
dozen.
Note
[“Green retreats.” Pope twice uses the phrase “green retreats”: in
“Windsor Forest,” line
1, and in his second Pastoral,
“Summer,” line 72:— The mossy fountains, and the green retreats.
“Let Euclid rest . .
.” From Milton’s sonnet to
Cyriack Skinner. The second passage is from his sonnet to Mr. Lawrence.]
LETTER 64 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Aug. 14, 1800.
READ on and you’ll come to the Pens. My head is playing all the tunes in the world,
ringing such peals. It has just finished the “Merry
Christ Church Bells,” and absolutely is beginning “Turn again, Whittington.” Buz, buz, buz: bum,
bum, bum: wheeze, wheeze, wheeze: feu, feu, feu: tinky, tinky, tinky: craunch. I shall certainly come to be damned at last. I
have been getting drunk for two days running. I find my moral sense in the last
stage of a consumption, and my religion burning as blue and faint as the tops
of burning bricks. Hell gapes and the Devil’s great guts cry cupboard for
me. In the midst of this infernal torture, Conscience (and be damn’d to
her), is barking and yelping as loud as any of them. I have sat down to read
over again, and I think I do begin to spy out something with beauty and design
in it. I perfectly accede to all your alterations, and only desire that you had
cut deeper, when your hand was in.
In the next edition of the “Anthology” (which Phœbus avert and those nine other wandering maids also!) please
to blot out gentle-hearted, and substitute drunken: dog, ragged-head,
seld-shaven, odd-eyed, stuttering, or any other epithet which truly and
properly belongs to the gentleman in question. And for
Charles read Tom, or
Bob, or Richard for more
delicacy. Damn you, I was beginning to forgive you and believe in earnest that
the lugging in of my proper name was purely unintentional on your part, when
looking back for further conviction, stares me in the face Charles Lamb of the India House. Now I am
convinced it was all done in malice, heaped sack-upon-sack, congregated,
studied malice. You Dog! your 141st page shall not save you. I own I was just
ready to acknowledge that there is a something
not unlike good poetry in that page, if you had not run into the unintelligible
abstraction-fit about the manner of the Deity’s making spirits perceive
his presence. God, nor created thing alive, can receive any honour from such
thin show-box attributes. By-the-by, where did you pick up that scandalous
piece of private
history about the angel and the Duchess of
Devonshire? If it is a fiction of your own, why truly it is a
very modest one for you. (Now I do affirm that
“Lewti” is a
very beautiful poem. I was in earnest when I praised it. It describes a silly
species of one not the wisest of passions. Therefore it
cannot deeply affect a disenthralled mind. But such imagery, such novelty, such
delicacy, and such versification never got into an “Anthology” before,) I am only sorry that the cause of all the
passionate complaint is not greater than the trifling circumstance of Lewti being out of temper one day. In sober
truth, I cannot see any great merit in the little Dialogue called “Blenheim.” It is
rather novel and pretty; but the thought is very obvious and children’s
poor prattle, a thing of easy imitation. Pauper vult
videri etest.
“Gualberto”
certainly has considerable originality, but sadly wants finishing. It is, as it
is, one of the very best in the book. Next to “Lewti” I like the “Raven,” which has a good deal of
humour. I was pleased to see it again, for you once sent it me, and I have lost
the letter which contained it. Now I am on the subject of Anthologies, I must
say I am sorry the old Pastoral way has fallen into disrepute. The Gentry which
now indite Sonnets are certainly the legitimate descendants of the ancient
shepherds. The same simpering face of description, the old family face, is
visibly continued in the line. Some of their ancestors’ labours are yet
to be found in Allan Ramsay’s and
Jacob Tonson’sMiscellanies. But, miscellanies decaying and the old
Pastoral way dying of mere want, their successors (driven from their paternal
acres) now-a-days settle and hive upon Magazines and Anthologies. This Race of
men are uncommonly addicted to superstition. Some of them are Idolators and
worship the Moon. Others deify qualities, as love, friendship, sensibility, or
bare accidents, as Solitude. Grief and Melancholy have their respective altars
and temples among them, as the heathens builded theirs to Mors, Febris,
Palloris. They all agree in ascribing a
peculiar sanctity to the number fourteen. One of their own legislators
affirmeth, that whatever exceeds that number “encroacheth upon the
province of the Elegy”—vice versa, whatever “cometh short of that
number abutteth upon the premises of the Epigram.” I have been able to
discover but few Images in their temples, which, like
the Caves of Delphos of old, are famous for giving Echoes. They impute a religious importance to the letter O, whether because by its
roundness it is thought to typify the moon, their principal goddess, or for its
analogies to their own labours, all ending where they began; or whatever other
high and mystical reference, I have never been able to discover, but I observe
they never begin their invocations to their gods without it, except indeed one
insignificant sect among them, who use the Doric A, pronounced like Ah! broad,
instead. These boast to have restored the old Dorian mood.
Now I am on the subject of poetry, I must announce to you,
who, doubtless, in your remote part of the Island, have not heard tidings of so
great a blessing, that George
Dyer hath prepared two ponderous volumes full of Poetry and Criticism.
They impend over the town, and are threatened to fall in the winter. The first
volume contains every sort of poetry except personal satire, which
George, in his truly original prospectus, renounceth
for ever, whimsically foisting the intention in between the price of his book
and the proposed number of subscribers. (If I can, I will get you a copy of his
handbill.) He has tried his vein in every species
besides—the Spenserian, Thomsonian, Masonic and Akensidish
more especially. The second volume is all criticism; wherein he demonstrates to
the entire satisfaction of the literary world, in a way that must silence all
reply for ever, that the pastoral was introduced by Theocritus and polished by Virgil and Pope—that
Gray and Mason
(who always hunt in couples in George’s brain) have
a good deal of poetical fire and true lyric genius—that Cowley was ruined by excess of wit (a warning
to all moderns)—that Charles Lloyd,
Charles Lamb, and William Wordsworth, in later days, have struck
the true chords of poesy. O, George,
George, with a head uniformly wrong and a heart
uniformly right, that I had power and might equal to my wishes!—then I would
call the Gentry of thy native Island, and they should come in troops, flocking
at the sound of thy Prospectus Trumpet, and crowding who shall be first to
stand in thy List of Subscribers. I can only put twelve shillings into thy
pocket (which, I will answer for them, will not stick there long), out of a
pocket almost as bare as thine. [Lamb
here erases six lines.] Is it not a pity so much fine writing should
be erased? But, to tell the truth, I began to scent that I was getting into
that sort of style which Longinus and
Dionysius Halicarnassus aptly call
“the affected.” But I am suffering from the combined effect of two
days’ drunkenness, and at such times it is not very easy to think or
express in a natural series. The Only useful Object of this Letter is to
apprize you that on Saturday I shall transmit the Pens by the same coach I sent
the Parcel. So enquire them out. You had better write to Godwin here, directing your letter to be
forwarded to him. I don’t know his
address. You know your letter must at any rate come to London first.
C. L.
Note
[“Your satire upon me”—“This Lime-tree Bower my Prison” (see pages 98
and 172).
“Those nine other wandering maids”—the Muses. A
recollection of The Anti-Jacobin’sverses on Lamb and his friends (see page 136).
“Your 141st page.” “This Lime-tree Bower” again. By
“unintelligible abstraction-fit” Lamb refers to the passage:— Ah! slowly sink Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun! Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb, Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds! Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves! And kindle, thou blue Ocean! So my friend Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood, Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem Less gross than bodily; and of such hues As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet He makes Spirits perceive His presence.
“That scandalous piece of private history.” A
reference to Coleridge’s “Ode to Georgiana, Duchess of
Devonshire,” reprinted in the Annual Anthology from the Morning Post.
“Blenheim”—Southey’s ballad, “It was a summer’s evening.”
“Pauper vult videri et
est.” He wants to seem bald, and he is.
“Gualberto.” The poem “St. Gualberto” by Southey, in the Annual Anthology.
“The
Raven” was referred to in Lamb’s
letter on page 90.
George Dyer’sPoems, in two volumes, were
published in 1800. See note to Letter 80 on page 208. See also Appendix I., page 951.]
LETTER 65 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[p.m. August 21, 1800.]
DEAR Manning,—I am going to ask a favour of you, and am at a loss how to
do it in the most delicate manner. For this purpose I have been looking into
Pliny’sLetters, who is noted to have had the best grace in begging
of all the ancients (I read him in the elegant translation of Mr. Melmoth), but not finding any case there exactly similar
with mine, I am constrained to beg in my own barbarian way. To come to the
point then, and hasten into the middle of things, have you a copy of your Algebra to give away? I do not
ask it for myself; I have too much reverence for the Black Arts ever to
approach thy circle, illustrious Trismegist! But that worthy man and excellent
Poet, George Dyer, made me a visit
yesternight, on purpose to borrow one, supposing, rationally enough I must say,
that you had made me a present of one before this; the omission of which I take
to have proceeded only from negligence; but it is a fault. I could lend him no
assistance. You must know he is just now diverted from the pursuit of Bell Letters by a paradox, which he has heard his
friend Frend (that learned
mathematician) maintain, that the negative quantities of mathematicians were
meræ nugæ, things scarcely in
rerum naturâ, and smacking
too much of mystery for gentlemen of Mr. Frend’s
clear Unitarian capacity. However, the dispute once set a-going has seized
violently on George’s pericranick; and it is
necessary for his health that he should speedily come to a resolution of his
doubts. He goes about teasing his friends with his new mathematics; he even
frantically talks of purchasing Manning’s
Algebra, which shows him far gone, for, to my knowledge, he has not
been master of seven shillings a good time. George’s
pockets and . . .’s brains are two things in nature which do not abhor a
vacuum. . . . Now, if you could step in, in this trembling suspense of his
reason, and he should find on Saturday morning, lying for him at the
Porter’s Lodge, Clifford’s Inn,—his safest address—Manning’s Algebra, with a neat manuscriptum in
the blank leaf, running thus, From The Author! it
might save his wits and restore the unhappy author to those studies of poetry
and criticism, which are at present suspended, to the infinite regret of the
whole literary world. N.B.—Dirty books [? backs], smeared leaves, and
dogs’ ears, will be rather a recommendation than otherwise. N.B.—He must
have the book as soon as possible, or nothing can withhold him from madly
purchasing the book on tick. . . . Then shall we see him sweetly restored to
the chair of Longinus—to dictate in smooth
and modest phrase the laws of verse; to prove that Theocritus first introduced the Pastoral, and Virgil and Pope brought it to its perfection; that Gray and Mason (who always hunt in couples in
George’s brain) have shown a great deal of
poetical fire in their lyric poetry; that Aristotle’s rules are not to be servilely followed, which
George has shown to have imposed great shackles upon
modern genius. His poems, I find, are to consist of two vols.—reasonable
octavo; and a third book will exclusively
contain criticisms, in which he asserts he has gone pretty
deeply into the laws of blank verse and rhyme—epic poetry, dramatic
and pastoral ditto—all which is to come out before Christmas. But above all he
has touched most deeply upon the
Drama, comparing the English with the modern German stage, their merits and
defects. Apprehending that his studies (not to mention
his turn, which I take to be chiefly towards the lyrical
poetry) hardly qualified him for these disquisitions, I modestly inquired what
plays he had read? I found by George’s reply that he
had read Shakspeare, but that was a good while since: he calls him a
great but irregular genius, which I think to be an original and just remark.
(Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Ben Jonson,
Shirley, Marlowe, Ford, and the
worthies of Dodsley’s
Collection—he confessed he had read none of them, but professed his
intention of looking through them all, so as to be
able to touch upon them in his book.) So
Shakspeare, Otway, and I believe Rowe, to whom he was naturally directed by Johnson’s Lives, and these not read
lately, are to stand him in stead of a general knowledge of the subject. God
bless his dear absurd head!
By the by, did I not write you a letter with something
about an invitation in it?—but let that pass; I suppose it is not agreeable.
N.B. It would not be amiss if you were to accompany your
present with a dissertation on negative quantities.
C. L.
Note
[Mr. Melmoth. A translation of the Letters of Pliny the Younger was made
by William Melmoth in 1746.
Trismegistus—thrice greatest—was the term applied to Hermes, the Egyptian philosopher. Manning had written An
Introduction to Arithmetic and Algebra, 1796, 1798.
William Frend (1757-1841), the mathematician and
Unitarian, who had been prosecuted in the Vice-Chancellor’s Court at Cambridge for a
tract entitled “Peace and Union
Recommended to the Associated Bodies of Republicans and Anti-Republicans,”
in which he attacked much of the Liturgy of the Church of England. He was found guilty and
banished from the University of Cambridge. He had been a friend of Robert Robinson, whose lifeDyer
wrote, and remained a friend of Dyer to the end of his life. Coleridge had been among the
undergraduates who supported Frend at his trial.
“Meræ nugæ”—Sheer
nonsense.
“. . .’s brain.” In a later letter (see page
633) Lamb uses Judge
Park’s wig, when his head is in it, as a simile for emptiness.]
LETTER 66 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
August 26th, 1800.
HOW do you like this little epigram? It is not my writing, nor had I any
finger in it. If you concur with me in thinking it very elegant and very
original, I shall be tempted to name the author to you. I will just hint that
it is almost or quite a first attempt.
HELEN REPENTANT TOO LATE 1 High-born Helen, round your
dwelling These twenty years I’ve paced in vain: Haughty beauty, your lover’s duty Has been to glory in his pain. 2 High-born Helen! proudly telling Stories of your cold disdain; I starve, I die, now you comply, And I no longer can complain. 3 These twenty years I’ve lived on tears, Dwelling for ever on a frown; On sighs I’ve fed, your scorn my bread; I perish now you kind are grown. 4 Can I, who loved my Beloved But for the “scorn was in her eye,” Can I be moved for my Beloved, When she “returns me sigh for sigh?” 5 In stately pride, by my bed-side, High-born Helen’s portrait’s hung; Deaf to my praise; my mournful lays Are nightly to the portrait sung. 6 To that I weep, nor ever sleep, Complaining all night long to her! Helen, grown old, no longer
cold, Said, ‘You to all men I prefer.”
Godwin returned from Wicklow the week
before last, tho’ he did not reach home till the Sunday after. He might
much better have spent that time with you.—But you see your invitation would
have been too late. He greatly regrets the occasion he mist of visiting you,
but he intends to revisit Ireland in the next summer, and then he will
certainly take Keswick in his way. I dined with the Heathen on Sunday.
By-the-by, I have a sort of recollection that somebody, I
think you, promised me a sight of Wordsworth’sTragedy. I should be very glad of it
just now; for I have got Manning with
me, and should like to read it with him. But this, I confess, is a refinement.
Under any circumstances, alone in Cold Bath Prison, or in the desert island,
just when Prospero & his crew had set
off, with Caliban in a cage, to Milan, it
would be a treat to me to read that play. Manning has read
it, so has Lloyd, and all
Lloyd’s family; out I could not get him to
betray his trust by giving me a sight of it. Lloyd is
sadly deficient in some of those virtuous vices. I have just lit upon a most
beautiful fiction of hell punishments, by the author of “Hurlothrumbo,” a
mad farce. The inventor imagines that in hell there is a great caldron of hot
water, in which a man can scarce hold his finger, and an immense sieve over it,
into which the probationary souls are put. “And all the little souls Pop through the riddle holes.”
Mary’s love to Mrs. Coleridge—mine to all.
N.B.—I pays no Postage.—
George Dyer is the only literary
character I am happily acquainted with. The oftener I see him, the more deeply
I admire him. He is goodness itself. If I could but calculate the precise date
of his death, I would write a novel on purpose to make
George the hero. I could hit him off to a hair.
George brought a Dr. Anderson to see me. The Doctor is a very
pleasant old man, a great genius for agriculture, one that ties his
breeches-knees with Packthread, & boasts of having had disappointments from
ministers. The Doctor happened to mention an Epic Poem by one Wilkie, called the “Epigoniad,” in which he assured us
there is not one tolerable line from beginning to end, but all the characters,
incidents, &c., are verbally copied from Homer. George, who had been sitting quite
inattentive to the Doctor’s criticism, no sooner heard the sound of
Homer strike his
pericraniks, than up he gets, and declares he must see that poem immediately:
where was it to be had? An epic poem of 800 [? 8,000] lines, and he not hear of
it! There must be some things good in it, and it was necessary he should see
it, for he had touched pretty deeply upon that subject in his criticisms on the
Epic. George has touched pretty deeply upon the Lyric, I
find; he has also prepared a dissertation on the Drama and the comparison of
the English and German theatres. As I rather doubted his competency to do the
latter, knowing that his peculiar turn lies in the lyric
species of composition, I questioned George what English
plays he had read. I found
that he had read Shakspere (whom he
calls an original, but irregular, genius), but it was a good while ago; and he
has dipt into Rowe and Otway, I suppose having found their names in
Johnson’s Lives at
full length; and upon this slender ground he has undertaken the task. He never
seem’d even to have heard of Fletcher, Ford, Marlow, Massinger, and the Worthies of Dodsley’s Collection; but he is to
read all these, to prepare him for bringing out his “Parallel” in
the winter. I find he is also determined to vindicate Poetry from the shackles
which Aristotle & some others have
imposed upon it, which is very good-natured of him, and very necessary just
now! Now I am touching so deeply upon poetry, can I
forget that I have just received from Cottle a magnificent copy of his Guinea Epic. Four-and-twenty Books to read
in the dog-days! I got as far as the Mad Monk the first day, & fainted.
Mr. Cottle’s genius strongly points him to the
Pastoral, but his inclinations divert him perpetually from his calling. He
imitates Southey, as Rowe did Shakspeare, with his “Good morrow to ye;
good master Lieutt.” Instead of a man, a woman, a
daughter, he constantly writes one a man, one a woman, one his daughter.
Instead of the king, the hero, he
constantly writes, he the king, he the hero—two flowers of rhetoric palpably
from the “Joan.”
But Mr. Cottle soars a higher pitch: and when he is
original, it is in a most original way indeed. His terrific scenes are
indefatigable. Serpents, asps, spiders, ghosts, dead bodies, staircases made of
nothing, with adders’ tongues for bannisters—My God! what a brain he must
have! He puts as many plums in his pudding as my Grandmother used to do; and
then his emerging from Hell’s horrors into Light, and treading on pure
flats of this earth for twenty-three Books together!
C. L.
Note
[The little epigram was
by Mary Lamb. It was printed first in the John Woodvil
volume in 1802; and again, in a footnote to Lamb’s essay “Blakesmoor in H——shire,” 1824.
Godwin’s return was from his visit to
Curran. Coleridge had asked him to break his journey at Keswick.
“Wordsworth’s
Tragedy”—“The
Borderers.”
“Hurlothrumbo,” an opera, was written by Samuel Johnson (1691-1773), a dancing master. It was produced at the Little
Theatre in the Haymarket in 1729 and afterwards published.
“I would write a novel.” Lamb returns to this idea in Letter 91 on page 232.
One of Dyer’s printed
criticisms of Shakespeare, in his Poetics, some years later might be quoted:
“Shakespeare had the inward clothing of a fine mind; the outward covering of solid reading, of
critical observation, and the richest eloquence; and compared with these, what are the
trappings of the schools?”
“Cottle’s Guinea Epic.”
This would be Alfred, an Epic
Poem, by Joseph Cottle, the
publisher.]
LETTER 67 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[p.m. August 28, 1800.]
GEORGE DYER is
an Archimedes, and an Archimagus, and a
Tycho Brahe, and a Copernicus; and thou art the darling of the
Nine, and midwife to their wandering babe also! We take tea with that learned
poet and critic on Tuesday night, at half-past five, in his neat library; the
repast will be light and Attic, with criticism. If thou couldst contrive to
wheel up thy dear carcase on the Monday, and after dining with us on tripe,
calves’ kidneys, or whatever else the Cornucopia of St. Clare may be
willing to pour out on the occasion, might we not adjourn together to the
Heathen’s—thou with thy Black Backs and I with some innocent volume of
the Bell Letters—Shenstone, or the like?
It would make him wash his old flannel gown (that has not been washed to my
knowledge since it has been his—Oh the long time!) with
tears of joy. Thou shouldst settle his scruples and unravel his cobwebs, and
sponge off the sad stuff that weighs upon his dear wounded pia mater; thou
shouldst restore light to his eyes, and him to his friends and the public;
Parnassus should shower her civic crowns upon thee for saving the wits of a
citizen! I thought I saw a lucid interval in George the
other night—he broke in upon my studies just at tea-time, and brought with him
Dr. Anderson, an old gentleman who
ties his breeches’ knees with packthread, and boasts that he has been
disappointed by ministers. The Doctor wanted to see me; for, I being a Poet, he
thought I might furnish him with a copy of verses to suit his “Agricultural Magazine.” The
Doctor, in the course of the conversation, mentioned a poem called “Epigoniad” by one
Wilkie, an epic poem, in which there
is not one tolerable good line all through, but every incident and speech
borrowed from Homer.
George had been sitting inattentive seemingly to what
was going on—hatching of negative quantities—when, suddenly, the name of his
old friend Homer stung his pericranicks, and, jumping up,
he begged to know where he could meet with Wilkie’s
work. “It was a curious fact that
there should be such an epic poem and he not know of it; and he must get a copy
of it, as he was going to touch pretty deeply upon the subject of the Epic—and
he was sure there must be some things good in a poem of 1400 lines!” I
was pleased with this transient return of his reason and recurrence to his old
ways of thinking: it gave me great hopes of a recovery, which nothing but your
book can completely insure. Pray come on Monday if you can, and stay your own time. I have a good large room, with two beds
in it, in the handsomest of which thou shalt repose a-nights, and dream of
Spheroides. I hope you will understand by the nonsense of this letter that I am
not melancholy at the thoughts of thy coming: I thought it necessary to add
this, because you love precision. Take notice that our stay at
Dyer’s will not exceed eight o’clock,
after which our pursuits will be our own. But indeed I think a little
recreation among the Bell Letters and poetry will do you some service in the
interval of severer studies. I hope we shall fully discuss with
George Dyer what I have never yet heard done to my
satisfaction, the reason of Dr.
Johnson’s malevolent strictures on the higher species of
the Ode.
Note
[Archimedes, the philosopher and
mathematician of Syracuse; Archimagus, the title given to the High-Priest of the Persian
Magi; Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer, born 1546,
who discovered a new star in Cassiopeia; Copernicus,
the German astronomer, born 1473, the founder of modern astronomy.
“Thy Black Back”—Manning’s Algebra.
Dr. Anderson was James Anderson
(1739-1808), the editor, at that time, of Recreations in Agriculture, Natural History, Arts, and Miscellaneous
History, published in monthly parts. Lamb gave him a copy of verses—three extracts from John Woodvil which were
printed in the number for November, 1800, as being “from an unpublished drama by
C. Lamb.” They were the “Description of a Forest Life,” “The General
Lover” (“What is it you love?”) and “Fragment or Dialogue,” better known as “The Dying Lover” (see page 131). All
have slight variations from other versions. The most striking is the epithet
“lubbar bands of sleep,” instead of “lazy bands of
sleep,” in the “Description of a Forest
Life.”
Wilkie was William Wilkie
(1721-1772), the “Scottish Homer,” whose Epigoniad in nine books,
based on the fourth book of the Iliad, was published in 1757.]
LETTER 68 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[p.m. Sept. 22, 1800.]
DEAR Manning,—You needed not imagine any apology necessary. Your fine
hare and fine birds (which just now are dangling by our kitchen blaze)
discourse most eloquent music in your justification. You just nicked my palate.
For, with all due decorum and leave may it be spoken, my worship hath taken
physic for his body to-day, and being low and puling, requireth to be pampered.
Foh! how beautiful and strong those buttered onions come to my nose! For you
must know we extract a divine spirit of gravy from those materials which, duly
compounded with a consistence of bread and cream (y’clept bread-sauce),
each to each giving double grace, do mutually illustrate and set off (as
skilful goldfoils to rare jewels) your partridge, pheasant, woodcock, snipe,
teal, widgeon, and the other lesser daughters of the ark. My friendship,
struggling with my carnal and fleshly prudence (which suggests that a bird a
man is the proper allotment in such cases), yearneth sometimes to have thee
here to pick a wing or so. I question if your Norfolk sauces match our London
culinaric.
George Dyer has introduced me to the
table of an agreeable old gentleman, Dr.
Anderson, who gives hot legs of mutton and grape pies at his
sylvan lodge at Isleworth, where, in the middle of a street, he has shot up a
wall most preposterously before his small dwelling, which, with the
circumstance of his taking several panes of glass out of bedroom windows (for
air), causeth his neighbours to speculate strangely on the state of the good
man’s pericranicks. Plainly, he lives under the reputation of being
deranged. George does not mind this circumstance; he
rather likes him the better for it. The Doctor, in his pursuits, joins
agricultural to poetical science, and has set
George’s brains mad about the old Scotch
writers, Barbour, Douglas’sÆneid, Blind
Harry, &c. We returned home in a return postchaise (having
dined with the Doctor), and George kept wondering and
wondering, for eight or nine turnpike miles, what was the name, and striving to
recollect the name, of a poet anterior to Barbour. I
begged to know what was remaining of his works. “There is nothing extant of his works, Sir, but by all accounts he
seems to have been a fine genius!” This fine genius, without
anything to show for it or any title beyond George’s
courtesy, without even a name! and Barbour, and
Douglas, and Blind Harry, now are
the predominant sounds in George’s pia mater, and
their buzzings exclude politics, criticism, and algebra—the late lords of that
illustrious lumber-room. Mark, he has never read any of these bucks, but is
impatient till he reads them all at the Doctor’s suggestion. Poor Dyer!
his friends should be careful what sparks they let fall into such inflammable
matter.
Could I have my will of the heathen, I would lock him up
from all access of new ideas; I would exclude all critics that would not swear
me first (upon their Virgil) that they would
feed him with nothing but the old, safe, familiar notions and sounds (the
rightful aborigines of his brain)—Gray,
Akenside and Mason. In these sounds, reiterated as often as
possible, there could be nothing painful, nothing distracting.
God bless me, here are the birds, smoking hot!
All that is gross and unspiritual in me rises at the sight!
Avaunt friendship and all memory of absent friends!
C. Lamb.
Note
[“Divine spirit of gravy.” This passage is the first
of Lamb’s outbursts of gustatory ecstasy,
afterwards to become frequent in his writings.
John Barbour (1316-1395), author of Bruce;Gavin Douglas, (?1474-1522), author of two allegories,
“The Palace of Honour”
and “King Hart,” and
translator of the Æneid; and Henry the Minstrel, or
Blind Harry (fl. 1470-1492), author of a poem on Wallace.
Here should come a letter, dated October 9, 1800, in the finest spirit
of comedy describing to Coleridge an evening with
George Dyer and the Cottles
after the death of their brother Amos; and how
Lamb, by praising Joseph Cottle’s poem, drew away that good man’s thoughts from
his grief. “Joseph, who till now had sat with his knees
cowering in by the fireplace, wheeled about, and with great difficulty of body shifted
the same round to the corner of a table where I was sitting, and first stationing one
thigh over the other, which is his sedentary mood, and placidly fixing his benevolent
face right against mine, waited my observations. At that moment it came strongly into
my mind, that I had got Uncle Toby before me, he
looked so kind and so good.” The letter, printed in full in other editions,
is unfortunately not available for this.]
LETTER 69 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[p.m. Oct. 16, 1800.]
DEAR Manning,—Had you written one week before you did, I certainly
should have obeyed your injunction; you should have seen me before my letter. I
will explain to you my situation. There are six
of us in one department. Two of us (within these four days) are confined with
severe fevers; and two more, who belong to the Tower Militia, expect to have
marching orders on Friday. Now six are absolutely necessary. I have already
asked and obtained two young hands to supply the loss of the feverites; and, with the other prospect before me, you may believe I
cannot decently ask leave of absence for myself. All I can promise (and I do
promise with the sincerity of Saint Peter, and the
contrition of sinner Peter if I fail) that I will come the
very first spare week, and go nowhere till I have been at Cambridge. No matter
if you are in a state of pupilage when I come; for I can employ myself in
Cambridge very pleasantly in the mornings. Are there not libraries, halls,
colleges, books, pictures, statues? I wish to God you had made London in your
way. There is an exhibition quite uncommon in Europe, which could not have
escaped your genius,—a live rattlesnake, ten feet in length, and the thickness
of a big leg. I went to see it last night by candlelight. We were ushered into
a room very little bigger than ours at Pentonville. A man and woman and four
boys live in this room, joint tenants with nine snakes, most of them such as no
remedy has been discovered for their bite. We walked into the middle, which is
formed by a half-moon of wired boxes, all mansions of snakes,—whip-snakes,
thunder-snakes, pig-nose-snakes, American vipers, and this monster. He lies
curled up in folds; and immediately a stranger enters (for he is used to the
family, and sees them play at cards,) he set up a rattle like a
watchman’s in London, or near as loud, and reared up a head, from the
midst of these folds, like a toad, and shook his head, and showed every sign a
snake can show of irritation. I had the foolish curiosity to strike the wires
with my finger, and the devil flew at me with his toad-mouth wide open: the
inside of his mouth is quite white. I had got my finger away, nor could he well
have bit me with his damn’d big mouth, which would have been certain
death in five minutes. But it frightened me so much, that I did not recover my
voice for a minute’s space. I forgot, in my fear, that he was secured.
You would have forgot too, for ’tis incredible how such a monster can be
confined in small gauzy-looking wires. I dreamed of snakes in the night. I wish
to heaven you could see it. He absolutely swelled with passion to the bigness
of a large thigh. I could not retreat without infringing on another box, and
just behind, a little devil not an inch from my back, had got his nose out,
with some difficulty and pain, quite through the bars! He was soon taught
better manners. All the snakes were curious, and objects of terror: but this
monster, like Aaron’s serpent, swallowed up the
impression of the rest. He opened his damn’d mouth, when he made at me,
as wide as his head was broad. I hallooed out quite
loud, and felt pains all over my body with the fright.
I have had the felicity of hearing George Dyer read out one book of “The Farmer’s Boy.”
I thought it rather childish. No doubt, there is originality in it, (which, in
your self-taught geniuses, is a most rare quality, they generally getting hold
of some bad models in a scarcity of books, and forming their taste on them,)
but no selection. All is described.
Mind, I have only heard read one book.
Yours sincerely, Philo-Snake, C. L.
Note
[The
Farmers Boy, by Robert
Bloomfield, was published in March, 1800, and was immensely popular. Other
criticisms upon it by Lamb will be found on pages 193
and 621.
Lamb’s visit to Cambridge was deferred until
January 5, 1801. See page 207.]
LETTER 70 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[p.m. Nov. 3, 1800.]
ECQUID
meditaturArchimedes? What is Euclid doing? What has happened to learned
Trismegist?—Doth he take it in ill part, that his
humble friend did not comply with his courteous invitation? Let it suffice, I
could not come—are impossibilities nothing—be they abstractions of the
intellects or not (rather) most sharp and mortifying realities? nuts in the
Will’s mouth too hard for her to crack?
brick’ and stone walls in her way, which she can by no means eat through?
sore lets, impedimenta viarum, no
thoroughfares? racemi nimium alte
pendentes? Is the phrase classic? I allude to the grapes in
Æsop, which cost the fox a strain, and
gained the world an aphorism. Observe the superscription of this letter. In
adapting the size of the letters, which constitute your
name and Mr. Crisp’s name
respectively, I had an eye to your different stations in life. ’Tis
really curious, and must be soothing to an aristocrat. I
wonder it has never been hit on before my time. I have made an acquisition
latterly of a pleasant hand, one Rickman, to whom I was introduced by George Dyer, not the most flattering auspices
under which one man can be introduced to another. George
brings all sorts of people together, setting up a sort of agrarian law, or common property, in matter of society;
but for once he has done me a great pleasure, while he was only pursuing a
principle, as ignes fatui may light
you home. This Rickman lives in our Buildings, immediately
opposite our house; the finest fellow to drop in a’ nights, about nine or
ten o’clock—cold bread-and-cheese time—just in the wishing time of the night, when you wish for somebody to come in,
without a distinct idea of a probable anybody. Just in the nick, neither too
early to be tedious, nor too late to sit a reasonable time. He is a most
pleasant hand: a fine rattling fellow, has gone through life laughing at solemn
apes; himself hugely literate, oppressively full of information in all
stuff” of conversation, from matter of fact to Xenophon and Plato—can talk
Greek with Porson, politics with
Thelwall, conjecture with
George Dyer, nonsense with me, and anything with
anybody: a great farmer, somewhat concerned in an agricultural magazine—reads
no poetry but Shakspeare, very intimate
with Southey, but never reads his
poetry: relishes George Dyer, thoroughly penetrates into
the ridiculous wherever found, understands the first
time (a great desideratum in common minds)—you need never twice speak
to him; does not want explanations, translations, limitations, as Professor Godwin does when you make an
assertion: up to anything, down
to everything—whatever sapit hominem.
A perfect man. All this farrago, which must perplex you to read, and has put me
to a little trouble to select, only proves how impossible it is to describe a
pleasant hand. You must see
Rickman to know him, for he is a species in one. A new
class. An exotic, any slip of which I am proud to put in my garden-pot. The
clearest-headed fellow. Fullest of matter with least verbosity. If there be any
alloy in my fortune to have met with such a man, it is that he commonly divides
his time between town and country, having some foolish family ties at
Christchurch, by which means he can only gladden our London hemisphere with
returns of light. He is now going for six weeks.
At last I have written to Kemble, to know the event of my play, which was presented last
Christmas. As I suspected, came an answer back that the copy was lost, and
could not be found—no hint that anybody had to this day ever looked into
it—with a courteous (reasonable!) request of another copy (if I had one by me,)
and a promise of a definitive answer in a week. I could not resist so facile
and moderate a demand, so scribbled out another, omitting sundry things, such
as the witch story, about half of the forest scene (which is too leisurely for
story), and transposing that damn’d soliloquy about England getting
drunk, which, like its reciter, stupidly stood alone, nothing prevenient or
antevenient, and cleared away a good deal besides; and sent this copy, written
all out (with alterations, &c., requiring judgment) in one day and a half! I sent it last night, and
am in weekly expectation of the tolling-bell and death-warrant.
This is all my Lunnon news. Send me some from the banks of Cam, as the poets delight to speak, especially
George Dyer, who has no other name,
nor idea, nor definition of Cambridge: namely, its being a market-town, sending
members to Parliament, never entered into his definition: it was and is,
simply, the banks of the Cam or the fair Cam, as Oxford is the banks of the
Isis or the fair Isis. Yours in all humility, most illustrious
Trismegist,
C. Lamb.
(Read on; there’s more at the bottom.)
You ask me about the “Farmer’s Boy”—don’t
you think the fellow who wrote it
(who is a shoemaker) has a poor mind? Don’t you find he is always
silly about poor Giles, and
those abject kind of phrases, which mark a man that looks up to wealth?
None of Burns’s poet-dignity.
What do you think? I have just opened him; but he makes me sick. Dyer knows the shoemaker (a damn’d
stupid hound in company); but George promises to
introduce him indiscriminately to all friends and all combinations.
Note
[The paragraph beginning “At last I have written,”
has certain corrections taken from the late Mr. Dykes
Campbell’s copy of it in The Athenæum, October 31, 1891.
“Ecquid meditatur
Archimedes?”—“What does
Manning ‘intend’?” Possibly a
half recollection of Milton’ssonnet on Cyriack Skinner, referred to
in Letter 63.
“Impedimenta
viarum.” Lamb here drops into
Burtonese.
“Racemi nimium alte
pendentes.” Clusters hanging too high.
Mr. Crisp was Manning’s
landlord, a barber in St. Mary’s Passage, Cambridge. In one letter at least Lamb spells his name Crips—a joke he
was fond of. In Congreve’s “Way of the World,” one of the servants
says “crips” for “crisp”.
“Rickman.” This was John Rickman (1771-1840), already a friend of Southey’s, whom he had met at Burton, near
Christchurch, in Hampshire, where Rickman’s father lived.
Rickman, a graduate of Lincoln College, Oxford, was at this time
secretary to Charles Abbot, afterwards Lord
Colchester. He had conducted the Commercial, Agricultural, and Manufacturer’s
Magazine, and he was practically the originator of the census in England.
We shall meet with him often in the correspondence.
“Wishing time.” A variation upon Hamlet’s “witching time of night”
(III., 2, 406).
Kemble was John Philip Kemble,
then manager of Drury Lane. The play was “John Woodvil.” For an account of the version
which Lamb submitted, see the Notes to Poems and Plays, Vol. V. of the present edition.
George Dyer wrote a History of Cambridge
University.
George Daniel, the antiquary and bookseller, tells
us that many years later he took Bloomfield to dine
with Lamb at Islington.]
LETTER 71 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[p.m. Nov. 28, 1800.]
DEAR Manning,—I have received a very kind invitation from Lloyd and Sophia to go and spend a month with them at the Lakes. Now it
fortunately happens (which is so seldom the case!) that I have spare cash by
me, enough to answer the expenses of so long a journey; and I am determined to
get away from the office by some means. The purpose of this letter is to
request of you (my dear friend) that you will not take it unkind if I decline
my proposed visit to Cambridge for the present. Perhaps
I shall be able to take Cambridge in my way, going or
coming. I need not describe to you the expectations which such an one as
myself, pent up all my life in a dirty city, have formed of a tour to the
Lakes. Consider Grasmere! Ambleside! Wordsworth! Coleridge! I
hope you will.* Hills, woods, lakes, and mountains, to the eternal devil. I
will eat snipes with thee, Thomas Manning. Only confess,
confess, a bite.
P.S. I think you named the 16th; but was it not modest
of Lloyd to send such an invitation! It
shows his knowledge of money and time. I would be loth to think he meant “Ironic satire sidelong sklented On my poor pursie.”—Burns.
For my part, with reference to my friends northward, I must confess that I
am not romance-bit about Nature. The earth, and sea, and sky (when all is said)
is but as a house to dwell in. If the inmates be courteous, and good liquors
flow like the conduits at an old coronation; if they can talk sensibly and feel
properly; I have no need to stand staring upon the gilded looking-glass (that
strained my friend’s purse-strings in the purchase), nor his
five-shilling print over the mantelpiece of old
Nabbs the carrier (which only betrays his false taste). Just as
important to me (in a sense) is all the furniture of my world—eye-pampering,
but satisfies no heart. Streets, streets, streets, markets, theatres, churches,
Covent Gardens, shops
sparkling with pretty faces of industrious milliners, neat sempstresses, ladies
cheapening, gentlemen behind counters lying, authors in the street with
spectacles, George Dyers (you may know
them by their gait), lamps lit at night, pastry-cooks’ and
silver-smiths’ shops, beautiful Quakers of Pentonville, noise of coaches,
drowsy cry of mechanic watchman at night, with bucks reeling home drunk; if you
happen to wake at midnight, cries of Fire and Stop thief; inns of court, with
their learned air, and halls, and butteries, just like Cambridge colleges; old
book-stalls, Jeremy Taylors, Burtons on Melancholy, and Religio Medicis on every stall. These are
thy pleasures, O London with-the-many-sins. O City abounding in whores, for
these may Keswick and her giant brood go hang!
C. L.
Note
[Charles Lloyd had just settled
at Old Brathay, about three miles from Ambleside.
Manning’s reply to this letter indicates that
Lamb’s story of the invitation to stay with
Lloyd was a hoax. The first page ended where I
have put the asterisk—as in Letter 59, to Gutch.
Manning writes: “N.B. Your Lake
story completely took me in till I got to the 2d page. I was pleased to think you were
so rich, but I confess rather wondered how you should be able conveniently to take so
long a journey this inside-fare time of the year.”
Manning also says: “I condole with you,
Mr. Lamb, on the tragic fate of your tragedie—I wonder what fool it was
that read it! By the bye, you would do me a very very great favour by letting me have a
copy. If Beggars might be chusers, I should ask to have it transcribed partly by you
and partly by your sister. I have a desire to possess some of Mary’s handwriting” (see Letter 79 from
Lamb to Manning, on page 205).
“Burns.” The lines
are in the poem “To W. Simpson,
Ochiltree,” verse 2:— Ironic satire, sidetins sklented On my poor Musie.
“Beautiful Quakers of Pentonville.” This is almost
certainly a reference to Hester Savory, the original
of Lamb’s poem “Hester” (see page 261). The whole passage is the
first of three eulogies of London in the letters (see pages 210 and 212), all very similar.
See also page 235 for “The
Londoner,” which Lamb wrote for the Morning Post and which was
printed there on February 1, 1802.
“You may know them by their gait” (see “Julius Cæsar,” I., 3, 132.]
LETTERS 72 AND 73 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
[Dec. 4, 1800.]
DEAR Sir,—I send this speedily after the heels of
Cooper (O! the dainty expression) to say that
Mary is obliged to stay at home on
Sunday to receive a female friend, from whom I am equally glad to escape. So
that we shall be by ourselves. I write, because it may make some difference in
your marketting, &c.
C. L. Thursday Morning.
I am sorry to put you to the expense of twopence
postage. But I calculate thus: if Mary comes she will
eat Beef 2 plates, 4d. Batter Pudding 1 do. 2d. Beer, a pint, 2d. Wine, 3 glasses, 11d. I drink no wine! Chesnuts, after dinner, 2d. Tea and supper at moderate calculation, 9d. ——— 2s. 6d. From which deduct 2d. postage ——— 2s. 4d.
You are a clear gainer by her not
coming.
Note
[If the date be correct this becomes the first extant letter proper
which Lamb sent to the author of Political Justice. Godwin was then forty-four years old, and had long been
busy upon his tragedy “Antonio,” in which Lamb had been assisting with
suggestions. In this connection I place here the following document, which belongs,
however, naturally to an earlier date, but is not harmed by its present position:—
MINUTE SENT BY C. LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
[No date. Autumn, 1800.]
Queries. Whether the best conclusion would not be a
solemn judicial pleading, appointed by the king, before himself in person of
Antonio as proxy for Roderigo, and Guzman for himself—the forms and ordering of it to be highly
solemn and grand. For this purpose, (allowing it,) the king must be reserved,
and not have committed his royal dignity by descending to previous conference
with Antonio, but must refer from the
beginning to this settlement. He must sit in dignity as a high royal arbiter.
Whether this would admit of spiritual interpositions, cardinals,
&c.—appeals to the Pope, and haughty rejection of his interposition by
Antonio—(this merely by the way).
The pleadings must be conducted by short speeches—replies,
taunts, and bitter recriminations by Antonio, in his rough style. In the midst of the undecided
cause, may not a messenger break up the proceedings by an account of Roderigo’s death (no improbable or
far-fetch’d event), and the whole conclude with an affecting and awful
invocation of Antonio upon Roderigo’s spirit, now no longer dependent
upon earthly tribunals or a froward woman’s will, &c., &c.
Almanza’s daughter is now free,
&c.
This might be made very affecting.
Better nothing follow after; if anything, she must step forward and resolve to
take the veil. In this case, the whole story of the former nunnery must be
omitted. But, I think, better leave the final conclusion to the imagination of
the spectator. Probably the violence of confining her in a convent is not
necessary; Antonio’s own castle would
be sufficient.
To relieve the former part of the Play, could not some sensible images, some
work for the Eye, be introduced? A gallery of Pictures, Almanza’s ancestors, to which Antonio might affectingly point his sister, one
by one, with anecdote, &c.
At all events, with the present want of action, the Play
must not extend above four Acts, unless it is quite new modell’d. The
proposed alterations might all be effected in a few weeks.
Solemn judicial pleadings always go off well, as in Henry the 8th, Merchant of Venice, and
perhaps Othello.
Note
Lamb, said Mr.
Paul, writing of this critical Minute, was so genuinely kind and even
affectionate in his criticism that Godwin id not
perceive his real disapproval.
Mr. Swinburne, writing in The Athenæum for May 13, 1876, made
an interesting comment upon one of Lamb’s
suggestions in the foregoing document. It contains, he remarks, “a singular
anticipation of one of the most famous passages in the work of the greatest master of our own age, the scene of the portraits in
‘Hernani:’ ‘To relieve the former part of the play, could not
some sensible images, some work for the eye, be introduced? A gallery
of pictures, Alexander’s ancestors, to
which Antonio might affectingly point his
sister, one by one, with anecdote, &c.’ I know of no coincidence
more pleasantly and strangely notable than this between the gentle genius of the
loveliest among English essayists and the tragic invention of the loftiest among French
poets.”
After long negotiation “Antonio” was now actually in rehearsal at Drury
Lane, to be produced on December 13. Lamb supplied
the epilogue.
Cooper was Godwin’s
servant.]
LETTER 74 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
Dec. 10th, 1800. Wednesday Morning.
DEAR Sir,—I expected a good deal of pleasure from
your company to-morrow, but I am sorry I must beg of you to excuse me. I have
been confined ever since I saw you with one of the severest colds I ever
experienced, occasioned by being in the night air on Sunday, and on the
following day, very foolishly. I am neither in health nor spirits to meet
company. I hope and trust I shall get out on Saturday night. You will add to
your many favours, by transmitting to me as early as possible as many tickets
as conveniently you can spare,—Yours truly,
C. L.
I have been plotting how to abridge the Epilogue. But I
cannot see that any lines can be spared, retaining the connection, except
these two, which are better out. “Why should I instance, &c., The sick man’s purpose, &c.,”
and then the following line must run thus, “The truth by an example best is
shown.”
Excuse this important
postscript.
LETTER 75 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[p.m. Dec. 13, 1800.]
DON’T spill the cream upon this letter. I have
received your letter this moment, not having been at the office. I have just
time to scribble down the epilogue. To your epistle I will just reply, that I
will certainly come to Cambridge before January is out: I’ll come when I
can. You shall have an amended copy of my play early next week. Mary thanks you; but her handwriting is too
feminine to be exposed to a Cambridge gentleman, though I endeavour to persuade
her that you understand algebra, and must understand her hand. The play is the
man’s you wot of; but for God’s sake (who would not like to have so
pious a professor’s work damn’d) do not mention it—it is to come out in a feigned name,
as one Tobin’s. I will omit the
introductory lines which connect it with the play, and give you the concluding
tale, which is the mass and bulk of the epilogue. The name is JackIncident. It is about
promise-breaking—you will see it all, if you read the papers.
“Jack, of dramatic genius justly vain, Purchased a renter’s share at Drury-lane; A prudent man in every other matter, Known at his club-room for an honest hatter; Humane and courteous, led a civil life, And has been seldom known to beat his wife; But Jack is now grown quite another man, Frequents the green-room, knows the plot and plan Of each new piece, And has been seen to talk with Sheridan! In at the play-house just at six he pops, And never quits it till the curtain drops, Is never absent on the author’s night, Knows actresses and actors too by sight; So humble, that with Suett
he’ll confer, Or take a pipe with plain Jack
Bannister; Nay, with an author has been known so free, He once suggested a catastrophe— In short, John dabbled till his head was
turn’d; His wife remonstrated, his neighbours mourn’d, His customers were dropping off apace, And Jack’s affairs began to wear a piteous face. One night his wife began a curtain lecture; “My dearest Johnny, husband, spouse,
protector, Take pity on your helpless babes and me, Save us from ruin, you from bankruptcy— Look to your business, leave these cursed plays, And try again your old industrious ways.” Jack who was always scared at the Gazette, And had some bits of scull uninjured yet, Promised amendment, vow’d his wife spake reason, “He would not see another play that season—” Three stubborn fortnights Jack his
promise kept, Was late and early in his shop, eat, slept, And walk’d and talk’d, like ordinary men; No wit, but John the hatter once again— Visits his club: when lo! one fatal night His wife with horror view’d the well-known sight— John’s hat, wig, snuff-box—well she knew his
tricks— And Jack decamping at the hour of six, Just at the counter’s edge a playbill lay, Announcing that “Pizarro” was the play— “O Johnny, Johnny, this
is your old doing.” Quoth Jack, “Why what the devil
storm’s a-brewing? About a harmless play why all this fright? I’ll go and see it if it’s but for spite— Zounds, woman! Nelson’s’1 to be
there to-night.”
N.B.—This was intended for Jack Bannister to speak; but the sage managers have chosen
Miss Heard,—except Miss
Tidswell, the worst actress ever seen or heard. Now, I remember I have promised the loan of my play. I will
lend it instantly, and you shall get it (’pon honour!) by this day week.
I must go and dress for the boxes! First night! Finding I
have time, I transcribe the rest. Observe, you have read the last first; it
begins thus:—the names I took from a little outline G. gave me. I have not read the play.
“Ladies, ye’ve seen how Guzman’s consort died, Poor victim of a Spaniard brother’s pride, When Spanish honour through the world was blown, And Spanish beauty for the best was known.2 In that romantic, unenlighten’d time, A breach of promise3 was
a sort of crime— Which of you handsome English ladies here, But deems the penance bloody and severe? A whimsical old Saragossa4 fashion, That a dead father’s dying inclination, Should live to thwart a living daughter’s
passion,5 Unjustly on the sex we6
men exclaim, Rail at your7 vices,—and
commit the same;— Man is a promise-breaker from the womb, And goes a promise-breaker to the tomb— What need we instance here the lover’s vow, The sick man’s purpose, or the great man’s bow?8 The truth by few examples best is shown— Instead of many which are better known, Take poor Jack Incident,
that’s dead and gone. Jack,” &c. &c. &c.
Now you have it all—how do you like it? I am going to hear
it recited!!!
C. L.
1 A good clap-trap. Nelson has exhibited two or three times at both
theatres—and advertised himself.
2 Four easy lines. 3 For which the heroine
died. 4 In Spain!!
5 Two neat lines. 6 Or you. 7 Or our, as they have altered it.
8 Antithesis
Note
[“As one Tobin’s.” The
rehearsals of “Antonio”
were attended by Godwin’s friend, John Tobin, subsequently author of “The Honeymoon,” in the hope, on
account of Godwin’s reputation for heterodoxy, of deceiving
people as to the real authorship of the play. It was, however, avowed by
Godwin on the title-page.
Jack Bannister, the comedian, was a favourite actor
of Lamb’s. See the Elia essay “On some of the Old Actors.”
Miss Heard was a daughter of William Heard, the author of “The Snuff-Box,” a feeble comedy. Miss Tidswell, by the irony of fate, had a part in
Lamb’s own play, “Mr. H.,” six years later.
“I have not read the play.” Meaning probably,
“I have not read it in its final form.” Lamb must have read it in earlier versions. I quote Mr. Kegan Paul’s summary of the plot of “Antonio”:—
Helena was betrothed, with her father’s consent,
to her brother Antonio’s friend,
Roderigo. While Antonio and Roderigo were at
the wars, Helena fell in love with, and married, Don Gusman. She was the king’s ward, who set aside the
precontract. Antonio, returning, leaves his friend behind; he has had
great sorrows, but all will be well when he comes to claim his bride. When
Antonio finds his sister is married, the rage he exhibits is
ferocious. He carries his sister off from her husband’s house, and demands that the
king shall annul the marriage with Gusman. There is then talk of
Helena’s entrance into a convent. At last the king, losing
patience, gives judgment, as he had done before, that the pre-contract with
Roderigo was invalid, and the marriage to
Gusman valid. Whereupon Antonio bursts
through the guards, and kills his sister.]
LETTER 76 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
Dec. 14, 1800. Late o’ Sunday.
DEAR Sir,—I have performed my office in a slovenly
way, but judge for me. I sat down at 6 o’clock, and never left reading
(and I read out to Mary) your play till
10. In this sitting I noted down lines as they occurred, exactly as you will
read my rough paper. Do not be frightened at the bulk of my remarks, for they
are almost all upon single lines, which, put together, do not amount to a
hundred, and many of them merely verbal. I had but one object in view,
abridgement for compression sake. I have used a dogmatical language (which is
truly ludicrous when the trivial nature of my remarks is considered), and,
remember, my office was to hunt out faults. You may fairly abridge one half of
them, as a fair deduction for the infirmities of Error, and a single reading,
which leaves only fifty objections, most of them
merely against words, on no short play. Remember, you constituted me
Executioner, and a hangman has been seldom seen to be ashamed of his profession
before Master Sheriff. We’ll talk of the Beauties (of which I am more
than ever sure) when we meet,—Yours truly,
C. L.
I will barely add, as you are on the very point of
printing, that in my opinion neither prologue nor epilogue should accompany
the play. It can only serve to remind your readers of its fate. Both
suppose an audience, and, that jest being gone, must convert into
burlesque. Nor would I (but therein custom and decorum must be a law) print
the actors’ names. Some things must be kept out of sight.
I have done, and I have but a few square inches of
paper to fill up. I am emboldened by a little jorum of punch (vastly good)
to say that next to one man, I am the most hurt at our ill success. The
breast of Hecuba, where she did suckle
Hector, looked not to be more
lovely than Marshal’s forehead when it spit forth sweat, at
Critic-swords contending. I remember two honest lines by Marvel, (whose poems by the way I am just going to possess) “Where every Mower’s wholesome heat Smells like an Alexander’s sweat.”
Note
[“Antonio” was performed on December 13, with John
Philip Kemble in the title-role, and was a complete failure. Lamb wrote an account of the unlucky evening many years
later in the “Old Actors”
series in the London
Magazine (see Elia, Vol. II. of the present edition, page 292). He speaks there, as
here, of Marshal’s forehead—Marshal being
John Marshall, a friend of the
Godwins. The lines from Andrew Marvell are
from the poem “Upon Appleton
House.” For the reference to Hecuba see
“Coriolanus,” I., 3,
43-46.
After the play Godwin supped with
Lamb, when it was decided to publish “Antonio” at once.
Lamb retained the MS. for criticism. The present letter in the
original contains his comments, the only one of which that Mr.
Kegan Paul thought worth reproducing being the following:—
“‘Enviable’ is a very bad word. I allude to
‘Enviable right to bless us.’ For instance, Burns, comparing the ills of manhood with the state of
infancy, says, ‘Oh! enviable early days;’ here ’tis good,
because the passion lay in comparison. Excuse my insulting your judgment with an
illustration. I believe I only wanted to beg in the name of a favourite Bardie, or at
most to confirm my own judgment.”
Lamb, it will be remembered (see page 172), had
refused to let Coleridge use “enviable”
in “Lewti.” Burns’s poem to which Lamb
alludes is “Despondency, an
Ode,” Stanza 5, “Oh! enviable, early days.”
Godwin’s play was published in 1801 without
Lamb’s epilogue.]
LETTER 77 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
Dec. 16th, 1800.
WE are damn’d!
Not the facetious epilogue could save us. For, as the
editor of the “Morning
Post,” quick-sighted gentleman! hath this morning truly observed,
(I beg pardon if I falsify his words, their profound sense I am sure I retain,)
both prologue and epilogue were worthy of accompanying such a piece; and indeed
(mark the profundity, Mister Manning)
were received with proper indignation by such of the audience only as thought
either worth attending to. Professor, thy glories wax dim! Again, the
incomparable author of the “True
Briton” declareth in his paper (bearing same date) that the
epilogue was an indifferent attempt at humour and character, and failed in
both. I forbear to mention the other papers, because I have not read them. O
Professor, how different thy feelings now
(quantum mutatus ab illo professore, qui in
agris philosophiæ tantas victorias aquisivisti),—how
different thy proud feelings but one little week ago,—thy anticipation of thy
nine nights,—those visionary claps, which have soothed thy soul by day and thy
dreams by night! Calling in accidentally on the Professor while he was out, I
was ushered into the study; and my nose quickly (most sagacious always) pointed
me to four tokens lying loose upon thy table, Professor, which indicated thy
violent and satanical pride of heart. Imprimis, there caught mine eye a list of
six persons, thy friends, whom thou didst meditate inviting to a sumptuous
dinner on the Thursday, anticipating the profits of thy Saturday’s play
to answer charges; I was in the honoured file! Next, a stronger evidence of thy
violent and almost satanical pride, lay a list of all the morning papers (from
the “Morning
Chronicle” downwards to the “Porcupine,”) with the places of their
respective offices, where thou wast meditating to insert, and didst insert, an
elaborate sketch of the story of thy play—stones in thy enemy’s hand to
bruise thee with; and severely wast thou bruised, O Professor! nor do I know
what oil to pour into thy wounds. Next, which convinced me to a dead conviction
of thy pride, violent and almost satanical pride—lay a list of books, which thy un-tragedy-favoured pocket could never
answer; Dodsley’sOld Plays, Malone’sShakspeare (still harping upon thy play, thy
philosophy abandoned meanwhile to Christians and superstitious minds); nay, I
believe (if I can believe my memory), that the ambitious Encyclopædia itself
was part of thy meditated acquisitions; but many a playbook was there. All
these visions are damned; and thou, Professor, must read Shakspere in future out of a common edition;
and, hark ye, pray read him to a little better purpose! Last and strongest
against thee (in colours manifest as the hand upon
Belshazzar’s wall), lay a volume of poems by C. Lloyd and C. Lamb.
Thy heart misgave thee, that thy assistant might possibly not have talent
enough to furnish thee an epilogue! Manning, all these
things came over my mind; all the gratulations that would have thickened upon
him, and even some have glanced aside upon his humble friend; the vanity, and
the fame, and the profits (the Professor is £500 ideal money out of pocket by
this failure, besides £2OO he would have got for the copyright, and the
Professor is never much beforehand with the world; what he gets is all by the
sweat of his brow and dint of brain, for the Professor, though a sure man, is
also a slow); and now to muse upon thy altered physiognomy, thy pale and
squalid appearance (a kind of blue sickness about the eyelids), and thy crest
fallen, and thy proud demand of £200 from thy bookseller changed to an
uncertainty of his taking it at all, or giving thee full £50. The Professor has
won my heart by this his mournful catastrophe. You remember Marshall, who dined with him at my house; I
met him in the lobby immediately after the damnation of the Professor’s
play, and he looked to me like an angel: his face was lengthened, and all over sweat; I never saw such a care-fraught
visage; I could have hugged him, I loved him so intensely. “From every
pore of him a perfume fell.” I have seen that man in many
situations, and from my soul I think that a more god-like honest soul exists
not in this world. The Professor’s poor nerves trembling with the recent
shock, he hurried him away to my house to supper; and there we comforted him as
well as we could. He came to consult me about a change of catastrophe; but
alas! the piece was condemned long before that crisis. I at first humoured him
with a specious proposition, but have since joined his true friends in advising
him to give it up. He did it with a pang, and is to print it as his.
L.
Note
[The Professor was Lamb’s
name for Godwin.
“Quantum mutatus ab illo . .
.”—“How changed from that Professor who in the fields of
philosophy had achieved so many victories.” An adaptation of Virgil, Æneid, II., 274, etc.
The Porcupine was Cobbett’s
paper.
“From every pore of him a perfume fell.” From
Lee’s “Rival Queens,” I., 3, 44.]
LETTERS 78 AND 79 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[Middle December.]
I SEND you all of Coleridge’s letters to me, which I have preserved: some
of them are upon the subject of my play. I also send you Kemble’s two letters, and the
prompter’s courteous epistle, with a curious critique on “Pride’s Cure,”
by a young physician from Edinbro’, who
modestly suggests quite another kind of a plot. These are monuments of my
disappointment which I like to preserve.
In Coleridge’s
letters you will find a good deal of amusement, to see genuine talent
struggling against a pompous display of it. I also send you the Professor’s letter to me (careful
Professor! to conceal his name even from his correspondent), ere yet the
Professor’s pride was cured. Oh monstrous and almost satanical pride!
You will carefully keep all (except the Scotch
Doctor’s, which burn) in statu quo, till I come to claim mine own.
C. Lamb.
For Mister
Manning, Teacher of Mathematics and the Black Arts. There is
another letter in the inside cover of the book opposite the blank leaf that
was.
Mind this goes for a letter. (Acknowledge it directly,
if only in ten words.)
Dear Manning—(I
shall want to hear this comes safe.) I have scratched out a good deal, as you
will see. Generally, what I have rejected was either false in feeling, or a
violation of character—mostly of the first sort. I will here just instance in
the concluding few lines of the “Dying Lover’s Story,” which
completely contradicted his character of silent and unreproachful. I hesitated
a good deal what copy to send you, and at last resolved to send the worst,
because you are familiar with it, and can make it out; and a stranger would
find so much difficulty in doing it, that it would give him more pain than
pleasure.
This is compounded precisely of the two persons’
hands you requested it should be.—Yours sincerely,
C. Lamb.
Note
[These were the letters accompanying the copy of “Pride’s Cure” (or “John Woodvil”) which Charles and Mary Lamb
together made for Manning, as requested in the note
on page 195.
All the letters mentioned by Lamb
have vanished; unless by an unlikely chance the bundle contained Coleridge’s letters on Mrs. Lamb’s death and on the quarrel with Lamb
and Lloyd (see pages 42 and 120).
Lamb, in later life, seldom kept letters; fortunately he preserved
several of Manning’s.
The last lines of “The
Dying Lover” will be found quoted on page 131.
Manning’s reply, dated December, 1800, gives a
little information concerning the Edinburgh physician’s letter—“that
gentleman whose fertile brain can, at a moment’s warning, furnish you with 10
Thousand models of a plot—‘The greatest variety of Rapes, Murders, Deathsheads,
&c., &c., sold here.’” Manning thinks that
the Scotch doctor understands Lamb’s tragedy
better than Coleridge does. He adds: “P.S.—My verdict upon the Poet’s epitaph is
‘genuine.’” This probably applies to a question asked by
Lamb concerning Wordsworth’spoem of that name.]
LETTER 80 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
December 27th, 1800.
AT length George
Dyer’s phrenesis has come to a crisis; he is raging and
furiously mad. I waited upon the heathen, Thursday was a se’nnight; the
first symptom which struck my eye and gave me incontrovertible proof of the
fatal truth was a pair of nankeen pantaloons four times too big for him, which
the said Heathen did pertinaciously affirm to be new.
They were absolutely ingrained with the accumulated dirt of
ages; but he affirmed them to be clean. He was going to visit a lady that was
nice about those things, and that’s the reason he wore nankeen that day.
And then he danced, and capered, and fidgeted, and pulled up his pantaloons,
and hugged his intolerable flannel vestment closer about his poetic loins; anon
he gave it loose to the zephyrs which plentifully insinuate their tiny bodies
through every crevice, door, window or wainscot, expressly formed for the
exclusion of such impertinents. Then he caught at a proof sheet, and catched up
a laundress’s bill instead—made a dart at Blom-field’s Poems, and
threw them in agony aside. I could not bring him to one direct reply; he could
not maintain his jumping mind in a right line for the tithe of a moment by
Clifford’s Inn clock. He must go to the printer’s immediately—the
most unlucky accident—he had struck off five hundred impressions of his Poems, which were ready for
delivery to subscribers, and the Preface must all be expunged. There were
eighty pages of Preface, and not till that morning had he discovered that in
the very first page of said Preface he had set out with a principle of
Criticism fundamentally wrong, which vitiated all his following reasoning. The
Preface must be expunged, although it cost him £30—the lowest calculation,
taking in paper and printing! In vain have his real friends remonstrated
against this Midsummer madness. George is as obstinate as
a Primitive Christian—and wards and parries off all our thrusts with one
unanswerable fence;—“Sir, it’s of great consequence that the world is not misled!”
As for the other Professor, he has actually begun to dive into Tavernier and Chardin’sPersian Travels for
a story, to form a new drama for the sweet tooth of this fastidious age. Hath
not Bethlehem College a fair action for non-residence against such professors?
Are poets so few in this age,
that He must write poetry? Is morals a subject so
exhausted, that he must quit that line? Is the metaphysic well (without a
bottom) drained dry?
If I can guess at the wicked pride of the Professor’s heart, I would take a shrewd
wager that he disdains ever again to dip his pen in Prose. Adieu, ye splendid theories! Farewell, dreams of political
justice! Lawsuits, where I was counsel for Archbishop Fenelonversus my own
mother, in the famous fire cause!
Vanish from my mind, professors, one and all! I have metal
more attractive on foot.
Man of many snipes,—I will sup with thee, Deo
volente et diabolo nolente, on Monday night the 5th of January,
in the new year, and crush a cup to the infant century.
A word or two of my progress. Embark at six o’clock
in the morning, with a fresh gale, on a Cambridge one-decker; very cold till
eight at night; land at St. Mary’s light-house, muffins and coffee upon
table (or any other curious production of Turkey or both Indies), snipes
exactly at nine, punch to commence at ten, with argument; difference of opinion is expected to take place about
eleven; perfect unanimity, with some haziness and dimness, before twelve.—N.B.
My single affection is not so singly wedded to snipes; but the curious and
epicurean eye would also take a pleasure in beholding a delicate and
well-chosen assortment of teals, ortolans, the unctuous and palate-soothing
flesh of geese wild and tame, nightingales’ brains, the sensorium of a
young sucking-pig, or any other Christmas dish,
which I leave to the judgment of you and the cook of Gonville.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Lamb’s copy of George Dyer’sPoems is in the British
Museum. It has the original withdrawn 1800 title-page and the cancelled preface bound up
with it, and Lamb has written against the reference to the sacrifice,
in the new 1801 preface: “One copy of this cancelled preface, snatch’d out
of the fire, is prefaced to this volume.” See Letter 91, page 230. It runs to
sixty-five pages, whereas the new one is but a few words. Southey tells Grosvener Bedford in
one of his letters that Lamb gave Dyer the title
of Cancellarius Magnus. Dyer reprinted in the 1802 edition of his
Poems the greater part of the
cancelled preface and all of the first page—so that it is difficult to say what the fallacy
was. The original edition of his Poems was
to be in three large volumes. In 1802 it had come down to two small ones.
Godwin’s Persian drama was “Abbas, King of Persia,” but he could not get it acted. The
reference to Fenelon is to
Godwin’sPolitical Justice (first edition, Vol. I., page 84) where
he argues on the comparative worth of the persons of Fenelon, a
chambermaid, and Godwin’s mother, supposing them to have been
present at the famous fire at Cambrai and only one of them to be saved. (As a matter of
fact Fenelon was not at the fire.)
We must suppose that Lamb carried out his intention of visiting
Manning on January 5; but there is no
confirmation.]
LETTER 81 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[p.m. January 30, 1801.]
THANKS for your Letter and Present. I had already
borrowed your second volume. What most please me are, the Song of Lucy. . . . Simon’s sickly daughter
in the Sexton made me cry.
Next to these are the description of the continuous Echoes in the story of Joanna’s
laugh, where the mountains and all the scenery absolutely seem
alive—and that fine Shakesperian character of the Happy Man, in the Brothers, —that creeps about the fields, Following his fancies by the hour, to bring Tears down his cheek, or solitary smiles Into his face, until the Setting SunWrite Fool upon his forehead. I will mention one more: the
delicate and curious feeling in the wish for the Cumberland Beggar, that he may have about
him the melody of Birds, altho’ he hear them not. Here the mind knowingly
passes a fiction upon herself, first substituting her own feelings for the
Beggar’s, and, in the same breath detecting the fallacy, will not part
with the wish.—The Poet’s
Epitaph is disfigured, to my taste by the vulgar satire upon parsons
and lawyers in the beginning, and the coarse epithet of pin point in the 6th
stanza. All the rest is eminently good, and your own. I will just add that it
appears to me a fault in the Beggar, that the instructions conveyed in it are
too direct and like a lecture: they don’t slide into the mind of the
reader, while he is imagining no such matter. An intelligent reader finds a
sort of insult in being told, I will teach you how to think upon this subject.
This fault, if I am right, is in a ten-thousandth worse degree to be found in
Sterne and many many novelists &
modern poets, who continually put a sign post up to shew where you are to feel.
They set out with assuming their readers to be stupid. Very different from
Robinson Crusoe, the
Vicar of Wakefield, Roderick Random, and other
beautiful bare narratives. There is implied an unwritten compact between Author
and reader; I will tell you a story, and I suppose you will understand it
Modern novels “St.
Leons” and the like are full of such flowers as these
“Let not my reader suppose,” “Imagine, if you can”—modest!—&c,—I will here
have done with praise and blame. I have written so much, only that you may not
think I have passed over your book without observation.—I am sorry that
Coleridge has christened his Ancient Marinere “a
poet’s Reverie”—it is as bad as Bottom the Weaver’s declaration that he is not a Lion but
only the scenical representation of a Lion. What new idea is gained by this
Title, but one subversive of all credit which the tale should force upon us, of
its truth? For me, I was never so affected with any human Tale. After first
reading it, I was totally possessed with it for many days—I dislike all the
miraculous part of it, but the feelings of the man under the operation of such
scenery dragged me along like Tom
Piper’s magic whistle. I totally differ from your idea
that the Marinere should have had a character and profession. This is a Beauty
in Gulliver’s
Travels, where the mind is kept in a placid state of little
wonderments; but the Ancient Marinere
undergoes such Trials, as overwhelm and bury all individuality or memory of
what he was, like the state of a man in a Bad dream, one terrible peculiarity
of which is: that all consciousness of personality is gone. Your other
observation is I think as well a little unfounded: the Marinere from being
conversant in supernatural events has acquired a supernatural and strange cast
of phrase, eye,
appearance, &c. which frighten the wedding guest. You will excuse my
remarks, because I am hurt and vexed that you should think it necessary, with a
prose apology, to open the eyes of dead men that cannot see. To sum up a
general opinion of the second vol.—I do not feel any one poem in it so forcibly
as the Ancient Marinere, the Mad
Mother, and the Lines at Tintern Abbey in the first.—I could, too, have wished the
Critical preface had appeared in a separate treatise. All its dogmas are true
and just, and most of them new, as criticism. But they associate a diminishing idea with the Poems which follow, as having
been written for Experiment on the public taste, more
than having sprung (as they must have done) from living and daily
circumstances.—I am prolix, because I am gratifyed in the opportunity of
writing to you, and I don’t well know when to leave off. I ought before
this to have reply’d to your very kind invitation into Cumberland. With
you and your Sister I could gang any where. But I am afraid whether I shall
ever be able to afford so desperate a Journey. Separate from the pleasure of
your company, I don’t much care if I never see a mountain in my life. I
have passed all my days in London, until I have formed as many and intense
local attachments, as any of you mountaineers can have done with dead nature.
The Lighted shops of the Strand and Fleet Street, the innumerable trades,
tradesmen and customers, coaches, waggons, playhouses, all the bustle and
wickedness round about Covent Garden, the very women of the Town, the Watchmen,
drunken scenes, rattles,—life awake, if you awake, at all hours of the night,
the impossibility of being dull in Fleet Street, the crowds, the very dirt
& mud, the Sun shining upon houses and pavements, the print shops, the old
book stalls, parsons cheap’ning books, coffee houses, steams of soups
from kitchens, the pantomimes, London itself a pantomime and a masquerade,—all
these things work themselves into my mind and feed me, without a power of
satiating me. The wonder of these sights impells me into night-walks about her
crowded streets, and I often shed tears in the motley Strand from fulness of
joy at so much Life.—All these emotions must be strange to you. So are your
rural emotions to me. But consider, what must I have been doing all my life,
not to have lent great portions of my heart with usury to such scenes?——
My attachments are all local, purely local. I have no
passion (or have had none since I was in love, and then it was the spurious
engendering of poetry & books) to groves and vallies. The rooms where I was
born, the furniture which has been before my eyes all my life, a book case
which has followed me about (like a faithful dog, only exceeding him in
knowledge) wherever I have moved—old chairs, old tables, streets, squares,
where I have sunned myself, my old school,—these are my
mistresses. Have I not enough, without your mountains? I do not envy you. I
should pity you, did I not know, that the Mind will make friends of any thing.
Your sun & moon and skys and hills & lakes affect me no more, or
scarcely come to me in more venerable characters, than as a gilded room with
tapestry and tapers, where I might live with handsome visible objects. I
consider the clouds above me but as a roof, beautifully painted but unable to
satisfy the mind, and at last, like the pictures of the apartment of a
connoisseur, unable to afford him any longer a pleasure. So fading upon me,
from disuse, have been the Beauties of Nature, as they have been confinedly
called; so ever fresh & green and warm are all the inventions of men and
assemblies of men in this great city. I should certainly have laughed with dear
Joanna.
Give my kindest love, and my
sister’s, to D. &
yourself and a kiss from me to little Barbara Lewthwaite.
C. Lamb.
Thank you for Liking my Play!!
Note
[This is the first—and perhaps the finest—letter from Lamb to Wordsworth
that has been preserved. Wordsworth, then living with his sister
Dorothy at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, was nearly
thirty-one years of age; Lamb was nearly twenty-six. The work
criticised is the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads. The second and sixth stanzas of the
“Poet’s Epitaph” ran
thus:— A Lawyer art thou?—draw not nigh; Go, carry to some other place The hardness of thy coward eye, The falshood of thy sallow face. . . .
. . . . . Wrapp’d closely in thy sensual fleece O turn aside, and take, I pray, That he below may rest in peace, Thy pin-point of a soul away!
St. Leon was by
Godwin.
Of “The Ancient Mariner,
a Poet’s Reverie,” Wordsworth had said in a note to the first volume
of Lyrical
Ballads:—
The Poem of my Friend has indeed great defects; first, that
the principal person has no distinct character, either in his profession of Mariner, or as
a human being who having been long under the controul of supernatural impressions might be
supposed himself to partake of something supernatural; secondly, that he does not act, but
is continually acted upon; thirdly, that the events having no necessary connection do not
produce each other; and lastly, that the imagery is somewhat too laboriously accumulated.
“The Mad
Mother.” The poem beginning, “Her eyes are wild, her head is
bare.”
“I could, too, have wished.” The passage from these
words to “don’t well know when to leave off,” is now printed for
the first time. When Wordsworth sent the
correspondence to Moxon, for Talfourd’s use, in 1835, he wrote:—
There are, however, in them some parts which had better be
kept back. ... I have also thought it proper to suppress every word of criticism [Wordsworth meant adverse criticism] upon my own poems. . .
. Those relating to my works are withheld, partly because I shrink from the thought of
assisting in any way to spread my own praises, and still more I being convinced that the
opinions or judgments of friends given in this way are of little value.
“I have passed all my days in London.” See note on
page 195.
“Joanna.’ Joanna of the laugh. See note on page 831.
“Barbara Lewthwaite.” See Wordsworth’s
“Pet Lamb.”
“Thank you for Liking my Play!!” We must suppose this
postscript to contain a touch of sarcasm. Lamb had
sent “John Woodvil” to
Grasmere and Keswick. Wordsworth apparently had been
but politely interested in it. Coleridge had written
to Godwin: “Talking of tragedies, at every
perusal my love and admiration of his [Lamb’s] play rises a
peg.”
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, dated at end
February 7, 1801, not available for this edition. It is one of the best letters written by
Lamb to Robert Lloyd, or to any one.
Lamb first praises Izaak
Walton, whose Compleat Angler he loves for two reasons: for itself and for its
connection with his own Hertfordshire county, Hoddesdon, Broxbourne, Amwell and the Ware
neighbourhood. The letter passes to a third eulogy of London (see note on page 195).
Lamb closes by remarking that Manning is “a dainty chiel and a man of great power, almost an
enchanter.”]
LETTER 82 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
Feb. 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 acknowledgement of having received from me
many months since a copy of a certain Tragedy, with excuses for not having
made any acknowledgement 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 2d vol. 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 2d vol. (which I had
been so unfortunate as to miss). 1st 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
TongueThen fell upon thee.” The lines were thus undermarked, and then followed “This Passage,
as combining in an extraordinary degree that Union of Imagination and
Tenderness which I am speaking of, I consider as one of the Best I ever
wrote!”
2d Specimen.—A youth, after years of absence, revisits his
native place, and thinks (as most people do) that there has been strange
alteration in his absence:— “And that the rocks And everlasting Hills themselves were changed.” You see both these are good Poetry: but after one has been reading
Shakspeare twenty of the best years
of one’s life, to have a fellow start up, and prate about some unknown
quality, which Shakspeare possessed in a degree inferior
to Milton and somebody
else!! This was not to be all my castigation.
Coleridge, who had not written to me
some months before, starts up from his bed of sickness to reprove me for my
hardy presumption: four long pages, equally sweaty and more tedious, came from
him; assuring me that, when the works of a man of true genius such as W. undoubtedly was, do not please me at first
sight, I should suspect the fault to lie
“in me and not in them,” etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. What
am I to do with such people? I certainly shall write them a very merry Letter.
Writing to you, I may say that the 2d vol. has no such pieces as the three I
enumerated. It is full of original thinking and an observing mind, but it does
not often make you laugh or cry.—It too artfully aims at simplicity of
expression. And you sometimes doubt if Simplicity be not a cover for Poverty.
The best Piece in it I will
send you, being short. I have grievously offended my friends in the North by
declaring my undue preference; but I need not fear you:—
“She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the Springs of Dove, A maid whom there were few (sic) to praise And very few to love. “A violet, by a mossy stone, Half hidden from the eye. Fair as a star when only one Is shining in the sky. “She lived unknown; and few could know. When Lucy ceased to be. But she is in the grave, and oh! The difference to me.”
This is choice and genuine, and so are many, many more. But
one does not like to have ’em rammed down one’s throat.
“Pray, take it—it’s very good—let me help you—eat
faster.”
Note
[It cannot be too much regretted that Lamb’s “very merry Letter” in answer to Wordsworth and Coleridge’s remonstrances has not been preserved.
At the end of the letter occurred this passage quoted by Mr. Dykes Campbell in an article in The Athenæum:—
“Now to my own affairs. I have not taken that thing to Colman, but I have proceeded one step in the business.
I have inquired his address and am promised it in a few days.”
That thing would, I think, be a play by some one else, perhaps Holcroft, to be offered to George Colman, manager of the Haymarket: hence the emphasis laid upon
“my play.”]
LETTER 83 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[Late February, 1801.]
YOU masters of logic ought to know (logic is nothing
more than a knowledge of words, as the Greek etymon
implies), that all words are no more to be taken in a literal sense at all
times than a promise given to a tailor. When I expressed an apprehension that
you were mortally offended, I meant no more than by the application of a
certain formula of efficacious sounds, which had done in similar cases before,
to rouse a sense of decency in you, and a remembrance of what was due to me!
You masters of logic should advert to this phenomenon in human speech, before
you arraign the usage of us dramatic geniuses. Imagination is a good blood
mare, and goes well; but the misfortune is, she has too many paths before her.
’Tis true I might have imaged to myself, that you had trundled your frail
carcass to Norfolk. I might also, and did imagine, that you had not, but that
you were lazy, or inventing new properties in a triangle, and for that purpose
moulding and squeezing Landlord Crisp’s
three-cornered beaver into fantastic experimental forms; or that Archimedes was meditating to repulse the French,
in case of a Cambridge invasion, by a geometric hurling of folios on their red
caps; or, peradventure, that you were in extremities, in great wants, and just
set out for Trinity-bogs when my letters came. In short, my genius (which is a
short word now-a-days for what-a-great-man-am-I) was absolutely stifled and
overlaid with its own riches. Truth is one and poor, like the cruse of
Elijah’s widow. Imagination is the bold face
that multiplies its oil: and thou, the old cracked pipkin, that could not
believe it could be put to such purposes. Dull pipkin, to have
Elijah for thy cook! Imbecile recipient of so fat a
miracle! I send you George
Dyer’sPoems, the richest production of the lyric muse this century can justly boast: for Wordsworth’sL. B. were published, or at least written,
before Christmas. Please to advert to pages 291 to 296 for the most astonishing
account of where Shakspeare’s muse
has been all this while. I thought she had been dead, and buried in Stratford
Church, with the young man that kept her company,— “But it seems, like the Devil, Buried in Cole Harbour. Some say she’s risen again, ’Gone prentice to a Barber.”
N.B.—I don’t charge anything for the additional
manuscript notes, which are the joint productions of myself and a learned
translator of Schiller, John Stoddart, Esq.
N.B. the 2nd.—I should not have blotted your book, but I had
sent my own out to be bound, as I was in duty bound. A liberal criticism upon
the several pieces, lyrical, heroical, amatory, and satirical, would be
acceptable. So, you don’t think there’s a Word’s—worth of good poetry in the great
L. B.! I daren’t
put the dreaded syllables at their just length, for my back tingles from the
northern castigation. I send you the three letters, which I beg you to return
along with those former letters, which I hope you are not going to print by
your detention. But don’t be in a hurry to send them. When you come to
town will do. Apropos of coming to town, last Sunday was a fortnight, as I was
coming to town from the Professor’s, inspired with new rum, I tumbled down, and
broke my nose. I drink nothing stronger than malt liquors.
I am going to change my lodgings, having received a hint
that it would be agreeable, at our Lady’s next feast. I have partly fixed
upon most delectable rooms, which look out (when you stand a tiptoe) over the
Thames and Surrey Hills, at the upper end of King’s Bench walks in the
Temple. There I shall have all the privacy of a house without the encumbrance,
and shall be able to lock my friends out as often as I desire to hold free
converse with my immortal mind; for my present lodgings resemble a
minister’s levee, I have so increased my acquaintance (as they call
’em), since I have resided in town. Like the country mouse, that had
tasted a little of urban manners, I long to be nibbling my own cheese by my
dear self without mouse-traps and time-traps. By my new plan, I shall be as
airy, up four pair of stairs, as in the country; and in a garden, in the midst
of [that] enchanting, more than Mahometan paradise, London, whose dirtiest
drab-frequented alley, and her lowest bowing tradesman, I would not exchange
for Skiddaw, Helvellyn, James, Walter, and the parson into the bargain. O! her
lamps of a night! her rich goldsmiths, print-shops, toyshops, mercers,
hardwaremen, pastry-cooks! St. Paul’s Churchyard! the Strand! Exeter
Change! Charing Cross, with the man upon a black horse! These are thy gods, O
London! Ain’t you mightily moped on the banks of the Cam! Had not you
better come and set up here? You can’t think what a difference. All the
streets and pavements are pure gold, I warrant you. At least I know an alchemy
that turns her mud into that metal,—a mind that loves to be at home in crowds.
’Tis half-past twelve o’clock, and all sober
people ought to be a-bed. Between you and me, the “Lyrical Ballads” are but drowsy
performances.
C. Lamb (as you may
guess)
Note
[Lamb refers in his opening
sentences to a letter from himself to Manning which
no longer exists. In Manning’s last letter, dated February 24,
he complains that he found on returning to Cambridge three copies of a letter from
Lamb suggesting that he was offended because he had not answered.
The passage in George
Dyer’sPoems between pages 291 and 296 is long, but it is so
quaint and so illustrative of its author’s mind that I give it in full, footnotes and
all, in the Appendix (see page 951).
Stoddart we have already met. He had translated,
with Georg Heinrich Noehden, Schiller’sFiesco, 1796, and Don Carlos,
1798. The copy of Dyer’sPoems annotated by
Lamb and Stoddart I have not seen.
“So, you don’t think there’s a Word’s—worth . . .” Manning had written, on February 24, 1801, of the second
volume of Lyrical
Ballads: “I think ’tis utterly absurd from one end to
the other. You tell me ’tis good poetry—if you mean that there is nothing
puerile, nothing bombast or conceited, everything else that is so often found to
disfigure poetry, I agree, but will you read it over and over again? Answer me that,
Master Lamb.” The three letters
containing the northern castigation are unhappily lost.
“My back tingles.” “Back “is not Lamb’s word.
“I am going to change my lodgings.” The
Lambs were still at 34 Southampton Buildings; they moved to 16
Mitre Court Buildings just before Lady Day, 1801.
“James, Walter, and
the parson.” In Wordsworth’s
poem “The Brothers.”
Exeter Change, which stood where Burleigh Street now is, was a great
building, with bookstalls and miscellaneous stalls on the ground floor and a menagerie
above. It was demolished in 1829.
“Charing Cross, with the man upon a black horse.”
Lamb was quoting the old rhyme:— As I was going by Charing Cross, I saw a black man upon a black horse. They told me it was King Charles the
First, Oh dear! my heart was ready to burst!]
LETTER 84 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
April, 1801.
I WAS not aware that you owed me anything beside
that guinea; but I dare say you are right. I live at No. 16 Mitre-court
Buildings, a pistol-shot off Baron
Maseres’. You must introduce me to the Baron. I think we should suit one another mainly. He lives on the
ground floor for convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story for the air!
He keeps three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress, not
caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the higher
mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles lettres. The
very antithesis of our characters would make up a harmony. You must bring the
baron and me together.—N.B. when you come to see me, mount up to the top of the
stairs—I hope you are not asthmatical—and come in flannel, for it’s pure
airy up there. And bring your glass, and I will shew you the Surrey Hills. My
bed faces the river so as by perking up upon my haunches, and supporting my
carcase with my elbows, without much wrying my neck, can see the white sails
glide by the bottom of the King’s Bench walks as I lie in my bed. An
excellent tiptoe prospect in the best room: casement windows with small panes,
to look more like a cottage. Mind, I have got no bed for you, that’s
flat; sold it to pay expenses of moving. The very bed on which Manning lay—the friendly, the mathematical
Manning! How forcibly does it remind me of the
interesting Otway! “The very
bed which on thy marriage night gave thee into the arms of Belvidera, by the coarse hands of
ruffians—” (upholsterers’ men,) &c. My tears will not
give me leave to go on. But a bed I will get you, Manning,
on condition you will be my day-guest.
I have been ill more than month, with a bad cold, which
comes upon me (like a murderer’s conscience) about midnight, and vexes me
for many hours. I have successively been drugged with Spanish licorice, opium,
ipecacuanha, paregoric, and tincture of foxglove (tinctura purpuræ
digitalis of the ancients). I am afraid I must leave off
drinking.
Note
[Francis Maseres (1731-1824), whom
Lamb mentions again in his Elia essay on “The Old Benchers,” was the
mathematician (hence his interest to Manning) and
reformer. His rooms were at 5 King’s Bench Walk. He became Cursitor Baron of the
Exchequer in 1773. To the end he wore a three-cornered hat, a wig and ruffles. Priestley praised the Baron’s mathematical labours,
in which he had the support of William Frend.
“Otway.” See
“Venice Preserved,” Act
I., Scene 1. Lamb quotes from memory.
Here should come a letter from Lamb
to Robert Lloyd, dated April 6, 1801, in praise of
Jeremy Taylor, particularly the Holy Dying.
Lamb recommends Lloyd to read the story of
the Ephesian matron in the eighth section.
Here also should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, containing a
very interesting criticism of George Frederick
Cooke’s acting as Richard III. at
Covent Garden. Lamb wrote for the Morning Post, January 8, 1802, a criticism of
Cooke in this part, which will be found in Vol. I. of the present
edition.]
LETTER 85 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
June 29, 1801.
DEAR Sir,—Doctor
Christy’s Brother and Sister are come to town, and have
shown me great civilities. I in return wish to requite them, having, by God’s grace, principles of generosity implanted (as the moralists say) in my nature, which
have been duly cultivated and watered by good and religious friends, and a
pious education. They have picked up in the northern parts of the island an
astonishing admiration of the great author of the New Philosophy in England,
and I have ventured to promise their taste an evening’s gratification by
seeing Mr. Godwinface to face!!!!! Will you do
them and me in them the pleasure of drinking tea and supping with me at the old
number 16 on Friday or Saturday next? An early nomination of the day will very
much oblige yours sincerely,
Ch. Lamb.
Note
[Dr. Christy’s brother and
sister I do not identify.]
LETTER 86 CHARLES LAMB TO WALTER WILSON
August 14th, 1801.
DEAR Wilson.—I am extremely sorry that any serious difference should
subsist between us on account of some foolish behaviour of mine at Richmond;
you knew me well enough before—that a very little liquor will cause a
considerable alteration in me.
I beg you to impute my conduct solely to that, and not to
any deliberate intention of offending you, from whom I have received so many
friendly attentions. I know that you think a very im-portant difference in opinion with respect to some more serious
subjects between us makes me a dangerous companion; but do not rashly infer,
from some slight and light expressions which I may have made use of in a moment
of levity in your presence, without sufficient regard to your feelings—do not
conclude that I am an inveterate enemy to all religion. I have had a time of
seriousness, and I have known the importance and reality of a religious belief.
Latterly, I acknowledge, much of my seriousness has gone off, whether from new
company or some other new associations; but I still retain at bottom a
conviction of the truth, and a certainty of the usefulness of religion. I will
not pretend to more gravity or feeling than I at present possess; my intention
is not to persuade you that any great alteration is probable in me; sudden
converts are superficial and transitory; I only want you to believe that I have
stamina of seriousness within me, and that I desire nothing more than a return
of that friendly intercourse which used to subsist between us, but which my
folly has suspended.
Believe me, very affectionately yours,
C. Lamb.
Note
[Walter Wilson (1781-1847) was,
perhaps, at this time, or certainly previously, in the India House with Lamb. Later he became a bookseller, and then, inheriting
money, he entered at the Inner Temple. We meet him again later in the correspondence, in
connection with his Life of Defoe,
1830.
One wonders if the following passage in Hazlitt’s essay “On Coffee-House Politicians” in Table Talk has any reference to
the Richmond incident:—
Elia, the grave and witty, says things not to be
surpassed in essence: but the manner is more painful and less a relief to my own thoughts.
Some one conceived he could not be an excellent companion, because he was seen walking down
the side of the Thames, passibus iniquis, after
dining at Richmond. The objection was not valid.]
LETTER 87 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[August,] 1801.
DEAR Manning,—I have forborne writing so long (and so have you, for the
matter of that), until I am almost ashamed either to write or to forbear any
longer. But as your silence may proceed from some worse cause than neglect—from
illness, or some mishap which
may have befallen you—I begin to be anxious. You may have been burnt out, or
you may have married, or you may have broken a limb, or turned country parson;
any of these would be excuse sufficient for not coming to my supper. I am not
so unforgiving as the nobleman in “Saint Mark.” For me, nothing new
has happened to me, unless that the poor “Albion” died last Saturday of the world’s neglect, and
with it the fountain of my puns is choked up for ever.
All the Lloyds wonder that you do not
write to them. They apply to me for the cause. Relieve me from this weight of
ignorance, and enable me to give a truly oracular response.
I have been confined some days with swelled cheek and
rheumatism—they divide and govern me with a viceroy-headache in the middle. I
can neither write nor read without great pain. It must be something like
obstinacy that I choose this time to write to you in after many months
interruption.
I will close my letter of simple inquiry with an epigram on
Mackintosh, the “Vindiciæ
Gallicæ”-man—who has got a place at last—one of the last I did for the “Albion”:— “Though thou’rt like Judas, an
apostate black, In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack; When he had gotten his ill-purchas’d pelf, He went away, and wisely hanged himself: This thou may do at last, yet much I doubt, If thou hast any Bowels to gush out!”
Yours, as ever,
C. Lamb.
Note
[The Albion was at the time of its decease owned and edited by John Fenwick, a friend of Lamb’s whom we shall meet again. Lamb told the
story in the Elia
essay on “Newspapers” in
the following passage:—
“From the office of the Morning Post (for we may as well exhaust our
Newspaper Reminiscences at once) by change of property in the paper, we were
transferred, mortifying exchange! to the office of the Albion Newspaper, late Rackstrow’s Museum, in Fleet
Street What a transition—from a handsome apartment, from rose-wood desks, and silver
inkstands, to an office—no office, but a den rather, but just redeemed from the
occupation of dead monsters, of which it seemed redolent—from the centre of loyalty and
fashion, to a focus of vulgarity and sedition! Here in murky closet, inadequate from
its square contents to the receipt of the two bodies of Editor, and humble
paragraph-maker, together at one time, sat in the discharge of his new Editorial
functions (the ‘Bigod’ of Elia) the redoubted
John Fenwick.
“F., without a guinea in
his pocket, and having left not many in the pockets of his friends whom he might
command, had purchased (on tick doubtless) the whole and sole Editorship,
Proprietorship, with all the rights and titles (such as they were worth) of the Albion, from one Lovell; of whom we know nothing, save that he had stood in the pillory
for a libel on the Prince of Wales. With this hopeless concern—for it had been sinking
ever since its commencement, and could now reckon upon not more than a hundred
subscribers—F. resolutely determined upon pulling down the
Government in the first instance, and making both our fortunes by way of corollary. For
seven weeks and more did this infatuated Democrat go about borrowing seven shilling
pieces, and lesser coin, to meet the daily demands of the Stamp Office, which allowed
no credit to publications of that side in politics. An outcast from politer bread, we
attached our small talents to the forlorn fortunes of our friend. Our occupation now
was to write treason.
“Recollections of feelings—which were all that now remained from
our first boyish heats kindled by the French Revolution, when if we were misled, we
erred in the company of some, who are accounted very good men now—rather than any
tendency at this time to Republican doctrines—assisted us in assuming a style of
writing, while the paper lasted, consonant in no very under-tone to the right earnest
fanaticism of F. Our cue was now to insinuate,
rather than recommend, possible abdications. Blocks, axes, Whitehall tribunals, were
covered with flowers of so cunning a periphrasis—as Mr.
Bayes says, never naming the thing directly—that the keen eye of an
Attorney-General was insufficient to detect the lurking snake among them. There were
times, indeed, when we sighed for our more gentleman-like occupation under Stuart. But with change of masters it is ever change
of service. Already one paragraph, and another, as we learned afterwards from a
gentleman at the Treasury, had begun to be marked at that office, with a view of its
being submitted at least to the attention of the proper Law Officers—when an unlucky,
or rather lucky epigram from our pen, aimed at Sir J——s
M——h, who was on the eve of departing for India to reap the fruits of
his apostacy, as F. pronounced it, (it is hardly worth
particularising), happening to offend the nice sense of Lord, or, as he then delighted
to be called, Citizen Stanhope, deprived
F. at once of the last hopes of a guinea from the last patron
that had stuck by us; and breaking up our establishment, left us to the safe, but
somewhat mortifying, neglect of the Crown lawyers.”
There are, however, in Lamb’s
account, written thirty years afterwards, some errors. He passed rather from the Albion to the Post than from the Post to the Albion (see the notes to the above essay in Vol. II. of this edition).
Sir James Mackintosh was not in 1801 on the eve
of departing for India: he did not get the post of Recordership of Bombay until two years
later. The epigram probably referred to an earlier rumour of a post for him. His apostasy
consisted in recanting in 1800 from the opinions set forth in his Vindiciæ Gallicæ, 1791, a
book supporting the French Revolutionists, and in becoming a close friend of his old enemy
Burke. I have not succeeded in finding a file of
the Albion.
“The nobleman in ‘St. Mark.’” Lamb was thinking of Luke xiv.
16-24.]
LETTER 88 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[p.m. August 31, 1801.]
I HEARD that you were going to China, with a
commission from the Wedgwoods to collect hints for their
pottery, and to teach the Chinese perspective. But I did not know that London
lay in your way to Pekin. I am seriously glad of it, for I shall trouble you
with a small present for the Emperor of Usbeck Tartary, as you go by his
territories: it is a fragment of a “Dissertation on
the state of political parties in England at the end of the eighteenth
century,” which will no doubt be very interesting to his
Imperial Majesty. It was written originally in English for the use of the two and twenty readers of
“The Albion” (this
calculation includes a printer, four pressmen, and a
devil); but becoming of no use when “The
Albion” stopped, I got it translated into Usbeck Tartar by my good
friend Tibet Kulm, who is come to London with a civil invitation from the Cham
to the English nation to go over to the worship of the Lama.
“The
Albion” is dead—dead as nail in door—and my revenues have died
with it; but I am not as a man without hope. I have got a sort of opening to
the “Morning
Chronicle,”!!! Mister
Manning, by means of that common dispenser of benevolence,
Mister Dyer. I have not seen
Perry the editor yet: but I am
preparing a specimen. I shall have a difficult job to manage, for you must know
that Mister Perry, in common with the great body of the
Whigs, thinks “The Albion” very low. I find I must rise a peg or so, be a little
more decent and less abusive; for, to confess the truth, I had arrived to an
abominable pitch; I spared neither age nor sex when my cue was given me.
N’importe (as they say
in French): any climate will suit me. So you
are about to bring your old face-making face to London. You could not come in a
better time for my purposes; for I have just lost Rickman, a faint idea of whose character I sent you. He is gone
to Ireland for a year or two, to make his fortune; and I have lost by his
going, what [it] seems to me I can never recover—a finished
man. His memory will be to me as the brazen serpent to the
Israelites,—I shall look up to it, to keep me upright and honest. But he may
yet bring back his honest face to England one day. I wish your affairs with the
Emperor of China had not been so urgent, that you might
have stayed in Great Britain a year or two longer, to have seen him; for,
judging from my own experience, I almost dare pronounce
you never saw his equal. I never saw a man that could be at all a second or
substitute for him in any sort.
Imagine that what is here erased was an apology and
explanation, perfectly satisfactory you may be sure! for rating this man so
highly at the expense of ——, and ——, and ——, and M——, and ——, and ——, and ——.
But Mister Burke has explained this
phenomenon of our nature very prettily in his letter to a Member of the National
Assembly, or else in his Appeal to the old Whigs, I forget which. Do you remember an
instance from Homer (who understood these
matters tolerably well) of Priam driving
away his other sons with expressions of wrath and bitter reproach, when
Hector was just dead.
I live where I did, in a private
manner, because I don’t like state. Nothing is so
disagreeable to me as the clamours and applauses of the mob. For this reason I
live in an obscure situation in one of the courts of the Temple.
C. L.
Note
[Manning had taken up Chinese at
Cambridge, and in 1800 he had moved to Paris to study the language under Dr. Hagan. He did not, however, go to China until 1806.
The Wedgwoods were Coleridge’s patrons. Lamb’s reference to
them is, of course, a joke.
The Morning
Chronicle was then the chief Whig paper, the principal opponent of the
Morning Post. I
have, I think, traced two or three of Lamb’s
contributions to the Chronicle at this
period, but they are not of his best. He quickly moved on to the Post, but, as we shall see, only for a short period.
Rickman went to Dublin in 1801 with Abbot, the Chief
Secretary for Ireland, and was appointed Deputy-Keeper of the Privy Seal. He returned in
February, 1802.
The reference to Burke is to his
justification of his particular solicitude for the Crown, as the part of the British
Constitution then in danger, though not in itself more important than the other parts, in the
“Appeal from the New to the Old
Whigs.” The Priam-Hector illustration is there employed.
“Homer.” See The Iliad, Book 24, lines 311-316. Pope translates thus:— Next on his sons his erring fury falls, Polites, Paris,
Agathon, he calls; His threats Diphobus and Dius hear, Hippothoüs, Pammon,
Helenus the seer, And generous Antiphon: for yet these nine Survived, sad relics of his numerous line.
Here perhaps should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, returning to
Jeremy Taylor, and deprecating a selection from his works, which
Robert Lloyd had suggested that Lamb should
make. (In 1805 Basil Montagu, afterwards, if not
now, a friend of Lamb’s, published a volume of Selections from the Works
of Taylor, &c.) Lamb adds that Manning and Coleridge are in town,
and he is making a thorough alteration in the structure of his play (“John Woodvil”) for publication.]
LETTER 89 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
Sept. 9, 1801.
DEAR Sir,—Nothing runs in my head when I think of
your story, but that you
should make it as like the life of
Savage as possible. That is a known and familiar tale, and its
effect on the public mind has been very great. Many of the incidents in the
true history are readily made dramatical. For instance, Savage used to walk backwards and forwards
o’ nights to his mother’s window, to catch a glimpse of her, as she
passed with a candle. With some such situation the play might happily open. I
would plunge my Hero, exactly like Savage, into
difficulties and embarrassments, the consequences of an unsettled mind: out of
which he may be extricated by the unknown interference of his mother. He should
be attended from the beginning by a friend, who should stand in much the same
relation towards him as Horatio to
Altamont in the play of the Fair Penitent. A character of
this sort seems indispensable. This friend might gain interviews with the
mother, when the son was refused sight of her. Like Horatio with Calista, he
might wring his [her?] soul. Like Horatio,
he might learn the secret first. He might be exactly in
the same perplexing situation, when he had learned it, whether to tell it or conceal it from the Son (I have still
Savage in my head) might kill a
man (as he did) in an affray—he should receive a pardon, as
Savage did—and the mother might interfere to have him
banished. This should provoke the Friend to demand
an interview with her husband, and disclose the whole secret. The husband,
refusing to believe anything to her dishonour, should fight with him. The
husband repents before he dies. The mother explains and confesses everything in
his presence. The son is admitted to an interview with his now acknowledged
mother. Instead of embraces, she resolves to abstract herself from all
pleasure, even from his sight, in voluntary penance all her days after. This is
crude indeed!! but I am totally unable to suggest a better. I am the worst hand
in the world at a plot. But I understand enough of passion to predict that your
story, with some of Savage’s, which has no
repugnance, but a natural alliance with it, cannot fail. The mystery of the
suspected relationship—the suspicion, generated from slight and forgotten
circumstances, coming at last to act as Instinct, and so to be mistaken for
Instinct—the son’s unceasing pursuit and throwing of himself in his
mother’s way, something like Falkland’s eternal persecution of Williams—the high and intricate passion in the
mother, the being obliged to shun and keep at a distance the thing nearest to
her heart—to be cruel, where her heart yearns to be kind, without a possibility
of explanation. You have the power of life and death and the hearts of your
auditors in your hands; still Harris
will want a skeleton, and he must have it. I can only put in some sorry hints.
The discovery to the son’s friend may take place not before the 3d act—in
some such way as this. The mother may cross the street—he may point her out to
some gay companion of his as the Beauty of Leghorn—the pattern for wives,
&c. &c. His companion, who is an Englishman, laughs at his mistake, and
knows her to have been the famous Nancy
Dawson, or any one else, who captivated the English king. Some
such way seems dramatic, and speaks to the Eye. The audience will enter into
the Friend’s surprise, and into the perplexity of his situation. These
Ocular Scenes are so many great landmarks, rememberable headlands and
lighthouses in the voyage. Macbeth’s
witch has a good advice to a magic [? tragic] writer, what to do with his
spectator. “Show his eyes, and grieve his heart.” The most difficult thing seems to be, What to do with the husband? You
will not make him jealous of his own son? that is a stale and an unpleasant
trick in Douglas, &c.
Can’t you keep him out of the way till you want him, as the husband of
Isabella is conveniently sent off till his cue
comes? There will be story enough without him, and he will only puzzle all.
Catastrophes are worst of all. Mine is most stupid. I only propose it to fulfil
my engagement, not in hopes to convert you.
It is always difficult to get rid of a woman at the end of a
tragedy. Men may fight and die. A woman must either take
poison, which is a nasty trick, or go mad, which is not
fit to be shown, or retire, which is poor, only retiring is most reputable.
I am sorry I can furnish you no better: but I find it
extremely difficult to settle my thoughts upon anything but the scene before
me, when I am from home, I am from home so seldom. If any, the least hint
crosses me, I will write again, and I very much wish to read your plan, if you
could abridge and send it. In this little scrawl you must take the will for the
deed, for I most sincerely wish success to your play.—Farewell,
C. L.
Note
[This and the letter that follows it contain Lamb’s suggestions for Godwin’s play “Faulkener,” upon which he was now meditating, but which was not performed
until 1807. Lamb wrote the prologue, a poem in praise of Defoe, since it was in Roxana, or at least in one
edition of it, that the counterpart to, or portion of, Godwin’s
plot is found. There, however, the central figure is a daughter, not a son. See the letters
to Walter Wilson, pages 586 and 600.
Mr. Swinburne, in the little article to which I have
already alluded (see page 197), says of this and the following letter: “Several of
Lamb’s suggestions, in spite of his own
modest disclaimer (‘I am the worst hand in the world at a plot’), seem to
me, especially as coming from the author of a tragedy memorable alike for sweetness of
moral emotion and emptiness of theatrical subject, worthy of note for the instinctive
intuition of high dramatic effect implied in their rough and rapid outlines.”
Richard Savage, the poet, whose life Johnson wrote, claimed to be the illegitimate son of
Lady Macclesfield by Lord
Rivers. Savage killed Sinclair in a tavern quarrel in
1727, and was condemned to death. His pardon was obtained by the Countess of Hertford.
“The Fair
Penitent” is by Nicholas Rowe.
Falkland and Williams are in Godwin’s novel
Caleb
Williams, dramatised by Colman as
“The Iron Chest.”
“Harris will want a skeleton.”
Thomas Harris, stage manager of Covent Garden
Theatre.
Nancy Dawson (1730?-1767), the famous dancer and
bona roba.
“Macbeth’s
witch”—“Macbeth,” IV., 1, 110.
“Douglas”—Home’s tragedy.
“The husband of Isabella.” In Southern’s “Fatal
Marriage.”
For the next letter see Appendix II., page 966.]
LETTER 90 (Fragment) CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
Margate, Sep. 17, 1801.
I SHALL be glad to come home and talk these matters
over with you. I have read your scheme very attentively. That Arabella has been mistress to King
Charles is sufficient to all the purposes of the story. It can
only diminish that respect we feel for her to make her turn whore to one of the
Lords of his Bedchamber. Her son must not know that she has been a whore: it
matters not that she has been whore to a King: equally in both cases it is
against decorum and against the delicacy of a son’s respect that he
should be privy to it. No doubt, many sons might feel a wayward pleasure in the
honourable guilt of their mothers; but is it a true feeling? Is it the best
sort of feeling? Is it a feeling to be exposed on theatres to mothers and
daughters? Your conclusion (or rather Defoe’s) comes far short of the tragic ending, which is
always expected; and it is not safe to disappoint. A tragic auditory wants blood. They care but little about a man and his wife
parting. Besides, what will you do with the son, after all his pursuits and
adventures? Even quietly leave him to take guinea-and-a-half lodgings with
mamma in Leghorn! O impotent and pacific measures! . . . I am certain that you
must mix up some strong ingredients of distress to give a savour to your
pottage. I still think that you may, and must, graft the story of Savage upon Defoe. Your
hero must kill a man or do some thing. Can’t you
bring him to the gallows or some great mischief, out of which she must have
recourse to an explanation with her husband to save him. Think on this. The
husband, for instance, has great friends in Court at Leghorn. The son is
condemned to death. She cannot teaze him for a stranger. She must tell the
whole truth. Or she may tease him, as for a stranger,
till (like Othello in Cassio’s case) he begins to suspect her for
her importunity. Or, being pardoned, can she not teaze her husband to get him
banished? Something of this I suggested before. Both is best. The
murder and the pardon will make business for the fourth act, and the banishment
and explanation (by means of the Friend I want you to
draw) the fifth. You must not open any of the truth to Dawley by means of a letter. A letter is a feeble messenger on
the stage. Somebody, the son or his friend, must, as a coup de main, be
exasperated, and obliged to tell the husband. Damn the husband and his
“gentlemanlike qualities.” Keep him out of sight, or he
will trouble all. Let him be in England on trade, and come home, as Biron does in Isabella, in the fourth act, when he is
wanted. I am for introducing situations, sort of counterparts to situations,
which have been tried in other plays—like but not the same. On this principle I
recommended a friend like Horatio in the
“Fair
Penitent,” and on this principle I recommend a situation like
Othello, with relation
to Desdemona’s intercession for
Cassio. By-scenes may likewise receive
hints. The son may see his mother at a mask or feast, as Romeo, Juliet. The festivity of the company contrasts with the strong
perturbations of the individuals. Dawley
may be told his wife’s past unchastity at a mask by some
witch-character—as Macbeth upon the heath,
in dark sentences. This may stir his brain, and be forgot, but come in aid of
stronger proof hereafter. From this, what you will perhaps call whimsical way
of counterparting, this honest stealing, and original mode of plagiarism, much
yet, I think, remains to be sucked. Excuse these abortions. I thought you would
want the draught soon again, and I would not send it empty away.—Yours truly,
WILLIAM GODWIN!!! Somers Town, 17th Sept., 1801.
Note
[The point of signing this letter with Godwin’s name and adding his address (Lamb, it will be noticed, was then at Margate) is not clear. In Letter 443
(see page 785), where Lamb plays the same trick on Hood, the reason is plain enough.
Here should come four letters from Lamb to John Rickman, recently made public by the late Canon Ainger. See Appendix II., page 966.]
LETTER 91 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN RICKMAN
To John Rickman, Esqr., Dublin Castle. [No date. ? November, 1801.]
A LETTER from G.
Dyer will probably accompany this. I wish I could convey to you
any notion of the whimsical scenes I have been witness to in this fortnight
past. ’Twas on Tuesday week the poor heathen scrambled up to my door
about breakfast time. He came thro’ a violent rain with no neckcloth on,
and a beard that made him a spectacle to men and angels, and tap’d at the
door. Mary open’d it, and he stood
stark still and held a paper in his hand importing that he had been ill with a
fever. He either wouldn’t or couldn’t speak except by signs. When
you went to comfort him he put his hand upon his heart and shook is head and
told us his complaint lay where no medicines could reach it. I was
dispatch’d for Dr. Dale, Mr. Phillips of St Paul’s Church yard,
and Mr. Frend, who is to be his
executor. George solemnly delivered into Mr.
Frend’s hands and mine an old burnt preface that had been
in the fire, with injunctions which we solemnly vow’d to obey that it
should be printed after his death with his last corrections, and that some
account should be given to the world why he had not fulfill’d his
engagement with subscribers. Having done this and borrowed two guineas of his
bookseller (to whom he imparted in confidence that he should leave a great many
loose papers behind him which would only want methodizing and arranging to
prove very lucrative to any bookseller after his death), he laid himself down
on my bed in a mood of complacent resignation. By the aid of meat and drink put
into him (for I all along suspected a vacuum) he was enabled to sit up in the
evening, but he had not got the better of his intolerable fear of dying; he
expressed such philosophic indifference in his speech and such frightened
apprehensions in his physiognomy that if he had truly been dying, and I had
known it, I could not have kept my countenance. In particular, when the doctor
came and ordered him to take little white powders (I suppose of chalk or alum,
to humour him), he ey’d him with a suspicion which
I could not account for; he has since explain’d that he took it for
granted Dr. Dale knew his situation and had ordered him
these powders to hasten his departure that he might suffer as little pain as
possible. Think what an aspect the heathen put on with these fears upon a dirty
face. To recount all his
freaks for two or three days while he thought he was going, and how the fit
operated, and sometimes the man got uppermost and sometimes the author, and he
had this excellent person to serve, and he must correct some proof sheets for
Phillips, and he could not bear to leave his
subscribers unsatisfy’d, but he must not think of these things now, he
was going to a place where he should satisfy all his debts—and when he got a
little better he began to discourse what a happy thing it would be if there was
a place where all the good men and women in the world might meet, meaning
heav’n, and I really believe for a time he had doubts about his soul, for
he was very near, if not quite, light-headed. The fact was he had not had a
good meal for some days and his little dirty Neice (whom he sent for with a
still dirtier Nephew, and hugg’d him, and bid them farewell) told us that
unless he dines out he subsists on tea and gruels. And he corroborated this
tale by ever and anon complaining of sensations of gnawing which he felt about
his heart, which he mistook his stomach to be, and sure enough these gnawings
were dissipated after a meal or two, and he surely thinks that he has been
rescued from the jaws of death by Dr. Dale’s white
powders. He is got quite well again by nursing, and chirps of odes and lyric
poetry the day long—he is to go out of town on Monday, and with him goes the
dirty train of his papers and books which follow’d him to our house. I
shall not be sorry when he takes his nipt carcase out of my bed, which it has
occupied, and vanishes with all his Lyric lumber, but I will endeavour to bring
him in future into a method of dining at least once a day. I have proposed to
him to dine with me (and he has nearly come into it) whenever he does not go
out; and pay me. I will take his money beforehand and he shall eat it out. If I
don’t it will go all over the world. Some worthless relations, of which
the dirty little devil that looks after him and a still more dirty nephew are
component particles, I have reason to think divide all his gains with some lazy
worthless authors that are his constant satellites. The Literary Fund has voted
him seasonably £20 and if I can help it he shall spend it on his own carcase. I
have assisted him in arranging the remainder of what he calls Poems and he will
get rid of ’em I hope in another [Here three lines are
torn away at the foot of the page, wherein Lamb makes the transition from George
Dyer to another poor author, George Burnett].
I promised Burnet to
write when his parcel went. He wants me to certify that he is more awake than
you think him. I believe he may be by this time, but he is so full of
self-opinion that I fear whether he and Phillips will ever do together. What he is to do for
Phillips he whimsically seems to consider more as a
favor done toP. than a job fromP. He still persists to
call employ-ment dependence, and prates about the insolence of booksellers and the tax
upon geniuses. Poor devil! he is not launched upon the ocean and is sea-sick
with aforethought. I write plainly about him, and he would stare and frown
finely if he read this treacherous epistle, but I really am anxious about him,
and that [?it] nettles me to see him so proud and so helpless. If he is not
serv’d he will never serve himself. I read his long letter to Southey, which I suppose you have seen. He had
better have been furnishing copy for Phillips than
luxuriating in tracing the causes of his imbecillity. I believe he is a little
wrong in not ascribing more to the structure of his own mind. He had his yawns
from nature, his pride from education.
I hope to see Southey soon, so I need only send my remembrance to him now.
Doubtless I need not tell him that Burnett is not to be foster’d in self-opinion. His eyes
want opening, to see himself a man of middling stature. I am not oculist enough
to do this. The booksellers may one day remove the film. I am all this time on
the most cordial supping terms of amity with G. Burnett
and really love him at times: but I must speak freely of people behind their
backs and not think it back-biting. It is better than Godwin’s way of telling a man he is a
fool to his face.
I think if you could do any thing for George in the way of an office (God knows
whether you can in any haste [?case], but you did talk of it) it is my firm
belief that it would be his only chance of settlement; he will never live by
his literary exertions, as he calls them—he is too proud to go the usual way to
work and he has no talents to make that way unnecessary. I know he talks big in
his letter to Southey that his mind is
undergoing an alteration and that the die is now casting that shall consign him
to honor or dishonour, but these expressions are the convulsions of a fever,
not the sober workings of health. Translated into plain English, he now and
then perceives he must work or starve, and then he thinks he’ll work; but
when he goes about it there’s a lion in the way. He came dawdling to me
for an Encyclopædia yesterday. I recommended him to Norris’ library and he said if he could not get it there;
Phillips was bound to furnish him
with one; it was Phillips’ interest to do so, and
all that. This was true with some restrictions—but as to
Phillips’ interests to oblige G.
B.! Lord help his simple head! P. could by
a whistle call together a host of such authors as
G. B. like Robin
Hood’s merry men in green. P. has
regular regiments in pay. Poor writers are his crab-lice and suck at him for
nutriment. His round pudding chops are their idea of
plenty when in their idle fancies they aspire to be
rich.
What do you think of a life of G. Dyer? I can scarcely conceive a more amusing novel. He has
been connected with all sects
in the world and he will faithfully tell all he knows. Every body will read it;
and if it is not done according to my fancy I promise to put him in a novel
when he dies. Nothing shall escape me. If you think it
feasible, whenever you write you may encourage him. Since he has been so close
with me I have perceiv’d the workings of his inordinate vanity, his
gigantic attention to particles and to prevent open vowels in his odes, his
solicitude that the public may not lose any tittle of his poems by his death,
and all the while his utter ignorance that the world don’t care a pin
about his odes and his criticisms, a fact which every body knows but himself—he
is a rum genius.
C. L.
Note
[See Appendix II., page 967, for further references to Dyer. Also for notes on letters to Rickman belonging to this period.
Dr. Dale would probably be Thomas
Dale of Devonshire Square, Bishopsgate, who had a large city practice in
those days. He died in 1816.
Phillips of St. Paul’s Churchyard. See note on
page 123.
“An old burnt preface.” See note on page 208.
George Burnett we have already met once in the
correspondence (see page 111). He was born probably in 1776. He went to Balliol, met
Southey and Coleridge and became a Pantisocratist. Subsequently he became a dissenting
minister at Yarmouth, and then a medical student at Edinburgh; and later he succeeded
George Dyer as tutor in the family of Lord Stanhope. He became one of Phillips’ hacks, as Lamb’s letter tells us. His principal work was the Specimens of English Prose
Writers, 1807, in three volumes, in which it has been stated that
Lamb had a hand. He died in want in 1811.
The reference to Southey being in
Dublin is explained by the fact that, through Rickman, he had been appointed private secretary to Mr. Corry, Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland, at a
salary of £400. He did not long retain the post, as it was vexatious and the duties very
irregular.]
LETTER 92 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[No date. ? Feb. 15, 1802.]
NOT a sentence, not a syllable of
Trismegistus, shall be lost through my neglect. I am
his word-banker, his storekeeper of puns and syllogisms. You cannot conceive
(and if Trismegistus cannot, no man can) the strange joy which I felt
at the receipt of a letter from Paris. It seemed to give me a learned
importance, which placed me above all who had not Parisian correspondents.
Believe that I shall carefully husband every scrap, which will save you the
trouble of memory, when you come back. You cannot write things so trifling, let
them only be about Paris, which I shall not treasure. In particular, I must
have parallels of actors and actresses. I must be told if any building in Paris
is at all comparable to St. Paul’s, which, contrary to the usual mode of
that part of our nature called admiration, I have looked up to with unfading
wonder every morning at ten o’clock, ever since it has lain in my way to
business. At noon I casually glance upon it, being hungry; and hunger has not
much taste for the fine arts. Is any night-walk comparable to a walk from St.
Paul’s to Charing Cross, for lighting and paving, crowds going and coming
without respite, the rattle of coaches and the cheerfulness of shops? Have you
seen a man guillotined yet? is it as good as hanging? are the women all painted, and the men all
monkeys? or are there not a few that look like rational of both sexes? Are you
and the First Consulthick? All this expense of ink I may fairly put you to, as your
letters will not be solely for my proper pleasure, but are to serve as
memoranda and notices, help for short memory, a kind of Rumfordising recollection, for yourself on
your return. Your letter was just what a letter should be, crammed and very
funny. Every part of it pleased me till you came to Paris; and your
damn’d philosophical indolence or indifference stung me. You cannot stir
from your rooms till you know the language! What the devil!—are men nothing but
word-trumpets? are men all tongue and ear? have these creatures, that you and I
profess to know something about, no faces, gestures,
gabble: no folly, no absurdity, no induction of French education upon the
abstract idea of men and women, no similitude nor dissimilitude to English!
Why! thou damn’d Smellfungus! your
account of your landing and reception, and Bullen (I forget how you spell it—it
was spelt my way in Harry the Eighth’s
time,) was exactly in that minute style which strong impressions Inspire
(writing to a Frenchman, I write as a Frenchman would). It appears to me as if
I should die with joy at the first landing in a foreign country. It is the
nearest pleasure, which a grown man can substitute for that unknown one, which
he can never know—the pleasure of the first entrance into life from the womb. I
dare say, in a short time, my habits would come back like a “stronger
man” armed, and drive out that new pleasure; and I should soon sicken for
known objects. Nothing has transpired here that seems to me of sufficient
importance to send dry-shod over the water: but I suppose you will want to be
told some news. The best and the worst to me is, that I have given up two guineas
a week at the “Post,”
and regained my health and spirits, which were upon the wane. I grew sick, and
Stuart unsatisfied. Ludisti satis, tempus abire est; I must
cut closer, that’s all. Mister
Fell—or as you, with your usual facetiousness and drollery, call
him, Mr. F + ll—has stopped short in the middle of his play. Some friend has told him that it has not the least merit in
it. Oh! that I had the rectifying of the Litany! I would put in a libera nos (Scriptores videlicet) ab
amicis! That’s all the news. A propos (is it pedantry, writing to a
Frenchman, to express myself sometimes by a French word, when an English one
would not do as well? methinks, my thoughts fall naturally into it).——
In all this time I have done but one thing, which I reckon
tolerable, and that I will transcribe, because it may give you pleasure, being
a picture of my humours. You will find it in my last page. It absurdly is a
first Number of a series, thus strangled in its birth.
More news! The Professor’s
Rib has come out to be a damn’d disagreeable woman, so
much so as to drive me and some more old cronies from his house. If a man will
keep snakes in his house, he must not wonder if people are shy of coming to see
him because of the snakes.
C. L.
Apropos, I think you wrong about my play. All the
omissions are right. And the supplementary scene, in which Sandford narrates the manner in which his
master is affected, is the best in the book. It stands where a hodge-podge
of German puerilities used to stand. I insist upon it that you like that
scene. Love me, love that scene. I will now transcribe the “Londoner” (No. 1),
and wind up all with affection and humble servant at the end.
The Londoner. No. 1
In compliance with my own particular humour, no less
than with thy laudable curiosity, Reader, I proceed to give thee some
account of my history and habits. I was born under the nose of St.
Dunstan’s steeple, just where the conflux of the eastern and western
inhabitants of this twofold city meet and justle in friendly opposition at
Temple-bar. The same day which gave me to the world saw London happy in the
celebration of her great annual feast. This I cannot help looking upon as a
lively type or omen of the future great goodwill which I was destined to
bear toward the City, resembling in kind that solicitude which every Chief
Magistrate is supposed to feel for whatever concerns her interests and
well-being. Indeed, I consider myself in some sort a speculative Lord Mayor
of London: for, though circumstances unhappily preclude me from the hope of
ever arriving at the dignity of a gold chain
and spital sermon, yet thus much will I say of myself, in truth, that
Whittington himself with his Cat (just emblem of vigilance and a furred gown), never went beyond me in affection,
which I bear to the citizens. Shut out from serving them in the most
honourable mode, I aspire to do them benefit in another, scarcely less
honourable; and if I cannot, by virtue of office, commit vice and
irregularity to the material Counter, I will, at
least, erect a spiritual one, where they shall be
laid fast by the heels. In plain words, I will
do my best endeavour to write them down.
To return to myself (from whence
my zeal for the Public good is perpetually causing me to digress), I will
let thee, Reader, into certain more of my peculiarities. I was born (as you
have heard), bred, and have passed most of my time, in a crowd. This has begot in me an entire affection for that way of
life, amounting to an almost insurmountable aversion from solitude and
rural scenes. This aversion was never interrupted or suspended, except for
a few years in the younger part of my life, during a period in which I had
fixed my affections upon a charming young woman. Every man, while the
passion is upon him, is for a time at least addicted to groves and meadows,
and purling streams. During this short period of my existence, I contracted
just enough familiarity with rural objects to understand tolerably well
ever after the Poets, when they declaim in such
passionate terms in favour of a country life.
For my own part, now the fit is
long past, I have no hesitation in declaring, that a mob of happy faces
crowding up at the pit door of Drury-Lane Theatre just at the hour of five,
give me ten thousand finer pleasures, than I ever received from all the
flocks of silly sheep, that have whitened the plains
of Arcadia or Epsom Downs.
This passion for crowds is no where feasted so full as
in London. The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull
in Fleet-street. I am naturally inclined to hypochondria, but in London it vanishes, like all other ills.
Often when I have felt a weariness or distaste at home, have I rushed out
into her crowded Strand, and fed my humour, till tears have wetted my cheek
for inutterable sympathies with the multitudinous moving picture, which she
never fails to present at all hours, like the shifting scenes of a skilful
Pantomime.
The very deformities of London, which give distaste to
others, from habit do not displease me. The endless succession of shops,
where Fancy (miscalled Folly) is supplied with perpetual new gauds and
toys, excite in me no puritanical aversion. I gladly behold every appetite
supplied with its proper food. The obliging customer, and the obliged
tradesmen—things which live by bowing, and things which exist but for homage, do not
affect me with disgust; from habit I perceive nothing but urbanity, where
other men, more refined, discover meanness. I love the very smoke of
London, because it has been the medium most familiar to my vision. I see
grand principles of honour at work in the dirty ring which encompasses two
combatants with fists, and principles of no less eternal justice in the
tumultuous detectors of a pickpocket. The salutary astonishment with which
an execution is surveyed, convinces me more forcibly than an hundred
volumes of abstract polity, that the universal instinct of man, in all
ages, has leaned to order and good government. Thus an art of extracting
morality, from the commonest incidents of a town life, is attained by the
same well-natured alchemy, with which the Foresters of
Arden in a beautiful country Found tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing— Where has spleen her food but in London—humour, interest, curiosity,
suck at her measureless breasts without a possibility of being satiated.
Nursed amid her noise, her crowds, her beloved smoke—what have I been doing
all my life, if I have not lent out my heart with usury to such scenes?
Reader, in the course of my peregrinations about the
great city, it is hard, if I have not picked up matter, which may serve to
amuse thee, as it has done me, a winter evening long. When next we meet, I
purpose opening my budget—Till when, farewell.
“What is all this about?” said
Mrs. Shandy. “A story of a
cock and a bull,” said Yorick: and so it is; but Manning will take good-naturedly what God
will send him across the water: only I hope he won’t shut his eyes, and open his mouth, as the
children say, for that is the way to gape, and not
to read. Manning, continue your
laudable purpose of making me your register. I will render back all your
remarks; and I, not you, shall have received usury
by having read them. In the mean time, may the great Spirit have you in his
keeping, and preserve our Englishmen from the inoculation of frivolity and
sin upon French earth.
Allons—or what is it you say,
instead of good-bye?
Mary sends her kind remembrance, and
covets the remarks equally with me.
C. Lamb.
Note
[The reference to the “word-banker” and
“register” is explained by Manning’s first letter to Lamb
from Paris, in which he says: “I . . . beg you to keep all my letters. I hope to
send you many—and I may in the course of time, make some
observations that I shall wish to recall to my memory when I return to
England.”
“Are you and the First Consul thick?”—Napoleon, with whom
Manning was destined one day to be on terms. In
1803, on the declaration of war, when he wished to return to England,
Manning’s was the only passport that
Napoleon signed; again, in 1817, on returning from China,
Manning was wrecked near St. Helena, and, waiting on the island
for a ship, conversed there with the great exile.
“Rumfordising.” A word coined by Lamb from Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count von Romford, the founder of
the Royal Institution, the deviser of the Rumford stove, and a tireless scientific and
philosophical experimentalist.
“Smellfungus.” Evidently an allusion to
Sterne’s attack on Smollett, in The Sentimental Journey:
“The lamented Smelfungus travelled from
Boulogne to Paris, from Paris to Rome, and so on; but he set out with the spleen and
jaundice, and every object he passed by was discoloured or distorted.”
“Bullen”—Boulogne.
“Stronger man.” See Luke xi.
21, 22.
“The Post.” Lamb had been
writing criticisms of plays; but Stuart, as we have
seen, wanted them on the same night as the performance and Lamb found
this impossible.
“Ludisti satin, tempus abire est.” Horace, Epist. II., 2,
214-215:— Lusisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti:Tempus abire tibi est.
(Thou hast had enough of the pleasures of life, enough of feasting and
revellings; it is time for thee to depart.)
“Fell”—R.
Fell, author of a Tour through the Batavian Republic, 1801. Later he compiled a Life of Charles James
Fox, 1808. Lamb knew him, as well as
Fenwick, through Godwin. See note on page 967 of Appendix II.
“Libera nos . .
.” The phrase “Defend me from my friends; I can defend
myself against my enemies,” is attributed to Marechal Villars, when taking leave of Louis
XIV.
“I have done but one thing”—“The Londoner,” referred to later.
“The Professor’s Rib”—Godwin’s second wife, the widow Clairmont (mother of Jane Clairmont), whom he had married in December, 1801.
“Apropos, I think you wrong about my
play.” The portion beginning with these words is usually printed as a
separate letter. But I think it formed only the postscript to that which precedes. The earlier reference to “The Londoner” is practically proof.
John
Woodvil had just been published and Lamb had sent Manning a copy.
Manning, in return, had written from Paris early in February:
“I showed your Tragedy to Holcroft, who
had taste enough to discover that ’tis full of poetry—but the plot he condemns
in toto. Tell me how it succeeds. I
think you were ill advised to retrench so much. I miss the beautiful Branches you have
lopped off and regret them. In some of the pages the sprinkling of words is so thin as
to be quite outré. There you were wrong
again.”
With reference to John Woodvil see Poems and Plays,
Vol. V. of this edition.
“The
Londoner” was published in the Morning
Post, February 1, 1802. I have quoted the article from that paper, as
Lamb’s copy for Manning has disappeared. Compare passages on London on pages 194 and
210. Concerning “The Londoner” Manning
wrote, in his next letter—April 6, 1802—“I like your ‘Londoner’ very much, there is a deal of happy fancy in it, but it is not
strong enough to be seen by the generality of readers, yet if you were to write a volume of
essays in the same stile you might be sure of its succeeding.”]
LETTER 93 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN RICKMAN
16, Mitre Court Buildings, Inner Temple, April 10, 1802.
DEAR Rickman,—The enclosed letter explains itself. It will save me the
danger of a corporal interview with the man-eater who, if very sharp-set, may
take a fancy to me, if you will give me a short note, declaratory of
probabilities. These from him who hopes to see you once or twice more before he
goes hence, to be no more seen: for there is no tipple nor tobacco in the
grave, whereunto he hasteneth.
C. Lamb.
How clearly the Goul writes, and like a gentleman!
Note
[A friend of Burnett, named
Simonds, is meant. Lamb
calls him a “Goul” in another letter, and elsewhere says he eats strange
flesh.]
LETTER 94 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[No date. (?) Early April, 1802.]
MY dear Manning,—Although something of the latest, and after two
months’ waiting, your letter was highly gratifying. Some parts want a
little explication; for example, “the god-like face of the First Consul.” What god does he most resemble? Mars, Bacchus, or Apollo? or the god Serapis who, flying (as Egyptian chronicles deliver) from the
fury of the dog Anubis (the hieroglyph of
an English mastiff), lighted on Monomotapa (or the land of apes), by some
thought to be Old France, and there set up a tyranny, &c. Our London prints
of him represent him gloomy and sulky, like an angry Jupiter. I hear that he is very small, even less than me, who
am “less than the least of the Apostles,” at least than they
are painted in the Vatican. I envy you your access to this great man, much more
than your seances and conversaziones, which I have a shrewd suspicion must be
something dull. What you assert concerning the actors of Paris, that they
exceed our comedians, “bad as ours are,” is impossible. In
one sense it may be true, that their fine gentlemen, in what is called genteel
comedy, may possibly be more brisk and dégagé than Mr.
Caulfield or Mr.
Whitfield; but have any of them the power to move laughter in excess? or can a Frenchman laugh? Can they batter at your judicious ribs till they shake,
nothing loth to be so shaken? This is John
Bull’s criterion, and it shall be mine. You are
Frenchified. Both your tastes and morals are corrupt and perverted. By-and-by
you will come to assert, that Buonaparte is as great a
general as the old Duke of Cumberland,
and deny that one Englishman can beat three Frenchmen. Read “Henry the Fifth” to
restore your orthodoxy. All things continue at a stay-still in London. I cannot
repay your new novelties with my stale reminiscences. Like the prodigal, I have
spent my patrimony, and feed upon the superannuated chaff and dry husks of
repentance; yet sometimes I remember with pleasure the hounds and horses, which
I kept in the days of my prodigality. I find nothing new, nor anything that has
so much of the gloss and dazzle of novelty, as may rebound in narrative, and
cast a reflective glimmer across the channel. Something I will say about people
that you and I know. Fenwick is still in
debt, and the Professor has not done
making love to his new spouse. I think
he never looks into an almanack, or he would have found by the calendar that
the honeymoon was extinct a moon ago. Southey is Secretary to the Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer;
£400 a year. Stoddart is turned Doctor of Civil Law,
and dwells in Doctors’ Commons. I fear his commons
are short, as they say. Did I send you an epitaph I scribbled upon a poor girl who
died at nineteen, a good girl and a pretty girl, and a clever girl, but
strangely neglected by all her friends and kin?
“Under this cold marble stone Sleep the sad remains of one Who, when alive, by few or none Was loved, as loved she might have been, If she prosperous days had seen, Or had thriving been, I ween. Only this cold funeral stone Tells she was beloved by one, Who on the marble graves his moan.”
Brief, and pretty, and tender, is it not? I send you this,
being the only piece of poetry I have done, since the muses all went with
T. M. to Paris. I have neither stuff
in my brain, nor paper in my drawer, to write you a longer letter. Liquor and
company and wicked tobacco a’nights, have quite dispericraniated me, as
one may say; but you who spiritualise upon Champagne may continue to write long
letters, and stuff ’em with amusement to the end. Too long they cannot
be, any more than a codicil to a will which leaves me sundry parks and manors
not specified in the deed. But don’t be two months before you write
again. These from merry old England, on the day of her valiant patron
St. George.
C. Lamb.
Note
[This letter is usually dated 1803, but I feel sure it should be 1802.
Southey had given up his Irish appointment in
that year, and Godwin’s honeymoon began in
December, 1801.
“The dog Anubis.”
See Milton’sode on the Nativity, Hymn 23.
“Even less than me.” Mr.
W. C. Hazlitt gives in Mary and Charles Lamb a vivid impression of Lamb’s spare figure: a farmer at Widford,
Mr. Charles Tween, himself not a big man, told Mr.
Hazlitt that when walking out with Lamb he would place
his hands under his arm and lift him over the stiles as if it were nothing. Napoleon’s height was 5 feet 6 or 7 inches.
Thomas Caulfield, a brother of the antiquary and
print-seller, James Caulfield, was a comedian and
mimic at Drury Lane; Whitfield was an actor at Drury
Lane, who later moved to Covent Garden.
“An epitaph.” These lines were written upon a friend of Rickman’s, Mary Druitt
of Wimborne. They were printed in the Morning Post for February 7, 1804, signed
C. L. See page 268 and notes to Vol. V. of this edition.
For the rest of the letter see page 768.]
LETTER 95 (Fragment) CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Sept. 8th, 1802.
DEAR Coleridge,—I thought of not writing till we had performed some
of our commissions; but we have been hindered from setting about them, which
yet shall be done to a tittle. We got home very pleasantly on Sunday. Mary is a good deal fatigued, and finds the
difference of going to a place, and coming from it. I feel that I shall
remember your mountains to the last day I live. They haunt me perpetually. I am
like a man who has been falling in love unknown to himself, which he finds out
when he leaves the lady. I do not remember any very strong impression while
they were present; but, being gone, their mementos are shelved in my brain. We
passed a very pleasant little time with the Clarksons. The Wordsworths are at Montagu’s rooms, near neighbours to
us. They dined with us yesterday, and I was their guide to Bartlemy Fair!
Note
[In the summer of 1802 the Lambs paid a sudden visit
to Coleridge at Keswick. Afterwards they went to
Grasmere, although the Wordsworths were away from home; but they saw
Thomas Clarkson, the philanthropist, then living
at Ullswater (see the next letter). They had reached London again on September 5. Procter records that on being asked how he felt when among
the lakes and mountains, Lamb replied that in order
to bring down his thoughts from their almost painful elevation to the sober regions of
life, he was obliged to think of the ham and beef shop near St. Martin’s Lane.
This letter, the original of which is I know not where, is here, for
dismal copyright reasons, very imperfectly given. Mr.
Macdonald prints it in full. Mrs.
Gilchrist in her memoir of Mary
Lamb supplies one omitted passage, as follows:—
“Lloyd has written me a
fine letter of friendship all about himself and Sophia and love and cant which I have not answered. I have not given up
the idea of writing to him but it will be done very plainly and sincerely, without
acrimony.”
Mr. Dykes Campbell, in his edition of Coleridge, supplies another
omitted passage:—
“I was pleased to recognise your blank-verse poem (the Picture)
in the Morn. Post of
Monday. It reads very well, and I feel some dignity in the notion of being able to
understand it better than most Southern readers.”
Coleridge’s poem “The Picture; or, The Lover’s Resolution,”
was printed in the Morning
Post for September 6. Its scenery was probably pointed out to Lamb by Coleridge at Keswick.
Basil Montagu, the lawyer, an old friend of
Wordsworth’s. It is his son Edward who figures in the “Anecdote for Fathers.”
Bartholomew Fair, held at Smithfield, continued until 1855, but its
glories had been decreasing for some years.]
LETTER 96 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
24th Sept., 1802, London.
MY dear Manning,—Since the date of my last letter, I have been a
traveller. A strong desire seized me of visiting remote regions. My first
impulse was to go and see Paris. It was a trivial objection to my aspiring
mind, that I did not understand a word of the language, since I certainly
intend some time in my life to see Paris, and equally certainly never intend to
learn the language; therefore that could be no objection. However, I am very
glad I did not go, because you had left Paris (I see) before I could have set
out. I believe, Stoddart promising to go
with me another year prevented that plan. My next scheme, (for to my restless,
ambitious mind London was become a bed of thorns) was to visit the far-famed
Peak in Derbyshire, where the Devil sits, they say, without breeches. This my
purer mind rejected as indelicate. And my final resolve was a tour to the
Lakes. I set out with Mary to Keswick,
without giving Coleridge any notice; for
my time being precious did not admit of it. He received us with all the
hospitality in the world, and gave up his time to show us all the wonders of
the country. He dwells upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, in a
comfortable house, quite enveloped on all sides by a net of mountains: great
floundering bears and monsters they seemed, all couchant and asleep. We got in
in the evening, travelling in a post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst of a
gorgeous sunshine, which transmuted all the mountains into colours, purple,
&c. &c. We thought we had got into fairyland. But that went off (as it
never came again—while we stayed we had no more fine sunsets); and we entered
Coleridge’s comfort-able study just in the dusk, when the mountains were all dark
with clouds upon their heads. Such an impression I never received from objects
of sight before, nor do I suppose I can ever again. Glorious creatures, fine
old fellows, Skiddaw, &c. I never shall forget ye, how ye lay about that
night, like an intrenchment; gone to bed, as it seemed for the night, but
promising that ye were to be seen in the morning.
Coleridge had got a blazing fire in his study; which
is a large, antique, ill-shaped room, with an old-fashioned organ, never played
upon, big enough for a church, shelves of scattered folios, an Æolian harp, and
an old sofa, half-bed, &c. And all looking out upon the last fading view of
Skiddaw and his broad-breasted brethren: what a night! Here we stayed three
full weeks, in which time I visited Wordsworth’s cottage, where we stayed a day or two with
the Clarksons (good people and most
hospitable, at whose house we tarried one day and night), and saw Lloyd. The Wordsworths were gone to Calais.
They have since been in London and past much time with us: he is now gone into
Yorkshire to be married.1 So we have seen Keswick,
Grasmere, Ambleside, Ulswater (where the Clarksons live),
and a place at the other end of Ulswater—I forget the name—to which we
travelled on a very sultry day, over the middle of Helvellyn. We have clambered
up to the top of Skiddaw, and I have waded up the bed of Lodore. In fine, I
have satisfied myself, that there is such a thing as that which tourists call
romantic, which I very much suspected before: they make such a spluttering
about it, and toss their splendid epithets around them, till they give as dim a
light as at four o’clock next morning the lamps do after an illumination.
Mary was excessively tired, when she got about
half-way up Skiddaw, but we came to a cold rill (than which nothing can be
imagined more cold, running over cold stones), and with the reinforcement of a
draught of cold water she surmounted it most manfully. Oh, its fine black head,
and the bleak air atop of it, with a prospect of mountains all about, and
about, making you giddy; and then Scotland afar off, and the border countries
so famous in song and ballad! It was a day that will stand out, like a
mountain, I am sure, in my life. But I am returned (I have now been come home
near three weeks—I was a month out), and you cannot conceive the degradation I
felt at first, from being accustomed to wander free as air among mountains, and
bathe in rivers without being controlled by any one, to come home and work. I felt very little. I had
been dreaming I was a very great man. But that is going off, and I find I shall
conform in time to that state of life to which it has pleased God to call me.
Besides, after all, Fleet-Street and the Strand are better
1 See Appendix II., page 968.
places to live in for good
and all than among Skiddaw. Still, I turn back to those great places where I
wandered about, participating in their greatness. After all, I could not live
in Skiddaw. I could spend a year—two, three years—among them, but I must have a
prospect of seeing Fleet-Street at the end of that time, or I should mope and
pine away, I know. Still, Skiddaw is a fine creature. My habits are changing, I
think: i.e. from drunk to sober. Whether I shall be
happier or not remains to be proved. I shall certainly be more happy in a
morning; but whether I shall not sacrifice the fat, and the marrow, and the
kidneys, i.e. the night, the glorious care-drowning
night, that heals all our wrongs, pours wine into our mortifications, changes
the scene from indifferent and flat to bright and brilliant!—O
Manning, if I should have formed a diabolical
resolution, by the time you come to England, of not admitting any spirituous
liquors into my house, will you be my guest on such shameworthy terms? Is life,
with such limitations, worth trying? The truth is, that my liquors bring a nest
of friendly harpies about my house, who consume me. This is a pitiful tale to
be read at St. Gothard; but it is just now nearest my heart. Fenwick is a ruined man. He is hiding himself
from his creditors, and has sent his wife and children into the country.
Fell, my other drunken companion
(that has been: nam hic cæstus artemque repono), is turned
editor of a “Naval Chronicle.” Godwin (with a pitiful artificial wife) continues a steady friend, though the
same facility does not remain of visiting him often. That Bitch has detached
Marshall from his house,
Marshall the man who went to sleep when the
“Ancient
Mariner” was reading: the old, steady, unalterable friend of the
Professor. Holcroft is not yet come to
town. I expect to see him, and will deliver your message. How I hate this part of a letter. Things come crowding in to say,
and no room for ’em. Some things are too little to be told, i.e. to have a preference; some are too big and
circumstantial. Thanks for yours, which was most delicious. Would I had been
with you, benighted &c. I fear my head is turned with wandering. I shall
never be the same acquiescent being. Farewell; write again quickly, for I shall
not like to hazard a letter, not knowing where the fates have carried you.
Farewell, my dear fellow.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Lamb suggests in Letter 54 that he
knew some French.
“Where the Devil sits.” A reference probably to
Drayton’sPolyolbion, Book XI., where the
reader must find it for himself.
“Like an intrenchment.” Lamb probably had this simile from Coleridge, who often used it.
“Nam hic cæsttus artemque
repono.” Virgil,
Æneid, V., 484,
“Hic victor cæstus artemque
repono”—“Here victorious I lay aside my cestus and my art.”
Marshall we met in the letters to Godwin of December 14, 1800, page 201, and to Manning,
December 16, 1800, page 203.
“Holcroft”—Thomas Holcroft (1745-1809), a miscellaneous writer, who is best known by
his play “The Road to Ruin.”
Lamb says of him in his “Letter to Southey” (see Vol. I. of this edition,
page 232) that he was “one of the most candid, most upright, and single-meaning
men” that he had ever met.]
LETTER 97 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
October 9, 1802. Cabolus Agnus Coleridgio Suo S.
CARISSIME—Scribis, ut nummos scilicet epistolarios
solvam et postremo in Tartara abeam: immo tu potius Tartaricum (ut aiunt)
deprehendisti, qui me vernacula mea lingua pro scriba conductitio per tot annos
satis eleganter usum ad Latinè impure et canino fere ore latrandum per tuasmet
epistolas benè compositas et concinnatas percellere studueris. Conabor tamen:
Attamen vereor, ut Ædes istas nostri Christi, inter quas tantâ diligentia
magistri improba [?improbi] bonis literulis, quasi per clysterem quendam
injectis, infrà supraque olim penitus imbutus fui, Barnesii et Marklandii
doctissimorum virorum nominibus adhuc gaudentes, barbarismis meis peregrinis et
aliunde quæsitis valde dehonestavero [sic]. Sed pergere quocunque placet.
Adeste igitur, quotquot estis, conjugationum declinationumve turmæ, terribilia
spectra, et tu imprimis ades, Umbra et Imago maxima obsoletæ (Diis gratiæ)
Virgæ, quâ novissime in mentem recepta, horrescunt subito natales [nates], et
parum deest quo minùs braccas meas ultro usque ad crura demittam, et ipse puer
pueriliter ejulem.
Ista tua Carmina
Chamouniana satis grandia esse mihi constat; sed hoc mihi nonnihil
displicet, quòd in iis illae montium Grisosonum inter se responsiones totidem
reboant anglicè, God, God, haud aliter atque temet
audivi tuas montes Cumbrianas resonare docentes, Tod,
Tod, nempe Doctorem infelicem:
vocem certe haud Deum Sonantem. Pro cæteris plaudo.
Itidem comparationes istas tuas satis callidas et lepidas certè novi: sed
quid hoc ad verum? cum illi Consulari viro
et mentemirritabilem istam Julianam: et etiam astutias frigidulas
quasdam Augusto propriores, nequaquam
congruenter uno afflatu comparationis causâ insedisse affirmaveris: necnon
nescio quid similitudinis etiam cum Tiberio
tertio in loco solicite produxeris. Quid tibi equidem cum uno vel altero
Cæsare, cùm universi Duodecim ad comparationes tuas se ultro tulerint?
Præterea, vetustati ad nutans, comparationes iniquas odi.
Istas Wordsworthianas nuptias (vel potius cujusdam Edmundii tui) te retulisse mirificum gaudeo. Valeas, Maria, fortunata nimium, et antiqua; illae
Mariae Virgini (comparatione plusquam Caesareana) forsitan comparanda, quoniam
“beata inter mulieres:” et etiam fortasse Wordsworthium ipsuni tuum
maritum Angelo Salutatori æquare fas erit, quoniam e Cœlo (ut ille) descendunt
et Musæ et ipsi Musicolæ: at Wordsworthium Musarum observantissimum semper novi. Necnon te
quoque affinitate hac nova, Dorothea,
gratulor: et tu certe alterum donum Dei.
Istum Ludum, quem tu,
Coleridgi, Americanum garris, a Ludo (ut Ludi sunt) maximè abhorrentem
prætereo: nempe quid ad Ludum attinet, totius illæ gentis Columbianæ, a nostrâ
gente, eadem stirpe ortâ, ludi singuli causa voluntatem perperam alienare?
Quæso ego materiam ludi: tu Bella ingeris.
Denique valeas, et quid de Latinitate mea putes, dicas:
facias ut opossum illum nostrum volantem
vel (ut tu malis) quendam Piscem errabundum, a me salvum et pulcherrimum esse
jubeas. Valeant uxor tua cum Hartleiio
nostro. Soror mea salva est et ego: vos et ipsa salvere jubet. Ulterius
progrediri [? progredi] non liquet: homo sum æratus.
P.S.—Pene mihi exciderat, apud me esse Librorum a
Johanno Miltono Latinè scriptorum
volumina duo, quæ (Deo volente) cum cæteris tuis libris ocyùs citius per Maria
[?] ad te missura [sic] curabo; sed me in hoc tali
genere rerum nullo modo festinantem novisti: habes
confitentem reum. Hoc solum dici [sic] restat, prædicta
volumina pulchra esse et omnia opera Latina J. M. in se continere. Circa
defensionem istam Pro Popo. Ango. acerrimam in præsens ipse præclaro gaudio moror.
Jussa tua Stuartina faciam ut diligenter colam. Iterum iterumque valeas: Et facias memor sis nostri.
Note
[I append a translation from the pen of Mr.
Stephen Gwynn:—
Charles Lamb to his Friend
Coleridge, Greeting.
Dear Friend—You write that I am to pay my debt, to wit in coin
of correspondence, and finally that I am to go to Tartarus: no but it is you have caught a
Tartar (as the saying is), since after all these years employing my own vernacular tongue,
and prettily enough for a hired penman, you have set about to drive me by means of your
well composed and neatly turned epistles to gross and almost doggish barking in the Latin.
Still, I will try: And yet I fear that the Hostel of our Christ,—wherein by the exceeding
diligence of a relentless master I was in days gone by deeply imbued from top to bottom
with polite learning, instilled as it were by a clyster—which still glories in the names of
the erudite Barnes and Markland, will be vilely dishonoured by my outlandish and adscititious
barbarisms. But I am determined to proceed, no matter whither. Be with me therefore all ye
troops of conjugations and declensions, dread spectres, and approach thou chiefest, Shade
and Phantom of the disused (thank Heaven) Birch, at whose entry to my imagination a sudden
shiver takes my rump, and a trifle then more would make me begin to let down my breeches to
my calves, and turning boy, howl boyishly.
That your Ode at
Chamounix is a fine thing I am clear; but here is a thing offends me somewhat,
that in the ode your answers of the Grison mountains to each other should so often echo in
English God, God—in the very tone that I have heard your own lips teaching your Cumbrian
mountains to resound Tod, Tod, meaning the unlucky
doctor—a syllable assuredly of no Godlike sound. For the rest, I approve.
Moreover, I certainly recognise that your comparisons are acute and witty; but what has this
to do with truth? since you have given to the great Consul at once that irritable mind of Julius, and also a kind of cold cunning, more proper to Augustus—attributing incongruous characteristics in one breath
for the sake of your comparison: nay, you have even in the third instance laboriously drawn
out some likeness to Tiberius. What had you to do with
one Cæsar, or a second, when the whole Twelve offered themselves to your comparison?
Moreover, I agree with antiquity, and think comparisons odious.
Your Wordsworth
nuptials (or rather the nuptials of a certain Edmund of
yours) fill me with joy in your report. May you prosper, Mary, fortunate beyond compare, and perchance comparable to that ancient
Virgin Mary (a comparison more than Cæsarean) since
“blessed art thou among women:” perhaps also it will be no impiety
to compare Wordsworth himself your husband to the
Angel of Salutation, since (like the angel) from heaven descend both Muses and the servants
of the Muses: whose devoutest votary I always know Wordsworth to be.
Congratulations to thee, Dorothea, in this new
alliance: you also assuredly are another “gift of God.”
As for your Ludus [Lloyd], whom
you talk of as an “American”, I pass him by as no sportsman (as sport goes): what
kind of sport is it, to alienate utterly the good will of the whole Columbian people, our
own kin, sprung of the same stock, for the sake of one Ludd
[Lloyd]? I seek the material for diversion: you heap on War.
Finally, fare you well, and pray tell me what you think of my Latinity.
Kindly wish health and beauty from me to our flying
possum or (as you prefer to call it) roving Fish. Good health to your wife
and my friend Hartley. My sister and I are well. She
also sends you greeting. I do not see how to get on farther: I am a man in debt [or
possibly in “fetters ”].
P.S.—I had almost forgot, I have by me two volumes of the Latin writings
of John Milton, which (D.V.) I will have sent you
sooner or later by Mary: but you know me no way precipitate in this
kind: the accused pleads guilty. This only remains to be said, that the aforesaid volumes
are handsome and contain all the Latin works of J. M. At present I
dwell with much delight on his vigorous defence of the English people.
I will be sure to observe diligently your Stuartial tidings.
Again and again farewell: and pray be mindful of me.
Coleridge’s “Hymn before Sun-rise, in the Vale of Chamouni,” was
printed in the Morning
Post for September 11, 1802. The poem contains this passage:— God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God! God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!
Canon Ainger suggests that by
Tod, the unlucky doctor, Lamb meant Dr. William Dodd
(1729-1777), the compiler of the Beauties of Shakespeare and the forger, who was hanged at
Tyburn.
“Your comparisons.” Coleridge’s “Comparison of the Present State of France with that of Rome under Julius and Augustus
Caesar” was printed in the Morning Post, September 21, September 25 and October
2,1802. See Essays on His Own
Times, 1850, Vol. III., page 478.
Wordsworth’s marriage to Mary Hutchinson, on October 4, 1802, had called forth from
Coleridge his ode on “Dejection,” printed in the Morning Post for the same day, in which
Wordsworth was addressed as Edmund. In later
editions Coleridge suppressed its personal character.
Ludus is Lloyd. Lamb means by “American “what we should mean by
pro-American. Compare Lady Sarah Lennox (Letters, I., 277.)
The flying opossum (shortened to Pi-pos) was a name for little Derwent Coleridge, then two years old. It arose from his
inability to pronounce the words “flying opossum” under a picture in one
of his books.
“Stuartial.” Referring to Daniel Stuart of the Morning Post.]
LETTER 98 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Oct. 11th, 1802.
DEAR Coleridge,—Your offer about the German poems is exceedingly
kind; but I do not think it a wise speculation, because the time it would take
you to put them into prose would be nearly as great as if you versified them.
Indeed, I am sure you could do the one nearly as soon as the other; so that,
instead of a division of labour, it would be only a multiplication. But I will
think of your offer in another light. I dare say I could find many things of a
light nature to suit that paper, which you would not object to pass upon
Stuart as your own, and I should
come in for some light profits, and Stuart think the more
highly of your assiduity. “Bishop Hall’s Characters” I know nothing about, having
never seen them. But I will reconsider your offer, which is very plausible; for
as to the drudgery of going every day to an editor with my scraps, like a
pedlar, for him to pick out, and tumble about my ribbons and posies, and to
wait in his lobby, &c., no money could make up for the degradation. You are
in too high request with him to have anything unpleasant of that sort to submit
to.
It was quite a slip of my pen, in my Latin letter, when I
told you I had Milton’s Latin
Works. I ought to have said his Prose Works, in two volumes, Birch’s edition, containing all, both
Latin and English, a fuller and better edition than Lloyd’s of Toland.
It is completely at your service, and you must accept it from me; at the same
time, I shall be much obliged to you for your Latin Milton, which you think you
have at Howitt’s; it will leave me nothing to wish
for but the “History of
England,” which I shall soon pick up for a trifle. But you
must write me word whether the Miltons are worth paying carriage for. You have
a Milton; but it is pleasanter to eat one’s own peas
out of one’s own garden, than to buy them by the peck at Covent Garden;
and a book reads the better, which is our own, and has been so long known to
us, that we know the topography of its blots and dog’s-ears, and can
trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins, or over a pipe, which I think is
the maximum. But, Coleridge, you must
accept these little things, and not think of returning money for them, for I do
not set up for a factor or general agent. As for the fantastic debt of 15l., I’ll think you were dreaming, and not trouble
myself seriously to attend to you. My bad Latin you properly correct; but
natales for nates was an inadvertency: I knew better.
Progrediri or progredi I thought indifferent, my
authority being Ainsworth. However, as I
have got a fit of Latin, you will now and then indulge me with an epistola. I pay the postage of this, and
propose doing it by turns. In that case I can now and then write to you without
remorse; not that you would mind the money, but you have not always ready cash
to answer small demands—the epistolarii
nummi.
Your “Epigram on the Sun and Moon in Germany” is admirable. Take
’em all together, they are as good as Harrington’s. I will muster up all the conceits I can,
and you shall have a packet some day. You and I together can answer all demands
surely: you, mounted on a terrible charger (like Homer in the Battle
of the Books) at the head of the cavalry: I will lead the light
horse. I have just heard from Stoddart.
Allen and he intend taking Keswick
in their way home. Allen wished particularly to have it a
secret that he is in Scotland, and wrote to me accordingly very urgently. As
luck was, I had told not above three or four; but Mary had told Mrs. Green of Christ’s
Hospital! For the present, farewell: never forgetting love to Pi-pos and his friends.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Coleridge, who seems to have been
asked by Stuart of the Morning Post for translations of German verse, had suggested, I
presume, that he should supply Lamb (who knew no
German) with literal prose translations, and that Lamb should versify
them, as he had in the case of “Thekla’s Song”
in Coleridge’s translation of the first part of Wallenstein
nearly three years before. Lamb’s suggestion is that he should
send to Stuart epigrams and paragraphs in
Coleridge’s name. Whether or not he did so, I cannot say.
Bishop Hall’sCharacters of Vices and
Virtues was published in 1608. Coleridge may have suggested that Lamb should imitate them for the Morning Post. Lamb later came to
know Hall’ssatires, for he quotes from them in his review of
Barron Field’s poems in 1820.
Milton’s prose works were edited by Thomas Birch, and by John
Toland in folio.
“My bad Latin”—in the letter of October 9, 1802.
Ainsworth was Robert Ainsworth,
compiler of the Thesaurus
Linguæ Latinæ, 1736, for many years the best Latin dictionary.
“Your Epigram”—Coleridge’s Epigram “On the Curious Circumstance that in the German Language the
Sun is feminine and the Moon masculine.” It appeared in the Morning Post on October
11, 1802. Coleridge had been sending epigrams and other verse to the
Post for some time.
Harrington would be Sir John
Harington (1561-1612), the author of many epigrams.
“Like Homer.” In Swift’s satire Homer appeared at the “Head of the Cavalry, mounted on a furious
Horse, with Difficulty managed by the Rider himself, but which no other Mortal durst
approach.”
Stoddart and Allen we have met. I do not know anything of Mrs.
Green.]
LETTER 99 (Fragment)1 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Oct. 23rd, 1802.
I READ daily your political essays. I was
particularly pleased with “Once a Jacobin:” though the
argument is obvious enough, the style was less swelling than your things
sometimes are, and it was plausible ad
populum. A vessel has just arrived from Jamaica with the
news of poor Sam Le Grice’s death.
He died at Jamaica of the yellow fever. His course was rapid and he had been
very foolish; but I believe there was more of kindness and warmth in him than
in almost any other of our schoolfellows. The annual meeting of the Blues is
to-morrow, at the London Tavern, where poor Sammy dined
with them two years ago, and attracted the notice of all by the singular
foppishness of his dress. When men go off the stage so early, it scarce seems a
noticeable thing in their epitaphs, whether they had been wise or silly in
their lifetime. I am glad the snuff and Pi-pos’s Books please. “Goody Two Shoes” is almost out of print.
Mrs. Barbauld’s stuff has
banished all the old classics of the nursery; and the shopman at Newbery’s hardly deigned to reach them
off an old exploded corner of a shelf, when Mary asked for them. Mrs. B.’s and
Mrs. Trimmer’s nonsense lay in
piles about. Knowledge insignificant and vapid as Mrs.
B.’s books convey, it seems, must come to a child in the
1 See Appendix II., page 968.
shape of knowledge, and his empty noddle must be turned
with conceit of his own powers when he has learnt that a Horse is an animal,
and Billy is better than a Horse, and such like; instead
of that beautiful Interest in wild tales which made the child a man, while all
the time he suspected himself to be no bigger than a child. Science has
succeeded to Poetry no less in the little walks of children than with men. Is
there no possibility of averting this sore evil? Think what you would have been
now, if instead of being fed with Tales and old wives’ fables in
childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history?
Damn them!—I mean the cursed Barbauld Crew, those Blights and Blasts of all that is Human in
man and child.
As to the Translations, let me do two or three hundred
lines, and then do you try the Nostrums upon Stuart in any way you please. If they go down I will bray more.
In fact, if I got or could but get 50l. a year only, in
addition to what I have, I should live in affluence.
Have you anticipated it, or could not you give a Parallel of
Bonaparte with Cromwell, particularly as to the contrast in
their deeds affecting foreign states?
Cromwell’s interference for the Albigenses,
B[uonaparte]’s against the Swiss. Then Religion
would come in; and Milton and you could
rant about our countrymen of that period. This is a hasty suggestion, the more
hasty because I want my Supper. I have just finished Chapman’sHomer. Did you ever read it?—it has most the
continuous power of interesting you all along, like a rapid original, of any,
and in the uncommon excellence of the more finished parts goes beyond Fairfax or any of ’em. The metre is
fourteen syllables, and capable of all sweetness and grandeur. Cowper’s damn’d blank verse
detains you every step with some heavy Miltonism; Chapman
gallops off with you his own free pace. Take a simile for an example. The
council breaks up— “Being abroad, the earth was overlaid With flockers to them, that came forth; as when of frequent bees Swarms rise out of a hollow rock, repairing the degrees Of their egression endlessly, with ever rising
new From forth their sweet nest; as their store, still as it faded,
grew, And never would cease sending forth her clusters
to the spring, They still crowd out so: this flock here, that there, belabouring The loaded flowers. So,” &c. &c. [Iliad, Book II., 70-77.]
What endless egression of phrases the
dog commands!
Take another: Agamemnon
wounded, bearing his wound heroically for the sake of the army (look below) to
a woman in labour. “He, with his lance, sword, mighty stones, poured his heroic
wreak On other squadrons of the foe, whiles yet warm blood did break Thro’ his cleft veins: but when the wound was quite exhaust
and crude, The eager anguish did approve his princely fortitude. As when most sharp and bitter pangs distract a labouring dame, Which the divine Ilithiæ, that rule the painful frame Of human childbirth, pour on her; the Ilithiæ that are The daughters of Saturnia; with whose extreme repair The woman in her travail strives to take the worst it gives; With thought, it must be, ’tis love’s fruit, the end
for which she lives; The mean to make herself new born, what comforts will redound: So,” &c. [Iliad, Book XI., 228-239.]
I will tell you more about Chapman and his peculiarities in my next. I am much interested
in him.
Yours ever affectionately, and Pi-Pos’s.
C. L.
Note
[Coleridge was just now
contributing political essays as well as verse to the Morning Post. “Once a Jacobin always a Jacobin” appeared on
October 21, 1802. These were afterwards reprinted in Essays on His Own Times. Ad
populum is a reminder of Coleridge’s
first political essays, the Conciones ad Populum of 1795.
“Goody Two
Shoes”—One of Newbery’s most
famous books for children, sometimes attributed to Goldsmith, though, I think, wrongly.
Mrs. Barbauld (1743-1825) was the author of Hymns in Prose for Children, and she
contributed to her brother John Aikin’sEvenings at
Home, both very popular books. Lamb,
who afterwards came to know Mrs. Barbauld, described her and Mrs. Inchbald as the two bald women. Mrs. Sarah Trimmer (1741-1810) was the author of many
books for children; she lives by the Story of the Robins.
The translation for Stuart either
was not made or not accepted; nor did Coleridge
carry out the project of the parallel of Buonaparte
with Cromwell. Hallam, however, did so in his Constitutional History of
England, unfavourably to Cromwell.
George Chapman’sOdyssey was paraphrased by
Lamb in his Adventures of Ulysses, 1808
(see the letter to Elton on page 650).
Lamb either did not return to the subject with Coleridge, or his “next letter” has been
lost.]
LETTER 100 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Nov. 4th, 1802.
OBSERVE, there comes to you, by the Kendal waggon
tomorrow, the illustrious 5th of November, a box, containing the Miltons, the strange American Bible, with
White’s brief note, to which
you will attend; Baxter’s
“Holy
Commonwealth,” for which you stand indebted to me 3s. 6d.; an
odd volume of Montaigne, being of no use
to me, I having the whole; certain books belonging to Wordsworth, as do also the strange
thick-hoofed shoes, which are very much admired at in London. All these
sundries I commend to your most strenuous looking after. If you find the
Miltons in certain parts dirtied and soiled with a crumb of right Gloucester
blacked in the candle (my usual supper), or peradventure a stray ash of tobacco
wafted into the crevices, look to that passage more especially: depend upon it,
it contains good matter. I have got your little Milton which, as it contains
Salmasius—and I make a rule of never
hearing but one side of the question (why should I distract myself?)—I shall
return to you when I pick up the Latina opera. The first Defence is the
greatest work among them, because it is uniformly great, and such as is
befitting the very mouth of a great nation speaking for itself. But the second Defence, which is but
a succession of splendid episodes slightly tied together, has one passage which
if you have not read, I conjure you to lose no time, but read it; it is his
consolations in his blindness, which had been made a reproach to him. It begins
whimsically, with poetical flourishes about Tiresias and other blind worthies (which still are mainly
interesting as displaying his singular mind, and in what degree poetry entered
into his daily soul, not by fits and impulses, but engrained and innate); but
the concluding page, i.e. of this
passage (not of the Defensio) which you will easily find, divested of all brags
and flourishes, gives so rational, so true an enumeration of his comforts, so
human, that it cannot be read without the deepest interest. Take one touch of
the religious part:—“Et sane haud ultima Dei cura
cæci—(we blind folks, I understand
it not nos for ego;)—sumus; qui nos, quominus
quicquam aliud prater ipsum cernere valemus, eo clementius atque
benignius respicere dignatur. Væ qui illudit nos, væ qui lædit,
execratione publica devovendo; nos ab iniuriis hominum non modo
incolumes, sed pene sacros divina lex reddidit, divinus favor: nec tam
oculorum hebetudine quam cœlestium alarum umbrâ has nobis fecisse tenebras videtur, factas illustrare rursus
interiore ac longe præstabiliore lumine haud raro solet. Huc refero,
quod et amici omciosius nunc etiam quam solebant, colunt, observant,
adsunt; quod et nonnulli sunt, quibuscum Pyladeas atque Theseas
alternare voces verorum amicorum liceat. “Vade gubernaculum mei pedis.Da manum ministro amico.Da collo manum tuam, ductor autem viæ ero tibi
ego.” All this, and much more, is highly pleasing to know. But you may easily
find it;—and I don’t know why I put down so many words about it, but for
the pleasure of writing to you and the want of another topic.
Yours ever,
C. Lamb.
To-morrow I expect with anxiety S. T. C.’s letter to Mr. Fox.
Note
[Lamb refers to Milton’sDefensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano
contra Alexandrum Morum Ecclesiasten. The following is a translation of
the Latin passage by Robert Fellowes:—
And indeed, in my blindness, I enjoy in no inconsiderable
degree the favour of the Deity; who regards me with more tenderness and compassion in
proportion as I am able to behold nothing but himself. Alas! for him who insults me, who
maligns and merits public execration! For the divine law not only shields me from injury,
but almost renders me too sacred to attack; not indeed so much from the privation of my
sight, as from the overshadowing of those heavenly wings, which seem to have occasioned
this obscurity; and which, when occasioned, he is wont to illuminate with an interior
light, more precious and more pure. To this I ascribe the more tender assiduities of my
friends, their soothing attentions, their kind visits, their reverential observances; among
whom there are some with whom I may interchange the Pyladean and Thesean dialogue of
inseparable friends. Orest. Proceed, and
be rudder of my feet, by showing me the most endearing love. [Eurip. in Orest.
And in another place— “Lend your hand to your devoted friend, Throw your arm round my neck, and I will conduct you on the way.”
Coleridge’s first letter to Charles James Fox was printed in the Morning Post for November 4, 1802, his
second on November 9.]
LETTER 101 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[November, 1802.]
MY dear Manning,—I must positively write, or I shall miss you at
Toulouse. I sit here like a decayed minute hand (I lie; that does not sit), and being myself the
exponent of no time, take no heed
how the clocks about me are going. You possibly by this time may have explored
all Italy, and toppled, unawares, into Etna, while you went too near those
rotten-jawed, gap-toothed, old worn-out chaps of hell,—while I am meditating a
quiescent letter to the honest postmaster at Toulouse. But in case you should
not have been felo de se, this is to
tell you, that your letter was quite to my palate—in particular your just
remarks upon Industry, damned Industry (though indeed you left me to explore
the reason), were highly relishing.
I’ve often wished I lived in the Golden Age, when
shepherds lay stretched upon flowers, and roused themselves at their
leisure,—the genius there is in a man’s natural idle face, that has not
learned his multiplication table! before doubt, and propositions, and
corollaries, got into the world! Now, as Joseph Cottle, a Bard of Nature, sings, going
up Malvern Hills, “How steep! how painful the ascent! It needs the evidence of close deduction To know that ever I shall gain the top.” You must know that Joe is lame, so that he had some
reason for so singing. These two lines, I assure you, are taken totidem literis from a very popularpoem. Joe is also an Epic Poet as well as a
Descriptive, and has written a tragedy, though both his drama and epopoiea are
strictly descriptive, and chiefly of the Beauties of Nature, for Joe thinks
man with all his passions and frailties not a proper
subject of the Drama. Joe’s
tragedy hath the following surpassing speech in it. Some king is told that his
enemy has engaged twelve archers to come over in a boat from an enemy’s
country and way-lay him; he thereupon pathetically exclaims— “Twelve, dost thou say? Where be those
dozen villains!” Cottle read two or three acts out to us, very gravely on
both sides, till he came to this heroic touch,—and then he asked what we
laughed at? I had no more muscles that day. A poet that chooses to read out his
own verses has but a limited power over you. There is a bound where his
authority ceases.
Apropos: if you should go to Florence or to Rome, inquire
what works are extant in gold, silver, bronze, or marble, of Benvenuto Cellini, a Florentine artist, whose
Life doubtless, you have
read; or, if not, without controversy you must read: so hark ye, send for it
immediately from Lane’s circulating library. It is always put among the
romances, very properly; but you have read it, I suppose. In particular,
inquire at Florence for his colossal bronze statue (in the grand square or
somewhere) of Perseus. You may read the
story in Tooke’s “Pantheon.” Nothing
material has transpired in these parts.
Coleridge has indited a violent
philippic against Mr. Fox in the
“Morning Post,”
which is a compound of expressions of humility, gentlemen-ushering-in most
arrogant charges. It will do Mr. Fox no real injury among
those that know him.
Note
[Manning’s letter of September 10 had told Lamb he was on his way
to Toulouse.
Cottle’s epic was Alfred. The quoted lines were added in the twelfth
edition. He had also written John the Baptist.
“Cellini’s Life.” Lamb would probably have read the translation by Nugent, 1771. Cellini’sPerseus in bronze is in the
Loggia de’ Lanzi at Florence.]
LETTER 102 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[Dated at end: Feb. 19th, 1803.]
MY dear Manning,—The general scope of your letter afforded no
indications of insanity, but some particular points raised a scruple. For
God’s sake don’t think any more of “Independent
Tartary.” What have you to do among such Ethiopians? Is there no lineal descendant of Prester
John?
Is the chair empty? Is the sword unswayed?—depend
upon’t they’ll never make you their king, as long as any branch of
that great stock is remaining. I tremble for your Christianity. They’ll
certainly circumcise you. Read Sir John
Maundevil’s travels to cure you, or come over to England.
There is a Tartar-man now exhibiting at Exeter Change. Come and talk with him,
and hear what he says first. Indeed, he is no very favorable specimen of his
Countrymen! But perhaps the best thing you can do, is to try to get the idea
out of your head. For this purpose repeat to yourself every night, after you
have said your prayers, the words Independent Tartary, Independent Tartary, two
or three times, and associate with them the idea of
oblivion (’tis Hartley’s method with obstinate memories), or say,
Independent, Independent, have I not already got an Independence? That was a clever way of the old puritans—pun-divinity.
My dear friend, think what a sad pity it would be to bury such parts in heathen
countries, among nasty, unconversable, horse-belching, Tartar people! Some say,
they are Cannibals; and then conceive a Tartar-fellow eating my friend, and
adding the cool malignity of mustard and vinegar! I am afraid ’tis the
reading of Chaucer has misled you; his
foolish stories about Cambuscan and the ring, and the horse of brass.
Believe me, there’s no such things, ’tis all the poet’s invention; but if there were such darling things as old
Chaucer sings, I would up behind you on the Horse of
Brass, and frisk off for Prester
John’s Country. But these are all tales; a Horse of Brass
never flew, and a King’s daughter never talked with Birds! The Tartars,
really, are a cold, insipid, smouchey set. You’ll be sadly moped (if you
are not eaten) among them. Pray try and cure yourself. Take Hellebore (the
counsel is Horace’s, ’twas none
of my thought originally). Shave yourself oftener. Eat
no saffron, for saffron-eaters contract a terrible Tartar-like yellow. Pray, to
avoid the fiend. Eat nothing that gives the heart-burn. Shave
the upper lip. Go about like an European. Read no books of voyages
(they’re nothing but lies): only now and then a Romance, to keep the
fancy under. Above all, don’t go to any sights of wild
beasts. That has been your ruin. Accustom
yourself to write familiar letters on common subjects to your friends in
England, such as are of a moderate understanding. And think about common things
more. There’s your friend Holcroft
now, has written a play. You
used to be fond of the drama. Nobody went to see it. Notwithstanding this, with
an audacity perfectly original, he faces the town down in a preface, that they
did like it very much. I have heard a waspish
punster say, “Sir, why did you not laugh at my jest?” But
for a man boldly to face me out with, “Sir, I maintain it, you did
laugh at my jest,” is a little too much. I have seen
H. but once. He spoke of you to me in honorable terms.
H. seems to me to be drearily dull. Godwin is dull, but then he has a dash of
affectation, which smacks of the coxcomb, and your coxcombs are always
agreeable. I supped last night with Rickman, and met a merry natural captain, who pleases himself vastly with once having made a Pun
at Otaheite in the O. language. ’Tis the same man who said Shakspeare he liked, because he was so much of the Gentleman. Rickman is a
man “absolute in all numbers.” I think I may one day bring
you acquainted, if you do not go to Tartary first; for you’ll never come
back. Have a care, my dear friend, of Anthropophagi! their stomachs are always
craving. But if you do go among [them] pray contrive to stink as soon as you
can that you may [?not] hang a [?on] hand at the Butcher’s. ’Tis
terrible to be weighed out for 5d. a-pound. To sit at table (the reverse of
fishes in Holland), not as a guest, but as a meat.
God bless you: do come to England. Air and exercise may do
great things. Talk with some Minister. Why not your father?
God dispose all for the best. I have discharged my duty.
Your sincere frd,
C. Lamb. 19th Feb., 1803, London.
Note
[Manning’s letter producing
this reply is endorsed by Lamb, “Received
February 19, 1803,” so that he lost no time. Manning
wrote: “I am actually thinking of Independent Tartary as I write this, but you go
out and skate—you go out and walk some times? Very true, that’s a distraction—but
the moment I set myself down quietly to any-thing, in comes Independent Tartary—for
example I attend chemical lectures but every drug that Mr.
Vauquelin presents to me tastes of Cream of Tartar—in short I am become
good for nothing for a time, and as I said before, I should not have written now, but
to assure you of my friendly and affectionate remembrance, but as you are not in the
same unhappy circumstances, I expect you’ll write to me and not measure page for
page. This is the first letter I have begun for England for three months except one I
sent to my Father yesterday.” Manning returned to London
before leaving for China. He did not sail until 1806.
Prester John, the name given by old writers to the King
of Ethiopia in Abyssinia. A corruption of Belul Gian, precious stone; in Latin first
Johanus preciosus, then Presbyter Johannes
and then Prester John. In Sir John
Mandeville’sVoiage and
Travails, 1356, Prester John is said to be a lineal
descendant of Ogier the Dane.—“Is the chair empty?”
see “Richard III.,” IV.,
4, 470.—Hartley would be David
Hartley, the metaphysician, after whom Coleridge’s son was named.—The reader must go to Chaucer’s “Squire’s Tale” for Cambuscan, King of
Sarra, in Tartary; his horse of brass which conveyed him in a day wherever he would go; and
the ring which enabled his daughter Canace to
understand the language of birds.
Holcroft’s play was “A Tale of Mystery.”
Rickman had returned from Ireland some months
previously. The merry natural captain was James
Burney (1750-1821), with whom the Lambs soon became very friendly. He was
the centre of their whist-playing circle. Burney, who was brother of
Madame D’Arblay, had sailed with Captain Cook.
“Absolute in all numbers.” In the address to readers
prefixed to the first folio of Shakespeare is the
phrase “Absolute in their numbers.”
“The reverse of fishes in Holland.” An allusion to
Andrew Marvell’s whimsical satire against the Dutch:— The fish ofttimes the burgher dispossessed And sat not as a meat but as a guest.
“Why not your father?” Manning’s father was the Rev. William
Manning, rector of Diss, in Norfolk, who died in 1810.]
LETTER 103 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
March, 1803.
DEAR Manning,
I send you some verses I have
made on the death of a young Quaker you
may have heard me speak of as being in love with for some years while I lived
at Pentonville, though I had never spoken to her in my life. She died about a
month since. If you have interest with the Abbé de
Lisle, you may get ’em translated: he has done as much for
the Georgics.
HESTER When maidens such as Hester die, Their place ye may not well supply, Though ye among a thousand try, With vain endeavour. A month or more hath she been dead, Yet cannot I by force be led To think upon the wormy bed, And her together. A springy motion in her gait, A rising step, did indicate Of pride and joy no common rate, That flush’d her spirit. I know not by what name beside I shall it call:—if ’twas not pride, It was a joy to that allied, She did inherit. Her parents held the Quaker rule, Which doth the human feeling cool, But she was train’d in Nature’s school, Nature had blest her. A waking eye, a prying mind, A heart that stirs, is hard to bind, A hawk’s keen sight ye cannot blind, Ye could not Hester. My sprightly neighbour, gone before To that unknown and silent shore, Shall we not meet, as heretofore, Some summer morning, When from thy cheerful eyes a ray Hath struck a bliss upon the day, A bliss that would not go away, A sweet forewarning?
Note
[This letter is possibly only a fragment. I have supplied “Hester” from the 1818 text.
The young Quaker was Hester
Savory, the daughter of Joseph Savory, a goldsmith of the
Strand. She was married July 1, 1802, and died a few months after. In Vol. V. of the
present edition her portrait will be found.
“The Abbe de Lisle.” L’Abbe Jacques Delille (1738-1813) known by his
Géorgiques, 1770, a translation into French of Virgil’sGeorgics.]
LETTER 104 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: March 5, 1803.]
DEAR Wordsworth, having a Guinea of your sister’s left in
hand, after all your commissions, and as it does not seem likely that you will
trouble us, as the phrase is, for some time to come, I send you a pound note,
and with it the best things in the verse way I have lit upon for many a day. I
believe they will be new to you. You know Cotton, who wrote a 2d part to Walton’sAngler. A volume of his miscellaneous poems is scarce. Take what
follows from a poem call’d Winter. I omit 20 verses, in which a storm is described, to hasten
to the best:—
21 Louder, and louder, still they1
come, Nile’s Cataracts to these are dumb, The Cyclops to these Blades are still, Whose anvils shake the burning hill. 22 Were all the stars-enlighten’d skies As full of ears, as sparkling eyes, This rattle in the crystal hall Would be enough to deaf them all. 23 What monstrous Race is hither tost, Thus to alarm our British Coast, With outcries such as never yet War, or confusion, could beget? 24 Oh! now I know them, let us home, Our mortal Enemy is come, Winter, and all his blustring train Have made a voyage o’er the main.
1 The winds.
27 With bleak, and with congealing winds, The earth in shining chain he binds; And still as he doth further pass, Quarries his way with liquid glass. 28 Hark! how the Blusterers of the Bear Their gibbous Cheeks in triumph bear, And with continued shouts do ring The entry of their palsied king! 29 The squadron, nearest to your eye, Is his forlorn of Infantry, Bowmen of unrelenting minds, Whose shafts are feather’d with the winds. 30 Now you may see his vanguard rise Above the earthy precipice, Bold Horse, on bleakest mountains bred, With hail, instead of provend, fed. 31 Their lances are the pointed locks, Torn from the brows of frozen rocks, Their shields are chrystal as their swords, The steel the rusted rock affords. 32 See, the Main Body now appears! And hark! th’ Æolian Trumpeters. By their hoarse levets do declare, That the bold General rides there. 33 And look where mantled up in white He sleds it, like the Muscovite. I know him by the port he bears, And his lifeguard of mountaineers. 34 Their caps are furr’d with hoary frosts, The bravery their cold kingdom boasts; Their spungy plads are milk-white frieze, Spun from the snowy mountain’s fleece. 35 Their partizans are fine carv’d glass, Fring’d with the morning’s spangled grass; And pendant by their brawny thighs Hang cimetars of burnish’d ice. 38 Fly, fly, the foe advances fast, Into our fortress let us haste, Where all the roarers of the north Can neither storm, nor starve, us forth. 39 There under ground a magazine Of sovran juice is cellar’d in, Liquor that will the siege maintain, Should Phoebus ne’er return again. 40 ’Tis that, that gives the poet rage, And thaws the gelly’d blood of age, Matures the young, restores the old, And makes the fainting coward bold. 41 It lays the careful head to rest, Calms palpitations in the breast, Renders our live’s misfortunes sweet, And Venus frolic in the sheet. 42 Then let the chill Scirocco blow, And gird us round with hills of snow, Or else go whistle to the shore, And make the hollow mountains roar. 43 Whilst we together jovial sit, Careless, and crown’d with mirth and wit, Where tho’ bleak winds confine us home, Our fancies thro’ the world shall roam. 44 We’ll think of all the friends we know, And drink to all, worth drinking to; When, having drunk all thine and mine, We rather shall want health than wine! 45 But, where friends fail us, we’ll supply Our friendships with our Charity. Men that remote in sorrows live, Shall by our lusty bumpers thrive. 46 We’ll drink the wanting into wealth, And those that languish into health, Th’ afflicted into joy, th’ opprest Into security & rest. 47 The worthy in disgrace shall find Favour return again more kind, And in restraint who stifled lye, Shall taste the air of liberty. 48 The brave shall triumph in success, The lovers shall have mistresses, Poor unregarded virtue praise, And the neglected Poet bays. 49 Thus shall our healths do others good, While we ourselves do all we wou’d, For freed from envy, and from care. What would we be, but what we are? 50 ’Tis the plump Grape’s immortal juice, That does this happiness produce, And will preserve us free together, Maugre mischance, or wind, & weather. 51 Then let old winter take his course, And roar abroad till he be hoarse, And his lungs crack with ruthless ire, It shall but serve to blow our fire. 52 Let him our little castle ply With all his loud artillery, Whilst sack and claret man the fort, His fury shall become our sport. 53 Or let him Scotland take, and there Confine the plotting Presbyter; His zeal may freeze, whilst we kept warm With love and wine can know no harm.
How could Burns miss
the series of lines from 42 to 49?
There is also a long poem from the Latin on the
inconveniences of old age. I can’t set down the whole, tho’ right
worthy, having dedicated the remainder of my sheet to something else. I just
excerp here and there, to convince you, if after this you need it, that
Cotton was a first rate. Tis old
Gallus speaks of himself, once the delight of the
Ladies and Gallants of Rome:—
The beauty of my shape & face are fled, And my revolted form bespeaks me dead, For fair, and shining age, has now put on A bloodless, funeral complexion. My skin’s dry’d up, my nerves unpliant are, And my poor limbs my nails plow up and tear. My chearful eyes now with a constant spring Of tears bewail their own sad suffering; And those soft lids, that once secured my eye Now rude, and bristled grown, do drooping lie, Bolting mine eyes, as in a gloomy cave, Which there on furies, and grim objects, rave. ’Twould fright the full-blown Gallant to behold The dying object of a man so old. And can you think, that once a man he was, Of human reason who no portion has. The letters split, when I consult my book, And every leaf I turn does broader look. In darkness do I dream I see the light, When light is darkness to my perishd sight. * * * * * * * * * Is it not hard we may not from men’s eyes Cloak and conceal Age’s indecencies. Unseeming spruceness th’ old man discommends, And in old men, only to live, offends. * * * * * * * * * How can I him a living man believe, Whom light, and air, by whom he panteth, grieve; The gentle sleeps, which other mortals ease, Scarce in a winter’s night my eyelids seize. * * * * * * * * * The boys, and girls, deride me now forlorn, And but to call me, Sir, now think it scorn, They jeer my countnance, and my feeble pace, And scoff that nodding head, that awful was. * * * * * * * * *
A song written by Cowper, which in stile is much above his usual, and emulates in
noble plainness any old balad I have seen. Hayley has just published it &c. with a Life. I did not
think Cowperup to it:—
SONG ON THE LOSS OF THE ROYAL GEORGE 1 Toll for the Brave! The Brave, that are no more! All sunk beneath the wave, Fast by their native shore.— 2 Eight hundred of the Brave, Whose courage well was tried, Had made the vessel heel, And laid her on her side. 3 A Land breeze shook the shrouds, And she was over set; Down went the Royal George, With all her sails complete. 4 Toll for the Brave! Brave Kempenfelt is gone: His last sea-fight is fought; His work of glory done. 5 It was not in the battle, No tempest gave the shock; She sprang no fatal leak; She ran upon no rock. 6 His sword was in its sheath; His fingers held the pen, When Kempenfelt went down, With twice four hundred men. 7 Weigh the vessel up! Once dreaded by our foes! And mingle with the cup The tear that England owes. 8 Her timbers yet are sound, And she may float again, Full charg’d with England’s thunder, And plow the distant main. 9 But Kempenfelt is gone, His victories are o’er; And he, and his eight hundred, Shall plow the wave no more.
In your obscure part of the world, which I take to be Ultima
Thule, I thought these verses out of Books which cannot be accessible would not
be unwelcome. Having room, I will put in an Epitaph I writ for a real occasion, a year
or two back.
ON MARY DRUIT WHO DIED AGED 19 Under this cold marble stone Sleep the sad remains of One, Who, when alive, by few or none 2 Was lov’d, as lov’d she might have been, If she prosp’rous days had seen, Or had thriving been, I ween. 3 Only this cold funeral stone Tells, she was belov’d by One, Who on the marble graves his moan.
I conclude with Love to your Sister and Mrs. W.
Yours affecty, C. Lamb.
Mary sends Love, &c.
5th March, 1803.
On consulting Mary, I find it will be foolish inserting the Note as I
intended, being so small, and as it is possible you may have to trouble us
again e’er long; so it shall remain to be settled hereafter. However,
the verses shan’t be lost.
N.B.—All orders executed with fidelity and
punctuality by C. & M.
Lamb.
[On the outside is written:] I
beg to open this for a minute to add my remembrances to you all, and to
assure you I shall ever be happy to hear
from or see, much more to be useful to any of my old friends at Grasmere.
J. Stoddart.
A lean paragraph of the
Doctor’s.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Charles Cotton (1630-1687).
Wordsworth praises the poem on Winter in his preface to the 1815 edition of his works, and
elsewhere sets up a comparison between the character of Cotton and
that of Burns.
Hayley’sLife of Cowper appeared first in
1803.
Lamb’s epitaph was written at the request of
Rickman. See also the letter to Manning of April (or thereabouts), 1802, page 241.
Rickman seems to have supplied Lamb with a
prose epitaph and asked for a poetical version. Canon
Ainger prints what I take to be an earlier version from an unpublished
letter to Rickman, dated February 1, 1802. Lamb
printed the epitaph in the Morning
Post for February 7, 1804, over his initials (see Vol. V. of this
edition, pages 80 and 322). Mary Druit, or
Druitt, lived at Wimborne, and according to John Payne Collier, in An Old Man’s Diary, died of
small-pox at the age of nineteen. He says that Lamb’s lines were
cut on her tomb, but correspondence in Notes and Queries has proved this to be incorrect.
“The Doctor.” Stoddart, having taken his D.C.L in 1801, was now called Dr.
Stoddart.
Soon after this letter Mary Lamb
was taken ill again.]
LETTER 105 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
April 13th, 1803.
MY dear Coleridge,—Things have gone on better with me since you left
me. I expect to have my old housekeeper home again in a week or two. She has
mended most rapidly. My health too has been better since you took away that
Montero cap. I have left off cayenned eggs and such bolsters to discomfort.
There was death in that cap. I mischievously wished that by some inauspicious
jolt the whole contents might be shaken, and the coach set on fire. For you
said they had that property. How the old Gentleman, who joined you at Grantham,
would have clappt his hands to his knees, and not knowing but it was an
immediate visitation of God that burnt him, how pious it would have made him; him, I mean, that brought the Influenza
with him, and only took places for one—a damn’d old sinner, he must have
known what he had got with him! However, I wish the cap no harm for the sake of
the head it fits, and could be content to see it
disfigure my healthy sideboard again. [Here is a paragraph
erased.]
What do you think of smoking? I want your sober, average
noon opinion of it. I generally am eating my dinner about the time I should
determine it. [Another small erasure.]
Morning is a Girl, and can’t smoke—she’s no
evidence one way or other; and Night is so evidently bought
over, that he can’t be a very upright
Judge. May be the truth is, that one pipe is wholesome,
two pipes toothsome, three
pipes noisome, four pipes fulsome, five pipes quarrelsome; and that’s the sum on’t. But that is deciding rather upon rhyme than reason. .
. . After all, our instincts may be best. Wine, I am sure, good, mellow,
generous Port, can hurt nobody, unless they take it to excess, which they may
easily avoid if they observe the rules of temperance.
Bless you, old Sophist, who next to Human Nature taught me
all the corruption I was capable of knowing—And bless your Montero Cap, and
your trail (which shall come after you whenever you appoint), and your wife and
children—Pi pos especially.
When shall we two smoke again? Last night I had been in a
sad quandary of spirits, in what they call the evening; but a pipe and some
generous Port, and King Lear
(being alone), had its effects as a remonstrance. I went to bed pot-valiant. By
the way, may not the Ogles of Somersetshire be remotely
descended from King Lear?
Love to Sara, and ask
her what gown she means that Mary has got
of hers. I know of none but what went with Miss
Wordsworth’s things to Wordsworth, and was paid for out of their money. I allude to a
part which I may have read imperfectly in a letter of hers to you.
C. L.
Note
[Coleridge had been in London
early in April and had stayed with Lamb in the
Temple. From his letter to his wife, dated April 4, we get light on
Lamb’s allusion to his “old housekeeper,” i.e., Mary Lamb, and her rapid
mending:—
I had purposed not to speak of Mary Lamb, but I had better write it than tell it. The Thursday before last
she met at Rickman’s a Mr.
Babb, an old friend and admirer of her mother. The next day she smiled in an ominous way; on Sunday she told her brother that she
was getting bad, with great agony. On Tuesday morning she laid hold of me with violent
agitation and talked wildly about George Dyer. I told
Charles there was not a moment to lose; and I did
not lose a moment, but went for a hackney-coach and took her to the private mad-house at
Hugsden. She was quite calm, and said it was the best to do so. But she wept bitterly two
or three times, yet all in a calm way. Charles is cut to the heart.
Lamb’s first articulate doubts as to smoking
are expressed in this letter. One may perhaps take in this connection the passage on
tobacco and alcohol in the “Confessions of a Drunkard” (see Vol. I, page 135).
“Montero cap”—a recollection of Tristram Shandy.
The Ogles and King
Lear—merely a pun.]
LETTER 106 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[No date. May, 1803.]
Mary sends love from home.
DC.,—I do confess that I have not sent
your books as I ought to be [have] done; but you know how the human freewill is
tethered, and that we perform promises to ourselves no better than to our
friends. A watch is come for you. Do you want it soon, or shall I wait till
some one travels your way? You, like me, I suppose, reckon the lapse of time
from the waste thereof, as boys let a cock run to waste: too idle to stop it,
and rather amused with seeing it dribble. Your poems have begun printing; Longman sent to me to arrange them, the old
and the new together. It seems you have left it to him. So I classed them, as
nearly as I could, according to dates. First, after the Dedication, (which must
march first) and which I have transplanted from before the Preface (which stood
like a dead wall of prose between) to be the first poem—then comes “The Pixies,” and
the things most juvenile—then on “To Chatterton,” &c.—on, lastly,
to the “Ode on the
Departing Year,” and “Musings,”—which finish.
Longman wanted the Ode first; but the arrangement I
have made is precisely that marked out in the dedication, following the order
of time. I told Longman I was sure that you would omit a
good portion of the first edition. I instanced in several sonnets, &c.—but
that was not his plan, and, as you have done nothing in it, all I could do was
to arrange ’em on the supposition that all were to be retained. A few I
positively rejected; such as that of “The Thimble,” and that of
“Flicker and
Flicker’s wife,” and that not in the manner of Spenser, which you
yourself had stigmatised—and the “Man of Ross,”—I doubt whether I
should this last. It is not too late to save it. The first proof is only just
come. I have been forced to call that Cupid’s Elixir “Kisses.” It stands
in your first volume as an Effusion, so that, instead of prefixing The Kiss to that of
“One Kiss, dear Maid,” &c., I have ventured to entitle it “To Sara.” I am aware of the nicety of changing
even so mere a trifle as a title to so short a piece, and subverting old
associations; but two called “Kisses” would have been absolutely
ludicrous, and “Effusion” is no name; and these poems come close
together. I promise you not to alter one word in any poem whatever, but to take
your last text, where two are. Can you send any wishes about the book?
Longman, I think, should have settled with you. But it
seems you have left it to him. Write as soon as you possibly can; for, without
making myself responsible, I feel myself in some sort accessory to the
selection which I am to proof-correct. But I decidedly said to Biggs that I was sure you would omit more.
Those I have positively rubbed off I can swear to individually, (except the “Man of
Ross,” which is too familiar in Pope,) but no others—you have your cue. For my part, I had
rather all the Juvenilia were kept—memoriæ causa.
Rob Lloyd has written me a masterly
letter, containing a character of his father;—see, how different from Charles he views the old man! Literatim, “My father smokes, repeats
Homer in Greek, and Virgil, and is learning, when from business,
with all the vigour of a young man Italian. He is really a wonderful man.
He mixes public and private business, the intricacies of discording life
with his religion and devotion. No one more rationally enjoys the romantic
scenes of nature, and the chit-chat and little vagaries of his children;
and, though surrounded with an ocean of affairs, the very neatness of his
most obscure cupboard in the house passes not unnoticed. I never knew any
one view with such clearness, nor so well satisfied with things as they
are, and make such allowance for things which must appear perfect Syriac to
him.” By the last he means the Lloydisms of the younger branches.
His portrait of Charles (exact as far as he has had
opportunities of noting him) is most exquisite.
“Charles is become steady as a church,
and as straightforward as a Roman road. It would distract him to mention
anything that was not as plain as sense; he seems to have run the whole
scenery of life, and now rests as the formal
precisian of non-existence.” Here is genius I think, and
’tis seldom a young man, a Lloyd, looks at a father
(so differing) with such good nature while he is alive. Write—
I am in post-haste,
C. Lamb.
Love, &c., to Sara, P., and
H.
Note
[The date is usually given as March 20, but is May 20; certainly after
Coleridge’s visit to town (see preceding
letter).
Poems, by S. T. Coleridge, third edition, was now in preparation by Longman & Rees.
Lamb saw the volume through the press. The 1797
second edition was followed, except that Lloyd’s and Lamb’s contributions were
omitted, together with the following poems by Coleridge: “To the Rev. W. J. H.,” “Sonnet to Koskiusko,”
“Written after a Walk”
(which Lamb inaccurately called “Flicker and Flicker’s
Wife”), “From a Young
Lady” (“The Silver Thimble”),
“On the Christening of a
Friend’s Child,” “Introductory Sonnet to Lloyd’s ‘Poems on
the Death of Priscilla Farmer.’” “The Man of Ross” (whom Pope also celebrates in the Moral Essays, III., lines 250-290)
was retained, and also the “Lines
in the Manner of Spenser.” The piece rechristened “Kisses” had been called “The Composition of a Kiss.” Biggs was the printer. See also the next letter.
Of Robert Lloyd’s father
we hear more later (see page 402).]
LETTER 107 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
27th May, 1803.
MY dear Coleridge,—The date of my last was one day prior to the receipt
of your letter, full of foul omens. I explain, lest you should have thought
mine too light a reply to such sad matter. I seriously hope by this time you
have given up all thoughts of journeying to the green islands of the
Blest—voyages in time of war are very precarious—or at least, that you will
take them in your way to the Azores. Pray be careful of this letter till it has
done its duty, for it is to inform you that I have booked off your watch (laid
in cotton like an untimely fruit), and with it Condillac and all other books of yours which were left here.
These will set out on Monday next, the 29th May, by Kendal waggon, from White
Horse, Cripplegate. You will make seasonable inquiries, for a watch
mayn’t come your way again in a hurry. I have been repeatedly after
Tobin, and now hear that he is in
the country, not to return till middle of June. I will take care and see him
with the earliest. But cannot you write pathetically to him, enforcing a speedy
mission of your books for literary purposes? He is too good a retainer to
Literature, to let her interests suffer through his default. And why, in the
name of Beelzebub, are your books to travel
from Barnard’s Inn to the Temple, and then circuitously to Cripplegate,
when their business is to take a short cut down Holborn-hill, up Snow do., on
to Wood-street,
&c.? The former mode seems a sad superstitious subdivision of labour. Well!
the “Man of
Ross” is to stand; Longman
begs for it; the printer stands with a wet sheet in one hand and a useless Pica
in the other, in tears, pleading for it; I relent. Besides, it was a Salutation
poem, and has the mark of the beast “Tobacco” upon it. Thus much I
have done; I have swept off the lines about widows and
orphans in second edition, which (if you remember)
you most awkwardly and illogically caused to be inserted between two Ifs, to the great breach and disunion of said Ifs, which now meet again (as in first edition), like
two clever lawyers arguing a case. Another reason for subtracting the pathos
was, that the “Man of Ross”
is too familiar to need telling what he did, especially in worse lines than
Pope told it; and it now stands
simply as “Reflections at an Inn about a known
Character,” and sucking an old story into an accommodation
with present feelings. Here is no breaking spears with
Pope, but a new, independent, and really a very pretty
poem. In fact, ’tis as I used to admire it in the first volume, and I
have even dared to restore “If ’neath this roof thy wine-cheer’d moments
pass,” for “Beneath this roof if thy cheer’d moments pass.”
“Cheer’d” is a sad general word; “wine-cheer’d” I’m sure you’d
give me, if I had a speaking-trumpet to sound to you 300 miles. But I am your
factotum, and that (save in this instance, which is
a single case, and I can’t get at you) shall be next to a fac-nihil—at most, a fac-simile. I have ordered “Imitation of Spenser” to be
restored on Wordsworth’s
authority; and now, all that you will miss will be “Flicker and Flicker’s Wife,”
“The
Thimble,” “Breathe, dear harmonist,” and, I
believe, “The
Child that was fed with Manna.” Another volume will clear off
all your Anthologic Morning-Postian Epistolary Miscellanies; but pray
don’t put “Christabel” therein; don’t let that sweet maid come
forth attended with Lady Holland’s
mob at her heels. Let there be a separate volume of Tales, Choice Tales,
“Ancient
Mariners,” &c.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Coleridge, who was getting more
and more nervous about his health, had long been on the point of starting on some southern
travels with Thomas Wedgwood, but
Wedgwood had gone alone; his friend James Webbe Tobin, mentioned later in the letter, lived at Nevis, in the
West Indies: possibly Coleridge had thoughts of returning with him.
The Malta experiment, of which we are to hear later, had not, I think, yet been mooted.
“The Man of
Ross.” In the 1797 edition the poem had run thus, partly by Lamb’s advice (see the letters of June 10, 1796, and
February 5, 1797, pages 18 and 92):—
LINES WRITTEN AT THE KING’S-ARMS, ROSS, FORMERLY THE
HOUSE OF THE “MAN OF ROSS” Richer than Miser o’er his countless hoards, Nobler than Kings, or king-polluted Lords, Here dwelt the Man Of Ross! O Trav’ller, hear! Departed Merit claims a reverent tear. Friend to the friendless, to the sick man health, With generous joy he view’d his modest wealth; He hears the widow’s heaven-breath’d prayer of praise, He marks the shelter’d orphan’s tearful gaze, Or where the sorrow-shrivel’d captive lay, Pours the bright blaze of Freedom’s noon-tide ray. Beneath this roof if thy cheer’d moments pass, Fill to the good man’s name one grateful glass: To higher zest shall Mem’ry wake thy soul, And Virtue mingle in th’ ennobled bowl. But if, like me, thro’ life’s distressful scene Lonely and sad thy pilgrimage hath been; And if, thy breast with heart-sick anguish fraught, Thou journeyest onward tempest-tost in thought; Here cheat thy cares! in generous visions melt, And dream of Goodness, thou hast never felt!
Lamb changed it by omitting lines 9 to 14, Coleridge agreeing. The poet would not, however, restore
“wine-cheer’d” as in his earliest version, 1794. In the edition of 1828
the six lines were put back. “Breathe, dear Harmonist” was the poem
“To the Rev. W. J. H.,”
and “The Child that was fed with Manna” was “On the Christening of a Friend’s
Child.”
“Lady Holland’s mob.”
Elizabeth Vassall Fox, third Lady
Holland (1770-1845), was beginning her reign as a Muse. Lamb by his phrase means occasional and political verse
generally. The reference to “Christabel” helps to controvert Fanny
Godwin’s remark in a letter to Mrs.
Shelley, on July 20, 1816, that Lamb “says
Christabel ought never to have been published; that no one understood
it.”
“Ancient
Mariners.” Canon Ainger’s
transcript adds: “A word of your health will be richly acceptable.”]
LETTER 108 MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: July 9. p.m. July 11,
1803.]
MY dear Miss
Wordsworth—We rejoice with exceeding great joy to hear the
delightful tidings you were so very kind to remember to send us—I hope your
dear sister is perfectly well, and makes an excellent
nurse. Are you not now the happiest family in the world?
I have been in better health and spirits this week past than
since my last illness—I continued so long so very weak & dejected I began
to fear I should never be at all comfortable again. I strive against low
spirits all I can, but it is a very hard thing to get the better of.
I am very uneasy about poor Coleridge, his last letters are very melancholy ones. Remember
me affectionately to him and Sara. I
hope you often see him.
Southey is in town. He seems as proud of
his little girl as I suppose your
brother is of his boy; he says his home
is now quite a different place to what it used to be. I was glad to hear him
say this—it used to look rather chearless.
We went last week with Southey and Rickman and
his sister to Sadlers Wells, the lowest and most London-like of all our London
amusements—the entertainments were Goody Two Shoes,
Jack the Giant Killer, and Mary of Buttermere! Poor Mary was very happily married at the end of the
piece, to a sailor her former sweetheart. We had a prodigious fine view of her
father’s house in the vale of Buttermere—mountains very like large
haycocks, and a lake like nothing at all. If you had been with us, would you
have laughed the whole time like Charles
and Miss Rickman or gone to sleep as Southey and Rickman did?
Stoddart is in expectation of going soon
to Malta as Judge Advocate; it is likely to be a profitable situation, fifteen
hundred a year or more. If he goes he takes with him his sister, and, as I hear
from her as a very great secret, a wife;
you must not mention this because if he stays in England he may not be rich
enough to marry for some years. I do not know why I should trouble you with a
secret which it seems I am unable to keep myself and which is of no importance
to you to hear; if he succeeds in this appointment he will be in a great
bustle, for he must set out to Malta in a month. In the mean time he must go to
Scotland to marry and fetch his wife, and it is a match against her
parents’ consent, and they as yet know nothing of the Malta expedition;
so that he expects many difficulties, but the young lady and he are determined
to conquer them. He then must go to Salisbury to take leave of his father and
mother, who I pity very much, for they are old people and therefore are not
very likely ever to see their children again.
Charles is very well and very good—I mean very sober, but he is very good in every
sense of the word, for he has been very kind and patient with me and I have
been a sad trouble to him lately. He has shut out all his friends because he
thought company hurt me, and done every thing in
his power to comfort and amuse me. We are to go out of town soon for a few
weeks, when I hope I shall get quite stout and lively.
You saw Fenwick when
you was with us—perhaps you remember his wife and children were with his
brother, a tradesman at Penzance. He
(the brother), who was supposed to be in a great way of business, has become a
bankrupt; they are now at Penzance without a home and without money; and poor
Fenwick, who has been Editor of a country newspaper
lately, is likely soon to be quite out of employ; I am distressed for them, for
I have a great affection for Mrs.
Fenwick.
How pleasant your little house and orchard must be now. I
almost wish I had never seen it. I am always wishing to be with you. I could
sit upon that little bench in idleness day long. When you have a leisure hour,
a letter from [you], kind friend, will give me the greatest pleasure.
We have money of yours and I want you to send me some
commission to lay it out. Are you not in want of anything? I believe when we go
out of town it will be to Margate—I love the seaside and expect much benefit
from it, but your mountain scenery has spoiled us. We shall find the flat
country of the Isle of Thanet very dull.
Charles joins me in love to your brother
and sister and the little John. I nope
you are building more rooms. Charles said I was so long
answering your letter Mrs. Wordsworth
would have another little one before you received it. Our love and compliments
to our kind Molly, I hope she grows younger and happier
every day. When, and where, shall I ever see you again? Not I fear for a very
long time, you are too happy ever to wish to come to London. When you write
tell me how poor Mrs. Clarkson does.
God bless you and yours.
I am your affectionate friend, M. Lamb. July 9th.
Note
[Wordsworth’s eldest child,
John, was born on June 18, 1803. Southey’s little girl was Edith, born in September of the preceding year. It was
Southey who made the charming remark that no house was complete
unless it had in it a child rising six years, and a kitten rising six months.
Coleridge had been ill for some weeks after his
visit to London. He was about to visit Scotland with the Wordsworths.
Mary of Buttermere was Mary
Robinson, the Beauty of Buttermere, whom the swindler John Hatfield had married in October, 1802, under the
false name of Hope. Mary was the daughter of the landlord of the Fish Inn at Buttermere,
and was famous in the Lake Country for her charm. Coleridge sent to the Morning Post in October some letters on the imposture,
and Mary’s name became a household word.
Hatfield was hanged in September, 1803. Funds were meanwhile
raised for Mary, and she ultimately married a farmer, after being the
subject of dramas, ballads and novels.
The play which the Lambs saw was by Charles Dibdin the Younger, produced on April 11, 1803.
Its title was “Edward and Susan; or, The
Beauty of Buttermere.” A benefit performance for the real Beauty of
Buttermere was promised. Both Grimaldi and Belzoni were among the evening’s entertainers.
Stoddart was the King’s and the
Admiralty’s Advocate at Malta from 1803 to 1807. He married Isabella Moncrieff in 1803. His sister was Sarah Stoddart, of whom we are about to hear much.
According to the next letter the Lambs went not to
Margate, but to the Isle of Wight—to Cowes, with the Burneys.
Molly was an old cottager at Grasmere whom the Lambs had been friendly
with on their northern visit.
Mrs. Clarkson, the wife of Thomas Clarkson, was Catherine Buck.
She survived her husband, who died in 1846.]
LETTER 109 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN RICKMAN
Saturday Morning, July 16th, 1803.
DEAR Rickman,—I enclose you a wonder, a letter from the shades. A
dead body wants to return, and be
inrolled inter vivos. Tis a gentle
ghost, and in this Galvanic age it may have a chance.
Mary and I are setting out for the Isle
of Wight. We make but a short stay, and shall pass the time betwixt that place
and Portsmouth, where Fenwick is. I
sadly wanted to explore the Peak this Summer; but Mary is
against steering without card or compass, and we should be at large in
Darbyshire.
We shall be at home this night and to-morrow, if you can
come and take a farewell pipe.
I regularly transmitted your Notices to the “Morning Post,” but they have
not been duly honoured. The fault lay not in me.—
Yours truly, C. Lamb.
Note
[I cannot explain the reference to the dead body. Mr. Bertram Dobell considers it to apply to an article
which he believes Lamb to have written, called
“An Appeal from the
Shades,” printed in the London Magazine, New Series, Vol. V. (see Sidelights on Charles Lamb,
1903, pages 140-152). I cannot, however, think that Lamb could write in 1803 in the
deliberate manner of that essay; that the “Appeal “is
by him; or that the reference in the letter is to an essay at all. I have no real theory to
put forward; but it once occurred to me that the letter from the shades was from George Burnett, who had quarrelled with Rickman, and had now possibly appealed to his mercy
through Lamb. Later, Burnett entered the militia
as a surgeon, and at the beginning of 1804 he left for Poland. See Appendix II., page 969.]
LETTER 110 MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[Dated at end: September 21, 1803.]
MY dear Sarah, I returned home from my visit yesterday, and was much
pleased to find your letter; for I have been very anxious to hear how you are
going on. I could hardly help expecting to see you when I came in; yet, though
I should have rejoiced to have seen your merry face again, I believe it was
better as it was—upon the whole; and, all things considered, it is certainly
better you should go to Malta. The terms you are upon with your Lover does (as
you say it will) appear wondrous strange to me; however, as I cannot enter into
your feelings, I certainly can have nothing to say to it, only that I sincerely
wish you happy in your own way, however odd that way may appear to me to be. I
would begin now to advise you to drop all correspondence with
William; but, as I said before, as I cannot enter into
your feelings and views of things, your ways not being my ways, why should I
tell you what I would do in your situation? So, child, take thy own ways, and
God prosper thee in them!
One thing my advising spirit must say—use as little Secrecy
as possible; and, as much as possible, make a friend of your sister-in-law—you know I was not struck with
her at first sight; but, upon your account, I have watched and marked her very
attentively; and, while she was eating a bit of cold mutton in our kitchen, we
had a serious conversation. From the frankness of her manner, I am convinced she is a person
I could make a friend of; why should not you? We talked freely about you: she
seems to have a just notion of your character, and will be fond of you, if you
will let her.
My father had a sister lived with us—of course, lived with
my Mother, her sister-in-law; they were,
in their different ways, the best creatures in the world—but they set out wrong
at first. They made each other miserable for full twenty years of their
lives—my Mother was a perfect
gentlewoman, my Aunty as unlike a gentlewoman as you can possibly imagine a
good old woman to be; so that my dear Mother (who, though you do not know it,
is always in my poor head and heart) used to distress and weary her with
incessant and unceasing attention and politeness, to gain her affection. The
old woman could not return this in kind, and did not know what to make of
it—thought it all deceit, and used to hate my Mother with a bitter hatred;
which, of course, was soon returned with interest. A little frankness, and
looking into each other’s characters at first, would have spared all
this, and they would have lived, as they died, fond of each other for the last
few years of their life. When we grew up, and harmonised them a little, they
sincerely loved each other.
My Aunt and my Mother were wholly unlike you and your
sister, yet in some degree theirs is the secret history I believe of all
sisters-in-law—and you will smile when I tell you I think myself the only woman
in the world who could live with a brother’s wife, and make a real friend
of her, partly from early observation of the unhappy example I have just given
you, and partly from a knack I know I have of looking into people’s real
characters, and never expecting them to act out of it—never expecting another
to do as I would in the same case. When you leave your Mother, and say, if you
never shall see her again, you shall feel no remorse, and when you make a jewish bargain with your Lover,
all this gives me no offence, because it is your nature, and your temper, and I
do not expect or want you to be otherwise than you are. I love you for the good
that is in you, and look for no change.
But, certainly, you ought to struggle with the evil that
does most easily beset you—a total want of politeness in behaviour, I would say
modesty of behaviour, but that I should not convey to you my idea of the word
modesty; for I certainly do not mean that you want real
modesty; and what is usually called false, or mock, modesty is [a
quality] I certainly do not wish you to possess; yet I trust you know what I
mean well enough.
Secrecy, though you appear all frankness, is certainly a
grand failing of yours; it is likewise your brother’s, and, therefore, a family failing—by secrecy, I mean
you both want the habit of telling each other
at the moment every thing that happens—where you go,—and what you do,—the free
communication of letters and opinions just as they arrive, as Charles and I do,—and which is, after all, the
only groundwork of friendship. Your brother, I will answer for [it,] will never
tell his wife or his sister all that [is in] his mind—he will receive letters,
and not [mention it]. This is a fault Mrs.
Stoddart can never [tell him of;] but she can, and will, feel
it: though, [on] the whole, and in every other respect, she is [very] happy
with him. Begin, for God’s sake, at the first, and tell her every thing
that passes. At first she may hear you with indifference; but in time this will
gain her affection and confidence; show her all your letters (no matter if she
does not show hers)—it is a pleasant thing for a friend to put into one’s
hand a letter just fresh from the post. I would even say, begin with showing
her this, but that it is written freely and loosely, and some apology ought to
be made for it—which I know not how to make, for I must write freely or not at
all.
If you do this, she will tell your brother, you will say;
and what then, quotha? It will beget a freer communication amongst you, which
is a thing devoutly to be wished—
God bless you, and grant you may preserve your integrity,
and remain unmarried and penniless, and make William a
good and a happy wife.
Your affectionate friend, M. Lamb.
Charles is very unwell, and my head
aches. He sends his love: mine, with my best wishes, to your brother and
sister. I hope I shall get another letter from you.
Wednesday, 21st September, 1803.
Note
[Sarah Stoddart was the sister of
Dr. John Stoddart, who had just been appointed
the King’s and the Admiralty’s Advocate at Malta, whither Miss
Stoddart followed him. Her lover of that moment was a Mr.
Turner, and William was an earlier lover still. Her
sister-in-law was Mrs. John Stoddart, nee
Isabella Moncrieff, whom her brother had only just married.
“My Mother.” This is the only reference to her
mother in any of Mary
Lamb’s letters. The sister was Sarah
Lamb, usually known as Aunt Hetty.]
LETTERS 111 AND 112 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
Nov. 8, 1803.
MY dear Sir,—I have been sitting down for three or
four days successively to the review, which I so much wished to do well, and to
your satisfaction. But I can produce nothing but absolute flatness and
nonsense. My health and spirits are so bad, and my nerves so irritable, that I
am sure, if I persist, I shall teaze myself into a fever. You do not know how
sore and weak a brain I have, or you would allow for many things in me which
you set down for whims. I solemnly assure you that I never more wished to prove
to you the value which I have for you than at this moment; but although in so
seemingly trifling a service I cannot get through with it, I pray you to impute
it to this one sole cause, ill health. I hope I am above subterfuge, and that
you will do me this justice to think so.
You will give me great satisfaction by sealing my pardon
and oblivion in a line or two, before I come to see you, or I shall be ashamed
to come.—Your, with great truth,
C. Lamb.
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
Nov. 10, 1803.
DEAR Godwin,—You never made a more unlucky and perverse mistake than to
suppose that the reason of my not writing that cursed thing was to be found in
your book. I assure you most sincerely that I have been greatly delighted with
Chaucer. I may be
wrong, but I think there is one considerable error runs through it, which is a
conjecturing spirit, a fondness for filling out the picture by supposing what
Chaucer did and how he felt, where
the materials are scanty. So far from meaning to withhold from you (out of
mistaken tenderness) this opinion of mine, I plainly told Mrs. Godwin that I did find a fault, which I should reserve naming until I should see
you and talk it over. This she may very well remember, and also that I declined
naming this fault until she drew it from me by asking me if there was not too
much fancy in the work. I then confessed generally what I felt, but refused to
go into particulars until I had seen you. I am never very fond of saying things
before third persons, because in the relation (such is human nature) something is sure to be dropped. If Mrs.
Godwin has been the cause of your misconstruction, I am very
angry, tell her; yet it is not an anger unto death. I remember also telling
Mrs. G. (which she may have dropt) that I was by turns
considerably more delighted than I expected. But I wished to reserve all this
until I saw you. I even had conceived an expression to meet you with, which was
thanking you for some of the most exquisite pieces of criticism I had ever read
in my life. In particular, I should have brought forward that on “Troilus and Cressida”
and Shakespear which, it is little to
say, delighted me, and instructed me (if not absolutely instructed me, yet put into full-grown sense
many conceptions which had arisen in me before in my most discriminating
moods). All these things I was preparing to say, and bottling them up till I
came, thinking to please my friend and host, the author! when lo! this deadly
blight intervened.
I certainly ought to make great allowances for your
misunderstanding me. You, by long habits of composition and a greater command
gained over your own powers, cannot conceive of the desultory and uncertain way
in which I (an author by fits) sometimes cannot put the thoughts of a common
letter into sane prose. Any work which I take upon myself as an engagement will
act upon me to torment, e.g., when I have undertaken, as
three or four times I have, a school-boy copy of verses for Merchant
Taylors’ boys, at a guinea a copy, I have fretted over them, in perfect
inability to do them, and have made my sister wretched with my wretchedness for
a week together. The same, till by habit I have acquired a mechanical command,
I have felt in making paragraphs. As to reviewing, in particular, my head is so
whimsical a head, that I cannot, after reading another man’s book, let it
have been never so pleasing, give any account of it in any methodical way. I
cannot follow his train. Something like this you must have perceived of me in
conversation. Ten thousand times I have confessed to you, talking of my
talents, my utter inability to remember in any comprehensive way what I read. I
can vehemently applaud, or perversely stickle, at parts;
but I cannot grasp at a whole. This infirmity (which is nothing to brag of) may
be seen in my two little compositions, the tale and my play, in both which no
reader, however partial, can find any story. I wrote such stuff about Chaucer, and got into such digressions, quite
irreducible into 1⅕ column of a paper, that I was perfectly ashamed to show it
you. However, it is become a serious matter that I should convince you I
neither slunk from the task through a wilful deserting neglect, or through any
(most imaginary on your part) distaste of Chaucer; and I
will try my hand again, I hope with better luck. My health is bad and my time
taken up, but all I can spare between this and Sunday shall be employed for you, since you
desire it: and if I bring you a crude, wretched paper on Sunday, you must burn
it, and forgive me; if it proves anything better than I predict, may it be a
peace-offering of sweet incense between us.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Lamb’s review of Godwin’sLife of Chaucer, issued in
October, 1803, has not been identified. Perhaps it was never completed. See Letter 202. The
criticism of “Troilus and
Cressida” is in Chapter XVI.
Lamb’s early Merchant Taylors’ verses
have been lost, but two epigrams that he wrote many years later for the sons of Hessey, the publisher, have been preserved (see Letter
491).
I place here the following letter, not having any clue as to date, which
is immaterial:—]
LETTER 113 CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAM GODWIN
DEAR Mrs.
G.,—Having observed with some concern that Mr. Godwin is a little fastidious in what he
eats for supper, I herewith beg to present his palate with a piece of dried
salmon. I am assured it is the best that swims in Trent. If you do not know how
to dress it, allow me to add that it should be cut in thin slices and boiled in
paper previously prepared in butter. Wishing it exquisite, I remain,—Much as
before, yours sincerely,
C. Lamb.
Some add mashed potatoes.
LETTER 114 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS POOLE
[Dated at end: Feb. 14, 1804.]
DEAR Sir—I am sorry we have not been able to hear of
lodgings to suit young F. but we will
not desist in the enquiry. In a day or two something may turn up. Boarding
houses are common enough, but to find a family where he would be safe from
impositions within & impositions without is not so easy.—
I take this opportunity of thanking you for your kind
attentions to the Lad I took the liberty of recommending. His mother was
disposed to have taken in young F. but
could not possibly make room.
Your obliged &c. C. Lamb
Note
[I do not know to what lads the note refers, but probably young
F. was young Fricker, the
brother of Mrs. Coleridge and Mrs. Southey. The note is interesting only as giving
another instance of Lamb’s willing helpfulness to others.]
LETTER 115 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[p.m. March 10, 1804.]
DR C. I
blunderd open this letter, its weight making me conjecture it held an
inclosure; but finding it poetry (which is no man’s ground, but waste and
common) I perused it. Do you remember that you are to come to us to-night?
C. L. To Mr. Coleridge, Mr. Tobin’s, Barnards Inn, Holborn.
Note
[This is written on the back of a paper addressed to Mr. Lamb, India House, containing a long extract from
“Madoc” in Southey’s hand.
Coleridge, having been invited by Stoddart to Malta, was now in London on his way thither.
Tobin was probably James Webbe
Tobin, brother of John Tobin, the
solicitor and dramatist.
Between this letter and the next comes a letter from Lamb to Robert
Lloyd, dated at the end March 13, 1804, in which Lamb
congratulates Robert Lloyd on his approaching marriage to Hannah Hart. The wedding was celebrated on August 3,
1804.]
LETTER 116 MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[No date, ? March, 1804.]
MY dearest Sarah,—I will Just write a few hasty lines to say Coleridge is setting off sooner than we
expected; and I every moment expect him to call in one of his great hurrys for
this. Charles intended to write by him,
but has not: most likely he will send a letter after him to Portsmouth: if he
does, you will certainly hear from him soon. We rejoiced with exceeding joy to
hear of your safe arrival: I hope your brother will return home in a few years a very rich man.
Seventy pounds in one fortnight is a pretty beginning—
I envy your brother the pleasure of seeing Coleridge drop in unexpectedly upon him; we
talk—but it is but wild and idle talk—of following him: he is to get my brother
some little snug place of a thousand a year, and we are to leave all, and come
and live among ye. What a pretty dream.
Coleridge is very ill. I dread the
thoughts of his long voyage—write as soon as he arrives, whether he does or
not, and tell me how he is.
Jamaica bodies . . . [words
illegible].
He has got letters of recommendation to Governor Ball, and God knows who; and he will
talk and talk, and be universally admired. But I wish to write for him a letter
of recommendation to Mrs. Stoddart, and
to yourself, to take upon ye, on his first arrival, to be kind affectionate
nurses; and mind, now, that you perform this duty faithfully, and write me a
good account of yourself. Behave to him as you would to me, or to Charles, if we came sick and unhappy to you.
I have no news to send you; Coleridge will tell you how we are going on. Charles has lost the newspaper; but what we dreaded as an evil has
proved a great blessing, for we have both strangely recovered our health and
spirits since this has happened; and I hope, when I write next, I shall be able
to tell you Charles has begun something which will produce
a little money; for it is not well to be very poor—which
we certainly are at this present writing.
I sit writing here, and thinking almost you will see it
to-morrow; and what a long, long time it will be ere you receive this—When I
saw your letter, I fancy’d you were even just then in the first bustle of
a new reception, every moment seeing new faces, and staring at new objects, when, at that time, every thing
had become familiar to you; and the strangers, your new dancing partners, had
perhaps become gossiping fireside friends. You tell me of your gay, splendid
doings; tell me, likewise, what manner of home-life you lead—Is a quiet evening
in a Maltese drawing room as pleasant as those we have passed in Mitre Court
and Bell yard?—Tell me all about it, every thing pleasant, and every thing
unpleasant, that befalls you.
I want you to say a great deal about yourself. Are you happy? and do you not repent going out? I wish I
could see you for one hour only.
Remember me affectionately to your sister and brother; and
tell me, when you write, if Mrs.
Stoddart likes Malta, and how the climate agrees with her and
with thee.
We heard you were taken prisoners, and for several days
believed the tale.
How did the pearls, and the fine court finery, bear the
fatigues of the voyage, and how often have they been worn and admired?
Rickman wants to know if you are going
to be married yet—satisfy him in that little particular when you write.
The Fenwicks send
their love, and Mrs. Reynolds her love,
and the little old lady her best respects.
Mrs. Jefferies, who I see now and then, talks of you with
tears in her eyes, and, when she heard you was taken prisoner, Lord! how
frightened she was. She has heard, she tells me, that Mr. Stoddart is to have a pension of two
thousand a year, whenever he chuses to return to England.
God bless you, and send you all manner of comforts and
happinesses.
Your most affectionate friend, Mary Lamb.
How-do? how-do? No time to write. S. T. C. going off in a great hurry.
Ch. Lamb.
Note
[Miss Stoddart was now in Malta.
Governor Ball was Sir Alexander
Ball, to whom Coleridge was to act as
private secretary and of whom he wrote some years later in The Friend.
“Charles has lost the
newspaper”—his work on the Morning Post. Lamb’s
principal period on this paper had begun after Stuart sold it in September, 1803, and it lasted until February, 1804 (see
notes to Elia, Vol.
II. of this edition).
“We heard you were taken prisoners”—by the French.
“Mrs.
Reynolds”—Lamb’s old
schoolmistress and pensioner. Mrs. Jefferies I do not know.]
LETTER 117 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[p.m. April 4, 1804.]
Mary would send her best love, but I
write at office.
Thursday [April 5].
The £l came safe.
MY dear C.—I
but just received your commission-abounding letter. All shall be done. Make
your European heart easy in Malta, all shall be performed. You say I am to
transcribe off part of your letters and: send to X somebody (but the name is
lost under the wafer, so you must give it me)—I suppose Wordswth.
I have been out of town since Saturday, the reason I had not
your letter before. N.B. N.B. Knowing I had 2 or 3 Easter holydays, it was my
intention to have ask’d you if my accompanying you to Portsmth would have been pleasant. But you were not visible,
except just at the critical moment of going off from the Inn, at which time I
could not get at you. So Deus aliter disposuit, and I went
down into Hertfordshire.
I write in great bustle indeed—God bless you again. Attend
to what I have written mark’d X above, and don’t merge any part of
your Orders under seal again.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Addressed to “S. T. Coleridge, Esqr., J. C. Mottley’s, Esqr., Portsmouth,
Hants.”
Coleridge had left London for Portsmouth on March
27; he sailed for Malta on April 9.
“Deus aliter
disposuit”—“God ordered otherwise.”]
LETTERS 118 AND 119 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS POOLE
[Dated at end: Temple, 4th May, 1804.]
DEAR Sir—I have no sort of connexion with the Morning Post at present, nor
acquaintance with its late Editor (the
present Editor of the Courier) to
ask a favour of him with pro-priety; but if it
will be of any use, I believe I could get the insertions into the British Press (a Morning Paper)
through a friend.—
Yours truly C. Lamb. [Dated at end: Temple, 5 May 1804.]
DEAR Sir—I can get the insertions into the British Press without any
difficulty at all. I am only sorry that I have no interest in the M. Post, having so much greater
circulation. If your friend chuses it, you will be so good as to return me
the Critique, of which I forgot to take a copy, and I suppose on Monday or
Tuesday it will be in. The sooner I have it, the better.
Yours &c. C. Lamb.
I did formerly assist in the Post, but have no longer any engagement.—
Note
[Stuart, having sold the Morning Post, was now
developing the Courier. The notes are interesting only as showing Lamb’s attitude to Stuart. Writing to the Gentleman’s Magazine in June,
1838, concerning his association as editor with Coleridge, Stuart said: “But as for good
Charles Lamb, I never could make any-thing of his writings.
Coleridge often and repeatedly pressed me to settle him on a salary, and often and
repeatedly did I try; but it would not do. Of politics he knew nothing; they were out
of his line of reading and thought; and his drollery was vapid, when given in short
paragraphs fit for a newspaper: yet he has produced some agreeable books, possessing a
tone of humour and kind feeling, in a quaint style, which it is amusing to read, and
cheering to remember.”]
LETTER 120 CHARLES LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: June 2, 1804.]
DEAR Miss
Wordsworth, the task of letter-writing in my family falls to me;
you are the organ of correspondence in yours, so I address you rather than your
brother. We are all
sensibly obliged to you for the little scraps (Arthur’s Bower and his brethren) which you sent up; the
bookseller has got them and paid Mrs.
Fenwick for them. So while some are authors for fame, some for
money, you have commenced author for charity. The least we can do, is to see
your commissions fulfilled; accordingly I have booked this 2d June 1804 from
the Waggon Inn in Cripplegate the watch and books which I got from your brother
Richard, together with Purchas’sPilgrimage and Brown’sReligio Medici which I desire your brother’s acceptance of,
with some pens, of which I observed no great frequency when I tarried at
Grasmere. (I suppose you have got Coleridge’s letter)—These things I have put up in a deal
box directed to Mr. Wordsworth,
Grasmere, near Ambleside, Kendal, by the Kendal waggon. At the same time I have
sent off a parcel by C.’s desire to Mr. T. Hutchinson to the care of Mr.
“T. Monkhouse, or T.
Markhouse” (for C.’s writing is not very
plain) Penrith, by the Penrith waggon this day; which I beg you to apprize them
of, lest my direction fail. In your box, you will find a little parcel for
Mrs. Coleridge, which she wants as
soon as possible; also for yourselves the Cotton, Magnesia, bark and Oil, which
come to £2. 3. 4. thus
sh. Thread and needles 17 . 0 Magnesia 8 . 0 Oil 9 . 88 . 8 ————— packing case 2. 3. 42 . 6 ————— 2 . 5 . 10 deduct a guinea I owe you, which
C. was to pay, but did not 1 . 1 .— ————— leaves you indebted 1 . 4 . 10
whereby you may see how punctual I am.
I conclude with our kindest remembrances to your brother and
Mrs. W.
We hear, the young John is a Giant.
And should you see Charles
Lloyd, pray forget to give my love to
him.
Yours truly, DrMiss W.C. Lamb. June 2, 1804.
I send you two little copies of verses by Mary
L—b:—
DIALOGUE BETWEEN A MOTHER AND CHILDChild. “O Lady, lay your costly robes
aside, (Sings) No longer may you glory in your
pride.” Mother. Wherefore to day art singing in mine
ear Sad songs were made so long ago, my dear? This day I am to be a bride, you know. Why sing sad songs were made so long ago? Child. “O Mother lay your costly robes
aside,” For you may never be another’s bride: That line I learnt not in the old sad song. Mother. I pray thee, pretty one, now hold
thy tongue; Play with the bride maids, and be glad, my boy, For thou shalt be a second father’s joy. Child. One father fondled me upon his knee: One father is enough alone for me.
Suggested by a print of 2 females after Leo[nardo da] Vinci, called Prudence & Beauty, which hangs up in our
ro[om]. O! that you could see the print!!
The Lady Blanch, regardless of all her
lovers’ fears, To the Urseline Convent hastens, and long the Abbess hears: “O Blanch, my child, repent thee of the courtly life ye
lead.” Blanch looked on a rose-bud, and little
seem’d to heed; She looked on the rose-bud, she looked round, and thought On all her heart had whisper’d, and all the Nun had taught. “I am worshipped by lovers, and brightly shines my fame, All Christendom resoundeth the noble
Blanch’s name; Nor shall I quickly wither like the rose-bud from the tree, My Queen-like graces shining when my beauty’s gone from me. But when the sculptur’d marble is raised o’er my head, And the matchless Blanch lies lifeless among
the noble dead, This saintly Lady Abbess has made me justly fear. It nothing will avail me that I were worshipt here.”
I wish they may please you: we in these parts are not a
little proud of them.
C. L.
Note
[“The little scraps.” Professor
Knight tells me that the scraps were not written but only copied by
Miss Wordsworth. Arthur’s Bower ran thus:— Arthur’s bower has broke his band, He comes riding up the land, The King of Scots with all his power Cannot build up Arthur’s bower.
“Your brother Richard”—Wordsworth’s eldest brother. “Purchas’s Pilgrimage.” Samuel Purchas (1575?-1626) was the author of Purchas His Pilgrimage, 1613; Purchas His
Pil-grim, 1619; and Hakluytus Posthumous, or Purchas his
Pilgrimes, 1625. This last is Purchas’s best work, and
is probably that which Lamb sent to Grasmere.
Mary Lamb’s two poems, her earliest that we
know, with the exception of “Helen” (see page 183), were printed in the Works, 1818.]
LETTER 121 MARY LAMB (AND CHARLES LAMB) TO SARAH
STODDART
[Late July, 1804.]
MY dearest Sarah,—Your letter, which contained the news of Coleridge’s arrival, was a most welcome
one; for we had begun to entertain very unpleasant apprehensions for his
safety; and your kind reception of the forlorn wanderer gave me the greatest
pleasure, and I thank you for it in my own and my brother’s name. I shall
depend upon you for hearing of his welfare; for he does not write himself; but,
as long as we know he is safe, and in such kind friends’ hands, we do not
mind. Your letters, my dear Sarah, are to me very, very
precious ones. They are the kindest, best, most natural ones I ever received.
The one containing the news of the arrival of Coleridge
perhaps the best I ever saw; and your old friend Charles is of my opinion. We sent it off to Mrs. Coleridge and the Wordsworths—as well because we thought it our
duty to give them the first notice we had of our dear friend’s safety, as
that we were proud of shewing our Sarah’s pretty
letter.
The letters we received a few days after from you and your
brother were far less welcome ones.
I rejoiced to hear your sister is well;
but I grieved for the loss of the dear baby; and I am sorry to find your
brother is not so successful as he at first expected to be; and yet I am almost
tempted to wish his ill fortune may send him over [to] us again. He has a
friend, I understand, who is now at the head of the Admiralty; why may he not
return, and make a fortune here?
I cannot condole with you very sincerely upon your little
failure in the fortune-making way. If you regret it, so do I. But I hope to see
you a comfortable English wife; and the forsaken, forgotten
William, of English-partridge memory, I have still a
hankering after. However, I thank you for your frank communication, and I beg
you will continue it in future; and if I do not agree with a good grace to your
having a Maltese husband, I will wish you happy,
provided you make it a part of your marriage articles that your husband shall
allow you to come over sea and make me one visit; else may neglect and
overlookedness be your portion while you stay there.
I would condole with you when the misfortune has fallen your
poor leg; but such is the blessed distance we are at from each other, that I
hope, before you receive this, that you forgot it ever happened.
Our compliments [to] the high ton at the Maltese court. Your
brother is so profuse of them to me, that being, as you know, so unused to
them, they perplex me sadly; in future, I beg they may be discontinued. They
always remind me of the free, and, I believe, very improper, letter I wrote to
you while you were at the Isle of Wight. The more kindly you and your brother
and sister took the impertinent advice contained in it, the more certain I feel
that it was unnecessary, and therefore highly improper. Do not let your brother
compliment me into the memory of it again.
My brother has had a letter from your Mother, which has distressed him sadly—about
the postage of some letters being paid by my brother. Your silly brother, it
seems, has informed your Mother (I did not think your brother could have been
so silly) that Charles had grumbled at paying the said postage. The fact was,
just at that time we were very poor, having lost the Morning Post, and we were
beginning to practise a strict economy. My brother, who never makes up his mind
whether he will be a Miser or a Spendthrift, is at all times a strange mixture
of both: of this failing, the even economy of your correct brother’s
temper makes him an ill judge. The miserly part of Charles, at that time smarting under his recent loss, then
happened to reign triumphant; and he would not write, or let me write, so often
as he wished, because the postage cost two and four pence. Then came two or
three of your poor Mother’s letters nearly together; and the two and four
pences he wished, but grudged, to pay for his own, he was forced to pay for
hers. In this dismal distress, he applied to Fenwick to get his friend Motley to send them free from Portsmouth. This Mr.
Fenwick could have done for half a word’s speaking; but
this he did not do. Then Charles foolishly and
unthinkingly complained to your brother in a half serious, half joking way; and
your brother has wickedly, and with malice afore thought, told your Mother. O
fye upon him! what will your Mother think of us?
I too feel my share of blame in this vexatious business; for
I saw the unlucky paragraph in my brother’s letter; and I had a kind of
foreboding that it would come to your Mother’s ears—although I had a
higher opinion of your brother’s good sense than I find he deserved. By
entreaties and prayers, I might have pre-vailed on my brother to say nothing about it. But I
make a point of conscience never to interfere or cross my brother in the humour
he happens to be in. It always appears to me to be a vexatious kind of Tyranny,
that women have no business to exercise over men, which, merely because they having a better judgement, they have the power to
do. Let men alone, and at last we find they come round
to the right way, which we, by a kind of intuition,
perceive at once. But better, far better, that we should let them often do
wrong, than that they should have the torment of a Monitor always at their
elbows.
Charles is sadly fretted now, I know, at
what to say to your Mother. I have made this long preamble about it to induce
[you,] if possible, to reinstate us in your Mother’s good graces. Say to
her it was a jest misunderstood; tell her Charles Lamb is
not the shabby fellow she and her son took him for; but that he is now and then
a trifle whimsical or so. I do not ask your brother to do this, for I am
offended with him for the mischief he has made.
I feel that I have too lightly passed over the interesting
account you sent me of your late disappointment. It was not because I did not
feel and compl[ete]ly enter into the affair with you. You surprise and please
me with the frank and generous way in which you deal with your Lovers, taking a
refusal from their so prudential hearts with a better grace and more good
humour than other women accept a suitor’s service. Continue this open
artless conduct, and I trust you will at last find some man who has sense
enough to know you are well worth risking a peaceable life of poverty for. I
shall yet live to see you a poor, but happy, English wife.
Remember me most affectionately to Coleridge; and I thank you again and again for
all your kindness to him. To dear Mrs.
Stoddart and your brother, I beg my best love; and to you all I
wish health and happiness, and a soon return to Old England.
I have sent to Mr. Burrel’s for
your kind present; but unfortunately he is not in town. I am impatient to see
my fine silk handkerchiefs; and I thank you for them, not as a present, for I
do not love presents, but as a [word illegible] remembrance of your old friend.
Farewell.
I am, my best Sarah, Your most affectionate friend, Mary Lamb.
Good wishes, and all proper remembrances, from old
nurse, Mrs. Jeffries, Mrs.
Reynolds, Mrs. Rickman, &c. &c.
&c.
Long live Queen Hoop-oop-oop-oo, and all the old merry
phantoms!
[Charles Lamb
adds:—]
My Dear Miss
Stoddart,—Mary has
written so fully to you, that I have nothing to add but that, in all the
kindness she has exprest, and loving desire to see you again, I bear my
full part. You will, perhaps, like to tear this half from the sheet, and
give your brother only his strict due, the remainder. So I will just repay
your late kind letter with this short postscript to hers. Come over here,
and let us all be merry again.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Coleridge reached Valetta on May
18, 1804; but no opportunity to send letters home occurred until June 5. Miss Stoddart seems to have given up all her lovers at
home in the hope of finding one in Malta.
“The blessed distance.” Here Mary Lamb throws out an idea afterwards developed by her
brother in the Elia
essay on “Distant
Correspondents.”
Lamb’s letter to Stoddart containing the complaint as to postage no longer exists. Mrs. Stoddart, Sarah’s mother,
had remained in England, at Salisbury.
Of Mr. Burrel I know nothing, nor can I explain
Queen Hoopoop-oop-oo.
Here should come a letter from Lamb
to Robert Lloyd, dated September 13, 1804, not
available for this edition, in which Lamb expresses his inability to
accept an invitation, having had a month’s holiday at Richmond. After alluding to
Priscilla Lloyd’s approaching marriage (to
Christopher Wordsworth) he says that these new
nuptials do not make him the less satisfied with his bachelor state.]
LETTER 129 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[p.m. October 13, 1804.]
(Turn over leaf for more letters.)
DEAR Wordsworth—I have not forgot your commissions. But the truth
is, and why should I not confess it? I am not plethorically abounding in Cash
at this present. Merit, God knows, is very little rewarded; but it does not
become me to speak of myself. My
motto is “Contented with little, yet wishing for more.” Now
the books you wish for would require some pounds, which I am sorry to say I
have not by me: so I will say at once, if you will give me a draft upon your
town-banker for any sum you propose to lay out, I will dispose of [it] to the
very best of my skill in choice old books, such as my own soul loveth. In fact,
I have been waiting for the liquidation of a debt to enable myself to set about
your commission handsomely, for it is a scurvy thing to cry Give me the money
first, and I am the first of the family of the Lambs that
have done it for many centuries: but the debt remains as it was, and my old
friend that I accommodated has generously forgot it!
The books which you want I calculate at about £8.
Ben Jonson is a Guinea Book. Beaumont & Fletcher in folio, the right folio, not now to be met with; the
octavos are about £3. As to any other old dramatists, I do not know where to
find them except what are in Dodsley’s old plays, which are about £3 also: Massinger I never saw but at one shop, but it
is now gone, but one of the editions of Dodsley contains about a fourth (the best) of his plays.
Congreve and the rest of King Charles’s moralists are cheap and
accessible. The works on
Ireland I will enquire after, but I fear, Spenser’s is not to be had apart from
his poems; I never saw it. But you may depend upon my sparing no pains to
furnish you as complete a library of old Poets & Dramatists as will be
prudent to buy; for I suppose you do not include the £20 edition of Hamlet, single play, which
Kemble has. Marlow’s plays and poems are totally
vanished; only one edition of Dodsley retains one, and the
other two, of his plays: but John Ford is
the man after Shakespear. Let me know your will and
pleasure soon: for I have observed, next to the pleasure of buying a bargain
for one’s self is the pleasure of persuading a friend to buy it. It
tickles one with the image of an imprudency without the penalty usually
annex’d.
C. Lamb.
LETTER 123 MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH (Second part of Letter 122)
[p.m. October 13, 1804.]
MY dear Miss
Wordsworth—I writ a letter immediately upon the receipt of
yours, to thank you for sending me the welcome tidings of your little
niece’s birth, and Mrs.
Wordsworth’s safety, & waited till I could get a frank to
send it in. Not being able to procure one, I will defer my thanks no longer for
fear Mrs. Wordsworth should add another little baby to
your family, before my congratulations on the birth of the little Dorothy arrive.
I hope Mrs.
Wordsworth, & the pretty baby, & the young philosopher,
are well: they are three strangers to me whom I have a longing desire to be
acquainted with.
My brother desires me not to send such a long gossiping
letter as that I had intended for you, because he wishes to fill a large share
of the paper with his acknowledgments to Mr.
Wordsworth for his letters, which he considers as a very
uncommon favor, your brother seldom writing letters. I must beg my brother will
tell Mr. Wordsworth how very proud he has made me also by
praising my poor verses. Will you be so kind as to forward the opposite page to
Mrs. Coleridge. This sheet of paper
is quite a partnership affair. When the parliament meets you shall have a
letter for your sole use.
My brother and I have been this summer to Richmond; we had a
lodging there for a month, we passed the whole time there in wandering about,
& comparing the views from the banks of the Thames with your mountain
scenery, & tried, & wished, to persuade ourselves that it was almost as
beautiful. Charles was quite a Mr. Clarkson in his admiration and his
frequent exclamations, for though we had often been at Richmond for a few hours
we had no idea it was so beautiful a place as we found it on a month’s
intimate acquaintance.
We rejoice to hear of the good fortune of your brave
sailor-brother, I should have liked
to have been with you when the news first arrived.
Your very friendly invitations have made us long to be with
you, and we promise ourselves to spend the first money my brother earns by
writing certain books (Charles often
plans but never begins) in a journey to Grasmere.
When your eyes (which I am sorry to find continue unwell)
will permit you to make use of your pen again I shall be very happy to see a
letter in your own hand writing.
I beg to be affectionately remembered to your brother &
sister
& remain ever your affectionate friend M. Lamb.
Compliments to old Molly.
LETTER 124 MARY LAMB TO MRS. S. T. COLERIDGE (Third part of Letter 122)
[p.m. October 13, 1804.]
[Charles Lamb
adds:—]
C. Lamb particularly desires to be
remembered to Southey and all the
Southeys, as well as to Mrs. C. and her little Coleridges.
Mrs. C.’s letters have all been sent as
Coleridge left word, to Motley’s, Portsmouth.
MY dear Mrs.
Coleridge—I have had a letter written ready to send to you,
which I kept, hoping to get a frank, and now I find I must write one entirely
anew, for that consisted of matter not now in season, such as condolence on the
illness of your children, who I hope are now quite well, & comfortings on
your uncertainty of the safety of Coleridge, with wise reasons for the delay of the letters from
Malta, which must now be changed for pleasant congratulations.
Coleridge has not written to us, but we have had two
letters from the Stoddarts since the one
I sent to you, containing good accounts of him, but as I find you have had
letters from himself I need not tell you the particulars.
My brother sent your letters to Mr. Motley according to Coleridge’s direction, & I have no doubt but he
forwarded them.
One thing only in my poor letter the time makes no
alteration in, which is that I have half a bed ready for you, & I shall
rejoice with exceeding great joy to have you with me. Pray do not change your
mind for I shall be sadly disappointed if you do. Will Hartley be with you? I hope he will, for you
say he goes with you to Liverpool, and I conclude you come from thence to
London.
I have seen your brother lately, and I find he entertains good hopes from
Mr. Salte, and his present employment I hear is likely
to continue a considerable time longer, so that I hope you may consider him as
good as provided for. He seems very steady, and is very well spoken of at his
office.
I have lately been often talking of you with Mrs. Hazlitt. William Hazlitt is painting my brother’s picture, which
has brought us acquainted with the whole family. I like William
Hazlitt and his sister very much indeed, & I think
Mrs. Hazlitt a pretty good-humoured woman. She has a
nice little girl of the Pypos kind, who is so fond of my brother
that she stops strangers in the street to tell them when Mr. Lamb is coming to see her.
I hope Mr. Southey
and your sister and the little Edith are
well. I beg my love to them.
God bless you, and your three little darlings, & their
wandering father, who I hope will soon return to you in high health &
spirits.
I remain ever your affectionate friend Mary Lamb.
Compliments to Mr.
Jackson and darling friend. I hope they are well.
Note
[“Contented with little . . .” Adapted from Burns, “Contented wi’ Little”:— Contented wi’ little, and cantie wi’ mair.
The Ben Jonson in Lamb’s own library was the 1692 folio; his Beaumont and Fletcher, which may be seen at the British Museum, was the folio 1647 or
1679.
Spenser’s prose work, View of the Present State of
Ireland, is that referred to.
“John Ford.” Lamb says in the Dramatic Specimens, 1808,
“Ford was of the first order of poets.”
Dorothy Wordsworth (afterwards the wife of Edward Quillinan) was born August 16, 1804.
“Your brave sailor-brother”—John Wordsworth.
Mrs. Coleridge now had three children—Hartley, Derwent
and Sara. We do not know whether or no she stayed
with the Lambs, as suggested. Her brother was George Fricker.
William Hazlitt’s sister was Peggy Hazlitt. His sister-in-law, Mrs. Hazlitt, was the wife of John Hazlitt, the miniature painter.
Hazlitt’s portrait of Lamb was the one in the dress of a Venetian senator,
reproduced as frontispiece to Vol. IV. of this edition. It now hangs in the National
Portrait Gallery.]
LETTER 125 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
7 Nov., 1804.
DEAR Southey,—You were the last person from whom we heard of Dyer, and if you know where to forward the news
I now send to him, I shall be obliged to you to lose no time. D.’s sister-in-law, who lives in St. Dunstan’s
Court, wrote to him about three weeks ago, to the Hope Inn, Cambridge, to
inform him that Squire Houlbert, or some such name, of
Denmark Hill, has died, and left her husband a thousand pounds, and two or
three hundred to Dyer. Her letter got no answer, and she
does not know where to direct to him; so she came to me, who am equally in the
dark. Her story is, that Dyer’s immediately coming
to town now, and signing some papers, will save him a considerable sum of
money—how, I don’t understand; but it is very right he should hear of
this. She has left me barely time for the post; so I conclude with all Love,
&c., to all at Keswick.
Dyer’s brother, who, by his wife’s account,
has got 1000l. left him, is father of the little dirty
girl, Dyer’s niece and factotum.
In haste, Yours truly, C. Lamb.
If you send George this, cut off the last paragraph.
D.’s laundress had a letter a few days
since; but George never dates.
LETTER 126 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[p.m. February 18, 1805.]
MY dear Wordsworth, the subject of your letter has never been out of
our thoughts since the day we first heard of it, and many have been our
impulses towards you, to write to you, or to write to enquire about you; but it
never seemed the time. We felt all your situation, and how much you would want
Coleridge at such a time, and we
wanted somehow to make up to you his absence, for we loved and honoured your
Brother, and his death always occurs
to my mind with something like a feeling of reproach, as if we ought to have
been nearer acquainted, and as if there had been some incivility shown him by
us, or something short of that respect which we now feel: but this is always a
feeling when people die, and I should not foolishly offer a piece of
refinement, instead of sympathy, if I knew any other way of making you feel how
little like indifferent his loss has been to us. I have been for some time
wretchedly ill and low, and your letter this morning has affected me so with a
pain in my inside and a confusion, that I hardly know what to write or how. I
have this morning seen Stewart, the 2d mate, who was saved: but he
can give me no satisfactory account, having been in quite another part of the
ship when your brother went down. But I shall see Gilpin tomorrow, and will communicate your thanks, and learn
from him all I can. All accounts agree that just before the vessel going down,
your brother seemed like one overwhelmed with the situation, and careless of
his own safety. Perhaps he might have saved himself; but a Captain who in such
circumstances does all he can for his ship and nothing for himself, is the
noblest idea. I can hardly express myself, I am so really ill. But the
universal sentiment is, that your brother did all that duty required: and if he
had been more alive to the feelings of those distant ones whom he loved, he
would have been at that time a less admirable object; less to be exulted in by
them: for his character is high with all that I have heard speak of him, and no
reproach can fix upon him. Tomorrow I shall see Gilpin, I
hope, if I can get at him, for there is expected a complete investigation of
the causes of the loss of the ship, at the East India House, and all the
Officers are to attend: but I could not put off writing to you a moment. It is
most likely I shall have something to add tomorrow, in a second letter. If I do
not write, you may suppose I have not seen G. but you
shall hear from me in a day or two. We have done nothing but think of you,
particularly of Dorothy. Mary is crying by me while I with difficulty
write this: but as long as we remember any thing, we shall remember your
Brother’s noble person, and his sensible manly modest voice, and how safe
and comfortable we all were together in our apartment, where I am now writing.
When he returned, having been one of the triumphant China fleet, we thought of
his pleasant exultation (which he exprest here one night) in the wish that he
might meet a Frenchman in the seas; and it seem’d to be accomplished, all
to his heart’s desire. I will conclude from utter inability to write any
more, for I am seriously unwell: and because I mean to gather something like
intelligence to send to you tomorrow: for as yet, I have but heard second hand,
and seen one narrative, which is but a transcript of what was common to all the
Papers. God bless you all, and reckon upon us as entering into all your griefs.
[Signature cut away.]
Note
[This is the first of a series of letters bearing upon the loss of the
East Indiaman Earl of Abergavenny, which was wrecked off Portland
Bill on February 6, 1805, 200 persons and the captain, John Wordsworth, being lost. The
character of Wordsworth’s “Happy Warrior” is said to have
been largely drawn from his brother John. His age
was only thirty-three.]
LETTER 127 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[p.m. February 19, 1805.]
MY dear Wordsworth, I yesterday wrote you a very unsatisfactory letter.
To day I have not much to add, but it may be some satisfaction to you that I
have seen Gilpin, and thanked him in all
your names for the assistance he tried to give: and that he has assured me that
your Brother did try to save himself,
and was doing so when Gilpin called to him, but he was
then struggling with the waves and almost dead. G. heard
him give orders a very little before the vessel went down, with all possible
calmness, and it does not at all appear that your Brother in any absence of
mind neglected his own safety. But in such circumstances the memory of those
who escaped cannot be supposed to be very accurate; and there appears to be
about the Persons that I have seen a good deal of reservedness and
unwillingness to enter into detail, which is natural, they being Officers of
the Ship, and liable to be examined at home about its loss. The examination is
expected to day or to-morrow, and if any thing should come out, that can
interest you, I shall take an early opportunity of sending it to you.
Mary wrote some few days since to
Miss Stoddart, containing an account
of your Brother’s death, which most likely Coleridge will have heard, before the letter comes: we both
wish it may hasten him back. We do not know any thing of him, whether he is
settled in any post (as there was some talk) or not. We had another sad account
to send him, of the death of his schoolfellow Allen; tho’ this, I am sure, will much less affect him. I
don’t know whether you knew Allen; he died lately
very suddenly in an apoplexy. When you do and can write, particularly inform us
of the healths of you all. God bless you all. Mary will
write to Dorothy as soon as she thinks
she will be able to bear it. It has been a sad tidings to us, and has affected
us more than we could have believed. I think it has contributed to make me
worse, who have been very unwell, and have got leave for some few days to stay
at home: but I am ashamed to speak of myself, only in excuse for the unfeeling
sort of huddle which I now send. I could not delay it, having seen Gilpin, and I thought his assurance might be
some little ease to you.
We will talk about the Books, when you can better bear it. I
have bought none yet. But do not spare me any office you can put me on, now or when you are at leisure for such
things. Adopt me as one of your family in this affliction; and use me without
ceremony as such.
Mary’s kindest Love to all.
C. L. Tuesday [Feb. 19].
Note
[Mary Lamb’s letter to
Miss Stoddart, here referred to, is no longer
preserved. Coleridge a little later accepted the
post of private secretary to the Governor of Malta, Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander John Ball. Allen was Bob Allen, whom we have already met.]
DEAR Manning,—I have been very unwell since I saw you. A sad depression
of spirits, a most unaccountable nervousness; from which I have been partially
relieved by an odd accident. You knew Dick Hopkins, the
swearing scullion of Caius? This fellow, by industry and agility, has thrust
himself into the important situations (no sinecures, believe me) of cook to
Trinity Hall and Caius College: and the generous creature has contrived with
the greatest delicacy imaginable, to send me a present of Cambridge brawn. What
makes it the more extraordinary is, that the man never saw me in his life that
I know of. I suppose he has heard of me. I did not
immediately recognise the donor; but one of
Richard’s cards, which had accidentally fallen
into the straw, detected him in a moment. Dick, you know,
was always remarkable for flourishing. His card imports, that “orders
(to wit, for brawn), from any part of England, Scotland, or Ireland, will
be duly executed,” &c. At first, I thought of declining the
present; but Richard knew my blind side when he pitched
upon brawn. ’Tis of all my hobbies the supreme in the eating way. He
might have sent sops from the pan, skimmings, crumplets, chips, hog’s
lard, the tender brown judiciously scalped from a fillet of veal (dexterously
replaced by a salamander), the tops of asparagus, fugitive livers, runaway
gizzards of fowls, the eyes of martyred pigs, tender effusions of laxative
woodcocks, the red spawn of lobsters, leverets’ ears, and such pretty
filchings common to cooks; but these had been
ordinary presents, the everyday courtesies of dishwashers to their sweethearts.
Brawn was a noble thought. It is not every common gullet-fancier that can
properly esteem it. It is like a picture of one of the choice old Italian
masters. Its gusto is of that hidden sort. As Wordsworth sings of a modest poet,—“you must love him,
ere to you he will seem worthy of your love;” so brawn, you must
taste it, ere to you it will seem to have any taste at all. But ’tis nuts
to the adept: those that will send out their tongues and feelers to find it
out. It will be wooed, and not unsought be won. Now, ham-essence, lobsters,
turtle, such popular minions, absolutely court you, lay
themselves out to strike you at first smack, like one of David’s pictures (they call him Darveed), compared with the plain russet-coated wealth
of a Titian or a Correggio, as I illustrated above. Such are
the obvious glaring heathen virtues of a corporation dinner, compared with the
reserved collegiate worth of brawn. Do me the favour to leave off the business
which you may be at present upon, and go immediately to the kitchens of Trinity
and Caius, and make my most respectful compliments to Mr. Richard
Hopkins, and assure him that his brawn is most excellent; and
that I am moreover obliged to him for his innuendo about salt water and bran,
which I shall not fail to improve. I leave it to you whether you shall choose
to pay him the civility of asking him to dinner while you stay in Cambridge, or
in whatever other way you may best like to show your gratitude to my friend. Richard Hopkins,
considered in many points of view, is a very extraordinary character. Adieu: I
hope to see you to supper in London soon, where we will taste
Richard’s brawn, and drink his health in a
cheerful but moderate cup. We have not many such men in any rank of life as
Mr. R. Hopkins. Crisp the barber,
of St. Mary’s, was just such another. I wonder he never sent me any
little token, some chestnuts, or a puff, or two pound of hair just to remember
him by; gifts are like nails. Præsens ut
absens, that is, your present makes
amends for your absence.
Yours,
C. Lamb.
Note
[This letter is, I take it, a joke: that is to say, the brawn was sent to
Lamb by Manning, who seems
to have returned to Cambridge for a while, and Lamb affects to believe
that Hopkins, from whom it was bought, was the giver. I think this
view is supported by the reference to Mr. Crisp, at the
end,—Mr. Crisp being Manning’s late
landlord.
The letter contains Lamb’s
second expression of epicurean rapture: the first in praise of pig.
“As Wordsworth sings”—in the “Poet’s Epitaph”:— He is retired as noontide dew, Or fountain in a noon-day grove; And you must love him, ere to you He will seem worthy of your love.
“David”—the French
painter.
“Præsens ut
absens.” Lamb enlarged upon the
topic of gifts and giving many years later, in the Popular Fallacy “That we must not look a Gift Horse in the
Mouth,” 1826, and in his “Thoughts on Presents of Game,” 1833.]
LETTER 129 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[p.m. March 5, 1805.]
MY dear Wordsworth, if Gilpin’s statement has afforded you any satisfaction, I
can assure you that he was most explicit in giving it, and even seemed anxious
(interrupting me) to do away any misconception. His statement is not
contradicted by the last and fullest of the two Narratives which have been
published (the former being a mere transcript of the newspapers), which I would
send you if I did not suppose that you would receive more pain from the
unfeeling canting way in which it is drawn up, than satisfaction from its
contents; and what relates to your brother in particular is very short. It
states that your brother was seen talking to the First Mate but a few minutes
before the ship sank, with apparent cheerfulness, and it contradicts the
newspaper account about his depression of spirits procrastinating his taking
leave of the Court of Directors; which the drawer up of the Narrative (a man
high in the India House) is likely to be well informed of. It confirms
Gilpin’s account of his seeing your brother
striving to save himself, and adds that “Webber,
a Joiner, was near the Captain, who was standing on the hencoop when the
ship went down, whom he saw washed off by a sea, which also carried him
(Webber) overboard;”—this is all which
concerns your brother personally. But I will just transcribe from it, a Copy of
Gilpin’s account delivered in to the Court of
Directors:—
“Memorandum respecting the Loss of the E. of A.”
“At 10 a.m. being about 10
leagues to the westward of Portland, the Commodore made the signal to bear
up—did so accordingly; at this time having maintop gallant mast struck, fore
and mizen
do. on deck, and the jib boom in the wind about
W.S.W. At 3 p.m. got on board a Pilot, being about 2
leagues to the westward of Portland; ranged and bitted both cables at about ½
past 3, called all hands and got out the jib boom at about 4. While crossing
the east End of the Shambles, the wind suddenly died away, and a strong tide
setting the ship to the westward, drifted her into the breakers, and a sea
striking her on the larboard quarter, brought her to, with her head to the
northward, when she instantly struck, it being about 5 p.m. Let out all the reefs, and hoisted the topsails up, in hopes to
shoot the ship across the Shambles. About this time the wind shifted to the
N.W. The surf driving us off, and the tide setting us on alternately, sometimes
having 4½ at others 9 fathoms, sand of the sea about 8 feet; continued in this
situation till about ½ past 7, when she got off. During the time she was on the
Shambles, had from 3 to 4 feet water; kept the water at this height about 15
minutes, during the whole time the pumps constantly going. Finding she gained
on us, it was determined to run her on the nearest shore. About 8 the wind
shifted to the eastward: the leak continuing to gain upon the pumps, having 10
or 11 feet water, found it expedient to bale at the forescuttles and hatchway.
The ship would not bear up—kept the helm hard a starboard, she being
water-logg’d: but still had a hope she could be kept up till we got her
on Weymouth Sands. Cut the lashings of the boats—could not get the Long Boat
out, without laying the main-top-sail aback, by which our progress would have
been so delayed, that no hope would have been left us of running her aground,
and there being several sloops in sight, one having sent a small skiff on
board, took away 2 Ladies and 3 other passengers, and put them on board the
sloop, at the same time promising to return and take away a hundred or more of
the people: she finding much difficulty in getting back to the sloop, did not
return. About this time the Third Mate and Purser were sent in the cutter to
get assistance from the other ships. Continued pumping and baling till 11 p.m. when she sunk. Last cast of the lead 11
fathoms; having fired guns from the time she struck till she went down, about 2
a.m. boats came and took the people from the
wreck about 70 in number. The troops, in particular the Dragoons, pumped very
well.
“(Signed) Thos. Gilpin.”
And now, my dear W.—I
must apologize for having named my health. But indeed it was because, what with
the ill news, your letter coming upon me in a most wretched state of ill
spirits, I was scarce able to give it an answer, and I felt what it required.
But we will say no more about it. I am
getting better. And when I have persisted time enough in a course of regular
living I shall be well. But I am now well enough; and have got to business
afresh. Mary thanks you for your
invitation. I have wished myself with you daily since the news. I have wished
that I were Coleridge, to give you any
consolation. You have not mourned without one to have a feeling of it. And we
have not undervalued the intimation of your friendship. We shall one day prove
it by intruding on your privacy, when these griefs shall be a little calmed.
This year, I am afraid, it is impossible: but I shall store it up as among the
good things to come, which keep us up when life and spirits are sinking.
If you have not seen, or wish to see, the wretched narrative
I have mentioned, I will send it. But there is nothing more in it affecting
you. I have hesitated to send it, because it is unfeelingly done, and in the
hope of sending you something from some of the actual spectators; but I have
been disappointed, and can add nothing yet. Whatever I pick up, I will store
for you. It is perfectly understood at the E. I. House, that no blame whatever
belongs to the Captn. or Officers.
I can add no more but Mary’s warmest Love to all. When you can write without
trouble, do it, for you are among the very chief of our interests.
C. Lamb. 4 March.
LETTER 130 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: March 21, 1805.]
DEAR Wordsworth, upon the receipt of your last letter before that
which I have just received, I wrote myself to Gilpin putting your questions to him; but have yet had no
answer. I at the same time got a person in the India House to write a much
fuller enquiry to a relative of his who was saved, one
Yates a midshipman. Both these officers (and indeed
pretty nearly all that are left) have got appointed to other ships and have
joined them. Gilpin is in the Comet, India-man, now lying
at Gravesend. Neither Yates nor
Gilpin have yet answered, but I am in daily
expectation. I have sent your letter of this morning also to
Gilpin. The waiting for these answers has been my
reason for not writing you. I have made very particular enquiries about
Webber, but in vain. He was a common seaman (not the
ship’s carpenter) and no traces of him are at the I. House: it is most probable
that he has entered in some Privateer, as most of the crew have done. I will
keep the £1 note till you find out something I can do with it. I now write
idly, having nothing to send: but I cannot bear that you should think I have
quite neglected your commission. My letter to G. was such
as I thought he could not but answer: but he may be busy. The letter to
Yates I hope I can promise will be answered. One
thing, namely why the other ships sent no assistance, I have learn’d from
a person on board one of them: the firing was never once heard, owing to the
very stormy night, and no tidings came to them till next morning. The sea was
quite high enough to have thrown out the most expert swimmer, and might not
your brother have received some blow in the shock, which disabled him? We are
glad to hear poor Dorothy is a little
better. None of you are able to bear such a stroke. To people oppressed with
feeling, the loss of a good-humoured happy man that has been friendly with
them, if he were no brother, is bad enough. But you must cultivate his spirits,
as a legacy: and believe that such as he cannot be lost. He was a chearful
soul! God bless you. Mary’s love
always.
C. Lamb. 21st March, 1805.
LETTER 131 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[p.m. April 5, 1805.]
DEAR Wordsworth, I have this moment received this letter from
Gilpin in reply to 3 or 4 short
questions I put to him in my letter before yours for him came. He does not
notice having recd yours, which I sent immediately.
Perhaps he has already answered it to you. You see that his hand is
sprain’d, and your questions being more in number, may delay his answer
to you. My first question was, when it was he called to your brother: the rest
you will understand from the answers. I was beginning to have hard thoughts of
G. from his delay, but now I am conftrm’d in my
first opinion that he is a rare good-hearted fellow. How is Dorothy? and all of you?
Yours sincerely C. Lamb.
4th question was, was Capt.
W. standing near the shrouds or any place of safety at the
moment of sinking?
Comet, Northfleet, March 31st,
1805.
Sir—I did not receive yours of
16th inst. till this day, or shd. have
answered it sooner. To your first Question, I answer after the
Ship had sunk. To your second, my answer is, I was in the
Starboard Mizen Rigging—I thought I see the Captn. hanging by a Rope that was fast to
the Mizen Mast. I came down and haild him as loud as I could,
he was about 10 feet distant from me. I threw a rope which fell
close to him, he seem’d quite Motionless and insensible
(it was excessive cold), and was soon after sweep’d away,
and I see him no more. It was near about five minutes after the
Ship went down. With respect to the Captn and Webber being on the same
Hencoop, I can give no answer, all I can say, I did not see
them. Your fourth Question, I cannot answer, as I did not see
Capt. Wordsworth at
the moment the Ship was going down, tho I was then on the Poop
less than one minute before I see the Captn there. The Statement in the printed Pamphlet is by
no means correct. I have sprained my Wrist, most violently, and
am now in great pain, which will, I hope, be an apology for the
shortness of this Letter.
believe me truly yours*Thos.
Gilpin.This Letter as been detained till April
5th.
* This is merely a kind way of expressing himself, for I
have no acquaintance with him, nor ever saw him but that once I got
introduced to him.
I think I did not mention in my last, that I sent yours
to T. Evans, Richmond. I hope you
have got an answer.
LETTER 132 MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
[p.m. May 7, 1805.]
MY dear Miss
Wordsworth—I thank you, my kind friend, for your most
comfortable letter. Till I saw your own handwriting, I could not persuade
myself that I should do well to write to you, though I have often attempted it,
but I always left off dissatisfied with what I had written, and feeling that I
was doing an improper thing to intrude upon your sorrow. I wished to tell you,
that you would one day feel the kind of peaceful state of mind, and sweet
memory of the dead which you so happily describe as now almost begun, but I
felt that it was improper, and most grating to the feelings of the afflicted,
to say to them that the memory of their affliction would in time become a
constant part not only of their “dream, but of their most wakeful
sense of happiness.” That you would see every object with, and
through your lost brother, and that that would at last become a real and
everlasting source of comfort to you, I felt, and well knew from my own
experience in sorrow, but till you yourself began to feel this I did not dare tell you so, but
I send you some poor lines which I wrote under this conviction of mind, and
before I heard Coleridge was returning
home. I will transcribe them now before I finish my letter, lest a false shame
prevent me then, for I know they are much worse than they ought to be, written
as they were with strong feeling and on such a subject. Every line seems to me
to be borrowed, but I had no better way of expressing my thoughts, and I never
have the power of altering or amending anything I have once laid aside with
dissatisfaction. Why is he wandering on the sea? Coleridge should now with
Wordsworth be. By slow degrees he’d steal away Their woe, and gently bring a ray (So happily he’d time relief) Of comfort from their very grief. He’d tell them that their brother dead When years have passed o’er their head, Will be remember’d with such holy, True, and perfect melancholy That ever this lost brother John Will be their heart’s companion. His voice they’ll always hear, his face they’ll always
see, There’s nought in life so sweet as such a memory.
Mr. and Mrs.
Clarkson came to see us last week, I find it was at your request
they sought us out; you cannot think how glad we were to see them, so little as
we have ever seen of them, yet they seem to us like very old friends. Poor
Mrs. Clarkson looks very ill indeed, she walked near a
mile, and came up our high stairs, which fatigued her very much, but when she
had sat a while her own natural countenance with which she cheared us in your
little cottage seemed to return to her, and then I began to have hopes she
would get the better of her complaint. Charles does not think she is so much altered as I do. I wish
he may be the better judge. We talked of nothing but you. She means to try to
get leave of Dr. Beddoes to come and see
you—her heart is with you, and I do not think it would hurt her so much to come
to you, as it would distress you to see her so ill.
She read me a part of your letter wherein you so kindly
express your wishes that we would come and see you this summer. I wish we
could, for I am sure it would be a blessed thing for you and for us to be a few
weeks together—I fear it must not be. Mrs.
Clarkson is to be in town again in a fortnight and then they
have promised we shall see more of them.
I am very sorry for the poor little Dorothy’s illness—I hope soon to hear
she is perfectly recovered. Remember me with affection to your brother, and
your good sister. What a providence it is that your brother and you have this
kind friend, and these dear little ones—I rejoice
with her and with you that your brother is employed upon his poem again.
Pray remember us to Old Molly.
Mrs. Clarkson says her house is a
pattern of neatness to all her neighbours—such good ways she learnt of
“Mistress.” How well I remember the shining ornaments of her
kitchen, and her old friendly face, not [the] least ornamental part of it.
Excuse the haste I write in. I am unexpectedly to go out to
dinner, else I think I have much more to say, but I will not put it off till
next post, because you so kindly say I must not write if I feel unwilling—you
do not know what very great joy I have in being again writing to you. Thank you
for sending the letter of Mr. Evans, it
was a very kind one. Have you received one from a Cornet
Burgoine? My brother wrote to him and desires he would direct
his answer to your brother.
God bless you and yours my dear friend.
I am yours affectionately M. Lamb.
Note
[“Dream, but of their most wakeful sense . . .” I have
not found this.
Dr. Beddoes, who was attending Mrs.
Clarkson, would be, I suppose, Thomas
Beddoes of Clifton (1760-1808), the father of Thomas Lovell Beddoes and a friend of Coleridge and Southey. In a letter
from Dorothy Wordsworth to Mrs.
Clarkson, dated April 19, 1805 (recently printed by Mr. Hale White in the Athenæum), we read:—
I have great pleasure in thinking that you may see Miss Lamb; do not miss it if you can possibly go without
injury to yourself—they are the best good creatures—blessings be with them! they have
sympathised in our sorrow as tenderly as if they had grown up in the same [town?] with us
and known our beloved John from his childhood.
Charles has written to us the most consolatory
letters, the result of diligent and painful inquiry of the survivors of the wreck,—for this
we must love him as long as we have breath. I think of him and his sister every day of my
life, and many times in the day with thankfulness and blessings. Talk to dear
Miss Lamb about coming into this country and let us hear what she
says of it. I cannot express how much we all wish to see her and her brother while we are
at Grasmere. We look forward to Coleridge’s
return with fear and painful hope—but indeed I dare not look to it—I think as little as I
can of him.]
LETTER 133 CHARLES LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH[Slightly torn. The conjectures in square brackets
are Talfourd’s.]
Friday, 14th June, 1805.
MY dear Miss
Wordsworth, Your long kind letter has not been thrown away (for
it has given me great pleasure to find you are all resuming your old
occupations, and are better) but poor Mary to whom it is addrest cannot yet relish it. She has been
attacked by one of her severe illnesses, and is at present from home. Last
Monday week was the day she left me; and I hope I may calculate upon having her
again in a month, or little more. I am rather afraid late hours have in this
case contributed to her indisposition. But when she begins to discover symptoms
of approaching illness, it is not easy to say what is best to do. Being by
ourselves is bad, and going out is bad. I get so irritable and wretched with
fear, that I constantly hasten on the disorder. You cannot conceive the misery
of such a foresight. I am sure that for the week before she left me, I was
little better than light-headed. I now am calm, but sadly taken down, and flat.
I have every reason to suppose that this illness, like all her former ones,
will be but temporary; but I cannot always feel so. Meantime she is dead to me,
and I miss a prop. All my strength is gone, and I am like a [fool, ber]eft of
her co-operation. I dare not think, lest I [should think] wrong; so used am I
to look up to her [in the least] and the biggest perplexity. To say all that [I know of her] would be more than I think any
body could [believe or even understand; and when I hope to have her well [again
with me] it would be sinning against her feelings to go about to praise her:
for I can conceal nothing that I do from her. She is older, and wiser, and
better, than me, and all my wretched imperfections I cover to myself by
resolutely thinking on her goodness. She would share life and death, heaven and
hell, with me. She lives but for me. And I know I have been wasting and teazing
her life for five years past incessantly with my cursed drinking and ways of
going on. But even in this up-braiding of myself I am offending against her,
for I know that she has cleaved to me for better, for worse; and if the balance
has been against her hitherto, it was a noble trade.
I am stupid and lose myself in what I write. I write rather
what answers to my feelings (which are sometimes sharp enough) than express my
present ones, for I am only flat and stupid.
Poor Miss Stoddart!
she is coming to England under the notion of passing her time between her
mother and Mary, between London and Salisbury. Since she
talk’d of coming, word has been sent to Malta that her Mother is gone out
of her mind. This Letter, with mine to Stoddart with an account of Allen’s death, &c., has miscarried (taken by the
French) [word missing]. She is coming home, with no soul to receive [words
missing]. She has not a woman-friend in London.
I am sure you will excuse my writing [any more, I] am very
poorly. I cannot resist tra[nscribing] three or four Lines which poor Mary made upon a Picture (a Holy Family) which
we saw at an Auction only one week before she left home. She was then beginning
to show signs of ill boding. They are sweet Lines, and upon a sweet Picture.
But I send them, only as the last memorial of her. VIRGIN AND CHILD. L. DA VINCI Maternal Lady with the Virgin-grace, Heaven-born thy Jesus seemeth sure, And thou a virgin pure. Lady most perfect, when thy angel face Men look upon, they wish to be A Catholic, Madona fair, to worship thee. You had her lines about the “Lady Blanch.” You have not had some
which she wrote upon a copy of a girl from Titian, which I had hung up where that print of Blanch and the Abbess (as she beautifully
interpreted two female figures from L. da
Vinci) had hung, in our room. ’Tis light and pretty. Who art thou, fair one, who usurp’st the place Of Blanch, the Lady of the
matchless grace? Come, fair and pretty, tell to me Who in thy lifetime thou mightst be? Thou pretty art and fair, But with the Lady Blanch thou never must
compare. No need for Blanch her history to tell, Whoever saw her face, they there did read it well. But when I look on thee, I only know There liv’d a pretty maid some hundred years ago. This is a little unfair, to tell so much about ourselves, and to advert so
little to your letter, so full of comfortable tidings of you all. But my own
cares press pretty close upon me, and you can make allowance. That you may go
on gathering strength and peace is the next wish to
Mary’s recovery.
I had almost forgot your repeated invitation. Supposing that
Mary will be well and able, there is
another ability which you may guess at, which I cannot
promise myself. In prudence we
ought not to come. This illness will make it still more prudential to wait. It
is not a balance of this way of spending our money against another way, but an
absolute question of whether we shall stop now, or go on wasting away the
little we have got beforehand, which my wise conduct has already
incroach’d upon one half. My best Love, however, to you all; and to that
most friendly creature, Mrs. Clarkson,
and better health to her, when you see or write to her.
C. Lamb.
Note
[The reference to Miss Stoddart is
explained later, in Letter No. 135.
Mary Lamb’s two poems were included in the
Works,
1818. “Lady Blanch” is the
poem quoted on page 290.]
LETTER 134 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[Dated by Mr. Hazlitt: July 27, 1805.]
DEAR Archimedes,—Things have gone on badly with thy ungeometrical
friend; but they are on the turn. My old housekeeper has shown signs of
convalescence, and will shortly resume the power of the keys, so I shan’t
be cheated of my tea and liquors. Wind in the west, which promotes
tranquillity. Have leisure now to anticipate seeing thee again. Have been
taking leave of tobacco in a rhyming address. Had thought that vein had long
since closed up. [A sentence omitted here.] Find I can
rhyme and reason too. Think of studying mathematics, to restrain the fire of my
genius, which G. D. recommends. Have
frequent bleedings at the nose, which shows plethoric. Maybe shall try the sea
myself, that great scene of wonders. Got incredibly sober and regular; shave
oftener, and hum a tune, to signify cheerfulness and gallantry.
Suddenly disposed to sleep, having taken a quart of pease
with bacon and stout. Will not refuse Nature, who has done such things for me!
Nurse! don’t call me unless Mr. Manning comes.—What! the gentleman in
spectacles?—Yes.
Dormit. C. L. Saturday, Hot Noon.
Note
[“Have been taking leave of tobacco.” See page 317;
also page 648.]
LETTER 135 MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[? Sep. 18, 1805.]
MY dear Sarah,—I have made many attempts at writing to you, but it has
always brought your troubles and my own so strongly into my mind, that I have
been obliged to leave off, and make Charles write for me. I am resolved now, however few lines I
write, this shall go; for I know, my kind friend, you will like once more to
see my own handwriting.
I have been for these few days past in rather better
spirits, so that I begin almost to feel myself once more a living creature, and
to hope for happier times; and in that hope I include the prospect of once more
seeing my dear Sarah in peace and
comfort in our old garret. How did I wish for your presence to cheer my
drooping heart when I returned home from banishment.
Is your being with, or near, your poor dear Mother necessary to her comfort? does she take
any notice of you? and is there any prospect of her recovery? How I grieve for
her and for you. . . .
I went to the Admiralty about your Mother’s pension; from thence I was
directed to an office in Lincoln’s Inn, where they are paid. They
informed me at the office that it could not be paid to any person except
Mr. Wray, without a letter of attorney from your
Mother; and as the stamp for that will cost one pound, it will, perhaps, be
better to leave it till Mr. Wray comes to town, if he does
come before Christmas; they tell me it can be received any Thursday between
this and Christmas. If you send up a letter of Attorney, let it be in my name.
If you think, notwithstanding their positive assurance to the contrary, that
you can put me in any way of getting it without, let me know. Are you
acquainted with Mr. Pearce, and will my taking another
letter from you to him be of any service? or will a letter from Mr.
Wray be of any use?—though I fear not, for they said at the
office they had orders to pay no pension without a letter of Attorney. The
attestation you sent up, they said, was sufficient, and that the same must be
sent every year. Do not let us neglect this business; and make use of me in any
way you can.
I have much to thank you and your kind brother for; I kept
the dark silk, as you may suppose: you have made me very fine; the broche is
very beautiful. Mrs. Jeffries wept for gratitude when she
saw your present; she desires all manner of thanks and good wishes. Your
maid’s sister was gone to live a few miles from town; Charles, however, found her out, and gave her
the handkerchief. I want to
know if you have seen William, and if there is any
prospect in future there. All you said in your letter from Portsmouth that
related to him was burnt so in the fumigating, that we could only make out that
it was unfavourable, but not the particulars; tell us again how you go on, and
if you have seen him: I conceit affairs will some how be made up between you at
last.
I want to know how your brother goes on. Is he likely to make a very good fortune, and
in how long a time? And how is he, in the way of home comforts?—I mean, is he
very happy with Mrs. Stoddart? This was
a question I could not ask while you were there, and perhaps is not a fair one
now; but I want to know how you all went on—and, in short, twenty little
foolish questions that one ought, perhaps, rather to ask when we meet, than to
write about. But do make me a little acquainted with the inside of the good
Doctor’s house, and what passes therein.
Was Coleridge often
with you? or did your brother and Col. argue long
arguements, till between the two great argue-ers there grew a little
coolness?—or perchance the mighty friendship between
Coleridge and your Sovereign Governor, Sir Alexander Ball, might create a kind of
jealousy, for we fancy something of a coldness did exist, from the little
mention ever made of C. in your brother’s letters.
Write us, my good girl, a long, gossiping letter, answering
all these foolish questions—and tell me any silly thing you can recollect—any,
the least particular, will be interesting to us, and we will never tell tales
out of school: but we used to wonder and wonder, how you all went on; and when
you was coming home we said, “Now we shall hear all from Sarah.”
God bless you, my dear friend.
I am ever your affectionate Mary Lamb.
If you have sent Charles any commissions he has not executed, write me
word—he says he has lost or mislaid a letter desiring him to inquire about
a wig.
Write two letters—one of business and pensions, and
one all about Sarah Stoddart and
Malta. Is Mr. Moncrief doing well there?
Wednesday morning.
We have got a picture of Charles; do you think your brother would like to have it?
If you do, can you put us in a way how to send it?
Note
[Mrs. Stoddart was the widow of a
lieutenant in the Royal Navy. Mr. Wray and Mr.
Pearce were presumably gentlemen connected
with the Admiralty or in some way concerned with the pension.
“William” is still the early
William—not William
Hazlitt, whom Sarah was destined to
marry. Mr. Moncrieff would be Mrs. John Stoddart’s eldest brother, who was a
King’s Advocate in the Admiralty Court at Malta. The picture of Charles might be some kind of reproduction of
Hazlitt’s portrait of him, painted in the preceding year;
but more probably, I think, a few copies of Hancock’s drawing, made in 1798 for Cottle, had been struck off.]
LETTER 136 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM AND DOROTHY
WORDSWORTH
[p.m. September 28, 1805.]
MY dear Wordsworth (or Dorothy
rather, for to you appertains the biggest part of this answer by right.)—I will
not again deserve reproach by so long a silence. I have kept deluding myself
with the idea that Mary would write to
you, but she is so lazy, or, I believe the true state of the case, so
diffident, that it must revert to me as usual. Though she writes a pretty good
style, and has some notion of the force of words, she is not always so certain
of the true orthography of them, and that and a poor handwriting (in this age
of female calligraphy) often deter her where no other reason does. We have
neither of us been very well for some weeks past. I am very nervous, and she
most so at those times when I am: so that a merry friend, adverting to the
noble consolation we were able to afford each other, denominated us not unaptly
Gum Boil and Tooth Ache: for they use to say that a Gum Boil is a great relief
to a Tooth Ache. We have been two tiny excursions this summer, for three or
four days each: to a place near Harrow, and to Egham, where Cooper’s Hill
is: and that is the total history of our Rustications this year. Alas! how poor
a sound to Skiddaw, and Helvellyn, and Borrodaile, and the magnificent
sesquipedalia of the year 1802. Poor old Molly! to have
lost her pride, that “last infirmity of Noble Mind,” and her
Cow—Providence need not have set her wits to such an old
Molly. I am heartily sorry for her. Remember us
lovingly to her. And in particular remember us to Mrs. Clarkson in the most kind manner. I hope by southwards you
mean that she will be at or near London, for she is a great favorite of both of
us, and we feel for her health as much as is possible for any one to do. She is
one of the friendliest, comfortablest women we know, and made our little stay
at your cottage one of the pleasantest times we ever past. We were quite strangers to her.
Mr. C. is with you too?—our kindest
separate remembrances to him.
As to our special affairs, I am looking about me. I have
done nothing since the beginning of last year, when I lost my newspaper job,
and having had a long idleness, I must do something, or we shall get very poor.
Sometimes I think of a farce—but hitherto all schemes have gone off,—an idle
brag or two of an evening vaporing out of a pipe, and going off in the morning;
but now I have bid farewell to my “Sweet Enemy” Tobacco, as you
will see in my next page, I perhaps shall set soberly to work. Hang Work! I
wish that all the year were holyday. I am sure that Indolence indefeazible
Indolence is the true state of man, and business the invention of the Old
Teazer who persuaded Adam’s Master to give him an
apron and set him a houghing. Pen and Ink, and Clerks, and desks, were the
refinements of this old torturer a thousand years after, under pretence of
Commerce allying distant shores, promoting and diffusing knowledge, good
&c.—
A FAREWELL TO TOBACCO May the Babylonish curse Strait confound my stammering verse, If I can a passage see In this word-perplexity, Or a fit expression find, Or a language to my mind, (Still the phrase is wide an acre) To take leave of thee, Tobacco; Or in any terms relate Half my Love, or half my Hate, For I hate yet love thee so, That, whichever Thing I shew, The plain truth will seem to be A constrain’d hyperbole, And the passion to proceed More from a Mistress than a Weed. Sooty retainer to the vine, Bacchus’ black servant, negro
fine, Sorcerer that mak’st us doat upon Thy begrim’d complexion, And, for thy pernicious sake More and greater oaths to break Than reclaimed Lovers take ’Gainst women: Thou thy siege dost lay Much too in the female way, While thou suck’st the labouring breath Faster than kisses; or than Death. Thou in such a cloud dost bind us, That our worst foes cannot find us, And Ill Fortune (that would thwart us) Shoots at rovers, shooting at us; While each man thro’ thy heightening steam, Does like a smoking Etna seem, And all about us does express (Fancy and Wit in richest dress) A Sicilian Fruitfulness. Thou through such a mist dost shew us, That our best friends do not know us; And, for those allowed features, Due to reasonable creatures, Liken’st us to fell Chimeras, Monsters, that, who see us, fear us, Worse than Cerberus, or Geryon, Or, who first loved a cloud, Ixion. Bacchus we know, and we allow His tipsy rites. But what art thou? That but by reflex canst shew What his deity can do, As the false Egyptian spell Aped the true Hebrew miracle— Some few vapours thou may’st raise, The weak brain may serve to amaze, But to the reins and nobler heart Canst nor life nor heat impart. Brother of Bacchus,
later born, The old world was sure forlorn, Wanting thee; that aidest more The God’s victories than before All his panthers, and the brawls Of his piping Bacchanals; These, as stale, we disallow, Or judge of thee meant: only thou His true Indian Conquest art; And, for Ivy round his dart, The reformed God now weaves A finer Thyrsus of thy leaves. Scent to match thy rich perfume Chymic art did ne’er presume Through her quaint alembic strain; None so sovran to the brain. Nature, that did in thee excell, Framed again no second smell. Roses, violets, but toys For the smaller sort of boys, Or for greener damsels meant; Thou’rt the only manly scent. Stinking’st of the stinking kind, Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind, Africa that brags her foyson, Breeds no such prodigious poison, Henbane, nightshade, both together, Hemlock, aconite—— Nay rather, Plant divine, of rarest virtue, Blisters on the tongue would hurt you; ’Twas but in a sort I blamed thee, None e’er prosper’d who defamed thee: Irony all, and feign’d abuse, Such as perplext Lovers use At a need, when in despair To paint forth their fairest fair, Or in part but to express That exceeding comeliness Which their fancies does so strike, They borrow language of Dislike, And instead of Dearest Miss, Honey, Jewel, Sweetheart, Bliss, And, those forms of old admiring, Call her Cockatrice and Syren, Basilisk and all that’s evil, Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil, Ethiop wench, and Blackamoor, Monkey, Ape, and twenty more, Friendly Traitress, Loving Foe: Not that she is truly so, But no other way they know A contentment to express, Borders so upon excess, That they do not rightly wot, Whether it be pain or not. Or, as men, constrain’d to part With what’s nearest to their heart, While their sorrow’s at the height, Lose discrimination quite, And their hasty wrath let fall, To appease their frantic gall, On the darling thing whatever, Whence they feel it death to sever, Though it be, as they, perforce, Guiltless of the sad divorce. For I must (nor let it grieve thee, Friendliest of plants, that I must) leave thee— For thy sake, Tobacco, I Would do anything but die; And but seek to extend my days Long enough to sing thy praise. But, as She, who once has been A King’s consort, is a Queen Ever after; nor will bate Any tittle of her state, Though a widow, or divorced, So I, from thy converse forced, The old name and style retain, (A right Katherine of Spain;) And a seat too ’mongst the joys Of the blest Tobacco Boys: Where, though I by sour physician Am debarr’d the full fruition Of thy favours, I may catch Some collateral sweets, and snatch Sidelong odours, that give life Like glances from a neighbour’s wife; And still dwell in the by-places, And the suburbs of thy graces, And in thy borders take delight, An unconquer’d Canaanite.
I wish you may think this a handsome farewell to my
“Friendly Traitress.” Tobacco has been my evening comfort and my
morning curse for these five years: and you know how difficult it is from
refraining to pick one’s lips even, when it has become a habit This Poem
is the only one which I have finished since so long as when I wrote
“Hester
Savory.” I have had it in my head to do it these two years, but
Tobacco stood in its own light when it gave me head aches that prevented my
singing its praises. Now you have got it, you have got all my store, for I have
absolutely not another line. No more has Mary. We have nobody about us that cares for Poetry, and who
will rear grapes when he shall be the sole eater? Perhaps if you encourage us
to shew you what we may write, we may do something now and then before we
absolutely forget the quantity of an English line for want of practice. The
“Tobacco,” being a little in the way of Withers (whom Southey so
much likes) perhaps you will somehow convey it to him with my kind
remembrances. Then, everybody will have seen it that I wish to see it: I have
sent it to Malta.
I remain Dear W. and
D— yours truly,
C. Lamb. 28th Sep., 1805.
Note
[“Last infirmity of noble mind” (Lycidas, 71).
“Sweet Enemy.” Sir Philip
Sidney’s phrase, of France, in the sonnets. “Friendly
Traitress.” Lamb may have been thinking of
Helena’s phrase, A counsellor, a traitress and a dear. “All’s
Well,” I., 1, 184.
“Hang Work.” This paragraph is the germ of the sonnet
entitled “Work” which Lamb wrote fourteen years later
(see page 572). He seems always to have kept his thoughts in sight.
The “Farewell to
Tobacco” was printed in the Reflector, No. IV., 1811 or 1812, and then in the Works, 1818 (see
Notes to Vol. V. of this edition, pages 298-300.) Lamb’s farewell was frequently repeated; but it is a question whether
he ever entirely left off smoking. Talfourd says
that he did; but the late Mrs. Coe, who remembered
Lamb at Widford about 1827-1830, credited him with the company of
a black clay pipe. It was Lamb who, when Dr. Parr asked him how he managed to emit so much smoke, replied that he
had toiled after it as other men after virtue. And Macready relates that he remarked in his presence that he wished to draw
his last breath through a pipe and exhale it in a pun.
“Hester
Savory.” See page 262.]
LETTER 137 MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[Early November, 1805.]
MY dear Sarah,—Certainly you are the best letter-writer (besides writing
the best hand) in the world. I have just been reading over again your two long
letters, and I perceive they make me very envious. I have taken a bran new pen,
and put on my spectacles, and am peering with all my
might to see the lines in the paper, which the sight of your even lines had
well nigh tempted me to rule: and I have moreover taken two pinches of snuff
extraordinary, to clear my head, which feels more cloudy than common this fine,
chearful morning.
All I can gather from your clear and, I have no doubt,
faithful history of Maltese politics is, that the good Doctor, though a firm friend, an excellent
fancier of brooches, a good husband, an upright Advocate, and, in short, all
that they say upon tomb stones (for I do not recollect that they celebrate any
fraternal virtues there) yet is but a moody brother,
that your sister in law is pretty much
like what all sisters in law have been since the first happy invention of the
happy marriage state; that friend Coleridge has undergone no alteration by crossing the
Atlantic,—for his friendliness to you, as well as all the oddities you mention,
are just what one ought to look for from him; and that you, my dear Sarah, have proved yourself just as unfit to
flourish in a little, proud Garrison Town as I did shrewdly suspect you were
before you went there.
If I possibly can, I will prevail upon Charles to write to your brother by the conveyance you mention; but he
is so unwell, I almost fear the fortnight will slip away before I can get him
in the right vein. Indeed, it has been sad and heavy times with us lately: when
I am pretty well, his low spirits throws me back again; and when he begins to
get a little chearful, then I do the same kind office for him. I heartily wish
for the arrival of Coleridge; a few such
evenings as we have sometimes passed with him would wind us up, and set us a
going again.
Do not say any thing, when you write, of our low spirits—it
will vex Charles. You would laugh, or you
would cry, perhaps both, to see us sit together, looking at each other with
long and rueful faces, and saying, “how do you do?” and “how
do you do?” and then we fall a-crying, and say we will be better on the
morrow. He says we are like tooth-ach and his friend gum bile—which, though a kind of ease, is but an uneasy kind of
ease, a comfort of rather an uncomfortable sort.
I rejoice to hear of your Mother’s amendment; when you can leave her with any
satisfaction to yourself—which, as her sister, I think I understand by your
letters, is with her, I hope you may soon be able to do—let me know upon what
plan you mean to come to Town. Your brother proposed your being six months in
Town, and six with your Mother; but he did not then know of your poor
Mother’s illness. By his desire, I enquired for a respectable family for
you, to board with; and from Captn.
Burney I heard of one I thought would suit you at that time. He
particularly desires I would not think of your being with us, not thinking, I
conjecture, the home of a single man respectable enough. Your brother gave me
most unlimited orders to domineer over you, to be the inspector of all your
actions, and to direct and govern you with a stern voice and a high hand, to
be, in short, a very elder brother over you—does not the hearing of this, my
meek pupil, make you long to come to London? I am making all the proper
enquiries against the time of the newest and most approved modes (being myself
mainly ignorant in these points) of etiquette, and nicely correct maidenly
manners.
But to speak seriously. I mean, when we mean [? meet], that
we will lay our heads together, and consult and contrive the best way of making
the best girl in the world the fine Lady her brother wishes to see her; and
believe me, Sarah, it is not so
difficult a matter as one is sometimes apt to imagine. I have observed many a
demure Lady, who passes muster admirably well, who, I think, we could easily
learn to imitate in a week or two. We will talk of these things when we meet.
In the mean time, I give you free license to be happy and merry at Salisbury in
any way you can. Has the partridge-season opened any communication between you
and William—as I allow you to be imprudent till I see you,
I shall expect to hear you have invited him to taste his own birds. Have you
scratched him out of your will yet? Rickman is married, and that is all the news I have to send
you.
Your Wigs were sent by Mr. Varvell
about five months ago; therefore, he could have arrived when you came away.
I seem, upon looking over my letter again, to have written
too lightly of your distresses at Malta; but, however I may have written,
believe me, I enter very feelingly into all your troubles. I love you, and I
love your brother; and between you, both
of whom I think have been to blame, I know not what to say—only this I say, try
to think as little as possible of past miscarriages; it was, perhaps, so
ordered by Providence, that you might return home to be a comfort to your poor
Mother, And do not, I con-jure you, let her unhappy malady
afflict you too deeply. I speak from experience, and from the opportunity I
have had of much observation in such cases, that insane people, in the
fancy’s they take into their heads, do not feel as one in a sane state of
mind does under the real evil of poverty, the perception of having done wrong,
or any such thing that runs in their heads.
Think as little as you can, and let your whole care be to
be certain that she is treated with tenderness. I lay a
stress upon this, because it is a thing of which people in her state are
uncommonly susceptible, and which hardly any one is at all aware of: a hired
nurse never, even though in all other respects they are
good kind of people. I do not think your own presence necessary, unless she takes to you very much, except for the purpose of seeing
with your own eyes that she is very kindly treated.
I do so long to see you! God bless and comfort you!
Yours affectionately, M. Lamb.
Note
[Miss Stoddart had now returned
to England, to her mother at Salisbury, who had been and was very ill. Coleridge meanwhile had had coolnesses with Stoddart and had transferred himself to the roof of the
Governor.
Rickman married, on October 30, 1805, Susanna Postlethwaite of Harting, in Sussex.]
LETTER 138 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
November 10, 1805.
DEAR Hazlitt,—I was very glad to hear from you, and that your journey
was so picturesque. We miss you, as we foretold we
should. One or two things have happened, which are beneath the dignity of
epistolary communication, but which, seated about our fire at night, (the
winter hands of pork have begun) gesture and emphasis might have talked into
some importance. Something about Rickman’s
wife, for instance: how tall she is and that she visits
prank’d out like a Queen of the May with green streamers—a good-natured
woman though, which is as much as you can expect from a friend’s wife,
whom you got acquainted with a bachelor. Some things too about Monkey, which can’t so well be
written—how it set up for a fine Lady, and thought it had got Lovers, and was obliged to be convinc’d of
its age from the parish register, where it was proved to be only twelve; and an
edict issued that it should not give itself airs yet these four years; and how
it got leave to be called Miss, by grace;—these and such like Hows were in my
head to tell you, but who can write? Also how Manning’s come to town in spectacles, and studies physic;
is melancholy and seems to have something in his head, which he don’t
impart. Then, how I am going to leave off smoking. O la! your Leonardos of Oxford made my mouth water. I was
hurried thro’ the gallery, and they escaped me. What do I say? I was a
Goth then, and should not have noticed them. I had not settled my notions of
Beauty. I have now for ever!—the small head, the [here is drawn a long narrow
eye] long Eye,—that sort of peering curve, the wicked Italian mischief! the
stick-at-nothing, Herodias’ daughter kind of grace.
You understand me. But you disappoint me, in passing over in absolute silence
the Blenheim Leonardo. Didn’t you see it? Excuse a
Lover’s curiosity. I have seen no pictures of note since, except
Mr. Dawe’s gallery. It is
curious to see how differently two great men treat the same subject, yet both
excellent in their way: for instance, Milton and Mr. Dawe. Mr.
Dawe has chosen to illustrate the story of Sampson exactly in the point of view in which
Milton has been most happy: the interview etween the
Jewish Hero, blind and captive, and Dalilah. Milton has imagined his Locks grown
again, strong as horse-hair or porcupine’s bristles; doubtless shaggy and
black, as being hairs “which of a nation armed contained the
strength.” I don’t remember, he says black: but could
Milton imagine them to be yellow? Do you?
Mr. Dawe with striking originality of conception has
crowned him with a thin yellow wig, in colour precisely like Dyson’s, in curl and quantity resembling
Mrs. Professor’s, his Limbs
rather stout, about such a man as my Brother or Rickman—but no Atlas nor Hercules, nor yet so bony as Dubois, the Clown of Sadler’s Wells.
This was judicious, taking the spirit of the story rather than the fact: for
doubtless God could communicate national salvation to the trust of flax and tow
as well as hemp and cordage, and could draw down a Temple with a golden tress
as soon as with all the cables of the British Navy.—Miss
Dawe is about a portrait of sulky Fanny Imlay, alias Godwin: but
Miss Dawe is of opinion that her subject is neither
reserved nor sullen, and doubtless she will persuade the picture to be of the
same opinion. However, the features are tolerably like—Too much of
Dawes! Wasn’t you sorry for Lord Nelson? I have followed him in fancy ever
since I saw him walking in Pall Mall (I was prejudiced against him before)
looking just as a Hero should look; and I have been very much cut about it
indeed. He was the only pretence of a Great Man we had. Nobody is left of any Name at all.
His Secretary died by his side. I imagined him, a Mr. Scott, to be the man you met at Hume’s; but I learn from Mrs. Hume
that it is not the same. I met Mrs. H. one day, and agreed
to go on the Sunday to Tea, but the rain prevented us, and the distance. I have
been to apologise, and we are to dine there the first fine Sunday. Strange
perverseness! I never went while you staid here, and now I go to find you! What
other news is there, Mary?—What puns have
I made in the last fortnight? You never remember them. You have no relish for
the Comic. “O! tell Hazlitt not to forget to send
the American Farmer. I
dare say it isn’t so good as he fancies; but a Book’s a
Book.” I have not heard from Wordsworth or from Malta since. Charles Kemble, it seems, enters into possession tomorrow. We
sup at 109 Russell St. this evening. I wish your brother wouldn’t drink. It’s a blemish in the
greatest characters. You send me a modern quotation poetical. How do you like
this in an old play? Vittoria Corombona, a
spunky Italian Lady, a Leonardo one, nick-named the White Devil, being on her trial
for murder, &c.—and questioned about seducing a Duke from his wife and the
State, makes answer: “Condemn you me for that the Duke did love me? So may you blame some fair and chrystal river, For that some melancholic distracted man Hath drown’d himself in it.”—
Our ticket was a £20. Alas!! are both yours blanks?
P.S.—Godwin has
asked after you several times.
N.B.—I shall expect a Line from you, if but a bare Line,
whenever you write to Russell St., and a Letter often when you do not. I pay no
postage; but I will have consideration for you until parliament time and
franks. Luck to Ned Search and the new art of colouring.
Monkey sends her Love, and Mary especially.
Yours truly,
C. Lamb.
Note
[Addressed to Hazlitt at Wem.
This is the first letter from Lamb to
Hazlitt that has been preserved. The two men first met at
Godwin’s. Holcroft and Coleridge were
disputing which was best—man as he is, or man as he ought to be. Lamb
broke in with, “Give me man as he ought not to be.”
Hazlitt at this date was twenty-six, some three
years younger than Lamb. He had just abandoned his project of being a
painter and was settling down to literary work.
“Rickman’s
wife.” This passage holds the germ of Lamb’s essay on “The Behaviour of Married Persons,” first printed in the Reflector, No. IV.,
in 1811 or 1812, and afterwards included with the Elia essays.
“Monkey” was Louisa Martin, a little girl of whom Lamb was fond and whom he knew to the end of his life (see
Letter 576).
Manning studied medicine at the Westminster Hospital
for six months previous to May, 1806.
“The Oxford Leonardos . . . the Blenheim Leonardo.”
The only Leonardos at Oxford are the drawings at Christ Church. The
Blenheim Leonardo was probably Boltraffio’s “Virgin and Child”
which used to be ascribed to Da Vinci, as indeed
were many pictures he never painted. Hazlitt
subsequently wrote a work on the Picture
Galleries of England, but he mentions none of these works.
“Mr. Dawe’s gallery.”
George Dawe (1781-1829), afterwards R.A., of whom
Lamb wrote his essay “Recollections of a Late Royal Academician,” where he alludes again to the
picture of Samson (see Vol. I. of this edition, page 331).
“Which of a nation armed contained the strength”
(Samson Agonistes, 1494).
“Dyson’s.” Dyson was a friend of Godwin. Mrs. Professor was Mrs. Godwin.
“Miss Dawe.” I know nothing further of
George Dawe’s sister. Fanny Imlay was the unfortunate daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (by Gilbert Imlay the author). She committed suicide in 1816.
Nelson was killed on October 21, 1805. Scott was his chaplain, and he was not killed.
Hume was Joseph Hume, an
official at Somerset House, whom we shall meet again directly.
The American Farmer
was very likely Gilbert Imlay’s novel The Emigrants,
1793, or possibly his Topographical
Description of the Western Territory of North America, 1792.
Charles Kemble, brother of John Philip Kemble and father of Fanny Kemble.
John Hazlitt, the miniature painter, lived at 109
Russell Street.
Lamb’s quotation, afterwards included in his
Dramatic
Specimens, 1808, is from Webster’s “The White
Devil,” Act III., Scene 1.
The £20 ticket was presumably in the Lottery. Lamb’s essay “The Illustrious Defunct” (see Vol. I., page
259) shows him to have been interested in Lotteries; and in Letter No. 178 Mary Lamb states that he wrote Lottery puff’s.
“Ned Search.” Hazlitt was engaged on an abridgment of The Light of Nature Pursued, in
seven volumes, 1768-1778, nominally by Edward Search, but really by
Abraham Tucker.
“The new art of colouring” is a reference, I fancy,
to Tingry, mentioned again on page 331.]
LETTER 139 MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[November 9 and 14, 1805.]
MY dear Sarah,—After a very feverish night, I writ a letter to you; and I
have been distressed about it ever since. In the first place, I have thought I
treated too lightly your differences with your brother—which I freely enter
into and feel for, but which I rather wished to defer saying much about till we
meet. But that which gives me most concern is the way in which I talked about
your Mother’s illness, and which I
have since feared you might construe into my having a doubt of your showing her
proper attention without my impertinent interference. God knows, nothing of
this kind was ever in my thoughts; but I have entered very deeply into your
affliction with regard to your Mother; and while I was wishing, the many poor
souls in the kind of desponding way she is in, whom I have seen, came afresh
into my mind; and all the mismanagement with which I have seen them treated was
strong in my mind, and I wrote under a forcible impulse, which I could not at
that time resist, but I have fretted so much about it since, that I think it is
the last time I will ever let my pen run away with me.
Your kind heart will, I know, even if you have been a
little displeased, forgive me, when I assure you my spirits have been so much
hurt by my last illness, that at times I hardly know what I do. I do not mean
to alarm you about myself, or to plead an excuse; but I am very much otherwise
than you have always known me. I do not think any one perceives me altered, but
I have lost all self-confidence in my own actions, and one cause of my low
spirits is, that I never feel satisfied with any thing I do—a perception of not
being in a sane state perpetually haunts me. I am ashamed to confess this
weakness to you; which, as I am so sensible of, I ought to strive to conquer.
But I tell you, that you may excuse any part of my letter that has given
offence: for your not answering it, when you are such a punctual correspondent,
has made me very uneasy.
Write immediately, my dear Sarah, but do not notice this letter, nor do not mention any
thing I said relative to your poor Mother. Your handwriting will convince me
you are friends with me; and if Charles,
who must see my letter, was to know I had first written foolishly, and then
fretted about the event of my folly, he would both ways be angry with me.
I would desire you to direct to me at home, but your hand
is so well known to Charles, that that
would not do. Therefore, take no notice of my megrums till we meet, which I
most ardently long to do. An hour spent in your company would be a cordial to
my drooping heart.
Pray write directly, and believe me, ever
Your affectionate friend, M. Lamb.
Nov. 14.—I have kept this by me till to-day, hoping
every day to hear from you. If you found the seal a clumsy one, it is
because I opened the wafer.
Write, I beg, by the return of the post; and as I am
very anxious to hear whether you are, as I fear, dissatisfied with me, you
shall, if you please, direct my letter to Nurse. Her direction is,
Mrs. Grant, at Mr.
Smith’s, Maidenhead, Ram Court,
Fleet Street.
I was not able, you know, to notice, when I writ to
Malta, your letter concerning an insult you received from a vile wretch
there; and as I mostly show my letters to Charles, I have never named it since. Did it ever come to
your brother’s knowledge? Charles and I were
very uneasy at your account of it. I wish I could see you.
Yours ever, M. Lamb.
I do not mean to continue a secret correspondence, but
you must oblige me with this one letter. In future I will always show my
letters before they go, which will be a proper check upon my wayward pen.
LETTERS 140 AND 141 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[p.m. Nov. 15, 1805.]
DEAR Manning,—Certainly you could not have called at all hours from two
till ten, for we have been only out of an evening Monday and Tuesday in this
week. But if you think you have, your thought shall go for the deed. We did
pray for you on Wednesday night. Oysters unusually luscious—pearls of
extraordinary magnitude found in them. I have made bracelets of them—given them
in clusters to ladies. Last night we went out in despite, because you were not
come at your hour.
This night we shall be at home, so shall we certainly both
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Take your choice, mind I don’t
say of one, but choose which evening you will not, and come the other four.
Doors open at five o’clock. Shells forced about nine. Every gentleman
smokes or not as he pleases. O! I forgot, bring the £10, for fear you should
lose it.
C. L.
[I append another note, without a date, printed by Talfourd:—]
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
DEAR Manning,—I sent to Brown’s immediately.
Mr. Brown (or Pijou, as he is called
by the moderns) denied the having received a letter from you. The one for you
he remembered receiving, and remitting to Leadenhall Street; whither I
immediately posted (it being the middle of dinner), my teeth unpicked. There I
learned that if you want a letter set right, you must apply at the first door
on the left hand before one o’clock. I returned and picked my teeth. And
this morning I made my application in form, and have seen the vagabond letter,
which most likely accompanies this. If it does not, I will get Rickman to name it to the Speaker, who will
not fail to lay the matter before Parliament the next sessions, when you may be
sure to have all abuses in the Post Department rectified.
N.B. There seems to be some informality epidemical. You
direct yours to me in Mitre Court; my true address is Mitre Court Buildings. By
the pleasantries of Fortune, who likes a joke or a double
entendre as well as the best of her children, there happens to be
another Mr. Lamb (that there should be two!!) in Mitre
Court.
Farewell, and think upon it.
C. L.
Note
[Here should come a letter from Mary
Lamb to Mrs. Clarkson, dated December
25, 1805, printed by Mr. Macdonald. It states that
Lamb has been latterly in indifferent health, and
is unimportant.]
LETTER 142 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
Thursday, 15th Jan., 1806.
DEAR Hazlitt,—Godwin went to
Johnson’s yesterday about your
business. Johnson would not come down, or give any answer,
but has promised to open the manuscript, and to give you an answer in one
month. Godwin will punctually go again (Wednesday is Johnson’s open day)
yesterday four weeks next: i.e. in one lunar month from
this time. Till when Johnson positively declines giving
any answer. I wish you joy on ending your Search. Mrs. H.
was naming something about a Life of Fawcett, to be by you undertaken: the great
Fawcett, as she explain’d to Manning, when he ask’d, What
Fawcett? He innocently thought Fawcett the player. But
Fawcett the Divine is known to many people, albeit
unknown to the Chinese Enquirer. I should think, if you liked it, and
Johnson declined it, that Phillips is the man. He is perpetually bringing out
Biographies, Richardson, Wilkes, Foot, Lee Lewis, without
number: little trim things in two easy volumes price 12s. the two, made up of
letters to and from, scraps, posthumous trifles, anecdotes, and about forty
pages of hard biography. You might dish up a Fawcettiad in 3 months, and ask 60
or 80 Pounds for it. I should dare say that Phillips would
catch at it—I wrote to you the other day in a great hurry. Did you get it? This
is merely a Letter of business at Godwin’s request.
Lord Nelson is quiet at last. His ghost only
keeps a slight fluttering in odes and elegies in newspapers, and impromptus,
which could not be got ready before the funeral.
As for news—We have Miss
Stoddart in our house, she has been with us a fortnight and will
stay a week or so longer. She is one of the few people who are not in the way
when they are with you. No tidings of Coleridge. Fenwick is
coming to town on Monday (it no kind angel intervene) to surrender himself to
prison. He hopes to get the Rules of the Fleet. On the same, or nearly the
same, day, Fell, my other quondam
co-friend and drinker, will go to Newgate, and his wife and 4 children, I
suppose, to the Parish. Plenty of reflection and motives of gratitude to the
wise disposer of all things in us, whose prudent conduct has hitherto ensured
us a warm fire and snug roof over our heads. Nullum
numen abest si sit Prudentia.
Alas! Prudentia is in the last quarter of her tutelary
shining over me. A little time and I ——
But may be I may, at last, hit upon some mode of collecting
some of the vast superfluities of this money-voiding town. Much is to be got,
and I don’t want much. All I ask is time and leisure; and I am cruelly
off for them.
When you have the inclination, I shall be very glad to have
a letter from you.—Your brother and
Mrs. H., I am afraid, think hardly of us for not
coming oftener to see them, but we are distracted beyond what they can conceive
with visitors and visitings. I never have an hour for my head to work quietly
its own workings; which you know is as necessary to the human system as sleep.
Sleep, too, I can’t get for these damn’d winds
of a night: and without sleep and rest what should ensue? Lunacy. But I trust
it won’t.
Yours, dear H., mad or sober,
C. Lamb.
Note
[Hazlitt’s business was
finding a publisher for his abridgment of Search
(see page 326). Johnson was Priestley’s publisher. A letter to Godwin from Coleridge in June, 1803 (see Mr. Kegan
Paul’sLife of Godwin, II., 96), had suggested such an
abridgment, Coleridge adding that a friend of his would make it, and
that he would write a preface and see the proofs through the press. Hence
Godwin’s share in the matter.
Coleridge’s part of the transaction was not carried out.
Hazlitt’s Life of Joseph Fawcett (?1758-1804), the poet and dissenting preacher of
Walthamstow and Old Jewry, whom he had known intimately, was not written. The
Fawcett of whom Manning,
the Chinese Enquirer, was thinking was John Fawcett,
famous as Dr. Pangloss and Caleb Quotem.
“The Fleet”—the prison for debtors in Farringdon
Street. Closed in 1844. The Rules of the Fleet were the limits within which prisoners for
debt were under certain conditions permitted to live: the north side of Ludgate Hill, the
Old Bailey up to Fleet Lane, Fleet Lane to Fleet Market, and then back to Ludgate Hill. The
Rules cost money: £10 for the first £100 of the debt and for every additional £100, £4.
Later, Fenwick seems to have settled in America.
“Nullum, numen abest si sit
Prudentia”—“No protecting deity is wanting,
if there is prudence.” Adapted from Juvenal, Satire X., 365.
Here should come an undated letter, not available for this edition
(printed by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in Lamb and Hazlitt). The letter was
accompanied by Tingry’sPainters and Varnisher’s
Guide, 1804. Hazlitt, who was then
painting, seems to have wanted prints of trees, probably for a background. Lamb says that he has been hunting in shop windows for him.
He adds: “To supply poetry and wildness, you may read the American Farmer over
again” (see Letter No. 138). The postscript runs, “Johnson shall not be forgot at his month’s
end” (see above).]
LETTER 143 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN RICKMAN
Jan. 25th, 1806.
DEAR Rickman,—You do not happen to have any place at your disposal which
would suit a decayed Literatus? I do not much expect that you have, or that you
will go much out of the way to serve the object, when you hear it is Fenwick. But the case is, by a mistaking of his
turn, as they call it, he is reduced, I am afraid, to extremities, and would be
extremely glad of a place in an office. Now it does sometimes happen, that just
as a man wants a place, a place wants him; and though this is a lottery to
which none but G. B. would choose to
trust his all, there is no harm just to call in at Despair’s office for a
friend, and see if his number is come up (B.’s
further case I enclose by way of episode). Now, if you should happen, or
anybody you know, to want a hand, here is a young man of solid but not
brilliant genius, who would turn his hand to the making out dockets, penning a
manifesto, or scoring a tally, not the worse (I hope) for knowing Latin and
Greek, and having in youth conversed with the philosophers. But from these
follies I believe he is thoroughly awakened, and would bind himself by a
terrible oath never to imagine himself an extraordinary genius again.
Yours, &c., C. Lamb.
Note
[Mr. Hazlitt’s text, which I
follow here, makes Lamb appeal for Fenwick; but
other editors say Fell—except Talfourd, who says F. If, as
Lamb says in his previous letter,
Fell was bound for Newgate and Fenwick only
for the Fleet, probably it was Fenwick. But the matter is not very
important. Fenwick and Fell both came into
Lamb’s life through Godwin and at this point they drop out. The enclosure concerning George Burnett is missing.]
LETTER 144 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: February 1st, 1806.]
DEAR Wordsworth—I have seen the Books which you ordered, booked at
the White Horse Inn, Cripplegate, by the Kendal waggon this day 1st Feby. 1806;
you will not fail to see after
them in time. They are directed to you at Grasmere. We have made some
alteration in the Editions since your sister’s directions. The handsome quarto Spencer which she authorized Mary to buy for £2. 12. 6, when she brought it
home in triumph proved to be only theFairy
Queen: so we got them to take it again and I have procured
instead a Folio, which luckily contains, besides all the Poems, the view of the State of Ireland,
which is difficult to meet with. The Spencer, and the
Chaucer, being noble old books, we
did not think Stockdale’s modern
volumes would look so well beside them; added to which I don’t know
whether you are aware that the Print is excessive small,
same as Eleg. Extracts, or
smaller, not calculated for eyes in age; and Shakespear is one of the last books one should like to give up,
perhaps the one just before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book. So we
have used our own discretion in purchasing Pope’s fine Quarto in six volumes, which may be
read ad ultimam horam vitæ. It is bound like Law Books
(rather, half bound) and the Law Robe I have ever thought as comely and
gentlemanly a garb as a Book would wish to wear. The state of the purchase then
stands thus,
Which your Brother immediately
repaid us. He has the Bills for all (by his desire) except the
Spenser, which we took no bill with (not looking to
have our accounts audited): so for that and the Case he took a separate receipt
for 17/6. N.B. there is writing in the Shakespear: but it
is only variæ lectiones which some careful gentleman, the
former owner, was at the pains to insert in a very neat hand from 5
Commentators. It is no defacement. The fault of
Pope’s edition is, that he has comically and
coxcombically marked the Beauties: which is vile, as if you were to chalk up
the cheek and across the nose of a handsome woman in red chalk to shew where
the comeliest parts lay. But I hope the noble type and Library-appearance of
the Books will atone for that. With the Books come certain Books and Pamphlets
of G. Dyer, Presents or rather
Decoy-ducks of the Poet to take in his thus-far obliged friends to buy his
other works; as he takes care to inform them in M.S. notes to the Title Pages,
“G. Dyer, Author of other Books printed for
Longman &c.” The books
have lain at your dis-patchful brother’s a
12 months, to the great staling of most of the subjects. The three Letters and
what is else written at the beginning of the respective Presents will ascertain the division of the Property. If not, none of
the Donees, I dare say, will grudge a community of property in this case. We
were constrained to pack ’em how we could, for room. Also there comes
W. Hazlitt’sbook about Human Action,
for Coleridge; a little song book for
Sarah Coleridge; a Box for Hartley which your Brother was to have sent,
but now devolved on us—I don’t know from whom it came, but the things
altogether were too much for Mr. (I’ve forgot his name) to take charge
of; a Paraphrase on the King and Queen
of Hearts, of which I being the Author beg Mr. Johnny Wordsworth’s acceptance and
opinion. Liberal Criticism, as G. Dyer declares, I am
always ready to attend to!—And that’s all, I believe. N.B. I must remain
Debtor to Dorothy for 200 pens: but really Miss Stoddart (women are great gulfs of
Stationery), who is going home to Salisbury and has been with us some weeks,
has drained us to the very last pen: by the time S. T. C.
passes thro’ London I reckon I shall be in full feather. No more news has
transpired of that Wanderer. I suppose he has found his way to some of his
German friends.
A propos of Spencer
(you will find him mentioned a page or two before, near enough for an a
propos), I was discoursing on Poetry (as one’s apt to deceive onesself,
and when a person is willing to talk of what one likes, to believe that he also
likes the same: as Lovers do) with a Young
Gentleman of my office who is deep read in Anacreon Moore, Lord
Strangford, and the principal Modern Poets, and I happen’d
to mention Epithalamiums and that I could shew him a very fine one of
Spencer’s. At the mention of this, my Gentleman,
who is a very fine Gentleman, and is brother to the Miss Evans who Coleridge
so narrowly escaped marrying, pricked up his ears and exprest great pleasure,
and begged that I would give him leave to copy it: he did not care how long it
was (for I objected the length), he should be very happy to see any thing by him. Then pausing, and looking sad, he
ejaculated Poor Spencer! I begged to know the reason
of his ejaculation, thinking that Time had by this time softened down any
calamities which the Bard might have endured—“Why, poor
fellow!” said he “he has lost his Wife!”
“Lost his Wife?” said I, “Who are you talking
of?” “Why, Spencer,” said
he. “I’ve read the Monody he wrote on the occasion, and a very pretty thing it is.” This led to an
explanation (it could be delay’d no longer) that the sound
Spencer, which when Poetry is talk’d of
generally excites an image of an old Bard in a Ruff, and sometimes with it dim
notions of Sir P. Sydney and perhaps
Lord Burleigh, had raised in my
Gentleman a quite contrary image of The
Honourable William Spencer, who has
translated some things from the German very prettily, which are publish’d
with Lady Di. Beauclerk’s Designs.
Nothing like defining of Terms when we talk. What blunders
might I have fallen into of quite inapplicable Criticism, but for this timely
explanation.
N.B. At the beginning of Edm. Spencer (to prevent mistakes) I have
copied from my own copy, and primarily from a book of Chalmers on Shakspear, a Sonnet of Spenser’s
never printed among his poems. It is curious as being manly and rather
Miltonic, and as a Sonnet of Spenser’s with nothing
in it about Love or Knighthood. I have no room for remembrances; but I hope our
doing your commission will prove we do not quite forget you.
C. L. 1 Feb., 1806.
Note
[Stockdale’s Shakespeare was
published in 1784. Pope’s Quarto was published
in 1725.
“Ad ultimam horam
vitæ”—“To the last hour of life.”
“Hazlitt’s book
about Human Action for Coleridge”—An Essay on the Principles of Human Action, 1805.
“A Paraphrase of the King and Queen of Hearts.” This
was a little book for children by Lamb, illustrated
by Mulready and published by T. Hodgkins (for the Godwins) in
1806. It was discovered through this passage in this letter and is reprinted in facsimile
in Vol. III. of the present edition. The title ran The King and Queen of Hearts, with the Rogueries of the Knave
who stole away the Queen’s Pies.
Coleridge had left Malta on September 21, 1805. He
went to Naples, and from there to Rome in January, 1806, where he stayed until May 18.
“A propos of Spencer.” This portion of the letter, owing to a mistake of Talfourd’s, is usually tacked on to one dated June,
1806.
Anacreon Moore was Thomas
Moore; Lord Strangford, the diplomatist, was
the author of Poems from the
Portuguese of Camoens, 1803.
“Miss Evans.” See
note on page 25.
“Poor Spencer.” William Robert Spencer (1769-1834), was the author of jeux d’esprit and poems. He is now known, if at all, by his
ballad of “Bed Gellert.” He
married the widow of Count Spreti, and in 1804 published a book of elegies entitled
“The Year of Sorrow.”
Spencer was among the translators of Burger’s “Leonore,” his version
being illustrated by Lady Diana Beauclerk (his
great-aunt) in 1796. Lamb used this anecdote as a
little article in the Reflector, No. II., 1811, entitled
“On the Ambiguities arising
from Proper Names” (see Vol. I. of this edition, page 69).
Lamb, however, by always spelling the real poet with a
“c,” did nothing towards avoiding the ambiguity!
This is the sonnet
which Lamb copied into Wordsworth’sSpenser from George Chalmers’ Supplemental Apology for the Believers in the
Shakespeare-Papers (1799), page 94:—
To the Right worshipful, my singular good friend, Mr. Gabriel Harvey, Doctor of the Laws:— “Harvey, the happy above happiest men I read: that sitting like a looker on Of this world’s stage, doest note with critique pen The sharp dislikes of each condition: And as one careless of suspition, Ne fawnest for the favour of the great: Ne fearest foolish reprehension Of faulty men, which danger to thee threat. But freely doest, of what thee list, entreat, Like a great Lord of peerless liberty: Lifting the good up to high honours seat, And the Evil damning ever more to dy. For life, and death is [are] in thy doomful writing: So thy renowne lives ever by endighting.” Dublin: this xviij of July, 1586; Your devoted friend, during life, Edmund Spenser.]
LETTER 145 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
[Dated at end: Feb. 19, 1806.]
DEAR H.—Godwin has just been
here in his way from Johnson’s.
Johnson has had a fire in his house; this happened
about five weeks ago; it was in the daytime, so it did not burn the house down,
but did so much damage that the house must come down, to be repaired: his
nephew that we met on Hampstead Hill put it out: well, this fire has put him so
back, that he craves one more month before he gives you an answer.
I will certainly goad Godwin (if necessary) to go again this very day four weeks; but
I am confident he will want no goading.
Three or four most capital auctions of Pictures advertised.
In May, Welbore Ellis Agar’s, the
first private collection in England, so Holcroft says. In March, Sir George
Young’s in Stratford-place (where Cosway lives), and a
Mr. Hulse’s at Blackheath,
both very capital collections, and have been announce for some months. Also the
Marquis of Lansdowne’s Pictures
in March; and though inferior to mention, lastly, the Tructhsessian gallery.
Don’t your mouth water to be here?
T’other night Loftus called, whom we have not seen since you went before. We
meditate a stroll next Wednesday, Fast-day. He happened to light upon Mr. Holcroft’s Wife, and Daughter, their first visit at our house.
Your brother called
last night. We keep up our intimacy. He is going to begin a large Madona and
child from Mrs. H. and baby. I fear he goes astray after
ignes fatui. He is a clever man. By the bye, I saw a miniature of his as far
excelling any in his shew cupboard (that of your sister not excepted) as that
shew cupboard excells the shew things you see in windows—an old woman—damn her
name—but most superlative; he has it to clean—I’ll ask him the name—but
the best miniature I ever saw, equal to Cooper and them fellows. But for oil pictures!—what has he [to]
do with Madonas? if the Virgin Mary were alive and
visitable, he would not hazard himself in a Covent-Garden-pit-door crowd to see
her. It an’t his style of beauty, is it?—But he will go on painting
things he ought not to paint, and not painting things he ought to paint.
Manning is not gone to China, but talks
of going this Spring. God forbid!
Coleridge not heard of.
I, going to leave off smoke. In mean time am so smoky with
last night’s 10 Pipes, that I must leave off.
Mary begs her kind remembrances.
Pray write to us—
This is no Letter, but I supposed you grew anxious about
Johnson.
N.B.—Have taken a room at 3/- a week, to be in between 5
& 8 at night, to avoid my nocturnal alias knock-eternal visitors. The first-fruits of my
retirement has been a farce
which goes to manager tomorrow. Wish my ticket luck.
God bless you, and do write.—Yours, fumosissimus,
C. Lamb. Wednesday, 19 Feb., 1806.
Note
[Addressed to Hazlitt at Wem.
Johnson was the publisher whom we have already seen
considering Hazlitt’s abridgment of the Light of Nature
Revealed.
Lamb was always interested in sales of pictures: the
on-view days gave him some of his best opportunities of seeing good painting. The
Truchsessian Picture Gallery was in New Road, opposite Portland Place. Exhibitions were
held annually, the pictures being for sale.
Loftus was Tom Loftus of
Wisbech, a cousin of Hazlitt.
Holcroft’s wife at that time, his fourth, was
Louisa Mercier, who afterwards married Lamb’s friend, James
Kenney, the dramatist. The daughter referred to was probably Fanny Holcroft, who subsequently wrote novels and
translations.
Cooper, the miniature painter, would be Samuel Cooper (1609-1672), a connection by marriage of
Pope’s mother, and the painter of Cromwell and other interesting men.
Lamb’sN.B. contains
his first mention of his farce “Mr.
H.” We are not told where the 3s. room was situated. Possibly in the Temple.]
LETTER 146 MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[?Feb. 20, 21 and 22, 1806.]
MY dear Sarah,—I have heard that Coleridge was lately going through Sicily to Rome with a party,
but that, being unwell, he returned back to Naples. We think there is some
mistake in this account, and that his intended journey to Rome was in his
former jaunt to Naples. If you know that at that time he had any such
intention, will you write instantly? for I do not know whether I ought to write
to Mrs. Coleridge or not.
I am going to make a sort of promise to myself and to you,
that I will write you kind of journal-like letters of the daily what-we-do
matters, as they occur. This day seems to me a kind of new era in our time. It
is not a birthday, nor a new-year’s day, nor a leave-off-smoking day; but
it is about an hour after the time of leaving you, our poor Phoenix, in the
Salisbury Stage; and Charles has just
left me for the first time to go to his lodgings; and I am holding a solitary
consultation with myself as to the how I shall employ myself.
Writing plays, novels, poems, and all manner of such-like
vapouring and vapourish schemes are floating in my head, which at the same time
aches with the thought of parting from you, and is perplext at the idea of
I-cannot-tell-what-about notion that I have not made you half so comfortable as
I ought to have done, and a melancholy sense of the dull prospect you have
before you on your return home. Then I think I will make my new gown; and now I
consider the white petticoat will be better candle-light worth; and then I look
at the fire, and think, if the irons was but down, I would iron my Gowns—you
having put me out of conceit of mangling.
So much for an account of my own confused head; and now for
yours. Returning home from the Inn, we took that to pieces, and ca[n]vassed
you, as you know is our usual custom. We agreed we should miss you sadly, and
that you had been, what you yourself discovered, not at all
in our way; and although, if the Post Master should happen to open
this, it would appear to him to be no great compliment, yet you, who enter so
warmly into the interior of our affairs, will understand and value it, as well
as what we likewise asserted, that since you have been with us you have done
but one foolish thing, videPinckhorn (excuse my bad Latin, if it
should chance to mean exactly contrary to what I intend). We praised you for
the very friendly way in which you regarded all our whimsies, and, to use a
phrase of Coleridge’s, understood us. We had, in short, no drawback on our
eulogy on your merit, except lamenting the want of respect you have to
yourself—the want of a certain dignity of action, you know what I mean,
which—though it only broke out in the acceptance of the old Justice’s
book, and was, as it were, smothered and almost extinct, while you were
here—yet is so native a feeling in your mind, that you will do whatever the
present moment prompts you to do, that I wish you would take that one slight
offence seriously to heart, and make it a part of your daily consideration to
drive this unlucky propensity, root and branch, out of your character.—Then,
mercy on us, what a perfect little gentlewoman you will be!!!—
You are not yet arrived at the first stage of your journey;
yet have I the sense of your absence so strong upon me, that I was really
thinking what news I had to send you, and what had happened since you had left
us. Truly nothing, except that Martin
Burney met us in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, and borrowed
four-pence, of the repayment of which sum I will send you due notice.
Friday [Feb. 21, 1806].—Last night I told Charles of your matrimonial overtures from
Mr. White, and of the cause of that business being at
a stand-still. Your generous conduct in acquainting
Mr. White with the vexatious affair at Malta highly
pleased him. He entirely approves of it. You would be quite comforted to hear
what he said on the subject.
He wishes you success, and, when Coleridge comes, will consult with him about what is best to be
done. But I charge you, be most strictly cautious how you proceed yourself. Do
not give Mr. W. any reason to think you indiscreet; let
him return of his own accord, and keep the probability of his doing so full in
your mind; so, I mean, as to regulate your whole conduct by that expectation.
Do not allow yourself to see, or in any way renew your acquaintance with,
William, nor do not do any other silly thing of that
kind; for, you may depend upon it, he will be a kind of spy upon you, and, if he observes nothing that he
disapproves of, you will certainly hear of him again in time.
Charles is gone to finish the farce, and I am to hear it read
this night. I am so uneasy between my hopes and fears of how I shall like it,
that I do not know what I am doing. I need not tell you so, for before I send
this I shall be able to tell you all about it. If I think it will amuse you, I
will send you a copy. The bed was very cold last night.
Feb. 21 [?22].—I have received your letter, and am happy to
hear that your mother has been so well in your absence, which I wish had been
prolonged a little, for you have been wanted to copy out the Farce, in the writing of which I made many an
unlucky blunder.
The said Farce I carried (after many consultations of who was the most
proper person to perform so important an office) to Wroughton, the Manager of Drury Lane. He was very civil to me;
said it did not depend upon himself, but that he would put it into the
Proprietors’ hands, and that we should certainly have an answer from
them.
I have been unable to finish this sheet before, for
Charles has taken a week’s
holidays [from his] lodging, to rest himself after his labour, and we have
talked to-night of nothing but the Farce night and day; but yesterday [I carri]ed it to Wroughton; and since it has been out of the
[way, our] minds have been a little easier. I wish you had [been with] us, to
have given your opinion. I have half a mind to sc[ribble] another copy, and
send it you. I like it very much, and cannot help having great hopes of its
success.
I would say I was very sorry for the death of Mr.
White’s father; but not knowing the good old gentleman, I
cannot help being as well satisfied that he is gone—for his son will feel
rather lonely, and so perhaps he may chance to visit again Winterslow. You so
well describe your brother’s grave lecturing letter, that you make me
ashamed of part of mine. I would fain rewrite it, leaving out my ‘sage advice;’ but if I begin another letter,
something may fall out to prevent me from finishing it,—and, therefore, skip
over it as well as you can; it shall be the last I ever send you.
It is well enough, when one is talking to a friend, to
hedge in an odd word by way of counsel now and then; but there is something
mighty irksome in its staring upon one in a letter, where one ought only to see
kind words and friendly remembrances.
I have heard a vague report from the Dawes (the
pleasant-looking young lady we called upon was Miss Daw),
that Coleridge returned back to Naples:
they are to make further enquiries, and let me know the particulars. We have
seen little or nothing of Manning since
you went. Your friend [George] Burnett
calls as usual, for Charles to point out something for him. I miss you sadly, and but for the fidget I
have been in about the Farce, I should have missed you still more. I am sorry
you cannot get your money, continue to tell us all your perplexities, and do
not mind being called Widow Blackacre.
Say all in your mind about your Lover, now Charles knows of it;
he will be as anxious to hear as me. All the time we can spare from talking of
the characters and plot of the Farce, we talk of you. I have got a fresh bottle of Brandy to-day:
if you were here, you should have a glass, three parts
brandy—so you should. I bought a pound of bacon to-day, not so good as
yours. I wish the little caps were finished. I am glad the Medicines and the
Cordials bore the fatigue of their journey so well. I promise you I will write
often, and not mind the postage. God bless you.
Charles does not send his love,
because he is not here.
Yours affectionately, M. Lamb.
Write as often as ever you can. Do not work too
hard.
Note
[Mr. Hazlitt dates this letter
April, thinking that Mary Lamb’s pen slipped
when she wrote February 21 half-way through. But I think February must be right; because
(1) Miss Stoddart has only just left, and Lamb tells Hazlitt
in January that she is staying a week or so longer: April would make this time three
months; and (2) Lamb has told Hazlitt on February
19 that his farce is finished.
Coleridge left Malta for Rome on September 21, 1805.
He was probably at Naples from October, 1805, to the end of January, 1806, when he went to
Rome, remaining there until May 18. Writing to Mrs.
Clarkson on March 2, 1806, Dorothy
Wordsworth quotes from a letter written on February 25 by Mary Lamb to Mrs. S. T.
Coleridge and containing this passage: “My Brother has received a
letter from Stoddart dated December 26, in which
he tells him that Coleridge was then at Naples. We have also heard
from a Mr. Dawe that a friend of his had received
a letter of the same date, which mentioned Coleridge having been
lately travelling towards Rome with a party of gentlemen; but that he changed his mind
and returned back to Naples. Stoddart says nothing more than that
he was driven to Naples in consequence of the French having taken possession of
Trieste.” (See the Athenæum, January 23, 1904.)
“VidePinckhorn.” I cannot explain this, unless
a Justice Pinckhorn had ogled Sarah
Stoddart and offered her a present of a
book. Mary Lamb, by the way, some years later taught
Latin to William Hazlitt, Junior,
Sarah’s son.
Martin Charles Burney, the son of Captain Burney, born in 1788, a devoted admirer of the
Lambs to the end. He was now only eighteen. We shall often meet
him again.
Mr. White was not Lamb’s
friend James White.
Winterslow, in Wiltshire, about six miles from Salisbury, was a small
property belonging to Sarah Stoddart.
“Widow Blackacre.” In
Wycherley’s “Plain Dealer:” a busybody and persistent
litigant.]
LETTER 147 MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[March, 1806.]
MY dear Sarah,—No intention of forfeiting my promise, but mere want of
time, has prevented me from continuing my journal. You
seem pleased with the long, stupid one I sent, and, therefore, I shall
certainly continue to write at every opportunity. The reason why I have not had
any time to spare, is because Charles has
given himself some hollidays after the hard labour of finishing his farce, and, therefore, I have had
none of the evening leisure I promised myself. Next week he promises to go to
work again. I wish he may happen to hit upon some new plan, to his mind, for
another farce: when once begun, I do not fear his perseverance, but the
hollidays he has allowed himself, I fear, will unsettle him. I look forward to
next week with the same kind of anxiety I did to the first entrance at the new
lodging. We have had, as you know, so many teasing anxieties of late, that I
have got a kind of habit of foreboding that we shall never be comfortable, and
that he will never settle to work: which I know is wrong, and which I will try
with all my might to overcome—for certainly, if I could but see things as they
really are, our prospects are considerably improved since the memorable day of
Mrs. Fenwick’s last visit. I
have heard nothing of that good lady, or of the Fells, since you left us.
We have been visiting a little—to Norris’s, to Godwin’s; and last night we did not come home from
Captain Burney’s till two
o’clock: the Saturday night was changed to Friday, because Rickman could not be there to-night. We had the best tea
things, and the litter all cleared away, and every thing as handsome as
possible—Mrs. Rickman being of the
party. Mrs. Rickman is much increased in
size since we saw her last, and the alteration in her strait shape wonderfully improves her. Phillips was there, and Charles had a long batch of Cribbage with him:
and, upon the whole, we had the most chearful evening I have known there a long
time. To-morrow, we dine at Holcroft’s. These things rather fatigue me; but I look
for a quiet week next week, and hope for better times. We have had
Mrs. Brooks and all the Martins,
and we have likewise been there; so that I seem to have been in a continual
bustle lately. I do not think Charles cares so much for
the Martins as he did, which is a fact you will be glad to
hear—though you must not name them when you write: always remember, when I tell
you any thing about them, not to mention their names in return.
We have had a letter from your brother, by the same mail as yours, I suppose; he says he does
not mean to return till summer, and that is all he says about himself; his
letter being entirely filled with a long story about Lord Nelson—but nothing more than what the newspapers have been
full of, such as his last words, &c. Why does he tease you with so much good advice? is it merely to fill up his letters as he
filled ours with Lord Nelson’s exploits? or has any
new thing come out against you? has he discovered Mr. Curse-a-rat’s
correspondence? I hope you will not write to that news-sending gentleman any more. I promised never more to give my advice, but one may be allowed to hope a little; and I also hope you will have something to tell me
soon about Mr. W[hite]: have you seen him yet? I am sorry
to hear your Mother is not better, but I am in a hoping humour just now, and I
cannot help hoping that we shall all see happier days. The bells are just now
ringing for the taking of the Cape of Good Hope.
I have written to Mrs.
Coleridge to tell her that her husband is at Naples; your
brother slightly named his being there, but he did not say that he had heard
from him himself. Charles is very busy at
the Office; he will be kept there to-day till seven or eight o’Clock: and
he came home very smoky and drinky last night; so that I
am afraid a hard day’s work will not agree very well with him.
O dear! what shall I say next? Why this I will say next,
that I wish you was with me; I have been eating a mutton chop all alone, and I
have been just looking in the pint porter pot, which I find quite empty, and
yet I am still very dry. If you was with me, we would have a glass of brandy
and water; but it is quite impossible to drink brandy and water by oneself;
therefore, I must wait with patience till the kettle boils. I hate to drink tea
alone, it is worse than dining alone. We have got a fresh cargo of biscuits
from Captain Burney’s. I have——
March 14.—Here I was interrupted; and a long, tedious
interval has intervened, during which I have had neither time nor inclination to write a word. The Lodging—that
pride and pleasure of your heart and mine—is given up, and
here he is again—Charles, I
mean—as unsettled and as undetermined as ever. When he went to the poor
lodging, after the hollidays I told you he had taken, he could not endure the
solitariness of them, and I had no rest for the sole of my foot till I promised
to believe his solemn protestations that he could and would write as well at
home as there. Do you believe this?
I have no power over Charles: he will do—what he will do. But I ought to have some
little influence over myself. And therefore I am most manfully resolving to
turn over a new leaf with my own mind. Your visit to us, though not a very
comfortable one to yourself, has been of great use to me. I set you up in my
fancy as a kind of thing that takes an interest in my
concerns; and I hear you talking to me, and arguing the matter very learnedly,
when give way to despondency. You shall hear a good account of me, and the
progress I make in altering my fretful temper to a calm and quiet one. It is
but being once thorowly convinced one is wrong, to make one resolve to do so no
more; and I know my dismal faces have been almost as great a drawback upon
Charles’s comfort, as his feverish, teazing ways
have been upon mine. Our love for each other has been the torment of our lives
hitherto. I am most seriously intending to bend the whole force of my mind to
counteract this, and I think I see some prospect of success.
Of Charles ever
bringing any work to pass at home, I am very doubtful; and of the farce succeeding, I have little or
no hope; but if I could once get into the way of being chearful myself, I
should see an easy remedy in leaving town and living cheaply, almost wholly
alone; but till I do find we really are comfortable alone, and by ourselves, it
seems a dangerous experiment. We shall certainly stay where we are till after
next Christmas; and in the mean time, as I told you before, all my whole
thoughts shall be to change myself into just such a chearful soul as you would
be in a lone house, with no companion but your brother, if you had nothing to
vex you—nor no means of wandering after Curse-a-rats.
Do write soon: though I write all about myself, I am
thinking all the while of you, and I am uneasy at the length of time it seems
since I heard from you. Your Mother, and Mr. White, is
running continually in my head; and this second winter
makes me think how cold, damp, and forlorn your solitary house will feel to
you. I would your feet were perched up again on our fender.
Manning is not yet gone. Mrs. Holcroft is brought to bed. Mrs. Reynolds has been confined at home with
illness, but is recovering. God bless you.
Yours affectionately, M. Lamb.
Note
[“Norris’s”—Randal Norris, sub-treasurer of the Inner Temple, whose
wife, néeFaint, came from Widford, where she had known
Lamb’s grandmother, Mary Field.
Captain Burney’s whist parties, in Little
James Street, Pimlico, were, as a rule, on Saturdays. Later Lamb established a Wednesday party.
Of Mrs. Brooks I have no knowledge; nor of him whom
Mary Lamb called Mr. Curse-a-rat.
“The Cape of Good Hope.” The Cape of Good Hope, having
been taken by the English in 1795 from the Dutch, and restored to them at the Peace of
Amiens in 1802, had just been retaken by the English.
“Mrs. Holcroft is brought to
bed.” The child was Louisa, afterwards
Mrs. Badams.]
LETTER 148 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN RICKMAN
March, 1806.
DEAR Rickman,—I send you some papers about a salt-water soap, for which
the inventor is desirous of getting a parliamentary reward, like Dr. Jenner. Whether such a project be
feasible, I mainly doubt, taking for granted the equal utility. I should
suppose the usual way of paying such projectors is by patents and contracts.
The patent, you see, he has got. A contract he is about with the Navy Board.
Meantime, the projector is hungry. Will you answer me two questions, and return
them with the papers as soon as you can? Imprimis, is there any chance of
success in application to Parliament for a reward? Did you ever hear of the
invention? You see its benefits and saving to the nation (always the first
motive with a true projector) are feelingly set forth: the last paragraph but
one of the estimate, in enumerating the shifts poor seamen are put to, even
approaches to the pathetic. But, agreeing to all he says, is there the remotest
chance of Parliament giving the projector anything; and when should application
be made, now or after a report (if he can get it) from the navy board?
Secondly, let the infeasibility be as great as you will, you will oblige me by
telling me the way of introducing such an application to Parliament, without
buying over a majority of members, which is totally out of projector’s
power. I vouch nothing for the soap myself;
for I always wash in fresh water, and find it answer
tolerably well for all purposes of cleanliness; nor do I know the projector;
but a relation of mine has put me on writing to you, for whose parliamentary
knowledge he has great veneration.
P.S. The Capt. and
Mrs. Burney and Phillips take their chance at cribbage here on
Wednesday. Will you and Mrs. R. join the
party? Mary desires her compliments to
Mrs. R., and joins in the invitation.
Yours truly,
C. Lamb.
Note
[Rickman now held the post of
private secretary to the Speaker, Charles Abbot, afterwards Lord Colchester.
Captain Burney we have already met. His wife,
Sarah Burney, was, there is good reason to
suppose, in Lamb’s mind when he wrote the Elia essay
“Mrs. Battle’s Opinions on
Whist.” Phillips was either Colonel Phillips, a retired officer of marines, who had
sailed with Burney and Captain
Cook, had known Dr. Johnson, and had
married Burney’s sister; or Ned
Phillips (Rickman’s Secretary)
mentioned in the note to Letter 488, on page 838.]
LETTER 149 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
March 15, 1806.
DEAR H.—I am
a little surprised at no letter from you. This day week, to wit, Saturday, the
8th of March, 1806, I booked off by the Wem coach, Bull and Mouth Inn, directed
to you, at the Rev. Mr. Hazlitt’s,
Wem, Shropshire, a parcel containing, besides a book, &c., a rare print,
which I take to be a Titian; begging the
said W. H. to acknowledge the receipt thereof; which he
not having done, I conclude the said parcel to be lying at the inn, and may be
lost; for which reason, lest you may be a Wales-hunting at this instant, I have
authorised any of your family, whosoever first gets this, to open it, that so
precious a parcel may not moulder away for want of looking after. What do you
in Shropshire when so many fine pictures are a-going, a-going every day in
London? Monday I visit the Marquis of
Lansdowne’s, in Berkeley Square. Catalogue 2s. 6d.
Leonardos in plenty. Some other day
this week I go to see Sir Wm.
Young’s, in Stratford Place. Hulse’s, of Blackheath, are also to be sold this month;
and in May, the first private collection in Europe, Welbore Ellis Agar’s. And there are you, perverting
Nature in lying landscapes, filched from old rusty
Titians, such as I can scrape up here to send you, with an
additament from Shropshire Nature thrown in to make the whole look unnatural. I
am afraid of your mouth watering when I tell you that Manning and I got into Angerstein’s on Wednesday. Mon Dieu! Such Claudes! Four Claudes bought for more than £10,000 (those who
talk of Wilson being equal to
Claude are either mainly ignorant or stupid); one of
these was perfectly miraculous. What colours short of bonâ fide sunbeams it could be painted in,
I am not earthly colourman enough to say; but I did not think it had been in
the possibility of things. Then, a music-piece by Titian—a
thousand-pound picture—five figures standing behind a piano, the sixth playing;
none of the heads, as M. observed, indicating great men,
or affecting it, but so sweetly disposed; all leaning separate ways, but so
easy—like a flock of some divine shepherd; the colouring, like the economy of
the picture, so sweet and harmonious—as good as Shakspeare’s “Twelfth Night,”—almost, that is. It will give you a love of order, and cure you of
restless, fidgetty passions for a week after—more musical than the music which
it would, but cannot, yet in a manner does, show. I have no room for the rest.
Let me say, Angerstein sits in a room—his study (only that
and the library are shown)—when he writes a common letter, as I am doing,
surrounded with twenty pictures worth £60,000. What a luxury! Apicius and Heliogabalus, hide your diminished heads!
Yours, my dear painter,
C. Lamb.
Note
[Angerstein’s was the house of John Julius Angerstein (1735-1823) the financier, in Pall
Mall. He had a magnificent collection of pictures, £60,000 worth of which were bought on
his death by the nation, to form the nucleus of our National Gallery. A portrait of
Angerstein by Lawrence
hangs there. The Titian of which
Lamb speaks is now attributed to the School of
Titian. It is called “A
Concert,” and is No. 8 in the National Gallery catalogue. See opposite page.
Angerstein’sClaudes are also in the National Gallery, Nos. 2, 5, 12, 14 and 30.]
LETTER 150 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
May 10, 1806.
MY dear Manning—I didn’t know what your going was till I shook a
last fist with you, and then ’twas just like having shaken hands with a
wretch on the fatal scaffold, and when you are down the ladder, you can never
stretch out to him again. Mary says you
are dead, and there’s nothing to do but to leave it to time to do for us
in the end what it always does for those who mourn for people in such a case.
But she’ll see by your letter you are not quite dead. A little kicking
and agony, and then ——. Martin
Burneytook me out a walking that
evening, and we talked of Mister Manning; and then I came
home and smoked for you; and at twelve o’Clock came home
Mary and Monkey
Louisa from the play, and there was more talk and more smoking,
and they all seemed first-rate characters, because they knew a certain person.
But what’s the use of talking about ’em? By the time you’ll
have made your escape from the Kalmuks, you’ll have staid so long I shall
never be able to bring to your mind who Mary was, who will
have died about a year before, nor who the Holcrofts were! Me perhaps you will mistake for
Phillips, or confound me with Mr. Daw, because you saw us together.
Mary (whom you seem to remember yet) is not quite easy
that she had not a formal parting from you. I wish it had so happened. But you
must bring her a token, a shawl or something, and remember a sprightly little
Mandarin for our mantle-piece, as a companion to the Child I am going to
purchase at the Museum. She says you saw her writings about the other day, and
she wishes you should know what they are. She is doing for Godwin’s bookseller twenty of Shakspear’s plays, to be made into Children’s tales. Six are
already done by her, to wit, ‘The Tempest,’ ‘Winter’s Tale,’
‘Midsummer
Night,’ ‘Much Ado,’ ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona,’ and ‘Cymbeline:’ ‘The Merchant of
Venice’ is in forwardness. I have done ‘Othello’ and ‘Macbeth,’ and mean to
do all the tragedies. I think it will be popular among the little people.
Besides money. It is to bring in 60 guineas. Mary has done
them capitally, I think you’d think. These are the humble amusements we
propose, while you are gone to plant the cross of Christ among barbarous Pagan
anthropophagi. Quam homo homini præstat! but then, perhaps,
you’ll get murder’d, and we shall die in our beds with a fair
literary reputation. Be sure, if you see any of those people whose heads do
grow beneath their shoulders,
that you make a draught of them. It will be very curious. O
Manning, I am serious to sinking almost, when I think
that all those evenings, which you have made so pleasant, are gone perhaps for
ever. Four years you talk of, maybe ten, and you may come back and find such
alterations! Some circumstance may grow up to you or to me, that may be a bar
to the return of any such intimacy. I daresay all this is Hum, and that all
will come back; but indeed we die many deaths before we die, and I am almost
sick when I think that such a hold as I had of you is gone. I have friends, but
some of ’em are changed. Marriage, or some circumstance, rises up to make
them not the same. But I felt sure of you. And that last token you gave me of
expressing a wish to have my name joined with yours, you know not how it
affected me: like a legacy.
God bless you in every way you can form a wish. May He give
you health, and safety, and the accomplishment of all your objects, and return
you again to us, to gladden some fireside or other (I suppose we shall be moved
from the Temple). I will nurse the remembrance of your steadiness and quiet,
which used to infuse something like itself into our nervous minds. Mary called you our ventilator. Farewell, and
take her best wishes and mine.
One thing more. When you get to Canton, you will most likely
see a young friend of mine, Inspector of Teas, named Ball. He is a very good fellow and I should like to have my
name talked of in China. Give my kind remembrances to the same Ball.
Good bye. C. L.
Note
[Addressed to “Mr.
Manning, Passenger on Board the Thames, East Indiaman,
Portsmouth.”
Manning sailed for China this month. He did not
return to England until 1817. His nominal purpose was to practise medicine there, not to
spread Christianity, as Lamb suggests—probably in
fun.
This is Manning’s reply to
Lamb’s letter:—
“Dear
Lamb—As we are not sailed yet, and I have a few minutes,
why should not I give you a line to say that I received your kind letter
yesterday, and shall read it again before I have done with it. I am sorry I had
not time to call on Mary, but I did not
even call on my own Father, and he’s 70 and loves me like a Father. I
don’t know that you can do any thing for me at the India House: if you
hear any thing there about me, communicate it to Mr. Crabtree, 13, Newgate Street. I am not dead, nor dying—some people go into Yorkshire for four
[years], and I have no currant jelly aboard. Tell Holcroft I received his kind letter.
“T. Manningfor ever.”
“Quam homo homini
præstat.” Terence,
“Eunuchus,” II., 2, 1,
“Di immortales! homini homo quid
præstat!”—“Immortal gods! what a difference
there is between one man and another!”
See Appendix II., page 969, for addition to this letter.]
LETTER 151 MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[Mr. W. C. Hazlitt dates: June 2, 1806.]
MY dear Sarah,—You say truly that I have sent you
too many make-believe letters. I do not mean to serve you so again, if I can
help it. I have been very ill for some days past with the toothache. Yesterday,
I had it drawn; and I feel myself greatly relieved, but far from easy, for my
head and my jaws still ache; and, being unable to do any business, I would wish
to write you a long letter, to atone for my former offences; but I feel so
languid, that I am afraid wishing is all I can do.
I am sorry you are so worried with business; and I am still
more sorry for your sprained ancle. You ought not to walk upon it. What is the
matter between you and your good-natured maid you used to boast of? and what
the devil is the matter with your Aunt? You say she is discontented. You must
bear with them as well as you can; for, doubtless, it is you[r] poor
Mother’s teazing that puts you all out of sorts. I pity you from my
heart.
We cannot come to see you this summer, nor do I think it
advisable to come and incommode you, when you for the same expence could come
to us. Whenever you feel yourself disposed to run away from your troubles, come
up to us again. I wish it was not such a long, expensive journey, then you
could run backwards and forwards every month or two.
I am very sorry you still hear nothing from Mr.
White. I am afraid that is all at an end. What do you intend to
do about Mr. Turner?
I believe Mr.
Rickman is well again, but I have not been able to get out
lately to enquire, because of my toothache. Louisa
Martin is quite well again.
William Hazlitt, the brother of him you
know, is in town. I believe you have heard us say we like him? He came in good
time; for the loss of Manning made
Charles very dull, and he likes Hazlitt better than any body, except
Manning. My toothache has moped
Charles to death: you know how he hates to see people
ill.
Mrs. Reynolds has been this month past
at Deptford, so that I never know when Monday comes. I am glad you have got
your Mother’s pension.
My Tales are to be published in separate
story-books; I mean, in single stories, like the children’s little
shilling books. I cannot send you them in Manuscript, because they are all in
the Godwins’ hands; but one will
be published very soon, and then you shall have it all in
print. I go on very well, and have no doubt but I shall always be able
to hit upon some such kind of job to keep going on. I think I shall get fifty
pounds a year at the lowest calculation; but as I have not yet seen any money of my own earning, for we do not expect to be paid
till Christmas, I do not feel the good fortune, that has so unexpectedly
befallen me, half so much as I ought to do. But another year, no doubt, I shall
perceive it.
When I write again, you will hear tidings of the farce, for Charles is to go in a few days to the Managers
to enquire about it. But that must now be a next-year’s business too,
even if it does succeed; so it’s all looking forward, and no prospect of
present gain. But that’s better than no hopes at all, either for present
or future times.
Charles has written Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, and has begun Hamlet; you would like to see us, as we
often sit, writing on one table (but not on one cushion sitting), like
Hermia and Helena in the Midsummer’s Night’s Dream; or, rather, like an old
literary Darby and Joan: I taking snuff, and he groaning all the while, and saying
he can make nothing of it, which he always says till he has finished, and then
he finds out he has made something of it.
If I tell you that you Widow-Blackacreise, you must tell me I Tale-ise, for my Tales
seem to be all the subject matter I write about; and when you see them, you
will think them poor little baby-stories to make such a talk about; but I have
no news to send, nor nothing, in short, to say, that is worth paying two pence
for. I wish I could get franks, then I should not care how short or stupidly I
wrote.
Charles smokes still, and will smoke to
the end of the chapter.
Martin [Burney] has just been here. My
Tales (again) and Charles’sFarce has made the boy mad to turn Author; and he has written a
Farce, and he has made the Winter’s Tale into a story; but what
Charles says of himself is really true of
Martin, for he can make nothing at
all of it: and I have been talking very eloquently this morning, to
convince him that nobody can write farces, &c., under thirty years of age.
And so I suppose he will go home and new model his farce.
What is Mr. Turner? and what is
likely to come of him? and how do you like him? and what do you intend to do
about it? I almost wish you to remain single till your Mother dies, and then come and live with us;
and we would either get you a husband, or teach you how to live comfortably
without. I think I should like to have you always to the end of our lives
living with us; and I do not know any reason why that should not be, except for
the great fancy you seem to have for marrying, which after all is but a
hazardous kind of an affair: but, however, do as you like; every man knows best
what pleases himself best.
I have known many single men I should have liked in my
life (if it had suited them) for a husband: but very few
husbands have I ever wished was mine, which is rather against the state in
general; but one never is disposed to envy wives their good husbands. So much
for marrying—but however, get married, if you can.
I say we shall not come and see you, and I feel sure we
shall not: but, if some sudden freak was to come into our wayward heads, could
you at all manage?—Your Mother we should not mind, but I think still it would
be so vastly inconvenient.—I am certain we shall not come, and yet you may tell me, when you write, if it would be horribly
inconvenient if we did; and do not tell me any lies, but say truly whether you
would rather we did or not.
God bless you, my dearest Sarah! I wish, for your sake, I could have written a very
amusing letter; but do not scold, for my head aches sadly. Don’t mind my
headach, for before you get this it will be well, being only from the pains of
my jaws and teeth. Farewel.
Yours affectionately, M. Lamb.
Note
[This letter contains the first mention to Sarah Stoddart of William Hazlitt,
who was shortly to put an end to the claims both of Mr. White and
Mr. Turner.
The Tales
from Shakespear, although mainly Mary
Lamb’s book, did not bear her name for many years, not until after her
brother’s death. Her connection with it was, however, made public in more than one
literary year-book of her day. Originally they were to be unsigned, but Godwin “cheated” Lamb into putting a name to them (see Letter 161). The single stories,
which Mrs. Godwin issued at sixpence each, are now
excessively rare. The ordinary first edition in two volumes is a valuable possession, much
desired by collectors.]
LETTER 152 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[p.m. June 26, 1806.]
DEAR Wordsworth—We got the six pounds safe in your sister’s
letters—are pleased, you may be sure, with the good news of Mrs. W.—hope all is well over by this time.
“A fine boy!—have you any more? one more and a girl—poor copies of
me” vide Mr. H. a farce which the Proprietors have
done me the honor—but I will set down Mr.
Wroughton’s own words. N.B. the ensuing letter was sent in
answer to one which I wrote begging to know if my piece had any chance, as I
might make alterations, &c. I writing on the Monday, there comes this
letter on the Wednesday. Attend.
(Copy of a Letter from Mr. Rd.
Wroughton)
Sir, Your Piece of Mr. H—I am desired to say, is
accepted at Drury Lane Theatre, by the Proprietors, and, if
agreeable to you, will be brought forwards when the proper
opportunity serves—the Piece shall be sent to you for your
Alterations in the course of a few days, as the same is not in my
Hands but with the Proprietors.
I am Sir, Your obedient sert., Rd. Wroughton. (dated) 66 Gower St. Wednesday June 11, 1806
On the following Sunday Mr.
Tobin comes. The scent of a manager’s letter brought him.
He would have gone further any day on such a business. I read the letter to
him. He deems it authentic and peremptory. Our conversation naturally fell upon
pieces—different sorts of pieces—what is the best way of offering a piece—how
far the caprice of managers is an obstacle in the way of a piece—how to judge
of the merits of a piece—how long a piece may remain in the hands of the
managers before it is acted—and my piece—and your piece—and my poor
brother’s piece—my poor brother was all his life endeavouring to get a
piece accepted—
I am not sure that when my
poorBrother bequeathed the care of his pieces to Mr. James Tobin he did not therein convey a
legacy which in some measure mollified the otherwise first stupefactions of
grief. It can’t be expected that the present Earl Nelson passes all his time in watering the laurels of the
Admiral with Right Reverend Tears.
Certainly he steals a fine day now and then to plot how to lay out the grounds
and mansion at Burnham most suitably to the late
Earl’s taste, if he had lived, and how to spend the hundred thousand
pound parliament has given him in erecting some little neat monument to his
memory.
MR. H. I wrote that in mere
wantonness of triumph. Have nothing more to say about it. The Managers I thank
my stars have decided its merits for ever. They are the best judges of pieces,
and it would be insensible in me to affect a false modesty after the very
flattering letter which I have received and the ample—
I think this will be as good a pattern for Orders as I can
think on. A little thin flowery border round, neat not gaudy, and the Drury
Lane Apollo with the harp at the top. Or
shall I have no Apollo?—simply nothing? Or
perhaps the Comic Muse?
[Here came the picture of the box ticket.
See opposite page.]
The same form, only I think without the Apollo, will serve for the pit and galleries. I
think it will be best to write my name at full length; but then if I give away
a great many, that will be tedious. Perhaps Ch. Lamb will do. BOXES now I think on it
I’ll have in Capitals. The rest in a neat Italian hand. Or better
perhaps, Boxes, in old English character, like Madoc or Thalaba?
I suppose you know poor Mountague has lost his wife. That has been the reason for my
sending off all we have got of yours separately. I thought it a bad time to
trouble him. The Tea 25 lb. in 5 5 lb. Papers, two sheets to each, with the
chocolate which we were afraid Mrs. W.
would want, comes in one Box and the Hats in a small one. I booked them off
last night by the Kendal waggon. There comes with this letter (no, it comes a
day or two earlier) a Letter for you from the Doctor at Malta, about Coleridge, just received. Nothing of certainty, you see, only
that he is not at Malta. We supt with the Clarksons one
night—Mrs. Clarkson pretty well.
Mr. C. somewhat fidgety, but a good
man. The Baby has been on a visit to
Mrs. Charlotte Smith, Novellist-and
morals-trainer, but is returned. [A short passage omitted
here.]
Mary is just stuck fast in All’s Well that Ends Well.
She complains of having to set forth so many female characters in boy’s
clothes. She begins to think Shakspear
must have wanted Imagination. I to encourage her, for she often faints in the
prosecution of her great work, flatter her with telling her how well such a
play and such a play is done. But she is stuck fast and I have been obliged to
promise to assist her. To do this it will be necessary to leave off Tobacco.
But I had some thoughts of doing that before, for I sometimes think it does not agree with
me. W. Hazlitt is in Town. I took him to
see a very pretty girl professedly, where there were two young girls—the very
head and sum of the Girlery was two young girls—they neither laughed nor
sneered nor giggled nor whispered—but they were young girls—and he sat and
frowned blacker and blacker, indignant that there should be such a thing as
Youth and Beauty, till he tore me away before supper in perfect misery and
owned he could not bear young girls. They drove him mad. So I took him home to
my old Nurse, where he recover’d perfect tranquillity. Independent of
this, and as I am not a young girl myself, he is a great acquisition to us. He
is, rather imprudently, I think, printing a political pamphlet on his own
account, and will have to pay for the paper, &c. The first duty of an
Author, I take it, is never to pay anything. But non cuivis attigit
adire Corinthum. The Managers I thank my stars have
settled that question for me.
Yours truly, C. Lamb.
Note
[Wordsworth’s third child,
Thomas, who did not grow up, was born June 16,
1806.
“A fine boy!” The quotation is from Mr. H.’s soliloquy after the discovery of his name:—
“No son of mine shall exist, to bear my ill-fated name. No
nurse come chuckling, to tell me it is a boy. No midwife, leering at me from under the
lids of professional gravity. I dreamed of caudle. (Sings in a
melancholy tone) Lullaby, Lullaby,—hush-a-by-baby—how like its papa it
is!—(makes motions as if he was nursing). And then, when
grown up, ‘Is this your son, sir?’ ‘Yes, sir, a poor copy of me,—a
sad young dog!—just what his father was at his age,—I have four more at home.’
Oh! oh! oh!”
Tobin was James Tobin, whom we
have already met, brother of the late dramatist, John
Tobin.
Poor Mountague would be Basil Montagu, whose second wife had just died. He married afterwards
Anne Skepper, whom Lamb came to know well, and
of whom he speaks in his Elia essay “Oxford in
the Vacation.”
The Doctor was Dr. Stoddart.
Coleridge had left Malta some months before, as
we have seen. He had also left Rome and was in some foreign town unknown, probably not far
from Leghorn, whence he sailed for England in the following month, reaching Portsmouth in
August.
The Baby was Mrs. Godwin, and
Charlotte Smith was the poetess (of great fame
in her day, but now forgotten), who was then living at
Tilford, near Farnham, in Surrey. She died in the following October. The passage which I
have, with extreme reluctance, omitted, refers to the physical development of the two
ladies. Lamb was writing just then less for Wordsworth than Antiquity.
Hazlitt’s political pamphlet was his Free Thoughts on Public
Affairs, 1806.
“Non cuivis attigit adire
Corinthum.” Horace,
Epist. I., 17, 36,
“Non cuivis homini contingit adire
Corinthum”—“It is not the lot of every man to
visit Corinth.”]
LETTER 153 MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[No date. ? Begun on Friday, July 4, 1806.]
CHARLES and
Hazlitt are going to Sadler’s
Wells, and I am amusing myself in their absence with reading a manuscript of
Hazlitt’s; but have laid it down to write a few
lines, to tell you how we are going on. Charles has begged
a month’s hollidays, of which this is the first day, and they are all to
be spent at home. We thank you for your kind invitations, and were
half-inclined to come down to you; but after mature deliberation, and many wise
consultations, such as you know we often hold, we came to the resolution of
staying quietly at home: and during the hollidays we are both of us to set
stoutly to work and finish the Tales, six of them being yet to do. We thought, if we went anywhere
and left them undone, they would lay upon our minds; and that when we returned,
we should feel unsettled, and our money all spent besides: and next summer we
are to be very rich, and then we can afford a long journey some where, I will
not say to Salisbury, because I really think it is better for you to come to
us; but of that we will talk another time.
The best news I have to send you is, that the Farce is accepted. That is to say,
the manager has written to say it shall be brought out when an opportunity
serves. I hope that it may come out by next Christmas: you must come and see it
the first night; for if it succeeds, it will be a great pleasure to you, and if
it should not, we shall want your consolation. So you must come.
I shall soon have done my work, and know not what to begin
next. Now, will you set your brains to work and invent a story, either for a
short child’s story, or a long one that would make a kind of Novel, or a
Story that would make a play. Charles
wants me to write a play, but I am not
over anxious to set about it; but seriously will you draw me out a skeleton of
a story, either from memory of any thing that you have read, or from your own
invention, and I will fill it up in some way or other.
The reason I have not written so long is, that I worked,
and worked, in hopes to get through my task before the hollidays began; but at
last I was not able, for Charles was
forced to get them now, or he could not have had any at all: and having picked
out the best stories first, these latter ones take more time, being more
perplext and unmanageable. But however I hope soon to tell you that they are
quite completed. I have finished one to-day which teazed me more than all the
rest put together. The[y] sometimes plague me as bad as your Lovers do you. How
do you go on, and how many new ones have you had lately?
I met Mrs. Fenwick
at Mrs. Holcroft’s the other day;
she loo[ked very] placid and smiling, but I was so disconcerted that I hardly
knew how to sit upon my chair. She invited us to come and see her, but we did
not invite her in return; and nothing at all was said in an explanatory sort:
so that matter rests at present.
Mrs. Rickman continues very ill—so ill,
that there are no hopes of her recovery—for which I am very sorry indeed.
I am sorry you are altogether so uncomfortable; I shall be
glad to hear you are settled at Salisbury: that must be better than living in a
lone house, companionless as you are. I wish you could afford to bring your
Mother up to London; but that is
quite impossible.
Your brother wrote a
letter a week ago (which passed through our hands) to Wordsworth, to tell him all he knew of
Coleridge; but as he had not heard
from C. for some time, there was nothing in the letter we
did not know before.
Thanks for your brother’s letters. I preserve them very carefully, and
you shall have them (as the Manager says) when opportunity serves.
Mrs. Wordsworth is brought to bed; and I
ought to write to Miss Wordsworth to
thank her for the information, but I suppose I shall defer it till another
child is coming. I do so hate writing letters. I wish all my friends would come
and live in town. Charles has been
telling me even it is better [than] two months that he ought to write to your
brother. [It is not] my dislike to writing letters that prevents my [writing]
to you, but sheer want of time, I assure you, because [I know] you care not how
stupidly I write, so as you do but [hear at the] time what we are about.
Let me hear from you soon, and do let me hear some [good
news,] and don’t let me hear of your walking with sprained ancles again;
no business is an excuse for making yourself lame.
I hope your poor Mother is better, and Aunty and Maid jog
on pretty well; remember me to them all in due form and order. Charles’s love, and our best wishes that
all your little busy affairs may come to a prosperous conclusion.
Yours affectionately, M. Lamb. Friday evening.
[Added later:—]
They (Hazlitt
and Charles) came home from
Sadler’s Wells so dismal and dreary dull on Friday, that I gave them
both a good scolding—quite a setting to rights; and I think it has done
some good, for Charles has been very chearful ever
since. I begin to hope the home hollidays will go on very well. Mrs. Rickman is better. Rickman we saw at Captain Burney’s for the first time
since her illness last night.
Write directly, for I am uneasy about your Lovers; I
wish something was settled. God bless you.
Once more, yours affectionately,
M. Lamb.
Sunday morning [July 6, or more probably 13].—I did not put this in the
post, hoping to be able to write a less dull letter to you this morning;
but I have been prevented, so it shall go as it is. I am in good spirits
just at this present time, for Charles has been reading over the Tale I told you plagued
me so much, and he thinks it one of the very best: it is All’s Well that Ends Well. You must
not mind the many wretchedly dull letters I have sent you; for, indeed, I
cannot help it, my mind is so dry always after poring over my work all day.
But it will soon be over.
I am cooking a shoulder of Lamb (Hazlitt dines with us); it will be ready
at two o’Clock, if you can pop in and eat a bit with us.
Note
[The programme at Sadler’s Wells on July 4, 1806, was:
“Aquatic Theatre, Sadler’s Wells. A new dance called Grist
and Puff, or the Highland Fling. The admired comic pantomime, Harlequin and the Water Kelpe. New melodramatic Romance, The
Invisible Ring; or, The Water Monstre and Fire Spectre.” The author of
both was Mr. C. Dibdin, Jun. “Real
water.”
Mary Lamb’s next work, after the Tales from Shakespear, was Mrs. Leicester’s
School. Charles Lamb meanwhile was preparing his Dramatic Specimens and Adventures of
Ulysses.
Mrs. Rickman did not die then. She lived until
1836.]
LETTER 154 MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
[p.m. August 29, 1806.]
MY dear Miss
Wordsworth—After I had put my letter in the post yesterday I was
uneasy all the night because of some few expressions relative to poor Coleridge—I mean, in saying I wished your
brother would come to town and that
I wished your brother would consult Mr.
Southey. I am very sure your brother will take no step in
consequence of any foolish advice that I can give him, so far I am easy, but
the painful reflections I have had during a sleepless night has induced me to
write merely to quiet myself, because I have felt ever since, that in the
present situation of Coleridge, returned after an absence
of two years, and feeling a reluctance to return to his family, I ought not to
throw in the weight of a hair in advising you or your Brother, and that I ought
not to have so much as named to you his reluctance to return to Keswick, for so
little is it in my power to calculate on his actions that perhaps in a few days
he may be on his return home.
You, my dear friend, will perfectly understand me that I do
not mean that I might not freely say to you anything that is upon my mind—but
[the] truth is, my poor mind is so weak that I never dare trust my own
judgement in anything: what I think one hour a fit of low spirits makes me
unthink the next. Yesterday I wrote, anxiously longing for Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. Southey to endeavour to bring Mrs. C. to consent to a separation, and to day I think of the
letter I received from Mrs. Coleridge, telling me, as
joyful news, that her husband is arrived, and I feel it very wrong in me even
in the remotest degree to do anything to prevent her seeing that husband—she
and her husband being the only people who ought to be concerned in the affair.
All that I have said, or meant to say, you will perfectly
understand, it being nothing more than to beg you will consider both my letter
to day and yesterday as if you had not read either, they being both equally the
effect of low spirits, brought on by the fatigue of Coleridge’s conversation and the anxious care even to
misery which I have felt since he has been here, that something could be done
to make such an admirable creature happy. Nor has, I assure you, Mrs. Coleridge been without her full share in
adding to my uneasiness. They say she grows fat and is very happy—and people
say I grow fat and look happy—
It is foolish to teize you about my anxieties, you will
feel quite enough on the subject yourself, and your little ones are all ill,
and no doubt you are fatigued with nursing,
but I could not help writing to day, to tell you how what I said yesterday has
vext and worried me. Burn both these foolish letters and do not name the
subject of them, because Charles will
either blame me for having written something improper or he will laugh at me
for my foolish fears about nothing.
Though I wish you not to take notice of what I have said,
yet I shall rejoice to see a letter from you, and I hope, when you have half an
hour’s leisure, to see a line from you. We have not heard from Coleridge since he went out of town, but I
dare say you have heard either from him or Mrs.
Clarkson.
I remain my dear friend Yours most affectionately M. Lamb. Friday [August 29].
Note
[For the full understanding of Mary
Lamb’s letter it is necessary to read Coleridge’s Life and his Letters. Coleridge on
his return from abroad reached London August 17, 1806, and took up his quarters with the
Lambs on the following day. He once more joined Stuart, then editing the Courier, but much of his old enthusiasm
had gone. In Mr. Dykes Campbell’s words:—
Almost his first words to Stuart were:
“I am literally afraid, even to cowardice, to ask for any person, or of
any person.” Spite of the friendliest and most unquestioning welcome from
all most dear to him, it was the saddest of home-comings, for the very sympathy held
out with both hands induced only a bitter, hopeless feeling of remorse—a “Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain;— And genius given, and knowledge won in vain;—” of broken promises,—promises to friends and promises to himself; and above all,
sense of a will paralysed—dead perhaps, killed by his own hand.
Coleridge remained at
Lamb’s at any rate until August 29, afterwards taking rooms
in the Courier office at
348 Strand. Meanwhile his reluctance to meet or communicate with his wife was causing his
friends much concern, none more so than Mary Lamb,
who wrote at least two letters filled with anxious sympathy to Dorothy Wordsworth on the subject, asking for the mediation of Wordsworth or Southey. Her earlier letter is missing.
To quote Mr. Dykes Campbell
again:—
On September 16—just a month after his landing—he wrote his first letter to his wife, to
say that he might be expected at Greta Hall on the 29th.
Before this, Wordsworth had informed Sir George Beaumont that Coleridge “dare not go home, he recoils so much from the
thought of domesticating with Mrs.
Coleridge, with whom, though on many accounts he much respects her, he
is so miserable that he dare not encounter it. What a deplorable thing! I have
written to him to say that if he does not come down immediately I must insist upon
seeing him some-where. If he appoints London I shall go.
I believe if anything good is to be done for him it must be done by me.”
It was this letter of Wordsworth, doubtless,
which drew Coleridge to the North. Dorothy’s letter to Lady Beaumont, written on receipt of the announcement of
Coleridge’s home-coming, goes copiously and minutely
into the reasons for the estrangement between the poet and his wife. Miss
Wordsworth still had hopes of an improvement. “Poor
soul!” she writes, “he had a struggle of many years, striving to
bring Mrs. C. to a change of temper, and something like communion with him in his
enjoyments. He is now, I trust, effectually convinced that he has no power of that
sort,” and may, she thinks, if he will be “reconciled to that
one great want, want of sympathy,” live at home in peace and quiet.
“Mrs. C. has many excellent
properties, as you observe; she is unremitting in her attention as a nurse to her
children, and, indeed, I believe she would have made an excellent wife to many
persons. Coleridge is as little fitted for her as she for him,
and I am truly sorry for her.”
It might perhaps be stated here that the separation was agreed upon in
December. At the end of that month Coleridge visited
the Wordsworths at Coleorton with Hartley, and in a few days began to be “more like
his old self”—in Dorothy
Wordsworth’s phrase.
I append an undated letter, preserved in the
Morrison Collection, which may belong to this period:—]
LETTER 155 MARY LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
DEAR Coleridge—I have read your silly, very silly, letter, and
between laughing and crying I hardly know how to answer it. You are too serious
and too kind a vast deal, for we are not much used to either seriousness or
kindness from our present friends, and therefore your letter has put me into a
greater hurry of spirits that [?than] your pleasant segar did last night, for
believe me your two odd faces amused me much more than the mighty transgression
vexed me. If Charles had not smoked last
night his virtue would not have lasted longer than tonight, and now perhaps
with a little of your good counsel he will refrain. Be not too serious if he
smokes all the time you are with us—a few chearful evenings spent with you
serves to bear up our spirits many a long and weary year—and the very being led
into the crime by your segar that you thought so harmless, will serve for our
amusement many a dreary time when we can get no letter nor hear no tidings of
you.
You must positively must write to Mrs. Coleridge this day, and you must write
here, that I may know you write, or you must come and dictate a letter for me
to write to her. I know all that you would say in defence of not writing and I
allow in full force everything that [you] can say or think, but yet a letter
from me or you shall go today.
I wanted to tell you, but feared to begin the subject, how
well your children are, how Pypos
thrives and what a nice child Sara is,
and above all I hear such favorable accounts from Southey, from Wordsworth
and Hazlitt, of Hartley.
I have got Wordsworth’s letters out for you to look at, but you
shall not see them or talk of them without you like—Only come here as soon as
you receive this, and I will not teize you about writing, but will manage a few
lines, Charles and I between us. But
something like a letter shall go today.
Come directly Yours affectionately, M. Lamb.
LETTER 156 MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[p.m. October 23, 1806.]
MY dear Sarah—I thank you a thousand times for the beautiful work you have
sent me, I received the parcel from a strange gentleman yesterday. I like the
patterns very much, you have quite set me up in finery, but you should have
sent the silk handkerchief too. Will you make a parcel of that and send it by
the Salisbury coach—I should like to have it in a few days because we have not
yet been to Mr. Babbs and that handkerchief would suit
this time of year nicely.
I have received a long letter from your brother on the subject of your intended
marriage. I have no doubt but you also have one on this business, therefore it
is needless to repeat what he says. I am well pleased to find that upon the
whole he does not seem to see it in an unfavorable light. He says that, if
Mr. D. is a worthy man he shall have no objection to
become the brother of a farmer, and he makes an odd request to me that I shall
set out to Salisbury to look at and examine into the merits of the said
Mr. D., and speaks very confidently as if you would
abide by my determination. A pretty sort of an office truly.—Shall I come?
The objections he starts are only such as you and I have
already talked over, such as the difference in age, education, habits of life,
&c.
You have gone too far in this affair for any interference
to be at all desirable, and if you had not, I really do not know what my wishes
would be. When you bring Mr. Dowling at Christmas I
suppose it will be quite time enough for me to sit in judgement upon him, but
my examination will not be a
very severe one. If you fancy a very young man, and he likes an elderly
gentlewoman; if he likes a earned and accomplished lady, and you like a not
very learned youth, who may need a little polishing, which probably he will
never acquire; it is all very well, and God bless you both together and may you
be both very long in the same mind.
I am to assist you too, your brother says, in drawing up
the marriage settlements—another thankful office! I am not, it seems, to suffer
you to keep too much money in your own power, and yet I am to take care of you
in case of bankruptcy &c., and I am to recommend to you, for the better
management of this point, the serious perusal of Jeremy Taylor his opinion on the
marriage state, especially his advice against separate
interests in that happy state, and I am also to tell you how desirable
it is that the husband should have the intire direction of all money concerns,
except, as your good brother adds, in the case of his own family, where the
money, he observes, is very properly deposited in Mrs. Stoddart’s hands, she being better suited to enjoy
such a trust than any other woman, and therefore it is fit that the general
rule should not be extended to her.
We will talk over these things when you come to town, and
as to settlements, which are matters of which, I never having had a penny in my
own disposal, I never in my life thought of—and if I had been blessed with a
good fortune, and that marvellous blessing to boot, a husband, I verily believe
I should have crammed it all uncounted into his pocket—But thou hast a cooler
head of thy own, and I dare say will do exactly what is expedient and proper,
but your brother’s opinion seems somewhat like Mr.
Barwis’s and I dare say you will take it into due
consideration, yet perhaps an offer of your own money to take a farm may make
uncle do less for his nephew, and in that case Mr. D.
might be a loser by your generosity. Weigh all these things well, and if you
can so contrive it, let your brother settle the settlements himself when he
returns, which will most probably be long before you want them.
You are settled, it seems, in the very house which your
brother most dislikes. If you find
this house very inconvenient, get out of it as fast as you can, for your
brother says he sent you the fifty pound to make you comfortable, and by the
general tone of his letter I am sure he wishes to make you easy in money
matters: therefore why straiten yourself to pay the debt you owe him, which I
am well assured he never means to take? Thank you for the letter and for the
picture of pretty little chubby nephew John.
I have been busy making waistcoats and plotting new work to
succeed the Tales. As yet I
have not hit upon any thing to my mind.
Charles took an emendated copy of his
farce to Mr. Wroughton the Manager yesterday.
Mr. Wroughton was very friendly to him, and expressed
high approbation of the farce, but there are two, he tells him, to come out
before it, yet he gave him hopes that it will come out this season, but I am
afraid you will not see it by Christmas. It will do for another jaunt for you
in the spring. We are pretty well and in fresh spirits about this farce.
Charles has been very good lately in the matter of Smoking.
When you come bring the gown you wish to sell. Mrs. Coleridge will be in town then, and if
she happens not to fancy it, perhaps some other person may.
Coleridge I believe is gone home; he
left us with that design but we have not heard from him this fortnight.
Louisa sends her love; she has been very
unwell lately.
My respects to Coridon, Mother, and
Aunty.
Farewel, my best wishes are with you.
Yours affectionately, M. Lamb. Thursday.
When I saw what a prodigious quantity of work you had
put into the finery I was quite ashamed of my unreasonable request, I will
never serve you so again, but I do dearly love worked muslin.
Note
[Sarah Stoddart now has a new
lover, Mr. Dowling, to whom she seems actually to have become engaged.
Mr. Barwis, I presume, was Mr. Dowling’s uncle.
Coridon would, I imagine, be Mr. Dowling.]
LETTER 157 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
5th Dec. 1806.
Tuthill is at Crabtree’s who has married
Tuthill’s sister.
MANNING, your letter dated Hottentots, August the
what-was-it? came to hand. I can scarce hope that mine will have the same luck.
China—Canton—bless us—how it strains the imagination and makes it ache! I write
under another uncertainty, whether it can go to-morrow by a ship which I have
just learned is going off direct to your part of the world, or whether the
despatches may not be sealed up and this have to wait, for if it is detained
here, it will grow staler in a fortnight than in a five months’ voyage
coming to you. It will be a point of conscience to send you none but bran-new
news (the latest edition), which will but grow the better, like oranges, for a
sea voyage. Oh, that you should be so many hemispheres off—if I speak
incorrectly you can correct me—why, the simplest death or marriage that takes
place here must be important to you as news in the old Bastile. There’s
your friend Tuthill has got away from
France—you remember France? and Tuthill?—ten-to-one but he
writes by this post, if he don’t get my note in time, apprising him of
the vessel sailing. Know then that he has found means to obtain leave from
Bonaparte without making use of any
incredible romantic pretences as some have done, who never meant to fulfil
them, to come home; and I have seen him here and at Holcroft’s.1 An’t you glad
about Tuthill? Now then be sorry for
Holcroft, whose new play, called “The Vindictive Man,”
was damned about a fortnight since. It died in part of its own weakness, and in
part for being choked up with bad actors. The two principal parts were destined
to Mrs. Jordan and Mr. Bannister, but Mrs.
J. has not come to terms with the managers, they have had some
squabble, and Bannister shot some of his fingers off by
the going off of a gun. So Miss Duncan
had her part, and Mr. de Camp1 took his.1 His part, the
principal comic hope of the play, was most unluckily Goldfinch, taken out of the “Road to Ruin,” not only the same
character, but the identical Goldfinch—the
same as Falstaff is in two plays of
Shakspeare. As the devil of ill-luck
would have it, half the audience did not know that H. had
written it, but were displeased at his stealing from the “Road to Ruin;” and those who might have borne a
gentlemanly coxcomb with his “That’s your sort,” “Go
it”—such as Lewis is—did not
relish the intolerable vulgarity and inanity of the idea stript of his manner.
De Camp was hooted, more than hist, hooted and
bellowed off the stage before the second act was finished, so that the
remainder of his part was forced to be, with some violence to the play,
omitted. In addition to this, a whore was another principal character—a most
unfortunate choice in this moral day. The audience were as scandalised as if
you were to introduce such a personage to their private tea-tables. Besides,
her action in the play was gross—wheedling an old man into marriage. But the
mortal blunder of the play was that which, oddly enough,
H. took pride in, and exultingly told me of the night
before it came out, that there were no less than eleven principal characters in
it, and I believe he meant of the men only, for the play-bill exprest as much,
not reckoning one woman and one whore; and true it was, for Mr.
Powell, Mr. Raymond,
Mr. Bartlett, Mr. H. Siddons, Mr. Barrymore, &c. &c.,—to the number
1 [See Appendix II., page 970.]
of eleven, had all parts equally prominent, and
there was as much of them in quantity and rank as of the hero and heroine—and
most of them gentlemen who seldom appear but as the hero’s friend in a
farce—for a minute or two—and here they all had their ten-minute speeches, and
one of them gave the audience a serious account how he was now a lawyer but had
been a poet, and then a long enumeration of the inconveniences of authorship,
rascally booksellers, reviewers, &c.; which first set the audience
a-gaping; but I have said enough. You will be so sorry, that you will not think
the best of me for my detail; but news is news at Canton. Poor
H. I fear will feel the disappointment very seriously
in a pecuniary light. From what I can learn he has saved nothing. You and I
were hoping one day that he had; but I fear he has nothing but his pictures and
books, and a no very flourishing business, and to be obliged to part with his
long-necked Guido that hangs opposite as
you enter, and the game-piece that hangs in the back drawing-room, and all
those Vandykes, &c.! God should
temper the wind to the shorn connoisseur. I hope I need not say to you, that I
feel for the weather-beaten author and for all his household. I assure you his
fate has soured a good deal the pleasure I should have otherwise taken in my
own little farce being accepted,
and I hope about to be acted—it is in rehearsal actually, and I expect it to
come out next week. It is kept a sort of secret, and the rehearsals have gone
on privately, lest by many folks knowing it, the story should come out, which
would infallibly damn it. You remember I had sent it before you went. Wroughton read it, and was much pleased with
it. I speedily got an answer. I took it to make alterations, and lazily kept it
some months, then took courage and furbished it up in a day or two and took it.
In less than a fortnight I heard the principal part was given to Elliston, who liked it, and only wanted a
prologue, which I have since done and sent; and I had a note the day before
yesterday from the manager, Wroughton (bless his fat
face—he is not a bad actor in some things), to say that I should be summoned to
the rehearsal after the next, which next was to be yesterday. I had no idea it
was so forward. I have had no trouble, attended no reading or rehearsal, made
no interest; what a contrast to the usual parade of authors! But it is peculiar
to modesty to do all things without noise or pomp! I have some suspicion it
will appear in public on Wednesday next, for W. says in
his note, it is so forward that if wanted it may come out next week, and a new
melo-drama is announced for every day till then: and “a new farce is
in rehearsal,” is put up in the bills. Now you’d like to
know the subject. The title is “Mr. H.,”
no more; how simple, how taking! A great H. sprawling over the play-bill and
attracting eyes at
every comer. The story is a coxcomb appearing at Bath, vastly rich—all the
ladies dying for him—all bursting to know who he is—but he goes by no other
name than Mr. H.—a curiosity like that of
the dames of Strasburg about the man with the great nose. But I won’t
tell you any more about it. Yes, I will; but I can’t give you an idea how
I have done it. I’ll just tell you that after much vehement admiration,
when his true name comes out, “Hogsflesh,” all the women shun him,
avoid him, and not one can be found to change their name for him—that’s
the idea—how flat it is here!—but how whimsical in the farce! and only think
how hard upon me it is that the ship is despatched to-morrow, and my triumph
cannot be ascertained till the Wednesday after—but all China will ring of it by
and by. N.B. (But this is a secret). The Professor has got a tragedy coming out with the young Roscius in it in January next, as we
say—January last it will be with you—and though it is a profound secret now, as
all his affairs are, it cannot be much of one by the time you read this.
However, don’t let it go any further. I understand there are dramatic
exhibitions in China. One would not like to be forestalled. Do you find in all
this stuff I have written anything like those feelings which one should send my
old adventuring friend, that is gone to wander among Tartars and may never come
again? I don’t—but your going away, and all about you, is a threadbare
topic. I have worn it out with thinking—it has come to me when I have been dull
with anything, till my sadness has seemed more to have come from it than to
have introduced it. I want you, you don’t know how much—but if I had you
here in my European garret, we should but talk over such stuff as I have
written—so—. Those “Tales from
Shakespear” are near coming out, and Mary has begun a new work. Mr. Dawe is turned author: he has been in such
a way lately—Dawe the painter, I mean—he sits and stands
about at Holcroft’s and says nothing—then sighs and
leans his head on his hand. I took him to be in love—but it seems he was only
meditating a work,—“The Life
of Morland,”—the young man is not used to composition.
Rickman and Captain Burney are well; they assemble at my
house pretty regularly of a Wednesday—a new institution. Like other great men f
have a public day, cribbage and pipes, with Phillips and noisy Martin.
Good Heaven! what a bit only I’ve got left! How shall
I squeeze all I know into this morsel! Coleridge is come home, and is going to turn lecturer on taste
at the Royal Institution. I shall get £200 from the theatre if “Mr. H.” has a good run, and
I hope £100 for the copyright. Nothing if it fails; and there never was a more
ticklish thing. The whole depends on the manner in which the name is brought
out, which I value myself on, as a chef-d’oeuvre.
How the paper grows less and less! In less
than two minutes I shall cease to talk to you, and you may rave to the Great
Wall of China. N.B. Is there such a wall! Is it as big as Old London Wall by
Bedlam? Have you met with a friend of mine, named Ball, at Canton?—if you are acquainted, remember me kindly to
him.1 May-be, you’ll think I have not said
enough of Tuthill and the Holcrofts. Tuthill is a
noble fellow, as far as I can judge. The Holcrofts bear
their disappointment pretty well, but indeed they are sadly mortified.
Mrs. H. is cast down. It was well,
if it were but on this account, that Tuthill is come home.
N.B. If my little thing don’t succeed, I shall easily survive, having, as
it were, compared to H.’s venture, but a sixteenth
in the lottery. Mary and I are to sit
next the orchestra in the pit, next the tweedledees. She remembers you. You are
more to us than five hundred farces, clappings, &c.
Come back one day.
C. Lamb.
Note
[The letter is addressed to T. Manning,
Esq., Canton. At the end Lamb adds:—
“Holcroft has just writ to
me as follows:—
“‘Dear Sir, Miss
L. has informed us you are writing to Manning. Will you be kind enough to inform him directly from me that I
and my family are most truly anxious for his safety; that if praying could bring down
blessings on him we should pray morning noon and night; that his and our good friends
the Tuthills are once more happily safe in
England, and that I earnestly entreat not only a single letter but a correspondence
with him whenever the thing [is] practicable, with such an address as may make letters
from me likely to find him. In short, dear sir, if you will be kind enough to speak of
me to Manning, you cannot speak with greater friendship and
respect than I feel.
“‘Yours with true friendship and
kindness.’”
In the beginning of this letter we see the first germ of an idea
afterwards developed in the letter to Barron Field
of August 31, 1817 (see page 500), and again, more fully, in the Elia essay “Distant Correspondents.”
Tuthill, afterwards Sir George Leman
Tuthill (1772-1835), was the physician, who, on a visit to Paris, was
included among the English détenus and held a
captive for several years. He was released only after his wife had made a personal appeal
to Napoleon on his return from hunting. The words
“incredible romantic pretences” refer chaffingly to Manning’s application to
Napoleon for liberty to return to England two or three years
previously.
1 [See Appendix II., page 970.]
Holcroft’s “Vindictive Man” was produced at Drury Lane on
November 20, 1806. It was a complete failure. His “Road to Ruin,” produced in 1792 at Covent Garden,
with “Gentleman” Lewis as Goldfinch, had been a great success and is still occasionally
played. Holcroft was also a very voluminous author and translator, and
the partner of his brother-in-law, Mercier, in a
printing business, which, however, was unprofitable.
“The dames of Strasburg”—in Tristram, Shandy, Vol. IV.
“The Professor has a tragedy.” This was “Faulkener,” for which Lamb wrote the prologue (see Letters Nos. 89 and 90, pages
225 and 228, and Vol. V., page 123). Owing to the capriciousness of Master Betty, the Young Roscius, it
was not produced until December 16, 1807, and then with Elliston in the principal part. It was only partially successful, a result
for which Godwin blamed Holcroft, who had revised the play.
Mary Lamb’s new work was Mrs. Leicester’s
School.
“Mr. Dawe is turned author.”
The Life of George
Morland, by George Dawe, was
published in 1807.
Coleridge’s intended series of lectures on
Taste was abandoned. He did not actually deliver any until January 12, 1808.]
LETTER 158 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: December 11, 1806.]
Mary’s Love to all of you—I
wouldn’t let her write—
DEAR Wordsworth, Mr.
H. came out last night and failed. I had many fears; the subject was
not substantial enough. John Bull must have
solider fare than a Letter. We are pretty stout about it, have had plenty of
condoling friends, but after all, we had rather it should have succeeded. You
will see the Prologue in most of the Morning Papers. It was received with such
shouts as I never witness’d to a Prologue. It was attempted to be
encored. How hard! a thing I did merely as a task, because it was wanted—and
set no great store by; and Mr. H.!!
The quantity of friends we had in the house, my brother and
I being in Public Offices &c., was astonishing—but they yielded at length
to a few hisses. A hundred hisses—damn the word, I write it like kisses—how
different—a hundred hisses outweigh a 1000 Claps. The former come more directly
from the Heart—Well, ’tis withdrawn and there is an end.
Better Luck to us——
C. L. 11 Dec.—(turn over).
P.S. Pray when any of you write to the Clarksons, give our kind Loves, and say we
shall not be able to come and see them at Xmas—as I shall have but a day or
two,—and tell them we bear our mortification pretty well.
Note
[“Mr. H.” was
produced at Drury Lane on December 10, with Elliston
in the title-rôle. Lamb’s account of the
evening is supplemented by Hazlitt in his essay
“On Great and Little
Things” and by Crabb Robinson, a new
friend whom he had just made, in his Diary. See Vol. V. of this edition, pages 180 and 368.
The curious thing is that the management of Drury Lane advertised the farce as a success
and announced it for the next night. But Lamb apparently interfered
and it was not played again. Some few years later “Mr.
H.” was performed acceptably in America.]
LETTER 159 CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
December 11 [1806].
Don’t mind this being a queer letter. I am in haste,
and taken up by visitors, condolers, &c. God bless you!
DEAR Sarah,—Mary is a little
cut at the ill success of “Mr.
H.,” which came out last night and failed. I know you’ll
be sorry, but never mind. We are determined not to be cast down. I am going to
leave off tobacco, and then we must thrive. A smoking man must write smoky
farces.
Mary is pretty well, but I persuaded her
to let me write. We did not apprise you of the coming out of “Mr. H.” for fear of
ill-luck. You were much better out of the house. If it had taken, your
partaking of our good luck would have been one of our greatest joys. As it is,
we shall expect you at the time you mentioned. But whenever you come you shall
be most welcome. God bless you, dear Sarah,
Yours most truly, C. L.
Mary is by no means unwell, but I
made her let me write.
Note
[Following this should come a letter from Mary Lamb to Mrs. Thomas Clarkson,
dated December 23, 1806, not available for this edition. It also describes the ill success of “Mr. H.” “The blame rested
chiefly with Charles and yet it should not be
called blame for it was mere ignorance of stage effect . . . he seems perfectly aware
why and for what cause it failed. He intends to write one more with all his dearly
bought experience in his head, and should that share same fate he will then turn his
mind to some other pursuit.” Lamb did not write another
farce for many years. When he did—“The
Pawnbroker’s Daughter” (see Vol. V. of this edition, page 212)—it
deservedly was not acted.]
LETTER 160 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
[No date. ? 1806.]
I REPENT. Can that God whom thy votaries say that
thou hast demolished expect more? I did indite a splenetic letter, but did the
black Hypocondria never gripe thy heart, till thou hast
taken a friend for an enemy? The foul fiend Flibbertigibbet leads me over four
inched bridges, to course my own shadow for a traitor. There are certain
positions of the moon, under which I counsel thee not to take anything written
from this domicile as serious.
I rank thee with Alves, Latinè
Helvetius, or any of his cursed
crew? Thou art my friend, and henceforth my philosopher—thou shalt teach
Distinction to the junior branches of my household, and Deception to the
greyhaired Janitress at my door.
What! Are these atonements? Can Arcadians be brought upon
knees, creeping and crouching?
Come, as Macbeth’s drunken porter says, knock, knock, knock,
knock, knock, knock, knock—seven times in a day shalt thou batter at my peace,
and if I shut aught against thee, save the Temple of Janus, may Briareus, with
his hundred hands, in each a brass knocker, lead me such a life.
C. Lamb.
Note
[I cannot account for this letter in the absence of its predecessor and
that from Godwin to which it replies.
“The foul fiend Flibbertigibbet.” See “King Lear,” III., 4, 120.
“Helvetius”—Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771), author of De L’Esprit,
which was condemned by the Sorbonne.
“Macbeth’s drunken
porter.” See “Macbeth,” II., 3.
“Batter at my peace.” The tyrant has not battered at their peace. “Macbeth,” IV., 3, 178.
“Temple of Janus.” The doors of the temple were closed during peace and opened
in war time.]
LETTER 161 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: January 29, 1807.]
DEAR Wordsworth—We have book’d off from Swan and Two Necks,
Lad Lane, this day (per Coach) the Tales from Shakespear. You will forgive the plates, when I tell you
they were left to the direction of Godwin, who left the choice of subjects to the bad baby, who from mischief (I suppose) has
chosen one from damn’d beastly vulgarity (vide Merch. Venice) where no atom of authority
was in the tale to justify it—to another has given a name which exists not in
the tale, Nic Bottom, and which she thought
would be funny, though in this I suspect his hand, for I
guess her reading does not reach far enough to know Bottom’s Xtian name—and one of Hamlet, and Grave digging, a scene which is not hinted at in
the story, and you might as well have put King Canute
the Great reproving his courtiers—the rest are Giants and
Giantesses. Suffice it, to save our taste and damn our folly, that we left it
all to a friend W. G.—who in the first place cheated me
into putting a name to them, which I did not mean, but do not repent, and then
wrote a puff about their simplicity, &c., to go with the advertisement as
in my name! Enough of this egregious dupery.—I will try to abstract the load of
teazing circumstances from the Stories and tell you that I am answerable for
Lear, Macbeth, Timon, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, for occasionally a tail piece or
correction of grammar, for none of the cuts and all of the spelling. The rest
is my Sister’s.—We think Pericles of hers the best,
and Othello of mine—but I hope all have some good. As
You Like It we like least.
So much, only begging you to tear out the cuts and give them
to Johnny, as “Mrs. Godwin’s fancy.”
C. L. Thursday, 29 Jan., 1807.
Our Love to all.
I had almost forgot,
My part of the Preface begins in the middle of a
sentence, in last but one page after a colon thus :—which if they be happily so done
&c. the former part hath a more feminine turn and does hold me up
something as an instructor to young Ladies: but upon my modesty’s
honour I wrote it not.
Godwin told My Sister that the
Baby chose the Subjects. A fact
in Taste.
Note
[Lamb has run his pen lightly
through “God bless me,” at the beginning of the postscript.
The plates to the Tales from
Shakespear will be found reproduced in facsimile in Vol. III. of the present
edition. They were designed probably by Mulready.
An interval of nine months occurs before we come to another letter of the
date of which we can be certain. Of what happened in this time we know little or nothing,
but I think it probable that the following hitherto unpublished letter from Charles Lamb to the Clarksons explains part of the long silence. The postmark gives no year,
but it must be either 1807 or 1808, and since the Dramatic Specimens herein
referred to as in preparation were published in 1808, we may confidently assume it to be
1807. The letter tells its own story only too clearly: the Lambs had
been on a visit to the Clarksons at Bury St. Edmunds; Mary Lamb had again fallen ill while there; and her brother
had just left her once more at her Hoxton Asylum:—]
LETTER 162 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS AND CATHERINE
CLARKSON
[p.m. June (1807).]
DEAR Mr.
& Mrs. Clarkson, you will wish to
know how we performed our journey. My sister was tolerably quiet until we got to Chelmsford, where
she began to be very bad indeed, as your friends William Knight and his family can tell you when you see them.
What I should have done without their kindness I don’t know, but among
other acts of great attention, they provided me with a waistcoat to confine her
arms, by the help of which we went through the rest of our journey. But sadly
tired and miserably depressed she was before we
arrived at Hoxton. We got there about half past eight; and now ’tis all
over, I have great satisfaction that she is among people who have been used to
her. In all probability a few months or even weeks will restore her (her last
illness confined her ten weeks) but if she does recover I shall be very careful
how I take her so far from home again. I am so fatigued, for she talked in the
most wretched desponding way conceivable, particularly the last three stages,
she talked all the way,—so that you won’t expect me to say much, or even
to express myself as I should do in thanks for your kindnesses. My sister will
acknowlege them when she can.—
I shall not have heard how she is to day until too late for
the Post, but if any great change takes place for better or worse, I shall
certainly let you know.
She tells me something about having given away one of my
coats to your servant. It is a new one, and perhaps may be of small use to him.
If you can get it me again, I shall very willingly give him a compensation. I
shall also be much obliged by your sending in a parcel all the manuscripts,
books &c. she left behind. I want in particular the Dramatic Extracts, as my purpose is to
make use of the remainder of my holydays in completing them at the British
Museum, which will be employment & money in the end.
I am exceedingly harrassed with the journey, but that will
go off in a day or two, and I will set to work. I know you will grieve for us,
but I hope my sister’s illness is not worse than many she has got through
before. Only I am afraid the fatigue of the journey may affect her general
health. You shall have notice how she goes on. In the mean time, accept our
kindest thanks.
[Signature cut off.]
LETTER 163 MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[No date. Endorsed Oct, 1807.]
MY dear Sarah,—I am two letters in your debt; but it has not been so much
from idleness, as a wish first to see how your comical love affair would turn
out. You know, I make a pretence not to interfere; but like all old maids I
feel a mighty solicitude about the event of love stories. I learn from the
Lover that he has not been so remiss in his duty as you supposed. His Effusion,
and your complaints of his inconstancy, crossed each other on the road. He
tells me his was a very strange letter, and that probably it has affronted you. That it was a
strange letter I can readily believe; but that you were affronted by a strange
letter is not so easy for me to conceive, that not being your way of taking
things. But however it be, let some answer come, either to him, or else to me,
showing cause why you do not answer him. And pray, by all means, preserve the
said letter, that I may one day have the pleasure of seeing how Mr. Hazlitt treats of love.
I was at your brother’s on Thursday. Mrs.
S. tells me she has not written, because she does not like to
put you to the expense of postage. They are very well. Little Missy thrives
amazingly. Mrs. Stoddart conjectures she is in the family
way again; and those kind of conjectures generally prove too true. Your other
sister-in-law, Mrs. Hazlitt, was brought to bed last week
of a boy: so that you are likely to have plenty of nephews and nieces.
Yesterday evening we were at Rickman’s; and who should we find there but Hazlitt; though, if you do not know it was his
first invitation there, it will not surprise you as much as it did us. We were
very much pleased, because we dearly love our friends to be respected by our
friends.
The most remarkable events of the evening were, that we had
a very fine pine-apple; that Mr.
Phillips, Mr. Lamb, and
Mr. Hazlitt played at Cribbage in
the most polite and gentlemanly manner possible—and that I won two rubbers at
whist.
I am glad Aunty left you some business to do. Our
compliments to her and your Mother. Is
it as cold at Winterslow as it is here? How do the Lions go on? I am better,
and Charles is tolerably well. Godwin’s new Tragedy will probably be damned the
latter end of next week. Charles has written the Prologue.
Prologues and Epilogues will be his death. If you know the extent of Mrs. Reynolds’ poverty, you will be glad
to hear Mr. Norris has got ten pounds a
year for her from the Temple Society. She will be able to make out pretty well
now.
Farewell—Determine as wisely as you can in regard to
Hazlitt; and, if your determination
is to have him, Heaven send you many happy years together. If I am not
mistaken, I have concluded letters on the Corydon
Courtship with this same wish. I hope it is not ominous of change; for if I
were sure you would not be quite starved to death, nor beaten to a mummy, I
should like to see Hazlitt and you come together, if (as
Charles observes) it were only for
the joke sake.
Write instantly to me.
Yours most affectionately, M. Lamb. Saturday morning.
Note
[The reference to Godwin’s
tragedy, “Faulkener,”
which was produced on December 16, 1807, would indicate a later date, except that that play
was so frequently postponed.
The Lover this time is, at last, William
Hazlitt. Miss Stoddart was not his
first love; some time before he had wished to many a Miss Railton of
Liverpool; then, in the Lakes, he had had passages with a farmer’s daughter involving
a ducking at the hands of jealous rivals; while De
Quincey would have us believe that Hazlitt proposed to
Dorothy Wordsworth. But it was Sarah
Stoddart whom he was destined to marry. A specimen of
Hazlitt’s love letters (which Mary Lamb wished to see) will
be found in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’sMemoirs of William
Hazlitt, Vol. I., page 153. The marriage turned out anything but a
joke.
Mrs. Reynolds’ poverty was in later years
further relieved by an annuity of £30 from Charles
Lamb.]
LETTER 164 MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
Dec. 21, 1807.
MY dear Sarah,—I have deferred answering your last letter, in hopes of
being able to give you some intelligence that might be useful to you; for I
every day expected that Hazlitt or you
would communicate the affair to your brother; but, as the Doctor is silent upon the subject, I
conclude he yet knows nothing of the matter. You desire my advice; and
therefore I tell you I think you ought to tell your brother as soon as
possible; for, at present, he is on very friendly visiting terms with
Hazlitt, and, if he is not offended by a too long
concealment, will do every thing in his power to serve you. If you chuse that I
should tell him, I will; but I think it would come better from you. If you can
persuade Hazlitt to mention it, that would be still
better; for I know your brother would be unwilling to give credit to you,
because you deceived yourself in regard to Corydon.
Hazlitt, I know, is shy of speaking first; but I think
it of such great importance to you to have your brother friendly in the
business, that, if you can overcome his reluctance, it would be a great point
gained. For you must begin the world with ready money—at least an hundred
pound; for, if you once go into furnished lodgings, you will never be able to
lay by money to buy furniture.
If you obtain your brother’s approbation, he might
assist you, either by lending or otherwise. I have a great opinion of his
generosity, where he thinks it would be useful.
Hazlitt’s brother is mightily
pleased with the match; but he says you must have furniture, and be clear in
the world at first setting out, or you will be always behindhand. He also said
he would give you what furniture he could spare. I am afraid you can bring but
few things away from your house. What a pity that you have laid out so much
money on your cottage!—that money would have just done. I most heartily
congratulate you on having so well got over your first difficulties; and, now
that it is quite settled, let us have no more fears. I now mean not only to
hope and wish, but to persuade myself, that you will be very happy together.
Endeavour to keep your mind as easy as you can. You ought to
begin the world with a good stock of health and spirits: it is quite as
necessary as ready money at first setting out. Do not teize yourself about
coming to town. When your brother learns how things are going on, we shall
consult him about meetings and so forth; but, at present, any hasty step of
that kind would not answer, I know. If Hazlitt were to go down to Salisbury, or you were to come up
here, without consulting your brother, you know it would never do.
Charles is just come in to dinner; he
desires his love and best wishes.
Yours affectionately, M. Lamb. Monday morning.
Note
[Letter No. 165 shows that when Dr.
Stoddart was at length told of the engagement he resented it.
We now come to two curious letters from Charles Lamb to Joseph Hume, not
available for this edition, which are printed by Mr. W. C.
Hazlitt in Lamb
and Hazlitt. The first, dated December 29, 1807, contains the beginning
of an elaborate hoax maintained by Lamb and Hume
(who was Joseph Hume, a clerk in the Victualling Office at Somerset
House, and the author of a translation of
Tasso), in which Hazlitt, although the victim, played his
part. Lamb asserts that Hazlitt has cut his
throat. He also incidentally regrets that he cannot accept an invitation to dine with
Hume: “Cold bones of mutton and leather-roasted potatoes
at Pimlico at ten must carry it away from a certain Turkey and contingent plumb-pudding
at Montpelier at four (I always spell plumb-pudding with a b,
p-l-u-m-b—) I think it reads fatter and more
suetty.”
In reply to this letter came one from Hume, dated January 11, 1808, referring to a humble petition and
remonstrance by Hazlitt, dated January 10, 1808, showing that he is not dead. The petition will be
found in full in Lamb and
Hazlitt. It ends thus:—
With all the sincerity of a man doubtful between life and death, the petitioner declares
that he looks upon the said Charles Lamb as the
ring-leader in this unjust conspiracy against him, and as the sole cause and author of
the jeopardy he is in: but that as losers have leave to speak, he must say, that, if it
were not for a poem he wrote on
Tobacco about two years ago, a farce called Mr. H he brought out last winter with more wit than
discretion in it, some prologues and epilogues he has since written with good success,
and some lively notes he is at present writing on dead authors, he sees no reason why
he should not be considered as much a dead man as himself, and the undertaker spoken to
accordingly.
The next letter, dated January 12, 1808, carrying on the joke, consists
of speculations as to Hazlitt’s reappearance.
Lamb remarks that the commonest reason for the
return of the spirits of the dead is the desire to reveal hidden treasures which they had
hoarded in their lifetime. He destroys this theory in the case of
Hazlitt in the following passage:—
“I for my part always looked upon our dear friend as a man rich
rather in the gifts of his mind than in earthly treasures. He had few rents or comings
in, that I was ever aware of, small (if any) landed property, and by all that I could
witness he subsisted more upon the well-timed contributions of a few chosen friends who
knew his worth, than upon any Estate which could properly be called his own. I myself
have contributed my part. God knows, I speak not this in reproach. I have never taken,
nor indeed did the Deceased offer, any written acknowledgments
of the various sums which he has had of me, by which I could make the fact manifest to
the legal eye of an Executor or Administrator. He was not a Man to affect these
niceties in his transactions with his friends. He would often say, Money was nothing
between intimate acquaintances, that Golden Streams had no Ebb, that a Purse mouth
never regorged, that God loved a chearful giver but the Devil hated a free taker, that
a paid Loan makes angels groan, with many such like sayings: he had always free and
generous notions about money. His nearest friends know this best.”
Continuing the subject of the return of spirits, Lamb decides that it must be with the wish to establish
some speculative point in religion. “But whatever the cause of this re-appearance
may prove to be, we may now with truth assert that our deceased friend as attained to
one object of his pursuits, one hour’s separate existence gives a dead man
clearer notions of metaphysics than all the treatises which in his state of casual
entanglement the least immersed spirit can out-spin. It is good to leave such subjects
to that period when we shall have no Heads to ache, no brains to distort, no faces to
lengthen, no clothes to neglect.”]
LETTER 165 MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[p.m. February 12, 1808.]
MY dear Sarah,—I have sent your letter and drawing off to Wem (Hazlitt’s father’s), in
Shropshire, where I conjecture Hazlitt
is. He left town on Saturday afternoon, without telling us where he was going.
He seemed very impatient at not hearing from you. He was very ill and I suppose
is gone home to his father’s to be nursed.
I find Hazlitt has
mentioned to you an intention which we had of asking you up to town, which we
were bent on doing, but, having named it since to your brother, the Doctor expressed a strong desire that you
should not come to town to be at any other house than his own, for he said that
it would have a very strange appearance. His wife’s father is coming to be with them till near the end
of April, after which time he shall have full room for you. And if you are to
be married, he wishes that you should be married with all the proper decorums,
from his house. Now though we should be most willing
to run any hazards of disobliging him, if there were no other means of your and
Hazlitt’s meeting, yet as he seems so friendly
to the match, it would not be worth while to alienate him from you and
ourselves too, for the slight accommodation which the difference of a few weeks
would make, provided always, and be it understood, that if you and
H. make up your minds to be married before the time in
which you can be at your brother’s, our house stands open and most ready
at a moment’s notice to receive you. Only we would not quarrel
unnecessarily with your brother. Let there be a clear necessity shewn, and we
will quarrel with any body’s brother. Now though I have written to the
above effect, I hope you will not conceive, but, that both my brother and I had
looked forward to your coming with unmixed pleasure, and are really
disappointed at your brother’s declaration, for next to the pleasure of
being married, is the pleasure of making, or helping marriages forward.
We wish to hear from you, that you do not take our seeming
change of purpose in ill part, for it is but seeming on our part; for it was my
brother’s suggestion, by him first mentioned to Hazlitt, and cordially approved by me; but
your brother has set his face against it, and it is better to take him along
with us, in our plans, if he will good-naturedly go along with us, than not.
The reason I have not written lately has been that I thought
it better to leave you all to the workings of your own minds in this momentous affair, in which the inclinations of a
bye-stander have a right to form a wish, but not to give a vote.
Being, with the help of wide lines, at the end of my last
page, I conclude with our kind wishes, and prayers for the best.
Yours affectionately, M. Lamb.
H.’s direction is (if he is
there) at Wem in Shropshire. I suppose as letters must come to London
first, you had better inclose them, while he is there, for my brother in
London.
Note
[The drawing referred to, says Mr. W. C.
Hazlitt, was a sketch of Middleton Cottage, Miss
Stoddart’s house at Winterslow (see next letter).]
LETTER 166 CHARLES LAMB TO THE REV. W. HAZLITT
Temple, 18th February, 1808.
SIR,—I am truly concerned that any mistake of mine
should have caused you uneasiness, but I hope we have got a clue to William’s absence, which may clear up
all apprehensions. The people where he lodges in town have received direction
from him to forward one or two of his shirts to a place called Winterslow, in
the county of Hants [Wilts] (not far from Salisbury), where the lady lives
whose Cottage, pictured upon a card, if you opened my letter you have doubtless
seen, and though we have had no explanation of the mystery since, we shrewdly
suspect that at the time of writing that Letter which has given you all this
trouble, a certain son of yours (who is both Painter and Author) was at her
elbow, and did assist in framing that very Cartoon which was sent to amuse and
mislead us in town, as to the real place of his destination.
And some words at the back of the said Cartoon, which we had
not marked so narrowly before, by the similarity of the handwriting to
William’s, do very much
confirm the suspicion. If our theory be right, they have had the pleasure of
their jest, and I am afraid you have paid for it in anxiety. But I hope your
uneasiness will now be removed, and you will pardon a suspense occasioned by
Love, who does so many worse mischiefs every day.
The letter to the people where William lodges says, moreover, that he shall be in town in a
fortnight.
My sister joins in respects to you and Mrs. Hazlitt, and in our kindest remembrances
and wishes for the restoration of Peggy’s health.
I am, Sir, your humble servt.,
Ch. Lamb.
Note
[The Rev. William Hazlitt,
Hazlitt’s father (1737-1820), was a
Unitarian minister at Wem, in Shropshire, the son of an Irish Protestant.
Hazlitt’s mother was Grace
Loftus of Wisbech, a farmer’s daughter.
Sarah Stoddart’s letter containing the drawing
referred to had been sent by the Lambs to William Hazlitt at Wem, whereas Hazlitt, instead of seeking his father’s roof as arranged, had sought
his betrothed’s, and had himself helped in the mystification.
Peggy was Hazlitt’s only sister.]
LETTER 167 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[Dated at end: 26 February, 1808.]
DEAR Missionary,—Your letters from the farthest ends
of the world have arrived safe. Mary is
very thankful for your remembrance of her, and with the less suspicion of
mercenariness, as the silk, the symbolum materiale of
your friendship, has not yet appeared. I think Horace says somewhere, nox
longa. I would not impute negligence or unhandsome
delays to a person whom you have honoured with your confidence; but I have not
heard of the silk, or of Mr. Knox, save by your letter.
Maybe he expects the first advances! or it may be that he has not succeeded in
getting the article on shore, for it is among the res prohibitæ et non nisi smuggle-ationis viâ fruendæ.
But so it is, in the friendships between wicked men, the very expressions of
their good-will cannot but be sinful. Splendida
vitia at best. Stay, while I remember it—Mrs. Holcroft was safely delivered of a girl
some day in last week. Mother and child doing well. Mr. Holcroft has been attack’d with severe rheumatism.
They have moved to Clipstone Street. I suppose you know my farce was damned. The noise still rings in my
ears. Was you ever in the pillory?—being damned is something like that.
Godwin keeps a shop in Skinner
Street, Snow Hill, he is turned children’s bookseller, and sells penny,
twopenny, threepenny, and fourpenny books. Sometimes he gets an order for the
dearer sort of Books. (Mind, all that I tell you in this letter is true.) A
treaty of marriage is on foot between William
Hazlitt and Miss
Stoddart. Something about settlements only retards it. She has
somewhere about £80 a year, to be £120 when her mother dies. He has no
settlement except what he can claim from the Parish. Pauper est Cinna, sed
amat. The thing is therefore in abeyance. But there is love
o’ both sides. Little Fenwick (you
don’t see the connexion of ideas here, how the devil should you?) is in
the rules of the Fleet. Cruel creditors! operation of iniquitous laws! is Magna
Charta then a mockery? Why, in general (here I suppose you to ask a question)
my spirits are pretty good, but I have my depressions, black as a smith’s
beard, Vulcanic, Stygian. At such times I have recourse to a pipe, which is
like not being at home to a dun; he comes again with tenfold bitterness the
next day.—(Mind, I am not in debt, I only borrow a similitude from others; it
shows imagination.) I have done two books since the failure of my farce; they
will both be out this summer. The one is a juvenile book—“The Adventures of
Ulysses,” intended to be an introduction to the reading of Telemachus! It is done out
of the Odyssey, not from the
Greek: I would not mislead you; nor yet from Pope’sOdyssey, but from an older translation of one Chapman. The “Shakespear Tales” suggested the doing
it. Godwin is in both those cases my bookseller. The other
is done for Longman, and is “Specimens of English Dramatic Poets
contemporary with Shakespear.” Specimens are becoming
fashionable. We have—“Specimens of Ancient English Poets,” “Specimens of Modern English
Poets,” “Specimens of Ancient English Prose Writers,” without end.
They used to be called “Beauties.” You have seen “Beauties of
Shakespear?” so have many people that never saw any beauties in
Shakespear.
Longman is to print it, and be at all the expense and
risk; and I am to share the profits after all deductions; i.e. a year or two hence I must pocket what they please to tell me is
due to me. But the book is such as I am glad there should be. It is done out of
old plays at the Museum and out of Dodsley’s collection, &c. It is to have notes. So I go
creeping on since I was lamed with that cursed fall from off the top of
Drury-Lane Theatre into the pit, something more than a year ago. However, I
have been free of the house ever since, and the house was pretty free with me
upon that occasion. Damn ’em, how they hissed! It was not a hiss neither,
but a sort of a frantic yell, like a congregation of mad geese, with roaring
something like bears, mows and mops like apes, sometimes snakes, that
hiss’d me into madness. Twas like St.
Anthony’s temptations. Mercy on us, that God should give
his favourite children, men, mouths to speak with, to discourse rationally, to
promise smoothly, to flatter agreeably, to encourage warmly, to counsel wisely:
to sing with, to drink with, and to kiss with: and that they should turn them into
mouths of adders, bears, wolves, hyenas, and whistle like tempests, and emit
breath through them like distillations of aspic poison, to asperse and vilify
the innocent labours of their fellow-creatures who are desirous to please them!
God be pleased to make the breath stink and the teeth rot out of them all
therefore! Make them a reproach, and all that pass by them to loll out their
tongue at them! Blind mouths! as Milton somewhere calls them. Do you like Braham’s singing? The little Jew has
bewitched me. I follow him like as the boys followed Tom the
Piper. He cured me of melancholy, as David
cured Saul; but I don’t throw stones at him, as
Saul did at David in payment. I
was insensible to music till he gave me a new sense. O, that you could go to
the new opera of “Kais” to-night! ’Tis all about Eastern manners; it would
just suit you. It describes the wild Arabs, wandering Egyptians, lying
dervishes, and all that sort of people, to a hair. You needn’t ha’
gone so far to see what you see, if you saw it as I do every night at
Drury-lane Theatre. Braham’s singing, when it is
impassioned, is finer than Mrs.
Siddons’s or Mr.
Kemble’s acting; and when it is not impassioned, it is as
good as hearing a person of fine sense talking. The brave little Jew! Old
Sergeant Hill is dead. Mrs. Rickman is in the family way. It is
thought that Hazlitt will have children, if he marries
Miss Stoddart. I made a pun the other day, and palmed
it upon Holcroft, who grinned like a Cheshire cat. (Why do
cats grin in Cheshire?—Because it was once a county palatine, and the cats
cannot help laughing whenever they think of it, though I see no great joke in
it.) I said that Holcroft said, being asked who were the
best dramatic writers of the day, “Hook And I.” Mr. Hook is author of several pieces,
“Tekeli,”
&c. You know what hooks and eyes are, don’t you? They are what little
boys do up their breeches with. Your letter had many things in it hard to be
understood: the puns were ready and Swift-like; but don’t you begin to be melancholy in the
midst of Eastern customs! “The mind does not easily conform to foreign
usages, even in trifles: it requires something that it has been familiar
with.” That begins one of Dr.
Hawkesworth’s papers in the “Adventurer,” and is, I think, as sensible
a remark as ever fell from the Doctor’s mouth.1White is at Christ’s Hospital, a
wit of the first magnitude, but had rather be thought a gentleman, like
Congreve. You know
Congreve’s repulse which he gave to Voltaire, when he came to visit him as a literary man, that he wished to be considered only in
the light of a private gentleman. I think the impertinent Frenchman was
properly answered. I should just serve any member of the French institute in
the same manner, that wished to be introduced to me. Bonaparte has
1 [See Appendix II., page 970.]
voted 5,000 livres to Davy, the great young English chemist; but it has not arrived.
Coleridge has delivered two lectures
at the Royal Institution; two more were attended, but he did not come. It is
thought he has gone sick upon them. He a’n’t well, that’s
certain. Wordsworth is coming to see
him. He sits up in a two pair of stairs room at the “Courier” Office, and receives visitors on his
close stool. How is Mr. Ball? He has sent
for a prospectus of the London Library.
Does any one read at Canton? Lord
Moira is President of the Westminster Library. I suppose you
might have interest with Sir Joseph
Banks to get to be president of any similar institution that
should be set up at Canton. I think public reading-rooms the best mode of
educating young men. Solitary reading is apt to give the headache. Besides, who
knows that you do read? There are ten thousand institutions similar to the
Royal Institution, which have sprung up from it. There is the London
Institution, the Southwark Institution, the Russell Square Rooms Institution,
&c.—College quasi Con-lege, a place where people
read together. Wordsworth, the great
poet, is coining to town; he is to have apartments in the Mansion House. He
says he does not see much difficulty in writing like Shakspeare, if he had a mind to try it. It is
clear then nothing is wanting but the mind. Even Coleridge a little checked at this hardihood of assertion.
Jones of Trinity, I suppose you know
he is dead. Dyer came to me the other
evening at 11 o’clock, when there was a large room full of company, which
I usually get together on a Wednesday evening (all great men have public days),
to propose to me to have my face done by a Miss
Beetham (or Betham), a miniature painter, some relation to
Mrs. Beetham the Profilist or Pattern Mangle woman
opposite to St. Dunstan’s, to put before my book of Extracts. I declined it.
Well, my dear Manning, talking cannot be infinite; I have said all I have to say;
the rest is but remembrances, which we shall bear in our heads of you, while we
have heads. Here is a packet of trifles nothing worth; but it is a trifling
part of the world where I live; emptiness abounds. But, in fulness of
affection, we remain yours,
C. L.
Note
[Manning had written in April, 1807, saying that a roll of silk was on
its way to Mary Lamb. It was, however, another
letter, not preserved, which mentioned Mr. Knox as the bearer.
“Horace says
somewhere.” In Epistles, Book
I., 1, 20.
“Res prohibitæ et non nisi
smuggle-ationia viâ fruendæ” —“The things prohibited
and only to be enjoyed if they are smuggled.”
“Splendida vitia.”
Glorious aberrations.
Godwin sold books at 41 Skinner Street under his
wife’s name—M. J. Godwin. At first when he
began, in 1805, in Hanway Street, he had used the name of Thomas Hodgkins, his manager.
“Pauper est Cinna, sed
amat”—“Cinna (i.e., Hazlitt) is poor,
but none the less he loves.” Lamb is
evidently thinking of Ben Jonson’sTimber; or, Discoveries, where
Ben Jonson quotes Martial’s one-line epigram (8, xix.), “Pauper
videri Cinna vult; et est pauper.”
“Damn ’em, how they hissed.” This passage has in
it the germ of Lamb’s essay in The Reflector two or
three years later, “On the Custom of
Hissing at the Theatres” (see Vol. I. of this edition, page 87).
“Blind mouths” (Lycidas, 119).
John Braham (?1774-1856), the great tenor and the
composer of “The Death of
Nelson.” Lamb praised him again in his
Elia essay
“Imperfect
Sympathies,” and later wrote an amusing article on
Braham’s recantation of Hebraism (see “The Religion of Actors,” Vol. I.,
page 287). “Kais,” composed by
Braham and Reeve, was
produced at Drury Lane, February 11, 1808.
“Old Sergeant Hill.” George Hill (1716-1808), nicknamed Serjeant
Labyrinth, the hero of many stories of absence-of-mind. He would have
appealed to Manning on account of his mathematical
abilities. He died on February 21.
“Hook and I.” This pun is
attributed also to others; who may very easily have made it independently. Theodore Hook was then only nineteen, but had already
written “Tekeli,” a
melodrama, and several farces. Talfourd omits the
references to breeches.
“Dr. Hawkesworth.” John Hawkesworth, LL.D. (?1715-1773), the editor of
Swift, a director of the East India Company, and
the friend of Johnson whom he imitated in The Adventurer. He also
made one of the translations of Fenelon’sTélémaque, to which Lamb’sAdventures of Ulysses was to serve as prologue.
James White, Lamb’s friend and the author of Falstaff’s Letters, was
for many years a clerk in the Treasurer’s office at Christ’s Hospital. Later he
founded an advertisement agency, which still exists.
“Congreve’s repulse.” The
story is told by Johnson in the Lives of the Poets. Congreve “disgusted him [Voltaire] by the despicable foppery of desiring to be
considered not as an author but a gentleman; to which the Frenchman replied,
‘that, if he had been only a gentleman, he should not have come to visit
him.’”
“Young Davy.” Afterwards
Sir Humphry Davy, and now one of Coleridge’s correspondents. He had been awarded the
Napoleon prize of 3,000 francs “for his
discoveries announced in the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1807.”
“Coleridge’s lectures.”
Coleridge delivered the first on January
12,1808, and the second on February 5. The third and fourth were eventually delivered some
time before April 3. The subject was not Taste but Poetry.
Coleridge’s rooms over The Courier office at No. 348 Strand are described
by De Quincey in his Works, Vol. II. (1863 edition), page 98.
It was Coleridge’s illness
that was bringing Wordsworth to town, to be followed
by Southey, largely by the instrumentality of
Charles and Mary
Lamb. It is conjectured that Coleridge was just then
more than usually in the power of drugs.
Sir Joseph Banks, as President of the Royal Society,
had written a letter to the East India Company supporting Manning’s wish to practise as a doctor in Canton.
The similar institutions that sprang up in imitation of the Royal
Institution have all vanished, except the London Institution in Finsbury Circus.
“Writing like Shakspeare.” This passage was omitted by Talfourd. He seems to have shown it to Crabb Robinson, just after Lamb’s death, as one of the things that could not be published.
Robinson (or Robinson’s editor,
Dr. Sadler), in recording the event, substitutes
a dash for Wordsworth’s name.
Miss Betham was Miss Mary Matilda
Betham (1776-1852), afterwards a friend and correspondent of Lamb. We shall soon meet her again. She had written a Biographical Dictionary
of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country, 1804, and some poems.
Among her sitters were Coleridge and Mrs. Coleridge. The Profilist opposite St. Dunstan’s
was, I take it, E. Beetham, Patent Washing-Mill Maker at 27 Fleet
Street. I find this in the 1808 Directory. The shop was close to Inner Temple Lane.]
LETTER 168 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
March 11, 1808.
DEAR Godwin,—The giant’s vomit was perfectly nauseous, and I am
glad you pointed it out. I have removed the objection. To the other passages I
can find no other objection but what you may bring to numberless passages
besides, such as of Scylla snatching up the
six men, etc., that is to say, they are lively images of shocking things. If
you want a book, which is
not occasionally to shock, you should not have thought of a tale which was so
full of anthropophagi and wonders. I cannot alter these things without enervating
the Book, and I will not alter them if the penalty should be that you and all
the London booksellers should refuse it. But speaking as author to author, I
must say that I think the terrible in those two passages
seems to me so much to preponderate over the nauseous, as to make them rather
fine than disgusting. Who is to read them, I don’t know: who is it that
reads Tales of Terror and
Mysteries of Udolpho?
Such things sell. I only say that I will not consent to alter such passages,
which I know to be some of the best in the book. As an author I say to you an
author, Touch not my work. As to a bookseller I say, Take the work such as it
is, or refuse it. You are as free to refuse it as when we first talked of it.
As to a friend I say, Don’t plague yourself and me with nonsensical
objections. I assure you I will not alter one more word.
Note
[This letter refers to the proofs of Lamb’sAdventures of Ulysses, his prose paraphrase for children
of Chapman’stranslation of the Odyssey, which Mrs. Godwin was publishing. Godwin had written the following letter:—
Skinner St., March 10, 1808.
Dear Lamb,—I address you with all humility, because
I know you to be tenax propositi.
Hear me, I entreat you, with patience.
It is strange with what different feelings an author and a
bookseller looks at the same manuscript. I know this by experience: I was an
author, I am a bookseller. The author thinks what will conduce to his honour:
the bookseller what will cause his commodities to sell.
You, or some other wise man, I have heard to say, It is
children that read children’s books, when they are read, but it is
parents that choose them. The critical thought of the tradesman put itself
therefore into the place of the parent, and what the parent will condemn.
We live in squeamish days. Amid the beauties of your
manuscript, of which no man can think more highly than I do, what will the
squeamish say to such expressions as these,—“devoured their limbs, yet
warm and trembling, lapping the blood,” p. 10. Or to the
giant’s vomit, p. 14; or to the minute and shocking description of the
extinguishing the giant’s eye in the page following. You, I daresay, have
no formed plan of excluding the female sex from among your readers, and I, as a
bookseller, must consider that if you have you exclude one half of the human
species.
Nothing is more easy than to modify these things if you
please, and nothing, I think, is more indispensable.
Give me, as soon as possible, your thoughts on the matter.
I should also like a preface. Half our customers know not
Homer, or know him only as you and I
know the lost authors of antiquity. What can be more proper than to mention one
or two of those obvious recommendations of his works, which must lead every
human creature to desire a nearer acquaintance.—
Believe me, ever faithfully yours, W. Godwin.
As a glance at the Adventures of Ulysses will show (see Vol. III. of this
edition), Lamb did not make the alteration on pages
10 or 15 (pages 211 and 212 of Vol. III.), although the giant’s vomit has
disappeared. The Tales of
Terror, 1801, were by Matthew Gregory
Lewis, “Monk Lewis,” as he was called, and
the Mysteries of
Udolpho, 1794, by Mrs.
Radcliffe.]
LETTER 169 CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[Dated at end: March 12, 1808.]
DEAR Sir,—Wordsworth breakfasts with me on Tuesday morning next; he goes
to Mrs. Clarkson the next day, and will
be glad to meet you before he goes. Can you come to us before nine or at nine
that morning? I am afraid, W. is so
engaged with Coleridge, who is ill, we
cannot have him in an evening. If I do not hear from you, I will expect you to
breakfast on Tuesday.
Yours truly, C. Lamb. Saturday, 12 Mar., 1808.
Note
[This is the first letter to Henry Crabb
Robinson (1775-1867), whom Lamb was
destined to know very intimately, and to whose Diary we are indebted for much of our information
concerning the Lambs. Robinson, who was only a
month younger than Lamb, had been connected with the
Times as foreign
correspondent and foreign editor; in November, 1809, he gave up journalism and began to
keep his terms at the Middle Temple, rising in time to be leader of the Norfolk Circuit. We
shall see much more of him. He knew Lamb well enough to accompany him,
his sister and Hazlitt to “Mr.
H.” in December, 1806.
Wordsworth left on April 3, by which time Coleridge was sufficiently recovered to give two more
lectures. The series closed in June. Coleridge then went to Bury St.
Edmunds to see the Clarksons, and then to Grasmere,
to the Wordsworths. His separation from Mrs. Coleridge had already occurred, he and his wife remaining, however, on
friendly terms.]
LETTER 170 MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[p.m. March 16, 1808.]
MY dear Sarah,—Do not be very angry that I have not written to you. I have
promised your brother to be at your wedding, and that favor you must accept as
an atonement for my offences—you have been in no want of correspondence lately,
and I wished to leave you both to your own inventions.
The border you are working for me I prize at a very high
rate because I consider it as the last work you can do for me, the time so fast
approaching when you must no longer work for your friends. Yet my old fault of
giving away presents has not left me, and I am desirous of even giving away
this your last gift. I had intended to have given it away without your
Knowledge, but I have intrusted my secret to Hazlitt, and I suppose it will not remain a secret long, so I
condescend to consult you. It is to Miss
Hazlitt, to whose superior claim I wish to give up my right to
this precious worked border. Her brother William is her
great favorite, and she would be pleased to possess his bride’s last
work. Are you not to give the fellow-border to one sister-in-law, and therefore
has she not a just claim to it?—I never heard in the annals of weddings (since
the days of Nausicaa, and she only washed
her old gowns for that purpose) that the brides ever furnished the apparel of
their maids. Besides, I can be completely clad in your work without it, for the
spotted muslin will serve both for cap and hat (Nota bene, my hat is the same
as yours) and the gown you sprigged for me has never been made up, therefore I
can wear that—Or, if you like better, I will make up a new silk which Manning has sent me from China.
Manning would like to hear I wore it for the first
time at your wedding. It is a very pretty light colour, but there is an
objection (besides not being your work and that is a very serious objection)
and that is, Mrs. Hazlitt tells me that
all Winterslow would be in an uproar if the bridemaid was to be dressed in
anything but white, and although it is a very light colour I confess we cannot call it white, being a sort of a
dead-whiteish-bloom colour; then silk, perhaps, in a morning is not so proper,
though the occasion, so joyful, might justify a full dress. Determine for me in
this perplexity between the sprig and the China-Manning
silk. But do not contradict my whim about Miss Hazlitt
having the border, for I have set my heart upon the matter: if you agree with
me in this I shall think you have forgiven me for giving away your pin; and
that was a mad trick, but I had many obligations and no money. I repent me of
the deed, wishing I had it now to send to Miss H. with the
border, and I cannot, will not, give her the Doctor’s pin, for having never had any presents from
gentlemen in my young days, I highly prize all they now give me, thinking my
latter days are better than my former.
You must send this same border in your own name to Miss Hazlitt, which will save me the disgrace
of giving away your gift, and make it amount merely to a civil refusal.
I shall have no present to give you on your marriage, nor do
I expect that I shall be rich enough to give anything to baby at the first
christening, but at the second, or third child’s I hope to have a coral
or so to spare out of my own earnings. Do not ask me to be Godmother, for I
have an objection to that—but there is I believe, no serious duties attached to
a bride’s maid, therefore I come with a willing mind, bringing nothing
with me but many wishes, and not a few hopes, and a very little of fears of
happy years to come.
I am dear Sarah Yours ever most affectionately M. Lamb.
What has Charles
done that nobody invites him to the wedding?
Note
[The wedding was on May 1, 1808. Originally it was intended to perform
the ceremony at Winterslow, but London was actually the place: St. Andrew’s, Holborn.
Mary Lamb was a bridesmaid and Charles Lamb was present. He told Southey in a letter some years after: “I was at
Hazlitt’s marriage, and had like to
have been turned out several times during the ceremony. Anything awful makes me
laugh.”
The episode of Nausicaa, to which
Mary Lamb refers, had just been rewritten by
Charles Lamb in the Adventures of Ulysses.
Here should come a letter from Lamb
to George Dyer (see Appendix II., page 970), which
states that Coleridge is Bury’d; that is, at
Bury St. Edmunds, and that the Dramatic Specimens has been published, but not Ulysses yet. Lamb says
that he will give both to
Dyer rather than let him buy them, since half-guinea books were
never calculated for his friends. A few remarks follow about Hazlitt and certain painters turning poets and encroaching on
Lamb and Dyer’s province.]
LETTER 171 MARY AND CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
(LATE STODDART)
December 10th, 1808.
MY dear Sarah,—I hear of you from your brother; but you do not write yourself, nor does Hazlitt. I beg that one or both of you will
amend this fault as speedily as possible, for I am very anxious to hear of your
health. I hope, as you say nothing about your fall to your brother, you are
perfectly recovered from the effects of it.
You cannot think how very much we miss you and H. of a Wednesday evening. All the glory of
the night, I may say, is at an end. Phillips makes his jokes, and there is no one to applaud him;
Rickman argues, and there is no one
to oppose him.
The worst miss of all to me is, that, when we are in the
dismals, there is now no hope of relief from any quarter whatsoever. Hazlitt was most brilliant, most ornamental,
as a Wednesday-man; but he was a more useful one on common days, when he dropt
in after a quarrel or a fit of the glooms. The Sheffington is quite out now, my brother having got drunk with
claret and Tom Sheridan. This visit, and
the occasion of it, is a profound secret, and therefore I tell it to nobody but
you and Mrs. Reynolds. Through the
medium of Wroughton, there came an
invitation and proposal from T. S., that C. L. should write some scenes in a speaking
pantomime, the other parts of which Tom now, and his
father formerly, have manufactured
between them. So, in the Christmas holydays, my brother and his two great
associates, we expect, will be all three damned together: this is, I mean, if
Charles’s share, which is done and sent in, is
accepted.
I left this unfinished yesterday, in the hope that my
brother would have done it for me: his reason for refusing me was ‘no
exquisite reason;’ for it was, because he must write a letter to
Manning in three or four weeks, and
therefore he could not be always writing letters, he said. I wanted him to tell
your husband about a great work which Godwin is going to publish, to enlighten the world once more,
and I shall not be able to make out what it is.
He (Godwin) took his usual walk one evening, a fortnight
since, to the end of Hatton Garden and back again. During that walk, a thought
came into his mind, which he instantly set down and improved upon, till he
brought it, in seven or eight days, into the compass of a reasonable sized
pamphlet. To propose a subscription to all well disposed people, to raise a
certain sum of money, to be expended in the care of a cheap monument for the
former and the future great dead men,—the monument to be a white cross, with a
wooden slab at the end, telling their names and qualifications. This wooden
slab and white cross to be perpetuated to the end of time. To survive the fall
of empires and the destruction of cities by means of a map, which was, in case
of an insurrection among the people, or any other cause by which a city or
country may be destroyed, to be carefully preserved; and then, when things got
again into their usual order, the white-cross-wooden-slab-makers were to go to
work again, and set them in their former places. This, as nearly as I can tell
you, is the sum and substance of it, but it is written remarkably well, in his
very best manner; for the proposal (which seems to me very like throwing salt
on a sparrow’s tail to catch him) occupies but half a page, which is
followed by very fine writing on the benefits he conjectures would follow if it
were done. Very excellent thoughts on death, and on our feelings concerning
dead friends, and the advantages an old country has over a new one, even in the
slender memorials we have of great men who once flourished.
Charles is come home, and wants his
dinner; and so the dead men must be no more thought on: tell us how you go on,
and how you like Winterslow and winter evenings.
Noales [Knowles]
has not got back again, but he is in better spirits. John Hazlitt was here on Wednesday, very
sober.
Our love to Hazlitt.
Yours affectionately, M. Lamb. [Charles Lamb
adds:—] Saturday.
There came this morning a printed prospectus from
S. T. Coleridge, Grasmere, of a
weekly paper, to be called The Friend—a flaming prospectus—I have no
time to give the heads of it—to commence first Saturday in January. There
came also a notice of a Turkey from Mr.
Clarkson, which I am more sanguine in expecting the
accomplishment of than I am of Coleridge’s
prophecy.
C. Lamb.
Note
[“The Sheffington.” I have no notion what this word
means. Lamb’s share of the speaking pantomime
for the Sheridans has vanished. We do not even know if it were ever
accepted.
The late Mr. Charles Kent, in his
Centenary Edition of Lamb’s works, printed a
comic opera, said, on the authority of P. G.
Patmore, to be Lamb’s, and identified it with the experiment mentioned by
Mary Lamb. But an examination of the manuscript,
which is in the British Museum, convinces me that the writing is not
Lamb’s, while the matter has nothing characteristic in it.
Tom Sheridan, by the way, was just a month
younger than Lamb.
“No exquisite reason.” Sir
Andrew Aguecheek’s phrase (“Twelfth Night,” II., 3, 157).
Godwin’s new book was the Essay on Sepulchres, 1809.
Noales was probably James Sheridan
Knowles (1784-1862), the dramatist, a protégé of Hazlitt’s father. We shall meet him again in the
correspondence. After serving as a soldier and practising medicine he had gone on the
stage. Several years later he became one of Lamb’s friends.
The Friend, which
probably had been in Coleridge’s thoughts for
some time, was announced to begin on the first Saturday in January. Lamb’s scepticism was justified; the first number
came out on June 1.]
LETTER 172 MARY AND CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. THOMAS
CLARKSON
[p.m. Dec. (10), 1808.]
MY dear Mrs.
Clarkson—I feel myself greatly indebted to Mr. Clarkson for his care about our direction,
since it has procured us the pleasure of a line from you. Why are we all, my
dear friend, so unwilling to sit down and write a letter when we all so well
know the great satisfaction it is to hear of the welfare of an absent friend? I
began to think that you and all I connect in my mind with you were gone from us
for ever——Coleridge in a manner gave us
up when he was in town, and we have now lost all traces of him. At the time he
was in town I received two letters from Miss
Wordsworth, which I never answered because I would not complain
to her of our old friend. As this has never been explained to her it must seem
very strange, more particularly so, as Miss
Hutchinson & Mrs.
Wordsworth were in an ill state
of health at the time. Will you some day soon write a few words just to tell me
how they all are and all you know concerning them?
Do not imagine that I am now complaining to you of Coleridge. Perhaps we are both in fault, we
expect too much, and he gives too little. We ought many years ago to have
understood each other better. Nor is it quite all over with us yet, for he will
some day or other come in with the same old face, and receive (after a few
spiteful words from me) the same warm welcome as ever. But we could not submit
to sit as hearers at his lectures and not be permitted to see our old friend
when school-hours were over. I beg you will not let what I have said give you a
moment’s thought, nor pray do not mention it to the
Wordsworths nor to Coleridge, for
I know he thinks I am apt to speak unkindly of him. I am not good tempered, and
I have two or three times given him proofs that I am not. You say you are all
in your “better way,” which is a very chearful hearing, for I trust
you mean to include that your health is bettering too. I look forward with
great pleasure to the near approach of Christmas and Mr. Clarkson. And now the turkey you are so
kind as to promise us comes into my head & tells me it is so very near that
if writing before then should happen to be the least irksome to you, I will be
content to wait for intelligence of our old friends till I have the pleasure of
seeing Mr. Clarkson in town. I ought to say this because I
know at times how dreadfully irksome writing a letter is to me, even when I
have no reason in the world to give why it is so, and I remember I have heard
you express something of the same kind of feelings.
I try to remember something to enquire after at Bury—The
lady we visited, the cherry tree Tom and I robbed,
Tom my partner in the robbery (Mr. Thomas C—— I suppose now), and your Cook
maid that was so kind to me, are all at present I can recollect. Of all the
places I ever saw Bury has made the liveliest impression on my memory. I have a
very indistinct recollection of the Lakes.
Charles joins with me in affectionate
remembrances to you all, and he is more warm in his expressions of gratitude
for the turkey because he is fonder of good eating than I am, though I am not
amiss in that way.
God bless you my kind friends I remain yours affectionately M. Lamb.
Excuse this slovenly letter, if I were to write it over
again I should abridge it one half.
We have this moment received a very chearful letter from
Coleridge, who is now at
Grasmere. It contains a prospectus for a new weekly publication to be
called The
Friend. He says they are well there, and in good
spirits & that he has not been so well for a long time.
The Prospectus is of a weekly paper of a miscellaneous
nature to be call’d the
Friend & to come out, the first number, the first Saturday
in January. Those who remember The Watchman
will not be very sanguine in expecting a regular fulfillment of this
Prophecy. But C. writes in
delightful spirits, & if ever, he may now do this thine. I suppose he will send you a
Prospectus. I had some thought of inclosing mine. But I want to shew it
about. My kindest remembrc to Mr. C. & thanks for the turkey.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Coleridge, after delivering his
lectures, had gone to Bury on a visit to the Clarksons. He then passed
on to Grasmere, to Wordsworth’s new house,
Allan Bank, and settled down to project The Friend.
Tom Clarkson, with whom Mary Lamb robbed a cherry tree, became a metropolitan magistrate. He died
in 1837.
Here should come a letter from Lamb
to Robert Lloyd, dated February 25, 1809, not
available for this edition. It tells Lloyd where to look for
Lamb when he reached town—at 16 Mitre Court Buildings, which he is
leaving at Lady Day, or at 2 or 4 Inner Temple Lane. “Drury Lane Theatre is burnt
to the ground.” Robert Lloyd spent a short while in
London in the spring of 1809 and saw the Lambs, Godwin, Captain
Burney, James White and other
persons. His letters to his wife describing these experiences, printed in Charles Lamb and the
Lloyds, are amusingly fresh and enthusiastic.]
LETTER 178 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
28th March, 1809.
DEAR Manning,—I sent you a long letter by the ships which sailed the
beginning of last month, accompanied with books, &c. Since I last wrote,
Holcroft is dead. He died on
Thursday last.1
1 [See Appendix II., page 970.
So there is one of your friends whom you will
never see again! Perhaps the next fleet may bring you a letter from Martin Burney, to say that he writes by desire
of Miss Lamb, who is not well enough to
write herself, to inform you that her brother died on Thursday last, 14th June,
&c. But I hope not. I should be sorry to give occasion to open a
correspondence between Martin and you. This letter must be
short, for I have driven it off to the very moment of doing up the packets; and
besides, that which I refer to above is a very long one; and if you have
received my books, you will have enough to do to read them. While I think on
it, let me tell you we are moved. Don’t come any more to Mitre Court
Buildings. We are at 34, Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, and shall be
here till about the end of May: then we remove to No. 4, Inner Temple Lane,
where I mean to live and die; for I have such horror of moving, that I would
not take a benefice from the King, if I was not indulged with non-residence.
What a dislocation of comfort is comprised in that word moving! Such a heap of
little nasty things, after you think all is got into the cart: old
dredging-boxes, worn-out brushes, gallipots, vials, things that it is
impossible the most necessitous person can ever want, but which the women, who
preside on these occasions, will not leave behind if it was to save your soul;
they’d keep the cart ten minutes to stow in dirty pipes and broken
matches, to show their economy. Then you can find nothing you want for many
days after you get into your new lodgings. You must comb your hair with your
fingers, wash your hands without soap, go about in dirty gaiters. Was I
Diogenes, I would not move out of a
kilderkin into a hogshead, though the first had had nothing but small beer in
it, and the second reeked claret. Our place of final destination,—I don’t
mean the grave, but No. 2 [4] Inner Temple Lane,—looks out upon a gloomy
churchyard-like court, called Hare Court, with three trees and a pump in it. Do
you know it? I was born near it, and used to drink at that pump when I was a
Rechabite of six years old. If you see newspapers you will read about Mrs. Clarke. The sensation in London about
this nonsensical business is marvellous. I remember nothing in my life like it.
Thousands of ballads, caricatures, lives, of Mrs. Clarke,
in every blind alley. Yet in the midst of this stir, a sublime abstracted
dancing-master, who attends a family we know in Kensington, being asked a
question about the progress of the examination in the House, inquired who
Mrs. Clarke was? He had heard nothing of it. He had
evaded this omnipresence by utter insignificancy! The Duke should make that man his confidential valet. I proposed
locking him up, barring him the use of his fiddle and red pumps, until he had
minutely perused and committed to memory the whole body of the examinations, which employed the House of
Commons a fortnight, to teach him to be more attentive to what concerns the
public. I think I told you of Godwin’s little book, and of Coleridge’s prospectus, in my last; if I did not, remind
me of it, and I will send you them, or an account of them, next fleet. I have
no conveniency of doing it by this. Mrs.
—— grows every day in disfavour with God and man. I will be
buried with this inscription over me:—“Here lies C. L., the Woman-hater”—I mean that hated
one woman: for the rest, God bless them, and
when he makes any more, make ’em prettier. How do you like the
Mandarinesses? Are you on some little footing with any of them? This is
Wednesday. On Wednesdays is my levee. The Captain, Martin, Phillips, (not the Sheriff,) Rickman, and
some more, are constant attendants, besides stray visitors. We play at whist,
eat cold meat and hot potatoes, and any gentleman that chooses smokes. Why do
you never drop in? You’ll come some day, won’t you?
C. Lamb, &c.
Note
[Thomas Holcroft died on March 23,
1809, aged sixty-three.
Mitre Court Buildings, Southampton Buildings and Inner Temple Lane
(Lamb’s homes) have all been rebuilt since
Lamb’s day.
“That word ‘moving.’” Lamb later elaborated and condensed this passage, in the Elia essay “New Year’s Eve”: “Any
alteration, on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, puzzles and discomposes me.
My household-gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up without
blood.”
“Mrs. Clarke.” Mary Anne Clarke (1776-1852), mistress of the Duke of York, Commander-in-Chief, whose reception of money from
officers as a return for procuring them preferment or promising to, by her influence with
the Duke, had just been exposed in Parliament, and was causing immense excitement.
“Godwin’s little
book.” This may have been the Essay on Sepulchres.
Godwin’sLives of Edward and John Phillips, Milton’s nephews, appeared also at this time.
“Mrs. ——.” Most probably Mrs. Godwin once more.
“Not the Sheriff.” Alluding to Sir Richard Phillips, the publisher, who was elected
Sheriff of London in 1807, and was knighted in 1808.]
LETTER 174 CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[Dated by H. C. R.: May, 1809.]
DEAR Sir,—Would you be so kind as, when you go to
the Times office, to see about an
Advertisement which My Landlady’s Daughter left for insertion about ten
days since and has not appeared, for a Governesses Place? The references are to
Thorpe & Graves 18 Lower Holborn, and to M. B. 115 Oxford St. Though not
anxious about attitudes, she pines for a situation. I got home tolerably well,
as I hear, the other evening. It may be a warning to any one in future to ask
me to a dinner party. I always disgrace myself. I floated up stairs on the
Coachman’s back, like Ariel;
“On a bat’s back I do fly, After sunset merrily.”
In sobriety I am Yours truly C. Lamb.
Note
[Lamb used the simile of Ariel at least twice afterwards: at the close of the Elia essay
“Rejoicings on the New
Year’s Coming-of-Age,” and in Letter 489, on page 844, to J. V. Asbury of Enfield, the
Lambs’ doctor.]
LETTER 175 MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
[June 2, 1809.]
“YOU may write to Hazlitt, that I will certainly go to Winterslough, as my Father has agreed to give me
5l. to bear my expences, and has given leave
that I may stop till that is spent, leaving enough to defray my Carriage on
the 14th July.”
So far Martin has
written, and further than that I can give you no intelligence, for I do not yet
know Phillips’s intentions; nor
can I tell you the exact time when we can come; nor can I positively say we
shall come at all; for we have scruples of conscience about there being so many
of us.
Martin says, if you can borrow a blanket
or two, he can sleep on the floor, without either bed or mattress, which would
save his expences at the Hut;
for, if Phillips breakfasts there, he
must do so too, which would swallow up all his money. And he and I have
calculated that, if he has no Inn expences, he may as well spare that money to
give you for a part of his roast beef.
We can spare you also just five pounds. You are not to say
this to Hazlitt, lest his delicacy
should be alarmed; but I tell you what Martin and I have planned, that, if you happen to be empty
pursed at this time, you may think it as well to make him up a bed in the best
kitchen.
I think it very probable that Phillips will come; and, if you do not like such a croud of us,
for they both talk of staying a whole month, tell me so, and we will put off
our visit till next summer.
The 14th July is the day Martin has fixed for coming. I should have written before, if I
could have got a positive answer from them.
Thank you very much for the good work you have done for me.
Mrs. Stoddart also thanks you for
the gloves. How often must I tell you never to do any needle work for any body
but me?
Martin Burney has been very ill, and
still is very weak and pale. Mrs.
Holcroft and all her children, and all her scholars, have had
the measles. Your old friend, Mrs.
Fenwick, is in town.
We are going to see Mrs. Martin and her
daughter, Mrs. Fulton (Sarah Martin),
and I expect to see there the future husband of Louisa. It will be a charming evening, doubtless.
I cannot write any more, for we have got a noble Life of Lord Nelson lent
us for a short time by my poor relation the book
binder, and I want to read as much of it as I can.
Yours affectionately, M. Lamb.
On reading Martin’s note over again, we guess the Captain means him to stay only a
fortnight. It is most likely we shall come the beginning of July.
Saturday [? June 3].
Note
[The Lambs were proposing to spend their holidays
with the Hazlitts, in July, and to take Colonel Phillips and his nephew Martin
Burney with them. (Or possibly it was the other Phillips.) As it happened, however, Mary
Lamb was taken ill almost immediately after writing this letter, and the
visit had to be postponed until September and October.
The Hut was the Winterslow inn.
“My poor relation the book binder.” See Letter 415.]
LETTER 176 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
June 7th, 1809.
DEAR Coleridge,—I congratulate you on the appearance of “The Friend.” Your first
number promises well, and I have no doubt the succeeding numbers will fulfil
the promise. I had a kind letter from you some time since, which I have left
unanswered. I am also obliged to you, I believe, for a review in the
“Annual,” am I not?
The “Monthly Review”
sneers at me, and asks
“if ‘Comus’ is not good enough for Mr. Lamb?” because I have said no
good serious dramas have been written since the death of Charles the First, except “Samson Agonistes”; so
because they do not know, or won’t remember, that “Comus” was written long
before, I am to be set down as an undervaluer of Milton! O Coleridge, do kill those
reviews, or they will kill us—kill all we like! Be a friend to all else, but
their foe. I have been turned out of my chambers in the Temple by a landlord
who wanted them for himself; but I have got other at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane,
far more commodious and roomy. I have two rooms on third floor and five rooms
above, with an inner staircase to myself, and all new painted, &c., and all
for £30 a year! I came into them on Saturday week; and on Monday following,
Mary was taken ill with fatigue of
moving, and affected, I believe, by the novelty of the home; she could not
sleep, and I am left alone with a maid quite a stranger to me, and she has a
month or two’s sad distraction to go through. What sad large pieces it
cuts out of life—out of her life, who is getting rather old; and we may not
have many years to live together! I am weaker, and bear it worse than I ever
did. But I hope we shall be comfortable by and bye. The rooms are delicious,
and the best look backwards into Hare Court, where there is a pump always
going. Just now it is dry. Hare Court trees come in at the window, so that
it’s like living in a garden. I try to persuade myself it is much
pleasanter than Mitre Court; but, alas! the household gods are slow to come in
a new mansion. They are in their infancy to me; I do not feel them yet; no
hearth has blazed to them yet. How I hate and dread new places!
I was very glad to see Wordsworth’sbook advertised; I am to have it to-morrow
lent me, and if Wordsworth don’t send me an order
for one upon Longman, I will buy it. It
is greatly extolled and liked by all who have seen it. Let me hear from some of
you, for I am desolate. I shall have to send you, in a week or two, two volumes
of Juvenile Poetry, done by
Mary and me within the last six months, and
that tale in prose which
Wordsworth so much liked, which was published at
Christmas, with nine others, by us, and has reached a second edition.
There’s for you! We have almost worked ourselves out of child’s
work, and I don’t know what to do. Sometimes I think of a drama, but I
have no head for play-making; I can do the dialogue, and that’s all. I am
quite aground for a plan, and I must do something for money. Not that I have
immediate wants, but I have prospective ones. O money, money, how blindly thou
hast been worshipped, and how stupidly abused! Thou art health, and liberty,
and strength; and he that has thee may rattle his pockets at the foul fiend!
Nevertheless, do not understand by this that I have not
quite enough for my occasions for a year or two to come. While I think on it,
Coleridge, I fetch’d away my
books which you had at the “Courier” Office, and found all but a third volume of the old
plays, containing “The White
Devil,” “Green’s Tu Quoque,” and the “Honest Whore,”—perhaps the most
valuable volume of them all—that I could not find. Pray, if you can, remember
what you did with it, or where you took it out with you a walking perhaps; send
me word; for, to use the old plea, it spoils a set. I found two other volumes
(you had three), the “Arcadia,” and “Daniel,” enriched with manuscript notes. I wish every
book I have were so noted. They have thoroughly converted me to relish
Daniel, or to say I relish him, for, after all, I
believe I did relish him. You well call him sober-minded. Your notes are
excellent. Perhaps you’ve forgot them. I have read a review in the “Quarterly,” by Southey, on the Missionaries, which is most masterly. I only
grudge it being there. It is quite beautiful. Do remember my Dodsley; and pray do write, or let some of
you write. Clarkson tells me you are in
a smoky house. Have you cured it? It is hard to cure anything of smoking. Our
little poems are but humble, but they have no name. You must read them,
remembering they were task-work; and perhaps you will admire the number of
subjects, all of children, picked out by an old Bachelor and an old Maid. Many
parents would not have found so many. Have you read “Cœlebs?” It has reached eight
editions in so many weeks; yet literally it is one of the very poorest sort of
common novels, with the draw-back of dull religion in it. Had the religion been
high and flavoured, it would have been something. I borrowed this “Cœlebs in Search of a Wife” of a very careful,
neat lady, and returned it with this stuff written in the beginning:— “If ever I marry a wife I’d marry a landlord’s daughter, For then I may sit in the bar. And drink cold brandy-and-water.”
I don’t expect you can find time from your
“Friend” to
write to me much, but write something, for there has been a long silence. You
know Holcroft is dead. Godwin is well. He has written a very pretty,
absurd book about
sepulchres. He was affronted because I told him it was better than Hervey, but not so good as Sir T. Browne. This letter is all about books;
but my head aches, and I hardly know what I write; but I could not let
“The Friend” pass without a
congratulatory epistle. I won’t criticise till it comes to a volume. Tell
me how I shall send my packet to you?—by what conveyance?—by Longman, Short-man, or how? Give my Kindest
remembrances to Wordsworth. Tell him he
must give me a book. My kind love to Mrs.
W. and to Dorothy
separately and conjointly. I wish you could all come and see me in my new
rooms. God bless you all.
C. L.
Note
[The first number of The Friend was dated June 1, 1809.
Lamb’sDramatic Specimens had been
reviewed in the Annual
Review for 1808, with discrimination and approval (see Vol. IV. of this
edition, page 600), but whether or not by Coleridge
I do not know.
Wordsworth’s book was his pamphlet on the
“Convention of Cintra.”
The Juvenile Poetry was Poetry for Children. Entirely Original. By the author of Mrs. Leicester’s School. In two volumes. 1809. Mrs. Leicester’s
School, 1809, had been published a little before. Wordsworth’s favourite tale was Arabella Hardy’s “The Sea Voyage.”
I know nothing of the annotated copy of Sidney’sArcadia. Daniel’sPoetical Works, 12mo, 1718, two
volumes, with marginalia by Lamb and Coleridge, is still preserved. The copy of Hannah More’sCœlebs in Search of a Wife,
1809, with Lamb’s verses, is not, I think, now known.
Southey’smissionary article was in the first number of the
Quarterly,
February, 1809.
Hervey wrote Meditations among the Tombs;Sir Thomas Browne, Urn Burial.
Here should come four letters from Lamb to Charles Lloyd, Senior, not
available for this edition. They are all printed in Charles Lamb and the Lloyds.
The first, dated June 13, 1809, contains an interesting criticism of a translation of the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad, which
Charles Lloyd, the father of Robert
Lloyd, had made. Lamb says that what he misses, and
misses also in Pope, is a savage-like plainness of
speaking.
“The heroes in Homer are not
half civilized—they utter all the cruel, all the selfish, all the mean thoughts even of
their nature, which it is the fashion of our great men to keep in.”
Mr. Lloyd had translated άοιδούς
(line 720) “minstrels.” Lamb says
“minstrels I suspect to be a word bringing merely English or English ballad
feelings to the Mind. It expresses the thing and something more, as to say Sarpedon was a Gentleman, or as somebody translated
Paul’s address, ‘Ye men of
Athens,’ ‘Gentlemen of Athens.’”
The second letter, dated June 19, 1809, continues the subject. Lamb writes: “I am glad to see you venture made
and maid for rhymes. ’Tis true their sound is the same. But the mind occupied in
revolving the different meaning of two words so literally the same, is diverted from
the objection which the mere Ear would make, and to the mind it is rhyme
enough.”
In the third letter, dated July 31, 1809, Lamb remarks of translators of Homer,
that Cowper delays one as much, walking over a
Bowling Green, as Milton does, travelling over steep
Alpine heights.
The fourth letter, undated, accompanies criticisms of Mr. Lloyd’s translation of the Odyssey, Books 1 and 2. Mr. Lloyd
had translated βους Ήελίοιο (Book 1, line 8) “Bullocks of the
Sun.” Lamb wrote: “Oxen of the
Sun, I conjure. Bullocks is too Smithfield and sublunary a Word. Oxen of the Sun, or of
Apollo, but in any case not
Bullocks.”
With a letter to Robert Lloyd,
belonging to this year, Lamb sends Poetry for Children, and states
that the poem “The Beggar
Man” is by his brother, John Lamb.]
LETTER 177 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Monday, Oct. 30th, 1809.
DEAR Coleridge,—I have but this moment received your letter, dated
the 9th instant, having just come off a journey from Wiltshire, where I have
been with Mary on a visit to Hazlitt. The journey has been of infinite
service to her. We have had nothing but sunshiny days and daily walks from
eight to twenty miles a-day; have seen Wilton, Salisbury, Stonehenge, &c.
Her illness lasted but six weeks; it left her weak, but the country has made us
whole. We came back to our Hogarth
Room—I have made several acquisitions since you saw them,—and found Nos. 8, 9,
10 of “The
Friend.” The account of Luther in the Warteburg is as
fine as anything I ever read. God forbid that a man who has such things to say
should be silenced for want of £100. This Custom-and-Duty Age would have made
the Preacher on the Mount take out a licence, and St.
Paul’s Epistles would not have been missible without a
stamp. Oh, that you may find means to go on! But alas! where is Sir G. Beaumont?—Sotheby? What is become of the rich Auditors in Albemarle
Street? Your letter has saddened me.
I am so tired with my journey, being up all night, I have
neither things nor words in my power. I believe I expressed my admiration of
the pamphlet. Its power over
me was like that which Milton’s
pamphlets must have had on his contemporaries, who were tuned to them. What a
piece of prose! Do you hear if it is read at all? I am out of the world of
readers. I hate all that do read, for they read nothing but reviews and new
books. I gather myself up unto the old things.
I have put up shelves. You never saw a book-case in more
true harmony with the contents, than what I’ve nailed up in a room,
which, though new, has more aptitudes for growing old than you shall often
see—as one sometimes gets a friend in the middle of life, who becomes an old
friend in a short time. My rooms are luxurious; one is for prints and one for
books; a Summer and a Winter parlour. When shall I ever see you in them?
C. L.
Note
[Hazlitt has given some account of
the Lambs’ visit to Winterslow, but the passage belongs probably
to the year following. In his essay “On the Conversation of Authors” he likens
Lamb in the country to “the most
capricious poet Ovid among the Goths.”
“The country people thought him an oddity, and did not understand his jokes.
It would be strange if they had, for he did not make any, while he stayed. But when he
crossed the country to Oxford, then he spoke a little. He and the old colleges were
hail-fellow well met; and in the quadrangles he ‘walked
gowned.’“Again, in “A
Farewell to Essay-writing,” Hazlitt says: “I
used to walk out at this time with Mr. and Miss
Lamb of an evening, to look at the Claude
Lorraine skies over our heads melting from azure into purple and gold,
and to gather mushrooms, that sprang up at our feet, to throw into our hashed
mutton.”
Lamb’sHogarths were framed in black. It must have been about this time that he
began his essay “On the Genius of
Hogarth,” which was printed in The Reflector in 1811 (see Vol. I., page 70).
The Friend lasted
until No. XXVII., March 15, 1810. The account of Luther was in No. VIII., October 5, 1809. Coleridge had not been supported financially as he had
hoped, and had already begun to think of stopping the paper.
Sir George Howland Beaumont (1753-1827), of
Coleorton, the friend and patron of men of genius, had helped, with Sotheby, in the establishment of The Friend, and was instrumental
subsequently in procuring a pension for Coleridge.
William Sotheby (1757-1833), the translator and author, had
received subscriptions for Coleridge’s lectures.
“The rich Auditors in Albemarle Street”—those who had
listened to Coleridge’s lectures at the Royal
Institution.
“The pamphlet.” Presumably Wordsworth’s “Convention of Cintra.”
“You never saw a book-case.” Leigh Hunt wrote of Lamb’s
books in the essay “My Books,”
in The Literary Examiner:—
It looks like what it is, a selection made at precious intervals from the
book-stalls;—now a Chaucer at nine and twopence;
now a Montaigne or a Sir Thomas Browne at two shillings; now a Jeremy Taylor, a Spinoza; an old
English Dramatist, Prior, and Sir Philip Sidney; and the books are “neat as
imported.” The very perusal of the backs is a “discipline of
humanity.” There Mr. Southey takes
his place again with an old Radical friend: there Jeremy
Collier is at peace with Dryden:
there the lion, Martin Luther, lies down with
the Quaker lamb, Sewel: there Guzman d’Alfarache thinks himself fit company
for Sir Charles Grandison, and
has his claims admitted. Even the “high fantastical” Duchess of Newcastle, with her laurel on her head, is
received with grave honours, and not the less for declining to trouble herself with the
constitutions of her maids.]
LETTER 178 MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
November 7th, 1809.
MY dear Sarah—The dear, quiet, lazy, delicious month we spent with you is
remembered by me with such regret, that I feel quite discontent &
Winterslow-sick. I assure you, I never passed such a pleasant time in the
country in my life, both in the house & out of it, the card playing
quarrels, and a few gaspings for breath after your swift footsteps up the high
hills excepted, and those drawbacks are not unpleasant in the recollection. We
have got some salt butter to make our toast seem like yours, and we have tried
to eat meat suppers, but that would not do, for we left our appetites behind
us; and the dry loaf, which offended you, now comes in at night unaccompanied;
but, sorry am I to add, it is soon followed by the pipe and the gin bottle. We
smoked the very first night of our arrival.
Great news! I have just been interrupted by Mr. Daw, who comes to tell me he was yesterday
elected a Royal Academician. He said none of his own friends voted for him; he
got it by strangers, who were pleased with his picture of Mrs.
White. Charles says he
does not believe Northcote ever voted
for the admission of any one. Though a very cold day, Daw
was in a prodigious sweat, for joy at his good fortune.
More great news! my beautiful green curtains were put up
yesterday, and all the doors listed with green baize, and four new boards put
to the coal-hole, and fastening hasps put to the window, and my died Manning silk cut out.
Yesterday was an eventful day: for yesterday too Martin Burney was to be examined by Lord Eldon, previous to his being admitted as an
Attorney; but he has not yet been here to announce his success.
I carried the baby-caps to Mrs.
[John] Hazlitt; she was much pleased, and vastly thankful.
Mr. [John] H. got fifty-four guineas
at Rochester, and has now several pictures in hand.
I am going to tell you a secret, for —— says she would be sorry to have it talked
of. One night —— came home from the
ale-house, bringing with him a great, rough, ill-looking fellow, whom he
introduced to —— as Mr. Brown, a gentleman he had hired as
a mad keeper, to take care of him, at forty pounds a year, being ten pounds
under the usual price for keepers, which sum Mr. Brown had
agreed to remit out of pure friendship. It was with great difficulty, and by
threatening to call in the aid of watchmen and constables, that —— could
prevail on Mr. Brown to leave the house.
We had a good chearful meeting on Wednesday: much talk of
Winterslow, its woods & its nice sun flowers. I did not so much like
Phillips at Winterslow, as I now
like him for having been with us at Winterslow. We roasted the last of his
‘beach, of oily nut prolific,’ on Friday, at the
Captain’s. Nurse is now
established in Paradise, alias the Incurable Ward [of Westminster Hospital]. I
have seen her sitting in most superb state, surrounded by her seven incurable
companions. They call each other ladies. Nurse looks as if she would be
considered as the first lady in the ward: only one seemed at [all] like to
rival her in dignity.
A man in the India House has resigned, by which Charles will get twenty pounds a year; and
White has prevailed on him to write
some more lottery-puffs. If that ends in smoke, the twenty pounds is a sure
card, and has made us very joyful.
I continue very well, & return you very sincere thanks
for my good health and improved looks, which have almost made Mrs. Godwin die with envy; she longs to come
to Winterslow as much as the
spiteful elder sister did to go to the well for a gift to spit diamonds—
Jane and I have agreed to boil a round of beef for your
suppers, when you come to town again. She, Jane, broke two of the Hogarth
glasses while we were away—whereat I made a great noise.
Farewel. Love to William, and Charles’s love and good wishes for the speedy arrival of
the Life of Holcroft,
& the bearer thereof.
Yours most affectionately, M. Lamb. Tuesday.
Charles told Mrs. Godwin, Hazlitt had found a well in his garden, which, water being
scarce in your country, would bring him in two hundred a year; and she came
in great haste the next morning to ask me if it were true. Your brother and
his &c. are quite well.
Note
[George Dawe had just been elected
not Royal Academician but Associate. He became full R.A. in 1814.
Mrs. White was the wife of Anthony
White, the surgeon, who had been apprenticed to Sir Anthony Carlisle.
Northcote was James Northcote,
R.A., whose ConversationsHazlitt
recorded some years later.
Martin Burney never made a successful lawyer. His
life was destined to be unhappy and unprofitable, as we shall see later.
“I am going to tell you a secret.” In the absence of
the original these blanks cannot be filled in, nor are they important.
“Beach, of oily nut prolific.” From Cowper’sTask, “The Sofa,” lines 315, 316.
“Lottery puffs.” See note on page 326.
“The spiteful elder sister.” This story is in Grimm, I think.
“The Life of Holcroft.” The
Memoirs of Thomas
Holcroft, begun by Holcroft and
finished by Hazlitt, although completed in 1810, was
not published until 1816.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, dated January
1, 1810, thanking him for a turkey. Lamb mentions that his 1809
holiday had been spent in Wiltshire, where he saw Salisbury Cathedral and Stonehenge. He
adds that Coleridge’sFriend is occasionally sublime.
This was the last letter of the correspondence. Robert Lloyd died on October 26, 1811. Lamb wrote in the Gentleman’s Magazine a memoir of him, which will be found in Vol. I. of this
edition, page 132.]
LETTER 179 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
Jan. 2nd, 1810.
Mary sends her love.
DEAR Manning,—When I last wrote to you, I was in lodgings. I am now in
chambers, No. 4., Inner Temple Lane, where I should be happy to see you any
evening. Bring any of your friends, the Mandarins, with you. I have two
sitting-rooms: I call them so par
excellence, for you may stand, or loll, or lean, or try any
posture in them; but they are best for sitting; not squatting down Japanese
fashion, but the more decorous use of the post——s which European usage has
consecrated. I have two of these rooms on the third floor, and five sleeping,
cooking, &c., rooms, on the fourth floor. In my best room is a choice
collection of the works of Hogarth, an
English painter of some humour. In my next best are shelves containing a small
but well-chosen library. My best room commands a court, in which there are
trees and a pump, the water of which is excellent—cold with brandy, and not
very insipid without. Here I hope to set up my rest, and not quit till
Mr. Powell, the undertaker, gives me notice that I may
have possession of my last lodging. He lets lodgings for single gentlemen. I
sent you a parcel of books by my last, to give you some idea of the state of
European literature. There comes with this two volumes, done up as letters, of minor
poetry, a sequel to “Mrs.
Leicester;” the best you may suppose mine; the next best are
my coadjutor’s; you may amuse yourself in guessing them out; but I must
tell you mine are but one-third in quantity of the whole. So much for a very
delicate subject. It is hard to speak of one’s self, &c. Holcroft had finished his life when I wrote to
you, and Hazlitt has since finished his
life—I do not mean his own life, but he has finished a life of Holcroft, which is going to
press. Tuthill is Dr.
Tuthill. I continue Mr.
Lamb. I have published a little book for children on titles of
honour: and to give them some idea of the difference of rank and gradual
rising, I have made a little scale, supposing myself to receive the following
various accessions of dignity from the king, who is the fountain of honour—As
at first, 1, Mr. C. Lamb; 2, C. Lamb,
Esq.; 3, Sir C. Lamb, Bart.; 4,
Baron Lamb of Stamford;1 5,
Viscount Lamb; 6, Earl Lamb; 7,
Marquis Lamb; 8, Duke Lamb. It
would look like quibbling to carry it on further, and especially as it is not
necessary for children to go beyond the ordinary titles of sub-regal dignity in
1 Where my family come from. I have chosen that
if ever I should have my choice.
our own country, otherwise I have
sometimes in my dreams imagined myself still advancing, as 9th, King
Lamb; 10th, Emperor Lamb; 11th,
Pope Innocent, higher than which is nothing but the
Lamb of God. Puns I have not made many (nor punch much), since the date of my
last; one I cannot help relating. A constable in Salisbury Cathedral was
telling me that eight people dined at the top of the spire of the cathedral;
upon which I remarked, that they must be very sharp-set. But in general I
cultivate the reasoning part of my mind more than the imaginative. Do you know
Kate * * * * * * * * * I am stuffed out so with eating
turkey for dinner, and another turkey for supper yesterday (turkey in Europe
and turkey in Asia), that I can’t jog on. It is New-Year here. That is,
it was New-Year half a-year back, when I was writing this. Nothing puzzles me
more than time and space, and yet nothing puzzles me less, for I never think
about them.1 The Persian ambassador is the principal
thing talked of now. I sent some people to see him worship the sun on Primrose
Hill at half past six in the morning, 28th November; but he did not come, which
makes me think the old fire-worshippers are a sect almost extinct in Persia.
Have you trampled on the Cross yet? The Persian ambassador’s name is
Shaw Ali Mirza. The common people
call him Shaw Nonsense. While I think of it, I have put three letters besides
my own three into the India post for you, from your brother, sister, and some
gentleman whose name I forget. Will they, have they, did they, come safe? The
distance you are at, cuts up tenses by the root. I think you said you did not
know Kate * * * * * * * * * I express her by nine stars,
though she is but one, but if ever one star differed from another in glory ——.
You must have seen her at her father’s. Try and remember her. Coleridge is bringing out a paper in weekly
numbers, called the “Friend,” which I would send, if I could; but the difficulty I
had in getting the packets of books out to you before deters me; and
you’ll want something new to read when you come home. It is chiefly
intended to puff off Wordsworth’s
poetry; but there are some noble things in it by the by. Except
Kate, I have had no vision of excellence this year,
and she passed by like the queen on her coronation day; you don’t know
whether you saw her or not. Kate is fifteen: I go about
moping, and sing the old pathetic ballad I used to like in my youth— “She’s sweet Fifteen, I’m one year
more.”
Mrs. Bland sung it in boy’s
clothes the first time I heard it. I sometimes think the lower notes in my
voice are like Mrs. Bland’s.
1 [See Appendix II., page 971.]
That glorious singer Braham, one of my lights, is fled. He was for a season. He was
a rare composition of the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel, yet all these
elements mixed up so kindly in him, that you could not tell which predominated;
but he is gone, and one Phillips is
engaged instead. Kate is vanished, but Miss B *
* * * * * is always to be met with! “Queens drop away, while blue-legg’d Maukin thrives; And courtly Mildred dies while country
Madge survives.” That is not my poetry, but Quarles’s; but haven’t you observed that the rarest
things are the least obvious? Don’t show anybody the names in this
letter. I write confidentially, and wish this letter to be considered as private. Hazlitt
has written a grammar for Godwin;
Godwin sells it bound up with a treatise of his own on
language, but the grey mare is the better horse. I
don’t allude to Mrs. Godwin, but
to the word grammar, which comes near to grey mare, if you observe, in sound. That figure is
called paranomasia in Greek. I am sometimes happy in it. An old woman begged of
me for charity. “Ah! sir,” said she, “I have seen
better days;” “So have I, good woman,” I
replied; but I meant literally, days not so rainy and overcast as that on which
she begged: she meant more prosperous days. Mr.
Dawe is made associate of the Royal Academy. By what law of
association I can’t guess. Mrs.
Holcroft, Miss Holcroft,
Mr. and Mrs.
Godwin, Mr. and Mrs.
Hazlitt, Mrs. Martin and Louisa, Mrs. Lum,
Capt. Burney, Mrs. Burney, Martin Burney, Mr.
Rickman, Mrs. Rickman,
Dr. Stoddart, William
Dollin, Mr. Thompson,
Mr. and Mrs. Norris, Mr.
Fenwick, Mrs. Fenwick,
Miss Fenwick, a man that saw you at
our house one day, and a lady that heard me speak of you; Mrs. Buffam that heard
Hazlitt mention you, Dr.
Tuthill, Mrs. Tuthill, Colonel Harwood, Mrs.
Harwood, Mr. Collier,
Mrs. Collier, Mr.
Sutton, Nurse, Mr. Fell,
Mrs. Fell, Mr.
Marshall, are very well, and occasionally inquire after you.
[Rest cut away.]
Note
[“I have published a little book.” This was, of
course, an invention. In the Elia essay on “Poor
Relations” Lamb says that his
father’s boyhood was spent at Lincoln, and in Susan
Yates’ story in Mrs. Leicester’s School we see the Lincolnshire
fens, but of the history of the family we know nothing. I fancy Stamford is a true touch.
“The Persian ambassador.” A portrait of this splendid
person is preserved at the India Office. Leigh Hunt says
that Dyer was among the pilgrims to Primrose Hill.
“Kate * * * * * * * * *.” I have not
identified this young lady.
“The old pathetic ballad.” I have not found this.
“Mrs. Bland.” Maria Theresa Bland (1769-1838), a Jewess, and a
mezzo-soprano famous in simple ballads, who was connected with Drury Lane for many years.
“Braham is fled.” Braham did not sing in London in 1810, but joined
Mrs. Billington in a long provincial tour.
Phillips was Thomas
Philipps (1774-1841), singer and composer.
“Miss B * * * * * *.” Miss Burrell. See note on page 513.
“Not my poetry, but Quarles’s.” In “An Elegie,” Stanza 16. Lamb does not quote quite correctly.
“Hazlitt’s
grammar.” A
New and Improved Grammar of the English Tongue . . . by William Hazlitt, to which
is added A New Guide to the English Tongue by E[dward] Baldwin
(William Godwin). Published by M. J. Godwin. 1810.
“A woman begged of me.” Lamb told this story at the end of his Elia essay “A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars,” in the
London Magazine, June,
1822, but the passage was not reprinted in book form. See Vol. II. of this edition, page
387.
George Dawe was made A.R.A. in 1809, not R.A. until
1814.
Of the friends on Lamb’s
list we have already met several. Mr. and Mrs.
Norris were the Randal Norrises.
Dr. Stoddart having left Malta was now
practising in Doctors Commons. Mr. and Mrs. Collier
were the John Dyer Colliers, the parents of
John Payne Collier, who introduced
Lamb to Henry Crabb
Robinson. Both Colliers were journalists. We meet some
Buffams later, in the Moxon correspondence. Mr.
Marshall was Godwin’s friend.
Of Mrs. Lum, Mr. Dollin, Mr.
Thompson, Colonel and Mrs.
Harwood, and Mr. Sutton, I know nothing.]
LETTER 180 CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[Dated by H. C. R. Feb. 7, 1810.]
DR R.—My Brother whom you have met at my rooms (a plump good looking man
of seven and forty!) has written a book about humanity, which I transmit to you
herewith. Wilson the Publisher has put it in his head that
you can get it Reviewed for him. I dare say it is not in the scope of your
Review—but if you could put it in any likely train, he would rejoyce. For alas!
our boasted Humanity partakes of Vanity. As it is, he teazes me to death with
chusing to suppose that I could get it into all the Reviews at a moment’s
notice—I!! who have been set up as a mark for them to throw at, and would
willingly consign them all to Hell flames and Megæra’s snaky locks.
But here’s the Book—and don’t shew it Mrs. Collier, for I remember she makes
excellent Eel soup, and the leading points of the Book are directed against
that very process.
Yours truly C. Lamb. At Home to-night—Wednesday [February 7].
Note
[Addressed to “Henry Robinson, Esq., 56 Hatton Garden,’ with
a Treatise on Cruelty to Animals.’”
Lamb’s brother, John
Lamb, who was born in 1763, was now Accountant of the South-Sea House. His
character is described by Lamb in the Elia essay “My Relations,” where he figures
as James Elia. Robinson’sDiary later frequently expresses
Robinson’s dislike of his dogmatic ways.
The pamphlet has been identified by Mr. L. S.
Livingston as A Letter to the
Right Hon. William Windham, on his opposition to Lord Erskine’s Bill for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It was published by Maxwell & Wilson at 17 Skinner Street in 1810. No author’s name is given. One
copy only is known, and that is in America, and the owner declines to permit it to be
reprinted. The particular passage referring to eel pie runs thus:—
“If an eel had the wisdom of Solomon, he
could not help himself in the ill-usage that befalls him; but if he had, and were told,
that it was necessary for our subsistence that he should be eaten, that he must be
skinned first, and then broiled; if ignorant of man’s usual practice, he would
conclude that the cook would so far use her reason as to cut off his head first, which
is not fit for food, as then he might be skinned and broiled without harm; for however
the other parts of his body might be convulsed during the culinary operations, there
could be no feeling of consciousness therein, the communication with the brain being
cut off; but if the woman were immediately to stick a fork into his eye, skin him
alive, coil him up in a skewer, head and all, so that in the extremest agony he could
not move, and forthwith broil him to death: then were the same Almighty Power that
formed man from the dust, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, to call
the eel into a new existence, with a knowledge of the treatment he had undergone, and
he found that the instinctive disposition which man has in common with other
carnivorous animals, which inclines him to cruelty, was not the sole cause of his
torments; but that men did not attend to consider whether the sufferings of such
insignificant creatures could be lessened: that eels were not the only sufferers; that
lobsters and other shell fish were put into cold water and boiled to death by slow
degrees in many parts of the sea coast; that these, and many other such wanton
atrocities, were the consequence of care-lessness occasioned by the pride of mankind
despising their low estate, and of the general opinion that there is no punishable sin
in the ill-treatment of animals designed for our use; that, therefore, the woman did
not bestow so much thought on him as to cut his head off first, and that she would have
laughed at any considerate person who should have desired such a thing; with what
fearful indignation might he inveigh against the unfeeling metaphysician that, like a
cruel spirit alarmed at the appearance of a dawning of mercy upon animals, could not
rest satisfied with opposing the Cruelty Prevention Bill by the plea of possible
inconvenience to mankind, highly magnified and emblazoned, but had set forth to the
vulgar and unthinking of all ranks, in the jargon of proud learning, that man’s
obligations of morality towards the creatures subjected to his use are imperfect
obligations!”
Robinson’s review was, I imagine, The London Review, founded by Richard Cumberland in February, 1809, which, however, no
longer existed, having run its brief course by November, 1809.
“Megæra’s snaky
locks.” From Paradise Lost, X., 559:— and up the trees Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks That curl’d Megæra.
Here should come another letter from Lamb to Charles Lloyd, Senior, dated
March 10, 1810, not available for this edition. It refers to Mr.
Lloyd’s translation of the first seven books of the Odyssey and is accompanied
by a number of criticisms. Lamb advises Mr. Lloyd
to complete the Odyssey, adding that he would prize it for its Homeric plainness and
truths above the confederate jumble of Pope,
Browne and Fenton which goes under Pope’s name and is far
inferior to his Iliad. Among the criticisms is one on Mr.
Lloyd’s use of the word “patriotic,” in which
Lamb says that it strikes his ears as being too modern; adding
that in English few words of more than three syllables chime well into a verse. The word
“sentiment” calls from him the remark that he would root it out of a
translation of Homer. “It came in with Sterne, and was a child he had by
Affectation.”]
LETTER 181 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN MATHEW GUTCH
[April 9th, 1810.]
DEAR Gutch,—I
did not see your brother, who brought me Wither; but he understood, he said, you were daily expecting to
come to town: this has prevented my writing. The books have pleased me excessively: I should think you could not have
made a better selection. I never saw “Philarete” before—judge of my
pleasure. I could not forbear scribbling certain critiques in pencil on the
blank leaves. Shall I send them, or may I expect to see you in town? Some of
them are remarks on the character of Wither and of his
writings. Do you mean to have anything of that kind? What I have said on
“Philarete” is poor, but I think some
of the rest not so bad: perhaps I have exceeded my commission in scrawling over
the copies; but my delight therein must excuse me, and pencil-marks will rub
out. Where is the Life? Write, for I am quite in the dark.
Yours, with many thanks,
C. Lamb.
Perhaps I could digest the few critiques prefixed to the
Satires, Shepherds Hunting,
&c., into a short abstract of Wither’s character and works, at the end of his Life.
But, may be, you don’t want any thing, and have said all you wish in
the Life.
Note
[John Mathew Gutch (1776-1861),
whom we have met before (see page 167), was at this time living at Bristol, where he owned,
edited and printed Felix
Farley’s Bristol Journal. He had been printing for his own
pleasure an edition of George Wither’s poems, which he had sent to
Lamb for his opinion, intending ultimately to
edit Wither fully. Lamb returned the volumes with
a number of comments, many of which he afterwards incorporated in his essay “On the Poetry of George Wither,”
printed in his Works in 1818. Gutch subsequently handed the volumes
to his friend Dr. John Nott of the Hot Wells,
Bristol, who had views of his own upon Wither, and who commented in
his turn on the poet and on Lamb’s criticism of the poet. In
course of time the volumes fell into Lamb’s hands again, when
Nott’s comments on Wither and on
Lamb received treatment. They were ultimately given by
Lamb to his friend Brook
Pulham of the India House (who made the caricature etching of
“Ælia”) and are now in the possession of Mr. A. C.
Swinburne, who told the story of the book in the Nineteenth Century for January,
1885, reprinted in his Miscellanies, 1886. Some passages from that article will be found in
the notes to Lamb’s essay on Wither in Vol.
I. of the present edition, page 453. The last word was with Nott, for
when Gutch printed a three- or four-volume edition of Wither in 1820,
under Nott’s editorship, many of
Lamb’s best things were included as
Nott’s.]
LETTER 182 CHARLES LAMB TO BASIL MONTAGU
Mr. Hazlitt’s: Winterslow, near Sarum, 12th July, 1810.
DEAR [Montagu],—I have turned and twisted the MSS. in my head, and
can make nothing of them. I knew when I took them that I could not; but I do
not like to do an act of ungracious necessity at once; so I am ever committing
myself by half engagements and total failures. I cannot make any body
understand why I can’t do such things. It is a defect in my occiput. I
cannot put other people’s thoughts together; I forget every paragraph as
fast as I read it; and my head has received such a shock by an all-night
journey on the top of the coach, that I shall have enough to do to nurse it
into its natural pace before I go home. I must devote myself to imbecility. I
must be gloriously useless while I stay here. How is Mrs. [M.]? will she pardon my inefficiency?
The city of Salisbury is full of weeping and wailing. The Bank has stopt
payment; and every body in the town kept money at it, or has got some of its
notes. Some have lost all they had in the world. It is the next thing to seeing
a city with a plague within its walls. The Wilton people are all undone. All
the manufacturers there kept cash at the Salisbury bank; and I do suppose it to
be the unhappiest county in England this, where I am making holiday.
We purpose setting out for Oxford Tuesday fortnight, and
coming thereby home. But no more night travelling. My head is sore (understand
it of the inside) with that deduction of my natural rest which I suffered
coming down. Neither Mary nor I can spare
a morsel of our rest. It is incumbent on us to be misers of it. Travelling is
not good for us—we travel so seldom. If the Sun be Hell, it is not for the
fire, but for the sempiternal motion of that miserable Body of Light. How much
more dignified leisure hath a mussel glued to his unpassable rocky limit, two
inch square! He hears the tide roll over him, backwards and forwards twice
a-day (as the d——d Salisbury Long Coach goes and returns in eight and forty
hours), but knows better than to take an outside night-place a top on’t.
He is the Owl of the Sea. Minerva’s
fish. The fish of Wisdom.
Our kindest remembrances to Mrs.
[M.].
Yours truly, C. Lamb.
Note
[If the date is correct we must suppose that the
Lambs had made a second visit to the Hazlitts
and were intending to return by way of Oxford (see next Letter).
Basil Montagu was a barrister and humanitarian, a
friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and afterwards step-father-in-law of Procter. He was born in 1770 and lived until 1851. Lamb probably addressed to him many other letters, also to
his third wife, Carlyle’s “noble lady.” But the correspondence was
destroyed by Mrs. Procter.
The MSS. referred to cannot now be identified.]
LETTER 183 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
August 9th, 1810.
DEAR H.,—Epistemon is not well. Our pleasant
excursion has ended sadly for one of us. You will guess I mean my sister. She got home very well (I was very ill
on the journey) and continued so till Monday night, when her complaint came on,
and she is now absent from home.
I am glad to hear you are all well. I think I shall be mad
if I take any more journeys with two experiences against it. I find all well
here. Kind remembrances to Sarah—have
just got her letter.
H. Robinson has been to Blenheim. He
says you will be sorry to hear that we should have asked for the Titian Gallery there. One of his friends knew of
it, and asked to see it. It is never shown but to those who inquire for it.
The pictures are all Titians, Jupiter and Ledas, Mars and Venuses, &c., all
naked pictures, which may be a reason they don’t show it to females. But
he says they are very fine; and perhaps it is shown separately to put another
fee into the shower’s pocket. Well, I shall never see it.
I have lost all wish for sights. God bless you. I shall be
glad to see you in London.
Yours truly,
C. Lamb. Thursday.
Note
[Hazlitt subsequently saw the
Blenheim Titians and wrote of them with gusto in his
description of the Picture Galleries of
England.
Next should come a letter from Lamb
to Mrs. Thomas Clarkson, dated September 18, 1810,
not available for this edition; relating to the illness of Mary
Lamb and stating that she is “quite restored and will be with me in
little more than a week.”]
LETTER 184 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Friday, 19 Oct., 1810. E. I. Ho.
DR W.—I
forwarded the Letter which you sent to me, without opening it, to your
Sister at Binfield. She has returned
it to me, and begs me to tell you that she intends returning from B. on Monday
or Tuesday next, when Priscilla leaves
it, and that it was her earnest wish to spend another week with us in London,
but she awaits another Letter from home to determine her. I can only say that
she appeared so much pleased with London, and that she is so little likely to
see it again for a long time, that if you can spare her, it will be almost a
pity not. But doubtless she will have heard again from you, before I can get a
reply to this Letter & what she next hears she says will be decisive. If
wanted, she will set out immediately from London. Mary has been very ill which you have heard I suppose from the
Montagues. She is very weak and low
spirited now. I was much pleased with your continuation of the Essay on Epitaphs. It is the
only sensible thing which has been written on that subject & it goes to the
Bottom. In particular I was pleased with your Translation of that Turgid
Epitaph into the plain feeling under it. It is perfectly a Test. But what is
the reason we have so few good Epitaphs after all?
A very striking instance of your position might be found in
the Church yard of Ditton upon Thames, if you know such a place. Ditton upon
Thames has been blessed by the residence of a Poet, who for Love or Money, I do
not well know which, has dignified every grave stone for the last few years
with bran new verses, all different, and all ingenious, with the Author’s
name at the Bottom of each. The sweet Swan of Thames has artfully diversified
his strains & his rhymes, that the same thought never occurs twice. More
justly perhaps, as no thought ever occurs at all, there was a physical impossibility that the same thought
should recur. It is long since I saw and read these inscriptions, but I
remember the impression was of a smug Usher at his desk, in the intervals of
instruction levelling his pen. Of Death as it consists of dust and worms and
mourners and uncertainty he had never thought, but the word death he had often
seen separate & conjunct with other words, till he had learned to skill of
all its attributes as glibly as Unitarian Belsham will discuss you the attributes of the word God, in a
Pulpit, and will talk of infinity with a tongue that dangles from a scull that
never reached in thought and thorough imagination two inches, or further than
from his hand to his mouth, or from the vestry to the Sounding Board. [But the]
epitaphs were trim and sprag & patent, & pleased the survivors of
Thames Ditton above the old mumpsimus of Afflictions Sore.
To do justice though, it must be owned that even the
excellent Feeling which dictated this Dirge when new, must have suffered
something in passing thro’ so many thousand applications, many of them no
doubt quite misplaced, as I have seen in Islington Churchy’d (I think) an
Epitaph to an Infant who died Ætatis 4 months, with this seasonable inscription
appended, Honor thy Fathr. and Mothr. that thy days may be long in the Land &c.—Sincerely wishing
your children better [words cut out with signature].
Note
[Binfield, near Windsor, was the home of Dorothy Wordsworth’s uncle, Dr.
Cookson, Canon of Windsor.
Priscilla, née Lloyd, a sister
of Charles Lloyd, had married Christopher Wordsworth, afterwards Master of Trinity, in
1804.
Wordsworth’s “Essay on Epitaphs” was printed in part in The Friend,
February 22, 1810. For the remainder see Wordsworth’sWorks. Part II. began with a reference to
Rosamund Gray. I quote the passage
containing the turgid example.
Let us return to an instance of common life. I quote it with reluctance, not so much for
its absurdity as that the expression in one place will strike at first sight as little
less than impious; and it is indeed, though unintentionally so, most irreverent. But I
know no other example that will so forcibly illustrate the important truth I wish to
establish. The following epitaph is to be found in a church-yard in Westmoreland; which
the present Writer has reason to think of with interest as it contains the remains of
some of his ancestors and kindred. The date is 1673. “Under this Stone, Reader, inter’d doth lye, Beauty and Virtue’s true epitomy. At her appearance the noone-son Blush’d and shrunk in ’cause quite outdon. In her concentered did all graces dwell: God pluck’d my rose that He might take a smel. I’ll say no more: but weeping wish I may Soone with thy dear chaste ashes com to lay. Sic efflevit Maritus.”
Can anything go beyond this in extravagance? yet, if the fundamental thoughts be
translated into a natural style, they will be found reasonable and affecting “The
woman who lies here interred, was in my eyes a perfect image of beauty and virtue; she
was to me a brighter object than the sun in heaven: God took her, who was my delight,
from this earth to bring her nearer to Himself. Nothing further is worthy to be said
than that weeping I wish soon to lie by thy dear chaste ashes. Thus did the husband
pour out his tears.”
Wordsworth wrote an epitaph on Lamb, but it was too long to be used. A few lines are now
on the tablet in Edmonton Church.
The text of “Afflictions Sore” will
be found on page 63. Lamb had begun his criticisms of
churchyard epitaphs very early: Talfourd tells that,
when quite a little boy, after reading a number of flattering inscriptions, he asked
Mary Lamb where all the bad people were buried.]
LETTER 185 MARY AND CHARLES LAMB TO MISS
WORDSWORTH
[p.m. November 13, 1810.]
MY dear friend—My brother’s letter, which I
did not see, I am sure has distressed you sadly. I was then so ill as to alarm
him exceedingly, and he thought me quite incapable of any kind of business. It
is a great mortification to me to be such an useless creature, and I feel
myself greatly indebted to you for the very kind manner in which you take this
ungracious matter: but I will say no more on this unpleasant subject. I am at
present under the care of Dr. Tuthill. I
think I have derived great benefit from his medicines. He has also made a water
drinker of me, which, contrary to my expectations, seems to agree with me very
well.
I very much regret that you were so untimely snatched away;
the lively recollection you seem to retain of London scenes will I hope induce
you to return, in happier times, for I must still hope for better days.
We have had many pleasant hours with Coleridge,—if I had not known how ill he is I
should have had no idea of it, for he has been very chearful. But yet I have no
good news to send you of him, for two days ago, when I saw him last, he had not
begun his course of medicine & regimen under Carlisle. I have had a very chearful letter from Mrs. Clarkson. She complained a little of your
friend Tom, but she says she means to
devote the winter to the task of new molding him, I am afraid she will find it
no easy task.
Mrs. Montague was very sorry to find you
gone. I have not seen much of her, for I have kept very much at home since her
return. I mean to stay at home and keep early hours all this winter.
I have a new maid coming this evening.
Betty, that you left here, went from me last week, and
I took a girl lately from the country, who was fetched away in a few days by
her sister, who took it into her head that the Temple was an improper place for
a girl to live in. I wish the one that is coming may suit me. She is seven
& twenty, with a very plain person, therefore I may hope she will be in
little danger here.
Henry Robinson, and many other friends
that you made here, enquire continually after you. The Spanish lady is gone,
and now poor Robinson is left quite forlorn.
The streets remind me so much of you that I wish for you
every showy shop I pass by. I hope we had many pleasant fireside hours
together, but I almost fear the stupid dispirited state I was in made me seem a
very flat companion; but I know I listened with great pleasure to many
interesting conversations. I thank you for what you have done for Phillips, his fate will be decided in about a
week. He has lately breakfasted with Sir Joseph
Banks, who received him with great civility but made him no
promise of support. Sir Joseph told him a new candidate
had started up who it was expected would be favoured by the council. I am
afraid Phillips stands a very poor chance.
I am doing nothing, I wish I was, for if I were once more
busily employed at work, I should be more satisfied with myself. I should not
feel so helpless, & so useless.
I hope you will write soon, your letters give me great
pleasure; you have made me so well acquainted with all your household, that I
must hope for frequent accounts how you are all going on. Remember us
affectionately to your brother & sister. I hope the little Katherine continues mending. God bless you all
& every one.
Your affectionate friend M. Lamb. Novr. 13, 1810.
LETTER 185 (continued).
[Charles Lamb
adds:—]
Mary has left a little space for me to
fill up with nonsense, as the Geographers used to cram monsters in the voids of
their maps & call it Terra Incognita. She has told you how she has taken to
water, like a hungry otter. I too limp after her in lame imita-tion, but it goes against me
a little at first. I have been aquavorous now for full four days, and it seems a moon. I am full of
cramps & rheumatisms,’ and cold internally so that fire won’t
warm me, yet I bear all for virtues sake. Must I then leave you, Gin, Rum,
Brandy, Aqua Vita?—pleasant jolly fellows—Damn Temperance and them that first
invented it, some Anti Noahite. Coleridge has powdered his head, and looks like Bacchus, Bacchus ever sleek and young. He is going to turn sober, but
his Clock has not struck yet, meantime he pours down goblet after goblet, the
2d to see where the 1st is gone, the 3d to see no harm happens to the second, a
fourth to say there’s another coming, and a 5th to say he’s not
sure he’s the last. William Henshaw is dead. He died
yesterday, aged 56. It was but a twelvemonth or so back that his Father, an
ancient Gunsmith & my Godfather, sounded me as to my willingness to be
guardian to this William in case of his (the old
man’s) death. William had three times broke in
business, twice in England, once in t’other Hemisphere. He returned from
America a sot & hath liquidated all debts. What a hopeful ward I am rid of.
Ætatis 56. I must have taken care of his morals, seen that he did not form
imprudent connections, given my consent before he could have married &c.
From all which the stroke of death hath relieved me. Mrs. Reynolds is the name of the Lady to whom
I will remember you tomorrow. Farewell. Wish me strength to continue.
I’ve been eating jugg’d Hare. The toast & water makes me quite
sick.
C. Lamb.
Note
[After the preceding letter Mary
Lamb had been taken ill—but not, I think, mentally—and Dorothy Wordsworth’s visit was put off.
Coleridge, The Friend having ceased, had
come to London with the Montagus on October 26 to stay with them
indefinitely at 55 Frith Street, Soho. But a few days after his arrival Montagu had inadvisedly repeated what he unjustifiably
called a warning phrase of Wordsworth’s
concerning Coleridge’s difficult habits as a guest—the word
“nuisance” being mentioned—and this had so plunged
Coleridge in grief that he left Soho for Hammersmith, where his
friends the Morgans were living. Montagu’s
indiscretion led to a quarrel between Coleridge and
Wordsworth which was long of healing. This is no place in which to
tell the story, which has small part in Lamb’s
life; but it led to one of the few letters from Coleridge to
Lamb that have been preserved (see Mr.
E. H. Coleridge’s edition of
Coleridge’sLetters, page 586).
Carlisle was Sir Anthony
Carlisle (1768-1840), the surgeon and a friend of Lamb.
“The Spanish lady”—Madam Lavaggi. See
Robinson’sDiary, 1869, Vol. I., page 303.
“Phillips.” This would be Ned Phillips, I presume, not the Colonel. I have not discovered for what post he was
trying.
“The little Katherine.” Catherine Wordsworth, born September 6, 1808, lived only
until June 4, 1812.
“I have been aquavorous.”
Writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on December 23
Crabb Robinson says that Lamb has abstained from alcohol and tobacco since Lord
Mayor’s Day (November 9).
“Bacchus ever sleek and
young.” After Dryden, “Alexander’s Feast,” III.,
2:— Bacchus ever fair and ever young.
“William Henshaw.” I know nothing more
of this unfortunate man.]
LETTER 186 MARY AND CHARLES LAMB TO MISS
WORDSWORTH
[p.m. Nov. 23, 1810.]
MY dear Friend, Miss
Monkhouse left town yesterday, but I think I am able to answer
all your enquiries. I saw her on Sunday evening at Mrs. Montagu’s. She looked very well & said her
health was greatly improved. She promised to call on me before she left town
but the weather having been very bad I suppose has prevented her. She received
the letter which came through my brother’s hands and I have learned from
Mrs. Montagu that all your commissions are executed.
It was Carlisle that she consulted, and
she is to continue taking his prescriptions in the country. Mr. Monkhouse & Mr.
Addison drank tea with us one evening last week. Miss
Monkhouse is a very pleasing girl, she reminds me, a little, of
Miss Hutchinson. I have not seen
Henry Robinson for some days past,
but I remember he told me he had received a letter from you, and he talked of
Spanish papers which he should send to Mr.
Southey. I wonder he does not write, for I have always
understood him to be a very regular correspondent, and he seemed very proud of
your letter. I am tolerably well, but I still affect the invalid—take
medicines, and keep at home as much as I possibly can. Water-drinking, though I
confess it to be a flat thing, is become very easy to me. Charles perseveres in it most manfully.
Coleridge is just in the same state
as when I wrote last—I have not seen him since Sunday, he was then at Mr. Morgan’s but talked of taking a
lodging.
Phillips feels a certainty that he shall
lose his election, for the new candidate is himself a Fellow of the Royal
Society, and [it] is thought Sir Joseph
Banks will favour him. It will now be soon decided.
My new maid is now sick in bed. Am I not unlucky? She would
have suited me very well if she had been healthy, but I must send her away if
she is not better tomorrow.
Charles promised to add a few lines, I
will therefore leave him plenty of room, for he may perhaps think of something
to entertain you. I am sure I cannot.
I hope you will not return to Grasmere till all fear of the
Scarlet Fever is over, I rejoice to hear so good an account of the children and
hope you will write often. When I write next 1 will endeavour to get a frank.
This I cannot do but when the parliament is sitting, and as you seemed anxious
about Miss Monkhouse I would not defer
sending this, though otherwise it is not worth paying one penny for.
God bless you all.
Yours affectionately M. Lamb.
LETTER 186 (continued). [Charles Lamb adds:—]
We are in a pickle. Mary from her affectation of physiognomy has hired a stupid big
country wench who looked honest, as she thought, and has been doing her work
some days but without eating—eats no butter nor meat, but prefers cheese with
her tea for breakfast—and now it comes out that she was ill when she came with
lifting her mother about (who is now with God) when she was dying, and with
riding up from Norfolk 4 days and nights in the waggon. She got advice
yesterday and took something which has made her bring up a quart of blood, and
she now lies, a dead weight upon our humanity, in her bed, incapable of getting
up, refusing to go into an hospital, having no body in town but a poor
asthmatic dying Uncle, whose son lately married a drab who tills his house, and
there is no where she can go, and she seems to have made up her mind to take
her flight to heaven from our bed.—O God! O God!—for the little wheelbarrow
which trundled the Hunchback from door to door to try the various charities of
different professions of Mankind!
Here’s her Uncle just crawled up, he is far liker
Death than He. O the Parish, the Parish, the hospital, the infirmary, the
charnel house, these are places meet for such guests, not our quiet mansion where nothing but affluent plenty and literary
ease should abound.—Howard’s House, Howard’s House, or where the
Parylitic descended thro’ the sky-light (what a God’s Gift) to get
at our Savior. In this perplexity such topics as Spanish papers and
Monkhouses sink into comparative insignificance. What
shall we do?—If she died, it were something: gladly would I pay the coffin
maker and the bellman and searchers—O Christ.
C. L.
Note
[Miss Monkhouse was the daughter
of the Wordsworths’ and Lambs’
friend, Thomas Monkhouse.
“Mr. Addison.” I have not traced this
gentleman.
Miss Hutchinson was Sarah
Hutchinson, sister of Mrs.
Wordsworth.
“The Hunchback.” In the Arabian Nights.
“Howard’s House.” This would be Cold-Bath
Fields Prison, erected in 1794 upon some humane suggestions of Howard the Philanthropist.
“The Paralytic.” See Mark
ii.]
LETTERS 187 AND 188 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
Wednesday, November 28, 1810.
DEAR Hazlitt—I sent you on
Saturday a Cobbett,
containing your reply to
the Edinburgh Review, which I
thought you would be glad to receive as an example of attention on the part of
Mr. Cobbett to insert it so
speedily. Did you get it? We have received your pig, and return you thanks; it
will be dressed in due form, with appropriate sauce, this day. Mary has been very ill indeed since you saw
her; that is, as ill as she can be to remain at home. But she is a good deal
better now, owing to a very careful regimen. She drinks nothing but water, and
never goes out; she does not even go to the Captain’s. Her indisposition has been ever since that
night you left town; the night Miss
W[ordsworth] came. Her coming, and that d——d Mrs. Godwin coming and staying so late that
night, so overset her that she lay broad awake all that night, and it was by a
miracle that she escaped a very bad illness, which I thoroughly expected. I
have made up my mind that she shall never have any one in the house again with
her, and that no one shall sleep with her, not even for a night; for it is a
very serious thing to be always
living with a kind of fever upon her; and therefore I am sure you will take it
in good part if I say that if Mrs.
Hazlitt comes to town at any time, however glad we shall be to
see her in the daytime, I cannot ask her to spend a night under our roof. Some
decision we must come to, for the harassing fever that we have both been in,
owing to Miss Wordsworth’s coming, is not to be
borne; and I would rather be dead than so alive. However, at present, owing to
a regimen and medicines which Tuthill
has given her, who very kindly volunteer’d the care of her, she is a
great deal quieter, though too much harassed by company, who cannot or will not
see how late hours and society teaze her.
Poor Phillips had
the cup dash’d out of his lips as it were. He had every prospect of the
situation, when about ten days since one of the council of the R. Society
started for the place himself, being a rich merchant who lately failed, and he
will certainly be elected on Friday next. P. is very sore
and miserable about it.
Coleridge is in town, or at least at
Hammersmith. He is writing or going to write in the Courier against Cobbett, and in favour of paper money.
No news. Remember me kindly to Sarah. I write from the office.
Yours ever,
C. Lamb.
I just open’d it to say the pig, upon proof, hath
turned out as good as I predicted. My fauces yet retain the sweet porcine
odour. I find you have received the Cobbett. I think your paper complete.
Mrs. Reynolds, who is a sage woman,
approves of the pig.
Note
[“A Cobbett.” This was Cobbett’sPolitical Register for November 24, 1810, containing
Hazlitt’s letter upon “Mr. Malthus and the Edinburgh
Reviewers,” signed “The Author of a Reply to the Essay on
Population.” Hazlitt’s reply had been criticised
in the Edinburgh for
August, probably only just published.
The postscript contains Lamb’s first passage in praise of roast pig.
I place here the following undated letter to Godwin from Mr. Kegan
Paul’sWilliam Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries, as it
seems to be connected with the decision concerning visitors expressed in the letter to
Hazlitt:—]
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
DEAR Godwin,—I have found it for several reasons indispensable to my
comfort, and to my sister’s, to
have no visitors in the forenoon. If I cannot accomplish this I am determined
to leave town.
I am extremely sorry to do anything in the slightest degree
that may seem offensive to you or to Mrs.
Godwin, but when a general rule is fixed on, you know how odious
in a case of this sort it is to make exceptions; I assure you I have given up
more than one friendship in stickling for this point. It would be unfair to
those from whom 1 have parted with regret to make exceptions, which I would not
do for them. Let me request you not to be offended, and to request
Mrs. G. not to be offended, if I beg both your
compliances with this wish. Your friendship is as dear to me as that of any
person on earth, and if it were not for the necessity of keeping tranquillity
at home, I would not seem so unreasonable.
If you were to see the agitation that my sister is in,
between the fear of offending you and Mrs.
G. and the difficulty of maintaining a system which she feels we
must do to live without wretchedness, you would excuse this seeming strange
request, which I send you with a trembling anxiety as to its reception with
you, whom I would never offend. I rely on your goodness.
C. Lamb.
LETTER 189 MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
[? End of 1810 or early 1811.]
MY dear Sarah,—I have taken a large sheet of paper, as if I were going to
write a long letter; but that is by no means my intention, for I only have time
to write three lines to notify what I ought to have done the moment I received
your welcome letter. Namely, that I shall be very much joyed to see you. Every
morning lately I have been expecting to see you drop in, even before your
letter came; and I have been setting my wits to work to think how to make you
as comfortable as the nature of our inhospitable habits will admit. I must work
while you are here; and I have been slaving very hard to get through with
something before you come, that I may be quite in the way of it, and not teize
you with complaints all day that I do not know what to do.
I am very sorry to hear of your mischance. Mrs. Rickman has just buried her youngest
child. I am glad I am an old maid; for, you see, there is nothing but
misfortunes in the marriage state.
Charles was drunk last night, and drunk
the night before; which night before was at Godwin’s, where we went, at a short summons from
Mr. G., to play a solitary rubber, which was
interrupted by the entrance of
Mr. and little Mrs. Liston; and after them came Henry Robinson, who is now domesticated at
Mr. Godwin’s fireside, and likely to become a
formidable rival to Tommy Turner. We
finished there at twelve o’clock (Charles and
Liston brim-full of gin and water and snuff): after
which Henry Robinson spent a long evening by our fireside
at home; and there was much gin and water drunk, albeit only one of the party
partook of it. And H. R. professed himself highly indebted
to Charles for the useful information he gave him on
sundry matters of taste and imagination, even after
Charles could not speak plain for tipsiness. But still
he swallowed the flattery and the spirits as savourily as
Robinson did his cold water.
Last night was to be a night, but it was not. There was a
certain son of one of Martin’s
employers, one young Mr. Blake; to do whom honour,
Mrs. Burney brought forth, first rum, then a single
bottle of champaine, long kept in her secret hoard; then two bottles of her
best currant wine, which she keeps for Mrs.
Rickman, came out; and Charles partook liberally of all these beverages, while
Mr. Young Blake and Mr.
Ireton talked of high matters, such as the merits of the Whip
Club, and the merits of red and white champaine. Do I spell that last word
right? Rickman was not there, so
Ireton had it all his own way.
The alternating Wednesdays will chop off one day in the week
from your jolly days, and I do not know how we shall make it up to you; but I
will contrive the best I can. Phillips
comes again pretty regularly, to the great joy of Mrs. Reynolds. Once more she hears the well-loved sounds of,
‘How do you do, Mrs. Reynolds? How does
Miss Chambers do?’
I have spun out my three lines amazingly. Now for family
news. Your brother’s little twins are not dead, but Mrs. John Hazlitt and her baby may be, for any
thing I know to the contrary, for I have not been there for a prodigious long
time. Mrs. Holcroft still goes about
from Nicholson to Tuthil, and from Tuthil
to Godwin, and from
Godwin to Tuthil, and from
Tuthil to Godwin, and from
Godwin to Tuthil, and from
Tuthil to Nicholson, to consult
on the publication, or no publication, of the life of the good man, her husband. It is
called the Life Everlasting. How does that same Life go on in your parts? Good
bye, God bless you. I shall be glad to see you when you come this way.
Yours most affectionately, M. Lamb.
I am going in great haste to see Mrs. Clarkson, for I must get back to
dinner, which I have hardly time to do. I wish that dear, good, amiable
woman would go out of town. I thought she was clean gone; and yesterday there was a consultation of physicians held at
her house, to see if they could keep her among them here a few weeks
longer.
Note
[This letter is dated by Mr.
Hazlitt November 30, 1810, but I doubt if that can be right. See extract
from Crabb Robinson in the note to Letter 185, on
page 422, testifying to Lamb’s sobriety between
November 9 and December 23.
Liston was John Liston
(1776?-1846), the actor, whose mock biography Lamb
wrote some years later (see Vol. I. of this edition, page 248). His wife was a diminutive comedienne, famous as Queen Dollalolla in “Tom Thumb.” Lamb may have known
Liston through the Burneys, for he is said to
have been an usher in Dr. Burney’s school—Dr. Charles Burney, Captain
Burney’s brother.
“Henry Robinson.” Crabb Robinson’sDiary shows us that his
domestication by Godwin’s fireside was not of
long duration. I do not know who Tommy Turner was. Mr.
Ireton was probably William Ayrton,
the musical critic, a friend and neighbour of the Burneys, and later a
friend of the Lambs, as we shall see.
“The alternating Wednesdays.” The Lambs
seem to have given up their weekly Wednesday evening, which now became fortnightly. Later
it was changed to Thursday and made monthly. Mrs.
Reynolds had been a Miss Chambers.]
LETTER 190 MARY LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM
[No date. ? 1811.]
MY dear Matilda,—Coleridge has
given me a very chearful promise that he will wait on Lady Jerningham any day you will be pleased to
appoint; he offered to write to you; but I found it was to be done tomorrow, and as I am pretty well acquainted with his
tomorrows, I thought good to let you know his determination today. He is in
town today, but as he is often going to Hammersmith for a night or two, you had
better perhaps send the invitation through me, and I will manage it for you as
well as I can. You had better let him have four or five days’ previous
notice, and you had better send the invitation as soon as you can; for he seems
tolerably well just now. I mention all these betters, because I wish to do the
best I can for you, perceiving, as I do, it is a thing you have set your heart upon. He dined one [d]ay in
company with Catilana (is that the way
you spell her Italian name?—I am reading Sallust, and had like to have written Catiline). How I should have liked, and how you
would have liked, to have seen Coleridge and
Catilana together!
You have been very good of late to let me come and see you
so seldom, and you are a little goodish to come so seldom here, because you
stay away from a kind motive. But if you stay away always, as I fear you mean
to do, I would not give one pin for your good intentions. In plain words, come
and see me very soon; for though I be not sensitive as some people, I begin to
feel strange qualms for having driven you from me.
Yours affectionately, M. Lamb. Wednesday.
Alas! Wednesday shines no more to me now.
Miss Duncan played famously in the
new comedy, which went off as famously. By the way, she put in a spiteful
piece of wit, I verily believe of her own head; and methought she stared me
full in the face. The words were “As silent as an author in
company.” Her hair and herself looked remarkably well.
Note
[I place this undated letter here on account of that which follows.
Angelica Catalani (1782-1849) was the great singer.
I find no record of Coleridge’s meeting with
her.
“Miss Duncan.” Praise
of this lady in Miss Hardcastle and other parts will be
found in Leigh Hunt’sCritical Essays on the Performers of the London
Theatres, 1807. At this time she was playing with the Drury Lane
Company at the Lyceum. They produced several new plays.]
LETTER 191 (Fragment) CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN MORGAN
[Dated at end: March 8, 1811.]
THERE—don’t read any further, because the
Letter is not intended for you but for Coleridge, who might perhaps not have opened it directed to him
suo nomine. It is to invite C. to Lady Jerningham’s on Sunday. Her
address is to be found within. We come to Hammersmith notwithstanding on
Sunday, and hope Mrs. M. will not think
of getting us Green Peas or any such expensive luxuries. A plate of plain
Turtle, another of Turbot, with good roast Beef in the rear, and, as Alderman Curtis says, whoever can’t make
a dinner of that ought to be damn’d.
C. Lamb. Friday night, 8 Mar., 1811.
Note
[This is Lamb’s only existing letter to
Coleridge’s friend, John Morgan.
Coleridge had not found a lodging and was still with the
Morgans at 7 Portland Place, Hammersmith.
Alderman Sir William Curtis, M.P.,
afterwards Lord Mayor of London, was the subject of much ridicule by the Whigs and
Radicals, and the hero of Peter Pindar’s
satire “The Fat Knight and the
Petition.” It was he who first gave the toast of the three
R.’s—“reading, riting and rithmetic” (see Letter 328).]
LETTER 192 MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
2 Oct., 1811. Temple.
MY dear Sarah,—I have been a long time anxiously expecting the happy news
that I have just received. I address you because, as the letter has been lying
some days at the India House, I hope you are able to sit up and read my
congratulations on the little live boy
you have been so many years wishing for. As we old women say, ‘May he
live to be a great comfort to you!’ I never knew an event of the
kind that gave me so much pleasure as the little
long-looked-for-come-at-last’s arrival; and I rejoiced to hear his honour
has begun to suck—the word was not distinctly written and I was a long time
making out the solemn fact. I hope to hear from you soon, for I am desirous to
know if your nursing labours are attended with any difficulties. I wish you a
happy getting-up, and a merry christening.
Charles sends his love, perhaps though he
will write a scrap to Hazlitt at the
end. He is now looking over me, he is always in my way, for he has had a
month’s holydays at home, but I am happy to say they end on Monday—when
mine begin, for I am going to pass a week at Richmond with Mrs. Burney. She has been dying, but she went
to the Isle of Wight and recovered once more, and she is finishing her recovery at Richmond. When
there I intend to read Novels and play at Piquet all day long.
Yours truly, M. Lamb.
LETTER 192 (continued) CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
DEAR Hazlitt,
I cannot help accompanying my sister’s congratulations
to Sarah with some of my own to you on
this happy occasion of a man child being
born—
Delighted Fancy already sees him some future rich alderman
or opulent merchant; painting perhaps a little in his leisure hours for
amusement like the late H. Bunbury, Esq.
Pray, are the Winterslow Estates entailed? I am afraid lest
the young dog when he grows up should cut down the woods, and leave no groves
for widows to take their lonesome solace in. The Wem Estate of course can only
devolve on him, in case of your brother leaving no male issue.
Well, my blessing and heaven’s be upon him, and make
him like his father, with something a better temper and a smoother head of
hair, and then all the men and women must love him.
Martin and the Card-boys join in
congratulations. Love to Sarah. Sorry we are not within Caudle-shot.
C. Lamb.
If the widow be
assistant on this notable occasion, give our due respects and kind
remembrances to her.
Note
[William Hazlitt’s son,
William Hazlitt, afterwards the Registrar, was
born on September 26, 1811. He had been preceded by another boy, in 1809, who lived,
however, only a few months.
“H. Bunbury.” Henry William Bunbury, the caricaturist and painter, and
the husband of Goldsmith’s friend, Catherine Horneck, the “Jessamy Bride.”
He died in 1811.
The Card-boys would be Lamb’s Wednesday visitors.
Here should come a letter from Lamb
to Charles Lloyd, Senior, dated September 8, 1812,
not available for this edition. It is printed in Charles Lamb and the Lloyds: a
letter of criticism of Mr. Lloyd’s translation of the Epistles of Horace.
A letter from Lamb to Charles Lloyd, Junior, belonging to this period, is now no
more, in common with all but two of his letters, the remainder of which were destroyed by
Lloyd’s son, Charles Grosvenor
Lloyd. Writing to Daniel Stuart on
October 13, 1812, Wordsworth says,
“Lamb writes to Lloyd that
C.’s play [Coleridge’s “Remorse”] is accepted.”
We now come to a period of three years in Lamb’s life which is represented in the correspondence by only two or
three letters. Not until Letter 196, August 9, 1814, does he return to his old manner.
During this time Lamb is known to have written his first essay on Christ’s Hospital, his
“Confessions of a
Drunkard,” the little but excellent series of Table-Talk in The Examiner and some verses in the same
paper. Possibly he wrote many letters too, but they have disappeared. We know from
Crabb Robinson’sDiary that it was a social period
with the Lambs; the India House work also becoming more exacting than
before.]
LETTERS 193 AND 194 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN DYER COLLIER
[No date. Probably 1812.]
DEAR Sir—Mrs.
Collier has been kind enough to say that you would endeavour to
procure a reporter’s situation for W.
Hazlitt. I went to consult him upon it last night, and he
acceded very eagerly to the proposal, and requests me to say how very much
obliged he feels to your kindness, and how glad he should be for its success.
He is, indeed, at his wits’ end for a livelihood; and, I should think,
especially qualified for such an employment, from his singular facility in
retaining all conversations at which he has been ever present. I think you may
recommend him with confidence. I am sure I shall myself be obliged to you for
your exertions, having a great regard for him.
Yours truly, C. Lamb. Sunday morning.
Note
[John Payne Collier, who prints
this in his Old Man’s
Diary, adds: “The result was that my father procured for
Hazlitt the situation of a parliamentary
reporter on the Morning
Chronicle; but he did not retain it long, and as his talents were
undoubted, Mr. Perry transferred to him the office
of theatrical critic, a position which
was subsequently held for several years by a person of much inferior talents.”
Crabb Robinson mentions in his Diary under the date December 24,
1812, that Hazlitt is in high spirits from his
engagement with Perry as parliamentary reporter at four guineas a week.
I place here, not having any definite date, a letter on a kindred subject
from Mary Lamb:—]
MARY LAMB TO MRS. JOHN DYER COLLIER
[No date.]
DEAR Mrs.
C.—This note will be given to you by a young friend of mine, whom I wish you would employ: she has
commenced business as a mantua-maker, and, if you and my girls would try her, I
think she could fit you all three, and it will be doing her an essential
service. She is, I think, very deserving, and if you procure work for her among
your friends and acquaintances, so much the better. My best love to you and my
girls. We are both well.
Yours affectionately, Mary Lamb.
Note
[John Payne Collier remarks:
“Southey and Coleridge, as is well known, married two sisters of the name of
Fricker. I never saw either of them, but a third sister settled as a mantua-maker in London, and for
some years she worked for my mother and her daughters. She was an intelligent woman, but by
no means above her business, though she was fond of talking of her two poet-married
relations. She was introduced to my mother by the following note from Mary Lamb, who always spoke of my sisters as her
girls.”
Mary Lamb had herself worked as a mantua-maker for
some years previous to the autumn of 1796.]
LETTER 195 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN SCOTT
[p.m. (? Feb.), 1814.]
“SIR—Your explanation is perfectly pleasant to
me, and I accede to your proposal most willingly.
As I began with the beginning of this month, I will if you
please call upon you for your part of the engagement (supposing I shall have performed mine) on the 1st
of March next, and thence forward if it suit you quarterly.—You will
occasionally wink at Briskets & Veiny Pieces.
Your hble. Svt. C. Lamb. Saturday.
Note
[John Scott (1783-1821) we shall
meet later, in 1820, in connection with the London Magazine, which he edited until the fatal
termination of his quarrel with Blackwood’s. Scott had just become editor of The Champion.
Lamb’s only contribution to The Champion under Scott, which can be identified, is the essay “On the Melancholy of Tailors,” but
there is little doubt that he supplied many of the extracts from old authors which were
printed from time to time, and possibly one or two comic letters also.
See Letter 201 on page 449.]
LETTER 196 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: August 9, 1814.]
DEAR Wordsworth, I cannot tell you how pleased I was at the receit
of the great Armful of
Poetry which you have sent me, and to get it before the rest of the
world too! I have gone quite through with it, and was thinking to have
accomplishd that pleasure a second time before I wrote to thank you, but
M. Burney came in the night (while
we were out) and made holy theft of it, but we expect restitution in a day or
two. It is the noblest conversational poem I ever read. A day in heaven. The
part (or rather main body) which has left the sweetest odour on my memory (a
bad term for the remains of an impression so recent) is the Tales of the Church
yard. The only girl among seven brethren, born out of due time and not duly
taken away again—the deaf man and the blind man—the Jacobite and the Hanoverian
whom antipathies reconcile—the Scarron-entry of the rusticating parson upon his
solitude—these were all new to me too. My having known the story of Margaret (at the beginning), a very old
acquaintance, even as long back as I saw you first at Stowey, did not make her
re-appearance less fresh. I
don’t know what to pick out of this Best of Books upon the best subjects
for partial naming.
That gorgeous Sunset is famous, I think it must have been
the identical one we saw on Salisbury plain five years ago, that drew Phillips from the card table where he had sat
from rise of that luminary to its unequall’d set, but neither he nor I
had gifted eyes to see those symbols of common things glorified such as the
prophets saw them, in that sunset—the wheel—the potter’s clay—the wash
pot—the wine press—the almond tree rod—the baskets of figs—the fourfold visaged
head, the throne and him that sat thereon.
One feeling I was particularly struck with as what I
recognised so very lately at Harrow Church on entering in it after a hot and
secular day’s pleasure,—the instantaneous coolness and calming, almost
transforming, properties of a country church just entered—a certain fragrance
which it has—either from its holiness, or being kept shut all the week, or the
air that is let in being pure country—exactly what you have reduced into words
but I am feeling I cannot. The reading your lines about it fixed me for a time,
a monument, in Harrow Church, (do you know it?) with its fine long Spire white
as washd marble, to be seen by vantage of its high scite as far as Salisbury
spire itself almost—
I shall select a day or two very shortly when I am coolest
in brain to have a steady second reading, which I feel will lead to many more,
for it will be a stock book with me while eyes or spectacles shall be lent me.
There is a deal of noble matter about mountain scenery, yet
not so much as to overpower and discountenance a poor Londoner or South country
man entirely, though Mary seems to have
felt it occasionally a little too powerfully, for it was her remark during
reading it that by your system it was doubtful whether a Liver in Towns had a
Soul to be Saved. She almost trembled for that invisible part of us in her.
Save for a late excursion to Harrow and a day or two on the
banks of the Thames this Summer, rural images were fast fading from my mind,
and by the wise provision of the Regent all
that was countryfy’d in the Parks is all but obliterated. The very colour
of green is vanishd, the whole surface of Hyde Park is dry crumbling sand
(Arabia Arenosa), not a vestige or hint of grass ever having grown there,
booths and drinking places go all round it for a mile and half I am confident—I
might say two miles in circuit—the stench of liquors, bad tobacco, dirty people and provisions, conquers the air and we are
stifled and suffocated in Hyde Park.
Order after Order has been issued by Ld. Sidmouth in the name
of the Regent (acting in behalf of his Royal
father) for the dispersion of the varlets, but in vain. The vis
unita of all the Publicans in
London, Westmr., Marybone, and miles round is too
powerful a force to put down. The Regent has rais’d a phantom which he
cannot lay. There they’ll stay probably for ever. The whole beauty of the
Place is gone—that lake-look of the Serpentine—it has got foolish ships upon
it—but something whispers to have confidence in nature and its revival— at the coming of the milder
day These monuments shall all be overgrown. Meantime I confess to have smoked one delicious Pipe in one of the
cleanliest and goodliest of the booths—a tent rather, “O call it not a
booth!”—erected by the public Spirit of
Watson, who keeps the Adam and Eve at Pancras (the ale
houses have all emigrated with their train of bottles, mugs, corkscrews,
waiters, into Hyde Park—whole Ale houses with all their Ale!) in company with
some of the guards that had been in France and a fine French girl (habited like
a Princess of Banditti) which one of the dogs had transported from the Garonne
to the Serpentine. The unusual scene, in H. Park, by Candlelight in open air,
good tobacco, bottled stout, made it look like an interval in a campaign, a
repose after battle, I almost fancied scars smarting and was ready to club a
story with my comrades of some of my lying deeds.
After all, the fireworks were splendent—the Rockets in
clusters, in trees and all shapes, spreading about like young stars in the
making, floundering about in Space (like unbroke horses) till some of Newton’s calculations should fix them,
but then they went out. Any one who could see ’em and the still finer
showers of gloomy rain fire that fell sulkily and angrily from ’em, and
could go to bed without dreaming of the Last Day, must be as hardened an
Atheist as * * * * * *.
Again let me thank you for your present and assure you that
fireworks and triumphs have not distracted me from receiving a calm and noble
enjoyment from it (which I trust I shall often), and I sincerely congratulate
you on its appearance.
With kindest remembrances to you & household, we
remain—yours sincerely
C. Lamb and sister. 9 Aug., 1814.
Note
[With this letter Lamb’s
second epistolary period may be said to begin.
Wordsworth had sent Lamb a copy of The Excursion, which had been published in July, 1814. In
connection with this letter Lamb’sreview of the poem in the Quarterly (see Vol. I. of this edition, page 160) should be read.
The tales of the churchyard are in Books VI. and VII. The story of Margaret had been written in 1795.
The “sunset scene” (see Letter 199, page 444) is at
the end of Book II. Lamb refers to his visit to
Hazlitt at Winterslow, near Salisbury, in 1809,
with Mary Lamb, Colonel
Phillips and Martin Burney. Wordsworth was not with them. This is the passage:—
So was he lifted gently from the ground, And with their freight homeward the shepherds moved Through the dull mist, I following—when a step, A single step, that freed me from the skirts Of the blind vapour, opened to my view Glory beyond all glory ever seen By waking sense or by the dreaming soul! The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, Was of a mighty city—boldly say A wilderness of building, sinking far And self-withdrawn into a boundless depth, Far sinking into splendour—without end! Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold, With alabaster domes, and silver spires, And blazing terrace upon terrace, high Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright, In avenues disposed; there, towers begirt With battlements that on their restless fronts Bore stars—illumination of all gems! By earthly nature had the effect been wrought Upon the dark materials of the storm Now pacified; on them, and on the coves And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto The vapours had receded, taking there Their station under a cerulean sky. Oh, ’twas an unimaginable sight! Clouds, mists, streams, watery rocks and emerald turf, Clouds of all tincture, rocks and sapphire sky, Confused, commingled, mutually inflamed, Molten together, and composing thus, Each lost in each, that marvellous array Of temple, palace, citadel, and huge Fantastic pomp of structure without name, In fleecy folds voluminous, enwrapped. Right in the midst, where interspace appeared Of open court, an object like a throne Under a shining canopy of state Stood fixed; and fixed resemblances were seen To implements of ordinary use, But vast in size, in substance glorified; Such as by Hebrew Prophets were beheld In vision—forms uncouth of mightiest power For admiration and mysterious awe.
In August, 1814, London was in a state of jubilation over the declaration
of peace between England and France. Lord Sidmouth,
late Mr. Addington, the Home Secretary, known as “The
Doctor,” was one of Lamb’s
butts in his political epigrams.
“At the coming of the milder
day.” A quotation from Wordsworth’s “Hart-Leap Well.”
“O call it not a booth!” I have not traced this.
“* * * * * *.” I assume these stars to stand for Godwin.]
LETTER 197 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
13 August, 1814.
DEAR Resuscitate,—there comes to you by the vehicle
from Lad Lane this day a volume of German; what it is I cannot justly say, the
characters of those northern nations having been always singularly harsh and
unpleasant to me. It is a contribution of Dr.
Southey towards your wants, and you would have had it sooner but
for an odd accident. I wrote for it three days ago, and the Dr., as he thought,
sent it me. A book of like exterior he did send, but being disclosed, how far
unlike. It was the Well-bred
Scholar,—a book with which it seems the Dr. laudably fills up those
hours which he can steal from his medical avocations. Chesterfield, Blair,
Beattie, portions from “The Life of Savage,”
make up a prettyish system of morality and the Belles Lettres, which Mr. Mylne, a Schoolmaster, has properly
brought together, and calls the collection by the denomination above mentioned.
The Doctor had no sooner discovered his error than he despatched man and horse
to rectify the mistake, and with a pretty kind of ingenuous modesty in his note
seemeth to deny any knowledge of the Well-bred Scholar; false modesty surely and a blush misplaced; for,
what more pleasing than the consideration of professional austerity thus
relaxing, thus improving; but so, when a child I remember blushing, being
caught on my knees to my maker, or doing otherwise some pious and praiseworthy
action; now I rather love such things to be seen. Henry Crabb Robinson is out upon his circuit, and his books are
inaccessible without his leave and key. He is attending the Midland Circuit,—a
short term, but to him, as to many young Lawyers, a long vacation sufficiently
dreary. I thought I could do no better than transmit to him, not extracts, but
your very letter itself, than which I think I never read any thing more moving,
more pathetic, or more conducive to the purpose of persuasion. The Crab is a
sour Crab if it does not sweeten him. I think it would draw another third
volume of Dodsley out of me;
but you say you don’t want any English books? Perhaps, after all, that’s as
well; one’s romantic credulity is for ever misleading one into misplaced
acts of foolery. Crab might have answered by this time:
his juices take a long time supplying, but they’ll run at last,—I know
they will,—pure golden pippin. His address is at T.
Robinson’s, Bury, and if on Circuit, to be forwarded
immediately—such my peremptory superscription. A fearful rumour has since
reached me that the Crab is on the eve of setting out for France. If he is in
England, your letter will reach him, and I flatter myself a touch of the
persuasive of my own, which accompanies it, will not be thrown away; if it be,
he is a Sloe, and no true-hearted crab, and there’s an end. For that life
of the German Conjuror which you speak of, “Colerus de Vita Doctoris
vix-Intelligibilis,” I perfectly remember the last evening we
spent with Mrs. Morgan and Miss Brent, in London-Street,—(by that token
we had raw rabbits for supper, and Miss Brent prevailed
upon me to take a glass of brandy and water after supper, which is not my
habit,)—I perfectly remember reading portions of that life in their parlour,
and I think it must be among their Packages. It was the very last evening we
were at that house. What is gone of that frank-hearted circle, Morgan and his cos-lettuces? He ate walnuts
better than any man I ever knew. Friendships in these parts stagnate.1 I am going to eat Turbot, Turtle, Venison, marrow
pudding—cold punch, claret, madeira,—at our annual feast at half-past four this
day.2 They keep bothering me, (I’m at
office,) and my ideas are confused. Let me know if I can be of any service as
to books. God forbid the Architectonicon should be sacrificed to a foolish
scruple of some Book-proprietor, as if books did not belong with the highest
propriety to those that understand ’em best.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Since Lamb’s last letter to
him (October 30, 1809) Coleridge had done very
little. The
Friend had been given up; he had made his London home with the Morgans; had delivered the lectures on Shakespeare and contributed to The Courier; “Remorse” had been produced with
Lamb’s prologue, January 23, 1813; the quarrel with
Wordsworth had been to some extent healed; he
had sold his German books; and the opium-habit was growing on him. He was now at Bristol,
living with Joseph Wade, and meditating a great work
on Christianity which Cottle was to print, and which
ultimately became the Biographia Literaria.
The term “Resuscitate” may refer to one of Coleridge’s frequent threats of dying (see Letter
257, page 551).
1 [See Appendix II., page 972.] 2 [Ibid., page 972.]
Dr. Henry Herbert Southey (1788-1866) was brother of
the poet. He had just settled in London.
“Mylne” was William Milns, author of the Well-Bred Scholar, 1794.
Crabb Robinson does not mention Coleridge’s letter, nor make any reference to it, in
his Diary. He went
to France in August after circuit. It was at this time (August 23) that
Coleridge wrote to John
Murray concerning a translation of Goethe’sFaust, which Murray contemplated (see Letters, E. H. Coleridge, page 624). The suggestion that
Coleridge should translate Faust for Murray came viâCrabb RobinsonviâLamb.
The “life of the German conjuror.” There were several
Colerus’. John
Colerus of Amsterdam wrote a Life of Spinoza. Lamb may have meant this.
John Colerus of Berlin invented a perpetual calendar and
John Jacob Colerus examined Platonic doctrine. There are still
others.
The Morgans had moved to Ashley,
near Box. Miss Brent was Mrs. Morgan’s sister.
“Friendships in these parts stagnate.” Here comes, in
Mr. Macdonald’s transcript, a long and
very interesting passage concerning Lamb’s
card-playing friend Phillips, who has been appointed
by Rickman, the new Clerk Assistant, to the House of
Commons, to a secretaryship. Lamb suggests that in the past he has
been guilty of writing Phillips love poems for him. My text has also
another unavoidable omission.
“Our annual feast”—the annual dinner of the India
House clerks.
“The Architectonicon.” Lamb refers possibly to some great projected work of Coleridge’s. The term is applied to metaphysicians.
Possibly Goethe is referred to.]
LETTER 198 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
26th August, 1814.
LET the hungry soul rejoice: there is corn in Egypt.
Whatever thou hast been told to the contrary by designing friends, who perhaps
inquired carelessly, or did not inquire at all, in hope of saving their money,
there is a stock of “Remorse” on hand, enough, as Pople conjectures, for seven years’ consumption; judging
from experience of the last two years. Methinks it makes for the benefit of
sound literature, that the best books do not always go off best. Inquire in
seven years’ time for the “Rokebys” and the “Laras,” and where shall they be found?—fluttering
fragmentally in some
thread-paper—whereas thy “Wallenstein” and thy
“Remorse” are safe on Longman’s or
Pople’s shelves, as in some Bodleian; there they
shall remain; no need of a chain to hold them fast—perhaps for ages—tall
copies—and people shan’t run about hunting for them as in old
Ezra’s shrievalty they did for a Bible, almost
without effect till the great-great-grand-niece (by the mother’s side) of
Jeremiah or Ezekiel (which was
it?) remembered something of a book, with odd reading in it, that used to lie
in the green closet in her aunt Judith’s bedchamber.
Thy caterer Price was at Hamburgh when
last Pople heard of him, laying up for
thee, like some miserly old father for his generous-hearted son to squander.
Mr. Charles Aders, whose books also pant
for that free circulation which thy custody is sure to give them, is to be
heard of at his kinsmen, Messrs. Jameson
and Aders, No. 7, Laurence-Pountney-Lane, London,
according to the information which Crabius with his parting breath left me.
Crabius is gone to Paris. I prophesy he and the
Parisians will part with mutual contempt. His head has a twist Alemagne, like
thine, dear mystic.
I have been reading Madame
Staelon
Germany. An impudent clever woman. But if “Faust” be no better than in her
abstract of it, I counsel thee to let it alone. How canst thou translate the
language of cat-monkeys? Fie on such fantasies! But I will not forget to look
for Proclus. It is a kind of book which
when one meets with it one shuts the lid faster than one opened it. Yet I have
some bastard kind of recollection that somewhere, some time ago, upon some
stall or other, I saw it. It was either that or Plotinus, 205-270 a.d.,
Neoplatonist, or Saint Augustine’s
“City of God.” So
little do some folks value, what to others, sc. to
you, “well used,” had been the “Pledge of
Immortality.” Bishop Bruno
I never touched upon. Stuffing too good for the brains of such “a
Hare” as thou describest. May it burst his pericranium, as the gobbets of
fat and turpentine (a nasty thought of the seer) did that old dragon in the
Apocrypha! May he go mad in trying to understand his author! May he lend the
third volume of him before he has quite translated the second, to a friend who
shall lose it, and so spoil the publication; and may his friend find it and
send it him just as thou or some such less dilatory spirit shall have announced
the whole for the press; lastly, may he be hunted by Reviewers, and the devil
jug him! So I think I have answered all the questions except about Morgan’s cos-lettuces. The first
personal peculiarity I ever observed of him (all worthy souls are subject to
’em) was a particular kind of rabbit-like delight in munching salads with
oil without vinegar after dinner—a steady contemplative browsing on them—didst
never take note of it? Canst think of any
other queries in the solution of which I can give thee satisfaction? Do you
want any books that I can procure for you? Old Jimmy Boyer is dead at last. Trollope has got his living, worth £1000 a-year net. See, thou
sluggard, thou heretic-sluggard, what mightest thou not have arrived at! Lay
thy animosity against Jimmy in the grave. Do not entail it on thy posterity.
Charles Lamb.
Note
[Coleridge’s play
“Remorse” had been
published by Pople in 1813. A copy of the first
edition now brings about thirty shillings; but this is largely owing to the presence in the
volume of Lamb’s prologue. But Rokeby and Lara bring their pounds too.
“Thy caterer Price.” I do not
identify.
Charles Aders was a friend of Robinson’s, and through him of Lamb’s: a collector of pictures, particularly of the
German school, whose house was in Euston Square. Lamb’s poem
“Angel Help” (see Vol. V.,
page 48) describes a picture in Mrs. Aders’
album; and his poem “To C. Aders,
Esq.” (Vol. V., page 85), his collection. Crabius was, of course, Crabb
Robinson.
“Madame Stael on
Germany”—De
l’Allemagne.
“Fie on such fantasies!”—“Fie on sinful
luxury.” See the fairies’ song in “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” V., 5.
“Proclus”—the
Neo-Platonist, 412-485 a.d., “‘Well used,’
had been the ‘Pledge of Immortality.’” See Paradise Lost, IV., 200-201.
“Bishop Bruno.” St. Bruno, Bishop of Wurzburg, author of S. Brunonis Opera.
“Such ‘a Hare.’” Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855), who afterwards knew
Coleridge, was then at Cambridge, after living
at Weimar. I find no record of his translating Bruno; but this
possibly was he.
“Old dragon in the Apocrypha.” See “Bel and the Dragon,” verse 27.
“Jimmy Boyer.” The Rev. James Boyer, Headmaster of Christ’s Hospital in
Lamb and Coleridge’s day, died in 1814. His living, the richest in the
Hospital’s gift, was that of Colne Engaine, which passed to the Rev. Arthur William Trollope, Headmaster of Christ’s
Hospital until 1826. Boyer had been a Spartan, and
Coleridge and he had had passages, but in the main
Coleridge’s testimony to him is favourable and kindly (see
Lamb’sChrist’s Hospital essay, Vol. II. of this
edition, and notes).
“Entail”—A punning reference to Boyer’s “whipping propensities.”]
LETTER 199 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[p.m. illegible. Sept. 19, 1814.]
MY dear W. I
have scarce time or quiet to explain my present situation, how unquiet and
distracted it is. . . . Owing to the absence of some of my compeers, and to the
deficient state of payments at E. I. H. owing to bad peace speculations in the
Calico market (I write this to W. W., Esq. Collector of
Stamp duties for the conjoint northern counties, not to W.
W. Poet) I go back, and have for this many days past, to evening
work, generally at the rate of nine hours a day. The nature of my work too,
puzzling and hurrying, has so shaken my spirits, that my sleep is nothing but a
succession of dreams of business I cannot do, of assistants that give me no
assistance, of terrible responsibilities. I reclaimed your book, which Hazlit has uncivilly kept, only 2 days ago, and have made shift
to read it again with shatterd brain. It does not lose—rather some parts have
come out with a prominence I did not perceive before—but such was my aching
head yesterday (Sunday) that the book was like a Mountn. Landscape to one that should walk on the edge of a precipice. I
perceived beauty dizzily. Now what I would say is, that I see no prospect of a
quiet half day or hour even till this week and the next are past. I then hope
to get 4 weeks absence, and if then is time enough to begin I will most gladly
do what you require, tho’ I feel my inability, for my brain is always
desultory and snatches off hints from things, but can seldom follow a
“work “methodically. But that shall be no excuse. What I beg you to
do is to let me know from Southey, if
that will be time enough for the “Quarterly,” i.e. suppose it done in 3
weeks from this date (19 Sept.): if not it is my bounden duty to express my
regret, and decline it. Mary thanks you
and feels highly grateful for your Patent of Nobility, and acknowleges the
author of Excursion as the legitimate Fountain of
Honor. We both agree, that to our feeling Ellen is best as she is. To us there would have been something
repugnant in her challenging her Penance as a Dowry! the fact is explicable,
but how few to whom it could have been renderd explicit!
The unlucky reason of the detention of Excursion was, Hazlit and we having a misunderstanding. He
blowed us up about 6 months ago, since which the union hath snapt, but
M. Burney borrowd it for him and
after reiterated messages I only got it on
Friday. His remarks had
some vigor in them, particularly something about an old ruin being too modern for your Primeval Nature, and about a lichen,
but I forget the Passage, but the whole wore a slovenly air of dispatch and
disrespect. That objection which M. Burney had imbibed
from him about Voltaire, I explaind to
M. B. (or tried) exactly on your principle of its
being a characteristic speech. That it was no settled comparative estimate of
Voltaire with any of his own tribe of buffoons—no
injustice, even if you spoke it, for I dared say you never could relish Candide. I know I tried to
get thro’ it about a twelvemonth since, and couldn’t for the
Dullness. Now, I think I have a wider range in buffoonery than you. Too much
toleration perhaps.
I finish this after a raw ill bakd dinner, fast gobbled up,
to set me off to office again after working there till near four. O Christ! how
I wish I were a rich man, even tho’ I were squeezed camel-fashion at
getting thro’ that Needles eye that is spoken of in the Written Word. Apropos, are you a Xtian? or is it the Pedlar and the
Priest that are?
I find I miscalld that celestial splendor of the mist going
off, a sunset. That only shews my inaccuracy of head.
Do pray indulge me by writing an answer to the point of time
mentioned above, or letSouthey. I am asham’d to go
bargaining in this way, but indeed I have no time I can reckon on till the 1st
week in Octor. God send I may not be disappointed in
that!
Coleridge swore in letter to me he would
review Excn. in the Quarterly. Therefore, tho’ that shall not stop me, yet if I can do anything, when done, I must know of him if he has anything ready,
or I shall fill the world with loud exclaims.
I keep writing on, knowing the Postage is no more for much
writing, else so faggd & disjointed I am with damnd India house work, I
scarce know what I do. My left arm reposes on “Excursion.” I feel what it would
be in quiet. It is now a sealed Book.
O happy Paris, seat of idleness and pleasure! From some
return’d English I hear that not such a thing as a counting house is to
be seen in her streets, scarce a desk—Earthquakes swallow up this mercantile
city and its gripple merchants, as Drayton hath it, “born to be the curse of this brave
isle.” I invoke this not on account of any parsimonious habits
the mercantile interest may have, but, to confess truth, because I am not fit
for an office.
Farewell, in haste, from a head that is ill to methodize, a
stomach to digest, and all out of Tune. Better harmonies await you.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Wordsworth had been appointed in
1813 Distributor of Stamps for the county of Westmoreland. Lamb is writing again about
The
Excursion, which at the instigation of Southey, to whom Wordsworth had made the suggestion,
he is to review for the Quarterly.
“Hazlitt and we having a
misunderstanding.” The precise cause of the trouble we do not know, but in
Crabb Robinson’sDiary, in 1811, it is said that a
slight coolness had begun between the two men on account of money which Lamb did not feel justified in lending to
Hazlitt. Between 1811 and 1814, however, they were friendly again.
It was Hazlitt’s hostile attitude to Wordsworth that brought about Robinson’s split
with him, although that also was mended: literary men are short haters.
HazlittreviewedThe Excursion—from Lamb’s copy, which in
itself was a cause of grievance—in The
Examiner, in three numbers, August 21, 28 and October 2.
Wordsworth had described Candide, in Book II., as the
“dull product of a scoffer’s pen.”
Hazlitt wrote thus:—
. . . We cannot however agree with Mr. Wordsworth
that Candide
is dull. It is, if our author pleases, “the production
of a scoffer’s pen,” or it is any thing, but dull. Rasselas
indeed is dull; but then it is privileged dulness. It may not be proper in a grave,
discreet, orthodox, promising young divine, who studies his opinions in the contraction
or distension of his patron’s brow, to allow any merit to a work like Candide; but we conceive that it would
have been more in character, that is, more manly, in Mr.
Wordsworth, nor do we think it would have hurt the cause he espouses, if
he had blotted out the epithet, after it had peevishly escaped him. Whatsoever savours
of a little, narrow, inquisitorial spirit, does not sit well on a poet and a man of
genius. The prejudices of a philosopher are not natural. . . .
Lamb himself made the same criticism, three years
later, at Haydon’s dinner party (see page
954).
Hazlitt had also said of The Excursion that—
Such is the severe simplicity of Mr.
Wordsworth’s taste, that we doubt whether he would not reject a
druidical temple, or time-hallowed ruin, as too modern and artificial for his purpose.
He only familiarises himself or his readers with a stone, covered with lichens, which
has slept in the same spot of ground from the creation of the world, or with the rocky
fissure between two mountains, caused by thunder, or with a cavern scooped out by the
sea. His mind is, as it were, coeval with the primary forms of things, holds
immediately from nature; and his imagination “owes no allegiance “but
“to the elements.”
“In the Written Word.” See Matthew xix. 24.
“Are you a Xtian?”—referring to the sentiments of
Wanderer and the Pastor—two characters of The Excursion.
“A sunset” See preceding letter to Wordsworth, page 435.
“Gripple merchants.” See Drayton’s lines “Upon the noble Lady Aston’s departure for France.”
Lamb had used this quotation before, in his essay “The Good Clerk,” in The Reflector.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Southey, dated October 20,
1814, not available for this edition (printed by Mr. W. C.
Hazlitt in The
Lambs), stating that Lamb has deposited with
Mr. Grosvenor Bedford,
Southey’s friend and correspondent, his review of The
Excursion. “Who can cram into a strait coop of a review any
serious idea of such a vast and magnificent poem?”]
LETTER 200 MARY LAMB TO BARBARA BETHAM (aged 14)
Novr. 2, 1814.
IT is very long since I have met with such an
agreeable surprise as the sight of your letter, my kind young friend, afforded
me. Such a nice letter as it is too. And what a pretty hand you write. I
congratulate you on this attainment with great pleasure, because I have so
often felt the disadvantage of my own wretched handwriting.
You wish for London news. I rely upon your sister Ann for gratifying you in this respect, yet I
have been endeavouring to recollect whom you might have seen here, and what may
have happened to them since, and this effort has only brought the image of
little Barbara Betham, unconnected with
any other person, so strongly before my eyes that I seem as if I had no other
subject to write upon. Now I think I see you with your feet propped upon the
fender, your two hands spread out upon your knees—an attitude you always chose
when we were in familiar confidential conversation together—telling me long
stories of your own home, where now you say you are “Moping on with
the same thing every day,” and which then presented nothing but
pleasant recollections to your mind. How well I remember your quiet steady face
bent over your book. One day, conscience struck at having wasted so much of
your precious time in reading, and feeling yourself, as you prettily said,
“quite useless to me,” you went to my drawers and hunted
out some unhemmed pocket-handkerchiefs, and by no means could I prevail upon
you to resume your story books till you had hemmed them all. I remember, too,
your teaching my little maid to read—your sitting with her a whole evening to
console her for the death of her sister; and that she in her turn endeavoured
to become a comforter to you, the next evening, when you wept at the sight of
Mrs. Holcroft, from whose school you
had recently eloped because you were not partial to sitting in the stocks.
Those tears, and a few you once dropped when my brother teased you about your supposed fondness for an
apple dumpling, were the only interruptions to the calm contentedness of your
unclouded brow. We still remain the same as you left us, neither taller nor
wiser, or perceptibly older, but three years must have made a great alteration
in you. How very much, dear Barbara, I should like to see
you!
We still live in Temple Lane, but I am now sitting in a room
you never saw. Soon after you left us we we[re] distressed by the cries of a
cat, which seemed to proceed from the garrets adjoining to ours, and only
separated from ours by a locked door on the farther side of my brother’s
bedroom, which you know was the little room at the top of the kitchen stairs.
We had the lock forced and let poor puss out from behind a pannel of the
wainscot, and she lived with us from that time, for we were in gratitude bound
to keep her, as she had introduced us to four untenanted, unowned rooms, and by
degrees we have taken possession of these unclaimed apartments—First putting up
lines to dry our clothes, then moving my brother’s bed into one of these,
more commodious than his own room. And last winter, my brother being unable to
pursue a work he had begun, owing to the kind interruptions of friends who were
more at leisure than himself, I persuaded him that he might write at his ease
in one of these rooms, as he could not then hear the door knock, or hear
himself denied to be at home, which was sure to make him call out and convict
the poor maid in a fib. Here, I said, he might be almost really not at home. So
I put in an old grate, and made him a fire in the largest of these garrets, and
carried in one table, and one chair, and bid him write away, and consider
himself as much alone as if he were in a new lodging in the midst of Salisbury
Plain, or any other wide unfrequented place where he could expect few visitors
to break in upon his solitude. I left him quite delighted with his new
acquisition, but in a few hours he came down again with a sadly dismal face. He
could do nothing, he said, with those bare whitewashed walls before his eyes.
He could not write in that dull unfurnished prison.
The next day, before he came home from his office, I had
gathered up various bits of old carpetting to cover the floor; and, to a little
break the blank look of the bare walls, I hung up a few old prints that used to
ornament the kitchen, and after dinner, with great boast of what an improvement
I had made, I took Charles once more into
his new study. A week of busy labours followed, in which I think you would not
have disliked to have been our assistant. My brother and I almost covered the
walls with prints, for which purpose he cut out every print from every book in
his old library, coming in every now and then to ask my leave to strip a fresh
poor author—which he might not do, you know, without my permission, as I am elder sister. There was such pasting, such
consultation where their portraits, and where the series of pictures from
Ovid, Milton, and Shakespear
would show to most advantage, and in what obscure corner authors of humbler
note might be allowed to tell their stories. All the books gave up their stores
but one, a translation from Ariosto, a
delicious set of four and twenty prints, and for which I had marked out a
conspicuous place; when lo! we found at the moment the scissars were going to
work that a part of the poem was printed at the back of every picture. What a
cruel disappointment! To conclude this long story about nothing, the poor
despised garret is now called the print room, and is become our most favorite
sitting room.
Your sister Ann will
tell you that your friend Louisa is
going to France. Miss Skepper is out of
town, Mrs. Reynolds desires to be
remembered to you, and so does my neighbour Mrs.
Norris, who was your doctress when you were unwell, her three
little children are grown three big children. The Lions still live in Exeter
Change. Returning home through the Strand, I often hear them roar about twelve
oclock at night. I never hear them without thinking of you, because you seemed
so pleased with the sight of them, and said your young companions would stare
when you told them you had seen a Lion.
And now my dear Barbara fare well, I have not written such a long letter a long
time, but I am very sorry I had nothing amusing to write about. Wishing you may
pass happily through the rest of your school days, and every future day of your
life,
I remain, your affectionate Friend, M. Lamb.
My brother sends
his love to you, with the kind remembrance your letter shewed you have of
us as I was. He joins with me in respects to your good father and mother,
and to your brother John, who, if I
do not mistake his name, is your tall young brother who was in search of a
fair lady with a large fortune. Ask him if he has found her yet. You say
you are not so tall as Louisa—you
must be, you cannot so degenerate from the rest of your family. Now you
have begun, I shall hope to have the pleasure of hearing from [you] again.
I shall always receive a letter from you with very great delight.
Note
[This charming letter is to a younger sister of Matilda Betham.
What the work was which in 1814 drove Lamb into an empty room I do not know. It may have been something which
came to nought. Beyond the essay on
Tailors (see Vol. I., page 172) and a few brief scraps for The Champion he did practically nothing
that has survived until some verses in 1818, a few criticisms in 1819, and in 1820 the
first of the Elia
essays for the London
Magazine. Louisa was Louisa Holcroft, about to go to France with her mother and step-father,
James Kenney. Miss
Skepper was Basil Montagu’s
step-daughter, afterwards the wife of B. W. Procter
(Barry Cornwall). Exeter Change, where there was a menagerie, was
in the Strand (see note on page 217). There is a further reference to the tallness of
John Betham in Lamb’s letter to Landor in
1832 (see page 889).]
LETTER 201 (See Letter 195). CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN SCOTT
Dated at end: Dec. 12, 1814.
SIR, I am sorry to seem to go off my agreement, but
very particular circumstances have happened to hinder my fulfillment of it at
present. If any single Essays ever occur to me in future, you shall have the
refusal of them. Meantime I beg you to consider the thing as at an end.
DEAR W. your
experience about tailors seems to be in point blank opposition to Burton, as much as the
author of the Excursion
does toto cœlo differ in his notion of a country life from
the picture which W. H. has exhibited of
the same. But with a little explanation you and B. may be
reconciled. It is evident that he confined his observations to the genuine
native London tailor. What freaks Tailor-nature may take in the country is not
for him to give account of. And certainly some of the freaks recorded do give
an idea of the persons in question being beside themselves, rather than in
harmony with the common moderate self enjoymt. of the rest mankind. A flying tailor, I venture to
say, is no more in rerum naturâ than a flying horse or a
Gryphon. His wheeling his airy flight from the precipice you mention had a
parallel in the melancholy Jew who toppled from the monument. Were his limbs
ever found? Then, the man who cures diseases by words is evidently an inspired
tailor. Burton never affirmed that the act
of sewing disqualified the practiser of it from being a fit organ for
supernatural revelation. He never enters into such subjects. ’Tis the
common uninspired tailor which he speaks of. Again the person who makes his
smiles to be heard, is evidently a man under possession; a demoniac taylor. A
greater hell than his own must have a hand in this. I am not certain that the
cause which you advocate has much reason for triumph. You seem to me to
substitute light headedness for light heartedness by a trick, or not to know
the difference. I confess, a grinning tailor would shock me.—Enough of
tailors.—
The “’scapes” of the great god Pan who appeared among your
mountains some dozen years since, and his narrow chance of being submerged by
the swains, afforded me much pleasure. I can conceive the water nymphs pulling
for him. He would have been another Hylas.
W. Hylas. In a mad letter which Capel Loft wrote to M. M.Phillips (now
Sr. Richd.)
I remember his noticing a metaphysical article by Pan,
signed H. and adding “I take your correspondent to be the same with
Hylas.” Hylas has [? had] put
forth a pastoral just before. How near the unfounded conjecture of the
certainly inspired Loft (unfounded as we thought it) was
to being realized! I can conceive him being “good to all that wander
in that perilous flood.” One J.
Scott (I know no more) is editr. of
Champn.
Where is Coleridge?
That Review you speak of, I am only sorry it did not appear last month.
The circumstances of haste and peculiar bad spirits under which it was written,
would have excused its slightness and inadequacy, the full load of which I
shall suffer from its lying by so long as it will seem to have done from its
postponement. I write with great difficulty and can scarce command my own
resolution to sit at writing an hour together. I am a poor creature, but I am
leaving off Gin. I hope you will see good will in the thing. I had a difficulty
to perform not to make it all Panegyrick; I have attempted to personate a mere
stranger to you; perhaps with too much strangeness. But you must bear that in
mind when you read it, and not think that I am in mind distant from you or your
Poem, but that both are close to me among the nearest of persons and things. I
do but act the stranger in the Review. Then, I was puzzled about extracts and
determined upon not giving one
that had been in the Examiner, for
Extracts repeated
give an idea that there is a meagre allowce. of good
things. By this way, I deprived myself of Sr. W.
Irthing and the reflections that conclude his story, which are
the flower of the Poem. H. had given the
reflections before me. Then it is the first Review I ever did, and I did not
know how long I might make it. But it must speak for itself, if Giffard and his crew do not put words in its
mouth, which I expect. Farewell. Love to all. Mary keeps very bad.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Lamb seems to have sent Wordsworth
a copy of The Champion
containing his essay, signed Burton, Junior, “On the Melancholy of Tailors.”
Wordsworth’s letter of reply, containing the examples of other tailors, is no longer
in existence. “A greater hell” is a pun: the receptacle into which
tailors throw scraps is called a hell. See Lamb’s “Satan in Search of a Wife” and notes
(Vol. V., pages 110 and 344) for more on this topic.
“W. H.”—Hazlitt: referring again to his review of The Excursion in The Examiner.
“The melancholy Jew”—Mr.
Lyon Levy, a diamond merchant, who jumped off the Monument commemorating the
Fire of London, on January 18, 1810. “Wheeling his airy flight” is an
adaptation of Gray’s beetle which “wheels
its droning flight” in the “Elegy.”
“The ‘’scapes’ of the great god Pan.” A reference to Hazlitt’s flirtation with a farmer’s daughter
in the Lake country, ending almost in immersion (see page 376). Hylas, seeking for water with a pitcher, so enraptured the nymphs of the
river with his beauty that they drew him in.
Capell Lofft (1751-1824) was a lawyer and
philanthropist of independent means who threw himself into many popular discussions and
knew many literary men. He was the patron of Robert
Bloomfield. Lamb was amused by him,
but annoyed that his initials were also C. L. “M. M.
Phillips”—for Monthly Magazine, which Phillips published.
“Good to all that wander in that perilous flood.” See
Lycidas,
184, 185.
“One J. Scott.”
See note on page 434.
“Where is Coleridge?” Coleridge was now at Calne, in Wiltshire, with the
Morgans. He was being treated for the drug habit
by a Dr. Page.
“That Review.” Lamb’sreview of The
Excursion, which, although the Quarterly that contains it is dated October, 1814,
must have been delayed until the end of the year. The episode of Sir W. Irthing (really Sir Alfred Irthing) is in Book VII. Lamb’s
foreboding as to Gifford’s action was only too
well justified, as we shall see. Lamb’s statement that it is his
first review is interesting in connection with Letters 111 and 112.
“Mary keeps very bad.” Mary Lamb, we learn from Crabb
Robinson’sDiary, had been taken ill some time between December 11
and December 24, having tired herself by writing an article on needlework for the British Lady’s
Magazine (see Vol. I. of this edition, page 176). She did not recover until
February, 1815.]
LETTER 203 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[p.m. illegible. ? Early Jan., 1815.]
DEAR Wordsworth, I told you my Review was a very imperfect one. But
what you will see in the Quarterly
is a spurious one which Mr. Baviad
Gifford has palm’d upon it for mine. I never felt more
vexd in my life than when I read it. I cannot give you an idea of what he has
done to it out of spite at me because he once sufferd me to be called a lunatic
in his Thing. The language he has alterd throughout.
Whatever inadequateness it had to its subject, it was in point of composition
the prettiest piece of prose I ever writ, and so my sister (to whom alone I
read the MS.) said. That charm if it had any is all gone: more than a third of
the substance is cut away, and that not all from one place, but passim, so as to make utter nonsense. Every warm
expression is changed for a nasty cold one. I have not the cursed alteration by
me, I shall never look at it again, but for a specimen I remember I had said
the Poet of the Excursn.
“walks thro’ common forests as thro’ some Dodona or
enchanted wood, and every casual bird that flits upon the boughs, like that
miraculous one in Tasso, but in
language more piercing than any articulate sounds, reveals to him far
higher lovelays.” It is now (besides half a dozen alterations in
the same half dozen lines) “but in language more intelligent reveals to him”—that is one I remember. But
that would have been little, putting his damnd Shoemaker phraseology (for he
was a shoemaker) in stead of mine, which has been tinctured with better authors
than his ignorance can comprehend—for I reckon myself a dab at Prose—verse I leave to my betters—God help them, if they
are to be so reviewed by friend and foe as you have been this quarter. I have
read “It won’t
do.” But worse than altering words, he has kept a few members
only of the part I had done best, which was to explain all I could of your
“scheme of
harmonies,” as I had ventured to call it, between the external
universe and what within us answers to it. To do this I had accumulated a good
many short passages, rising in length to the end, weaving in the Extracts as if
they came in as a part of the text, naturally, not obtruding them as specimens.
Of this part a little is left, but so as without conjuration no man could tell
what I was driving it [? at]. A proof of it you may see (tho’ not judge
of the whole of the injustice) by these words: I had spoken something about
“natural methodism—”and after follows “and
therefore the tale of Margaret shd. have been postponed” (I forget my
words, or his words): now the reasons for postponing it are as deducible from
what goes before, as they are from the 104th psalm. The passage whence I
deduced it has vanished, but clapping a colon before a therefore is always reason enough for Mr. Baviad
Gifford to allow to a reviewer that is not himself. I assure you
my complaints are founded. I know how sore a word alterd makes one, but indeed
of this Review the whole complexion is gone. I regret only that I did not keep
a copy. I am sure you would have been pleased with it, because I have been
feeding my fancy for some months with the notion of pleasing you. Its
imperfection or inadequateness in size and method I knew, but for the writing
part of it, I was fully satisfied. I hoped it would make more than atonement.
Ten or twelve distinct passages come to my mind, which are gone, and what is
left is of course the worse for their having been there, the eyes are pulld out
and the bleeding sockets are left. I read it at Arch’s shop with my face burning with vexation secretly,
with just such a feeling as if it had been a review written against myself,
making false quotations from me. But I am ashamd to say so much about a short
piece. How are you served! and the labors of years
turn’d into contempt by scoundrels.
But I could not but protest against your taking that thing
as mine. Every pretty expression, (I know there were
many) every warm expression, there was nothing else, is vulgarised and
frozen—but if they catch me in their camps again let them spitchcock me. They
had a right to do it, as no name appears to it, and Mr. Shoemaker Gifford I suppose never wa[i]ved a right he had
since he commencd author. God confound him and all caitiffs.
C. L.
Note
[For the full understanding of this letter it is necessary to read
Lamb’s review (see Vol. I. of this edition,
page 160).
William Gifford (1756-1826), editor of the Quarterly, had been a
shoemaker’s apprentice. Lamb calls him
Mr. Baviad Gifford on account of his satires, The Mæviad and The Baviad, against
the Della Cruscan school of poetry, of which Robert Merry had been the principal member. Some of
Lamb’s grudge against Gifford, which
was of old standing (see notes to Lamb’s review, Vol. I., page
446), was repaid in his sonnet “St. Crispin
to Mr. Gifford” (see Vol. V. of this edition, page 104).
Gifford’s connection with Canning, in the Anti-Jacobin, could not have improved his position with
Lamb.
“I have read ‘It won’t
do.’” A reference to the review of The Excursion in the
Edinburgh for November, by Jeffrey, beginning “This will never
do.”]
LETTER 204 CHARLES LAMB TO MR. SARGUS
[Dated at end: Feb. 23, 1815.]
DR Sargus—This is to give you notice that I have parted with the
Cottage to Mr. Grig Junr. to whom
you will pay rent from Michaelmas last. The rent that was due at Michaelmas I
do not wish you to pay me. I forgive it you as you may have been at some
expences in repairs.
[In 1812 Lamb inherited, through his godfather, Francis Fielde, who is mentioned in the Elia essay
“My First Play,” a
property called Button Snap, near Puckeridge, in Hertfordshire, consisting of a small
cottage and about an acre of ground. In 1815 he sold it for £50, and the foregoing letter
is an intimation of the transaction to his tenant. The purchaser, however, was not a
Mr. Grig, but a Mr. Greg (see notes to
“My First Play” in Vol. II. of this edition, page
372). I give there also a picture of the cottage.
I append here an undated letter to Joseph
Hume which belongs to a time posterior to the sale of the cottage. It refers
to Tuthill’s candidature for the post of
physician to St. Luke’s Hospital.
The letter is printed in Mr. Kegan
Paul’sWilliam Godwin: His Friends and Acquaintances, as though
it were written to Godwin, and all Lamb’s editors follow in assuming the Philosopher to
be the recipient, but internal evidence practically proves that Hume was addressed; for there is the reference to Mrs. Hume and her daughters, and
Godwin lived not in Kensington but in Skinner Street.]
LETTER 205 CHARLES LAMB TO JOSEPH HUME
“Bis dat qui dat cito.”
I HATE the pedantry of expressing that in another
language which we have sufficient terms for in our own. So in plain English I
very much wish you to give your vote to-morrow at Clerkenwell, instead of
Saturday. It would clear up the brows of my favourite candidate, and stagger
the hands of the opposite party. It commences at nine. How easy, as you come
from Kensington (à propos, how is
your excellent family?) to turn down Bloomsbury, through Leather Lane (avoiding
Lay Stall St. for the disagreeableness of the name). Why, it brings you in four
minutes and a half to the spot renowned on northern milestones, “where
Hicks’ Hall formerly stood.” There will be good cheer ready
for every independent freeholder; where you see a green flag hang out go boldly
in, call for ham, or beef, or what you please, and a mug of Meux’s Best.
How much more gentleman-like to come in the front of the battle, openly avowing
one’s sentiments, than to lag in on the last day, when the adversary is
dejected, spiritless, laid low. Have the first cut at them. By Saturday
you’ll cut into the mutton. I’d go cheerfully myself, but I am no
freeholder (Fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium), but I sold it for
£50. If they’d accept a copyholder, we clerks are naturally copy-holders.
By the way, get Mrs.
Hume, or that agreeable Amelia or
Caroline, to stick a bit of green in your hat. Nothing
daunts the adversary more than to wear the colours of your party. Stick it in
cockade-like. It has a martial, and by no means disagreeable effect.
Go, my dear freeholder, and if any chance calls you out of
this transitory scene earlier than expected, the coroner shall sit lightly on
your corpse. He shall not too anxiously enquire into the circumstances of blood
found upon your razor. That might happen to any gentleman in shaving. Nor into
your having been heard to express a contempt of life, or for scolding
Louisa for what Julia did, and
other trifling incoherencies.
Yours sincerely,
C. Lamb.
Note
[“Bis dat . . .”—“He who
gives quickly gives twice.” “Lay Stall St.” This street,
which is still found in Clerkenwell, was of course named from one of the laystalls or
public middens which were a feature of London when sanitation was in its infancy.
“Where Hicks’ Hall formerly stood.” Hicks’
Hall, the old Sessions House of the County of Middlesex, stood in St. John Street,
Clerkenwell, until its demolition in 1782, when the justices removed to the new Sessions
House on Clerkenwell Green. The milestones on the Great North Road, which had long been
measured from Hicks’ Hall were reinscribed “—— Miles from the spot where
Hicks’ Hall formerly stood.” Thus Hicks’ Hall remained a household word
long after it had ceased to exist. The adventures of Jedediah Jones in
search of “the spot where Hicks’ Hall formerly stood” are amusingly set
forth in Knight’sLondon, Vol. I., pages 242-244.
“Fuimus Troes . . .” (Æneid, II.,
325)—“We once were Trojans; Troy once stood.”
We meet Hume’s daughters
again in Letter 517.]
LETTER 206 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[p.m. partly illegible. April 7, 1815.]
The conclusion of this epistle getting gloomy, I have chosen
this part to desire our kindest Loves to Mrs.
Wordsworth and to Dorothea. Will none of you ever be in London again?
DEAR Wordswth. you have made me very proud with your
successive book presents. I have been carefully through the two volumes to see that nothing was
omitted which used to be there. I think I miss nothing but a Character in Antithet. manner which
I do not know why you left out; the moral to the boys building the giant, the omission
whereof leaves it in my mind less complete; and one admirable line gone (or
something come in stead of it) “the stone-chat and the glancing
sand-piper,” which was a line quite alive. I demand these at your
hand. I am glad that you have not sacrificed a verse to those scoundrels. I
would not have had you offer up the poorest rag that lingered upon the stript
shoulders of little Alice Fell, to have
atoned all their malice. I would not have given ’em a red cloak to save
their souls. I am afraid lest that substitution of a shell (a flat
falsification of the history) for the household implement as it stood at first,
was a kind of tub thrown out to the beast, or rather thrown out for him. The
tub was a good honest tub in its place, and nothing could fairly be said
against it. You say you made the alteration for the “friendly
reader,” but the malicious will take it to himself. Damn ’em; if
you give ’em an inch &c.
The preface is noble
and such as you should write: I wish I could set my name to it—Imprimatur—but
you have set it there yourself, and I thank you. I had rather be a door-keeper
in your margin, than have their proudest text swelling with my eulogies. The
poems in the volumes which are new to me are so much in the old tone that I
hardly received them as novelties. Of those, of which I had no previous
knowlege, the four yew trees and the mysterious company which you have
assembled there, most struck me—“Death the Skeleton and Time the
Shadow—” It is a sight not for every youthful poet to dream of—it
is one of the last results he must have gone thinking-on for years for. Laodamia is a very original
poem; I mean original with reference to your own manner. You have nothing like
it. I should have seen it in a strange place, and greatly admired it, but not
suspected its derivation. Let me in this place, for I have writ you several
letters without naming it, mention that my brother, who is a picture collector, has picked up an
undoubtable picture of Milton. He gave a
few shillings for it, and could get no history with it, but that some old lady
had had it for a great many years. Its age is ascertainable from the state of
the canvas, and you need only see it to be sure that it is the original of the
heads in the Tonson Editions, with which
we are all so well familiar. Since I saw you I have had a treat in the reading
way which comes not every day. The Latin Poems of V. Bourne, which were quite new to me. What a heart that man
had, all laid out upon town scenes, a proper counterpoise to some people’s rural extravaganzas. Why I mention him is that
your Power of Music reminded me of his poem of the
balad singer in the Seven Dials. Do you remember his epigram on the old woman
who taught Newton the A. B. C, which
after all, he says, he hesitates not to call
Newton’sPrincipia. I was
lately fatiguing myself with going thro’ a volume of fine words by
Ld.
Thurlow—excellent words, and if the heart could live by
words alone, it could desire no better regale—but what an aching vacuum of
matter; I don’t stick at the madness of it, for that is only a
consequence of shutting his eyes and thinking he is in the age of the old
Elisabeth poets; from thence I turned to V. Bourne—what a
sweet unpretending pretty-mannered matter-ful creature,
sucking from every flower, malting a flower of every thing, his diction all
Latin and his thoughts all English. Bless him, Latin wasn’t good enough
for him, why wasn’t he content with the language which Gay and Prior wrote in.
I am almost sorry that you printed Extracts from those first
Poems, or that you did not print them at length. They do not read to me as they
do all together. Besides they have diminished the value of the original (which
I possess) as a curiousity. I have hitherto
kept them distinct in my mind as referring to a particular period of your life.
All the rest of your poems are so much of a piece, they might have been written
in the same week—these decidedly speak of an earlier period. They tell more of
what you had been reading.
We were glad to see the poems by a female friend. The one of the wind is
masterly, but not new to us. Being only three, perhaps you might have clapt a
D. at the corner and let it have past as a printer’s mark to the
uninitiated, as a delightful hint to the better-instructed. As it is, Expect a
formal criticism on the Poems of your female friend, and she must expect it.
I should have written before, but I am cruelly engaged and
like to be. On Friday I was at office from 10 in the morning (two hours dinner
except) to 11 at night, last night till 9. My business and office business in
general has increased so. I don’t mean I am there every night, but I must
expect a great deal of it. I never leave till 4—and do not keep a holyday now
once in ten times, where I used to keep all red letter days, and some fine days
besides which I used to dub Nature’s holydays. I have had my day. I had
formerly little to do. So of the little that is left of life I may reckon two
thirds as dead, for Time that a man may call his own is his Life, and hard work
and thinking about it taints even the leisure hours, stains Sunday with workday
contemplations—this is Sunday, and the headache I have is part late hours at
work the 2 preceding nights and part later hours over a consoling pipe
afterwds. But I find stupid acquiescence coming over me. I bend to the yoke,
and it is almost with me and my household as with the man and his consort— To them each evening had its glittering star And every Sabbath day its golden sun— To such straits am I driven for the Life of life, Time—O that from that
superfluity of Holyday leisure my youth wasted “Age might but take
some hours youth wanted not.—” N.B. I have left off spirituous
liquors for 4 or more months, with a moral certainty of its lasting. Farewell,
dear Wordsworth.
Note
[Wordsworth had just brought out,
with Longmans, his Poems . . . including Lyrical Ballads and
the Miscellaneous Pieces of the Author, 1815, in two volumes. The
“Character in the Antithetical
Manner” was omitted from all editions of Wordsworth’s poems between
1800 and 1836. In the 1800 version of “Rural Architecture” there had been these last lines, expunged in the editions of 1805 and 1815,
but restored with a slight alteration in later editions:— —Some little I’ve seen of blind boisterous works In Paris and London, ’mong Christians or Turks, Spirits busy to do and undo: At remembrance whereof my blood sometimes will flag, —Then, light-hearted Boys, to the top of the Crag; And I’ll build up a Giant with you.
In the original form of the “Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew Tree” there
had been these lines:— His only visitants a straggling sheep, The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper. Wordsworth had altered them to:— His only visitants a straggling sheep, The stone-chat, or the sand-lark, restless Bird, Piping along the margin of the lake. In the 1820 edition Wordsworth put back the original form.
“Those scoundrels.” Principally the critic of the
Edinburgh,
Jeffrey, but Wordsworth’s assailants generally.
“That substitution of a shell.” In the original draft
of “The Blind Highland
Boy” the adventurous voyage was made in A Household Tub, like one of those Which women use to wash their clothes. In the new version the vessel was a turtle’s shell.
“The preface.” Wordsworth quotes from Lamb’s
essay in The
Reflector on the genius of
Hogarth, referring to the passage as “the language of one of my most
esteemed Friends.” It is Lamb’s description of
Imagination as that which “draws all things to one, which makes things animate or
inanimate, beings with their attributes, subjects with their accessories, take one
colour and serve to one effect.”
“The four yew trees.” The poem is called “Yew Trees.” This is the passage in
question:—
But worthier still of note Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale, Joined in one solemn and capacious grove; Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth Of intertwisted fibres serpentine Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved; Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks That threaten the profane;—a pillared shade, Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue, By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged Perennially—beneath whose sable roof Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked With unrejoicing berries—ghostly Shapes May meet at noontide: Fear and trembling Hope, Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton And Time the Shadow; there to celebrate, As in a natural temple scattered o’er With altars undisturbed of mossy stone, United worship; or in mute repose To lie, and listen to the mountain flood Murmuring from Glaramara’s inmost caves.
“Picture of Milton.” This portrait, a reproduction of which I give on the
opposite page, is now in America, the property of the New York Public Library, by whose
permission the reproduction has been made.
“V. Bourne.” Lamb afterwards translated some of Bourne’sPoemata and wrote critically of them in the
Englishman’s Magazine in 1831 (see Vol. v., page 61, and Vol. I., page 337).
“Lord Thurlow.” But see
Letter No. 445 and note.
“Extracts from those first Poems.” Wordsworth included extracts from juvenile pieces, which
had been first published in his Descriptive Sketches, 1793.
“A female friend”—Dorothy
Wordsworth. The three poems were “Address to a Child” (beginning, “What
way does the Wind come from?”), “The Mother’s Return” and “The Cottager to Her Infant.”
“To them each evening had its glittering star . .
.”—The
Excursion, Book V.
“Age might but take some hours . . .” From Wordsworth’s “Small Celandine”:— Age might but take the things Youth needed not.]
LETTER 207 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[p.m. April 28, 1815.J
Excuse this maddish letter: I am too tired to write in
forma—
DEAR Wordswth. The more I read of your two last volumes, the more
I feel it necessary to make my acknowledgmts for them
in more than one short letter. The Night Piece to which you refer me I meant fully to have noticed,
but the fact is I come so fluttering and languid from business, tired with
thoughts of it, frightened with fears of it, that when I get a few minutes to
sit down to scribble (an action of the hand now seldom natural to me—I mean voluntary
pen-work) I lose all presential memory of what I had intended to say, and say
what I can,—talk about Vincent Bourne or
any casual image instead of that which I had meditated—by the way, I must look
out V. B. for you.—So I had meant to have mentioned Yarrow Visited, with that stanza,
“But thou that didst appear so fair—” than which I think
no lovelier stanza can be found in the wide world of poetry—yet the poem on the
whole seems condemned to leave behind it a melancholy of imperfect
satisfaction, as if you had wronged the feeling with which in what preceded it
you had resolved never to visit it, and as if the Muse had determined in the
most delicate manner to make you, and scarce make you, feel it. Else, it is far
superior to the other, which has but one exquisite verse in it, the last but
one, or the two last—this has all fine, except perhaps that that of “studious ease and generous cares” has a
little tinge of the less romantic about it. The farmer of Tilsbury vale is
a charming counter part to poor
Susan, with the addition of that delicacy towards aberrations from
the strict path which is so fine in the Old Thief and the boy by his side,
which always brings water into my eyes. Perhaps it is the worse for being a
repetition. Susan stood for the representative of poor Rus in Urbe. There was
quite enough to stamp the moral of the thing never to be forgotten.
“Fast volumes of vapour” &c. The last verse of Susan was to be got rid of at all events. It threw a
kind of dubiety upon Susan’s moral
conduct. Susan is a servant maid. I see her
trundling her mop and contemplating the whirling phenomenon thro’ blurred
optics; but to term her a poor outcast seems as much as to say that poor
Susan was no better than she should be,
which I trust was not what you meant to express. Robin
Goodfellow supports himself without that stick of a moral which you have thrown away,—but how I can be brought
in felo de omittendo for that Ending to the boy builders is
a mystery. I can’t say positively now—I only know that no line oftener or
readier occurs than that “Light hearted boys, I will build up a giant
with you.” It comes naturally with a warm holyday and the
freshness of the blood. It is a perfect summer Amulet that I tye round my legs
to quicken their motion when I go out a Maying. (N.B.) I don’t often go
out a maying.—Must is the tense with me now. Do you take
the Pun? Young Romilly is
divine, the reasons of his mother’s grief being remediless. I never saw
parental love carried up so high, towering above the other Loves. Shakspeare had done something for the filial
in Cordelia, and by implication for the
fatherly too in Lear’s resentment—he
left it for you to explore the depths of the maternal heart. I get stupid, and
flat and flattering—what’s the use of telling you what good things you
have written, or—I hope I may add—that I know
them to be good. Apropos—when I first opened upon the just mentioned poem, in a
careless tone I said to Mary as if
putting a riddle “What is good for a bootless bean?” to
which with infinite presence of mind (as the jest book has it) she answered, a
“shoeless pea.” It was the first joke she ever made.
Joke the 2d I make—you distinguish well in your old preface between the verses
of Dr. Johnson of the man in the Strand,
and that from the babes of the wood. I was thinking whether taking your own
glorious lines— And for the love was in her soul For the youthful Romilly— which, by the love I bear my own soul, I think have no parallel in any of
the best old Balads, and just altering it to— And from the great respect she felt For Sir Samuel
Romilly— would not have explained the boundaries of prose expression and poetic
feeling nearly as well. Excuse my levity on such an occasion, never felt deeply
in my life, if that poem did not make me, both lately and when I read it in MS.
No alderman ever longed after a haunch of buck venison more than I for a
Spiritual taste of that White
Doe you promise. I am sure it is superlative, or will be when drest, i.e. printed. All things read raw tome in MS.—to
compare magna parvis, I cannot endure my own writings in
that state. The only one which I think would not very much win upon me in print
is Peter Bell. But I am not
certain. You ask me about your preface. I like both that and the Supplement without an exception. The
account of what you mean by Imagination is very valuable to me. It will help me
to like some things in poetry better, which is a little humiliating in me to
confess. I thought I could not be instructed in that science (I mean the
critical), as I once heard old obscene beastly Peter Pindar in a dispute on Milton say he thought that if he had reason to value himself
upon one thing more than another it was in knowing what good verse was. Who
lookd over your proof sheets, and left ordebo in that line of Virgil?
My brothers picture of
Milton is very finely painted, that
is, it might have been done by a hand next to Vandyke’s. It is the genuine Milton,
and an object of quiet gaze for the half hour at a time. Yet tho’ I am
confident there is no better one of him, the face does not quite answer to
Milton. There is a tinge of petit (or petite, how do
you spell it) querulousness about. Yet hang it, now I remember better, there is
not—it is calm, melancholy, and poetical.
One of the copies you sent had precisely the same
pleasant blending of a sheet of 2d vol. with a sheet of 1st. I think it was
page 245; but I sent it and had it rectifyd. It gave me in the first impetus of
cutting the leaves just such a cold squelch as going down a plausible turning
and suddenly reading “no thoroughfare.” Robinson’s is entire; he is gone to Bury his father.
I wish you would write more criticism, about Spenser &c. I think I could say something
about him myself—but Lord bless me—these “merchants and their spicy
drugs” which are so harmonious to sing of, they lime-twig up my
poor soul and body, till I shall forget I ever thought myself a bit of a
genius! I can’t even put a few thoughts on paper for a newspaper. I
“engross,” when I should pen a paragraph. Confusion blast all
mercantile transactions, all traffick, exchange of commodities, intercourse
between nations, all the consequent civilization and wealth and amity and link
of society, and getting rid of prejudices, and knowlege of the face of the
globe—and rot the very firs of the forest that look so romantic alive, and die
into desks. Vale.
Yours dear W. and all yours’ C. Lamb.
[Added at foot of the first
page:] N.B. Dont read that Q. Review—I will never look into another.
Note
[Lamb continues his criticism of
the 1815 edition of Wordsworth’sPoems. The
“Night Piece” begins— The sky is overcast.
The stanza from “Yarrow Visited” is quoted on page 557. The poem followed “Yarrow Unvisited” in the
volume. The one exquisite verse in “Yarrow Unvisited”
first ran:— Your cottage seems a bower of bliss, It promises protection To studious ease and generous cares And every chaste affection.
Wordsworth altered to— A covert for protection Of tender thoughts that nestle there, The brood of chaste affection.
“Poor
Susan” had in the 1800 version ended thus:— Poor Outcast! return—to receive thee once more The house of thy Father will open its door, And thou once again, in thy plain russet gown, May’st hear the thrush sing from a tree of its own. Wordsworth expunged this stanza in the 1815 edition.
“Fast volumes of vapour” should be “Bright volumes of
vapour.” For the Old Thief see “The Two Thieves.”
“Felo de
omittendo.” See the preceding letter, where Lamb remonstrated with Wordsworth for omitting the last lines from “Rural Architecture.”
Wordsworth seems to have charged Lamb with
the criticism that decided their removal.
“The Pun.” Canon
Ainger pointed out that Hood, in his
“Ode to Melancholy,”
makes the same pun very happily:— Even as the blossoms of the May, Whose fragrance ends in must.
“Young Romilly.”
In “The Force of Prayer,”
which opens with the question— What is good for a bootless bene? Later Mary Lamb made another joke, when at
Munden’s farewell performance she said,
“Sic transit gloria Munden!”
The stanzas from which Lamb quotes
run:— “What is good for a bootless bene?” The Falconer to the Lady said; And she made answer “Endless sorrow!” In that she knew that her Son was dead. She knew it by the Falconer’s words, And from the look of the Falconer’s eye; And from the love which was in her soul For her youthful Romilly.
Sir Samuel Romilly (1757-1818), the lawyer and law
reformer, was the great opponent of capital punishment for small offences.
In the preface to the 1802 edition of Lyrical Ballads, etc.,
Wordsworth had quoted Dr. Johnson’s prosaic lines:— I put my hat upon my head And walked into the Strand, And there I met another man Whose hat was in his hand. —contrasting them with these lines from the “Babes in the
Wood”:— These pretty Babes with hand in hand Went wandering up and down; But never more they saw the Man Approaching from the Town.
“Peter Pindar.” John Wolcot (1738-1819), whom Lamb had met at Henry Rogers’,
brother of the poet.
“Ordebo.”
Wordsworth quoted Virgil’s lines (Eclogue I., 75, 76).— Non ego vos posthac, viridi projectus in antro,Dumosa pendere procul de rupe ordebo [videbo].
“Merchants and their spicy drugs,” See Paradise Lost,
II., 639, 640.]
LETTER 208 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
London, May 6th, 1815.
DEAR Southey,—I have received from Longman a copy of “Roderick,” with the author’s
compliments, for which I much thank you. I don’t know where I shall put
all the noble presents I have lately received in that way; the “Excursion,” Wordsworth’s two last vols., and now “Roderick,” have come pouring in upon me like some
irruption from Helicon. The story of the brave Maccabee was already, you may be
sure, familiar to me in all its parts. I have, since the receipt of your
present, read it quite through again, and with no diminished pleasure. I
don’t know whether I ought to say that it has given me more pleasure than
any of your long poems. “Kehama” is doubtless more powerful, but I don’t feel that
firm footing in it that I do in “Roderick;” my
imagination goes sinking and floundering in the vast spaces of unopened-before
systems and faiths; I am put out of the pale of my old sympathies; my moral
sense is almost outraged; I can’t believe, or with horror am made to
believe, such desperate chances against omnipotences, such disturbances of
faith to the centre. The more potent the more painful the spell. Jove and his brotherhood of gods, tottering with
the giant assailings, I can bear, for the soul’s hopes are not struck at
in such contests; but your Oriental almighties are too much types of the
intangible prototype to be meddled with without shuddering. One never connects
what are called the attributes with Jupiter. I mention only what diminishes my delight at the
wonder-workings of “Kehama,” not what
impeaches its power, which I confess with trembling.
But “Roderick” is a comfortable poem. It reminds me of the delight
I took in the first reading of the “Joan of Arc.” It is maturer and better
than that, though not better to me now than that was then. It suits me better
than “Madoc.” I
am at home in Spain and Christendom. I have a timid imagination, I am afraid. I
do not willingly admit of strange beliefs or out-of-the-way creeds or places. I
never read books of travel, at least not farther than Paris or Rome. I can just
endure Moors, because of their connection as foes with Christians; but
Abyssinians, Ethiops, Esquimaux, Dervises, and all that tribe, I hate. I
believe I fear them in some manner. A Mahometan turban on the stage, though
enveloping some well known face (Mr.
Cook or Mr. Maddox, whom
I see another day good Christian and English waiters, innkeepers, &c.),
does not give me pleasure unalloyed. I am a Christian, Englishman, Londoner,
Templar. God help me when I come to put off these snug relations, and to get abroad into the world
to come! I shall be like the crow on the sand, as
Wordsworth has it; but I won’t
think on it—no need, I hope, yet.
The parts I have been most pleased with, both on 1st and 2nd
readings, perhaps, are Florinda’s
palliation of Roderick’s crime,
confessed to him in his disguise—the retreat of Palayo’s family first discovered,—his being made
king—“For acclamation one form must serve, more
solemn for the breach of old
observances.” Roderick’s vow is extremely fine, and his blessing on the
vow of Alphonso: “Towards the troop he spread his arms, As if the expanded soul diffused itself, And carried to all spirits with the act Its affluent inspiration.”
It struck me forcibly that the feeling of these last lines
might have been suggested to you by the Cartoon of Paul at Athens. Certain it is that a better motto or guide to
that famous attitude can no where be found. I shall adopt it as explanatory of
that violent, but dignified motion.
I must read again Landor’s “Julian.” I have not read it some time.
I think he must have failed in Roderick,
for I remember nothing of him, nor of any distinct character as a
character—only fine-sounding passages. I remember thinking also he had chosen a
point of time after the event, as it were, for Roderick survives to no use; but my memory is weak, and I will
not wrong a fine Poem by trusting to it.
The notes to your poem I have not read again; but it will be
a take-downable book on my shelf, and they will serve sometimes at breakfast,
or times too light for the text to be duly appreciated. Though some of
’em, one of the serpent Penance, is serious enough, now I think
on’t.
Of Coleridge I hear
nothing, nor of the Morgans. I hope to
have him like a re-appearing star, standing up before me some time when least
expected in London, as has been the case whylear.
I am doing nothing (as the phrase is)
but reading presents, and walk away what of the day-hours I can get from hard
occupation. Pray accept once more my hearty thanks, and expression of pleasure
for your remembrance of me. My sister desires her kind respects to Mrs S. and to all at Keswick.
Yours truly,
C. Lamb.
The next Present I look for is the “White Doe.” Have
you seen Mat. Betham’s
“Lay of
Marie?” I think it very delicately pretty as to sentiment,
&c.
Note
[Southey’sRoderick, the Last of the
Goths, was published in 1814. Driven from his throne by the Moors,
Roderick had dis-guised himself as a monk under the name of Father Maccabee. The Curse of Kehama had been published in 1810;
Madoc in 1805;
Joan of Arc
(see Letter 3 &c.) in 1796. Southey was now Poet Laureate.
“I never read books of travels.” Writing to Dilke, of The Athenæum, for books, some years later, Lamb makes a
point of “no natural history or useful learning” being sent—such as
Giraffes, Pyramids and Adventures in Central Africa. None the less, as a boy, he tells us,
he had read Bruce and applied his Abyssinian methods
to the New River (see the Elia essay on
Newspapers). “The crow on the sand.” In “The Farmer of Tilsbury Vale”:— As lonely he stood as a crow on the sands. Verse xii., line 4.
Florinda’s palliation of Roderick’s crime is in Book X.; the retreat of Pelayo’s family discovered, in Book XVI.; Pelayo made king, in Book XVIII. Landor’sCount Julian, published in 1812, dealt with the same
story, Florinda, whom Roderick violated, having been the daughter of the Count, a Spanish Goth.
Julian devoted himself to Roderick’s ruin, even turning traitor for the purpose. Southey’s notes are tremendous—sometimes filling all
but a line or two of the page.
“The White Doe.” Wordsworth’s poem The White Doe of Rylstone, to
be published this year, 1815.
“Matilda
Betham’sLay of Marie.” See note on page 477.]
LETTER 209 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Aug. 9th, 1815.
DEAR Southey,—Robinson is not
on the circuit, as I erroneously stated in a letter to W. W., which travels with this, but is gone to
Brussels, Ostend, Ghent, &c. But his friends the Colliers, whom I consulted respecting your
friend’s fate, remember to have heard him say, that Father Pardo had effected his escape (the
cunning greasy rogue), and to the best of their belief is at present in Paris.
To my thinking, it is a small matter whether there be one fat friar more or
less in the world. I have rather a taste for clerical executions, imbibed from
early recollections of the fate of the excellent Dodd. I hear Buonaparte
has sued his habeas corpus, and the twelve judges are now sitting upon it at
the Rolls.
Your boute-feu (bonfire) must be excellent of its kind.
Poet Settle presided at the last
great thing of the kind in London, when the pope was burnt in form. Do you
provide any verses on this occasion? Your fear
for Hartley’s intellectuals is
just and rational. Could not the Chancellor
be petitioned to remove him? His lordship took Mr.
Betty from under the paternal wing. I think at least he should
go through a course of matter-of-fact with some sober man after the mysteries.
Could not he spend a week at Poole’s before he goes back to Oxford? Tobin is dead. But there is a man in my
office, a Mr. Hedges, who proses it away
from morning to night, and never gets beyond corporal and material verities.
He’d get these crack-brain metaphysics out of the young gentleman’s
head as soon as any one I know. When I can’t sleep o’ nights, I
imagine a dialogue with Mr. H. upon any given subject, and
go prosing on in fancy with him, till I either laugh or fall asleep. I have
literally found it answer. I am going to stand godfather; I don’t like
the business; I cannot muster up decorum for these occasions; I shall certainly
disgrace the font. I was at Hazlitt’s marriage, and had like to have been turned out
several times during the ceremony. Any thing awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved
once at a funeral. Yet I can read about these ceremonies with pious and proper
feelings. The realities of life only seem the mockeries. I fear I must get
cured along with Hartley, if not too inveterate.
Don’t you think Louis the Desirable is
in a sort of quandary?
After all, Bonaparte is
a fine fellow, as my barber says, and I should not mind standing bareheaded at
his table to do him service in his fall. They should have given him Hampton
Court or Kensington, with a tether extending forty miles round London. Qu.
Would not the people have ejected the Brunswicks some day in his favour? Well,
we shall see.
C. Lamb.
Note
[“Father Pardo.” I
have not traced this fat friar.
“The excellent Dodd.” The
Rev. William Dodd (1729-1777), compiler of The Beauties of
Shakespeare, was hanged for forgery in 1777, when Lamb was two years old. The case caused immense public
interest.
“Buonaparte.” Waterloo
had been fought on June 18.
“Your boute-feu.” The bonfire in honour of Waterloo flamed on
Skiddaw on August 21. See Southey’s
description in his letter to his brother, August 23, 1815 (Life and Correspondence, Vol. IV.,
page 120).
“Poet Settle.” Elkanah Settle (1648-1724) was chief organiser of the
procession on the anniversary of Queen
Elizabeth’s birthday in 1680, when the Pope was burned in effigy.
Hartley Coleridge, now almost nineteen, after having
been to school at Ambleside, had been sent to Oxford through the instru-mentality of his uncle, Southey. At the time of Lamb’s
letter he was staying at Calne with his father. Mr.
Betty was the Young Roscius, whom we have already seen,
who, after retiring from the Phenomenon stage of his career in 1808, had since been to
school and to Cambridge upon his earnings, and had now become an adult actor.
Poole was Thomas Poole of
Nether Stowey, whom we have seen: Coleridge’s
old and very sensible friend. Tobin would probably be James Webbe Tobin, the brother of the dramatist. He had
died in 1814 (see Letter No. 153).
“I am going to stand godfather.” To what child I do
not know.
“Louis the Desirable”—Louis XVIII., styled by the Royalists “Le Desiré.”]
LETTER 210 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[p.m. August 9, 1815.] 9th Aug. 1815.
DEAR Wordsworth, We acknowlege with pride the receit of both your
hand writings, and desire to be ever had in kindly remembrance by you both and
by Dorothy. Miss Hutchinson has just transmitted us a letter containing,
among other chearful matter, the annunciation of a
child born. Nothing of consequence has turned up in our parts
since your departure. Mary and I felt
quite queer after your taking leave (you W. W.) of us in
St. Giles’s. We wishd we had seen more of you, but felt we had scarce
been sufficiently acknowleging for the share we had enjoyed of your company. We
felt as if we had been not enough expressive of our
pleasure. But our manners both are a little too much on
this side of too-much-cordiality. We want presence of mind and presence of
heart. What we feel comes too late, like an after thought impromptu. But
perhaps you observed nothing of that which we have been painfully conscious of,
and are, every day, in our intercourse with those we stand affected to through
all the degrees of love. Robinson is on
the Circuit. Our Panegyrist I thought had forgotten one of the objects of his
youthful admiration, but I was agreeably removed from that scruple by the
laundress knocking at my door this morning almost before I was up, with a
present of fruit from my young friend, &c.—There is something inexpressibly
pleasant to me in these presents. Be it fruit, or fowl,
or brawn, or what not. Books are
a legitimate cause of acceptance. If presents be not the soul of friendship,
undoubtedly they are the most spiritual part of the body of that intercourse.
There is too much narrowness of thinking in
this point. The punctilio of acceptance methinks is too confined and
straitlaced. I could be content to receive money, or clothes, or a joint of
meat from a friend; why should he not send me a dinner as well as a dessert? I
would taste him in the beasts of the field, and thro’ all creation.
Therefore did the basket of fruit of the juvenile Talfourd not displease me. Not that I have any thoughts of
bartering or reciprocating these things. To send him any thing in return would
be to reflect suspicion of mercenariness upon what I know he meant a freewill
offering. Let him overcome me in bounty. In this strife a generous nature loves
to be overcome. Alsager (whom you call
Alsinger—and indeed he is rather singer than sager, no reflection upon his
naturals neither) is well and in harmony with himself and the world. I
don’t know how he and those of his constitution keep their nerves so
nicely balanced as they do. Or have they any? or are they made of packthread?
He is proof against weather, ingratitude, meat under done, every weapon of
fate. I have just now a jagged end of a tooth pricking against my tongue, which
meets it half way in a wantonness of provocation, and there they go at it, the
tongue pricking itself like the viper against the file, and the tooth galling
all the gum inside and out to torture, tongue and tooth, tooth and tongue, hard
at it, and I to pay the reckoning, till all my mouth is as hot as brimstone,
and I’d venture the roof of my mouth that at this moment, at which I
conjecture my full-happinessed friend is picking his crackers, not one of the
double rows of ivory in his privileged mouth has as much as a flaw in it, but
all perform their functions, and having performed it expect to be picked
(luxurious steeds!) and rubbed down. I don’t think he could be robbed, or
could have his house set on fire, or ever want money. I have heard him express
a similar opinion of his own impassibility. I keep acting here
Heautontimorumenos. M. Burney has been
to Calais and has come home a travelld Monsieur. He speaks nothing but the
Gallic Idiom. Field is on circuit. So
now I believe I have given account of most that you saw at our Cabin. Have you
seen a curious letter in Morn.
Chron., by C. Ll., the genius
of absurdity, respecting Bonaparte’s
suing out his Habeas Corpus. That man is his own moon. He has no need of
ascending into that gentle planet for mild influences. You wish me some of your
leisure. I have a glimmering aspect, a chink-light of liberty before me, which
I pray God may prove not fallacious. My remonstrances have stirred up others to
remonstrate, and altogether, there is a plan for separating certain parts of
business from our department, which if it take place will produce me more time,
i.e. my evenings free. It may be a means of placing me in a more conspicuous
situation which will knock at my nerves another way, but I wait the issue in submission. If I can
but begin my own day at 4 o Clock in the afternoon, I shall think myself to
have Eden days of peace and liberty to what I have had. As you say, how a man
can fill 3 volumes up with an Essay on the Drama is wonderful. I am sure a very
few sheets would hold all I had to say on the subject, and yet I dare say * * *
* * * * * * * [*] as Von Slagel * * *
Did you ever read Charronon Wisdom? or Patrick’sPilgrim? if neither, you have two great
pleasures to come. I mean some day to attack Carylon
Job, six Folios. What any man can write, surely I may read. If I do
but get rid of auditing Warehousekeepers Accts. and get
no worse-harassing task in the place of it, what a Lord of Liberty I shall be.
I shall dance and skip and make mouths at the invisible event, and pick the
thorns out of my pillow and throw ’em at rich men’s night caps, and
talk blank verse, hoity toity, and sing “A Clerk I was in London
Gay,” ban, ban, Ca-Caliban, like the emancipated monster, and go
where I like, up this street or down that ally. Adieu, and pray that it may be
my luck. Good be to you all.
C. Lamb.
Note
[“A child born.” This was George
Hutchinson, Mrs. Wordsworth’s
nephew.
“Our Panegyrist”—Thomas
Noon Talfourd. This is Lamb’s
first mention of his future biographer. Talfourd was then just twenty,
had published some poems, and was reading law with Chitty, the special pleader. He had met Lamb at the
beginning of 1815 through William Evans, owner of
The Pamphleteer,
had scoured London for a copy of Rosamund Gray, and had written of
Lamb in The Pamphleteer as one
of the chief of living poets. He then became an ardent supporter of Wordsworth, his principal criticism of whom was written
later for the New Monthly
Magazine.
“If presents be not the soul of friendship.” Lamb’s “Thoughts on Presents of Game,” written many
years later for The
Athenæum, carries on this theme (see Vol. I., page 343).
“Alsager.” Thomas Massa Alsager, a friend of Crabb
Robinson, and through him of Lamb, was
a strange blend of the financial and the musical critic. He controlled the departments of
Money and Music for The
Times for many years.
“Heautontimorumenos”—“The
Self-Tormentor.” The name of a comedy by Terence.
“Field”—Barron Field (see note on page 502).
“C. Ll.”—Capell Lofft (see note on page 451). He wrote to the Morning Chronicle for August 2 and 3,
1815, as Lamb says. The gist of his argument was in
this sentence:—
[7th para.] Bonaparte with the concurrence of the
Admiralty, is within the limits of British local allegiance. He is a temporary,
considered as private, though not a natural born subject, and as such within the limits
of 31 Car. II. the Habeas Corpus Act, [etc.].
On August 10 he wrote again, quoting the lines from “The Tempest”:— The nobler action is, In virtue than in vengeance:—He being here The sole drift of our purpose, wrath here ends; Not a frown further.
“An Essay on the Drama.” This cryptic passage refers,
I imagine, to a translation by John Black,
afterwards the editor of the Morning Chronicle, of August Von
Schlegel’sLectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, 2 vols., 1815.
Does Lamb mean—“And yet, I dare say, I know as much as Von Slagel did.”
“Charron on Wisdom” and “Patrick’s
Pilgrim.” Pierre
Charron’sDe la Sagesse, and Bishop
Patrick’sParable of
the Pilgrim, 1664, a curious independent anticipation of Bunyan. Lamb had
written of both these books in a little essay contributed in 1813 to The Examiner, entitled “Books with One Idea in them” (see Vol.
I., page 153).
“Caryl on Job”—Commentary on the Book of
Job, 12 vols., 4o, 1651-1666, by Joseph Caryl.
“Make mouths at the invisible event” (“Hamlet,” IV., 4, 50).
“A Clerk I was in London Gay.” A song sung in
Colman’s “Inkle and Yarico,” which Lamb actually did use as a motto for his Elia essay “The Superannuated Man,”
dealing with his emancipation, ten years later.
“Ban, ban, Ca-Caliban.” See “The Tempest,” II., 2, 188.]
LETTER 211 MARY AND CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH
HUTCHINSON
[Dated at end: August 20, 1815.]
MY dear friend, It is less fatigue to me to write
upon lines, and I want to fill up as much of my paper as I can in gratitude for
the pleasure your very kind letter has given me. I began to think I should not
hear from you; knowing you were not fond of letter-writing I quite forgave you,
but I was very sorry. Do not make a point of conscience of it, but if ever you
feel an inclination you cannot think how much a few lines would delight me. I
am happy to hear so good an account of your sister and child, and sincerely
wish her a perfect recovery. I am glad you did not arrive sooner, you escaped
much anxiety. I have just received
a very chearful letter from Mrs.
Morgan—the following I have picked out as I think it will interest
you. “Hartley Coleridge has been
with us for two months. Morgan invited
him to pass the long vacation here in the hope that his father would be of
great service to him in his studies: he seems to be extremely amiable. I
believe he is to spend the next vacation at Lady
Beaumont’s. Your old friend Coleridge is very hard at work at the preface to a new Edition
which he is just going to publish in the same form as Mr. Wordsworth’s—at first the preface
was not to exceed five or six pages, it has however grown into a work of great
importance. I believe Morgan has already written nearly
two hundred pages. The title of it is ‘Autobiographia
Literaria:’ to which are added ‘Sybilline
Leaves,’ a collection of Poems by the same author.
Calne has lately been much enlivened by an excellent company of players—last
week they performed the ‘Remorse’ to a very crowded and brilliant audience; two of the
characters were admirably well supported; at the request of the actors
Morgan was behind the scenes all the time and assisted
in the music &c.”
Thanks to your kind interference we have had a very nice
letter from Mr. Wordsworth. Of them and
of you we think and talk quite with a painful regret that we did not see more
of you, and that it may be so long before we meet again.
I am going to do a queer thing—I have wearied myself with
writing a long letter to Mrs. Morgan, a
part of which is an incoherent rambling account of a jaunt we have just been
taking. I want to tell you all about it, for we so seldom do such things that
it runs strangely in my head, and I feel too tired to give you other than the
mere copy of the nonsense I have just been writing.
“Last Saturday was the grand feast day of the India
House Clerks. I think you must have heard Charles talk of his yearly turtle feast. He has been lately
much wearied with work, and, glad to get rid of all connected with it, he used
Saturday, the feast day being a holiday, borrowed the Monday following, and we
set off on the outside of the Cambridge Coach from Fetter Lane at eight
o’clock, and were driven into Cambridge in great triumph by
Hell Fire Dick five minutes before three.
Richard is in high reputation, he is private tutor to
the Whip Club. Journeys used to be tedious torments to me, but seated out in
the open air I enjoyed every mile of the way—the first twenty miles was
particularly pleasing to me, having been accustomed to go so far on that road
in the Ware Stage Coach to visit my Grandmother in the days of other times.
“In my life I never spent so many pleasant hours
together as I did at Cambridge. We were walking the whole time—out of one
College into another. If you ask me which I like best I must make the children’s traditionary
unoffending reply to all curious enquirers—‘Both.’ I liked them all best. The little gloomy ones, because they
were little gloomy ones. I felt as if I could live and die in them and never
wish to speak again. And the fine grand Trinity College, Oh how fine it was!
And King’s College Chapel, what a place! I heard the Cathedral service
there, and having been no great church goer of late years, that and the painted
windows and the general effect of the whole thing affected me wonderfully.
“I certainly like St. John’s College best. I had
seen least of it, having only been over it once, so, on the morning we
returned, I got up at six o’clock and wandered into it by myself—by
myself indeed, for there was nothing alive to be seen but one cat, who followed
me about like a dog. Then I went over Trinity, but nothing hailed me there, not
even a cat.
“On the Sunday we met with a pleasant thing. We had
been congratulating each other that we had come alone to enjoy, as the miser
his feast, all our sights greedily to ourselves, but having seen all we began
to grow flat and wish for this and tother body with us, when we were accosted
by a young gownsman whose face we knew, but where or how we had seen him we
could not tell, and were obliged to ask his name. He proved to be a young man
we had seen twice at Alsager’s. He
turned out a very pleasant fellow—shewed us the insides of places—we took him
to our Inn to dinner, and drank tea with him in such a delicious college room,
and then again he supped with us. We made our meals as short as possible, to
lose no time, and walked our young conductor almost off his legs. Even when the
fried eels were ready for supper and coming up, having a message from a man who
we had bribed for the purpose, that then we might see Oliver Cromwell, who was not at home when we
called to see him, we sallied out again and made him a visit by candlelight—and
so ended our sights. When we were setting out in the morning our new friend
came to bid us good bye, and rode with us as far as Trompington. I never saw a
creature so happy as he was the whole time he was with us, he said we had put
him in such good spirits that [he] should certainly pass an examination well
that he is to go through in six weeks in order to qualify himself to obtain a
fellowship.
“Returning home down old Fetter Lane I could hardly
keep from crying to think it was all over. With what pleasure [Charles] shewed me Jesus College where
Coleridge was—the barbe[r’s
shop] where Manning was—the house where
Lloyd lived—Franklin’s rooms, a young schoolfellow
with whom Charles was the first time he went to Cambridge:
I peeped in at his window, the room looked quite deserted—old chairs standing
about in disorder that seemed to have stood there
ever since they had sate in them. I write sad nonsense about these things, but
I wish you had heard Charles talk his nonsense over and
over again about his visit to Franklin, and how he then
first felt himself commencing gentleman and had eggs for his breakfast.”
Charles Lamb commencing gentleman!
A lady who is sitting by me seeing what I am doing says I
remind her of her husband, who acknowledged that the first love letter he wrote
to her was a copy of one he had made use of on a former occasion.
This is no letter, but if you give me any encouragement to
write again you shall have one entirely to yourself: a little encouragement
will do, a few lines to say you are well and remember us. I will keep this
tomorrow, maybe Charles will put a few
lines to it—I always send off a humdrum letter of mine with great satisfaction
if I can get him to freshen it up a little at the end. Let me beg my love to
your sister Johanna with many thanks. I have much pleasure
in looking forward to her nice bacon, the maker of which I long have had a
great desire to see.
God bless you, my dear Miss
Hutchinson, I remain ever
Your affectionate friend M. Lamb. Augst. 20.
LETTER 211 (continued) [Charles Lamb adds:—]
Dear Miss
Hutchinson, I subscribe most willingly to all my sister says of her
Enjoyment at Cambridge. She was in silent raptures all the while there, and
came home riding thro’ the air (her 1st long outside journey) triumphing
as if she had been graduated. I remember one foolish-pretty expression she made
use of, “Bless the little churches how pretty they are,” as
those symbols of civilized life opened upon her view one after the other on
this side Cambridge. You cannot proceed a mile without starting a steeple, with
its little patch of villagery round it, enverduring the waste. I don’t
know how you will pardon part of her letter being a transcript, but writing to
another Lady first (probably as the easiest task*) it
was unnatural not to give you an accot of what had so
freshly delighted her, and would have been a piece of transcendant rhetorick
(above her modesty) to have given two different accounts of a simple and
univocal pleasure. Bless me how learned I write! but I always forget myself
when I write to Ladies. One cannot tame
one’s erudition down to their merely English apprehensions. But this and
all other faults you will excuse from yours truly
C. Lamb.
Our kindest loves to Joanna, if she will accept it from us who are merely
nominal to her, and to the child and child’s parent. Yours again
C. L.[Mary Lamb adds
this footnote:—]
* “Easiest Task.” Not the true
reason, but Charles had so connected
Coleridge & Cambridge in my
mind, by talking so much of him there, and a letter coming so fresh from
him, in a manner that was the reason I wrote to them
first. I make this apology perhaps quite unnecessarily, but I am of a very
jealous temper myself, and more than once recollect having been offended at
seeing kind expressions which had particularly pleased me in a
friend’s letter repeated word for word to another—Farewell once more.
Note
[I have no idea why this charming letter was held back when Talfourd copied the Lamb-Wordsworth correspondence. I am
very glad to be able to print it now. The name of the young man who showed the Lambs such
courtesy is not known.
Coleridge’s literary plans were destined to
change. The Biographia
Literaria was published alone in 1817, and Sibylline Leaves alone later
in the same year.—“Remorse”
had been acted at Calne in June for the second time, a previous visit having been paid in
1813. Coleridge gave the manager a “flaming
testimonial.”—Lady Beaumont was the wife
of Sir George Beaumont (see page 405).
“Oliver Cromwell.”
The portrait by Cooper at Sidney Sussex College.
Marmaduke Franklin was with Lamb at Christ’s Hospital. Afterwards he became
Master of the Blue Coat School at Hertford. He is mentioned in the Elia essay on Christ’s Hospital.]
LETTER 212 MARY LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM
[No date. ? Late summer, 1815.]
MY dear Miss
Betham,—My brother and myself return you a thousand thanks for
your kind communication. We have read your poem many times over with increased interest,
and very much wish to see you to tell
you how highly we have been pleased with it. May we beg one favour?—I keep the
manuscript in the hope that you will grant it. It is that, either now or when
the whole poem is completed, you will read it over with us. When I say with us, of course I mean Charles. I know that you have many judicious friends, but I
have so often known my brother spy out errors in a manuscript which has passed
through many judicious hands, that I shall not be easy if you do not permit him
to look yours carefully through with you; and also you must allow him to
correct the press for you.
If I knew where to find you I would call upon you. Should
you feel nervous at the idea of meeting Charles in the capacity of a severe censor, give me a line, and
I will come to you any where, and convince you in five minutes that he is even
timid, stammers, and can scarcely speak for modesty and fear of giving pain
when he finds himself placed in that kind of office. Shall I appoint a time to
see you here when he is from home? I will send him out any time you will name;
indeed, I am always naturally alone till four o’clock. If you are nervous
about coming, remember I am equally so about the liberty I have taken, and
shall be till we meet and laugh off our mutual fears.
Yours most affectionately M. Lamb.
Note
[The letter refers again to The Lay of Marie.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Matilda Betham (franked by
John Rickman, September 13, 1815), not available
for this edition, in which Lamb apologises for delay in revising
Miss Betham’sLay of Marie. Mary Matilda
Betham, whom we have already met, had written a very charming poem on the
subject of Marie, a poetess who figured among the Anglo-Norman
trouveurs of the thirteenth century. Both Lamb and Southey helped her with counsel. The poem was published in
1816.
In another undated letter on the same subject (printed by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in The Lambs)
Lamb expresses his willingness to finish the proofs of The Lay of Marie (he
calls it just “Mary”), but says he cannot undertake
anything else. Apparently he found the task impossible, and Mary
Lamb had just been taken ill again. The next letter, which is undated,
refers to the same matter.]
LETTER 213 CHARLES LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM
DR Miss
Betham,—All this while I have been tormenting myself with the
thought of having been ungracious to you, and you have been all the while
accusing yourself. Let us absolve one another & be quits. My head is in
such a state from incapacity for business that I certainly know it to be my
duty not to undertake the veriest trifle in addition. I hardly know how I can
go on. I have tried to get some redress by explaining my health, but with no
great success. No one can tell how ill I am, because it does not come out to
the exterior of my face, but lies in my scull deep & invisible. I wish I
was leprous & black jaundiced skin-over, and [? or] that all was as well
within as my cursed looks. You must not think me worse than I am. I am
determined not to be overset, but to give up business rather and get ’em
to allow me a trifle for services past. O that I had been a shoe-maker or a
baker, or a man of large independt fortune. O darling
Laziness! heaven of Epicurus! Saints
Everlasting Rest! that I could drink vast potations of thee thro’
unmeasured Eternity. Otium cum vel sine dignitate. Scandalous, dishonerable,
any-kind-of-repose. I stand not upon the dignified
sort. Accursed damned desks, trade, commerce, business—Inventions of that old
original busybody brainworking Satan, Sabbathless restless
Satan—
A curse relieves. Do you ever try it?
A strange Letter this to write to a Lady, but mere
honey’d sentences will not distill. I dare not ask who revises in my
stead. I have drawn you into a scrape. I am ashamed, but I know no remedy. My
unwellness must be my apology. God bless you (tho’ he curse the India
House & fire it to the ground) and may no unkind Error creep into Marie, may all its readers like
it as well as I do & everybody about you like its kind author no worse. Why
the devil am I never to have a chance of scribbling my own free thoughts, verse
or prose, again? Why must I write of Tea & Drugs & Price Goods &
bales of Indigo—farewell.
C. Lamb. [Written at head of Letter on margin
the following:—]
Mary goes to her Place on Sunday—I mean your maid,
foolish Mary. She wants a very little brains only to
be an excellent Serv. She is excellently calculated for the country, where
nobody has brains.
Note
[In the passage concerning work and leisure we see another hint of the
sonnet (printed on page 646) which Lamb was to write
a little later.
“Otium cum vel . .
.”—“Ease either with or without dignity.”
Here should come two notes to William Ayrton,
printed by Mr. Macdonald, referring to the musical
use of the word “air.”]
LETTER 214 CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
Thursday 19 Oct. 1815.
My brother is gone to Paris.
DEAR Miss
H.—I am forced to be the replier to your Letter, for Mary has been ill and gone from home these five
weeks yesterday. She has left me very lonely and very miserable. I stroll
about, but there is no rest but at one’s own fireside, and there is no
rest for me there now. I look forward to the worse half being past, and keep up
as well as I can. She has begun to show some favorable symptoms. The return of
her disorder has been frightfully soon this time, with scarce a six
month’s interval. I am almost afraid my worry of spirits about the E I.
House was partly the cause of her illness, but one always imputes it to the
cause next at hand; more probably it comes from some cause we have no control
over or conjecture of. It cuts sad great slices out of the time, the little
time we shall have to live together. I don’t know but the recurrence of
these illnesses might help me to sustain her death better than if we had had no
partial separations. But I won’t talk of death. I will imagine us
immortal, or forget that we are otherwise; by God’s blessing in a few
weeks we may be making our meal together, or sitting in the front row of the
Pit at Drury Lane, or taking our evening walk past the theatres, to look at the
outside of them at least, if not to be tempted in. Then we forget we are
assailable, we are strong for the time as rocks, the wind is tempered to the
shorn Lambs. Poor C.
Lloyd, and poor Priscilla, I feel I hardly feel enough for him, my own calamities
press about me and involve me in a thick integument not to be reached at by
other folks’ misfortunes. But I feel all I can, and all the kindness I
can towards you all. God bless you. I hear nothing from Coleridge. Yours truly
C. Lamb.
Note
[Mary Lamb had recovered from her
preceding attack in February. She did not recover from the present illness until December.
“The wind is tempered to the shorn Lambs.”
“‘But God tempers the wind,’ said Maria, ‘to the shorn lamb’” (Sterne’sSentimental Journey). Also
in Henri Estienne (1594).
“Poor C. Lloyd, and poor
Priscilla.” Priscilla
Wordsworth (née Lloyd) died this month, aged
thirty-three. Charles Lloyd having just completed
his translation of the tragedies of
Alfieri, published in 1815, had been prostrated
by the most serious visitation of his malady that he had yet suffered.]
LETTER 215 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
Dec. 25th, 1815.
DEAR old friend and absentee,—This is Christmas-day
1815 with us; what it may be with you I don’t know, the 12th of June next
year perhaps; and if it should be the consecrated season with you, I
don’t see how you can keep it. You have no turkeys; you would not
desecrate the festival by offering up a withered Chinese bantam, instead of the
savoury grand Norfolcian holocaust, that smokes all around my nostrils at this
moment from a thousand firesides. Then what puddings have you? Where will you
get holly to stick in your churches, or churches to stick your dried tea-leaves
(that must be the substitute) in? What memorials you can have of the holy time,
I see not. A chopped missionary or two may keep up the thin idea of Lent and
the wilderness; but what standing evidence have you of the Nativity?—’tis
our rosy-cheeked, homestalled divines, whose faces shine to the tune of unto us a child; faces fragrant with the mince-pies of
half a century, that alone can authenticate the cheerful mystery—I feel.
I feel my bowels refreshed with the holy tide—my zeal is
great against the unedified heathen. Down with the Pagodas—down with the
idols—Ching-chong-fo—and his foolish priesthood! Come out of Babylon, O my
friend! for her time is come, and the child that is native, and the Proselyte
of her gates, shall kindle and smoke together! And in sober sense what makes
you so long from among us, Manning? You
must not expect to see the same England again which you left.
Empires have been overturned, crowns trodden into dust, the
face of the western world quite changed: your friends have all got old—those
you left blooming—myself (who am one of the few that remember you) those golden
hairs which you recollect my taking a pride in, turned to silvery and grey.
Mary has been dead and buried many
years—she desired to be buried in the silk gown you sent her. Rickman, that you remember active and strong,
now walks out supported by a servant-maid and a stick. Martin Burney is a very old man. The other day
an aged woman knocked at my door, and pretended to my acquaintance; it was long
before I had the most distant cognition of her; but at last together we made
her out to be Louisa, the daughter of Mrs.
Topham, formerly Mrs. Morton, who had been
Mrs. Reynolds, formerly Mrs. Kenney, whose first husband was Holcroft, the dramatic writer of the last
century. St. Paul’s Church is a heap of ruins; the Monument isn’t
half so high as you knew it, divers parts being successively taken down which
the ravages of time had rendered dangerous; the horse at Charing Cross is gone,
no one knows whither,—and all this has taken place while you have been settling
whether Ho-hing-tong should be spelt with a —— or a ——. For aught I see you had
almost as well remain where you are, and not come like a Struldbug into a world
where few were born when you went away. Scarce here and there one will be able
to make out your face; all your opinions will be out of date, your jokes
obsolete, your puns rejected with fastidiousness as wit of the last age. Your
way of mathematics has already given way to a new method, which after all is I
believe the old doctrine of Maclaurin,
new-vamped up with what he borrowed of the negative quantity of fluxions from
Euler.
Poor Godwin! I was
passing his tomb the other day in Cripplegate churchyard. There are some verses
upon it written by Miss Hayes, which if I
thought good enough I would send you. He was one of those who would have hailed
your return, not with boisterous shouts and clamours, but with the complacent
gratulations of a philosopher anxious to promote knowledge as leading to
happiness—but his systems and his theories are ten feet deep in Cripplegate
mould. Coleridge is just dead, having
lived just long enough to close the eyes of Wordsworth, who paid the debt to nature but a week or two
before. Poor Col., but two days before he died he wrote to
a bookseller proposing an epic poem on the “Wanderings of
Cain,” in twenty-tour books. It is said he has left behind him more
than forty thousand treatises in criticism and metaphysics, but few of them in
a state of completion. They are now destined, perhaps, to wrap up spices. You
see what mutations the busy hand of Time has produced, while you have consumed in foolish voluntary exile that
time which might have gladdened your friends—benefited your country; but
reproaches are useless. Gather up the wretched reliques, my friend, as fast as
you can, and come to your old home. I will rub my eyes and try to recognise
you. We will shake withered hands together, and talk of old things—of St.
Mary’s Church and the barber’s opposite, where the young students
in mathematics used to assemble. Poor Crisp, that kept it
afterwards, set up a fruiterer’s shop in Trumpington-street, and for
aught I know, resides there still, for I saw the name up in the last journey I
took there with my sister just before she died. I suppose you heard that I had
left the India House, and gone into the Fishmongers’ Almshouses over the
bridge. I have a little cabin there, small and homely; but you shall be welcome
to it. You like oysters, and to open them yourself; I’ll get you some if
you come in oyster time. Marshall,
Godwin’s old friend, is still alive, and talks
of the faces you used to make.
Come as soon as you can.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Since Lamb’s last letter
Manning had entered Lhassa, the sacred city of
Thibet, being the first Englishman to do so. He remained there until April, 1812, when he
returned to Calcutta. Then he took up his abode once more in Canton, and, in 1816, moved to
Peking as interpreter to Lord Amherst’s embassy,
returning to England the following year.
“Norfolcian.” Manning was a Norfolk man.
“Struldbug.” In Gulliver’s Travels. The
Struldbrugs who lived in Luggnagg and never died.
“Maclaurin.” Here Lamb surprises the
reader by a reasonable remark. Colin Maclaurin, the
mathematician, was the author of A Treatise of Fluxions.
Coleridge actually had begun many years before an
epic on the subject of the “Wanderings of Cain” (see note on page 173).]
LETTER 216 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
Dec. 26th, 1815.
DEAR Manning,—Following your brother’s example, I have just
ventured one letter to Canton, and am now hazarding another (not exactly a
duplicate) to St. Helena. The first was full of improbable romantic fictions, fitting
the remoteness of the mission it goes upon; in the present I mean to confine
myself nearer to truth as you come nearer home. A correspondence with the
uttermost parts of the earth necessarily involves in it some heat of fancy; it
sets the brain agoing; but I can think on the half-way house tranquilly. Your
friends, then, are not all dead or grown forgetful of you through old age, as
that lying letter asserted, anticipating rather what must happen if you kept
tarrying on for ever on the skirts of creation, as there seemed a danger of
your doing—but they are all tolerably well and in full and perfect
comprehension of what is meant by Manning’s coming
home again. Mrs. Kenney
(ci-devantHolcroft) never let
her tongue run riot more than in remembrances of you. Fanny expends herself in phrases that can only
be justified by her romantic nature. Mary
reserves a portion of your silk, not to be buried in (as the false nuncio
asserts), but to make up spick and span into a new bran gown to wear when you
come. I am the same as when you knew me, almost to a surfeiting identity. This
very night I am going to leave off tobacco! Surely there
must be some other world in which this unconquerable purpose shall be realised.
The soul hath not her generous aspirings implanted in her in vain. One that you
knew, and I think the only one of those friends we knew much of in common, has
died in earnest. Poor Priscilla, wife of
Kit Wordsworth! Her brother
Robert is also dead, and several of
the grown-up brothers and sisters, in the compass of a very few years. Death
has not otherwise meddled much in families that I know. Not but he has his
damn’d eye upon us, and is w[h]etting his infernal feathered dart every
instant, as you see him truly pictured in that impressive moral picture,
“The good man at the hour of death.”
I have in trust to put in the post four letters from Diss, and one from Lynn,
to St. Helena, which I hope will accompany this safe, and one from Lynn, and
the one before spoken of from me, to Canton. But we all hope that these latter
may be waste paper. I don’t know why I have forborne writing so long. But
it is such a forlorn hope to send a scrap of paper straggling over wide oceans.
And yet I know when you come home, I shall have you sitting before me at our
fire-side just as if you had never been away. In such an instant does the
return of a person dissipate all the weight of imaginary perplexity from
distance of time and space! I’ll promise you good oysters.
Cory is dead, that kept the shop opposite St.
Dunstan’s, but the tougher materials of the shop survive the perishing
frame of its keeper. Oysters continue to flourish there under as good auspices.
Poor Cory! But if you will absent yourself twenty years
together, you must not expect numerically the same population to congratulate
your return which wetted the sea-beach with their tears when you went away.
Have you recovered the breathless stone-staring
astonishment into which you must have been thrown upon learning at landing that
an Emperor of France was living in St.
Helena? What an event in the solitude of the seas! like finding a fish’s
bone at the top of Plinlimmon; but these things are nothing in our western
world. Novelties cease to affect. Come and try what your presence can.
God bless you.—Your old friend,
C. Lamb.
Note
[Robert Lloyd had died in 1811,
and within a few days one of his brothers and one of his sisters.
“The good man at the hour of death.” I have not found
the picture to which Lamb refers. Probably a popular
print of the day, or he may have been incorrectly remembering Blake’s “Death of the Good Old
Man” in Blair’sGrave.
Manning, by changing his plans, did not reach St.
Helena when he expected to; not, indeed, until July, 1817, when he met Napoleon.]
LETTER 217 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: April 9, 1816.]
DEAR Wordsworth—Thanks for the books you have given me and for all
the Books you mean to give me. I will bind up the Political Sonnets and Ode
according to your Suggestion. I have not bound the poems yet. I wait till People have
done borrowing them. I think I shall get a chain, and chain them to my shelves
More Bodleiano, and People may come and read them at chain’s length. For
of those who borrow, some read slow, some mean to read but don’t read,
and some neither read nor meant to read, but borrow to leave you an opinion of
their sagacity. I must do my money-borrowing friends the justice to say that
there is nothing of this caprice or wantonness of alienation in them. When they
borrow my money, they never fail to make use of it. Coleridge has been here about a fortnight. His health is
tolerable at present, though beset with temptations. In the first place, the
Cov. Gard. Manager has declined accepting his Tragedy, tho’ (having read it) I see
no reason upon earth why it might not have run a very fair chance, tho’
it certainly wants a prominent part for a Miss O
Neil or a Mr. Kean.
However he is going to day to write to Lord Byron to get it to Drury. Should you see
Mrs. C., who has just written to
C. a letter which I have given him, it will be as well
to say nothing about its fate till some answer is shaped from Drury. He has two
volumes printing together at Bristol, both finished as far as the composition
goes; the latter containing his fugitive Poems, the former his Literary Life. Nature, who conducts
every creature by instinct to its best end, has skilfully directed
C. to take up his abode at a Chemist’s
Laboratory in Norfolk Street. She might as well have sent a Helluo
Librorum for cure to the Vatican. God keep him inviolate among
the traps and pitfalls. He has done pretty well as yet.
Tell Miss H. my
Sister is every day wishing to be
quietly sitting down to answer her very kind Letter, but while C. stays she can hardly find a quiet time, God
bless him.
Tell Mrs. W. her
Postscripts are always agreeable. They are so legible too. Your manual graphy
is terrible, dark as Lycophron.
“Likelihood “for instance is thus typified [here
Lamb makes an illegible scribble].
I should not wonder if the constant making out of such
Paragraphs is the cause of that weakness in Mrs.
W.’s Eyes as she is tenderly pleased to express it.
Dorothy I hear has mounted
spectacles; so you have deoculated two of your dearest relations in life. Well,
God bless you and continue to give you power to write with a finger of power
upon our hearts what you fail to impress in corresponding lucidness upon our
outward eyesight.
Mary’s Love to all, She is quite
well.
I am call’d off to do the deposits on Cotton Wool—but
why do I relate this to you who want faculties to comprehend the great mystery
of Deposits, of Interest, of Warehouse rent, and Contingent Fund—Adieu.
C. Lamb.
A longer Letter when C. is gone back into the Country, relating his success,
&c.—my judgment of your new Books &c. &c.—I am scarce quiet enough while he
stays.
Yours again C. L. Tuesday 9 Apr. 1816.
Note
[Wordsworth had sent Lamb, presumably in proof (see next letter), Thanksgiving Ode, 18 Jan.
1816, with other short pieces chiefly referring to recent events,
1816—the subject of the ode being the peace that had come upon Europe with the downfall of
Napoleon. It follows in the collected works the
sonnets to liberty.
“More
Bodleiano.” According to Macray’sAnnals of the Bodleian Library (second edition, 1890,
page 121), books seem to have been chained in the Bodleian
Library up to 1751. The process of removing the chains seems to have begun in 1757. In 1761
as many as 1,448 books were unchained at a cost of a ½d. a piece. A dozen years later
discarded chains were sold at the rate of 2d. for a long chain, l½d. for a short one, and
if one hankered after a hundred-weight of them, the wish could be gratified on payment of
14s. Many loose chains are still preserved in the library as relics.
“For of those who borrow.” Lamb’sElia essay, “The
Two Races of Men,” may have had its germ in this passage.
Coleridge came to London from Calne in March
bringing with him the manuscript of “Zapolya.” He had already had correspondence with Lord Byron concerning a tragedy for Drury Lane, on whose committee
Byron had a seat, but he had done nothing towards writing it.
“Zapolya” was never acted. It was published in
1817. Coleridge’s lodgings were at 43 Norfolk Street, Strand.
See next letter for further news of Coleridge at this time.
“A Helluo
Librorum”—a book-glutton.
Lycophron, the Greek poet and grammarian, called
“Tenebrosus,’ on account of the obscurity of his poem
Cassandra.]
LETTER 218 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[April 26, 1816.] Sir,
PLEASE to state the Weights and Amounts of the following Lots
of sold Sale, 181 for
Your obedient Servant,Chas.
Lamb.Accountant’s Office,26 Apr. 1816
DEAR W. I
have just finished the pleasing task of correcting the Revise of the Poems and letter. I hope they will
come out faultless. One blunder I saw and shuddered at. The hallucinating
rascal had printed battered for battened, this last not conveying any distinct sense to his gaping
soul. The Reader (as they call ’em) had discovered it and given it the
marginal brand, but the substitutory n had not yet
appeared. I accompanied his notice with a most pathetic address to the Printer
not to neglect the Correction. I know how such a blunder would “batter
at your Peace.” [Batter is written batten and
corrected to batter in themargin.] With regard to the works, the Letter I read
with unabated satisfaction. Such a thing was wanted, called for. The parallel
of Cotton with Burns I heartily approve; Iz. Walton hallows any page in which his
reverend name appears. “Duty archly bending to purposes of general
benevolence” is exquisite. The Poems I endeavored not to
understand, but to read them with my eye alone, and I think I succeeded. (Some
people will do that when they come out, you’ll say.) As if I were to
luxuriate tomorrow at some Picture Gallery I was never at before, and going by
to day by chance, found the door open, had but 5 minutes to look about me,
peeped in, just such a chastised peep I took with my
mind at the lines my luxuriating eye was coursing over unrestrained,—not to
anticipate another day’s fuller satisfaction. Coleridge is printing Xtabel, by Ld Byron’s recommendation to
Murray, with what he calls a vision,
Kubla Khan—which said
vision he repeats so enchantingly that it irradiates and brings heaven and
Elysian bowers into my parlour while he sings or says it, but there is an
observation “Never tell thy dreams,” and I am almost afraid
that Kubla Khan is an owl that won’t bear day
light, I fear lest it should be discovered by the lantern of typography and
clear reducting to letters, no better than nonsense or no sense. When I was
young I used to chant with extacy Mild Arcadians ever blooming, till somebody
told me it was meant to be nonsense. Even yet I have a lingering attachment to
it, and think it better than Windsor Forest, Dying
Xtian’s address &c.—C. has sent his
Tragedy to D. L. T.—it
cannot be acted this season, and by their manner of receiving it, I hope he
will be able to alter it to make them accept it for next. He is at present
under the medical care of a Mr. Gilman
(Killman?) a Highgate Apothecary, where he plays at leaving off Laud—m. I think
his essentials not touched: he is very bad, but then he wonderfully picks up
another day, and his face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient glory, an
Archangel a little damaged.
Will Miss H. pardon
our not replying at length to her kind Letter? We are not quiet enough.
Morgan is with us every day, going
betwixt Highgate and the Temple. Coleridge is absent but 4 miles, and the neighborhood of such a
man is as exciting as the presence of 50 ordinary Persons. ’Tis enough to
be within the whiff and wind of his genius, for us not to possess our souls in
quiet. If I lived with him or the author of theExcursion, I should in a very little time lose my own
identity, and be dragged along in the current of other people’s thoughts,
hampered in a net. How cool I sit in this office, with no possible interruption
further than what I may term material; there is not as
much metaphysics in 36 of the people here as there is in the first page of
Locke’streatise on the Human
understanding, or as much poetry as in any ten lines of the Pleasures of Hope or more
natural Beggar’s
Petition. I never entangle myself in any of their speculations.
Interruptions, if I try to write a letter even, I have dreadful. Just now
within 4 lines I was call’d off for ten minutes to consult dusty old
books for the settlement of obsolete Errors. I hold you a guinea you
don’t find the Chasm where I left off, so excellently the wounded sense
closed again and was healed.
N.B. Nothing said above to the contrary but that I hold the
personal presence of the two mentioned potent spirits at a rate as high as any,
but I pay dearer, what amuses others robs me of myself, my mind is positively
discharged into their greater currents, but flows with a willing violence. As
to your question about work, it is far less oppressive to me than it was, from
circumstances; it takes all the golden part of the day away, a solid lump from
ten to four, but it does not kill my peace as before. Some day or other I shall
be in a taking again. My head akes and you have had enough. God bless you.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Lamb had been correcting the proofs of Wordsworth’sLetter to a Friend of Burns and his Thanksgiving Ode, with
other short Pieces, both published in 1816. In the Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns, which was called
forth by the intended republication of Burns’ life by Dr. Currie,
Wordsworth incidentally compares Burns and Cotton. The phrase which
Lamb commends is in the description of
“Tam o’ Shanter”
(page 22)—“This reprobate sits down to his cups, while the storm is roaring, and
heaven and earth are in confusion;—the night is driven on by song and tumultuous
noise—laughter and jest thicken as the beverage improves upon the palate—conjugal
fidelity archly bends to the service of general benevolence—selfishness is not absent,
but wearing the mask of social cordiality. . . .”
“Batter at your peace.” “Macbeth,” IV., 3, 178.
Coleridge’sChristabel (with Kubla Khan and The Pains of Sleep) was published
by Murray in 1816. It ran into a second edition
quickly, but was not too well received. The Edinburgh indeed described it as destitute of one ray of
genius. In a letter from Fanny Godwin to Mary Shelley, July 20, 1816, in Dowden’sLife of Shelley, we read that
“Lamb says Christabel ought never to have been published; and
that no one understood it, and Kubla Khan is
nonsense.” But this was probably idle gossip. Lamb had
admired Christabel to the full, but he may
have thought its publication in an incomplete state an error.
“Mild Arcadians ever blooming.” In Pope’s “Song by a Person of Quality.”
Coleridge was introduced to Mr. James Gillman of the Grove, Highgate, by Dr. Adams of Hatton Garden, to whom he had applied for
medical aid. Adams suggested that Gillman should
take Coleridge into his house. Gillman arranged
on April 11 that Adams should bring Coleridge on
the following day. Coleridge went alone and conquered. He promised to
begin domestication on the next day, and “I looked with impatience,”
wrote Gillman in his Life of Coleridge, “for the morrow . . . I felt
indeed almost spellbound, without the desire of release.”
Coleridge did not come on the morrow, but two days later. He
remained with the Gillmans for the rest of his life.
The Pleasures of
Hope, by Thomas Campbell; The Beggar’s
Petition—“Pity the sorrows of a poor old man”—by Thomas Moss (1740-1808), a ditty in all the recitation
books. Lamb alluded to it in the London Magazine version of his Elia essay,
“A Complaint of the Decay of
Beggars.”
Here should come a brief note from Lamb to Leigh Hunt, dated May 13,1816,
not available for this edition (printed in The Lambs), accompanying Falstaff’s Letters,
etc., and a gift of “John Woodvil.” This is
Lamb’s first letter to James Henry Leigh
Hunt (1784-1859) that has been preserved. He had known
Hunt (an old Christ’s Hospitaller, but later than
Lamb’s day) for some years. To his Reflector he contributed a number
of essays and humorous letters in 1810-1811; and he had written also for The Examiner in 1812 and during
Hunt’s imprisonment in 1813-1815. The
Lambs visited him regularly at the Surrey Jail. One of
Lamb’s most charming poems is inscribed “To T. L.
H.”—Thornton Leigh Hunt, whom he called
his “favourite child.”]
LETTER 219 CHARLES LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM
[Dated at end: June 1, 1816.]
DEAR Miss
Betham,—I have sent your very pretty lines to Southey in a frank as you requested.
Poor S. what a grievous loss he must have had!
Mary and I rejoice in the prospect of
seeing you soon in town. Let us be among the very first persons you come to
see. Believe me that you can have no friends who respect and love you more than
ourselves. Pray present our kind remembrances
to Barbara, and to all to whom you may
think they will be acceptable.
Yours very sincerely, C. Lamb.
Have you seen Christabel
since its publication?
E. I. H. June 1 1816.
Note
[Southey’s eldest son, Herbert, had died in April of this year.
Here should come a letter from Lamb
to H. Dodwell, of the India House, dated August,
1816, not available for this edition. Lamb writes from Calne, in
Wiltshire, where he and his sister were making holiday, staying with the Morgans. He states that he has lost all sense of time, and
recollected that he must return to work some day only through the accident of playing Commerce instead of whist.]
LETTER 220 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[p.m. September 23, 1816.]
MY dear Wordsworth, It seems an age since we have corresponded, but
indeed the interim has been stuffd out with more variety than usually checquers
my same-seeming existence.—Mercy on me, what a traveller have I been since I
wrote you last! what foreign wonders have been explored! I have seen Bath,
King Bladud’s ancient well, fair
Bristol, seed-plot of suicidal Chatterton, Marlbro’, Chippenham, Calne, famous for
nothing in particular that I know of—but such a vertigo of locomotion has not
seized us for years. We spent a month with the Morgans at the last named Borough—August—and such a change has
the change wrought in us that we could not stomach wholesome Temple air, but
are absolutely rusticating (O the gentility of it) at Dalston, about one
mischievous boy’s stone’s throw off Kingsland Turnpike, one mile
from Shoreditch church,—thence we emanate in various directions to Hackney,
Clapton, Totnam, and such like romantic country. That my lungs should ever
prove so dainty as to fancy they perceive differences of air! but so it is,
tho’ I am almost ashamed of it, like Milton’s devil (turn’d truant to his old Brimstone)
I am purging off the foul air of my once darling tobacco in this Eden, absolutely snuffing up pure
gales, like old worn out Sin playing at being innocent, which never comes
again, for in spite of good books and good thoughts there is something in a
Pipe that virtue cannot give tho’ she give her unendowed person for a
dowry. Have you read the review of Coleridge’s
character, person, physiognomy &c. in the Examiner—his features even to his nose—O
horrible license beyond the old Comedy. He is himself gone to the sea side with
his favorite Apothecary, having left for
publication as I hear a prodigious mass of composition for a Sermon to the middling ranks of people
to persuade them they are not so distressed as is commonly supposed. Methinks
he should recite it to a congregation of Bilston Colliers,—the fate of
Cinna the Poet would instantaneously be
his. God bless him, but certain that rogue-Examiner has beset him in most unmannerly strains. Yet
there is a kind of respect shines thro’ the disrespect that to those who
know the rare compound (that is the subject of it) almost balances the reproof,
but then those who know him but partially or at a distance are so extremely apt
to drop the qualifying part thro’ their fingers. The “after all,
Mr. Wordsworth is a man of great talents, if he
did not abuse them” comes so dim upon the eyes of an Edinbro’ review reader, that
have been gloating-open chuckle-wide upon the preceding detail of abuses, it
scarce strikes the pupil with any consciousness of the letters being there,
like letters writ in lemon. There was a cut at me a few months back by the same hand, but my agnomen or
agni-nomen not being calculated to strike the popular ear, it dropt anonymous,
but it was a pretty compendium of observation, which the author has collected
in my disparagement, from some hundreds of social evenings which we had spent
together,—however in spite of all, there is something tough in my attachment to
H—— which these violent strainings cannot quite
dislocate or sever asunder. I get no conversation in London that is absolutely
worth attending to but his. There is monstrous little sense in the world, or I
am monstrous clever, or squeamish or something, but there is nobody to talk
to—to talk with I should say—and to go talking to
one’s self all day long is too much of a good thing, besides subjecting
one to the imputation of being out of one’s senses, which does no good to
one’s temporal interest at all. By the way, I have seen
Colerge. but once this 3
or 4 months. He is an odd person, when he first comes to town he is quite hot
upon visiting, and then he turns off and absolutely never comes at all, but
seems to forget there are any such people in the world. I made one attempt to
visit him (a morning call) at Highgate, but there was something in him or his
apothecary which I found so unattractively-repulsing from any temptation to
call again, that I stay away as naturally as a
Lover visits. The rogue gives you Love Powders, and then a strong horse drench
to bring ’em off your stomach that they mayn’t hurt you. I was very
sorry the printing of your Letter was not quite to your mind, but I surely did not think but
you had arranged the manner of breaking the paragraphs from some principle
known to your own mind, and for some of the Errors, I am confident that Note of
Admiration in the middle of two words did not stand so when I had it, it must
have dropt out and been replaced wrong, so odious a blotch could not have
escaped me. Gifford (whom God curse) has
persuaded squinting Murray (whom may God
not bless) not to accede to an offer Field made for me to print 2 vols, of Essays, to include the
one on Hogrth. and 1 or
2 more, but most of the matter to be new, but I dare say I should never have
found time to make them; M. would have had ’em, but
shewed specimens from the Reflector to G——, as he acknowleged to
Field, and Crispin did for me. “Not on his
soal but on his soul, damn’d Jew” may the malediction of my
eternal antipathy light—We desire much to hear from you, and of you all,
including Miss Hutchinson, for not
writing to whom Mary feels a weekly (and
did for a long time feel a daily) Pang. How is Southey?—I hope his pen will continue to move many years
smoothly and continuously for all the rubs of the rogue Examiner. A pertinacious foulmouthed villain it is!
This is written for a rarity at the seat of business: it is
but little time I can generally command from secular calligraphy,—the pen seems
to know as much and makes letters like figures—an obstinate clerkish thing. It
shall make a couplet in spite of its nib before I have done with it, “and so I end Commending me to your love, my dearest friend.” from Leaden Hall, Septemr something, 1816
C. Lamb.
Note
[The Lambs had taken summer lodgings—at 14 Kingsland
Row, Dalston—which they retained for some years: but this is not quite certain (see Letter
244 and note, page 540).
Hazlitt’sarticle on Coleridge was in The Examiner for September 8. Among other
things Hazlitt said: “Mr.
Shandy would have settled the question at once: ‘You have little
or no nose, Sir.’”
One passage in the article gives colour to the theory that Hazlitt occasionally borrowed from Lamb’s conversation. In
Lamb’s letter to Wordsworth of April 20, 1816, he has the celebrated description of
Coleridge, “an archangel a little
damaged.” Hazlitt in this article writes: “If he had had but common moral
principle, that is, sincerity, he would have been a great man; nor hardly, as it is,
appears to us— ‘Less than arch-angel ruined, and the excess Of glory obscur’d.’” Hazlitt may have heard Lambs’ epithet,
backed probably by the same passage from Paradise Lost.
Crabb Robinson tells us, in his Diary, that Coleridge was less hurt by the article than he
anticipated. “He denies H., however,
originality, and ascribes to L. [Lamb] the best
ideas in H.’s articles. He was not displeased to hear of his
being knocked down by John Lamb
lately.”
Coleridge’s new work was The Statesman’s Manual; or, the
Bible the best Guide to Political Skill and Foresight: A Lay Sermon,
1816. It had been first announced as “A Lay Sermon on the Distresses of the
Country, addressed to the Middle and Higher Orders,” and Hazlitt’s article had been in the nature of an
anticipatory review.
I do not find anywhere the “cut” at Lamb from Hazlitt’s hand, or indeed any one’s hand, to which
Lamb refers. Hazlitt at this time was living
at No. 19 York Street, Westminster, in Milton’s old house.
“Agni-nomen.” From agnus, a lamb.
“The fate of Cinna.” Cinna the poet, mistaken
for the oppressor, was torn to pieces by the populace. See “Julius Cæsar,” III., 3.
“After all, Mr. Wordsworth . . .”—the Edinburgh
Reviewarticle
on The
Excursion, in November, 1814, beginning, “This will never
do,” had at least two lapses into fairness: “But the truth is, that
Mr. Wordsworth, with all his perversities,
is a person of great powers”; and “Nobody can be more disposed to do
justice to the great powers of Mr. Wordsworth than we
are.”
“The rogue gives you Love Powders.” See note on page
164.
“The printing of your Letter.” The Letter to a Friend of
Burns (see above).
“2 vols, of Essays.” These were printed with poems as
The Works of Charles
Lamb by the Olliers in 1818 (see
page 515).
“Crispin”—Gifford (see note on page 453).
“Not on his soal [sole] but on his soul”—“Merchant of Venice,” IV., 1,
123—“Not on thy sole, but on thy soul, harsh Jew.”
“Southey.” Hazlitt’s attacks on the Laureate were continuous.]
LETTER 221 MARY LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
[No date. Middle of November, 1816.] Inner Temple. [Charles Lamb adds at the
head:—]
Mary has barely left me room to say How
d’ye. I have received back the Examiner containing the delicate enquiry into certain infirm
parts of S. T. C.’s character.
What is the general opinion of it? Farewell. My love to all.
C.
Lamb.
MY dear friend, I have procured a frank for this
day, and having been hindered all the morning have no time left to frame
excuses for my long and inexcusable silence, and can only thank you for the
very kind way in which you overlook it. I should certainly have written on the
receipt of yours but I had not a frank, and also I wished to date my letter
from my own home where you expressed so cordial a wish to hear we had arrived.
We have passed ten, I may call them very good weeks, at Dalston, for they
completely answered the purpose for which we went. Reckoning our happy month at
Calne, we have had quite a rural summer, and have obtained a very clear idea of
the great benefit of quiet—of early hours and time intirely at one’s own
disposal, and no small advantages these things are; but the return to old
friends—the sight of old familiar faces round me has almost reconciled me to
occasional headachs and fits of peevish weariness—even London streets, which I
sometimes used to think it hard to be eternally doomed to walk through before I
could see a green field, seem quite delightful.
Charles smoked but one pipe while we were
at Dalston and he has not transgressed much since his return. I hope he will
only smoke now with his fellow-smokers, which will give him five or six clear
days in the week. Shame on me, I did not even write to thank you for the bacon,
upon which, and some excellent eggs your sister added to her kind present, we
had so many nice feasts. I have seen Henry
Robinson, who speaks in raptures of the days he passed with you.
He says he never saw a man so happy in three wives as Mr. Wordsworth is. I long to join you and make
a fourth, and we cannot help talking of the possibility in some future
fortunate summer of venturing to come so far, but we generally end in thinking
the possibility impossible, for I dare not come but by post chaises, and the
expence would be enormous, yet it was very pleasing to read Mrs. Wordsworth’s kind invitation
and to feel a kind of latent hope of what might one day happen.
You ask how Coleridge
maintains himself. I know no more than you do. Strange to say, I have seen him
but once since he has been at Highgate, and then I met him in the street. I
have just been reading your kind letter over again and find you had some doubt
whether we had left the Temple entirely. It was merely a lodging we took to
recruit our health and spirits. From the time we left Calne Charles drooped sadly, company became quite
irksome, and his anxious desire to leave off smoking, and his utter inability
to perform his daily resolutions against it, became quite a torment to him, so
I prevailed with him to try the experiment of change of scene, and set out in
one of the short stage coaches from Bishopsgate Street, Miss Brent and I, and we looked over all the
little places within three miles and fixed on one quite countrified and not two
miles from Shoreditch Church, and entered upon it the next day. I thought if we
stayed but a week it would be a little rest and respite from our troubles, and
we made a ten weeks stay, and very comfortable we were, so much so that if ever
Charles is superannuated on a small pension, which is
the great object of his ambition, and we felt our income straitened, I do think
I could live in the country entirely—at least I thought so while I was there
but since I have been at home I wish to live and die in the Temple where I was
born. We left the trees so green it looked like early autumn, and can see but
one leaf “The last of its clan” on our poor old Hare Court
trees. What a rainy summer!—and yet I have been so much out of town and have
made so much use of every fine day that I can hardly help thinking it has been
a fine summer. We calculated we walked three hundred and fifty miles while we
were in our country lodging. One thing I must tell you,
Charles came round every morning to a shop near the
Temple to get shaved. Last Sunday we had such a pleasant day, I must tell you
of it. We went to Kew and saw the old Palace where the King was brought up, it was the pleasantest sight I ever saw, I
can scarcely tell you why, but a charming old woman shewed it to us. She had
lived twenty six years there and spoke with such a hearty love of our good old
King, whom all the world seems to have forgotten, that it did me good to hear
her. She was as proud in pointing out the plain furniture (and I am sure you
are now sitting in a larger and better furnished room) of a small room in which
the King always dined, nay more proud of the simplicity of her royal
master’s taste, than any shower of Carlton House can be in showing the
fine things there, and so she was when she made us remark the smallness of one
of the Princesses’ bedrooms, and said she slept and also dressed in that
little room. There are a great many good pictures but I was most pleased with one of the King when he was about two years
old, such a pretty little white-headed boy.
I cannot express how much pleasure a letter from you gives
us. If I could promise my self I should be always as well as I am now, I would
say I will be a better correspondent in future. If Charles
has time to add a line I shall be less ashamed to send this hasty scrawl. Love
to all and every one. How much I should like once more to see Miss Wordsworth’s handwriting, if she
would but write a postscript to your next, which I look to receive in a few
days.
Yours affectionately M. Lamb.
For a Postscript, see the beginning.
Note
[“Miss Brent.”
Mrs. Morgan’s sister.
Crabb Robinson had been in the Lake Country in
September and October.
“The last of its clan.” From Coleridge’sChristabel, line 49.
“To a shop near the Temple” Possibly to Mr.
A—— of Flower de-Luce Court, mentioned by Lamb in the footnote to his essay “On the Melancholy of Tailors” (see Vol. I.,
page 174).
“Our good old King”—George
III., then in retirement. Carlton House was the home of the Regent, whom Lamb (and
probably his sister) detested—as his “Triumph of the Whale” and other squibs (see Vol. V.) show.
See Appendix it., page 973, for a letter to Rickman.]
LETTER 222 MARY LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
[No date. ? Late 1816.]
MY dear Miss
Hutchinson, I had intended to write you a long letter, but as my
frank is dated I must send it off with a bare acknowledgment of the receipt of
your kind letter. One question I must hastily ask you. Do you think Mr. Wordsworth would have any reluctance to
write (strongly recommending to their patronage) to any of his rich friends in
London to solicit employment for Miss
Betham as a Miniature Painter? If you give me hopes that he will
not be averse to do this, I will write to you more fully stating the infinite
good he would do by performing so irksome a task as I know asking favours to
be. In brief, she has contracted debts for printing her beautiful poem of
“Marie,” which
like all things of original excellence does not sell at all.
These debts have led to little accidents unbecoming a woman
and a poetess to suffer. Retirement with such should be voluntary.
[Charles Lamb
adds:—]
The Bell rings. I just snatch the Pen out of my
sister’s hand to finish rapidly. Wordswth. may tell De Q that Miss
B’s price for a Virgin and Child is three guineas.
Yours (all of you) ever C. L.
Note
[“De Q”—Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859), the “opium-eater,” then living
at Grasmere. Lamb and De Quincey
had first met in 1804; but it was not until 1821 that they became really intimate, when
Lamb introduced him to the London Magazine.
Miss Betham painted miniature portraits, among
others, of Mrs. S. T. Coleridge and Sara Coleridge.
Here should come a note to William
Ayrton dated April 18, 1817, not available for this edition, thanking him
for much pleasure at “Don Giovanni” (see note to next
letter).
Somewhen in 1816 should come a letter from Lamb to Leigh Hunt on the publication of
The Story of
Rimini, mentioned in Leigh Hunt’s Correspondence, of which this is the
only sentence that is preserved: “The third Canto is in particular my favourite:
we congratulate you most sincerely on the trait [? taste] of your prison
fruit.”]
LETTER 223 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM AYRTON
Epistle To Willm. Ayrton
Esqre.Temple, May 12, 1817.MY dear friend, Before I end,— Have you any More orders for Don
Giovanni To give Him that doth live Your faithful Zany? Without raillery I mean Gallery Ones: For I am a person that shuns All ostentation And being at the top of the fashion; And seldom go to operas But in formâ pauperis. I go to the play In a very economical sort of a way, Rather to see Than be seen. Though I’m no ill sight Neither, By candle-light, And in some kinds of weather. You might pit me For height Against Kean; But in a grand tragic scene I’m nothing:— It would create a kind of loathing To see me act Hamlet; There’d be many a damn let Fly At my presumption If I should try, Being a fellow of no gumption. By the way, tell me candidly how you relish This, which they call The lapidary style? Opinions vary. The late Mr.
Mellish Could never abide it. He thought it vile, And coxcombical. My friend the Poet
Laureat, Who is a great lawyer at Anything comical, Was the first who tried it; But Mellish could never abide it. But it signifies very little what Mellish said, Because he is dead. For who can confute A body that’s mute?— Or who would fight With a senseless sprite?— Or think of troubling An impenetrable old goblin That’s dead and gone, And stiff as stone, To convince him with arguments pro and con, As if some live logician, Bred up at Merton, Or Mr. Hazlitt,
the Metaphysician— Hey, Mr Ayrton! With all your rare tone. For tell me how should an apparition List to your call, Though you talk’d for ever,— Ever so clever, When his ear itself, By which he must hear, or not hear at all, Is laid on the shelf? Or put the case (For more grace) It were a female spectre— Now could you expect her To take much gust In long speeches, With her tongue as dry as dust, In a sandy place, Where no peaches, Nor lemons, nor limes, nor oranges hang, To drop on the drougth of an arid harangue, Or quench, With their sweet drench, The fiery pangs which the worms inflict, With their endless nibblings, Like quibblings, Which the corpse may dislike, but can ne’er contradict— Hey, Mr. Ayrton? With all your rare tone— I am. C. Lamb.
Note
[The text is from Ayrton’s
transcript in a private volume lately in the possession of Mr. Edward
Ayrton, lettered, Lamb’s
Works, Vol. III., uniform with the 1818 edition.
William Ayrton (1777-1858), a friend and neighbour
of the Burneys, and a member of Lamb’s whist-playing set, was a musical critic, and at this time
director of the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket, where he had just produced Mozart’s “Don
Giovanni.” His wife was Marianne
Arnold, sister of Samuel James
Arnold, manager of the Lyceum Theatre.
“You might pit me for height against
Kean.” This was so. Edmund
Kean was small in stature, though not so “immaterially” built as
Lamb is said to have been.
“Mr. Mellish.”
Possibly the Joseph Charles Mellish who translated
Schiller.
The Laureate, Southey, had first
tried the lapidary style in “Gooseberry
Pie”; later, without rhymes, in “Thalaba.”
Some time in the intervening three months before the next letter the
Lambs went to Brighton for their holiday.]
LETTER 224 CHARLES LAMB TO BARRON FIELD
Aug. 31st, 1817.
MY dear Barron,—The bearer of this letter so far across the seas is
Mr. Lawrey, who comes out to you as
a missionary, and whom I have been strongly importuned to recommend to you as a
most worthy creature by Mr. Fenwick, a
very old, honest friend of mine, of whom, if my memory does not deceive me, you
have had some knowledge heretofore as editor of the “Statesman”—a man of talent, and patriotic.
If you can show him any facilities in his arduous undertaking, you will oblige
us much. Well, and how does the land of thieves use you? and how do you pass
your time in your extra-judicial intervals? Going about the streets with a
lantern, like Diogenes, looking for an
honest man? You may look long enough, I fancy. Do give me some notion of the
manners of the inhabitants where you are. They don’t thieve all day long,
do they? No human property could stand such continuous battery. And what do
they do when they an’t stealing?
Have you got a theatre? What pieces are performed? Shakespear’s, I suppose—not so much for
the poetry, as for his having once been in danger of leaving his country on
account of certain “small deer.”
Have you poets among you? Cursed plagiarists, I fancy, if
you have any. I would not trust an idea or a pocket-handkerchief of mine among
’em. You are almost competent to answer Lord
Bacon’s problem, whether a nation of atheists can subsist
together. You are practically in one:— “So thievish ’tis, that the eighth commandment itself Scarce seemeth there to be.” Our old honest world goes on with little perceptible variation. Of course
you have heard of poor Mitchell’s
death, and that G. Dyer is one of
Lord Stanhope’s residuaries. I am
afraid he has not touched much of the residue yet. He is positively as lean as
Cassius. Barnes is going to Demerara or Essequibo, I am not quite
certain which. A[lsager] is turned
actor. He came out in genteel comedy at Cheltenham this season, and has hopes
of a London engagement.
For my own history, I am just in the same spot, doing the
same thing (videlicet, little or nothing,) as when you left me; only I have
positive hopes that I shall be able to conquer that inveterate habit of smoking
which you may remember I indulged in. I think of making a beginning this
evening, viz., Sunday 31st August, 1817, not Wednesday, 2nd Feb., 1818, as it
will be perhaps when you read this for the first time. There is the difficulty
of writing from one end of the globe (hemispheres I call ’em) to another!
Why, half the truths I have sent you in this letter will become lies before
they reach you, and some of the lies (which I have mixed for variety s sake,
and to exercise your judgment in the finding of them out) may be turned into
sad realities before you shall be called upon to detect them. Such are the
defects of going by different chronologies. Your now is not my now; and again,
your then is not my then; but my now may be your then, and vice versâ. Whose head is competent to these things?
How does Mrs. Field
get on in her geography? Does she know where she is by this time? I am not sure
sometimes you are not in another planet; but then I don’t like to ask
Capt. Burney, or any of those that
know anything about it, for fear of exposing my ignorance.
Our kindest remembrances, however, to Mrs. F., if she will accept of reminiscences
from another planet, or at least another hemisphere.
C. L.
Note
[This is Lamb’s first letter
that has been preserved to Barron Field.
Barron Field (1786-1846) was a lawyer, a son of Henry Field, apothecary to Christ’s Hospital, and
brother of a fellow clerk of Lamb’s in the India House. He had also been a
contributor to Leigh Hunt’sReflector in 1810-1812.
Field was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales,
whither he sailed in 1816, reaching Sydney in February, 1817. His wife was a Miss Jane Carncroft.
This letter forms the groundwork of Lamb’sElia essay on “Distant Correspondents” (see Vol. II., page 104), which may be read with
it as an example of the difference in richness between Lamb’s
epistolary and finished literary style.
“Small deer”—“Mice and rats, and such small
deer” (“King
Lear,” III., 4, 144)—an allusion to Shakespeare’s deer-stealing episode.
“Lord Bacon’s problem.”
Bacon discusses Atheists in more than one place;
but I do not find this problem stated.
“So thievish ’tis . . .” A perversion of
Coleridge’s lines, in The Ancient Mariner:— So lonely ’twas, that God himself Scarce seemed there to be.
“Poor Mitchell’s death.”
This may have been one of the lies referred to a little lower. If so, Thomas Mitchell (1783-1845) was probably intended, as he
had been at Christ’s Hospital, and was a friend of Leigh
Hunt’s, and might thus have known Lamb and Field. He translated
Aristophanes. The only
Mitchell of any importance who died in 1817 was Colonel Mitchell, who commanded a brigade at Waterloo; but
Lamb would hardly know anything of him.
George Dyer, who had been tutor in the family of the
third Earl of Stanhope (Citizen Stanhope), was one
of the ten executors to whom that peer’s estate was left, after paying a few
legacies. Among them was another of Lamb’s
acquaintances, Joseph Jekyll, mentioned in the Elia essay on the Old Benchers.
Dyer repudiated the office, but the heir persuaded him to accept
an annuity. Cassius (see “Julius Cæsar,” I., 2, 194) had “a lean
and hungry look.”
Thomas Barnes (1785-1841), another old
Christ’s Hospitaller, and a contributor to The Reflector, became editor of The Times in 1817. His projected journey
was one of the “lies”; nor did Alsager,
another Times man, whom we have already
met, turn actor.]
LETTER 225 CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES AND LOUISA
KENNEY
Londres, October, [1817].
DEAR Friends,—It is with infinite regret I inform
you that the pleasing privilege of receiving letters, by which I have for these
twenty years gratified my friends and abused the liberality of the Company
trading to the Orient, is now at an end. A cruel edict of the Directors has
swept it away altogether. The devil sweep away their patronage also. Rascals
who think nothing of sponging upon their employers for their Venison and Turtle
and Burgundy five days in a week, to the tune of five thousand pounds in a
year, now find out that the profits of trade will not allow the innocent
communication of thought between their underlings and their friends in distant
provinces to proceed untaxed, thus withering up the heart of friendship and
making the news of a friend’s good health worse than indifferent, as
tidings to be deprecated as bringing with it ungracious expenses. Adieu, gentle
correspondence, kindly conveyance of soul, interchange of love, of opinions, of
puns and what not! Henceforth a friend that does not stand in visible or
palpable distance to me, is nothing to me. They have not left to the bosom of
friendship even that cheap intercourse of sentiment the twopenny medium. The
upshot is, you must not direct any more letters through me. To me you may
annually, or biennially, transmit a brief account of your goings on [on] a
single sheet, from which after I have deducted as much as the postage comes to,
the remainder will be pure pleasure. But no more of those pretty commissions
and counter commissions, orders and revoking of orders, obscure messages and
obscurer explanations, by which the intellects of Marshall and Fanny used
to be kept in a pleasing perplexity, at the moderate rate of six or seven
shillings a week. In short, you must use me no longer as a go-between.
Henceforth I write up no thoroughfare.
Well, and how far is Saint Valery from Paris; and do you get
wine and walnuts tolerable; and the vintage, does it suffer from the wet? I
take it, the wine of this season will be all wine and water; and have you any
plays and green rooms, and Fanny Kellies
to chat with of an evening; and is the air purer than the old gravel pits, and
the bread so much whiter, as they say? Lord, what things you see that travel! I
dare say the people are all French wherever you go. What an overwhelming effect
that must have! I have stood one of ’em at a time, but two I generally
found overpowering, I used to cut and run; but,
then, in their own vineyards may be they are endurable enough. They say
marmosets in Senegambia are so pleasant as the day’s long, jumping and
chattering in the orange twigs; but transport ’em, one by one, over here
into England, they turn into monkeys, some with tails, some without, and are
obliged to be kept in cages.
I suppose you know we’ve left the Temple pro tempore. By the way, this conduct has caused strange
surmises in a good lady of our acquaintance. She lately sent for a young
gentleman of the India House, who lives opposite her, at Monroe’s, the
flute shop in Skinner Street, Snow Hill,—I mention no name, you shall never get
out of me what lady I mean,—on purpose to ask all he knew about us. I had
previously introduced him to her whist-table. Her inquiries embraced every
possible thing that could be known of me, how I stood in the India house, what
was the amount of my salary, what it was likely to be hereafter, whether I was
thought to be clever in business, why I had taken country lodgings, why at
Kingsland in particular, had I friends in that road, was anybody expected to
visit me, did I wish for visitors, would an unexpected call be gratifying or
not, would it be better if she sent beforehand, did anybody come to see me,
wasn’t there a gentleman of the name of Morgan, did he know him, didn’t he come to see me, did he
know how Mr. Morgan lived, she never could make out how
they were maintained, was it true that he lived out of the profits of a
linendraper’s shop in Bishopsgate Street (there she was a little right,
and a little wrong—M. is a gentleman tobacconist); in
short, she multiplied demands upon him till my friend, who is neither
over-modest nor nervous, declared he quite shuddered. After laying as bare to
her curiosity as an anatomy he trembled to think what she would ask next. My
pursuits, inclinations, aversions, attachments (some, my dear friends, of a
most delicate nature), she lugged ’em out of him, or would, had he been
privy to them, as you pluck a horse-bean from its iron stem, not as such tender
rosebuds should be pulled. The fact is I am come to Kingsland, and that is the
real truth of the matter, and nobody but yourselves should have extorted such a
confession from me. I suppose you have seen by the Papers that Manning is arrived in England. He expressed
some mortifications at not finding Mrs.
Kenney in England. He looks a good deal sunburnt, and is got a
little reserved, but I hope it will wear off. You will see by the Papers also
that Dawe is knighted. He has been
painting the Princess of Coborg and her
husband. This is all the news I could think of. Write to
us, but not by us, for I have near ten correspondents of
this latter description, and one or other comes pouring in every day, till my
purse strings and heart strings crack. Bad habits are not broken at once. I am sure you will excuse the apparent
indelicacy of mentioning this, but dear is my shirt, but dearer is my skin, and
it’s too late when the steed is stole, to shut the door.—Well, and does
Louisa grow a fine girl, is she
likely to have her mother’s complexion, and does Tom polish in French
air—Henry I mean—and Kenney is not so fidgety, and You sit down sometimes for a
quiet half-hour or so, and all is comfortable, no bills (that you call writs)
nor anything else (that you are equally sure to miscall) to annoy you?
Vive la gaite de cœur et la bell pastime, vive la beau France et
revive ma cher Empreur.
C. Lamb.
Note
[James Kenney and his wife were
now living at St. Valery. Marshall was Godwin’s old friend, whom we have already seen, and
Fanny was Fanny Holcroft.
Lamb’s friend Fanny
Kelly is first mentioned by Lamb in this letter.
Frances Maria Kelly (1790-1882), to give her her full name, was
then playing at the Lyceum. We shall soon see much of her.
“We’ve left the Temple pro
tempore”—referring to the Dalston lodgings.
“What lady I mean.” Mrs.
Godwin lived in Skinner Street.
Manning, on his return from China, was wrecked near
Sunda on February 17, 1817. The passengers were taken to St. Helena, and he did not reach
England until the summer. This must give us the date of the present letter, previously
attributed to October, 1816.
George Dawe was not knighted. Probably it was
rumoured that he was to be. His portrait of Princess Charlotte
of Saxe-Coburg (who died in 1817 so soon after her marriage) was very
popular.
Louisa would be, I suppose, Louisa
Holcroft. There was a Tom Holcroft,
in whom later Lamb took some interest.]
LETTER 226 MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
[p.m. November 21, 1817.]
MY dear Miss
Wordsworth, Your kind letter has given us very great
pleasure,—the sight of your hand writing was a most welcome surprize to us. We
have heard good tidings of you by all our friends who were so fortunate as to
visit you this summer, and rejoice to see it confirmed by yourself. You have
quite the advantage in volunteering a letter.
There is no merit in replying to so welcome a stranger.
We have left the Temple. I think you will be sorry to hear
this. I know I have never been so well satisfied with thinking of you at Rydal
Mount as when I could connect the idea of you with your own Grasmere Cottage.
Our rooms were dirty and out of repair, and the inconveniences of living in
chambers became every year more irksome, and so at last we mustered up
resolution enough to leave the good old place that so long had sheltered us—and
here we are, living at a Brazier’s shop, No. 20, in Russell Street,
Covent Garden, a place all alive with noise and bustle, Drury Lane Theatre in
sight from our front and Covent Garden from our back windows. The hubbub of the
carriages returning from the play does not annoy me in the least—strange that
it does not, for it is quite tremendous. I quite enjoy looking out of the
window and listening to the calling up of the carriages and the squabbles of
the coachmen and linkboys. It is the oddest scene to look down upon, I am sure
you would be amused with it. It is well I am in a chearful place or I should
have many misgivings about leaving the Temple. I look forward with great
pleasure to the prospect of seeing my good friend Miss Hutchinson. I wish Rydal Mount with all its inhabitants
enclosed were to be transplanted with her and to remain stationary in the midst
of Covent Garden. I passed through the street lately where Mr. and Mrs.
Wordsworth lodged; several fine new houses, which were then just
rising out of the ground, are quite finished and a noble entrance made that way
into Portland Place.
I am very sorry for Mr. De
Quincey—what a blunder the poor man made when he took up his
dwelling among the mountains. I long to see my friend Pypos. Coleridge is still at Little Hampton with Mrs. Gillman, he has been so ill as to be
confined to his room almost the whole time he has been there.
Charles has had all his Hogarths bound in a book, they were sent home
yesterday, and now that I have them all together and perceive the advantage of
peeping close at them through my spectacles I am reconciled to the loss of them
hanging round the room, which has been a great mortification to me—in vain I
tried to console myself with looking at our new chairs and carpets, for we have
got new chairs, and carpets covering all over our two sitting rooms, I missed
my old friends and could not be comforted—then I would resolve to learn to look
out of the window, a habit I never could attain in my life, and I have given it
up as a thing quite impracticable—yet when I was at Brighton last summer, the
first week I never took my eyes off from the sea, not even to look in a book. I
had not seen the sea for sixteen years. Mrs.
Morgan, who was with us, kept her liking, and continued her seat
in the window till the
very last, while Charles and I played truant and wandered
among the hills, which we magnified into little mountains and almost as good as
Westmoreland scenery. Certainly we made discoveries of many pleasant walks
which few of the Brighton visitors have ever dreamed of—for like as is the case
in the neighbourhood of London, after the first two or three miles we were sure
to find ourselves in a perfect solitude. I hope we shall meet before the
walking faculties of either of us fail. You say you can walk fifteen miles with
ease,—that is exactly my stint, and more fatigues me; four or five miles every
third or fourth day, keeping very quiet between, was all Mrs.
Morgan could accomplish.
God bless you and yours. Love to all and each one.
I am ever yours most affectionately
M. Lamb.
LETTER 226 (continued) CHARLES LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
DEAR Miss
Wordsworth, Here we are, transplanted from our native soil. I
thought we never could have been torn up from the Temple. Indeed it was an ugly
wrench, but like a tooth, now ’tis out and I am easy. We never can strike
root so deep in any other ground. This, where we are, is a light bit of
gardener’s mold, and if they take us up from it, it will cost no blood
and groans like mandrakes pull’d up. We are in the individual spot I like
best in all this great city. The theatres with all [a few
words cut away:Talfourdhas “their noises. Covent Garden”] dearer to me than
any gardens of Alcinous, where we are
morally sure of the earliest peas and ’sparagus. Bow Street, where the
thieves are examined, within a few yards of us. Mary had not been here four and twenty hours before she saw a
Thief. She sits at the window working, and casually throwing out her eyes, she
sees a concourse of people coming this way, with a constable to conduct the
solemnity. These little incidents agreeably diversify a female life. It is a
delicate subject, but is Mr. * * * really married? and has
he found a gargle to his mind? O how funny he did talk to me about her, in
terms of such mild quiet whispering speculative profligacy. But did the
animalcule and she crawl over the rubric together, or did they not?
Mary has brought her part of this letter to an
orthodox and loving conclusion, which is very well, for I have no room for
pansies and remembrances. What a nice holyday I got on Wednesday by favor of a
princess dying. [A
line and signature cut away.]
Note
[The Lambs’ house in Russell Street is now
(1904) a fruiterer’s: it has been rebuilt. Russell Street, Covent Garden, in those
days was divided into Great Russell Street (from the Market to Brydges Street, now
Catherine Street) and Little Russell Street (from Brydges Street to Drury Lane). The
brazier, or ironmonger, was Mr. Owen, Nos. 20 and 21.
The Wordsworths had moved to Rydal Mount in 1813.
“I am very sorry for Mr. De
Quincey.” Probably a reference to one of the
opium-eater’s illnesses.
It was at Littlehampton that Coleridge met Henry Francis Cary, the
translator of Dante, afterwards one of Lamb’s friends.
“Spot I like best in all this great city.” See Vol. I.
of this edition, page 155, for a little essay by Lamb
on places of residence in London.
“Mr. * * *.” One can but conjecture as
to these asterisks. De Quincey, who was very small,
married at the close of 1816.
“A princess dying”—Princess Charlotte of Saxe-Coburg. She was buried, amid
national lamentation, on November 19, 1817.]
LETTER 227 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN PAYNE COLLIER
The Garden of England, December 10, 1817.
DEAR J. P.
C.,—I know how zealously you feel for our friend S. T. Coleridge; and I know that you and your
family attended his lectures four or five years ago. He is in bad health and
worse mind: and unless something is done to lighten his mind he will soon be
reduced to his extremities; and even these are not in the best condition. I am
sure that you will do for him what you can; but at present he seems in a mood
to do for himself. He projects a new course, not of physic, nor of metaphysic,
nor a new course of life, but a new course of lectures on Shakspear and Poetry. There is no man better
qualified (always excepting number one); but I am pre-engaged for a series of
dissertations on India and India-pendence, to be completed at the expense of
the Company, in I know not (yet) how many volumes foolscap folio. I am busy
getting up my Hindoo mythology; and for the purpose I am once more enduring
Southey’sCurse. To be serious,
Coleridge’s state and affairs make me so; and
there are particular reasons just now, and have been any time for the last twenty
years, why he should succeed. He will do so with a little encouragement. I have
not seen him lately; and he does not know that I am writing.
Yours (for Coleridge’s sake) in haste,
C. Lamb.
Note
[The “Garden of England” of the address stands, of course,
for Covent Garden.
This is the first letter to Collier that has been
preserved. John Payne Collier (1789-1883), known as
a Shakespearian critic and editor of old plays and poems, was then a reporter on The Times. He had recently
married. Wordsworth also wrote to Collier on this
subject. Coleridge’s lectures were delivered
in 1818, beginning on January 27, in Flower-de-Luce Court. Their preservation we owe to
Collier’s shorthand notes.
MY dear Haydon,—I will come with pleasure to 22, Lisson Grove North, at
Rossi’s, half-way up, right-hand side—if I can
find it.
Yours, C. Lamb. 20, Russell Court, Covent Garden East. half-way up, next the
corner, left hand side.
Note
[The first letter that has been preserved to Haydon,
the painter. Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846) was
then principally known by his “Judgment of Solomon”:
he was at this time at work upon his most famous picture, “Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem.” Lamb’s note is in acceptance of the invitation to the famous dinner
which Haydon gave on December 28, 1817, to Wordsworth, Keats, Monkhouse and others, with the Comptroller of Stamps thrown in.
Haydon’sDiary describes the evening with much humour. See
Appendix, page 954.]
LETTER 229 CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
18 feb. 1818. East India House.
(Mary shall send you all the news, which I find I have left
out.)
MY dear Mrs.
Wordsworth, I have repeatedly taken pen in hand to answer your
kind letter. My sister should more properly have done it, but she having
failed, I consider myself answerable for her debts. I am now trying to do it in
the midst of Commercial noises, and with a quill which seems more ready to
glide into arithmetical figures and names of Goods, Cassia, Cardemoms, Aloes,
Ginger, Tea, than into kindly responses and friendly recollections.
The reason why I cannot write letters at home is, that I am
never alone. Plato’s (I write to
W. W. now)
Plato’s double animal parted never longed [?
more] to be reciprocally reunited in the system of its first creation, than I
sometimes do to be but for a moment single and separate. Except my
morning’s walk to the office, which is like treading on sands of gold for
that reason, I am never so. I cannot walk home from office but some officious
friend offers his damn’d unwelcome courtesies to accompany me. All the
morning I am pestered. I could sit and gravely cast up sums in great Books, or
compare sum with sum, and write Paid against this
and Unp’d against t’other, and yet
reserve in some “corner of my mind” some darling thoughts all my
own—faint memory of some passage in a Book—or the tone of an absent
friend’s Voice—a snatch or Miss
Burrell’s singing—a gleam of Fanny Kelly’s divine plain face—The two operations might
be going on at the same time without thwarting, as the sun’s two motions
(earth’s I mean), or as I sometimes turn round till I am giddy, in my
back parlour, while my sister is walking longitudinally in the front—or as the
shoulder of veal twists round with the spit, while the smoke wreathes up the
chimney—but there are a set of amateurs of the Belle Lettres—the gay
science—who come to me as a sort of rendezvous, putting questions of criticism,
of British Institutions, Lalla Rooks
&c., what Coleridge said at the
Lecture last night—who have the form of reading men, but, for any possible use
Reading can be to them but to talk of, might as well have been Ante-Cadmeans
born, or have lain sucking out the sense of an Egyptn.
hieroglyph as long as the Pyramids will last before they should find it. These pests worrit me at business
and in all its intervals, perplexing my accounts, poisoning my little salutary
warming-time at the fire, puzzling my paragraphs if I take a newspaper,
cramming in between my own free thoughts and a column of figures which had come
to an amicable compromise but for them. Their noise ended, one of them, as I
said, accompanys me home lest I should be solitary for a moment; he at length
takes his welcome leave at the door, up I go, mutton on table, hungry as
hunter, hope to forget my cares and bury them in the agreeable abstraction of
mastication, knock at the door, in comes Mrs.
Hazlitt, or M. Burney, or
Morgan, or Demogorgon, or my
brother, or somebody, to prevent my
eating alone, a Process absolutely necessary to my poor wretched digestion. O
the pleasure of eating alone!—eating my dinner alone! let me think of it. But
in they come, and make it absolutely necessary that I should open a bottle of
orange—for my meat turns into stone when any one dines with me, if I have not
wine—wine can mollify stones. Then that wine turns into acidity, acerbity,
misanthropy, a hatred of my interrupters (God bless ’em! I love some of
’em dearly), and with the hatred a still greater aversion to their going
away. Bad is the dead sea they bring upon me, choaking and death-doing, but
worse is the deader dry sand they leave me on if they go before bed time. Come
never, I would say to these spoilers of my dinner, but if you come, never go.
The fact is, this interruption does not happen very often, but every time it
comes by surprise that present bane of my life, orange wine, with all its
dreary stifling consequences, follows. Evening Company I should always like had
I any mornings, but I am saturated with human faces (divine forsooth) and voices all the golden morning, and five evenings
in a week would be as much as I should covet to be in company, but I assure you
that is a wonderful week in which I can get two, or one, to myself. I am never
C. L. but always C. L. and Co.
He, who thought it not good for man to be alone, preserve me
from the more prodigious monstrosity of being never by myself. I forget bed
time, but even there these sociable frogs clamber up to annoy me. Once a week,
generally some singular evening that, being alone, I go to bed at the hour I
ought always to be abed, just close to my bedroom window, is the club room of a
public house, where a set of singers, I take them to be chorus-singers of the
two theatres (it must be both of them), begin their orgies. They are a set of
fellows (as I conceive) who being limited by their talents to the burthen of
the song at the play houses, in revenge have got the common popular airs by
Bishop or some cheap composer
arranged for choruses, that is, to be sung all in chorus. At least I never can
catch any of the text of the plain song, nothing
but the Babylonish choral howl at the tail on’t. “That fury
being quenchd”—the howl I mean—a curseder burden succeeds, of
shouts and clapping and knocking of the table. At length over tasked nature
drops under it and escapes for a few hours into the society of the sweet silent
creatures of Dreams, which go away with mocks and mows at cockcrow. And then I
think of the words Christobel’s
father used (bless me, I have dipt in the wrong ink) to say every morning by
way of variety when he awoke—“Every knell, the Baron saith, Wakes us
up to a world of death,” or something like it. All I mean by this
senseless interrupted tale is, that by my central situation I am a little over
companied. Not that I have any animosity against the good creatures that are so
anxious to drive away the Harpy solitude from me. I like ’em, and cards,
and a chearful glass, but I mean merely to give you an idea between office
confinement and after office society, how little time I can call my own. I mean
only to draw a picture, not to make an inference. I would not that I know of
have it otherwise. I only wish sometimes I could exchange some of my faces and
voices for the faces and voices which a late visitation brought most welcome
and carried away leaving regret, but more pleasure, even a kind of gratitude,
at being so often favored with that kind northern visitation. My London faces
and noises don’t hear me—I mean no disrespect—or I should explain myself
that instead of their return 220 times a year and the return of W. W. &c. 7 times in 104 weeks, some more
equal distribution might be found. I have scarce room to put in Mary’s kind love and my poor name
Ch. Lamb. This to be read last.
W. H. goes on lecturing against
W. W. and making copious use of
quotations from said W. W. to give a zest to said
lectures. S. T. C. is lecturing with
success. I have not heard either him or H. but I dined
with S. T. C. at Gilman’s a Sunday or 2 since and he was well and in
good spirits. I mean to hear some of the course, but lectures are not much
to my taste, whatever the Lecturer may be. If read,
they are dismal flat, and you can’t think why you are brought
together to hear a man read his works which you could read so much better
at leisure yourself; if delivered extempore, I am always in pain lest the
gift of utterance should suddenly fail the orator in the middle, as it did
me at the dinner given in honor of me at the London Tavern.
“Gentlemen” said I, and there I stoppt,—the rest my feelings
were under the necessity of supplying. Mrs.
Wordsworthwill go on, kindly
haunting us with visions of seeing the lakes once more which never can be realized. Between us there is
a great gulf—not of inexplicable moral antipathies and distances, I hope
(as there seemd to be between me and that Gentleman concern’d in the Stamp office that I so
strangely coiled up from at Haydons). I think I had an instinct that he was the head of an
office. I hate all such people—Accountants, Deputy Accountants. The dear
abstract notion of the East India Company, as long as she is unseen, is
pretty, rather Poetical; but as she makes
herself manifest by the persons of such Beasts, I loathe and detest her as
the Scarlet what-do-you-call-her of Babylon. I thought, after abridging us
of all our red letter days, they had done their worst, but I was deceived
in the length to which Heads of offices, those true Liberty haters, can go.
They are the tyrants, not Ferdinand,
nor Nero—by a decree past this week, they
have abridged us of the immemorially-observed custom of going at one
o’clock of a Saturday, the little shadow of a holiday left us. Blast
them. I speak it soberly. Dear W. W., be thankful for
your Liberty.
We have spent two very pleasant Evenings lately with
Mr. Monkhouse.
Note
[Mary Lamb’s letter of news
either was not written or has not been preserved.
Lamb returned to the subject of this essay for his
Popular Fallacy “That Home is
Home” in 1826 (see Vol. II. of this edition, page 263). A little previously to
that essay he had written an article in the
New Times on unwelcome
callers (see Vol. I. of this edition, page 270).
“Plato’s double animal
parted.” A reference, I think, to the Phædo.
“Corner of my mind.” I do not find this.
“Miss Burrell”—Fanny Burrell, afterwards Mrs. Gould.
Lamb wrote in praise of her performance in “Don Giovanni in London” (see Vol.
I. of this edition, page 372).
“Fanny Kelly’s divine plain
face.” Only seventeen months later Lamb
proposed to Miss Kelly.
“Lalla Rooks.” Thomas Moore’s poem Lalla Rookh was published in
1817.
“What Coleridge said.” Coleridge was still lecturing on Shakespeare and poetry in Flower-de-Luce Court.
“Ante-Cadmeans.” Cadmus is fabled as having introduced the use of letters into Greece.
“Morgan, or Demogorgon.” Lamb was
fond of the passage in Paradise Lost (II., 295), in which “the dreaded name of
Demogorgon” sounds.
“Human faces (divine forsooth).” Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine. Paradise
Lost, III., 44.
“The two theatres”—Drury Lane and Covent Garden.
“Bishop”—Sir Henry Rowley
Bishop (1786-1855), composer of “Home, Sweet
Home.”
“That fury being quenchd.” That fury stay’d, Quencht in a boggy Syrtis. Paradise
Lost, II., 938-939.
“Mocks and mows.” “Mop and mow,”
in “The Tempest,” IV., 1,
47.
“Christabel’s
father.” Each matin bell, the Baron saith, Knells us back to a world of death. Part II., lines 1 and 2.
“W. H. goes on lecturing.”
Hazlitt was delivering a course of lectures on
the English poets at the Surrey Institution.
“‘Gentlemen’ said I.” On another occasion
Lamb, asked to give a toast, gave the best he
knew—woodcock on toast. See also his toasts at Haydon’s dinner. I do not know when or why the dinner was given to
him; perhaps after the failure of “W. H.”
“Gentleman concern’d in the Stamp office.” See
note to the preceding letter.
“Our red letter days.” Lamb repeats the complaint in his Elia essay “Oxford in the Vacation.” In 1820, I see from the
Directory, the Accountant’s Office, where Lamb had his desk,
kept sacred only five red-letter days, where, ten years earlier, it had observed many.
“Mr. Monkhouse.” Thomas Monkhouse, a friend of the
Wordsworths and of Lamb. He
was at Haydon’s dinner.
Here should come a note from Lamb
to Charles and James
Ollier, dated May 28, 1818, not available for this edition (printed in The Lambs); which
apparently accompanied final proofs of Lamb’sWorks.
Lamb remarks, “There is a Sonnet to come in by way of
dedication.” This would be that to Martin
Burney at the beginning of Vol. II. The Works were published in two volumes with a beautiful dedication to
Coleridge (see Vol. V. of the present edition,
page 1). Charles Ollier (1788-1859) was a friend of Leigh Hunt’s, for whom he published, as well as for
Shelley. He also brought out Keats’ first volume. The
Olliers’ address was The Library, Vere Street, Oxford
Street.]
LETTER 230 CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES AND JAMES
OLLIER
[p.m. June 18, 1818.]
DEAR Sir (whichever opens it) I am going off to
Birminghm. I find my books, whatever faculty of selling they
may have (I wish they had more for your | my sake), are admirably adapted for giving away. You
have been bounteous. Six more and I shall have satisfied all just claims. Am I
taking too great a liberty in begging you to send 4 as follows, and reserve 2
for me when I come home? That will make 31. Thirty-one times 12 is 372
shillings, Eighteen pounds twelve Shillings!!!—but here are my friends, to
whom, if you could transmit them, as I shall be away a month, you will greatly
oblige the obliged C. Lamb.
Mr. Ayrton, James Street, Buckingham
Gate
Mr. Alsager, Suffolk Street East,
Southwark, by Horsemonger Lane and in one parcel
directed to R.
Southey, Esq., Keswick, Cumberland
one for R. S.;
and one for Wm. Wordsworth, Esqr.
If you will be kind enough simply to
write “from the Author” in all 4—you will still further etc.—
Either Longman or
Murray is in the frequent habit
of sending books to Southey and will
take charge of the Parcel. It will be as well to write in at the beginning
thus
R. Southey Esq. from the Author.
W. Wordsworth Esq. from the Author.
Then, if I can find the remaining 2, left for me at
Russell St when I return, rather than encroach any
more on the heap, I will engage to make no more new friends ad infinitum,
yourselves being the last.
Yours truly C. L.
I think Southey
will give us a lift in that damn’d Quarterly. I meditate an attack upon that
Cobler Gifford, which shall
appear immediately after any favourable mention which
S. may make in the Quarterly. It can’t in decent gratitude appear before.
Note
[We know nothing of Lamb’s
visit to Birmingham. He is hardly likely to have stayed with any of the
Lloyd family. The attack on Gifford was probably the following sonnet, printed in The Examiner for October 3 and 4, 1819:— ST. CRISPIN TO MR.
GIFFORD All unadvised, and in an evil hour. Lured by aspiring thoughts, my son, you daft The lowly labours of the Gentle Craft For learned toils, which blood and spirits sour. All things, dear pledge, are not in all men’s power; The wiser sort of shrub affects the ground; And sweet content of mind is oftener found In cobbler’s parlour, than in critic’s bower. The sorest work is what doth cross the grain; And better to this hour you had been plying The obsequious awl with well-waxed finger flying, Than ceaseless thus to till a thankless vein; Still teazing Muses, which are still denying; Making a stretching-leather of your brain.]
LETTER 231 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Monday, Oct. 26th, 1818.
DEAR Southey,—I am pleased with your friendly remembrances of my little
things. I do not know whether I have done a silly thing or a wise one; but it
is of no great consequence. I run no risk, and care for no censures. My bread
and cheese is stable as the foundations of Leadenhall Street, and if it hold
out as long as the “foundations of our empire in the East,”
I shall do pretty well. You and W. W.
should have had your presentation copies more ceremoniously sent; but I had no
copies when I was leaving town for my holidays, and rather than delay,
commissioned my bookseller to send them thus nakedly. By not hearing from
W. W. or you, I began to be afraid Murray had not sent them. I do not see
S. T. C. so often as I could wish.
He never comes to me; and though his host and hostess are very friendly, it
puts me out of my way to go see one person at another person’s house. It
was the same when he resided at Morgan’s. Not but they also were more than civil; but
after all one feels so welcome at one’s own house. Have you seen poor
Miss Betham’s “Vignettes”? Some of
them, the second particularly, “To Lucy,” are sweet and good as herself, while she was
herself. She is in some measure abroad again. I am better
than I deserve to be. The hot weather has been such a treat! Mary joins in this little corner in kindest
remembrances to you all.
C. L.
Note
[The letter treats of Lamb’sWorks, just published. Matilda Betham followed up The Lay of Marie with a volume entitled Vignettes.
“I am better than I deserve.”
Why Lamb underlined these words I do not know, but it
may have been a quotation from Coleridge. Carlyle in his account of his visit to
Coleridge at Highgate (in the Life of John Sterling) puts it
into Coleridge’s mouth in connection with a lukewarm cup of
tea.]
LETTER 232 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Dec. 24th, 1818.
MY dear Coleridge,—I have been in a state of incessant hurry ever since
the receipt of your ticket. It found me incapable of attending you, it being
the night of Kenney’snew comedy. . . .1 You know my local aptitudes at such a time; I have
been a thorough rendezvous for all consultations. My head begins to clear up a
little; but it has had bells in it. Thank you kindly for your ticket, though
the mournful prognostic which accompanies it certainly renders its permanent
pretensions less marketable; but I trust to hear many a course yet. You
excepted Christmas week, by which I understood next week; I thought Christmas
week was that which Christmas Sunday ushered in. We are sorry it never lies in
your way to come to us; but, dear Mahomet, we will come to
you. Will it be convenient to all the good people at Highgate, if we take a
stage up, not next Sunday, but the following, viz., 3rd
January, 1819—shall we be too late to catch a skirt of the old out-goer;—how
the years crumble from under us! We shall hope to see you before then; but, if
not, let us know if then will be convenient. Can we
secure a coach home?
Believe me ever yours, C. Lamb.
I have but one holiday, which is Christmas-day itself
nakedly: no pretty garnish and fringes of St. John’s day, Holy
Innocents
1 [Canon
Ainger supplies the four missing words:
“which has utterly failed.”]
&c., that used to bestud it all around
in the calendar. Improbe labor! I
write six hours every day in this candle-light fog-den at Leadheall.
Note
[The ticket was for a new course of lectures, either on the History of
Philosophy, or Six Plays of Shakespeare, both of which began in December, 1818, and
continued into 1819.
Kenney’s new farce was “A Word for the Ladies,” produced at
Covent Garden on December 17.
“To catch a skirt of the old out-goer.” A reference to
Coleridge’s line— I saw the skirts of the departing year.
“Improbe
Labor!” Virgil (Georgics, I.,
145-146) has— Labor omnia vincitImprobus (Persevering labour overcomes everything); or more likely perhaps an incorrect recollection of Æneid, IV., 412,
“Improbe amor.”
Somewhere at this point should come a delightful letter from Lamb to John
Chambers. John Chambers was the brother of Charles Chambers (see note on page 682). He was a
colleague of Lamb’s at the India House (see the Elia essay “The Superannuated Man”), and
survived until 1872. It was to John Chambers that
Lamb made the remark that he (Lamb) was
probably the only man in England who had never worn boots and never ridden a horse. The
letter, which is concerned with the peculiarities of India House clerks, is famous for the
remark on Tommy Bye, a fellow clerk at the India
House, that “his sonnets are most like Petrarch of any foreign poet, or what we may suppose Petrarch would
have written if Petrarch had been born a fool.” We meet
Bye again in the letter to Wordsworth on page 524. I can find no trace of his sonnets in book form.
Possibly they were never published.]
LETTER 233 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH [This letter is written in black and red ink, changing with each line.]
[p.m. April 26, 1819.]
DEAR Wordsworth, I received a copy of Peter
Bell a week ago, and I hope the author will not be offended if I say
I do not much relish it. The humour, if it is meant for humour, is forced, and then the price. Sixpence
would have been dear for it. Mind, I do not mean yourPeter
Bell, but a Peter Bell
which preceded it about a week, and is in every bookseller’s shop window
in London, the type and paper nothing differing from the true one, the preface
signed W. W., and the supplementary preface quoting as the
author’s words an extract from supplementary preface to the Lyrical Balads. Is there no
law against these rascals? I would have this Lambert Simnel whipt at the cart’s tail. Then there is
Rogers! he has been re-writing your
Poem of the Stride, and
publishing it at the end of his “Human Life.” Tie him up to the Cart,
hangman, while you are about it. Who started the spurious P.
B. I have not heard. I should guess, one of the sneering
brothers—the vile Smiths—but I have
heard no name mentioned. Peter Bell (not the mock
one) is excellent. For its matter, I mean. I cannot say that the style of it
quite satisfies me. It is too lyrical. The auditors to whom it is feigned to be
told, do not arride me. I had rather it had been told
me, the reader, at once. Heartleap
Well is the tale for me, in matter as good as this, in manner
infinitely before it, in my poor judgment. Why did you not add the Waggoner? Have I thanked
you, though, yet, for Peter Bell? I would not not have it for a good deal of money. C—— is very foolish to scribble about books.
Neither his tongue nor fingers are very retentive. But I shall not say any
thing to him about it. He would only begin a very long story, with a very long
face, and I see him far too seldom to teaze him with affairs of business or
conscience when I do see him. He never comes near our house, and when we go to
see him, he is generally writing, or thinking he is writing, in his study till
the dinner comes, and that is scarce over before the stage summons us away. The
mock P. B. had only this effect on me, that after
twice reading it over in hopes to find something diverting in it, I
reach’d your two books off the shelf and set into a steady reading of
them, till I had nearly finished both before I went to bed. The two of your
last edition, of course, I mean. And in the morning I awoke determining to take
down the Excursion. I
wish the scoundrel imitator could know this. But why waste a wish on him? I do
not believe that paddling about with a stick in a pond and fishing up a dead
author whom his intolerable wrongs had driven to that deed of desperation,
would turn the heart of one of these obtuse literary Bells. There is no Cock
for such Peters. Damn ’em. I am glad this aspiration came upon the red
ink line. It is more of a bloody curse. I have delivered over your other
presents to Alsager and G. D.—A. I am sure will
value it and be proud of the hand from which it came. To G.
D. a poem is a poem. His own as good as any bodie’s, and
god bless him, any bodie’s as good as his own, for I do not think he has the most distant guess of the possibility
of one poem being better than another. The Gods by denying him the very faculty
itself of discrimination have effectually cut off every seed of envy in his
bosom. But with envy, they excided Curiosity also, and if you wish the copy
again, which you destined for him, I think I shall be able to find it again for
you—on his third shelf, where he stuffs his presentation copies, uncut, in
shape and matter resembling a lump of dry dust, but on carefully removing that
stratum, a thing like a Pamphlet will emerge. I have tried this with fifty
different Poetical Works that have been given G. D. in
return for as many of his own performances, and I confess I never had any
scruple in taking my own again wherever I found it, shaking the adherencies
off—and by this means one Copy of “my Works “served for
G. D. and with a little dusting was made over to my
good friend Dr. Stoddart, who little
thought whose leavings he was taking when he made me that graceful bow. By the
way, the Doctor is the only one of my acquaintance who bows gracefully, my Town
acquaintance I mean. How do you like my way of writing with two Inks? I think
it is pretty and mottley. Suppose Mrs.
W. adopts it, the next time she holds the pen for you.
[The ink differs with every word of the
following paragraph:—]
My dinner waits. I have no time to indulge any longer in
these laborious curiosities. God bless you and cause to thrive and to burgeon
whatsoever you write, and fear no inks of miserable poetasters.
Yours truly Charles Lamb.
Mary’s love.
Note
[The Peter
Bell to which Lamb refers was
written by John Hamilton Reynolds (1796- 1852), the
friend of Keats, and later Hood’s brother-in-law. The parody is a travesty of
Wordsworth generally rather than of Peter Bell, which
had not then been published. James and Horace Smith, of the Rejected Addresses, which
contained a parody of Wordsworth under the title “The Baby’s Debut,” had nothing
to do with it. Lamb’s indignation was shared by Coleridge, who wrote as follows to Taylor and Hessey,
the publishers, on April 16, 1819, on the announcement of
Reynolds’ work:—
Dear Sirs, I hope, nay I feel confident, that you will interpret
this note in th’ real sense—namely, as a proof of the esteem and respect which I
entertain toward you both. Looking in the Times
this morning I was startled by an advertisement of Peter Bell—a Lyrical
Ballad—with a very significant motto from one of our Comedies of Charles the IId’s reign, tho’ what it signifies I
wish to ascertain. Peter Bell is a Poem
of Mr. Wordsworth’s—and I have not heard, that
it has been published by him.—If it have, and with his name (I have reason to believe, that
he never published anonymously) and
this now advertised be a ridicule on it—I have nothing to say—But if it have not, I have
ventured to pledge myself for you, that you would not wittingly give the high
respectability of your names to an attack on a Manuscript work, which no man could assail
but by a base breach of trust.
It is stated in the article on Reynolds in the Dictionary of National Biography that Coleridge asserted positively that Lamb was the objectionable parodist; but this letter
suggests that that was not so.
“Lambert Simnel”—one
of the pretenders to the throne of Henry VII.
“Peter Bell (not the mock one).” Crabb Robinson’sDiary, in the original MS., for
June 6, 1812, contains this passage:—
With C. Lamb. Lent him
Peter Bell. To my surprise he finds
nothing in it good. He complains of the slowness of the narrative, as if that were not the
art of the Poet. W. he says has great thoughts, but
here are none of them. He has no interest in the Ass. These are to me inconceivable
judgments from C. L. whose taste in general I acquiesce in and who is
certainly an enthusiast for W.
Again, on May 11, 1819, after the poem was published, Robinson says:—
L. spoke of Peter Bell which he considers as one of the worst of
Wordsworth’s works. The lyric narrative
L. has no taste for. He is disgusted by the introduction, which he deems puerile
and the story he thinks ill told, though he allows the idea to be good.
“Rogers.” At the end of Samuel Rogers’ poem, Human Life, 1819, is a ballad,
entitled “The Boy of Egremond,”
which has for subject the same incident as that in Wordsworth’s “Force
of Prayer”—beginning What is good for a bootless bene? —the death of the Young Romilly as he leapt across
the Strid. In Wordsworth the answer to the question
is “Endless sorrow.” Rogers’ poem begins:— “Say what remains when hope is fled?” She answered “Endless weeping.”
Wordsworth’sPeter Bell was published a week
after the mock one. To The
Waggoner we shall come shortly.
The significance of the allusion to Coleridge is not perfectly clear; but I imagine it to refer to the
elaborate examination of Wordsworth’s poetry
in the Biographia
Literaria.
“These obtuse literary Bells.” Peter Bell, in the poem, sounds the river with his staff, and
draws forth the dead body of the ass’s master. Lamb passes, in his curse, to a reference to St.
Peter.
“Taking my own again.” This, if, as one may suppose,
adapted from Moliere’s “Je
reprendre mon bien partout où je le trouve,” is an indication
that Lamb knew the Frenchman’s comedies.]
LETTER 234 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
May 28, 1819.
MY dear M.,—I
want to know how your brother is, if you have heard lately. I want to know
about you. I wish you were nearer.1 How are my cousins,
the Gladmans of Wheathamstead, and farmer
Bruton? Mrs. Bruton is a glorious
woman. Hail, Mackeray End— This is a fragment of a blank verse poem which I once meditated, but got
no further. The E. I. H. has been thrown into a quandary by the strange
phenomenon of poor Tommy Bye, whom I have
known man and mad-man twenty-seven years, he being elder here than myself by
nine years and more. He was always a pleasant, gossiping, half-headed, muzzy,
dozing, dreaming, walk-about, inoffensive chap; a little too fond of the
creature—who isn’t at times? but Tommy had not
brains to work off an over-night’s surfeit by ten o’clock next
morning, and unfortunately, in he wandered the other morning drunk with last
night, and with a superfœtation of drink taken in since he set out from bed. He
came staggering under his double burthen, like trees in Java, bearing at once
blossom, fruit, and falling fruit, as I have heard you or some other traveller
tell, with his face literally as blue as the bluest firmament; some wretched
calico that he had mopped his poor oozy front with had rendered up its native
dye, and the devil a bit would he consent to wash it, but swore it was
characteristic, for he was going to the sale of indigo, and set up a laugh
which I did not think the lungs of mortal man were competent to. It was like a
thousand people laughing, or the Goblin Page. He imagined afterwards that the
whole office had been laughing at him, so strange did his own sounds strike
upon his nonsensorium. But Tommy
has laughed his last laugh, and awoke the next day to find himself reduced from
an abused income of £600 per annum to one-sixth of the sum, after thirty-six
years’ tolerably good service. The quality of mercy was not strained in
his behalf; the gentle dews dropt not on him from heaven. It just came across
me that I was writing to Canton. How is Ball? “Mr. B. is a
P——.” Will you drop in to-morrow night? Fanny Kelly is coming, if she does not cheat us. Mrs. Gold is well, but
proves “uncoined,” as the lovers about Wheathampstead would say. O hard hearted Burrell With teeth like a squirrel—
1 [See Appendix II., page 973.]
I have not had such a quiet half hour to sit down to a quiet
letter for many years. I have not been interrupted above four times. I wrote a
letter the other day in alternate lines, black ink and red, and you cannot
think how it chilled the flow of ideas. Next Monday is Whit-Monday. What a
reflection! Twelve years ago, and I should have kept that and the following
holiday in the fields a-Maying. All of those pretty pastoral delights are over.
This dead, everlasting dead desk—how it weighs the spirit of a gentleman down!
This dead wood of the desk instead of your living trees! But then, again, I
hate the Joskins, a name for Hertfordshire bumpkins. Each state of life has its
inconvenience; but then, again, mine has more than one. Not that I repine, or
grudge, or murmur at my destiny. I have meat and drink, and decent apparel; I
shall, at least, when I get a new hat.
A red-haired man has just interrupted me. He has broke the
current of my thoughts. I haven’t a word to add. I don’t know why I
send this letter, but I have had a hankering to hear about you some days.
Perhaps it will go off, before your reply comes. If it don’t, I assure
you no letter was ever welcomer from you, from Paris or Macao.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Manning, who had now settled in
England, but in retirement, was living in Hertfordshire, at Totteridge. The
Gladmans and Brutons are mentioned in the
Elia essay
“Mackery End in
Hertfordshire”:—
“The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End; or Mackarel End, as
it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in some old maps of Hertfordshire; a
farm-house,—delightfully situated within a gentle walk from Wheathampstead. I can just
remember having been there, on a visit to a great-aunt, when I was a child, under the
care of Bridget; who, as I have said, is older than myself by some
ten years. I wish that I could throw into a heap the remainder of our joint existences,
that we might share them in equal division. But that is impossible. The house was at
that time in the occupation of a substantial yeoman, who had married my
grandmother’s sister. His name was Gladman. My grandmother
was a Bruton, married to a Field. The
Gladmans and the Brutons are still
flourishing in that part of the country, but the Fields are almost
extinct.”
The farm at Mackery End is now (1904) in other hands, but a
Miss Sarah Bruton, the last of the flock, still lives at
Wheathampstead.
Tommy Bye we saw in the abstract of the letter to
Chambers on page 518.
“Over-night’s surfeit”—Apemantus’ phrase in “Timon,” IV., 3, 227,
“O’er-night’s surfeit.”
The Goblin Page is in Scott’sLay of the Last Minstrel.
“The quality of mercy was not strained”—from Portia’s speech in “The Merchant of Venice” (IV., 1, 184).
“Mrs. Gold is
well”—née Fanny Burrell (see note on
page 513).
“This dead wood of the desk.” Lamb used this figure more than once, in his letters and
elsewhere. In the Elia essay “The
Superannuated Man” he says: “I had grown to my desk, as it were;
and the wood had entered into my soul.”]
LETTER 235 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[p.m. June 7, 1819.]
MY dear Wordsworth, You cannot imagine how proud we are here of the
dedication. We read it twice for once that we do the poem—I mean all through—yet Benjamin is no common favorite—there is a spirit
of beautiful tolerance in it—it is as good as it was in 1806—and will be as
good in 1829 if our dim eyes shall be awake to peruse it.
Methinks there is a kind of shadowing affinity between the
subject of the narrative and the subject of the dedication—but I will not enter
into personal themes—else, substituting *******
**** for Ben, and the Honble
United Company of Merchts trading to the East Indies
for the Master of the misused Team, it might seem by no far fetched analogy to
point its dim warnings hitherward—but I reject the omen—especially as its
import seems to have been diverted to another victim.
Poor Tommy Bye, whom I
have known (as I express’d it in a letter to Manning), man and mad man 27 years—he was my gossip in
Leadenhall St.—but too much addicted to turn in at a
red lattice—came wandering into his and my common scene of business—you have
seen the orderly place—reeling drunk at nine o Clock— with his face of a deep
blue, contracted by a filthy dowlas muckinger which had given up its dye to his
poor oozy visnomy—and short to tell, after playing various pranks, laughing
loud laughters three—mad explosions they were—in the following morning the
“tear stood in his ee”—for he found his abused income of
clear £600 inexorably reduced to £100—he was my dear gossip—alas! Benjamin! . . .
I will never write another letter with alternate inks. You
cannot imagine how it cramps the flow of the style. I can conceive Pindar (I do not mean to compare myself [to] him) by the command of Hiero, the Sicilian tyrant (was not he the tyrant of some
place? fie on my neglect of
history—) conceive him by command of Hiero, or Perillus, set down to pen an Isthmian or Nemean
Panegyre in lines alternate red and black. I maintain he couldn’t have
done it—it would have been a strait laced torture to his muse, he would have
call’d for the Bull for a relief. Neither could
Lycidas, or the Chorics (how do you like the word?) of
Samson Agonistes, have
been written with two inks. Your couplets with points, Epilogues to Mr. H.s, &c. might be even
benefited by the twy-fount. Where one line (the second) is for point, and the
first for rhime, I think the alternation would assist, like a mould. I maintain
it, you could not have written your stanzas on pre existence with 2 inks. Try
another, and Rogers the Banker, with his
silver standish having one ink only, I will bet my Ode on Tobacco, against the Pleasures of Memory—and
Hope too—shall put
more fervor of enthusiasm into the same subject than you can with your two—he
shall do it stans pede in uno as it were.
The Waggoner is very ill put up in boards, at least it seems to me
always to open at the dedication—but that is a mechanical fault.
I re-read the White Doe of Rylston—the title should be always written at
length—as Mary Sabilla Novello, a very
nice woman of our acquaintance, always signs hers at the bottom of the shortest
note. Mary told her, if her name had been
Mary Ann, she would have signed M. A.
Novello, or M. only, dropping the A—which
makes me think, with some other triflings, that she understands something of
human nature. My pen goes galloping on most rhapsodically, glad to have escaped
the bondage of Two Inks.
Manning had just sent it home and it
came as fresh to me as the immortal creature it speaks of.
M. sent it home with a note, having this passage in
it, “I cannot help writing to you while I am reading Wordswths poem. I
am got into the 3rd Canto, and say that it raises my opinion of him very
much indeed. ✠ ’Tis broad; noble; poetical; with a masterly
scanning of human actions, absolutely above common readers. What a manly
(implied) interpretation of (bad) party-actions, as trampling the bible,
&c.”—and so he goes on.
✠ N.B. M——
from his peregrinations is 12 or 14 years behind in his knowledge of who has or
has not written good verse of late.
I do not know which I like best, the prologue (the latter
part specially) to P. Bell,
or the Epilogue to Benjamin. Yes, I tell stories, I do know. I like the last best, and
the Waggoner altogether as a pleasanter remembrance to me than the Itinerant.
If it were not, the page before the first page would and ought to make it so.
The sonnets are not all new to me. Of what are, the 9th I
like best. Thank you for that to Walton.
I take it as a favor done to me, that, being so
old a darling of mine, you should bear testimony to his worth in a book
containing a dedi——
I cannot write the vain word at full length any longer.
If as you say, the Waggoner in some sort came at my call, O
for a potent voice to call forth the Recluse from his profound Dormitory, where
he sleeps forgetful of his foolish charge The World.
Had I three inks I would invoke him!
Talfourd has written a most kind Review of J. Woodvil, &c., in the Champion. He is your most zealous
admirer, in solitude and in crowds. H. Crabbe
Robinson gives me any dear Prints that I happen to admire, and I
love him for it and for other things. Alsager shall have his copy, but at present I have lent it for
a day only, not chusing to part with my own. Mary’s love. How do you all do, amanuenses both—marital
and sororal?
C. Lamb.
Note
[Wordsworth had just put forth The Waggoner, which was
dedicated to Lamb in the following terms:—
My Dear Friend—When I
sent you, a few weeks ago, “The Tale of Peter Bell,” you asked
“Why ‘The
Waggoner ‘was not added?” To say the truth, from the
higher tone of imagination, and the deeper touches of passion aimed at in the former, I
apprehended this little piece could not accompany it without disadvantage. In the year
1806, if I am not mistaken, “The Waggoner” was
read to you in manuscript, and as you have remembered it for so long a time, I am the
more encouraged to hope that, since the localities on which the poem partly depends did
not prevent its being interesting to you, it may prove acceptable to others. Being,
therefore, in some measure the cause of its present appearance, you must allow me the
gratification of inscribing it to you, in acknowledgment of the pleasure I have derived
from your writings, and of the high esteem with which
I am very truly yours,William Wordsworth.
The poem, which had been written many years before, tells the story of
Benjamin, a waggoner in the Lake county, who one
stormy night, succumbing to the temptations of the Cherry Tree Inn, fell from good estate.
Lamb’s asterisks stand, of course, for
Charles Lamb.
“A tear stood in his ee.” In the ballad of
“Young Bekie” is the line An’ the tears was in his ee. The phrase was probably a commonplace in the old minstrelsy.
Hiero I. was King of Syracuse and is celebrated by
Pindar for his supremacy in the Olympian Games.
The bull for which Pindar would have called was that devised by
Perillus, the mechanic, for Phalaris, the tyrant of Agrigentum, in which criminals were roasted to
death.
“Your stanzas on pre existence”—the “Ode on Intimations of
Immortality.”
The Pleasures of
Hope was Campbell’s poem.
Mary Sabilla Novello was the wife of Vincent Novello, the organist, and Lamb’s friend.
The White Doe of
Rylstone had been published in 1815.
The 9th sonnet. Certain sonnets had been published with The Waggoner. The
9th was that beginning:— Grief, thou hast lost an ever ready Friend.
Wordsworth’s sonnet upon Walton begins:— While flowing rivers yield a blameless sport.
The Recluse was
not published until 1888, and then only Book I.
The Champion, in which
Talfourd reviewed Lamb’s Works, had now
become the property of John Thelwall.]
LETTERS 236 AND 237 CHARLES LAMB TO FANNY KELLY
20 July, 1819.
DEAR Miss
Kelly,—We had the pleasure, pain I might
better call it, of seeing you last night in the new Play. It was a most
consummate piece of Acting, but what a task for you to undergo! at a time when
your heart is sore from real sorrow! it has given rise to a train of thinking,
which I cannot suppress.
Would to God you were released from this way of life; that
you could bring your mind to consent to take your lot with us, and throw off
for ever the whole burden of your Profession. I neither expect or wish you to
take notice of this which I am writing, in your present over occupied &
hurried state.—But to think of it at your leisure. I have quite income enough,
if that were all, to justify for me making such a proposal, with what I may
call even a handsome provision for my survivor. What you possess of your own
would naturally be appropriated to those, for whose sakes chiefly you have made
so many hard sacrifices. I am not so foolish as not to know that I am a most
unworthy match for such a one as you, but you have for years been a principal
object in my mind. In many a sweet assumed character I have learned to love
you, but simply as F. M. Kelly I love
you better than them all. Can you quit these shadows of existence, & come
& be a reality to us? can you leave off harassing yourself to please a
thankless multitude, who know nothing of you,
& begin at last to live to yourself & your friends?
As plainly & frankly as I have seen you give or refuse
assent in some feigned scene, so frankly do me the justice to answer me. It is
impossible I should feel injured or aggrieved by your telling me at once, that
the proposal does not suit you. It is impossible that I should ever think of
molesting you with idle importunity and persecution after your mind [was] once
firmly spoken—but happier, far happier, could I have leave to hope a time might
come, when our friends might be your friends; our interests yours; our
book-knowledge, if in that inconsiderable particular we have any little
advantage, might impart something to you, which you would every day have it in
your power ten thousand fold to repay by the added cheerfulness and joy which
you could not fail to bring as a dowry into whatever family should have the
honor and happiness of receiving you, the most welcome accession that could be
made to it.
In haste, but with entire respect & deepest affection, I
subscribe myself
C. Lamb.
Note
[It was known, on the authority of the late Mr. Charles Kent, that Fanny Kelly,
the actress, had received an offer of marriage from Lamb; but my own impression was that it was made much later in life than
this letter, first printed in 1903 by Mr. John
Hollingshead, indicates. Miss Kelly, who at this time
was engaged at the Lyceum, would be twenty-nine on October 15; Lamb
was forty-four in February. His salary was now £600 a year.
Lamb had long admired Miss Kelly as an actress. In his Works, published in 1818, was
this sonnet:— TO MISS KELLY You are not, Kelly, of the common
strain, That stoop their pride and female honour down To please that many-headed beast the town, And vend their lavish smiles and tricks for gain; By fortune thrown amid the actors’ train, You keep your native dignity of thought; The plaudits that attend you come unsought. As tributes due unto your natural vein. Your tears have passion in them, and a grace Of genuine freshness, which our hearts avow; Your smiles are winds whose ways we cannot trace, That vanish and return we know not how— And please the better from a pensive face, And thoughtful eye, and a reflecting brow.
That Lamb had been pondering his
offer for some little time is suggested, Mr.
Macdonald remarks, by a passage in one of his articles on Miss Kelly in
The Examiner earlier in
this month, where he says of her as
Rachel, in “The Jovial Crew,” probably with full knowledge
that it would meet her eye and be understood (a truly Elian method of love-lettering),
“‘What a lass that were,’ said a stranger who sate beside us . . .
‘to go a gipseying through the world with.’”
This was Miss Kelly’s
reply:—
Henrietta Street, July 20th, 1819.
An early & deeply rooted attachment has fixed my heart on
one from whom no worldly prospect can well induce me to withdraw it but
while I thus frankly & decidedly decline your proposal, believe me, I
am not insensible to the high honour which the preference of such a mind as
yours confers upon me—let me, however, hope that all thought upon this
subject will end with this letter, & that you will henceforth encourage
no other sentiment towards me than esteem in my private character and a
continuance of that approbation of my humble talents which you have already
expressed so much & so often to my advantage and gratification.
Believe me I feel proud to acknowledge myself
Your obliged friendF. M. Kelly.
Lamb at once wrote again, as follows:—]
CHARLES LAMB TO FANNY KELLY
July 20th, 1819.
DEAR Miss
Kelly,—Your injunctions shall be obeyed to a
tittle. I feel myself in a lackadaisacal no-how-ish kind of a humour.
I believe it is the rain, or something. I had thought to have written
seriously, but I fancy I succeed best in epistles of mere fun; puns & that nonsense. You will be good friends with us, will
you not? let what has past “break no bones” between us. You will
not refuse us them next time we send for them?
Yours very truly, C. L.
Do you observe the delicacy of not signing my full name?
N.B. Do not paste that last letter of mine into your Book.
Note
[Writing again of Miss Kelly, in
the “Hypocrite,” in The Examiner of August 1 and
2, Lamb says: “She is in truth not framed to
tease or torment even in jest, but to utter a hearty Yes or No; to yield or refuse assent with a noble sincerity. We have
not the pleasure of being acquainted with her, but we have been told that she carries
the same cordial manners into private life.”
Miss Kelly died unmarried at the age of ninety-two.
“Break no bones.” Here Lamb makes one of his puns. By “bones” he meant also the little
ivory discs which were given to friends of the management,
entitling them to free entry to the theatre. With this explanation the next sentence of the
letter becomes clear.
See Appendix II., page 973, for a letter to S. J. Arnold.]
LETTER 238 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[No date. ? Summer, 1819.]
DR C. Your
sonnet is capital. The Paper ingenious, only that it split into 4 parts
(besides a side splinter) in the carriage. I have transferred it to the common
English Paper, manufactured of rags, for better
preservation. I never knew before how the Iliad and Odyssey were written. Tis strikingly
corroborated by observations on Cats. These domestic animals, put ’em on
a rug before the fire, wink their eyes up and listen to the Kettle, and then
purr, which is their Poetry.
On Sunday week we kiss your hands (if they are clean). This
next Sunday I have been engaged for some time.
With remembces to your good Host and Hostess
Yours ever C. Lamb.
Note
[The sonnet was Coleridge’s
“Fancy in Nubibus; or, The Poet in the
Clouds,” printed in Blackwood, November, 1819, but now sent to Lamb in manuscript, apparently on some curious kind of paper.
This is the sonnet:— O! it is pleasant, with a heart at ease, Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies, To make the shifting clouds be what you please, Or let the easily persuaded eyes Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould Of a friend’s fancy; or with head bent low And cheek aslant see rivers flow of gold ’Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go From mount to mount through Cloudland, gorgeous land! Or, list’ning to the tide, with closed sight, Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand By those deep sounds possessed with inward light, Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea. See Letter 243 on page 537.
Possibly it is to this summer that an undated note to Crabb Robinson belongs (in the Dr. Williams’
Library) in which Lamb says they are setting out to
see Lord Braybrooke’s house at Audley End.]
LETTER 239 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOLCROFT, Jr.
[No date. Autumn, 1819.]
DR Tom, Do
not come to us on Thursday, for we are moved into country lodgings, tho’
I am still at the India house in the mornings. See Marshall and Captain
Betham as soon as ever you can. I fear leave cannot be obtained
at the India house for your going to India. If you go it must be as
captain’s clerk, if such a thing could be obtain’d.
For God’s sake keep your present place and do not give
it up, or neglect it; as you perhaps will not be able to go to India, and you
see how difficult of attainment situations are.
Yours truly C. Lamb.
Note
[Thomas Holcroft was the son of
Lamb’s friend, the dramatist. Apparently he
did not take Lamb’s advice, for he lost his place, which was
some small Parliamentary post under John Rickman, in
November, 1819. Crabb Robinson, Anthony Robinson and Lamb took up the
matter and subscribed money, and Holcroft went out to India.]
LETTERS 240 AND 241 CHARLES LAMB TO JOSEPH COTTLE
[Dated at end: Nov. 3, 1819.]
DEAR Sir—It is so long since I have seen or heard
from you, that I fear that you will consider a request I have to make as
impertinent. About three years since, when I was one day at Bristol, I made an
effort to see you, but you were from home. The request I have to make is, that
you would very much oblige me, if you have any small portrait of yourself, by
allowing me to have it copied, to accompany a selection of “Likenesses of
Living Bards” which a most particular
friend of mine is making. If you have no objections, and could oblige me by
transmitting such portrait to me at No. 44 Russell Street, Covent Garden, I
will answer for taking the greatest care of it, and returning it safely the
instant the Copier has done with it. I hope you will pardon the liberty
From an old friend and well-wisher, Charles Lamb. London 5th Nov. 1819.
Note
[Lamb’s visit to Bristol was
made probably when he was staying at Calne with the Morgans in 1816. The present letter refers to an extra illustrated copy of
Byron’sEnglish Bards and Scotch Reviewers,
which was being made by William Evans, of The Pamphleteer, and
which is now in the British Museum. Owing to Cottle’s hostility to Byron, and
Byron’s scorn of Cottle,
Lamb could hardly explain the nature of the book more fully. See
note to the following letter.]
CHARLES LAMB TO JOSEPH COTTLE
[Not dated. ? Late 1819.]
DEAR Sir—My friend whom you have obliged by the loan
of your picture, having had it very exactly copied (and a very spirited Drawing
it is, as every one thinks that has seen it—the copy is not much inferior, done
by a daughter of Josephs, R.A.)—he
purposes sending you back the original, which I must accompany with my warm
thanks, both for that, and your better favor, the “Messiah,” which, I assure you, I
have read thro’ with great pleasure; the verses have great sweetness and
a New Testament-plainness about them which affected me very much.
I could just wish that in page 63 you had omitted the lines
71 and 72, and had ended the period with “The willowy brook was there, but that sweet sound— When to be heard again on Earthly ground?”— two very sweet lines, and the sense perfect.
And in page 154, line 68, “I come ordained a world
to save,”—these words are hardly borne out by the story, and seem
scarce accordant with the modesty with which our Lord came to take his common
portion among the Baptismal Candidates. They also anticipate the beauty of
John’s recognition of the Messiah, and the
subsequent confirmation from the voice and Dove.
You will excuse the remarks of an old brother bard, whose
career, though long since pretty well stopt, was coeval in its beginning with
your own, and who is sorry his lot has been always to be so distant from you.
It is not likely that C. L. will ever see
Bristol again; but, if J. C. should ever
visit London, he will be a most welcome visitor to C. L.
My sister joins in cordial remembrances and I request the
favor of knowing, at your earliest opportunity, whether the Portrait arrives
safe, the glass unbroken &c. Your glass broke in its coming.
Morgan is a little better—can read a
little, &c.; but cannot join Mrs. M.
till the Insolvent Act (or whatever it is called) takes place. Then, I hope, he
will stand clear of all debts. Meantime, he has a most exemplary nurse and kind
Companion in Miss Brent.
Once more, Dr Sir, Yours truly C. Lamb.
Note
[Cottle sent Lamb a miniature of himself by Branwhite, which had been copied in monochrome for Mr. Evans’ book. G. J.
Joseph, A.R.A., made a coloured drawing of Lamb for the same work. It serves as frontispiece to Vol. I. of the present
edition. Byron’s lines refer as a matter of fact
not to Joseph but to Amos
Cottle:— O, Amos Cottle!—Phoebus! what a name.
and so forth. Mr. Evans, however, dispensed with
Amos. Another grangerised edition of the same satire, also in the
British Museum, compiled by W. M. Tartt, has an
engraving of Amos Cottle and two portraits of
Lamb—the Hancock drawing,
and the Brook Pulham caricature.
Byron’s lines touching Lamb ran thus:— Yet let them not to vulgar Wordsworth
stoop, The meanest object of the lowly group, Whose verse, of all but childish prattle void, Seems blessed harmony to Lambe and
Lloyd. A footnote states that Lamb and Lloyd are
the most ignoble followers of Southey & Co.
Cottle’sMessiah, of which the earlier
portion had been published long since, was completed in 1815. Canon Ainger says that lines 71 and 72 in Lamb’s copy (not that of 1815), following upon the couplet quoted,
were:— (While sorrow gave th’ involuntary tear) Had ceased to vibrate on our listening ear.
Coleridge’s friend Morgan had just come upon evil times. Subsequently Lamb and Southey
united in helping him to the extent of £10 a year each.]
LETTER 242 CHARLES LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
[p.m. 25 Nov., 1819.]
DEAR Miss
Wordsworth, You will think me negligent, but I wanted to see
more of Willy, before I ventured to
express a prediction. Till yesterday I had barely seen
him—Virgilium Tantum
Vidi—but yesterday he gave us his small company to a
bullock’s heart—and I can pronounce him a lad of promise. He is no pedant
nor bookworm, so far I can answer. Perhaps he has hitherto paid too little
attention to other men’s inventions, preferring, like Lord Foppington, the “natural sprouts of
his own.” But he has observation, and seems thoroughly awake. I
am ill at remembering other people’s bon mots, but the following are a
few. Being taken over Waterloo Bridge, he remarked that if we had no mountains,
we had a fine river at least, which was a Touch of the Comparative, but then he
added, in a strain which augured less for his future abilities as a Political
Economist, that he supposed they must take at least a pound a week Toll. Like a
curious naturalist he inquired if the tide did not come up a little salty. This
being satisfactorily answered, he put another question as to the flux and
reflux, which being rather cunningly evaded than artfully solved by that
she-Aristotle Mary, who muttered
something about its getting up an hour sooner and sooner every day, he sagely
replied, “Then it must come to the same thing at last” which
was a speech worthy of an infant Halley!
The Lion in the ’Change by no means came up to his ideal standard. So
impossible it is for Nature in any of her works to come up to the standard of a
child’s imagination. The whelps (Lionets) he was sorry to find were dead,
and on particular enquiry his old friend the Ouran Outang had gone the way of
all flesh also. The grand Tiger was also sick, and expected in no short time to
exchange this transitory world for another—or none. But again, there was a
Golden Eagle (I do not mean that of Charing) which did much arride and console
him. William’s genius, I take it, leans a little to
the figurative, for being at play at Tricktrack (a kind of minor Billiard-table
which we keep for smaller wights, and sometimes refresh our own mature fatigues
with taking a hand at), not being able to hit a ball he had iterate aimed at,
he cried out, “I cannot hit that beast”. Now the balls are
usually called men, but he felicitously hit upon a middle term, a term of
approximation and imaginative reconciliation, a something where the two ends,
of the brute matter (ivory) and their human and rather violent personification into men,
might meet, as I take it, illustrative of that Excellent remark in a certain
Preface about
Imagination, explaining “like a sea-beast that had crawled
forth to sun himself.” Not that I accuse William
Minor of hereditary plagiary, or conceive the image to have come
ex traduce. Rather he seemeth to keep aloof from any
source of imitation, and purposely to remain ignorant of what mighty poets have
done in this kind before him. For being asked if his father had ever been on Westminster Bridge, he
answer’d that he did not know.
It is hard to discern the Oak in the Acorn, or a Temple
like St. Paul’s in the first stone which is laid, nor can I quite
prefigure what destination the genius of William
Minor hath to take. Some few hints I have set down, to guide my
future observations. He hath the power of calculation in no ordinary degree for
a chit. He combineth figures, after the first boggle, rapidly. As in the
Tricktrack board, where the hits are figured, at first he did not perceive that
15 and 7 made 22, but by a little use he could combine 8 with 25—and 33 again
with 16, which approacheth something in kind (far let me be from flattering him
by saying in degree) to that of the famous American
boy. I am sometimes inclined to think I perceive the future
satirist in him, for he hath a sub-sardonic smile which bursteth out upon
occasion, as when he was asked if London were as big as Ambleside, and indeed
no other answer was given, or proper to be given, to so ensnaring and provoking
a question. In the contour of scull certainly I discern something paternal. But
whether in all respects the future man shall transcend his father’s fame,
Time the trier of geniuses must decide. Be it pronounced peremptorily at
present, that Willy is a well-mannerd child, and though no
great student, hath yet a lively eye for things that lie before him. Given in
haste from my desk at Leadenhall. Your’s and yours’ most sincerely
C. Lamb.
Note
[This letter, which refers to a visit paid to the
Lambs in Great Russell Street by Wordsworth’s son, William,
then nine years old, is remarkable, apart from its charm and humour, for containing more of
the absolute method of certain of Lamb’sElia passages than anything he had yet written.
“Virgilium
tantum vidi” (Ovid,
Trist., IV., 10,
51)—“Virgil I saw and no more.” The same quotation is in the Elia essay “Amicus Redivivus.”
“Lord Foppington”—in Vanbrugh’s “Relapse.” Lamb used this speech as
the motto of his Elia essay “Detached
Thoughts on Books and Reading.”
“Halley”—Edmund Halley (1656-1742), the astronomer.
“The Lion in the ‘Change”—Exeter Change.
“Arride.” A favourite old word with Lamb. To gratify, to delight. From ar = ad, to; and ridere
to laugh.
“Like a sea-beast.” Lamb alludes to the preface to the edition of 1815 of Wordsworth’s poems, where he quotes illustratively from his
“Resolution and
Independence”:— Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself.
“If his father had ever been on Westminster Bridge.”
An allusion to Wordsworth’s sonnet
“Composed on Westminster
Bridge”:— Earth has not anything to show more fair.
“The American boy.” This was Zerah Colburn, the mathematical prodigy, born in Vermont State in 1804 and
exhibited in America and Europe by his father.]
LETTER 243 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Jan. 10th, 1820.
DEAR Coleridge,—A Letter written in the blood of your poor friend
would indeed be of a nature to startle you; but this is nought but harmless red
ink, or, as the witty mercantile phrase hath it, Clerk’s Blood. Damn
’em! my brain, guts, skin, flesh, bone, carcase, soul, Time, is all
theirs. The Royal Exchange, Gresham’s Folly, hath me body and spirit. I admire some
of Lloyd’s lines on you, and I
admire your postponing reading them. He is a sad Tattler, but this is under the
rose. Twenty years ago he estranged one friend from me quite, whom I have been
regretting, but never could regain since; he almost alienated you (also) from
me, or me from you, I don’t know which. But that breach is closed. The
dreary sea is filled up. He has lately been at work “telling
again,” as they call it, a most gratuitous piece of mischief, and has
caused a coolness betwixt me and (not a friend exactly, but) [an] intimate
acquaintance. I suspect, also, he saps Manning’s faith in me, who am to
Manning more than an acquaintance. Still I like his
writing verses about you. Will your kind host and hostess give us a dinner next
Sunday, and better still, not expect us if the weather
is very bad. Why you should refuse twenty guineas per sheet for Blackwood’s or any other
magazine passes my poor comprehension. But, as Strap says, you know best. I have no quarrel with you about præprandial avocations—so
don’t imagine one. That Manchester sonnet I think very likely is
Capel Lofft’s. Another sonnet appeared with the
same initials in the same paper, which turned out to be Procter’s. What do the rascals mean? Am
I to have the fathering of what idle rhymes every beggarly Poetaster pours
forth! Who put your marine
sonnet and about Browne into
“Blackwood”? I did not. So no more,
till we meet.
Ever yours, C. L.
Note
[Charles Lloyd, returned to
health, had written Desultory Thoughts in London, in which both Coleridge and Lamb
appeared, Coleridge as *** and Lamb as **. The
poem was published in 1821. Lloyd probably had sent it in manuscript
or proof to Lamb and Coleridge. Some of
Lloyd’s lines on Coleridge run thus:—
How shall I fitly speak on such a theme? He is a treasure by the world neglected, Because he hath not, with a prescience dim, Like those whose every aim is self-reflected, Pil’d up some fastuous trophy, that of him Might tell, what mighty powers the age rejected, But taught his lips the office of a pen— By fools he’s deem’d a being lost to men. . . . . .
. . . . . No! with magnanimous self-sacrifice, And lofty inadvertency of fame, He felt there is a bliss in being wise, Quite independent of the wise man’s name. Who now can say how many a soul may rise To a nobility of moral aim It ne’er had known, but for that spirit brave, Which, being freely gifted, freely gave? Sometimes I think that I’m a blossom blighted; But this I ken, that should it not prove so, If I am not inexorably spited Of all that dignities mankind below; By him I speak of, I was so excited, While reason’s scale was poising to and fro, “To the better cause;” that him I have to bless For that which it is comfort to possess. . . . . .
. . . . . No! Those who most have seen me, since the hour When thou and I, in former happier days, Frank converse held, though many an adverse power Have sought the memory of those times to raze, Can vouch that more it stirs me (thus a tower, Sole remnant of vast castle, still betrays Haply its former splendour) to have prov’d Thy love, than by fresh friends to have been lov’d.
The story of one of Lloyd’s
former indiscretions is told in the earlier letters of this collection. I cannot say what
friend he quite alienated, unless it was James White (see Letter No. 32). The nature of the later
offence of which Lamb accuses Lloyd is now unknown.
“Dreary sea.” From Christabel:— A dreary sea now flows between. Line 423.
“As Strap says.” In Roderick Random.
“That Manchester sonnet.” A sonnet entitled
“Manchester,” referring to the Luddites, and
signed C. L., by Capel Lofft.
Procter’s “C. L.” sonnet was upon Macready.
The marine sonnet was “Fancy in Nubibus” (see page 530). “About
Browne” refers to a note by Coleridge on Sir Thomas Browne in
the same number, signed G. J.—possibly James Gillman’s initials reversed.
We learn from a letter from Coleridge to J. H. Green (January
14, 1820) that the visit to Highgate which Lamb
mentions was a New Year visit of annual occurrence. Lamb’s
reference to præprandial avocations touches upon Coleridge’s
habit of coming down to see his guests only when dinner was ready.]
LETTER 244 MARY LAMB TO MRS. VINCENT NOVELLO
Newington, Monday. [Spring of 1820.]
MY dear Friend,—Since we heard of your sad sorrow,
you have been perpetually in our thoughts; therefore, you may well imagine how
welcome your kind remembrance of it must be. I know not how enough to thank you
for it. You bid me write a long letter; but my mind is so possessed with the
idea that you must be occupied with one only thought, that all trivial matters
seem impertinent. I have just been reading again Mr.
Hunt’s delicious Essay; which I am sure must have come so home to your hearts, I
shall always love him for it. I feel that it is all that one can think, but
which none but he could have done so prettily. May he lose the memory of his
own babies in seeing them all grow old around him! Together with the
recollection of your dear baby, the image of a little sister I once had comes
as fresh into my mind as if I had seen her as lately. A little cap with white
satin ribbon, grown yellow with long keeping, and a lock of light hair, were
the only relics left of her. The sight of them always brought her pretty, fair
face to my view, that to this day I seem to have a perfect recollection of her features. I long to see
you, and I hope to do so on Tuesday or Wednesday in next week. Percy Street! I
love to write the word; what comfortable ideas it brings with it! We have been
pleasing ourselves ever since we heard this piece of unexpected good news with
the anticipation of frequent drop-in visits, and all the social comfort of what
seems almost next-door neighbourhood.
Our solitary confinement has answered its purpose even
better than I expected. It is so many years since I have been out of town in
the Spring, that I scarcely knew of the existence of such a season. I see every
day some new flower peeping out of the ground, and watch its growth; so that I
have a sort of an intimate friendship with each. I know the effect of every
change of weather upon them—have learned all their names, the duration of their
lives, and the whole progress of their domestic economy. My landlady, a nice,
active old soul that wants but one year of eighty, and her daughter, a rather
aged young gentlewoman, are the only labourers in a pretty large garden; for it
is a double house, and two long strips of ground are laid into one, well stored
with fruit-trees, which will be in full blossom the week after I am gone, and
flowers, as many as can be crammed in, of all sorts and kinds. But flowers are
flowers still; and I must confess I would rather live in Russell Street all my
life, and never set my foot but on the London pavement, than be doomed always
to enjoy the silent pleasures I now do. We go to bed at ten o’clock. Late
hours are life-shortening things; but I would rather run all risks, and sit
every night—at some places I could name—wishing in vain at eleven o’clock
for the entrance of the supper tray, than be always up and alive at eight
o’clock breakfast, as I am here. We have a scheme to reconcile these
things. We have an offer of a very low-rented lodging a mile nearer town than
this. Our notion is, to divide our time, in alternate weeks, between quiet rest
and dear London weariness. We give an answer to-morrow; but what that will be,
at this present writing, I am unable to say. In the present state of our
undecided opinion, a very heavy rain that is now falling may turn the scale.
“Dear rain, do go away,” and let us have a fine cheerful sunset to
argue the matter fairly in. My brother walked seventeen miles yesterday before
dinner. And notwithstanding his long walk to and from the office, we walk every
evening; but I by no means perform in this way so well as I used to do. A
twelve-mile walk one hot Sunday morning made my feet blister, and they are
hardly well now. Charles is not yet come
home; but he bid me, with many thanks, to present his love to you and all
yours, to all whom and to each individually, and to Mr. Novello in particular, I beg to add mine. With the
sincerest wishes for the health and happiness of
all, believe me, ever, dear Mary
Sabilla, your most affectionate friend,
Mary Ann Lamb.
Note
[Leigh Hunt’s essay “Deaths of Little Children” appeared in
The Indicator
for April 5, 1820; it was suggested by the same loss as that which prompted Mary Lamb’s letter.
The address Newington is a little confusing. The
Lambs, we know from Letter 220, on page 490, had taken summer
lodgings at Dalston. Newington is a mile farther out rather than nearer London. As there is
no doubt that the year of the letter is correct, we must suppose that the
Lambs had left Dalston for a while for Newington, only to return
to it, as we know from several later letters dated from 14 Kingsland Row.]
LETTER 245 CHARLES LAMB TO JOSEPH COTTLE
London, India House, [? May 26th, 1820.]
MY dear Sir,—I am quite ashamed of not having
acknowledged your kind present earlier, but that unknown something, which was
never yet discovered, though so often speculated upon, which stands in the way
of lazy folks answering letters, has presented its usual obstacle. It is not
forgetfulness, nor disrespect, nor incivility, but terribly like all these bad
things.
I have been in my time a great epistolary scribbler; but the
passion, and with it the facility, at length wears out; and it must be pumped
up again by the heavy machinery of duty or gratitude, when it should run free.
I have read your “Fall of Cambria” with as much pleasure
as I did your “Messiah.” Your Cambrian poem I shall be tempted to repeat
oftenest, as Human poems take me in a mood more frequently congenial than
Divine. The character of Llewellyn pleases
me more than any thing else, perhaps; and then some of the Lyrical Pieces are
fine varieties.
It was quite a mistake that I could dislike anything you
should write against Lord Byron, for I have
a thorough aversion to his character and a very moderate admiration of his
genius; he is great in so little a way. To be a poet is to be the man—not a
petty portion of occasional low passion worked up into a permanent form of humanity. Shakespear has thrust such rubbishy feelings
into a corner—the dark, dusky heart of Don
John, in the Much
Ado about Nothing. The fact is, I have not seen your “Expostulatory
Epistle” to him. I was not aware, till your question, that it was
out. I shall inquire, and get it forthwith.
Southey is in town, whom I have seen
slightly; Wordsworth expected, whom I
hope to see much of. I write with accelerated motion; for I have two or three
bothering clerks and brokers about me, who always press in proportion as you
seem to be doing something that is not business. I could exclaim a little
profanely, but I think you do not like swearing.
I conclude, begging you to consider that I feel myself much
obliged by your kindness, and shall be most happy at any and at all times to
hear from you.
Dear Sir, yours truly,
Charles Lamb.
Note
[Joseph Cottle, the Bristol
publisher, had apparently just sent Lamb a copy of
his Fall of
Cambria, although it had been published some years before. Perhaps
Lamb had sent him his Works, and it was a return
gift. Cottle’s very serious Expostulatory Epistle to Lord
Byron (who had cast ridicule upon him and his brother in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers) was issued in 1820,
after the publication of Don
Juan had begun.
Southey arrived in London on May Day, 1820.
Wordsworth followed early in June.]
LETTER 246 CHARLES LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH (Incomplete)
[May 25, 1820.]
DEAR Miss
W.—There can be none to whom the last volume of W. W. has come more welcome than to me. I have traced the
Duddon in thought and with repetition along the banks (alas!) of the
Lea—(unpoetical name); it is always flowing and murmuring and dashing in my
ears. The story of Dion is divine—the genius of Plato falling on him like moonlight—the finest thing ever
expressed. Then there is Elidure and
Kirkstone Pass—the last not new to
me—and let me add one of the sweetest of them all to me, The Longest Day. Loving all these as much
as I can love poetry new to me, what could I wish or desire more or
extravagantly in a new volume? That I did not write to W.
W. was simply that he was to come so soon, and that flattens
letters. . . .
Yours, C. L.
Note
[I print from Professor
Knight’s text, in his Life of Wordsworth. Canon
Ainger supplies omissions—a reference to Martin
Burney’s black eye.
The Wordsworths were in town this summer, to attend
the wedding of Thomas Monkhouse and Miss Horrocks. We know from Crabb Robinson’sDiary that they were at Lamb’s on June 2: “Not much was said about his [W. W.’s] new volume of poems. But he himself
spoke of the ‘Brownie’s
Cell’ as his favourite.” The new volume was The River Duddon, a Series of
Sonnets, . . . 1820. “The Longest Day” begins:— Let us quit the leafy arbour.
Between this letter and the next Lamb wrote and sent off his first contribution to the London Magazine over the signature
Elia—“The
South-Sea House,” which was printed in the number for August, 1820.
Here should come a letter to Allsop. See Appendix II., page 973.]
LETTER 247 CHARLES LAMB TO BARRON FIELD
London, 16 Aug., 1820.
DEAR Field,—Captain Ogilvie,
who conveys this note to you, and is now paying for the first time a visit to
your remote shores, is the brother of a Gentleman intimately connected with the
family of the Whites, I mean of
Bishopsgate Street—and you will much oblige them and myself by any service or
civilities you can shew him.
I do not mean this for an answer to your warm-hearted
Epistle, which demands and shall have a much fuller return. We received your
Australian First Fruits,
of which I shall say nothing here, but refer you to **** of the Examiner,
who speaks our mind on all public subjects. I can only assure you that both
Coleridge and Wordsworth, and also C. Lloyd, who has lately reappeared in the
poetical horizon, were hugely taken with your Kangaroo.
When do you come back full of riches and renown, with the
regret of all the honest, and all the other part of the colony? Mary swears she shall live to see it.
Pray are you King’s or Queen’s men in Sidney? Or
have thieves no politics? Man, don’t let this lie about your room for
your bed sweeper or Major Domo to see, he mayn’t like the last paragraph.
This is a dull and lifeless scroll. You shall have soon a
tissue of truth and fiction impossible to be extricated, the interleavings
shall be so delicate, the partitions perfectly invisible, it shall puzzle you
till you return, & [then] I will not explain it. Till then a . . . adieu,
with kind rembrces. of me both to you & . . . [Signature
and a few words torn off.]
Note
[Barron Field, who was still in
New South Wales, had published his poems under the title First-Fruits of Australian
Poetry, and Lamb had reviewed them in The Examiner for January 16, 1820, over his usual
signature in that paper, * * * *. “The Kangaroo” is
quoted in that review (see Vol. I. of the present edition, page 199).
Captain Ogilvie was the brother of a clerk at the India House, who
gave Mr. Joseph H. Twichell some reminiscences of
Lamb, which were printed in Scribner’s Magazine.
“King’s or Queen’s men”—supporters of
George IV. or Caroline of
Brunswick. Lamb was very strongly in
favour of the Queen, as his Champion epigrams show (see Vol. V.).
“You shall soon see.” Lamb’s first reference to the Elia essays, alluding here to
“The South-Sea House.”
Here should come a letter from Lamb
to Hazlitt, not available for this edition, printed
by Mr. Hazlitt in his edition of the letters in
Bonn’s library. Lamb says that his sister is ill again and that
the last thing she read was Hazlitt’s “Thursday Nights” which gave her unmixed delight—the reference being to
the second part of the essay “On
the Conversation of Authors,” which was printed in the London Magazine for September, 1820,
describing Lamb’s evenings. Stoddart, Hazlitt’s brother-in-law,
Lamb adds, says it is better than Hogarth’s “Modern Midnight
Conversation.”]
LETTER 248 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[No date. ? Autumn, 1820.]
DEAR C,—Why
will you make your visits, which should give pleasure, matter of regret to your
friends? You never come but you take away some folio that is part of my
existence. With a great deal of difficulty I was made to comprehend the extent
of my loss. My maid Becky brought me a dirty bit of paper,
which contained her description of some book which Mr.
Coleridge had taken away. It was “Luster’s Tables,” which, for
some time, I could not make out. “What! has he carried away any of the
tables, Becky?”
“No, it wasn’t any tables, but it was a book that he called
Luster’s Tables.” I was obliged to search personally among
my shelves, and a huge fissure suddenly disclosed to me the true nature of the
damage I had sustained. That book, C., you should not have
taken away, for it is not mine; it is the property of a friend, who does not
know its value, nor indeed have I been very sedulous in explaining to him the
estimate of it; but was rather contented in giving a sort of corroboration to a
hint that he let fall, as to its being suspected to be not genuine, so that in
all probability it would have fallen to me as a deodand; not but I am as sure
it is Luther’s as I am sure that
Jack Bunyan wrote the “Pilgrim’s
Progress;” but it was not for me to pronounce upon the validity of
testimony that had been disputed by learneder clerks than I. So I quietly let
it occupy the place it had usurped upon my shelves, and should never have
thought of issuing an ejectment against it; for why should I be so bigoted as
to allow rites of hospitality to none but my own books, children, &c.?—a
species of egotism I abhor from my heart. No; let ’em all snug together,
Hebrews and Proselytes of the gate; no selfish partiality of mine shall make
distinction between them; I charge no warehouse-room for my friends’
commodities; they are welcome to come and stay as long as they like, without
paying rent. I have several such strangers that I treat with more than Arabian
courtesy; there’s a copy of More’s fine poem,
which is none of mine; but I cherish it as my own; I am none of those churlish
landlords that advertise the goods to be taken away in ten days’ time, or
then to be sold to pay expenses. So you see I had no right to lend you that
book; I may lend you my own books, because it is at my own hazard, but it is
not honest to hazard a friend’s property; I always make that distinction.
I hope you will bring it with you, or send it by Hartley; or he can bring that, and you
the “Polemical
Discourses,” and come and eat some atoning mutton with us one
of these days shortly. We are engaged two or three Sundays deep, but always
dine at home on week-days at half-past four. So come all four—men and books I
mean—my third shelf (northern compartment) from the top has two devilish gaps,
where you have knocked out its two eye-teeth.
Your wronged friend, C. Lamb.
Note
[This letter is usually dated 1824, but I think it was written earlier.
For one reason, Hartley Coleridge was not in London
in that year, and for another, there are several phrases in the Elia essay “Two Races of Men” (printed in the
London Magazine,
December, 1820) that are so similar to some in this letter that I imagine the letter to
have suggested the subject of the essay, the composition of which immediately followed it.
Thus, in the essay we read:—
“That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great
eyetooth knocked out—(you are now with me in my little back study in Bloomsbury,
reader!)——with the huge Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the Guildhall giants, in
their reformed posture, guard ant of nothing) once held the tallest of my folios, OperaBonaventuræ, choice and massy divinity, to which its two
supporters (school divinity also, but of a lesser calibre,—Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas),
showed but as dwarfs,—itself an Ascapart!—thatComberbatch abstracted upon the faith of a theory he
holds, which is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that
‘the title to property in a book (my Bonaventure, for
instance) is in exact ratio to the claimant’s powers of understanding and
appreciating the same.’ Should he go on acting upon this theory, which of
our shelves is safe?”
“Luster’s Tables”—Luther’sTable Talk.
“Hebrews and Proselytes of the gate.” The proselyte of
the gate—that is the stranger—was only partly admitted to Judaism. The proselyte of
righteousness, that is to say, of conviction rather than convenience, was a true Hebrew.
“More’s fine poem.” The
Psychozoia
Platonica, 1642, of Henry More,
the Platonist. Lamb seems to have returned the book, for it was not
among his books that he left. Luther’sTable Talk seems also to have been given up.
“The Polemical Discourses”—by Jeremy
Taylor.]
LETTER 249 CHARLES LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
[p.m. January 8, 1821.]
Mary perfectly approves of the
appropriatn of the feathers,
and wishes them Peacocks for your fair niece’s sake!
DEAR Miss
Wordsworth, I had just written the above end earning words when
Monkhouse tapped me on the shoulder
with an invitation to cold goose pye, which I was not Bird of that sort enough
to decline. Mrs. M. I am most happy to
say is better. Mary has been tormented
with a Rheumatism, which is leaving her. I am suffering from the festivities of
the season. I wonder how my misused carcase holds it out. I have play’d
the experimental philosopher on it, that’s certain. Willy shall be welcome to a mince pye, and a
bout at Commerce, whenever he comes. He was in our eye. I am glad you liked my
new year’s
speculations. Everybody likes them, except the Author of the Pleasures of Hope.
Disappointment attend him! How I like to be liked, and what I
do to be liked! They flatter me in magazines, newspapers, and all the
minor reviews. The Quarterlies hold aloof. But they must come into it in time,
or their leaves be waste paper. Salute Trinity Library in my name. Two special
things are worth seeing at Cambridge, a portrait of Cromwell at Sidney, and a better of Dr. Harvey (who found out that blood was red) at Dr. Davy’s. You should see them.
Coleridge is pretty well, I have not
seen him, but hear often of him from Alsop, who sends me hares and pheasants twice a week. I can
hardly take so fast as he gives. I have almost forgotten Butcher’s meat,
as Plebeian. Are you not glad the Cold is gone? I find winters not so agreeable
as they used to be, when “winter bleak had charms for me.” I
cannot conjure up a kind similitude for those snowy flakes—Let them keep to
Twelfth Cakes.
Mrs. Paris, our Cambridge friend, has
been in Town. You do not know the Watfords? in Trumpington
Street—they are capital people.
Ask any body you meet, who is the biggest woman in
Cambridge—and I’ll hold you a wager they’ll say Mrs.
Smith.
She broke down two benches in Trinity Gardens, one on the
confines of St. John’s, which occasioned a litigation between the
societies as to repairing it. In warm weather she retires into an ice-cellar
(literally!) and dates the returns of the years from a hot Thursday some 20
years back. She sits in a room with opposite doors and windows, to let in a thorough
draught, which gives her slenderer friends toothaches. She is to be seen in the
market every morning at 10, cheapening fowls, which I observe the Cambridge
Poulterers are not sufficiently careful to stump.
Having now answered most of the points containd in your
Letter, let me end with assuring you of our very best kindness, and excuse
Mary from not handling the Pen on
this occasion, especially as it has fallen into so much better hands! Will
Dr. W. accept of my respects at the
end of a foolish Letter.
C. L.
Note
[Miss Wordsworth was visiting her
brother, Christopher Wordsworth, the Master of
Trinity.
Willy was William Wordsworth,
junr.
Lamb’s New Year speculations were contained in
his Elia essay
“New Year’s Eve,”
in the London Magazine for January, 1821. ) There is no evidence that Campbell disapproved of the essay. Canon Ainger suggests that Lamb may
have thus alluded playfully to the pessimism of his remarks, so opposed to the pleasures of
hope. When the Quarterly did “come in,” in 1823, it was with cold words, as
we shall see.
“Salute Trinity Library.” It is here that are
preserved those MSS. of Milton, which Lamb regretted to have seen in his essay “Oxford in the Vacation,” in the London Magazine for October,
1820.
“Cromwell at
Sidney.” See Letter 211.
“Harvey . . . at
Dr. Davy’s”—Dr. Martin
Davy, Master of Caius.
“Alsop.” This is the first mention of
Thomas Allsop (1795-1880), Coleridge’s friend and disciple, who, meeting
Coleridge in 1818, had just come into Lamb’s circle. We shall meet him frequently.
Allsop’sLetters, Conversations and Recollections of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge contain much matter concerning Lamb.
“Winter bleak had charms for me.” I have not found
this. Thomson’sSeasons (“Autumn”)
has— E’en winter wild to him is full of bliss.
Mrs. Paris was a sister of William Ayrton and the mother of John Ayrton Paris, the physician. It was at her house at
Cambridge that the Lambs met Emma
Isola, whom we are soon to meet (see Letter 263).
“Mrs. Smith.” Lamb
worked up this portion of his letter into the little humorous sketch “The Gentle Giantess,” printed in the
London Magazine for
December, 1822 (see Vol. I. of the present edition, page
211), wherein Mrs. Smith of Cambridge becomes the Widow Blacket of Oxford.
“Dr. W.”—Dr. Christopher Wordsworth.]
LETTERS 250 AND 251 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[No date. ? 1821.]
DEAR Sir—The hairs of our head are numbered, but
those which emanate from your heart defy arithmetic. I would send longer thanks
but your young man is blowing his fingers in the Passage.
Yours gratefully C. L.
Note
[The date of this scrap is unimportant; but it comes well here in
connection with the reference in the preceding letter.
In Harper’s
Magazine for December, 1859, were printed fifty of Lamb’s notes to Allsop, all of which are reproduced in at least two editions of
Lamb’s letters. I have selected only those which say
anything, as for the most part Lamb was content with the merest
message; moreover, the date is often so uncertain as to be only misleading. Letter 251 is,
I fear, here out of place. Lamb was not at Dalston in the winter.
Crabb Robinson says of Allsop, “I believe his acquaintance with Lamb originated in his sending Coleridge a present of £100 in admiration of his
genius.”]
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[No date. ? 1821.]
DR Sir—Thanks for the Birds and your kindness. It
was but yesterdy. I was contriving with Talfd to meet you ½ way at his chamber. But
night don’t do so well at present. I shall want to be home at Dalston by
Eight.
I will pay an afternoon visit to you when you please. I dine
at a chop-house at One always, but I can spend an hour with you after that.
Yours truly C. L.
Would Saturdy serve?
END OF VOL. VI.
THE WORKS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB EDITED BY E. V. LUCAS VOLUME VII. LETTERS 1821-1834 METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET W. C. LONDON CONTENTS ** New Letter. * New Collation, or Addition to
Text.
PAGE LETTER 1821 549. 252 **Charles Lamb to Mrs. William Ayrton From the original, lately
in the possession of Mr. Edward Ayrton. Jan. 23 549. 253 **Charles Lamb to Miss Humphreys From the original at Rowfant.
Jan. 27 550. 254 **Charles Lamb to Mrs. William Ayrton From the original, lately
in the possession of Mr. Edward Ayrton. March 15 551. 255 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s Magazine.
March 30 551. 256 Charles Lamb to Leigh Hunt From Leigh Hunt’s
Correspondence. April 18 551. 257 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the Life of Charles
Mathews. May 1 552. 258 Charles Lamb to James Gillman From the Life of Charles Mathews,
May 2 553. 259 Charles Lamb to John Payne Collier Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). May 16 555. 260 *Charles Lamb to B. W. Procter From facsimile in Mrs.
Field’s A Shelf of Old Authors. ? Summer 556. 261 Charles Lamb to John Taylor Mr. Hazlitt’s text (Bohn).
June 8 557. 262 Charles Lamb to John Taylor Mr. Hazlitt’s text (The
Lambs). July 21 558. 263 Charles Lamb to Charles Cowden Clarke From Recollections of
Writers. Summer 559. 264 Mary Lamb to Mrs. William Ayrton From the original in the
possession of Mr. A. M. S. Methuen. No date 560. 265 **Charles Lamb to William Ayrton From the original, lately in
the possession of Mr. Edward Ayrton. Oct. 27
PAGE LETTER 1822 561. 266 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). March 9 562. 267 *Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. March 20 565. 268 Charles Lamb to W. Harrison Ainsworth Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(The Lambs). May 7 566. 269 Charles Lamb to William Godwin Mr. Kegan Paul’s text
(William Godwin: His Friends, etc.). May 16 568. 270 **Charles Lamb to Mrs. John Lamb From the original in the
Bodleian. May 22 569. 271 Charles Lamb to Mary Lamb (fragment) From Crabb Robinson’s
Diary. Aug. 569. 272 Charles Lamb to John Clare From the original (British
Museum). Aug. 31 571. 273 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Sept. 11 573. 274 *Charles Lamb to Barron Field From the original in the possession
of Mr. B. B. Mac-george. Sept. 22 575. 275 Charles Lamb to John Howard Payne From the Century
Magazine. Autumn 576. 276 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Oct. 9 578. 277 Charles Lamb to B. R. Haydon From Haydon’s Correspondence
and Table Talk. Oct. 9 578. 278 Charles Lamb to John Howard Payne From the Century
Magazine. Oct. 22 580. 279 Charles Lamb to B. R. Haydon From Haydon’s Correspondence
and Table Talk. Oct. 29 580. 280 Charles Lamb to Sir Walter Scott From Scott’s Familiar
Letters. Oct. 29 581. 281 **Charles Lamb to Thomas Robinson From the original (Dr.
Williams’ Library). Nov. 11 581. 282 Charles Lamb to John Howard Payne From the Century
Magazine. Nov. 13 583. 283 Mary Lamb to Mrs. James Kenney Mr. Hazlitt’s text (The
Lambs). ? Early Dec. 585. 284 Charles Lamb to John Taylor From Elia (Bell’s
edition). Dec. 7 586. 285 *Charles Lamb to Walter Wilson From the original
(Bodleian). Dec. 16 588. 286 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the origmal (British
Museum). Dec. 23
PAGE LETTER 1823 590. 287 Charles Lamb to John Howard Payne From the Century
Magazine. Jan. 591. 288 **Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Jan. 592. 289 Charles Lamb to Mr. and Mrs. J. D. Collier From the original in
the possession of Mr. R. B. Adam Jan. 6 594. 290 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Jan. 9 596. 291 Charles Lamb to John Howard Payne From the Century
Magazine. Jan. 23 596. 292 Charles Lamb to John Howard Payne From the Century
Magazine. Feb. 9 598. 293 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Feb. 17 600. 294 Charles Lamb to Walter Wilson From Mr. Hazlitt’s
text. Feb. 24 602. 295 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). March 11 604. 296 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). April 5 607. 297 *Charles Lamb to B. W. Procter Mr. Hazlitt’s text (Bohn)
with alterations. April 13 608. 298 *Charles Lamb to Sarah Hutchinson From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. April 25 610. 299 Charles Lamb to Miss Hutchinson (?) (fragment) From Notes and
Queries. No date 610. 300 *Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin From the original in the
possession of Mr. R. W. Dibdin. No date 612. 301 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). May 3 613. 302 *Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin From the original in the
possession of Mr. R. W. Dibdin. May 6 614. 303 Mary Lamb to Mrs. Randal Norris Mr. Hazlitt’s text (The
Lambs). June 18 616. 304 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). July 10 618. 305 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s Magazine. July 618. 306 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Sept. 2 620. 307 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s Magazine. Sept. 6 620. 308 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s Magazine. Sept. 9 621. 309 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s Magazine. Sept. 10
PAGE LETTER 1823 621. 310 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s Magazine.
Sept. 621. 311 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Sept. 17 623. 312 Charles Lamb to Charles Lloyd (fragment) From Letters and Poems
of Bernard Barton. Autumn 624. 313 Charles Lamb to H. F. Cary From Memoir of H. F. Cary. Oct. 14 624. 314 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s Magazine.
? Oct, 625. 315 Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin From the original in the
possession of Mr. R. W. Dibdin. Oct. 28 626. 316 Charles Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt Mr. Hazlitt’s text (Bohn).
Early Nov. 627. 317 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Mr. Hazlitt’s text (Bohn).
Nov. 21 629. 318 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Nov. 22 630. 319 *Charles Lamb to W. Harrison Ainsworth From the original. Dec. 9 632. 320 *Charles Lamb to W. Harrison Ainsworth From the original. Dec. 29 1824 633. 321 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Jan. 9 634. 322 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Jan. 23 637. 323 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Feb. 25 638. 324 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). March 24 639. 325 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Early spring 641. 326 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Thomas Allsop From Harper’s Magazine.
April 13 641. 327 **Charles Lamb to William Hone From the original in the
possession of Mr. R. A. Potts. April 642. 328 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original in the
possession of Mr. B. B. Mac-george. May 15 644. 329 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Mr. Hazlitt’s text (Bohn).
July 7 646. 330 Charles Lamb to W. Marter Mr. Hazlitt’s text (The Lambs).
July 19 647. 331 *Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin From the original in the
possession of Mr. R. W. Dibdin. July 28
PAGE LETTER 1824 647. 332 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Hood (1 fragment) From the
original. Aug. 10 650. 333 *Charles Lamb to C. A. Elton From the original in the possession
of Sir Edmund Elton. Aug. 17 652. 334 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Aug. 17 654. 335 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Sept. 30 655. 336 *Charles Lamb to Mrs. John Dyer Collier From the original (South
Kensington Museum). Nov. 2 656. 337 *Charles Lamb to B. W. Procter From Barry Cornwall’s
Charles Lamb with alterations. Nov. 11 657. 338 **Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson From the original (Dr.
Williams’ Library). Nov. 20 658. 339 *Charles Lamb to Sarah Hutchinson From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Nov. 25 659. 340 *Charles Lamb to Leigh Hunt From Leigh Hunt’s
Correspondence with alterations. ? Nov. 662. 341 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Dec. 1 664. 341 (Postscript) *Charles Lamb to Lucy Barton Dec. 1 1825 665. 342 *Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin From the original in the
possession of Mr. R. W. Dibdin. Jan. 11 667. 343 *Charles Lamb to Sarah Hutchinson From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Jan. 20 668. 344 *Charles Lamb to Vincent Novello From the original (British
Museum). Jan. 25 669. 345 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Feb. 10 671. 346 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). ? Feb. 671. 347 **Charles Lamb to Sarah Hutchinson From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. March 1 672. 348 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). March 23 673. 349 **Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson From the original (Dr.
Williams’ Library). March 29 674. 350 *Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. April 6 676. 351 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). April 6 677. 352 *Charles Lamb to Sarah Hutchinson From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. (Last paragraph from original scrap at Welbeck
Abbey.) April 18 678. 353 *Charles Lamb to William Hone From the original at Rowfant. May 2
PAGE LETTER 1825 679. 354 *Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. May 680. 355 Charles Lamb to Charles Chambers Mr. Hazlitt’s text (The
Lambs). ? May 683. 356 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). ? June 684. 357 *Charles Lamb to Henry Colburn (?) From the original (South
Kensington). June 14 684. 358 *Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge From the original (Morrison
Collection). July 2 688. 359 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). [For Letter 359A—Charles Lamb to John Aitken—see Appendix page
974.] July 2 689. 360 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Aug. 10 691. 361 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Aug. 10 694. 362 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s Magazine. Sept. 9 694. 363 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s Magazine. Sept. 24 695. 364 *Charles Lamb to William Hone From the original at Rowfant. Oct. 24 696. 365 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s Magazine. Dec. 5 696. 366 *Charles Lamb to Charles Ollier From the original (South
Kensington). ? Dec. 1826 697. 367 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s Magazine. See note 697. 368 Charles Lamb to Charles Oilier Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Early in year 698. 369 Charles Lamb to Charles Oilier Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Jan. 698. 370 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Feb. 7 699. 371 **Charles Lamb to Charles Ollier From the original in the
possession of Mr. R. A. Potts. March 16 700. 372 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). March 20 702. 373 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). March 22 703. 374 Charles Lamb to H. F. Cary Mr. Hazlitt’s text. April 3 704. 375 *Charles Lamb to Vincent Novello From the original|(British
Museum). May 9
PAGE LETTER 1826 704. 376 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). May 16 706. 377 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). June 1 707. 378 *Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin From the original in the
possession of Mr. R. W. Dibdin. June 30 710. 379 Charles Lamb to Thomas Hill From the original (British
Museum). No year 710. 380 *Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin From the original in the
possession of Mr. R. W. Dibdin. July 14 712. 381 **Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Sept. 6 715. 382 *Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin From the original in the
possession of Mr. R. W. Dibdin. Sept. 9 716. 383 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Sept. 26 718. 384 **Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original in the
possession of Mr. Henry Poulton. ? Sept. 719. 385 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). No date 1827 720. 386 Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). 1827. 723. 387 **Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson From the original (Dr.
Williams’ Library). Jan. 20 723. 388 **Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson From the original (Dr.
Williams’ Library). Jan. 20 724. 389 **Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson From the original (Dr.
Williams’ Library). Jan. 29 724. 390 Charles Lamb to B. R. Haydon From Taylor’s Life of
Haydon. Jan. May 725. 391 *Charles Lamb to William Hone From the original at Rowfant. March 726. 392 Charles Lamb to Thomas Hood Mr. Hazlitt’s text (The
Lambs). April 726. 393 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). No date 729. 394 *Charles Lamb to William Hone From the original at Rowfant. May 729. 395 *Charles Lamb to William Hone From the original at Rowfant. June 730. 396 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). June 11 733. 397 **Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson From the original (British
Museum). June 26
PAGE LETTER 1827 733. 398 *Charles Lamb to William Hone From the original at Rowfant. July 734. 399 **Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at
Rowfant. July 17 735. 400 Charles Lamb to P. G. Patmore From Patmore’s My Friends and
Acquaintances. July 19 738. 401 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Shelley Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). July 26 740. 402 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Basil Montagu Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Summer 742. 403 *Mary Lamb to Lady Stoddart *Charles Lamb to Sir John Stoddart From the original (Messrs. Maggs). Aug. 9 745. 404 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Aug. 10 746. 405 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Aug. 28 749. 406 Charles Lamb to P. G. Patmore From My Friends and
Acquaintances. Sept. 750. 407 *Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin From the original in the
possession of Mr. R. W. Dibdin. Sept. 5 751. 408 *Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin From the original in the
possession of Mr. R. W. Dibdin. Sept. 13 751. 409 *Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin From the original in the
possession of Mr. R. W. Dibdin. Sept. 18 752. 410 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Hood From the facsimile in Mrs.
Balmanno’s Pen and Pencil. Sept. 18 755. 411 *Charles Lamb to Henry Colburn From the original (South
Kensington). Sept. 25 756. 412 **Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original in the
possession of Mr. Henry Poulton. ? Sept. 26 756. 413 **Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson From the original (Dr.
Williams’ Library). Oct. 1 757. 414 *Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin From the orginal in the
possession of Mr. R. W. Dibdin. Oct. 2 757. 415 Charles Lamb to Barron Field From the Memoirs of Charles
Mathews. Oct. 4 759. 416 Charles Lamb to William Hone Mr. Hazlitt’s text (The
Lambs). ? Oct. 760. 417 Charles Lamb to Thomas Hood From the National Review. No date 761. 418 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). From the original (British Museum). No date 762. 419 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Dec. 4
PAGE LETTER 1827 763 420 Charles Lamb to Leigh Hunt Mr. Hazlitt’s text (Bohn). Dec. 764 421 Charles Lamb to William Hone Dec. 15 764 422 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s Magazine. ? Dec. 765 423 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s Magazine. Dec. 20 765 424 **Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at
Rowfant. Dec. 22 766 425 * Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). End of year 1828 767 426 *Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s Magazine with
alterations. Jan. 9 767 427 **Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at
Rowfant. ? Jan. 768 428 **Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at
Rowfant. Feb. 18 769 429 Charles Lamb to Charles Cowden Clarke From Reminiscences of
Writers. Feb. 25 772 430 **Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson From the original (Dr.
Williams’ Library). Feb. 26 772 431 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). March 19 773 432 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). April 21 774 433 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s Magazine. May 1 774 434 *Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original. May 3 774 435 *Charles Lamb to Walter Wilson From the original (British
Museum). May 17 775 436 **Charles Lamb to T. N. Talfourd From the original (Dr.
Williams’ Library). May 775 437 **Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From the original (Dr.
Williams’ Library). May 776 438 Mary Lamb to the Thomas Hoods Mr. Hazlitt’s text (The
Lambs). ? Summer 778 439 Charles Lamb to B. R. Haydon From Taylor’s Life of Haydon.
[For Letter 439A—the translation of a Latin letter from Lamb to John
Rickman—see Appendix II., page 975.] Aug. 779. 440 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Oct. 11 781. 441 Charles Lamb to Charles Cowden Clarke From Recollections of
Writers. Oct.
PAGE LETTER 1828 782. 442 Charles Lamb to Vincent Novello From Recollections of
Writers. Nov. 6 785. 443 Charles Lamb to Thomas Hood From Hood’s Own. Late autumn Dec. 786. 444 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Text from Mr. Samuel Davey. Dec. 5 787. 445 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Dec. 791. 446 Charles Lamb to Charles Cowden Clarke From Recollections of
Writers. End of year 1829 792. 447 Charles Lamb to T. N. Talfourd Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). ? Jan. 793. 448 *Charles Lamb to George Dyer From the original (British
Museum). Jan. 19 793. 449 Charles Lamb to B. W. Procter Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Jan. 22 796. 450 *Charles Lamb to B. W. Procter Mr. Hazlitt’s text (Bohn)
with alterations. Jan. 28 798. 451 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s Magazine. Jan. 29 798. 452 *Charles Lamb to B. W. Procter Mr. Hazlitt’s text (Bohn)
with alterations. Early in year 800. 453 *Charles Lamb to B. W. Procter Mr. Hazlitt’s text (Bohn)
with alterations. Feb. 2 801. 454 Charles Lamb to B. W. Procter Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Feb. 2 802. 455 Charles Lamb to Charles Cowden Clarke From Recollections of
Writers. Feb. 27 803. 456 *Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson From the original (Dr.
Williams’ Library). 804. 457 Charles Lamb to Samuel Rogers From Rogers and His
Contemporaries. March 22 805. 458 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). March 25 806. 459 Charles Lamb to Miss Sarah James Text from Mr. Samuel
Davey. ? April 807. 460 *Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson From the original (Dr.
Williams’ Library). ? April 808. 461 *Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson From the original (Dr.
Williams’ Library). [For Letter 461A—Charles Lamb to George Dyer—see
Appendix II., page 978.] April 17 809. 462 Charles Lamb to Thomas Hood Mr. Hazlitt’s text (The
Lambs). ? May 810. 463 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From The Autographic Mirror. No date
PAGE LETTER 1829 810. 464 Charles Lamb to Walter Wilson Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). May 28 811. 465 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). June 3 812. 466 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s Magazine. See note 813. 467 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (Britishj
Museum). July 25 815. 468 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop From Harper’s Magazine. Late July 815. 469 **Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at
Rowfant. Sept. 22 816. 470 Charles Lamb to James Gillman Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Oct. 26 818. 471 *Charles Lamb to Vincent Novello From the original (British
Museum). Nov. 10 818. 472 Charles Lamb to Walter Wilson Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Nov. 15 821. 473 Charles Lamb to James Gillman Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). ? Nov. 29 821. 474 Charles Lamb to James Gillman Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Nov. 30 824. 475 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Dec. 8 1830 826. 476 *Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth **Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth’s original. Jan. 22 831. 477 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Feb. 25 832. 478 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Williams Mr. Hazlitt’s text (The
Lambs). Feb. 26 833. 479 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Williams Mr. Hazlitt’s text (The
Lambs). March 1 834. 480 Charles Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). March 4 835. 481 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Williams Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). March 5 836. 482 Charles Lamb to James Gillman Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). March 8 837. 483 Charles Lamb to William Ayrton Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). March 14 839. 484 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Williams Mr. Hazlitt’s text (The
Lambs). March 22 840. 485 *Charles Lamb to Mrs. Williams From the original in the
possession of Mr. Yates Thompson. April 2
PAGE LETTER 1830 842. 486 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Williams From the original. April 9 843. 487 Charles Lamb to James Gillman Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). ? Spring 843. 488 Charles Lamb to James Vale Asbury From The Athæneum. ? April 844. 489 Charles Lamb to James Vale Asbury By permission of Mr. Edward
Hartley. No date 846. 490 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Williams Mr. Hazlitt’s text (The
Lambs). April 21 847. 491 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). May 10 851. 492 **Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at
Rowfant. May 12 852. 493 *Charles Lamb to Vincent Novello From the original (British
Museum). May 14 852. 494 *Charles Lamb to Vincent Novello From the original (British
Museum). May 853. 495 Charles Lamb to William Hone Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). May 21 853. 496 Charles Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). May 24 856. 497 Charles Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). June 3 857. 498 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). June 28 858. 499 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). Aug. 30 860. 500 Charles Lamb to Samuel Rogers From Rogers and His
Contemporaries. Oct. 5 861. 501 Charles Lamb to Vincent Novello From Recollections of
Writers. Nov. 8 861. 502 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Nov. 12 862. 503 **Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at
Rowfant. ? Dec. 863. 504 *Charles Lamb to George Dyer Mr. Hazlitt’s text (Bohn) with
alterations. Dec. 20 864. 505 *Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original (South
Kensington). ? Christmas 1831 866. 506 *Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at Rowfant. Feb. 3 868. 507 Charles Lamb to George Dyer Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Feb. 22 871. 508 *Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton From the original (British
Museum). April 30
PAGE LETTER 1831 873. 509 Charles Lamb to H. F. Gary Mr. Hazlitt’s text (Bohn). May 6 874. 510 **Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at
Rowfant. July 14 877. 511 “Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at
Rowfant. Early Aug. 878. 512 “Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at
Rowfant. Aug. 5 879. 513 *Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at Rowfant. Sept. 5 880. 514 Charles Lamb to William Hazlitt, junior Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Lamb and Hazlitt). Sept. 13 880. 515 *Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at Rowfant. Oct. 24 882. 516 **Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at
Rowfant. Dec. 15 1832 883. 517 Charles Lamb to Joseph Hume’s daughters Mr. Hazlitt’s
text (The Lambs). No date 884. 518 **Charles Lamb to C. W. Dilke From Sir Charles Dilke’s
original. March 5 885. 519 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). April 14 886. 520 Charles Lamb to James Sheridan Knowles From the original (South
Kensington). ? April 886. 521 Charles Lamb to John Forster From the original (South
Kensington). ? Late April 887. 522 “Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon? From the original (South
Kensington). June 1 887. 523 “”Charles Lamb to Walter Wilson From the original in
the Bodleian. Aug. 888. 524 Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson From the original (South
Kensington). ? Early Oct. 889. 525 “Charles Lamb to Walter Savage Landor From the original
(South Kensington). Oct. 891. 526 *”Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at
Rowfant. Late in year 891. 527 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Winter 893. 528 “Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original (South
Kensington). Dec. 894. 529 “Charles Lamb to John Forster From the original (South
Kensington). Dec. 23
PAGE LETTER 1833 894. 530 *Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From Sir Charles Dilke’s
original. Jan. 895. 531 *Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at Rowfant. Jan. 3 895. 532 *Charles Lamb to John Forster From the original (South
Kensington). No date 896. 533 Charles Lamb to John Forster From the original (South
Kensington). No date 896. 534 *Charles Lamb to John Forster From the original (South
Kensington). No date 896. 535 *Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at Rowfant. Jan. 24 897. 536 *Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original (South
Kensington). Feb. 11 898. 537 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original (South
Kensington). Feb. 898. 538 Charles Lamb to T. N. Talfourd Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Feb. 899. 539 **Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original in the
possession of Mr. Henry Poulton. No date 900. 540 *Charles Lamb to C. W. Dilke From Sir Charles Dilke’s
original. Feb. 900. 541 **Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at
Rowfant. Early in year 901. 542 Charles Lamb to B. W. Procter From Procter’s
Autobiographical Fragment. No date 902. 543 *Charles Lamb to William Hone From the original (National
Portrait Gallery). March 6 902. 544 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original (South
Kensington). March 19 903. 545 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original (South
Kensington). ? Spring 904. 546 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at Rowfant. March 30 904. 547 *Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at Rowfant. Spring 905. 548 *Charles Lamb to John Forster From the original (South
Kensington). ? March 906. 549 *Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at Rowfant. ? April 10 906. 550 **Charles Lamb to C. W. Dilke From Sir Charles Dilke’s
original. April 907. 551 **Charles Lamb to Mrs. William Ayrton From the original, lately
in the possession of Mr. Edward Ayrton. April 16
PAGE LETTER 1833 908. 552 *Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at Rowfant. April 25 908. 553 *Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at Rowfant. April 27 909. 554 Charles Lamb to the Rev. James Gillman May 7 910. 555 *Charles Lamb to John Forster From the original (South
Kensington). May 911. 556 *Charles Lamb to John Forster From the original (South
Kensington). May 12 911. 557 *Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. End of May 913. 558 *Charles Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt Mr. Hazlitt’s text (Bohn)
with alterations. May 31 913. 559 Charles Lamb to Matilda Betham From Fraser’s
Magazine. June 914. 560 **Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at
Rowfant. July 14 915. 561 **Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at
Rowfant. July 24 916. 562 *Charles and Mary Lamb to Edward and Emma Moxon From the original
at Rowfant. ? July 31 917. 563 Charles Lamb to H. F. Cary Mr. Hazlitt’s text (Bohn). Sept. 9 918. 564 *Charles and Mary Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at
Rowfant. Sept. 26 919. 565 **Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original at
Rowfant. Oct. 17 920. 566 Charles Lamb to Edward and Emma Moxon Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Nov. 29 923. 567 **Charles Lamb to C. W. Dilke From Sir Charles Dilke’s
original. Mid. Dec. 923. 568 *Charles Lamb to Samuel Rogers From Rogers and His
Contemporaries. Dec. 21 1834 926. 569 Charles Lamb to C. W. Dilke From Sir Charles Dilke’s
original. No date 926. 570 Charles Lamb to C. W. Dilke From Sir Charles Dilke’s
original. No date 926. 571 Charles Lamb to C. W. Dilke From Sir Charles Dilke’s
original. Spring 927. 572 *Charles Lamb to Mary Betham From the original in the possession
of Mr. B. B. Mac-george. Jan. 24 927. 573 *Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon From the original (South
Kensington). Jan. 28
PAGE LETTER 1834 928. 574 Charles Lamb to Miss Fryer Mr. Hazlitt’s text (Bohn). Feb. 14 929. 575 *Charles Lamb to Miss Fryer From the original in the possession
of Mr. A. M. S. Methuen. No date 930. 576 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth From Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth’s original. Feb. 22 932. 577 Charles Lamb to Charles Cowden Clarke (fragment) From the Life
and Labours of Vincent Novello. End of June 932. 578 *Charles Lamb to John Forster From the original (South
Kensington). June 25 932. 579 Charles Lamb to J. Fuller Russell From Notes and Queries. Summer 934. 580 Charles Lamb to J. Fuller Russell From Notes and Queries. Summer 936. 581 Charles Lamb to C. W. Dilke From Sir Charles Dilke’s
original. End of July 937. 582 Charles Lamb to the Rev. James Gillman Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Aug. 5 938. 583 Charles and Mary Lamb to H. F. Cary Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Sept. 12 938. 584 Charles Lamb to H. F. Cary Mr. Hazlitt’s text (Bohn). Oct. 940. 585 Charles Lamb to H. F. Cary Mr. Hazlitt’s text (Bohn). Oct. 18 941. 586 Charles Lamb to Mr. Childs Mr. Hazlitt’s text (Bohn). ? Dec. 942. 587 Charles Lamb to Mrs. George Dyer Mr. Hazlitt’s text
(Bohn). Dec. 22 943. 588 Mary Lamb to Jane Norris Mr. Hazlitt’s text (The
Lambs). Dec. 25 944. 589 Mary Lamb to Jane Norris Mr. Hazlitt’s text (The
Lambs). Oct. 3 944. 590 Miss James to Jane Norris July 25
ADDITIONAL LETTERS IN APPENDIX II
970. 170A Charles Lamb to George Dyer From The Mirror. Dec. 5 973. 237A **Charles and Mary Lamb to S. J. Arnold ? 1819. 973. 246A Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop July 13
974. 359A Charles Lamb to John Aitken July 5 975. 439A *Charles Lamb to John Rickman (translation) Oct. 3 978. 461A Charles Lamb to George Dyer From The Mirror. April 29
CONTENTS OF APPENDIX I PAGE Coleridge’s “Ode on the Departing Year” 947 Wither’s “Supersedeas” 950 Dyer’s “Poetic Sympathies” (fragment) 951 Haydon’s Party (from Taylor’s Life of Haydon) 954 Southey’s “To the Chapel Bell” 956 Barton’s “Spiritual Law” 957 Barton’s “Translation of Enoch” 957 Talfourd’s “Verses in Memory of a Child Named Charles Lamb”
958 FitzGerald’s “Meadows in Spring” 960 Montgomery’s “The Common Lot” 961 Barry Cornwall’s “Epistle to Charles Lamb “ 962CONTENTS OF APPENDIX III Notes on Vol. I. 979 Early Journalism, I. 980 Grand State Bed 980 Early Journalism, II. 980 A Fable for Twelfth Day 980 Miss Kelly 981 “Letter to an Old Gentleman” (note) 982 “Letter to Southey” (note) 982 Hood’s Progress of Cant 983 Mr. Ephraim Wagstaff 984 Waltham, Essex 986 “Mrs. Battle” (note) 986 “Praise of Chimney-Sweepers” (note) 987 “The Tombs in the Abbey” (note) 987 Lamb’s Earliest Poem 988 Dick Strype 989 “Farewell to Tobacco” (note) 990 “Harmony in Unlikeness” (note) 992 “To Emma” (note) 992PAGE A New Epigram 992 “On the Literary Gazette” (note) 992 “Prologue to ‘Remorse’” (note) 993 “Mr. H.” (note) 994 A New Poem 995 Sapphics 995 A Poem Possibly by Lamb 996 ALPHABETICAL LIST OF LETTERS 997 INDEX 1008 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Charles Lamb. From the drawing by Thomas Wageman about
1825; reproduced by permission of Mr. F. W. Halsey FrontispieceFacsimile of a Note from Lamb to Mrs. William Ayrton.
From the original lent by the late W. S. Ayrton To face page 550 The Bellows Portrait of Shakespeare. From the original
in the possession of Mr. B. B. Macgeorge 574 Mr. Alexander Pope, Ætat. 38. From the painting by M.
Dahll 606 Reduced Facsimile of Letter from Lamb to Sarah
Hutchinson. From the original in the possession of Mr. Gordon Wordsworth 608 Reduced Facsimile of Letter from Lamb to Sarah
Hutchinson (Page 2). From the original in the possession of Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth 610 Lamb’s House in Colebrooke Row, Islington, as it is
to-day (1904) 626 Death of the Wicked Man. Plate from Blair’s Grave,
designed by William Blake 644 Charles Lamb, Aged 50. From the etching by Brook Pulham
(First State) 706 “Very Deaf Indeed,” by Thomas Hood 706 Hollingdon Rural Church 709 The Young Catechist. Painted and engraved by Henry Meyer To face page 728 The Picture sent by Lamb to Bernard Barton. From the
original in the possession of Mrs. Edmund Lyons 730 Mary Lamb, by Thomas Hood 734 Lamb’s First House at Enfield 754 The Lamb Country. From a map drawn by Miss M. C. G.
Jackson To face page 792 Westwood Cottage (front) 817 Westwood Cottage (back) 824 Thomas Westwood, by Charles Lamb 829 Lamb’s House at Edmonton 910
THELETTERS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB1821—1834 LETTER 252 CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAM AYRTON
[Dated at end: Jan. 23, 1821.]
DEAR Mrs.
Ayrton, my sister desires me, as being a more expert penman than
herself, to say that she saw Mrs. Paris
yesterday, and that she is very much out of spirits, and has expressed a great
wish to see your son William, and
Fanny——
I like to write that word Fanny. I do
not know but it was one reason of taking upon me this pleasing task——
Moreover that if the said William and Frances will go and sit an
hour with her at any time, she will engage that no one else shall see them but
herself, and the servant who opens the door, she being confined to her private
room. I trust you and the Juveniles will comply with this reasonable request.
& am Dear Mrs. Ayrton yours and yours’ Truly C. Lamb. Cov. Gar. 23 Jan. 1821.
Note
[Mrs. Ayrton (née
Arnold) was the wife of William
Ayrton, the musical critic (see Letter 223).]
LETTER 253 CHARLES LAMB TO MISS HUMPHREYS
London 27 Jany. 1821.
DEAR Madam, Carriages to Cambridge are in such
request, owing to the Installation, that we have found it impossible to procure
a conveyance for Emma before Wednesday,
on which day between the hours of 3 and 4 in
the afternoon you will see your little friend, with her bloom somewhat impaired
by late hours and dissipation, but her gait, gesture, and general manners (I
flatter myself) considerably improved by —— somebody that
shall be nameless. My sister joins me in love to all true
Trumpingtonians, not specifying any, to avoid envy; and begs me to assure you
that Emma has been a very good girl, which, with certain
limitations, I must myself subscribe to. I wish I could cure her of making
dog’s ears in books, and pinching them on poor Pompey, who, for one, I dare say, will heartily rejoyce at her
departure.
Dear Madam, Yours truly foolishC.
L.
Note
[The letter is addressed to “Miss
Humphreys, with Mrs. Paris,
Trumpington Street, Cambridge.” Franked by J.
Rickman.
This letter contains the first reference in the correspondence to
Emma Isola, daughter of Charles Isola, Esquire Bedell of Cambridge University, and
granddaughter of Agostino Isola, the Italian critic
and teacher, of Cambridge, among whose pupils had been Wordsworth. Miss Humphreys was
Emma Isola’s aunt. Emma seems to have
been brought to London by Mrs. Paris and left with
the Lambs.
Pompey seems to have been the Lambs’
first dog. Later, as we shall see, they adopted Dash.]
LETTER 254 CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAM AYRTON [See facsimile on opposite page]
[Dated at end: March 15, 1821.]
DEAR Madam, We are out of town of necessity till
Wednesday next, when we hope to see one of you at least to a rubber. On some
future Saturday we shall most gladly accept your kind offer. When I read your
delicate little note, I am ashamed of my great staring letters.
Yours most truly Charles Lamb. Dalston near Hackney 15 Mar. 1821.
LETTER 255 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
30 March, 1821.
MY dear Sir—If you can come next Sunday we shall be
equally glad to see you, but do not trust to any of Martin’s appointments, except on business, in future. He
is notoriously faithless in that point, and we did wrong not to have warned
you. Leg of Lamb, as before; hot at 4. And the heart of Lamb ever.
Yours truly, C. L.
LETTER 256 CHARLES LAMB TO LEIGH HUNT
Indifferent Wednesday [April 18], 1821.
DEAR Hunt,—There
was a sort of side talk at Mr.
Novello’s about our spending Good
Friday at Hampstead, but my sister has got so bad a cold, and we both
want rest so much, that you shall excuse our putting off the visit some little
time longer. Perhaps, after all, you know nothing of it.—Believe me, yours
truly,
C. Lamb.
LETTER 257 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
May 1st [1821], Mr. Gilman’s, Highgate.
MR C.—I will
not fail you on Friday by six, and Mary,
perhaps, earlier. I very much wish to meet “Master Mathew,” and am much obliged to the G——s for the opportunity. Our kind respects to
them always.—
Elia.
Extract from a MS. note of S. T. C. in my Beaumont and Fletcher, dated April 17th 1807.
Midnight.
“God bless you, dear Charles Lamb, I am dying; I feel I have not many weeks
left.”
Note
[Master Mathew is in Ben Jonson’s “Every Man in His Humour.”
Lamb’s “Beaumont and
Fletcher,” is in the British Museum. The note quoted by
Lamb is not there, or perhaps it is one that has been crossed out.
This still remains: “N.B. I shall not be long here, Charles!
I gone, you will not mind my having spoiled a book in order to leave a Relic. S. T. C., Oct. 1811.”
LETTER 258 CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN
[Dated at end: 2 May, 1821.]
DEAR Sir—You dine so late on Friday, it will be
impossible for us to go home by the eight o’clock stage. Will you oblige
us by securing us beds at some house from which a stage goes to the Bank in the
morning? I would write to Coleridge, but
cannot think of troubling a dying man with such a request.
Yours truly, C. Lamb.
If the beds in the town are all engaged, in consequence
of Mr. Mathews’s appearance, a
hackney-coach will serve.
Wednesy. 2 May ’21.
We shall neither of us come much before the time.
Note
[Mrs. Mathews (who was
half-sister of Fanny Kelly) described this evening
in her Memoirs
of her husband, 1839. Her account of Lamb is
interesting:—
Mr. Lamb’s first approach was not
prepossessing. His figure was small and mean; and no man certainly was ever less beholden
to his tailor. His “bran” new suit of black cloth (in which he affected several
times during the day to take great pride, and to cherish as a novelty that he had long
looked for and wanted) was drolly contrasted with his very rusty silk stockings, shown from
his knees, and his much too large thick shoes, without polish. His
shirt rejoiced in a wide ill-plaited frill, and his very small, tight, white neckcloth was
hemmed to a fine point at the ends that formed part of the little bow. His hair was black
and sleek, but not formal, and his face the gravest I ever saw, but indicating great
intellect, and resembling very much the portraits of King Charles
I. Mr. Coleridge was very anxious
about his petLamb’s first impression
upon my husband, which I believe his friend saw; and
guessing that he had been extolled, he mischievously resolved to thwart his panegyrist,
disappoint the strangers, and altogether to upset the suspected plan of showing him off.
The Mathews’ were then living at Ivy Cottage,
only a short distance from the Grove, Highgate, where the famous Mathews collection of pictures was to be seen of which
Lamb subsequently wrote in the London Magazine.]
LETTER 259 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN PAYNE COLLIER
May 16, 1821.
DEAR J. P.
C.,—Many thanks for the “Decameron:” I have not such a
gentleman’s book in my collection: it was a great treat to me, and I got
it just as I was wanting something of the sort. I take less pleasure in books
than heretofore, but I like books about books. In the second volume, in
particular, are treasures—your discoveries about “Twelfth Night,” etc. What a
Shakespearian essence that speech of Osrades for food!—Shakespeare is coarse to it—beginning “Forbear and eat
no more.” Osrades warms up to
that, but does not set out ruffian-swaggerer. The character of the Ass with
those three lines, worthy to be set in gilt vellum, and worn in frontlets by
the noble beasts for ever— “Thou would, perhaps, he should become thy foe, And to that end dost beat him many times: He cares not for himself, much less thy blow.” Cervantes, Sterne, and Coleridge,
have said positively nothing for asses compared with this.
I write in haste; but p. 24, vol. i., the line you cannot
appropriate is Gray’ssonnet, specimenifyed by
Wordsworth in first preface to L. B., as mixed of bad and
good style: p. 143, 2nd vol., you will find last poem but one of the collection
on Sidney’s death in Spenser, the line, “Scipio,
Cæsar, Petrarch of our time.” This fixes it to be Raleigh’s: I had guess’d it to be Daniel’s. The last after it,
“Silence augmenteth rage,” I will be crucified if it be
not Lord Brooke’s. Hang you, and all
meddling researchers, hereafter, that by raking into learned dust may find me
out wrong in my conjecture!
Dear J. P. C., I
shall take the first opportunity of personally thanking you for my
entertainment. We are at Dalston for the most
part, but I fully hope for an evening soon with you in Russell or Bouverie
Street, to talk over old times and books. Remember us kindly to Mrs. J. P. C.
Yours very kindly, Charles Lamb.
I write in misery.
N.B.—The best pen I could borrow at our
butcher’s: the ink, I verily believe, came out of the kennel.
Note
[Collier’sPoetical
Decameron, in two volumes, was published in 1820: a series of imaginary
conversations on curious and little-known books. His “Twelfth Night”
discoveries will be found in the Eighth Conversation; Collier deduces
the play from Barnaby Rich’sFarewell to Military
Profession, 1606. He also describes Thomas
Lodge’s “Rosalynde,” the forerunner of “As You Like It,” in which is the character
Rosader, whom Lamb calls Osrades. His speech for food
runs thus:—
It hapned that day that Gerismond, the lawfull king of France banished by Torismond, who with a lustie crew of outlawes lined in that Forrest, that
day in honour of his birth, made a feast to all his bolde yeomen, and frolickt it with
store of wine and venison, sitting all at a long table vnder the shadow of Limon trees: to
that place by chance fortune conducted Rosader, who
seeing such a crew of braue men, hauing store of that for want of which hee and Adam perished, hee stept boldly to the boords end, and
saluted the Company thus.—Whatsoeuer thou be that art maister of these lustie squires, I
salute thee as graciously as a man in extreame distresse may: knowe that I and a fellow
friend of mine, are here famished in the forrest for want of foode: perish we must, vnlesse
relieued by thy fauours. Therefore if thou be a Gentleman, giue meate to men, and such as
are euery way worthie of life: let the proudest Squire that sits at thy table rise and
encounter with me in any honourable point of activitie whatsoeuer, and if he and thou proue
me not a man, send mee away comfortlesse: if thou refuse this, as a niggard of thy cates, I
will haue amongst you with my sword, for rather wil I die valiantly, then perish with so
cowardly an extreame (Collier’sPoetical
Decameron, 174, Eighth Conversation).
Lamb compares with that the passage in “As You Like It,” II., 7, 88,
beginning with Orlando’s “Forbear, and
eat no more.”
The character of the ass is quoted by Collier from an old book, The Noblenesse of the
Asse, 1595, in the Third Conversation:— Thou wouldst (perhaps) he should become thy foe, And to that end doost beat him many times; He cares not for himselfe, much lesse thy blowe. Lamb wrote more fully of this passage in an article
on the ass contributed to Hone’sEvery-Day Book in
1825 (see Vol. I. of the present edition, page 303).
The line from Gray’s sonnet
on the death of Mr. Richard West was
this:— And weep the more because I weep in vain.
“Scipio,
Cæsar,” etc. This line runs, in the epitaph on Sidney, beginning “To praise thy life”— Scipio, Cicero, and Petrarch of
our time! It is generally supposed to be by Raleigh. The
next poem, “Silence Augmenteth Grief,” is attributed by Malone to Sir Edward
Dyer, and by Hannah to
Raleigh.]
LETTER 260 CHARLES LAMB TO B. W. PROCTER
[No date. ? Summer, 1821.]
DEAR Sir, The Wits (as
Clare calls us) assemble at my Cell
(20 Russell St. Cov.-Gar.) this evening at ¼ before 7. Cold meat at 9. Puns
at—a little after. Mr. Cary wants to see
you, to scold you. I hope you will not fail.
Yours &c. &c. &c. C. Lamb. Thursday.
I am sorry the London Magazine is going to be given up.
Note
[I assume the date of this note to be summer, 1821, because it was then
that Baldwin, Cradock & Joy, the London Magazine’s
first publishers, gave it up. The reason was the death of John
Scott, the editor, and probably to a large extent the originator, of the
magazine. It was sold to Taylor & Hessey, their first number being dated July, 1821.
Scott had become involved in a quarrel with Blackwood, which reached
such a pitch that a duel was fought, between Scott and Christie, a friend of Lockhart’s. The whole story, which is involved, and indeed not wholly
clear, need not be told here: it will be found in Mr.
Lang’smemoir of
Lockhart. The meeting was held at Chalk Farm on February 16,1821. Peter George Patmore, sub-editor of the London, was
Scott’s second. Scott fell, wounded by
a shot which Christie fired purely in self-defence. He died on
February 27.
Mr. Cary. Henry Francis Cary the
translator of Dante and a contributor to the London Magazine.
The London Magazine had four periods. From 1820 to the middle of 1821,
when it was Baldwin, Cradock & Joy’s. From 1821
to the end of 1824, when it was Taylor &
Hessey’s at a shilling. From January,
1825, to August of that year, when it was Taylor &
Hessey’s at half-a-crown; and from September, 1825, to the
end, when it was Henry Southern’s, and was
published by Hunt & Clarke.]
LETTER 261 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN TAYLOR
Margate, June 8, 1821.
DEAR Sir,—I am extremely sorry to be obliged to
decline the article proposed, as I should have been flattered with a Plate
accompanying it. In the first place, Midsummer day is not a topic I could make
anything of—I am so pure a Cockney, and little read, besides, in May games and
antiquities; and, in the second, I am here at Margate, spoiling my holydays
with a Review I have undertaken for a friend, which I shall barely get through
before my return; for that sort of work is a hard task to me. If you will
excuse the shortness of my first contribution—and I know
I can promise nothing more for July—I will endeavour a longer article for our next. Will you permit me to say that I think
Leigh Hunt would do the article you
propose in a masterly manner, if he has not outwrit himself already upon the
subject. I do not return the proof—to save postage—because it is correct, with
one exception. In the stanza from Wordsworth, you have changed day into air for
rhyme-sake: day is the right reading, and I implore you to restore it.
The other passage, which you have queried, is to my ear
correct. Pray let it stand.
Dr Sr, yours truly, C. Lamb.
On second consideration, I do enclose the proof.
Note
[John Taylor (1781-1864), the
publisher, with Hessey, of the London Magazine was, in 1813, the first
publicly to identify Sir Philip Francis with
Junius. Taylor acted as
editor of the LondonMagazine from 1821 to 1824, assisted by Thomas Hood. Later his interests were centred in currency
questions.
“I am here at Margate.” I do not know what review
Lamb was writing. If written and published it has
not been reprinted. It was on this visit to Margate that Lamb met
Charles Cowden Clarke.
“My first contribution.” The first number to bear
Taylor & Hessey’s name was dated July, but they had presumably acquired the
rights in the magazine before then. Lamb’s first contribution to the London Magazine had been in
August, 1820, “The South-Sea
House.”
The proof which Lamb returned was
that of the Elia
essay on “Mackery End in
Hertfordshire,” printed in the July number of the London Magazine, in which he quoted a
stanza from Wordsworth’s “Yarrow Visited”:— But thou, that didst appear so fair To fond imagination, Dost rival in the light of day Her delicate creation.
Here should come a scrap from Lamb
to Ayrton, dated July 17, 1821, referring to the
Coronation. Lamb says that in consequence of this event he is
postponing his Wednesday evening to Friday.]
LETTER 262 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN TAYLOR
July 21, 1821.
DR Sir,—The Lond. Mag. is chiefly pleasant to me, because
some of my friends write in it. I hope Hazlitt intends to go on with it, we cannot spare Table Talk. For myself I feel
almost exhausted, but I will try my hand a little longer, and shall not at all
events be written out of it by newspaper paragraphs. Your proofs do not seem to
want my helping hand, they are quite correct always. For God’s sake
change Sisera to Jael. This last paper will be a
choke-pear I fear to some people, but as you do not object to it, I can be
under little apprehension of your exerting your Censorship too rigidly.
Thanking you for your extract from Mr. E.’s letter,
I remain, Dr Sir, Your obliged, C. Lamb.
Note
[Hazlitt continued his Table Talk in the London Magazine until December, 1821.
Lamb seems to have been treated foolishly by some
newspaper critic; but I have not traced the paragraphs in question.
The proof was that of the Elia essay “Imperfect Sympathies,” which was printed (with
a fuller title) in the number for August, 1821. The reference to Jael
is in the passage on Braham and the Jewish
character.
I do not identify Mr. E. Possibly Elton.
Here should come a further letter to Taylor, dated July 30, 1821, not available for this edition, in which
Lamb refers to some verses addressed to him by
“Olen” (Charles Abraham
Elton: see note to Letter 333) in the London Magazine for August, remonstrating with him for
the pessimism of the Elia essay “New
Year’s Eve” (see Vol. II. of this edition, page 328).
Lamb also remarks that he borrowed the name Elia
(pronounced Ellia) from an old South-Sea House clerk who is now dead.]
LETTER 263 CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE
[Summer, 1821.]
MY dear Sir—Your letter has lain in a drawer of my
desk, upbraiding me every time I open the said drawer, but it is almost
impossible to answer such a letter in such a place, and I am out of the habit
of replying to epistles otherwhere than at office. You express yourself
concerning H. like a true friend, and have
made me feel that I have somehow neglected him, but without knowing very well
how to rectify it. I live so remote from him—by Hackney—that he is almost out
of the pale of visitation at Hampstead. And I come but seldom to Covt Gardn this summer time—and
when I do, am sure to pay for the late hours and pleasant Novello suppers which I incur. I also am an
invalid. But I will hit upon some way, that you shall not have cause for your
reproof in future. But do not think I take the hint unkindly. When I shall be
brought low by any sickness or untoward circumstance, write just such a letter
to some tardy friend of mine—or come up yourself with your friendly Henshaw
face—and that will be better. I shall not forget in haste our casual day at
Margate. May we have many such there or elsewhere! God bless you for your kindness to
H., which I will remember. But do not show
N. this, for the flouting infidel doth mock when
Christians cry God bless us. Yours and his, too, and all
our little circle’s most affecte.
C. Lamb.
Mary’s love included.
Note
[Charles Cowden Clarke
(1787-1877) was the son of a schoolmaster who had
served as usher with George Dyer at Northampton.
Afterwards he established a school at Enfield, where Keats was one of the scholars. Charles Cowden Clarke,
at this time a bookseller, remained one of Keats’ friends and
was a friend also of Leigh Hunt’s, on whose behalf
he seems to have written to Lamb. Later he became a
partner of Alfred Novello, the musical publisher,
son of Vincent Novello. In 1828 he married Mary Victoria Novello.
“Friendly Henshaw face.” I cannot explain this.
Leigh Hunt left England for Italy in November, 1821, to
join Shelley and Byron.]
LETTER 264 MARY LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAM AYRTON
[No date. ? 1821.] Thursday Morning.
MY dear friend, The kind interest you took in my
perplexities of yesterday makes me feel that you will be well pleased to hear I
got through my complicated business far better than I had ventured to hope I
should do. In the first place let me thank you, my good friend, for your good
advice; for, had I not gone to Martin
first he would have sent a senseless letter to Mr.
Rickman, and now he is coming here to-day in order to frame one
in conjunction with my brother.
What will be Mr.
Rickman’s final determination I know not, but he and
Mrs. Rickman both gave me a most
kind reception, and a most patient hearing, and then Mr.
R. walked with me as far as Bishopsgate Street, conversing the
whole way on the same unhappy subject. I will see you again the very first
opportunity till when farewel with grateful thanks.
How senseless I was not to make you go back in that empty
coach. I never have but one idea in my poor head at a time.
Yours affectionately M. Lamb. atMr. Coston’sNo. 14 Kingsland Row Dalston.
Note
[The explanation of this letter is found in an entry in Crabb Robinson’sDiary, the
unpublished portion, which tells us that owing to certain irregularities Rickman, who was Clerk Assistant at the table of the House
of Commons, had been obliged to discharge Martin
Burney, who was one of his clerks.
Here should come another scrap from Lamb to Ayrton, dated August 14,
stating that at to-morrow’s rubber the windows will be closed on account of Her
Majesty’s death. Her Majesty was Queen
Caroline, whom Lamb had championed. She died on August 7.
Here should come an unavailable letter from Lamb to Allsop, dated October 19,
1821. In it Lamb thanks Allsop for a hare, which had come as from Mr. Talfourd. Lamb decides to divide
his gratitude between Allsop and Talfourd.
Mary Lamb, he says, has been and is ill. They are
at Dalston. The subscription is Piscatorum Amicus, C.
L.]
LETTER 265 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM AYRTON
[Oct. 27, 1821.]
I COME, Grimalkin! Dalston, near Hackney, 27th
Octr. One thousand 8 hundred and twenty one years
and a wee-bit since you and I were redeemed. I doubt if you are done properly
yet.
Note
[A further letter to Ayrton,
dated from Dalston, October 30, is printed by Mr.
Macdonald, in which Lamb speaks of his
sister’s illness and the death of his brother
John, who died on October 26, aged fifty-eight. It is reasonable to suppose
that Lamb, when the above note was written, was unaware of his
brother’s death (see note to Letter 267 on page 564). On October 26, however, he had
written to the editor of the London
Magazine saying that he was most uncomfortably situated at home and
expecting some trouble which might prevent further writing for some time—which may have
been an allusion to his brother’s illness or to signs of Mary Lamb’s approaching malady.
Here should come a note to William
Hone, printed by Mr. Macdonald,
evidently in reply to a comment on Lamb’s essay on “Saying Grace.” Also a letter to Rickman. See Appendix II., page 974.]
LETTER 266 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
March 9th, 1822.
DEAR C.,—It
gives me great satisfaction to hear that the pig turned out so well—they are
interesting creatures at a certain age—what a pity such buds should blow out
into the maturity of rank bacon! You had all some of the crackling—and brain
sauce—did you remember to rub it with butter, and gently dredge it a little,
just before the crisis? Did the eyes come away kindly with no Œdipean avulsion?
Was the crackling the colour of the ripe pomegranate? Had you no complement of
boiled neck of mutton before it, to blunt the edge of delicate desire? Did you
flesh maiden teeth in it? Not that I sent the pig, or can form the remotest
guess what part Owen could play in the business. I never
knew him give anything away in my life. He would not begin with strangers. I
suspect the pig, after all, was meant for me; but at the unlucky juncture of
time being absent, the present somehow went round to Highgate. To confess an
honest truth, a pig is one of those things I could never think of sending away.
Teals, wigeons, snipes, barn-door fowl, ducks, geese—your tame villatic
things—Welsh mutton, collars of brawn, sturgeon, fresh or pickled, your potted
char, Swiss cheeses, French pies, early grapes, muscadines, I impart as freely
unto my friends as to myself. They are but self-extended; but pardon me if I
stop somewhere—where the fine feeling of benevolence giveth a higher smack than
the sensual rarity—there my friends (or any good man) may command me; but pigs
are pigs, and I myself therein am nearest to myself. Nay, I should think it an
affront, an undervaluing done to Nature who bestowed such a boon upon me, if in
a churlish mood I parted with the precious gift. One of the bitterest pangs of
remorse I ever felt was when a child—when my kind old aunt had strained her
pocket-strings to bestow a sixpenny whole plum-cake upon me. In my way home
through the Borough, I met a venerable old man, not a mendicant, but
thereabouts—a look-beggar, not a verbal petitionist; and in the coxcombry of
taught-charity I gave away the cake to him. I walked on a little in all the
pride of an Evangelical peacock, when of a sudden my old aunt’s kindness
crossed me—the sum it was to her—the pleasure she had a right to expect that
I—not the old impostor—should take in eating her cake—the cursed ingratitude by
which, under the colour of a Christian virtue, I had frustrated her cherished purpose. I sobbed, wept, and
took it to heart so grievously, that I think I never suffered the like—and I
was right. It was a piece of unfeeling hypocrisy, and proved a lesson to me
ever after. The cake has long been masticated, consigned to dunghill with the
ashes of that unseasonable pauper.
But when Providence, who is better to us all than our aunts,
gives me a pig, remembering my temptation and my fall, I shall endeavour to act
towards it more in the spirit of the donor’s purpose.
Yours (short of pig) to command in everything.
C. L.
Note
[This letter probably led to the immediate composition of the Elia essay
“A Dissertation on Roast
Pig” (see Vol. II. of the present edition, page 120), which was printed in
the London Magazine for
September, 1822. See also “Thoughts on
Presents of Game,” Vol. I. of this edition, page 343.
“Œdipean avulsion.” Œdipus, King of Thebes, in a passion of grief put out his eyes.
“Owen.” Lamb’s landlord in Russell Street.
“Tame villatic things”—Samson Agonistes, 1695,
“tame villatic fowl.” Villatic means belonging to a village.
“My kind old aunt . . . the Borough.” This is rather
perplexing. Lamb, to the best of our knowledge, never
as a child lived anywhere but in the Temple. His only aunt of whom we know anything lived
with the family also in the Temple. But John
Lamb’s will proves Lamb to have had two aunts.
The reference to the Borough suggests therefore that the aunt in question was not Sarah Lamb (Aunt Hetty) but her
sister.]
LETTER 267 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
20th March, 1822.
MY dear Wordsworth—A letter from you is very grateful, I have not seen
a Kendal postmark so long! We are pretty well save colds and rheumatics, and a
certain deadness to every thing, which I think I may date from poor John’s Loss, and another accident or two
at the same time, that has made me almost bury myself at Dalston, where yet I
see more faces than I could wish. Deaths over-set one and put one out long
after the recent grief. Two or
three have died within this last two twelvemths., and
so many parts of me have been numbed. One sees a picture, reads an anecdote,
starts a casual fancy, and thinks to tell of it to this person in preference to
every other—the person is gone whom it would have peculiarly suited. It
won’t do for another. Every departure destroys a class of sympathies.
There’s Capt. Burney gone!—what
fun has whist now? what matters it what you lead, if you can no longer fancy
him looking over you? One never hears any thing, but the image of the
particular person occurs with whom alone almost you would care to share the
intelligence. Thus one distributes oneself about—and now for so many parts of
me I have lost the market. Common natures do not suffice me. Good people, as
they are called, won’t serve. I want individuals. I am made up of queer
points and I want so many answering needles. The going away of friends does not
make the remainder more precious. It takes so much from them as there was a
common link. A. B. and C. make a party. A. dies. B. not only loses A. but all
A.’s part in C. C. loses A.’s part in B., and so the alphabet
sickens by subtraction of interchangeables. I express myself muddily,
capite dolente. I have a dulling cold. My theory is to
enjoy life, but the practice is against it. I grow ominously tired of official
confinement. Thirty years have I served the Philistines, and my neck is not
subdued to the yoke. You don’t know how wearisome it is to breathe the
air of four pent walls without relief day after day, all the golden hours of
the day between 10 and 4 without ease or interposition. Tædet me harum
quotidianarum formarum, these pestilential clerk faces always in
one’s dish. O for a few years between the grave and the desk! they are
the same, save that at the latter you are outside the machine. The foul
enchanter—letters four do form his name—Busirane is his name in hell—that has curtailed you of some
domestic comforts, hath laid a heavier hand on me, not in present infliction,
but in taking away the hope of enfranchisement. I dare not whisper to myself a
Pension on this side of absolute incapacitation and infirmity, till years have
sucked me dry. Otium cum indignitate. I had thought in a
green old age (O green thought!) to have retired to Pender’s
End—emblematic name how beautiful! in the Ware road, there to have made up my
accounts with Heaven and the Company, toddling about between it and Cheshunt,
anon stretching on some fine Izaac
Walton morning to Hoddesdon or Amwell, careless as a Beggar, but
walking, walking ever, till I fairly walkd myself off my legs, dying walking!
The hope is gone. I sit like Philomel all day (but not singing) with my breast against this
thorn of a Desk, with the only hope that some Pulmonary affliction may relieve
me. Vide Lord Palmerston’s report of
the Clerks in the war office (Debates, this
morning’s Times) by which it
appears in 20 years, as many Clerks have been coughd and catarrhd out of it
into their freer graves.
Thank you for asking about the Pictures. Milton hangs over my fire side in Covt. Gard.
(when I am there), the rest have been sold for an old song, wanting the
eloquent tongue that should have set them off!
You have gratifyd me with liking my meeting with Dodd. For the Malvolio story—the thing is become in verity a sad task and I
eke it out with any thing. If I could slip out of it I shd be happy, but our chief reputed assistants have forsaken us. The
opium eater crossed us once with a
dazzling path, and hath as suddenly left us darkling; and in short I shall go
on from dull to worse, because I cannot resist the Bookseller’s
importunity—the old plea you know of authors, but I believe on my part sincere.
Hartley I do not so often see, but I
never see him in unwelcome hour. I thoroughly love and honor him.
I send you a frozen Epistle, but it is winter and dead time
of the year with me. May heaven keep something like spring and summer up with
you, strengthen your eyes and make mine a little lighter to encounter with
them, as I hope they shall yet and again, before all are closed. Yours, with
every kind rembe.
C. L.
I had almost forgot to say, I think you thoroughly right
about presentation copies. I should like to see you print a book I should
grudge to purchase for its size. D——n me, but I would have it though!
Note
[John Lamb’s will left
everything to his brother. We must suppose that his widow was independently provided for. I
doubt if the brothers had seen each other except casually for some time. The Elia essay
“My Relations”
contains John Lamb’s full-length portrait under the name of
James Elia.
Captain Burney died on November 17, 1821.
“Capite
dolente”—“With an aching head.”
“Tædet me harwm quotidianarwm
formarum.” See note on page 32.
“The foul enchanter—letters four do form his name.”
From Coleridge’s war eclogue, “Fire, Famine and Slaughter,” where the
letters form the name of Pitt. Here they stand for
Joseph Hume, not Lamb’s
friend, but Joseph Hume, M.P.
(1777-1855), who had attacked with success abuses in the East India Company; had revised
economically the system of collecting the revenue, thus touching Wordsworth as Distributor of Stamps; and had opposed
Vansittart’s scheme for the reduction of
pension charges. Busirane is the enchanter in the Fairy Queen, Book
III.
“Otium cum
indignitate.” See note on page 479.
“Vide Lord Palmerston’s
report.” In the Times of March 21 is the report of a debate on the estimates. Palmerston proved a certain amount of reduction of salary in
the War Office. Incidentally he remarked that “since 1810 not fewer than
twenty-six clerks had died of pulmonary complaints, and disorders arising from
sedentary habits.”
Milton was the portrait, already described (see page
457), which had been left to Lamb.
Lamb gave it as a dowry to Emma
Isola when she became Mrs. Moxon.
“My meeting with Dodd . .
. Malvolio story.” In the essay
“The Old Actors,” in
the London Magazine for
February, 1822 (see Vol. II. of this edition, page 136).
“Our chief reputed assistants.” Hazlitt had left the London Magazine; Scott, the original editor, was dead.
De Quincey, whose Confessions of an
Opium-Eater were appearing in its pages, has left a record of a visit to
the Lambs about this time. See his “London Reminiscences.”
“Hartley.” Hartley Coleridge, then a young man of twenty-five, was living in London
after the unhappy sudden termination of his Oxford career.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to William Godwin, dated April
13, in which Lamb remarks that he cannot think how
Godwin, who in his writings never expresses himself
disrespectfully of any one but his Maker, can have given offence to Rickman. This reminds one of
Godwin’s remark about Coleridge, “God bless him—to use a vulgar expression,” as
recorded by Coleridge in one of his letters.]
LETTER 268 CHARLES LAMB TO W. HARRISON AINSWORTH
[Dated at end: May 7, 1822.]
DEAR Sir,—I have read your poetry with pleasure. The
tales are pretty and prettily told, the language often finely poetical. It is
only sometimes a little careless, I mean as to redundancy. I have marked
certain passages (in pencil only, which will easily obliterate) for your
consideration. Excuse this liberty. For the distinction you offer me of a
dedication, I feel the honor of it, but I do not think it would advantage the
publication. I am hardly on an eminence enough to warrant it. The Reviewers,
who are no friends of mine—the two big ones especially who make a point of taking no notice of anything I bring
out—may take occasion by it to decry us both. But I leave you to your own
judgment. Perhaps, if you wish to give me a kind word, it will be more
appropriate before your republication ofTourneur.
The “Specimens” would give a handle to it, which the poems might
seem to want. But I submit it to yourself with the old recollection that
“beggars should not be chusers” and remain with great
respect and wishing success to both your publications
Your obet. Sert. C. Lamb.
No hurry at all for Tourneur.
Tuesday 7 May ’22.
Note
[William Harrison Ainsworth
(1805-1882), afterwards known as a novelist, was then articled to a Manchester solicitor,
but had begun his literary career. The book to which Lamb refers was called The Works of Cheviot
Tichburn, 1822, and was dedicated to him in the following terms:— TO MY FRIEND CHARLES LAMB,AS A SLIGHT MARKOFGRATITUDE FOR HIS KINDNESSANDADMIRATION OF HIS CHARACTER,THESE POEMS ARE INSCRIBED.
Ainsworth was meditating an edition of the works of
Cyril Tourneur, author of “The Atheist’s Tragedy,” to
whom Lamb had drawn attention in the Dramatic
Specimens, 1808. The book was never published.]
LETTER 269 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
May 16, 1822.
DEAR Godwin—I
sincerely feel for all your trouble. Pray use the enclosed £50, and pay me when
you can. I shall make it my business to see you very shortly.
Yours truly C. Lamb.
Note
[Owing largely to a flaw in the title-deed of his house at 41 Skinner
Street, which he had to forfeit, Godwin had come
upon poverty greater than any he had previously suffered, although he had been always more
or less necessitous. Lamb now lent him £50. In the
following year, after being mainly instrumental in putting on foot a fund for
Godwin’s benefit, he transformed this loan into a gift. An
appeal was issued in 1823 asking for £600, the following postscript to which, in
Lamb’s hand, is preserved at the South Kensington Museum:—
“There are few circumstances belonging to the case which are not
sufficiently adverted to in the above letter.
“Mr. Godwin’s
opponent declares himself determined to act against him with the last degree of
hostility: the law gives him the power the first week in November to seize upon
Mr. Godwin’s property, furniture, books, &c.
together with all his present sources of income for the support of himself and his
family. Mr. Godwin has at this time made considerable progress in
a work of great research, and requiring all the powers of his mind, to the completion
of which he had lookd for future pecuniary advantage. His mind is at this moment so
entirely occupied in this work, that he feels within himself the firmness and
resolution that no prospect of evil or calamity shall draw him
off from it or suspend his labours. But the calamity itself, if
permitted to arrive, will produce the physical impossibility for him to proceed. His
books and the materials of his work, as well as his present sources of income, will be
taken from him. Those materials have been the collection of several years, and it would
require a long time to replace them, if they could ever be replaced.
“The favour of an early answer is particularly requested, that
the extent of the funds supplied may as soon as possible be ascertained, particularly
as any aid, however kindly intended, will, after the lapse of a very few weeks, become
useless to the purpose in view.”
The signatories to the appeal were: Crabb
Robinson (£30), William Ayrton (£10),
John Murray (£10 10s.), Charles Lamb (£50), Lord Francis
Leveson-Gower (£10), Lord Dudley (£50),
the Hon. W. Lamb (£20) and Sir James Mackintosh (£10). Other contributions were: Lord Byron, £26 5s.; T. M.
Alsager, £10; and “A B C, by Charles Lamb,”
£10. A B C was Sir Walter Scott.
The work on which Godwin was then
labouring was his History of the
Commonwealth, 1824-1828. His new home was in the Strand. In 1833 he received the
post of Yeoman Usher of the Exchequer, which he held till his death in 1836, although its
duties had vanished ere then.]
LETTER 270 CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. JOHN LAMB
22 May 1822.
DEAR Mrs.
Lamb, A letter has come to Arnold for
Mrs. Phillips, and, as I have not her address, I take
this method of sending it to you. That old rogue’s name is
Sherwood, as you guessed, but as I named the shirts to
him, I think he must have them. Your character of him made me almost repent of
the bounty.
You must consider this letter as Mary’s—for writing letters is such a trouble and puts her
to such twitters (family modesty, you know; it is the way with me, but I try to
get over it) that in pity I offer to do it for her.—
We hold our intention of seeing France, but expect to see
you here first, as we do not go till the 20th of next month. A steam boat goes
to Dieppe, I see.—
Christie has not sent to me, and I suppose is in no hurry
to settle the account. I think in a day or two (if I do not hear from you to
the contrary) I shall refresh his memory.
I am sorry I made you pay for two Letters. I Peated it, and
re-peated it.
Miss Wright is married, and I am a hamper in her debt,
which I hope will now not be remembered. She is in great good humour, I hear,
and yet out of spirits.
Where shall I get such full flavor’d Geneva again?
Old Mr. Henshaw died last night
precisely at ½ past 11.—He has been open’d by desire of Mrs.
McKenna; and, where his heart should have been, was found a
stone. Poor Arnold is inconsolable; and, not having shaved
since, looks deplorable.
With our kind remembces. to
Caroline and your friends
We remain yours affectionaly
C. L. and M. Lamb.
[Occupying the entire margin up the
left-hand side of the letter is, in Mary
Lamb’s hand:—]
I thank you for your kind letter, and owe you one in
return, but Charles is in such a
hurry to send this to be franked.
Your affecate sister M. Lamb.
[On the right-hand margin, beside the paragraph about
Mr. Henshaw, is written in the same hand,
underlined:—]
He is not dead.
Note
[John Lamb’s widow had been a
Mrs. Dowden, with an unmarried daughter, probably the Caroline
referred to. The letter treats of family matters which could not now be explained even if
it were worth while. The Lambs were arranging a visit to Versailles,
to the Kenneys. Mr. Henshaw was
Lamb’s godfather, a gunsmith.]
LETTER 271 (Fragment) CHARLES LAMB TO MARY LAMB (in Paris).
[August, 1822.]
THEN you must walk all along the Borough side of the
Seine facing the Tuileries. There is a mile and a half of print shops and book
stalls. If the latter were but English. Then there is a place where the Paris
people put all their dead people and bring em flowers and dolls and ginger
bread nuts and sonnets and such trifles. And that is all I think worth seeing
as sights, except that the streets and shops of Paris are themselves the best
sight.
Note
[The Lambs had left England for France in June.
While they were there Mary Lamb was taken ill
again—in a diligence, according to Moore—and
Lamb had to return home alone, leaving a letter,
of which this is the only portion that has been preserved, for her guidance on her
recovery. Mary Lamb, who had taken her nurse with her in case of
trouble, was soon well again, and in August had the company of Crabb Robinson in Paris. Mrs. Aders
was also there, and Foss, the bookseller in Pall
Mall, and his brother. And it was on this visit that the Lambs met
John Howard Payne, whom we shall shortly see.]
LETTER 272 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN CLARE
India House, 31 Aug., 1822.
DEAR Clare—I
thank you heartily for your present. I am an inverate old Londoner, but while I
am among your choice collections, I seem to be native to them, and free of the
country. The quantity of your observation has
astonished me. What have most pleased me have been Recollections after a Ramble, and those Grongar Hill kind of pieces in eight
syllable lines, my favourite measure, such as Cowper Hill and Solitude. In some of your story-telling Ballads the provincial
phrases sometimes startle me. I think you are too profuse with them. In poetry
slang of every kind is to be avoided. There is a
rustick Cockneyism, as little pleasing as ours of London. Transplant Arcadia to
Helpstone. The true rustic style, the Arcadian English, I think is to be found
in Shenstone. Would his Schoolmistress, the prettiest
of poems, have been better, if he had used quite the Goody’s own
language? Now and then a home rusticism is fresh and startling, but where
nothing is gained in expression, it is out of tenor. It may make folks smile
and stare, but the ungenial coalition of barbarous with refined phrases will
prevent you in the end from being so generally tasted, as you deserve to be.
Excuse my freedom, and take the same liberty with my puns.
I send you two little volumes of my spare hours. They are of
all sorts, there is a methodist hymn for Sundays, and a farce for Saturday
night. Pray give them a place on your shelf. Pray accept a little volume, of
which I have [a] duplicate, that I may return in equal number to your welcome
presents.
I think I am indebted to you for a sonnet in the London for August.
Since I saw you I have been in France, and have eaten frogs.
The nicest little rabbity things you ever tasted. Do look about for them. Make
Mrs. Clare pick off the hind
quarters, boil them plain, with parsley and butter. The fore quarters are not
so good. She may let them hop off by themselves.
Yours sincerely, Chas. Lamb.
Note
[John Clare (1798-1864) was the
Northamptonshire poet whom the London
Magazine had introduced to fame. Octavius
Gilchrist had played to him the same part that Capell Lofft had to Bloomfield. His
first volume, Poems
Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, was published in January, 1820;
his next, The Village
Minstrel, in September of the next year. These he had probably sent to
Lamb. Helpstone was
Clare’s birthplace. Lamb’s two little return volumes
were his Works.
The sonnet in the August London Magazine was not signed by
Clare. It runs thus:— TO ELIAELIA, thy reveries and vision’d
themes To Care’s lorn heart a luscious pleasure prove; Wild as the mystery of delightful dreams, Soft as the anguish of remember’d love: Like records of past days their memory dances Mid the cool feelings Manhood’s reason brings, As the unearthly visions of romances Peopled with sweet and uncreated things;— And yet thy themes thy gentle worth enhances! Then wake again thy wild harp’s tenderest strings, Sing on, sweet Bard, let fairy loves again Smile in thy dreams, with angel ecstacies; Bright o’er our souls will break the heavenly strain Through the dull gloom of earth’s realities.
Clare addressed to Lamb a sonnet on his
Dramatic
Specimens which was printed in Hone’sYear Book in 1831.
Here should come a letter from Lamb
to Mrs. James Kenney, dated Sept. 11, 1822, in which
Lamb says that Mary Lamb had
reached home safely from France, and that she failed to smuggle Crabb Robinson’s waistcoat. He adds that the Custom House people
could not comprehend how a waistcoat, marked Henry Robinson, could be
a part of Miss Lamb’s wearing apparel. At the end of the letter
is a charming note to Mrs. Kenney’s little girl, Sophy, whom Lamb calls his dear wife.
He assures her that the few short days of connubial felicity which he passed with her among
the pears and apricots of Versailles were some of the happiest of his life.]
LETTER 273 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
India House, 11 Sept. 1822.
DEAR Sir—You have misapprehended me sadly, if you
suppose that I meant to impute any inconsistency (in your writing poetry) with
your religious profession. I do not remember what I said, but it was spoken
sportively, I am sure. One of my levities, which you are not so used to as my
older friends. I probably was thinking of the light in which your so indulging
yourself would appear to Quakers, and put their objection in my own foolish
mouth. I would eat my words (provided they should be written on not very coarse
paper) rather than I would throw cold water upon your, and my once, harmless
occupation. I have read Napoleon and the rest with delight. I like them for what they are,
and for what they are not. I have sickened on the modern rhodomontade &
Byron-ism, and your plain Quakerish Beauty has captivated me. It is all wholesome
cates, aye, and toothsome too, and withal Quakerish. If I were George Fox, and George Fox
Licenser of the Press, they should have my absolute imprimatur. I hope I have removed the impression.
I am, like you, a prisoner to the desk. I have been chained
to that gally thirty years, a long shot. I have almost grown to the wood. If no
imaginative poet, I am sure I am a figurative one. Do “Friends”
allow puns? verbal equivocations?—they are unjustly
accused of it, and I did my little best in the “imperfect Sympathies” to vindicate
them.
I am very tired of clerking it, but have no remedy. Did you
see a sonnet to this purpose in
the Examiner?— “Who first invented Work—and tied the
free And holy-day rejoycing spirit down To the ever-haunting importunity Of business, in the green fields, and the town— To plough—loom—anvil—spade—&, oh, most sad, To this dry drudgery of the desk’s dead wood? Who but the Being Unblest, alien from good, Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad Task ever plies ’mid rotatory burnings, That round and round incalculably reel— For wrath Divine hath made him like a wheel— In that red realm from whence are no returnings; Where toiling and turmoiling ever and aye He, and his Thoughts, keep pensive worky-day.” C. L. I fancy the sentiment exprest above will be nearly your own, the
expression of it probably would not so well suit with a follower of John Woolman. But I do not know whether
diabolism is a part of your creed, or where indeed to find an exposition of
your creed at all. In feelings and matters not dogmatical, I hope I am half a
Quaker. Believe me, with great respect, yours
C. Lamb.
I shall always be happy to see, or hear from you.—
Note
[This is the first of the letters to Bernard
Barton (1784-1849), a clerk in a bank at Woodbridge, in Suffolk, who was
known as the Quaker poet. Lamb had met him at a London Magazine dinner at 13
Waterloo Place, and had apparently said something about Quakers and poetry which
Barton, on thinking it over, had taken too seriously.
Bernard Barton was already the author of four volumes of poetry,
of which Napoleon and other
Poems was the latest, published in 1822.
Lamb’s essay on “Imperfect Sympathies” had been printed in the
London Magazine for August, 1821. For
John Woolman see note on page 94. The sonnet “Work” had been printed in the Examiner, August 29, 1819.]
LETTER 274 CHARLES LAMB TO BARRON FIELD
Sept. 22, 1822.
MY dear F.,—I
scribble hastily at office. Frank wants
my letter presently. I & sister are just returned from Paris!! We have
eaten frogs. It has been such a treat! You know our monotonous general Tenor.
Frogs are the nicest little delicate things—rabbity-flavoured. Imagine a
Lilliputian rabbit! They fricassee them; but in my mind, drest seethed, plain,
with parsley and butter, would have been the decision of Apicius. Shelley the great Atheist has gone down by water to eternal
fire! Hunt and his young fry are left
stranded at Pisa, to be adopted by the remaining duumvir, Lord Byron—his wife and 6 children & their
maid. What a cargo of Jonases, if they had foundered too! The only use I can
find of friends, is that they do to borrow money of you. Henceforth I will
consort with none but rich rogues. Paris is a glorious picturesque old City.
London looks mean and New to it, as the town of Washington would, seen after
it. But they have no St. Paul’s or Westminster Abbey. The Seine, so much
despised by Cockneys, is exactly the size to run thro’ a magnificent
street; palaces a mile long on one side, lofty Edinbro’ stone (O the
glorious antiques!): houses on the other. The Thames disunites London &
Southwark. I had Talma to supper with
me. He has picked up, as I believe, an authentic portrait of Shakspere. He paid a broker about £40 English
for it. It is painted on the one half of a pair of bellows—a lovely picture,
corresponding with the Folio head. The bellows has old carved wings round it,
and round the visnomy is inscribed, near as I remember, not divided into
rhyme—I found out the rhyme— “Whom have we here, Stuck on this bellows, But the Prince of good fellows, Willy Shakspere?” At top— “O base and coward luck! To be here stuck.—Poins.” At bottom— “Nay! rather a glorious lot is to him assign’d, Who, like the Almighty, rides upon the wind.—Pistol.”
This is all in old carved wooden letters. The countenance
smiling, sweet, and intellectual beyond measure, even as He was immeasurable. It may be a forgery. They laugh
at me and tell me Ireland is in Paris,
and has been putting off a portrait of the Black Prince. How far old wood may
be imitated I cannot say. Ireland was not found out by his parchments, but by
his poetry. I am confident no painter on either side the Channel could have
painted any thing near like the face I saw. Again, would such a painter and
forger have expected £40 for a thing, if authentic, worth £4000? Talma is not in the secret, for he had not
even found out the rhymes in the first inscription. He is coming over with it,
and, my life to Southey’sThalaba, it will gain universal faith.
The letter is wanted, and I am wanted. Imagine the blank
filled up with all kind things.
Our joint hearty remembrances to both of you. Yours as ever,
C. Lamb.
Note
[Frank would be Francis
John Field, Barron Field’s
brother, in the India House.
Shelley was drowned on July 8, 1822.
Talma was Francois Joseph Talma
(1763-1826), the great French tragedian. Lamb,
introduced by John Howard Payne, saw him in
“Regulus,” but not understanding French was but
mildly interested. “Ah,” said Talma in the account
by James Kenney printed in Henry Angelo’sPic Nic, “I was not
very happy to-night; you must see me in ‘Scylla.’” “Incidit in
Scyllam,” said Lamb, “qui vult
vitare Charybdim.” “Ah, you are a rogue; you are a
great rogue,” was Talma’s reply.
Talma had bought a pair of bellows with Shakespeare’s head on it.
Lamb’s belief in the authenticity of this portrait was
misplaced, as the following account from Chambers’ Journal for September 27, 1856, will
show:—
About the latter part of the last century, one Zincke, an artist of little note, but grandson of the celebrated
enameller of that name, manufactured fictitious Shakespeares by
the score. . . . The most famous of Zincke’s productions is
the well-known TalmaShakespeare, which gentle Charles Lamb made a pilgrimage to Paris to see; and when he did see,
knelt down and kissed with idolatrous veneration. Zincke painted
it on a larger panel than was necessary for the size of the picture, and then cut away
the superfluous wood, so as to leave the remainder in the shape of a pair of bellows. .
. . Zincke probably was thinking of “a muse of
fire” when he adopted this strange method of raising the wind; but he made
little by it, for the dealer into whose hands the picture passed, sold it as a
curiosity, not an original portrait, for £5. The buyer, being a person of ingenuity,
and fonder of money than curiosities, fabricated a series of letters to and from
Sir Kenelm Digby, and, passing over to
France, planted—the slang term used among the less honest of the
curiosity-dealing fraternity—the picture and the letters in an old château near Paris.
Of course a confederate managed to discover the plant, in the presence of witnesses,
and great was the excitement that ensued. Sir Kenelm Digby had
been in France in the reign of Charles I., and the
fictitious correspondence proved that the picture was an original, and had been painted by Queen Elizabeth’s command, on the lid of her
favourite pair of bellows!
It really would seem that the more absurd a deception is, the better it succeeds. All
Paris was in delight at possessing an original Shakespeare, while the London amateurs were in despair at such a
treasure being lost to England. The ingenious person soon found a purchaser, and a high
price recompensed him for his trouble. But more remains to be told. The happy purchaser
took his treasure to Ribet, the first Parisian picture-cleaner of
the day, to be cleaned. Ribet set to work; but we may fancy his
surprise as the superficial impasto of Zincke
washed off beneath the sponge, and Shakespeare became a female in
a lofty headgear adorned with blue ribbons.
In a furious passion the purchaser ran to the seller. “Let us talk over the affair
quietly,” said the latter; “I have been cheated as well as you: let us keep
the matter secret; if we let the public know it, all Paris and even London too, will be
laughing at us. I will return you your money, and take back the picture, if you will
employ Ribet to restore it to the same condition as it was in when
you received it.” This fair proposition was acceded to, and
Ribet restored the picture; but as he was a superior artist to
Zincke, he greatly improved it, and this
improvement was attributed to his skill as a cleaner. The secret being kept, and the
picture, improved by cleaning, being again in the market, Talma, the great Tragedian, purchased it at even a higher price than
that given by the first buyer. Talma valued it highly, enclosed it
in a case of morocco and gold, and subsequently refused 1000 Napoleons for it; and even
when at last its whole history was disclosed, he still cherished it as a genuine
memorial of the great bard.
By kind permission of Mr. B. B.
MacGeorge, who now owns both letter and bellows, I am enabled to give a
reproduction of the portrait on the opposite page. See also Lamb’s remarks on page 579.
Ireland was the author of “Vortigern,” the forged play attributed to
Shakespeare (see note on page 5).]
LETTER 275 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
[Autumn, 1822.]
DEAR Payne—A
friend and fellow-clerk of mine, Mr.
White (a good fellow) coming to your parts, I would fain have
accompanied him, but am forced instead to send a part of me, verse and prose,
most of it from 20 to 30 years old, such as I then was, and I am not much
altered.
Paris, which I hardly knew whether I liked when I was in
it, is an object of no small magnitude with me now. I want to be going, to the
Jardin des Plantes (is that right, Louisa?) with you—to Pere de la Chaise, La Morgue, and all the
sentimentalities. How is Talma, and his
(my) dear Shakspeare?
N.B.—My friend White knows Paris thoroughly, and does not want a guide. We
did, and had one. We both join in thanks. Do you remember a Blue-Silk Girl
(English) at the Luxembourg, that did not much
seem to attend to the Pictures, who fell in love with you, and whom I fell in
love with—an inquisitive, prying, curious Beauty—where is she?
Votre Très Humble Serviteur,
Charlois Agneau, aliasC. Lamb.
Guichy is well, and much as usual. He seems blind to
all the distinctions of life, except to those of sex. Remembrance to
Kenny and Poole.
Note
[John Howard Payne (1792-1852)
was born in New York. He began life as an actor in 1809 as Young
Norval in “Douglas,” and made his English début in 1813 in the
same part. For several years he lived either in London or Paris, where among his friends
were Washington Irving and Talma. He wrote a number of plays, and in one of them,
“Clari, or the Maid of
Milan,” is the song “Home, Sweet Home,” with Bishop’s music, on which his immortality rests.
Payne died in Tunis, where he was American Consul, in 1852, and
when in 1883 he was reinterred at Washington, it was as the author of “Home, Sweet Home.” He seems to have been a charming but
ill-starred man, whom to know was to love.
Mr. White was Edward White of
the India House, by whom Lamb probably sent a copy of
the 1818 edition of his Works. Louisa was Louisa Holcroft. Guichy was possibly the Frenchman,
mentioned by Crabb Robinson, with whom the
Lambs had travelled to France. Poole was, I imagine, John Poole, the dramatist, author of burlesque plays in
the London Magazine and
later of “Paul Pry,” which,
it is quite likely, he based on Lamb’s sketch “Tom Pry.”]
LETTER 276 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[Dated at end: 9 October 1822.]
DEAR Sir—I am asham’d not sooner to have
acknowledged your letter and poem. I think the latter very temperate, very
serious and very seasonable. I do not think it will convert the club at Pisa,
neither do I think it will satisfy the bigots on our side the water. Something
like a parody on the song of Ariel would
please them better. Full fathom five the Atheist lies, Of his bones are hell-dice made.— I want time, or fancy, to fill up the rest.
I sincerely sympathise with you on your doleful confinement. Of Time, Health,
and Riches, the first in order is not last in excellence. Riches are chiefly
good, because they give us Time. What a weight of wearisome prison hours have
[I] to look back and forward to, as quite cut out [of] life—and the sting of
the thing is, that for six hours every day I have no business which I could not
contract into two, if they would let me work Task-work. I shall be glad to hear
that your grievance is mitigated.
Shelly I saw once. His voice was the
most obnoxious squeak I ever was tormented with, ten thousand times worse than
the Laureat’s, whose voice is the
worst part about him, except his Laureatcy. Lord
Byron opens upon him on Monday in a Parody (I suppose) of the “Vision of Judgment,” in
which latter the Poet I think did not much show his. To award his Heaven and
his Hell in the presumptuous manner he has done, was a piece of immodesty as
bad as Shelleyism.
I am returning a poor letter. I was formerly a great
Scribbler in that way, but my hand is out of order. If I said my head too, I
should not be very much out, but I will tell no tales of myself. I will
therefore end (after my best thanks, with a hope to see you again some time in
London), begging you to accept this Letteret for a Letter—a Leveret makes a
better present than a grown hare, and short troubles (as the old excuse goes)
are best.
I hear that C. Lloyd
is well, and has returned to his family. I think this will give you pleasure to
hear.
I remain, dear Sir, yours truly
C. Lamb. E. I. H. 9 Oct. 22.
Note
[Barton had just published his
Verses on the
Death of P. B. Shelley, a lament for misapplied genius. The club at
Pisa referred particularly to Byron, Leigh Hunt and Trelawney. Trelawney placed three lines from Ariel’s song in “The Tempest” on Shelley’s monument; but
whether Lamb knew this, or his choice of rival lines is a coincidence, I do not know.
Trelawney chose the lines:— Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. There is no other record of Lamb’s meeting with Shelley, who, by the way, admired Lamb’s
writings warmly, particularly Mrs. Leicester’s School (see Letter 334).
Byron’sVision of Judgment, a burlesque of
Southey’s poem of the same name, was
printed in The Liberal
for 1822.]
LETTER 277 CHARLES LAMB TO B. R. HAYDON
India House, 9th October, 1822.
DEAR Haydon,
Poor Godwin has been turned out of his
house and business in Skinner Street, and if he does not pay two years’
arrears of rent, he will have the whole stock, furniture, &c., of his new
house (in the Strand) seized when term begins. We are trying to raise a
subscription for him. My object in writing this is simply to ask you, if this
is a kind of case which would be likely to interest Mrs. Coutts in his behalf; and who in your opinion is the best
person to speak with her on his behalf. Without the aid of from £300 to £400 by
that time, early in November, he must be ruined. You are the only person I can
think of, of her acquaintance, and can, perhaps, if not yourself, recommend the
person most likely to influence her. Shelley had engaged to clear him of all demands, and he has
gone down to the deep insolvent.
Yours truly, C. Lamb.
Is Sir Walter to be
applied to, and by what channel?
Note
[See note to Letter 269. Mrs. Coutts was probably
Harriot Mellon, the actress, widow of the banker, Thomas Coutts, and afterwards Duchess of St. Albans. She had played the part of the heroine Melesinda in “Mr. H.”]
LETTER 278 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
Thursday [Oct. 22], 1822.
“ALI
Pacha” will do. I sent my sister the first night, not having
been able to go myself, and her report of its effect was most favourable. I saw
it last night—the third night—and it was most satisfactorily received. I have
been sadly disappointed in Talfourd, who
does the critiques in the “Times,” and who promised his strenuous services; but by some
damn’d arrangement he was sent to the wrong house, and a most iniquitous
account of Ali substituted for his, which I am sure
would have been a kind one. The “Morning Herald” did it ample justice, without ap-pearing to puff
it. It is an abominable misrepresentation of the “Times,” that Farren
played Ali like Lord Ogilby. He acted infirmity of body, but not of voice or
purpose. His manner was even grand. A grand old gentleman. His falling to the
earth when his son’s death was announced was fine as anything I ever saw.
It was as if he had been blasted. Miss
Foote looked helpless and beautiful, and greatly helped the
piece. It is going on steadily, I am sure, for many
nights. Marry, I was a little disappointed with
Hassan, who tells us he subsists by cracking court
jests before Hali, but he made none. In all
the rest, scenery and machinery, it was faultless. I hope it will bring you
here. I should be most glad of that. I have a room for you, and you shall order
your own dinner three days in the week. I must retain my own authority for the
rest. As far as magazines go, I can answer for Talfourd in
the “New Monthly.” He
cannot be put out there. But it is established as a favourite, and can do
without these expletives. I long to talk over with you the Shakspeare Picture. My doubts of its being a
forgery mainly rest upon the goodness of the picture. The bellows might be
trumped up, but where did the painter spring from? Is Ireland a consummate artist—or any of
Ireland’s accomplices?—but we shall confer upon
it, I hope. The “New
Times,” I understand was favorable to “Ali,” but I have not seen it. I am sensible of the want of
method in this letter, but I have been deprived of the connecting organ, by a
practice I have fallen into since I left Paris, of taking too much strong
spirits of a night. I must return to the Hotel de l’Europe and Macon.
How is Kenney? Have
you seen my friend White? What is
Poole about, &c.? Do not write,
but come and answer me.
The weather is charming, and there is a mermaid to be seen
in London. You may not have the opportunity of inspecting such a Poisarde once again in ten centuries.
My sister joins me in the hope of seeing you.
Yours truly, C. Lamb.
Note
[Lamb had met John Howard Payne,
the American dramatist, at Kenney’s, in France
(see note on page 576). “Ali
Pacha,” a melodrama in two acts, was produced at Covent Garden on October 19,
1822. It ran altogether sixteen nights. William
Farren played the hero. Lord Ogleby, an
antiquated fop, is a character in “The Clandestine Marriage” by Colman and Garrick. Miss Foote played Helena. See also notes to the letter on page 576 for other references.]
LETTERS 279 AND 280 CHARLES LAMB TO B. R. HAYDON
Tuesday, 29th [October, 1822].
DEAR H., I
have written a very respectful letter to Sir W.
S. Godwin did not write,
because he leaves all to his committee, as I will explain to you. If this
rascally weather holds, you will see but one of us on that day.
Yours, with many thanks, C. Lamb.
CHARLES LAMB TO SIR WALTER SCOTT
East India House, London, 29th October 1822.
DEAR Sir,—I have to acknowledge your kind attention
to my application to Mr. Haydon. I have
transmitted your draft to Mr.
G[odwin]’s committee as an anonymous contribution through
me. Mr. Haydon desires his thanks and best respects to
you, but was desirous that I should write to you on this occasion. I cannot
pass over your kind expressions as to myself. It is not likely that I shall
ever find myself in Scotland, but should the event ever happen, I should be
proud to pay my respects to you in your own land. My disparagement of heaths
and highlands—if I said any such thing in half earnest,—you must put down as a
piece of the old Vulpine policy. I must make the most of the spot I am chained
to, and console myself for my flat destiny as well as I am able. I know very
well our mole-hills are not mountains, but I must cocker them up and make them
look as big and as handsome as I can, that we may both be satisfied. Allow me
to express the pleasure I feel on an occasion given me of writing to you, and
to subscribe myself, dear sir, your obliged and respectful servant,
Charles Lamb.
Note
[See note to Letter 269, on page 567. Lamb and Scott never met. Talfourd, however, tells us that “he used to
speak with gratitude and pleasure of the circumstances under which he saw him once in
Fleet-street. A man, in the dress of a mechanic, stopped him just at Inner Temple-gate,
and said, touching his hat, ‘I beg your pardon, sir, but perhaps you would like
to see Sir Walter Scott; that is he just crossing the road;’
and Lamb stammered out his hearty thanks to his truly humane
informer.”
Mr. Lang has recently discovered that also in 1818 or
thereabouts Sir Walter invited Lamb
to Abbotsford.
“The old Vulpine policy.” A reference to the fable of
the Fox and the Grapes.]
LETTER 281 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ROBINSON
[Dated at end: Nov. 11, 1822.]
DEAR Sir, We have to thank you, or Mrs. Robinson—for I think her name was on the
direction—for the best pig, which myself, the warmest of pig-lovers, ever
tasted. The dressing and the sauce were pronounced incomparable by two friends,
who had the good fortune to drop in to dinner yesterday, but I must not mix up
my cook’s praises with my acknowledgments; let me but have leave to say
that she and we did your pig justice. I should dilate on the crackling—done to
a turn—but I am afraid Mrs. Clarkson,
who, I hear, is with you, will set me down as an Epicure. Let it suffice, that
you have spoil’d my appetite for boiled mutton for some time to come.
Your brother Henry partook of the cold
relics—by which he might give a good guess at what it had been hot.
With our thanks, pray convey our kind respects to Mrs. Robinson, and the Lady before mentioned.
Your obliged SertCharles Lamb. India House 11 Nov. 22.
Note
[This letter is addressed to R. Robinson, Esq.,
Bury, Suffolk, but I think there is no doubt that Thomas
Robinson was the recipient.
Thomas Robinson of Bury St. Edmunds was Henry Crabb Robinson’s brother. Lamb’s “Dissertation on Roast Pig” had been printed
in the London Magazine in
September, 1822, and this pig was one of the first of many such gifts that came to him.]
LETTER 282 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
Wednesday, 13 November, ’22.
DEAR P.—Owing
to the inconvenience of having two lodgings, I did not get your letter quite so
soon as I should. The India House is my proper address, where I am sure for the
fore part of every day. The instant I got it, I
addressed a letter, for Kemble to see,
to my friend Henry Robertson, the
Treasurer of Covent Garden Theatre. He had a conference with
Kemble, and the result is, that
Robertson, in the name of the management, recognized
to me the full ratifying of your bargain: £250 for Ali, the Slaves, and another piece which they had not
received. He assures me the whole will be paid you, or the proportion for the
two former, as soon as ever the Treasury will permit it. He offered to write
the same to you, if I pleased. He thinks in a month or so they will be able to
liquidate it. He is positive no trick could be meant you, as Mr. Planché’s alterations, which were
trifling, were not at all considered as affecting your bargain. With respect to
the copyright of Ali, he was of opinion no money
would be given for it, as Ali is quite laid aside.
This explanation being given, you would not think of printing the two copies
together by way of recrimination. He told me the secret of the two Galley Slaves at Drury Lane. Elliston, if he is informed right, engaged
Poole to translate it, but before
Poole’s translation arrived, finding it coming
out at Cov. Gar., he procured copies of two several translations of it in
London. So you see here are four translations, reckoning yours. I fear no
copyright would be got for it, for anybody may print it and anybody has.
Your’s has run seven nights, and R. is of opinion it
will not exceed in number of nights the nights of Ali,—about thirteen. But your full right to your bargain with the
management is in the fullest manner recognized by him officially. He gave me
every hope the money will be spared as soon as they can spare it. He said a month or two, but seemed to me to mean about a month. A
new lady is coming out in Juliet, to whom
they look very confidently for replenishing their treasury.
Robertson is a very good fellow and I can rely upon
his statement. Should you have any more pieces, and want to get a copyright for
them, I am the worst person to negotiate with any bookseller, having been
cheated by all I have had to do with (except Taylor and Hessey,—but
they do not publish theatrical pieces), and I know not how to go about it, or
who to apply to. But if you had no better negotiator, I should know the minimum
you expect, for I should not like to make a bargain out of my own head, being
(after the Duke of Wellington) the worst of
all negotiators. I find from Robertson you have written to
Bishop on the subject. Have you
named anything of the copyright of the Slaves.
R. thinks no publisher would pay for it, and you would
not risque it on your own account. This is a mere business letter, so I will
just send my love to my little wife at
Versailles, to her dear mother, etc.
Believe me, yours truly,
C. L.
Note
[Payne’s translation of the
French play was produced at Covent Garden on November 6, 1822, under the title “The Soldier’s Daughter.” On the same night appeared a
rival version at Drury Lane entitled “Two Galley
Slaves.” Payne’s was played eleven times. The new
lady as Juliet was the other Fanny
Kelly not Lamb’s:
Fanny H. Kelly, from Dublin. The revival began on November 14.
Planché was James Robinson
Planché (1796-1880), the most prolific of librettists. Robert William Elliston, of whom Lamb
later wrote so finely, was then managing Drury Lane.
“Having been cheated.” Lamb’s particular reference was to Baldwin (see Letter 290).
“The Duke of
Wellington.” A reference to the Duke’s failure in representing
England at the Congress of Powers in Vienna and Verona.
Lamb’s “dear little
wife” was Sophy Kenney (see
abstract of letter on page 571).]
LETTER 283 MARY LAMB TO MRS. JAMES KENNEY
[No date. ? Early December, 1822.]
MY dear Friend,—How do you like Harwood? Is he not a noble boy? I congratulate
you most heartily on this happy meeting, and only wish I were present to
witness it. Come back with Harwood, I am dying to see
you—we will talk, that is, you shall talk and I will listen from ten in the
morning till twelve at night. My thoughts are often with you, and your
children’s dear faces are perpetually before me. Give them all one
additional kiss every morning for me. Remember there’s one for Louisa, one to Ellen, one
to Betsy, one to Sophia, one to James, one to
Teresa, one to Virginia, and one
to Charles. Bless them all! When shall I
ever see them again? Thank you a thousand times for all your kindness to me. I
know you will make light of the trouble my illness gave you; but the
recollection of it often sits heavy on my heart. If I could ensure my health,
how happy should I be to spend a month with you every summer!
When I met Mr.
Kenney there, I sadly repented that I had not dragged you on to
Dieppe with me. What a pleasant time we should have spent there!
You shall not be jealous of Mr.
Payne. Remember he did Charles and I good service without grudge or grumbling. Say to him how much I regret that we owe him
unreturnable obligations; for I still have my old fear that we shall never see
him again. I received great pleasure from seeing his two successful pieces. My
love to your boy Kenney, my boy
James, and all my dear girls, and also to
Rose; I hope she still drinks wine with you. Thank
Lou-Lou for her little bit of letter. I am in a
fearful hurry, or I would write to her. Tell my friend the Poetess that I
expect some French verses from her shortly. I have shewn
Betsy’s and Sophy’s
letters to all who came near me, and they have been very much admired. Dear
Fanny brought me the bag. Good soul
you are to think of me! Manning has
promised to make Fanny a visit this morning, happy girl!
Miss James I often see, I think
never without talking of you. Oh the dear long dreary Boulevards! how I do wish
to be just now stepping out of a Cuckoo into them!
Farewel, old tried friend, may we meet again! Would you
could bring your house with all its noisy inmates, and plant it, garden, gables
and all, in the midst of Covent Garden.
Yours ever most affectionately, M. Lamb.
My best respects to your good neighbours.
Note
[Harwood would be Harwood Holcroft.
“Louisa,” etc. Mrs. Kenney’s children by her first marriage were
Louisa, Ellen, Betsy and
Sophia. By her second, with Kenney, the others. Charles was named Charles Lamb Kenney.
“Payne’s two
successful pieces”—“Ali Pasha”
and “The Soldier’s Daughter.”
Fanny would be Fanny Holcroft,
Mrs. Kenney’s stepdaughter.
Miss Kelly has added to this letter a few words of
affection to Mrs. Kenney from “the real old
original Fanny Kelly.”
Charles Lamb also contributed to this letter a few
lines to James Kenney, expressing his readiness to
meet Moore the poet. He adds that he made a hit at
him as Little in the London Magazine, which though no reason for not meeting
him was a reason for not volunteering a visit to him. The reference is to the sonnet to Barry Cornwall in the
London Magazine for September, 1820,
beginning— Let hate, or grosser heats, their foulness mask Neath riddling Junius, or in L——e’s name. The second line was altered in Lamb’sAlbum Verses, 1830, to— Under the vizor of a borrowed name.]
LETTER 284 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN TAYLOR
[Dated: Dec. 7, 1822.]
DEAR Sir,—I should like the enclosed Dedication to
be printed, unless you dislike it. I like it. It is in the olden style. But if
you object to it, put forth the book as it is. Only pray don’t let the
Printer mistake the word curt for curst.
C. L. Dec. 7, 1822. DEDICATIONTO THE FRIENDLY AND JUDICIOUS READER,
Who will take these Papers, as they
were meant; not understanding every thing perversely in the absolute and
literal sense, but giving fair construction as to an after-dinner
conversation; allowing for the rashness and necessary incompleteness of
first thoughts; and not remembering, for the purpose of an after taunt,
words spoken peradventure after the fourth glass. The Author wishes (what
he would will for himself) plenty of good friends to stand by him, good
books to solace him, prosperous events to all his honest undertakings, and
a candid interpretation to his most hasty words and actions. The other sort
(and he hopes many of them will purchase his book too) he greets with the
curt invitation of Timon,
“Uncover, dogs, and lap:” or he dismisses them with
the confident security of the philosopher, “you beat but on the
case of ELIA.”
C. L. Dec. 7, 1822.
Note
[Elia. Essays
which have appeared under that signature in the London Magazine was
just about to be published. The book came out with no preface.
“Uncover, dogs, and lap” (“Timon of Athens,” III., 6, 95).
“You beat but on the case.” When
Anaxarchus, the philosopher, was being pounded to death in a
mortar, by command of Alexander the Great, he made use
of this phrase. After these words, in Canon
Ainger’s transcript, Lamb
remarks:—
“On better consideration, pray omit that Dedication. The Essays
want no Preface: they are all Preface. A Preface is nothing but
a talk with the reader; and they do nothing else. Pray omit it.
“There will be a sort of Preface in the next Magazine, which
may act as an advertisement, but not proper for the volume.
“Let Elia come
forth bare as he was born.”
The sort of Preface in the next magazine (January, 1823) was the
“Character of the Late
Elia,” used as a preface to the Last Essays in 1833.]
LETTER 285 CHARLES LAMB TO WALTER WILSON
E. I. H. 16 dec. 22.
DEAR Wilson Lightening I was going to call you— You must have thought me
negligent in not answering your letter sooner. But I have a habit of never
writing letters, but at the office—’tis so much time cribbed out of the
Company—and I am but just got out of the thick of a Tea Sale, in which most of
the Entry of Notes, deposits &c. usually falls to my share. Dodwell is willing, but alas! slow. To compare
a pile of my notes with his little hillock (which has been as long a building),
what is it but to compare Olympus with a mole-hill. Then
Wadd is a sad shuffler.—
I have nothing of Defoe’s but two or three Novels, and the Plague History. I can give
you no information about him. As a slight general character of what I remember
of them (for I have not look’d into them latterly) I would say that
“in the appearance of truth in all the incidents and conversations
that occur in them they exceed any works of fiction I am acquainted with.
It is perfect illusion. The Author never appears in
these self-narratives (for so they ought to be called or rather
Auto-biographies) but the narrator chains us down to
an implicet belief in every thing he says. There is all the minute detail
of a log-book in it. Dates are painfully pressed upon the memory. Facts are
repeated over and over in varying phrases, till you cannot chuse but
believe them. It is like reading Evidence given in a Court of Justice. So
anxious the story-teller seems, that the truth should be clearly
comprehended, that when he has told us a matter of fact, or a motive, in a
line or two farther down he repeats it with his favorite figure of speech,
‘I say’ so and so,—though he had made it abundantly plain
before. This is in imitation of the common people’s way of speaking,
or rather of the way in which they are addressed by a master or mistress,
who wishes to impress something upon their memories; and has a wonderful
effect upon matter-of-fact readers. Indeed it is to such principally that
he writes. His style is else-where
beautiful, but plain & homely. Robinson Crusoe is delightful to all
ranks and classes, but it is easy to see that it is written in phraseology
peculiarly adapted to the lower conditions of readers: hence it is an
especial favorite with sea-faring men, poor boys, servant maids &c. His
novels are capital kitchen-reading, while they are worthy from their deep
interest to find a shelf in the Libraries of the wealthiest, and the most
learned. His passion for matter of fact narrative
sometimes betrayed him into a long relation of common incidents which might
happen to any man, and have no interest but the intense appearance of truth
in them, to recommend them. The whole latter half, or two thirds, of Colonel Jack is of this
description. The beginning of Colonel Jack is the
most affecting natural picture of a young thief that was ever drawn. His
losing the stolen money in the hollow of a tree, and finding it again when
he was in despair, and then being in equal distress at not knowing how to
dispose of it, and several similar touches in the early history of the
Colonel, evince a deep knowledge of human nature; and, putting out of
question the superior romantic interest of the latter, in my mind very much
exceed Crusoe. Roxana (1st Edition) is the next in
Interest, though he left out the best part of it subsequent Editions from a
foolish hypercriticism of his friend, Southerne. But Moll Flanders, the account of the Plague &c. &c. are
all of one family, and have the same stamp of character.”—
[At the top of the first page is
added:—]
Omitted at the end . . . believe me with friendly
recollections, Brother (as I used to call you)
YoursC. Lamb. [Below the “Dear
Wilson” is added in smaller
writing:—]
The review was not mine, nor have I seen it.
Note
[Addressed to “Walter Wilson Esqr Lufton nr Yeovil
Somersetshire.”
Lamb’s friend Walter Wilson (see note on page 220) was beginning his Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel
Defoe, 1830. The passage sent to him in this letter by
Lamb he printed in Vol. III., page 428. Some years later (see
pages 464 and 819) Lamb sent Wilson a further
criticism. See also Letter 294 for the reference to Roxana.
For Dodwell see page 490. Of
Wadd we have no information, except, according to Crabb Robinson’sDiary, that he once acci-dentally discharged a pen full of ink into Lamb’s eye and that Lamb wrote
this epigram upon him:— What Wadd knows, God knows, But God knows what Wadd knows.]
LETTER 286 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[Dated at end: 23 December 1822.]
DEAR Sir—I have been so distracted with business and
one thing or other, I have not had a quiet quarter of an hour for epistolary
purposes. Christmas too is come, which always puts a rattle into my morning
scull. It is a visiting unquiet unQuakerish season. I get more and more in love
with solitude, and proportionately hampered with company. I hope you have some
holydays at this period. I have one day, Christmas day, alas! too few to
commemorate the season. All work and no play dulls me. Company is not play, but
many times hard work. To play, is for a man to do what he pleases, or to do
nothing—to go about soothing his particular fancies. I have lived to a time of
life, to have outlived the good hours, the nine o’Clock suppers, with a
bright hour or two to clear up in afterwards. Now you cannot get tea before
that hour, and then sit gaping, music-bothered perhaps, till half-past 12
brings up the tray, and what you steal of convivial enjoyment after, is heavily
paid for in the disquiet of to-morrow’s head.
I am pleased with your liking John Woodvil, and amused with your
knowledge of our drama being confined to Shakspeare and Miss
Bailly. What a world of fine territory between Land’s End
and Johnny Grots have you missed traversing. I almost envy you to have so much
to read. I feel as if I had read all the Books I want to read. O to forget
Fielding, Steele, &c., and read ’em new.
Can you tell me a likely place where I could pick up,
cheap, Fox’sJournal? There are no Quaker Circulating
Libraries? Ellwood, too, I must have. I
rather grudge that S[outhe]y has taken
up the history of your People. I am afraid he will put in some Levity. I am
afraid I am not quite exempt from that fault in certain magazine Articles,
where I have introduced mention of them. Were they to do again, I would reform
them.
Why should not you write a poetical Account of your old
Worthies, deducing them from Fox to
Woolman?—but I remember you did talk
of something in that kind, as a counterpart to the Ecclesiastical
Sketches. But would not a Poem be more consecutive than a string of
Sonnets? You have no Martyrs quite to the Fire, I think,
among you. But plenty of Heroic Confessors, Spirit-Martyrs—Lamb-Lions.—Think of
it,
It would be better than a series of Sonnets on
“Eminent Bankers.”—I like a hit at our way of life, tho’ it
does well for me, better than anything short of all
one’s time to one’s self, for which alone I rankle with
envy at the rich. Books are good, and Pictures are good, and Money to buy them
therefore good, but to buy TIME! in other words, life—
The “compliments of the time to you” should end
my letter; to a Friend I suppose I must say the “sincerity of the
season;” I hope they both mean the same. With excuses for this hastily
penn’d note, believe me with great respect—
C. Lamb. 23 dec. 22.
Note
[Miss Bailly would be Joanna Baillie (1762-1851), author of Plays on the Passions.
The copy of Fox’sJournal, 1694, which
was lent to Lamb has recently come into the
possession of the Society of Friends. In it is written: “This copy of
George Fox’s Journal, being the earliest edition of that
work, the property of John T. Shewell of Ipswich, is lent for six
months to Charles Lamb, at the request of Saml Alexander of Needham, Ipswich, 1st mo. 4
1823.” Lamb has added: “Returned by
Charles Lamb, within the period, with many thanks to the
Lender for the very great satisfaction which he has derived from the perusal of
it.”
Southey was meditating a Life of George Fox and corresponded with Barton on the subject. He did not write the book.
Barton had a plan to provide Wordsworth’sEcclesiastical Sonnets with a Quaker pendant.
He did not carry it out.
Here might come an undated and unpublished letter from Lamb to Basil
Montagu, which is of little interest except as referring to Miss James, Mary Lamb’s nurse.
Lamb says that she was one of four sisters, daughters of a Welsh
clergyman, who all became nurses at Mrs. Warburton’s, Hoxton,
whither, I imagine, Mary Lamb had often retired.
Mrs. Parsons, one of the sisters, became Mary
Lamb’s nurse when, some time after Lamb’s
death, she moved to 41 Alpha Road, Mrs. Parsons’ house. The late
John Hollingshead, great-nephew of these ladies,
says in his interesting book, My
Lifetime, that their father was rector of Beguildy, in Shropshire.]
LETTER 287 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
[January, 1823.]
DEAR Payne—Your little books are most acceptable. ’Tis a delicate
edition. They are gone to the binder’s. When they come home I shall have
two—the “Camp” and
“Patrick’s
Day”—to read for the first time. I may say three, for I never
read the “School for
Scandal.” “Seen it I have, and
in its happier days.” With the books Harwood left a truncheon or mathematical instrument, of which
we have not yet ascertained the use. It is like a telescope, but unglazed. Or a
ruler, but not smooth enough. It opens like a fan, and discovers a frame such
as they weave lace upon at Lyons and Chambery. Possibly it is from those parts.
I do not value the present the less, for not being quite able to detect its
purport. When I can find any one coming your way I have a volume for you, my
Elias collected. Tell
Poole, his Cockney in the Lon. Mag. tickled me exceedingly.
Harwood is to be with us this evening with Fanny, who comes to introduce a literary lady,
who wants to see me,—and whose portentous name is Plura, in English “many things.” Now, of
all God’s creatures, I detest letters-affecting, authors-hunting ladies.
But Fanny “will have it so.” So Miss Many
Things and I are to have a conference, of which you shall have the result. I
dare say she does not play at whist. Treasurer
Robertson, whose coffers are absolutely swelling with pantomimic
receipts, called on me yesterday to say he is going to write to you, but if I
were also, I might as well say that your last bill is at the Banker’s,
and will be honored on the instant receipt of the third Piece, which you have
stipulated for. If you have any such in readiness, strike while the iron is
hot, before the Clown cools. Tell Mrs.
Kenney, that the Miss F. H. (or H. F.)
Kelly, who has begun so splendidly in Juliet, is the identical little Fanny
Kelly who used to play on their green before their great
Lying-Inn Lodgings at Bayswater. Her career has stopt short by the injudicious
bringing her out in a vile new Tragedy, and for a third character in a stupid
old one,—the Earl of Essex.
This is Macready’s doing, who
taught her. Her recitation, &c. (not her voice or
person), is masculine. It is so clever, it seemed a male Debut. But
cleverness is the bane of Female Tragedy especially. Passions uttered
logically, &c. It is bad enough in men-actors. Could you do nothing for
little Clara Fisher? Are there no French
Pieces with a Child in them? By Pieces I mean here dramas, to prevent male-constructions.
Did not the Blue Girl remind you of some of Congreve’s women? Angelica or Millamant? To
me she was a vision of Genteel Comedy realized. Those kind of people never come
to see one. N’import—havn’t I Miss Many Things coming? Will you
ask Horace Smith to——[The remainder of this letter has been lost.]
Note
[Payne seems to have sent
Lamb an edition of Sheridan. “The
Camp” and “St.
Patrick’s Day” are among his less known plays.
“Seen it I have, and in its happier days.” After
Pope’s line (29) in the “Epilogue to the Satires I.”:— Seen him I have, but in his happier hour.
Poole was writing articles on France in the London Magazine. Lamb refers to “A Cockney’s Rural Sports” in the number
for December, 1822.
Fanny would be Fanny Holcroft.
Plura I do not identify.
“Fanny ‘will have it
so.’” Possibly in recollection of “pretty Fanny’s
way” in Parnell’s “Elegy to an Old Beauty.”
The new tragedy in which Miss Kelly had to play was
probably “The Huguenot,” produced December 11, 1822.
“The Earl of Essex” was
revived December 30, 1822. Macready played in both.
“Cleverness is the bane.” See Lamb’s little article on “The New Acting” in Vol. I., page 151.
Clara Fisher. See Letter 292.
The Blue Girl seems to refer to the lady mentioned at the end of Letter
275.
Angelica is in Congreve’s “Love for
Love”; Millamant in his “Way of the World.”]
LETTER 288 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[No date. January, 1823.]
DEAR Wordsworth, I beg your acceptance of Elia, detached from
any of its old companions which might have been less agreeable to you. I hope
your eyes are better, but if you must spare them, there is nothing in my pages
which a Lady may not read aloud without indecorum, which is
more than can be said ofShakspeare.
What a nut this last sentence would be for Blackwood! You will find I availed
myself of your suggestion, in curtailing the dissertation on Malvolio.
I have been on the Continent since I saw you.
I have eaten frogs.
I saw Monkhouse
tother day, and Mrs. M. being too poorly
to admit of company, the annual goosepye was sent to Russell Street, and with
its capacity has fed “A hundred head” (not of Aristotle’s) but “of
Elia’s friends.”
Mrs. Monkhouse is sadly confined, but
chearful.—
This packet is going off, and I have neither time, place nor
solitude for a longer Letter.’
Will you do me the favor to forward the other volume to
Southey?
Mary is perfectly well, and joins me in
kindest remembces to you all.
[Signature cut away.]
Note
[“What a nut . . . for Blackwood.” To help on Maga’s great cause against Cockney arrogance.
“The dissertation on Malvolio.” In Elia the essays on the Old Actors were much changed and rearranged (see
Appendix to Vol. II. in this edition).
“A hundred head.” See the Dunciad, IV., 192:— A hundred head of Aristotle’s friends.]
LETTER 289 CHARLES LAMB TO MR. AND MRS. J. D. COLLIER
Twelfth Day [January 6], 1823.
THE pig was above my feeble praise. It was a dear
pigmy. There was some contention as to who should have the ears, but in spite
of his obstinacy (deaf as these little creatures are to advice) I contrived to
get at one of them.
It came in boots too, which I took as a favor. Generally
those petty toes, pretty toes! are missing. But I suppose he wore them, to look
taller.
He must have been the least of his race. His little foots
would have gone into the silver slipper. I take him to have been Chinese, and a
female.—
If Evelyn could have
seen him, he would never have farrowed two such prodigious volumes, seeing how much good can be
contained in—how small a compass! He crackled delicately.
John Collier Junr has sent me a Poem which (without the smallest bias from the aforesaid present,
believe me) I pronounce sterling.
I set about Evelyn,
and finished the first volume in the course of a natural day. To-day I attack
the second.—Parts are very interesting.—
I left a blank at top of my letter, not being determined
which to address it to, so Farmer and Farmer’s wife will please to divide
our thanks. May your granaries be full, and your rats empty, and your chickens
plump, and your envious neighbors lean, and your labourers busy, and you as
idle and as happy as the day is long! Vive L’ Agriculture!
Frank Field’s marriage of course
you have seen in the papers, and that his brother Barron is expected home. How do you make your pigs so little? They are vastly engaging at that age. I was so myself. Now I am a disagreeable old hog— A middle-aged-gentleman-and-a-half. My faculties, thank God, are not much impaired. I have my sight, hearing,
taste, pretty perfect; and can read the Lord’s Prayer in the common type,
by the help of a candle, without making many mistakes.
Believe me, while my faculties last, a proper appreciator of
your many kindnesses in this way; and that the last lingering relish of past
flavors upon my dying memory will be the smack of that little Ear. It was the
left ear, which is lucky. Many happy returns (not of the Pig) but of the New
Year to both.—
Mary for her share of the Pig and the
memoirs desires to send the same—
Dr. Mr. C. and Mrs. C— Yours truly C. Lamb.
Note
[This letter, now printed from the original in the possession of
Mr. Adam of Buffalo, is usually supposed to have been addressed by
Lamb to Mr. and Mrs. Bruton of Mackery End. The
address is, however, Mrs. Collier, Smallfield Place,
East Grinstead, Sussex (see also Letters 266 and 336, pages 561 and 655).
“If Evelyn could have seen him.”
John Evelyn’sDiary had recently been
published, in 1818 and 1819, in two large quarto volumes.]
LETTER 290 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
9 Jan., 1823.
“THROW yourself on the world without any
rational plan of support, beyond what the chance employ of Booksellers would
afford you”!!!
Throw yourself rather, my dear Sir, from the steep Tarpeian
rock, slap-dash headlong upon iron spikes. If you had but five consolatory
minutes between the desk and the bed, make much of them, and live a century in
them, rather than turn slave to the Booksellers. They are Turks and Tartars,
when they have poor Authors at their beck. Hitherto you have been at
arm’s length from them. Come not within their grasp. I have known many
authors for bread, some repining, others envying the blessed security of a
Counting House, all agreeing they had rather have been Taylors, Weavers, what
not? rather than the things they were. I have known some starved, some to go
mad, one dear friend literally dying in a workhouse. You know not what a
rapacious, dishonest set those booksellers are. Ask even Southey, who (a single case almost) has made a
fortune by book drudgery, what he has found them. O you know not, may you never
know! the miseries of subsisting by authorship. ’Tis a pretty appendage
to a situation like yours or mine, but a slavery worse than all slavery to be a
bookseller’s dependent, to drudge your brains for pots of ale and breasts
of mutton, to change your free thoughts and voluntary numbers for ungracious
Task-Work. Those fellows hate us. The reason I
take to be, that, contrary to other trades, in which the Master gets all the
credit (a Jeweller or Silversmith for instance), and the Journeyman, who really
does the fine work, is in the background, in our work
the world gives all the credit to Us, whom they consider
as their Journeymen, and therefore do they hate us, and
cheat us, and oppress us, and would wring the blood of us out, to put another
sixpence in their mechanic pouches. I contend, that a Bookseller has a relative honesty towards Authors, not like his honesty
to the rest of the world. B[aldwin], who
first engag’d me as Elia, has not paid me up yet
(nor any of us without repeated mortifying applials), yet how the Knave fawned
while I was
of service to him! Yet I dare say the fellow is punctual in settling his
milk-score, &c. Keep to your Bank, and the Bank will keep you. Trust not to
the Public, you may hang, starve, drown yourself, for anything that worthy
Personage cares. I bless every star that Providence, not seeing good to make me
independent, has seen it next good to settle me upon the stable foundation of
Leadenhall. Sit down, good B. B., in the
Banking Office; what, is there not from six to Eleven p.m. 6 days in the week, and is there not all Sunday? Fie, what a
superfluity of man’s time,—if you could think so! Enough for relaxation,
mirth, converse, poetry, good thoughts, quiet thoughts. O the corroding
torturing tormenting thoughts, that disturb the Brain of the unlucky wight, who
must draw upon it for daily sustenance. Henceforth I retract all my fond
complaints of mercantile employment, look upon them as Lovers’ quarrels.
I was but half in earnest. Welcome, dead timber of a desk, that makes me live.
A little grumbling is a wholesome medicine for the spleen; but in my inner
heart do I approve and embrace this our close but unharassing way of life. I am
quite serious. If you can send me Fox, I will not keep it six weeks, and will return it, with warm
thanks to yourself and friend, without blot or dog’s ear. You much oblige
me by this kindness.
Yours truly,
C. Lamb.
Please to direct to me at India Ho. in future. [? I am]
not always at Russell St.
Note
[Barton had long been meditating
the advisability of giving up his place in the bank at Woodbridge and depending upon his
pen. Lamb’s letter of dissuasion is not the
only one which he received. Byron had written to him in
1812: “You deserve success; but we knew, before Addison wrote his Cato, that desert does not always command it. But suppose it attained— ‘You know what ills the author’s life assail— Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.’ Do not renounce writing, but never trust entirely to authorship. If you have a
profession, retain it; it will be like Prior’s fellowship, a last and sure resource.”
Barton had now broken again into dissatisfaction with his life. He
did not, however, leave the bank.
Southey made no “fortune” by his pen. He
almost always had to forestall his new works.]
LETTERS 291 AND 292 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
23 January, ’23.
DEAR Payne—I
have no mornings (my day begins at 5 p.m.) to
transact business in, or talents for it, so I employ Mary, who has seen Robertson, who says that the Piece which is to be Operafied was
sent to you six weeks since by a Mr. Hunter, whose journey
has been delayed, but he supposes you have it by this time. On receiving it
back properly done, the rest of your dues will be forthcoming. You have
received £30 from Harwood, I hope?
Bishop was at the theatre when
Mary called, and he has put your other piece into
C. Kemble’s hands (the piece
you talk of offering Elliston) and
C. K. sent down word that he had not yet had time to
read it. So stand your affairs at present. Glossop has got the Murderer. Will
you address him on the subject, or shall I—that is, Mary?
She says you must write more showable letters about these matters, for, with
all our trouble of crossing out this word, and giving a cleaner turn to
th’ other, and folding down at this part, and squeezing an obnoxious
epithet into a corner, she can hardly communicate their contents without
offence. What, man, put less gall in your ink, or write me a biting tragedy!
C. Lamb.
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
February [9], 1823.
MY dear Miss
Lamb—I have enclosed for you Mr. Payne’s piece called
Grandpapa, which I regret to say is not thought to be of
the nature that will suit this theatre; but as there appears to be
much merit in it, Mr. Kemble
strongly recommends that you should send it to the English Opera
House, for which it seems to be excellently adapted. As you have
already been kind enough to be our medium of communication with
Mr. Payne, I have imposed this trouble
upon you; but if you do not like to act for Mr.
Payne in the business, and have no means of
disposing of the piece, I will forward it to Paris or elsewhere as
you thins he may prefer.
Very truly yours,
Henry Robertson. T. R. C. G., 8 Feb. 1823.
DearP——
We have just received the above, and want your instructions. It strikes me as a
very merry little piece,
that should be played by very young actors. It strikes
me that Miss Clara Fisher would play the
boy exactly. She is just such a forward chit. No young man would do it without
its appearing absurd, but in a girl’s hands it would have just all the
reality that a short dream of an act requires. Then for the sister, if
Miss Stevenson that was, were Miss Stevenson and younger, they two would
carry it off. I do not know who they have got in that young line, besides
Miss C. F., at Drury, nor how you would like Elliston to have it—has he not had it? I am
thick with Arnold, but I have always
heard that the very slender profits of the English Opera House do not admit of
his giving above a trifle, or next to none, for a piece of this kind. Write me
what I should do, what you would ask, &c. The music (printed) is returned
with the piece, and the French original. Tell Mr.
Grattan I thank him for his book, which as far as I have read it is a
very companionable one. I have but just received it. It
came the same hour with your packet from Cov. Gar., i.e.
yester-night late, to my summer residence, where, tell Kenney, the cow is
quiet. Love to all at Versailles. Write quickly.
C. L.
I have no acquaintance with Kemble at all, having only met him once or twice; but any
information, &c., I can get from R., who is a good fellow, you may command. I am sorry the
rogues are so dilitory, but I distinctly believe they mean to fulfill their
engagement. I am sorry you are not here to see to these things. I am a poor
man of business, but command me to the short extent of my tether. My
sister’s kind remembrance ever.
C. L.
Note
[The “Grandpapa” was eventually produced at Drury Lane, May 25, 1825, and
played thrice. Miss Stevenson was an actress praised
by Lamb in The Examiner (see Vol. I. of this edition, pages 187 and
189).
Samuel James Arnold was manager of the Lyceum, then
known as the English Opera House; he was the brother of Mrs.
William Ayrton, Lamb’s friend.
Mr. Grattan was Thomas Colley
Grattan (1792-1864), who was then living in Paris. His book would be Highways and
Byways, first series, 1823.
There is one other note to Payne
in the Century Magazine,
unimportant and undated, suggesting a walk one Sunday.]
LETTER 293 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. February 17, 1823.]
MY dear Sir—I have read quite through the ponderous
folio of G. F. I think
Sewell has been judicious in
omitting certain parts, as for instance where G.
F.has revealed to him the natures of
all the creatures in their names, as Adam had. He luckily turns aside from that
compendious study of natural history, which might have superseded Buffon, to his proper spiritual pursuits, only
just hinting what a philosopher he might have been. The ominous passage is near
the beginning of the Book. It is clear he means a physical knowledge, without
trope or figure. Also, pretences to miraculous healing and the like are more
frequent than I should have suspected from the epitome in
Sewell. He is nevertheless a great spiritual man, and
I feel very much obliged by your procuring me the Loan of it. How I like the
Quaker phrases—though I think they were hardly completed till Woolman. A pretty little manual of Quaker
language (with an endeavour to explain them) might be gathered out of his Book.
Could not you do it? I have read through G. F. without
finding any explanation of the term first volume in the
title page. It takes in all, both his life and his death. Are there more Last
words of him? Pray, how may I venture to return it to Mr.
Shewell at Ipswich? I fear to send such a Treasure by a Stage
Coach. Not that I am afraid of the Coachman or the Guard reading it. But it might be lost. Can you put me in a way of sending
it in safety? The kind hearted owner trusted it to me for six months. I think I
was about as many days in getting through it, and I do not think that I skipt a
word of it. I have quoted G. F. in my Quaker’s meeting, as having said he
was “lifted up in spirit” (which I felt at the time to be not a
Quaker phrase), “and the Judge and Jury were as dead men under his
feet.” I find no such words in his Journal, and I did not get them from
Sewell, and the latter sentence I am sure I did not
mean to invent. I must have put some other Quaker’s words into his mouth.
Is it a fatality in me, that every thing I touch turns into a Lye? I once
quoted two Lines from a translation of Dante, which Hazlitt very
greatly admired, and quoted in a Book as proof of the stupendous power of that
poet, but no such lines are to be found in the translation, which has been
searched for the purpose. I must have dreamed them, for I am quite certain I
did not forge them knowingly. What a misfortune to have a Lying memory.—Yes, I have seen Miss Coleridge, and wish I had just such
a—daughter. God love her—to think that she should have had to toil thro’
five octavos of that cursed (I forget I write to a Quaker) Abbeypony History, and then to abridge
them to 3, and all for £113. At her years, to be doing stupid Jesuits’
Latin into English, when she should be reading or writing Romances. Heaven send
her Uncle do not breed her up a Quarterly Reviewer!—which reminds
me, that he has spoken very respectfully of you in the last number, which is
the next thing to having a Review all to one’s self. Your description of
Mr. Mitford’s place makes me
long for a pippin and some carraways and a cup of sack in his orchard, when the
sweets of the night come in.
Farewell. C. Lamb.
Note
[In the 1694 folio of George
Fox’sJournal the revelation of the names of creatures occurs twice, once
under Notts in 1647 and again under Mansfield in 1648.
“Sewell.” The History of the Rise, Increase and
Progress of the Christian People called Quakers, 1722. By William Sewell (1654-1720).
“In my Quaker’s
meeting”—the Elia essay (see Vol. II., page 45).
“I once quoted two Lines.” Possibly, Mr. A. R. Waller suggests to me, the lines:— Because on earth their names In Fame’s eternal volume shine for aye, quoted by Hazlitt in his Round Table essay “On Posthumous Fame,” and again in
one of his Edinburgh
Review articles. They are presumably based upon the Inferno, Canto IV. (see Haselfoot’s translation, second edition, 1899, page
21, lines 74-78). But the “manufacturer” of them must have had Spenser’s line in his mind, “On Fame’s
eternall bead-roll worthie to be fyled” (Faerie Queene, Bk. IV., Canto II., Stanza 82). They
have not yet been found in any translation of Dante.
This explanation would satisfy Lamb’s words “quoted in a book,”
i.e., The Round
Table, published in 1817.
“Miss Coleridge”—Coleridge’s daughter Sara, born in 1802, who had been brought up by her uncle, Southey. She had translated Martin Dobrizhoffer’s Latin history of the Abipones in order to gain funds for
her brother Derwent’s college expenses. Her
father considered the translation “unsurpassed for pure mother English by anything
I have read for a long time.” Sara Coleridge married her
cousin, Henry Nelson Coleridge, in 1829. She edited
her father’s works and died in 1852. At the present
time she and her mother were visiting the Gillmans.
Mr. Mitford was John Mitford
(1781-1859), rector of Benhall, in Suffolk, and editor of old poets. Later he became editor
of the Gentleman’s
Magazine. He was a cousin of Mary Russell
Mitford. In the Gentleman’s
Magazine for May, 1838, is a review of Talfourd’s edition of
Lamb’sLetters, probably from his pen, in
which he records a visit to the Lambs in 1827.]
LETTER 294 CHARLES LAMB TO WALTER WILSON
[Dated at end: February 24, 1823.]
DEAR W.—I
write that you may not think me neglectful, not that I have any thing to say.
In answer to your questions, it was at your house I saw an edition of Roxana, the preface to which
stated that the author had left out that part of it which related to Roxana’s daughter persisting in imagining
herself to be so, in spite of the mother’s denial, from certain hints she
had picked up, and throwing herself continually in her mother’s way (as
Savage is said to have done in his,
prying in at windows to get a glimpse of her), and that it was by advice of
Southern, who objected to the
circumstances as being untrue, when the rest of the story was founded on fact;
which shows S. to have been a stupid-ish fellow. The
incidents so resemble Savage’s story, that I taxed
Godwin with taking Falconer from his life by
Dr. Johnson. You should have the
edition (if you have not parted with it), for I saw it never but at your place
at the Mews’ Gate, nor did I then read it to compare it with my own; only
I know the daughter’s curiosity is the best part of my Roxana. The prologue you speak of was mine, so named, but not worth
much. You ask me for 2 or 3 pages of verse. I have not written so much since
you knew me. I am altogether prosaic. May be I may touch off a sonnet in time.
I do not prefer Col. Jack
to either Rob. Cr. or Roxana. I only spoke of the beginning of it, his
childish history. The rest is poor. I do not know anywhere any good character
of De Foe besides what you mention. I do
not know that Swift mentions him.
Pope does. I forget if D’Israeli has. Dunlop I think has nothing of him. He is quite
new ground, and scarce known beyond Crusoe. I do not
know who wrote Quarll. I never thought of Quarll as having an author. It is a
poor imitation; the monkey is the best in it, and his pretty dishes made of
shells. Do you know the Paper in
the Englishman by Sir Rd. Steele, giving an account of Selkirk? It is admirable, and has all the
germs of Crusoe. You must quote it entire. Captain G. Carleton wrote his own Memoirs; they are about
Lord Peterborough’s campaign in
Spain, & a good Book. Puzzelli puzzles me, and I am in
a cloud about Donald M’Leod. I never heard of them;
so you see, my dear Wilson, what poor
assistances I can give in the way of information. I wish your Book out, for I
shall like to see any thing about De Foe or from you.
Your old friend,
C. Lamb. From my and your old compound. 24 Feb. ’23.
Note
[With this letter compare Letter 89 to Godwin, and Letter 285 to Wilson,
pages 225 and 586.
Defoe’sRoxana, first edition, does not,
as a matter of fact, contain the episode of the daughter which Lamb so much admired. Later editions have it. Godwin says in his Preface to “Faulkener,” 1807, the play to which
Lamb wrote a prologue in praise of Defoe (see
Vol. V., page 123), that the only accessible edition of Roxana in
which the story of Susannah is fully told is that of
1745.
Richard Savage was considered to be the natural son
of the Countess of Macclesfield and Earl Rivers. His mother at first disowned him, but
afterwards, when this became impossible, repulsed him. Johnson says in his “Life
of Savage,” that it was his hero’s “practice to walk in the
dark evenings for several hours before her door in hopes of seeing her as she might
come by accident to the window or cross her apartment with a candle in her
hand.”
Swift and Defoe were steady enemies, although I do not find that either mentions the
other by name. But Swift in The Examiner often had Defoe in
mind, and Defoe in one of his political writings refers to
Swift, aproposWood’s halfpence, as “the copper farthing
author.”
Pope referred to Defoe twice in the Dunciad: once as
standing high, fearless and unabashed in the pillory, and once, libellously, as the father
of Norton, of the Flying
Post.
Philip Quarll was the
first imitation of Robinson
Crusoe. It was published in 1727, purporting to be the narrative of one
Dorrington, a merchant, and Quarll’s discoverer. The title begins, The Hermit; or, The Unparalleled Sufferings and Surprising Adventures of
Mr. Philip Quarll, an Englishman . . . Lamb
says in his essay on Christ’s
Hospital that the Blue-Coat boys used to read the book. It is unknown now,
although an abridgment appeared quite recently. The
authorship of the book is still unknown.
Steele’s account of Selkirk is in The Englishman, No. 26, Dec. 1, 1713. Wilson quoted it.
Defoe’s fictitious Military Memoirs of Capt. George
Carleton was published in 1728.
I cannot explain Puzzelli or Donald
M’Leod. Later Lamb sent
Wilson, who seems to have asked for some verse
about Defoe, the “Ode to the Treadmill,” but
Wilson did not use it.
“My old compound.” Robinson’sDiary (Vol. I., page 333) has this: “The large
room in the accountant’s office at the East India House is divided into boxes or
compartments, in each of which sit six clerks, Charles
Lamb himself in one. They are called Compounds. The meaning of the word
was asked one day, and Lamb said it was ‘a collection of
simples.’”]
LETTER 295 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[Dated at end: March 11, 1823.]
DEAR Sir—The approbation of my little book by your sister is very pleasing to me. The Quaker
incident did not happen to me, but to Carlisle the surgeon, from whose mouth I have twice heard it,
at an interval of ten or twelve years, with little or no variation, and have
given it as exactly as I could remember it. The gloss which your sister, or
you, have put upon it does not strike me as correct.
Carlisle drew no inference from it against the honesty
of the Quakers, but only in favour of their surprising coolness—that they
should be capable of committing a good joke, with an utter insensibility to its
being any jest at all. I have reason to believe in the truth of it, because, as
I have said, I heard him repeat it without variation at such an interval. The
story loses sadly in print, for Carlisle is the best story
teller I ever heard. The idea of the discovery of roasting pigs, I also
borrowed, from my friend Manning, and am
willing to confess both my plagiarisms.
Should fate ever so order it that you shall be in town with
your sister, mine bids me say that she
shall have great pleasure in being introduced to her. I think I must give up
the cause of the Bank—from nine to nine is galley-slavery, but I hope it is but
temporary. Your endeavour at explaining Fox’s insight into the natures of animals must fail, as I
shall transcribe the passage. It appears to me that he stopt short in time, and
was on the brink of falling with his friend Naylor, my
favourite.—The book shall be forthcoming whenever your friend can make
convenient to call for it.
They have dragged me again into the Magazine, but I feel the spirit of the thing in my
own mind quite gone. “Some brains” (I think Ben Jonson says it) “will endure but
one skimming.” We are about to have an inundation of poetry from
the Lakes, Wordsworth and Southey are coming up strong from the North.
The she Coleridges have taken flight, to my regret. With
Sara’s own-made acquisitions,
her unaffectedness and no-pretensions are beautiful. You might pass an age with
her without suspecting that she knew any thing but her mother’s tongue. I
don’t mean any reflection on Mrs.
Coleridge here. I had better have said her vernacular idiom.
Poor C. I wish he had a home to receive
his daughter in. But he is but as a stranger or a visitor in this world. How
did you like Hartley’s sonnets?
The first, at least, is vastly fine. Lloyd has been in town a day or two on business, and is
perfectly well. I am ashamed of the shabby letters I send, but I am by nature
anything but neat. Therein my mother bore me no Quaker. I never could seal a
letter without dropping the wax on one side, besides scalding my fingers. I
never had a seal too of my own. Writing to a great
man lately, who is moreover very Heraldic, I borrowed a seal of
a friend, who by the female side
quarters the Protectorial Arms of Cromwell. How they must have puzzled my correspondent!—My
letters are generally charged as double at the Post office, from their
inveterate clumsiness of foldure. So you must not take it disrespectful to your
self if I send you such ungainly scraps. I think I lose £100 a year at the
India House, owing solely to my want of neatness in making up Accounts. How I
puzzle ’em out at last is the wonder. I have to do with millions. I?
It is time to have done my incoherencies.
Believe me Yours Truly
C. Lamb. Tuesd 11 Ma 23.
Note
[Lamb had sent Elia to Woodbridge. Bernard Barton’s sister was Maria Hack, author of many books for children. The Quaker
incident is in the essay “Imperfect
Sympathies.” Carlisle was Sir Anthony Carlisle, whom we have already seen.
“Your endeavour at explaining Fox’s insight.” See Letter 293. James Nayler (1617?-1660), an early Quaker who permitted
his admirers to look upon him as a new Christ. He went to extremes totally foreign to the
spirit of the Society. Barton made a paraphrase of
Nayler’s “Last
Testimony.”
“They have dragged me again.” Lamb had been quite ready to give up Elia with the first essays.
“Old China,” one of his
most charming papers, was in the March London Magazine.
“Some brains . . .” I have not been able to find this
in Ben Jonson.
“Hartley’s sonnets.” Four
sonnets by Hartley Coleridge were printed in the
London Magazine for
February, 1823, addressed to R. S. Jameson. This
was the first:— When we were idlers with the loitering rills, The need of human love we little noted: Our love was Nature; and the peace that floated On the white mist, and slept upon the hills, To sweet accord subdued our wayward wills: One soul was ours, one mind, one heart devoted, That, wisely doating, ask’d not why it doated; And ours the unknown joy, that knowing kills. But now I find how dear thou wert to me; That, man is more than half of Nature’s treasure,— Of that fair beauty which no eye can see,— Of that still music which no ear can measure; But now the streams may sing for others’ pleasure, The hills sleep on in their eternity.
“Writing to a great man lately.” This was Sir Walter Scott (see Letter 279). Barron Field would be the friend with the seal.]
LETTER 296 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. 5 April 1823.]
DEAR Sir—You must think me ill mannered not to have
replied to your first letter sooner, but I have an ugly habit of aversion from
letter writing, which makes me an unworthy correspondent. I have had no spring,
or cordial call to the occupation of late. I have been not well lately, which
must be my lame excuse. Your poem, which I consider very affecting, found me
engaged about a humorous Paper for the London, which I had called a “Letter to an Old
Gentleman whose Education had been neglected”—and
when it was done Taylor and Hessey would not print it, and it discouraged
me from doing any thing else, so I took up Scott, where I had scribbled some petulant remarks, and for a make shift father’d
them on Ritson. It is obvious I could
not make your Poem a part of
them, and as I did not know whether I should ever be able to do to my mind what
you suggested, I thought it not fair to keep back the verses for the chance.
Mr. Mitford’ssonnet I like very
well; but as I also have my reasons against interfering at all with the
Editorial arrangement of the London, I transmitted it
(not in my own handwriting) to them, who I doubt not will be glad to insert it.
What eventual benefit it can be to you (otherwise than that a kind man’s
wish is a benefit) I cannot conjecture. Your Society are eminently men of
Business, and will probably regard you as an idle fellow, possibly disown you,
that is to say, if you had put your own name to a sonnet of that sort, but they
cannot excommunicate Mr. Mitford, therefore I thoroughly
approve of printing the said verses. When I see any Quaker names to the Concert
of Antient Music, or as Directors of the British Institution, or bequeathing
medals to Oxford for the best classical themes, etc.—then I shall begin to hope
they will emancipate you. But what as a Society can they do for you? you would
not accept a Commission in the Army, nor they be likely to procure it; Posts in
Church or State have they none in their giving; and then if they disown
you—think—you must live “a man forbid.”
I wishd for you yesterday. I dined in Parnassus, with
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Rogers, and Tom
Moore—half the Poetry of England constellated and clustered in
Gloster Place! It was a delightful Even! Coleridge was in
his finest vein of talk, had all the talk, and let ’em talk as evilly as
they do of the envy of Poets, I am sure not one there but was content to be
nothing but a listener. The Muses were dumb, while Apollo lectured on his and their fine Art. It is a lie that
Poets are envious, I have known the best of them, and can speak to it, that
they give each other their merits, and are the kindest critics as well as best
authors. I am scribbling a muddy epistle with an aking head, for we did not
quaff Hippocrene last night. Marry, it was Hippocras rather. Pray accept this
as a letter in the mean time, and do me the favor to mention my respects to
Mr. Mitford, who is so good as to
entertain good thoughts of Elia, but don’t show this
almost impertinent scrawl. I will write more respectfully next time, for
believe me, if not in words, in feelings, yours most so.
Note
[“Your poem.” Barton’s poem was entitled “A Poet’s Thanks,” and was printed in the
London Magazine for
April, 1823, the same number that contained Lamb’sarticle on Ritson and Scott. It is one of
his best poems, an expression of contentment in simplicity. The “Letter to an Old Gentleman,” a parody of
De Quincey’s series of “Letters to a Young Gentleman”
in the London Magazine,
was not published until January, 1825. Scott was John Scott of Amwell (Barton’s
predecessor as the Quaker poet), who had written a rather
foolish book of prose, Critical Essays on the English Poets. Ritson was
Joseph Ritson, the critic and antiquarian. See
Vol. I. of the present edition, page 218, for the essay. Barton seems
to have suggested to Lamb that he should write an essay around the
poem “A Poet’s Thanks.” Mitford’ssonnet, which was printed in the London Magazine for June, 1823, was addressed
commiseratingly to Bernard Barton. It began:— What to thy broken Spirit can atone, Unhappy victim of the Tyrant’s fears; and continued in the same strain, the point being that Barton was
the victim of his Quaker employers, who made him “prisoner at once and
slave.” Lamb’s previous letter shows us that
Barton was being worked from nine till nine, and we must suppose
also that an objection to his poetical exercises had been lodged or suggested. The matter
righted itself in time.
“A man forbid” (“Macbeth,” I., 3, 21).
“I dined in Parnassus.” This dinner, at Thomas Monkhouse’s, No. 34 Gloucester Place, is
described both by Moore and by Crabb Robinson, who was present.
Moore wrote in his Journal: “Dined at Mr.
Monkhouse’s (a gentleman I had never seen before) on Wordsworth’s invitation, who lives there
whenever he comes to town. A singular party. Coleridge, Rogers,
Wordsworth and wife,
Charles Lamb (the hero at present of the
London Magazine),
and his sister (the poor woman who went mad in a
diligence on the way to Paris), and a Mr. Robinson, one of the
minora sidera of this constellation
of the Lakes; the host himself, a Mæcenas of the
school, contributing nothing but good dinners and silence. Charles
Lamb, a clever fellow, certainly, but full of villainous and abortive
puns, which he miscarries of every minute. Some excellent things, however, have come
from him.”
Lamb told Moore that he had hitherto always felt an antipathy to him, but
henceforward should like him.
Crabb Robinson writes: “April 4th.—Dined at Monkhouse’s. Our party consisted of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, Moore, and
Rogers. Five poets of very unequal worth and
most disproportionate popularity, whom the public probably would arrange in the very
inverse order, except that it would place Moore above
Rogers. During this afternoon, Coleridge
alone displayed any of his peculiar talent. He talked much and well. I have not for
years seen him in such excellent health and spirits. His subjects metaphysical
criticism—Wordsworth he chiefly talked to.
Rogers occasionally let fall a remark.
Moore seemed conscious of his inferiority. He was very
attentive to Coleridge, but seemed to relish
Lamb, whom he sat next. L. was in a good
frame—kept himself within bounds and
was only cheerful at last. . . . I was at the bottom of the table, where I very ill
performed my part. . . . I walked home late with Lamb.”
Many years later Robinson sent to
The Athenæum (June
25, 1853) a further and fuller account of the evening.
“Hippocrene . . . Hippocras.” Hippocrene is the
fountain of the Muses; hippocras, a medicinal drink.]
LETTER 297 CHARLES LAMB TO B. W. PROCTER
April 13th, 1823.
DEAR Lad,—You must think me a brute beast, a
rhinoceros, never to have acknowledged the receipt of your precious present.
But indeed I am none of those shocking things, but have arrived at that
indisposition to letter-writing, which would make it a hard exertion to write
three lines to a king to spare a friend’s life. Whether it is that the
Magazine paying me so much a
page, I am loath to throw away composition—how much a sheet do you give your
correspondents? I have hung up Pope, and
a gem it is, in my town room; I hope for your approval. Though it accompanies
the “Essay on
Man,” I think that was not the poem he is here meditating. He
would have looked up, somehow affectedly, if he were just conceiving
“Awake, my St.
John.” Neither is he in the “Rape of the Lock” mood exactly. I think
he has just made out the last lines of the “Epistle to Jervis,” between gay and
tender, “And other beauties envy
Worsley’s eyes.”
I’ll be damn’d if that isn’t the line. He
is brooding over it, with a dreamy phantom of Lady
Mary floating before him. He is thinking which is the earliest
possible day and hour that she will first see it. What a miniature piece of
gentility it is! Why did you give it me? I do not like you enough to give you
anything so good.
I have dined with T.
Moore and breakfasted with Rogers, since I saw you; have much to say about them when we
meet, which I trust will be in a week or two. I have been over-watched and
overpoeted since Wordsworth has been in
town. I was obliged for health sake to wish him gone: but now he is gone I feel
a great loss. I am going to Dalston to recruit, and have serious thoughts—of
altering my condition, that is, of taking to sobriety. What do you advise me?
T. Moore asked me your address in a
manner which made me believe he meant to call upon you.
Rogers spake very kindly of you, as
every body does, and none with so much reason as your
C. L.
Note
[This is the first important letter to Bryan
Waller Procter, better known as Barry Cornwall, who was
afterwards to write, in his old age, so pleasant a memoir of Lamb. He
was then thirty-five, was practising law, and had already published Marcian Colonna and A Sicilian Story.
The Epistle to Mr.
Jervas (with Mr. Dryden’s
translation of Fresnoy’sArt of Painting)
did not end upon this line, but some eighteen lines later. I give the portrait opposite
page 606.
“Lady Mary.” By Lady
MaryLamb means, as Pope did in the first edition, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. But after his quarrel with that lady
Pope altered it to Worsley, signifying
Lady Frances Worsley, daughter of the Duke of Marlborough and wife of Sir Robert Worsley.]
LETTER 298 CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON (See Facsimile)
[p.m. April 25, 1823.]
DEAR Miss
H——, Mary has such an
invincible reluctance to any epistolary exertion, that I am sparing her a
mortification by taking the pen from her. The plain truth is, she writes such a
pimping, mean, detestable hand, that she is ashamed of the formation of her
letters. There is an essential poverty and abjectness in the frame of them.
They look like begging letters. And then she is sure to omit a most substantial
word in the second draught (for she never ventures an epistle without a foul
copy first) which is obliged to be interlined, which spoils the neatest
epistle, you know [the word “epistle” is
underlined]. Her figures, 1, 2, 3, 4, &c., where she has occasion
to express numerals, as in the date (25 Apr 1823), are not figures, but
Figurantes. And the combined posse go staggering up and down shameless as
drunkards in the day time. It is no better when she rules her paper, her lines
are “not less erring” than her words—a sort of unnatural parallel
lines, that are perpetually threatening to meet, which you know is quite
contrary to Euclid [here
Lamb has ruled lines grossly unparallel]. Her
very blots are not bold like this [here a bold blot],
but poor smears [here a poor smear] half left in and
half scratched out with another smear left in their place. I like a clean
letter, A bold free hand, and a fearless flourish. Then she has always to
go thro’ them (a second operation) to dot her is, and cross her ts. I
don’t think she can make a cork screw, if she tried—which has such a fine
effect at the end or middle of an epistle—and fills up—
[Here Lamb has made
a corkscrew two inches long (see facsimile).]
There is a corkscrew, one of the best I
ever drew. By the way what incomparable whiskey that was of Monkhouse’s. But if I am to write a
letter, let me begin, and not stand flourishing like a fencer at a fair.
It gives me great pleasure (the letter now begins) to hear
that you got down smoothly, and that Mrs.
Monkhouse’s spirits are so good and enterprising. It
shews, whatever her posture may be, that her mind at least is not supine. I
hope the excursion will enable the former to keep pace with its out-stripping
neighbor. Pray present our kindest wishes to her, and all. (That sentence
should properly have come in the Post Script, but we airy Mercurial Spirits,
there is no keeping us in). Time—as was said of one of us—toils after us in
vain. I am afraid our co-visit with Coleridge was a dream. I shall not get away before the end (or
middle) of June, and then you will be frog-hopping at Boulogne. And besides I
think the Gilmans would scarce trust him
with us, I have a malicious knack at cutting of apron strings. The
Saints’ days you speak of have long since fled to heaven, with Astræa, and the cold piety of the age lacks
fervor to recall them—only Peter left his key—the iron one
of the two, that shuts amain—and that’s the reason I am lockd up.
Meanwhile of afternoons we pick up primroses at Dalston, and Mary corrects me when I call ’em
cowslips. God bless you all, and pray remember me euphoneously to Mr. Gnwellegan. That Lee Priory must be a
dainty bower, is it built of flints, and does it stand at Kingsgate? Did you
remem
[This is apparently the proper end of the
letter. At least there is no indication of another sheet.]
Note
[Addressed to “Miss
Hutchinson, 17 Sion Hill, Ramsgate, Kent,” where she was
staying with Mrs. Monkhouse. “Not less
erring.” I have not found this.
“‘Time’—as was said of one of us.”
Johnson wrote of Shakespeare, in the Prologue at
the opening of Drury Lane Theatre in 1747:— And panting Time toil’d after him in vain.
“The Saints’ days.” See note on page 514.
Astræa, goddess of justice, fled to heaven in the
age of bronze owing to the wickedness of man.
“Shuts amain.” Two mass keys he bore, of metals twain, (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain). Lycidas, 110, 111.
“Mr. Gnwellegan.” Probably Lamb’s effort to write the name of Edward
Quillinan, afterwards Wordsworth’s son-in-law, whose first wife had been a Miss Brydges of Lee Priory.
“Lee Priory”—the home of Sir Egerton Brydges, at Ickham, near Canterbury, for some years. He had,
however, now left, and the private press was closed.
In Notes and
Queries, November 11, 1876, was printed the following scrap, a
postscript by Charles Lamb to a letter from Mary Lamb to Miss
H(utchinson). I place it here, having no clue as to date, nor does it
matter:—]
LETTER 299 (Fragment) CHARLES LAMB TO MISS HUTCHINSON (?)
[No date.]
APROPOS of birds—the other
day at a large dinner, being call’d upon for a toast, I gave, as the best
toast I knew, “Wood-cock toast,” which was drunk with 3 cheers.
Yours affecty C. Lamb.
LETTER 300 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[No date. Probably 1823.]
IT is hard when a Gentleman cannot remain concealed,
who affecteth obscurity with greater avidity than most do seek to have their
good deeds brought to light—to have a prying inquisitive finger, (to the danger
of its own scorching), busied in removing the little peck measure (scripturally
a bushel) under which one had hoped to bury his small candle. The receipt of
fern-seed, I think, in this curious age, would scarce help a man to walk
invisible.
Well, I am discovered—and thou thyself, who thoughtest to
shelter under the pease-cod of initiality (a stale and shallow device), art no
less dragged to light—Thy slender anatomy—thy skeletonian D—— fleshed and
sinewed out to the plump expansion of six characters—thy tuneful genealogy
deduced—
By the way, what a name is Timothy!
Lay it down, I beseech thee, and in its place take up the
properer sound of Timotheus—
Then mayst thou with unblushing fingers handle the Lyre
“familiar to the D——n name.”
With much difficulty have I traced thee to thy
lurking-place. Many a goodly name did I run over, bewildered between Dorrien,
and Doxat, and Dover, and Dakin, and Daintry—a wilderness of D’s—till at
last I thought I had hit it—my conjectures wandering upon a melancholy Jew—you
wot the Israelite upon Change—Master Daniels—a
contemplative Hebrew—to the which guess I was the rather led, by the
consideration that most of his nation are great readers—
Nothing is so common as to see them in the Jews’
Walk, with a bundle of script in one hand, and the Man of Feeling, or a volume of Sterne, in the other—
I am a rogue if I can collect what manner of face thou
carriest, though thou seemest so familiar with mine—If I remember, thou didst
not dimly resemble the man Daniels, whom at first I took
thee for—a care-worn, mortified, economical, commercio-political countenance,
with an agreeable limp in thy gait, if Elia mistake thee
not. I think I shd. shake hands with thee, if I met thee.
Note
[John Bates Dibdin, the son of
Charles Dibdin the younger and grandson of the
great Charles Dibdin, was at this time a young man
of about twenty-four, engaged as a clerk in a shipping office in the city. I borrow from
Canon Ainger an interesting letter from a sister
of Dibdin on the beginning of the correspondence:—
My brother . . . had constant occasion to conduct the
giving or taking of cheques, as it might be, at the India House. There he always selected
“the little clever man “in preference to the other clerks. At that time the
Elia Essays were
appearing in print. No one had the slightest conception who
“Elia” was. He was talked of everywhere, and everybody
was trying to find him out, but without success. At last, from the style and manner of
conveying his ideas and opinions on different subjects, my brother began to suspect that
Lamb was the individual so widely sought for, and
wrote some lines to him, anonymously, sending them by post to his residence, with the hope
of sifting him on the subject. Although Lamb could not know who sent
him the lines, yet he looked very hard at the writer of them the next time they met, when
he walked up, as usual, to Lamb’s desk in the most unconcerned
manner, to transact the necessary business. Shortly after, when they were again in conversation, something dropped from
Lamb’s lips which convinced his hearer, beyond a doubt, that
his suspicions were correct. He therefore wrote some more lines (anonymously, as before),
beginning— “I’ve found thee out, O
Elia!” and sent them to Colebrook Row. The consequence was that at their next meeting
Lamb produced the lines, and after much laughing, confessed
himself to be Elia. This led to a warm friendship between them.
Dibdin’s letter of discovery was signed
D. Hence Lamb’s fumbling after his
Christian name, which he probably knew all the time.
“Familiar to the D——n name.” I have not traced the
quotation that was in Lamb’s mind.]
LETTER 301 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. 3 May 1823.]
DEAR Sir—I am vexed to be two letters in your debt,
but I have been quite out of the vein lately. A philosophical treatise is
wanting, of the causes of the backwardness with which persons after a certain
time of life set about writing a letter. I always feel as if I had nothing to
say, and the performance generally justifies the presentiment. Taylor and Hessey did foolishly in not admitting the sonnet. Surely it
might have followed the B. B. I agree with you in thinking
Bowring’spaper better than the former.
I will inquire about my Letter
to the Old Gentleman, but I expect it to go
in, after those to the Young Gentn
are completed. I do not exactly see why the Goose and little Goslings should
emblematize a Quaker poet that has no children. But
after all—perhaps it is a Pelican. The Mene Mene Tekel
Upharsin around it I cannot decypher. The songster of the night
pouring out her effusions amid a Silent Meeting of Madge Owlets, would be at
least intelligible. A full pause here comes upon me, as if I had not a word
more left. I will shake my brain. Once—twice—nothing comes up. George Fox recommends waiting on these
occasions. I wait. Nothing comes. G. Fox—that sets me off
again. I have finished the Journal, and 400 more pages of the Doctrinals, which I picked up for 7s. 6d. If
I get on at this rate, the Society will be in danger of having two Quaker
poets—to patronise. I am at Dalston now, but if, when I go back to Cov. Gar., I
find thy friend has not call’d for the Journal, thee must put me in a way
of sending it; and if it should happen that the Lender of it, having that
volume, has not the other, I shall be most happy in his accept-ing the
Doctrinals, which I shall read but once certainly. It is not a splendid copy,
but perfect, save a leaf of Index.
I cannot but think the London drags heavily. I miss Janus. And O how it misses Hazlitt! Procter too is affronted (as Janus has
been) with their abominable curtailment of his things—some meddling Editor or
other—or phantom of one—for neither he nor Janus know
their busy friend. But they always find the best part cut out; and they have
done well to cut also. I am not so fortunate as to be served in this manner,
for I would give a clean sum of money in sincerity to leave them handsomely.
But the dogs—T. and H. I mean—will not affront me, and what can I
do? must I go on to drivelling? Poor
Relations is tolerable—but where shall I get another subject—or who
shall deliver me from the body of this death? I assure you it teases me more
than it used to please me. Ch. Lloyd has
published a sort of Quaker poem, he tells me, and that he has order’d me
a copy, but I have not got it. Have you seen it? I must leave a little wafer
space, which brings me to an apology for a conclusion. I am afraid of looking
back, for I feel all this while I have been writing nothing, but it may show I
am alive. Believe me, cordially yours
C. Lamb.
Note
[The sonnet probably was Mitford’s, which was printed in the June number (see page 606).
Bowring, afterwards Sir
John, was writing in the London Magazine on “Spanish Romances.”
“The Goose and little Goslings.” Possibly the design
upon the seal of Barton’s last letter.
“Janus.” The first mention of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (see note on page 619), who
sometimes wrote in the London over the pseudonym Janus Weathercock.
John Taylor, Hood and perhaps John Hamilton
Reynolds made up the magazine for press. In the May number, in addition to
Lamb’s “Poor Relations,” were contributions from De Quincey, Hartley
Coleridge, Cary, and Barton. But it was not what it had been.
Lloyd’s Quaker poem would probably be one of
those in his Poems, 1823, which contains some of his most interesting work.]
LETTER 302 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[p.m. May 6, 1823.]
DEAR Sir—Your verses were very pleasant, and I shall
like to see more of them—I do not mean addressed to me.
I do not know whether you live in town or country, but if
it suits your convenience I shall be glad to
see you some evening— say Thursday—at 20 Great Russell Street, Covt Garden. If you can come, do not trouble yourself to
write. We are old fashiond people who drink tea at six,
or not much later, and give cold mutton and pickle at nine, the good old hour.
I assure you (if it suit you) we shall be glad to see you.—
Yours, etc. C. Lamb. E.I.H., Tuesday, Some day of May 1823. Not official.
My love to Mr. Railton. The same to Mr. Rankin, to the whole Firm indeed.
Note
[The verses are not, I fear, now recoverable. Dibdin’s firm was Railton,
Rankin & Co., in Old Jury.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Hone, dated May 19, 1823. William Hone (1780-1842), who then, his stormy political
days over, was publishing antiquarian works on Ludgate Hill, had sent
Lamb his Ancient Mysteries Described, 1823.
Lamb thanks him for it, and invites him to 14 Kingsland Row,
Dalston, the next Sunday: “We dine exactly at 4.”]
LETTER 303 MARY LAMB TO MRS. RANDAL NORRIS
Hastings, at Mrs. Gibbs, York Cottage,
Priory, No. 4. [June 18, 1823.]
MY dear Friend,—Day after day has passed away, and
my brother has said, “I will write to Mrs. [?
Mr.] Norris tomorrow,” and therefore I am resolved to
write to Mrs. Norris today, and trust
him no longer. We took our places for Sevenoaks, intending to remain there all
night in order to see Knole, but when we got there we chang’d our minds,
and went on to Tunbridge Wells. About a mile short of the Wells the coach
stopped at a little inn, and I saw, “Lodgings to let” on a little,
very little house opposite. I ran over the way, and secured them before the
coach drove away, and we took immediate possession: it proved a very
comfortable place, and we remained there nine days. The first evening, as we
were wandering about, we met a lady, the wife of one of the India House clerks,
with whom we had been slightly acquainted some years ago, which slight
acquaintance has been ripened into a great intimacy during the nine pleasant
days that we passed at the Wells. She and her two daughters went with us in an
open chaise to Knole, and as the chaise held only five, we mounted Miss
James upon a little horse, which she rode famously. I was very
much pleased with Knole, and still more with Penshurst, which we also visited.
We saw Frant and the Rocks, and made much use of your Guide Book, only
Charles lost his way once going by
the map. We were in constant exercise the whole time, and spent our time so
pleasantly that when we came here on Monday we missed our new friends and found
ourselves very dull. We are by the seaside in a still less house, and we have
exchanged a very pretty landlady for a very ugly one, but she is equally
attractive to us. We eat turbot, and we drink smuggled Hollands, and we walk up
hill and down hill all day long. In the little intervals of rest that we allow
ourselves I teach Miss James French; she picked up a few
words during her foreign Tour with us, and she has had a hankering after it
ever since.
We came from Tunbridge Wells in a Postchaise, and would
have seen Battle Abbey on the way, but it is only shewn on a Monday. We are
trying to coax Charles into a
Monday’s excursion. And Bexhill we are also thinking about. Yesterday
evening we found out by chance the most beautiful view I ever saw. It is called
“The Lovers’ Seat.” . . . You have been here, therefore you
must have seen [it, or] is it only Mr. and Mrs. Faint who
have visited Hastings? [Tell Mrs.] Faint that though in my
haste to get housed I d[ecided on] . . . ice’s lodgings, yet it comforted
all th . . . to know that I had a place in view.
I suppose you are so busy that it is not fair to ask you to
write me a line to say how you are going on. Yet if any one of you have half an
hour to spare for that purpose, it will be most thankfully received. Charles joins with me in love to you all
together, and to each one in particular upstairs and downstairs.
Yours most affectionately, M. Lamb. June 18
Note
[Mr. Hazlitt dates this letter
1825 or 1826, and considers it to refer to a second visit to Hastings; but I think most
probably it refers to the 1823 visit, especially as the Lovers’ Seat would assuredly
have been discovered then. Miss James was Mary Lamb’s nurse. Mrs.
Randal Norris had been a Miss Faint.
There is a curious similarity between a passage in this letter and in
one of Byron’s, written in 1814: “I have been swimming, and eating turbot,
and smuggling neat brandies, and silk handkerchiefs . . . and walking on cliffs and
tumbling down hills.”
A Hastings guide book for 1825 gives Mrs.
Gibbs’ address as 4 York Cottages, near Priory Bridge. Near by, in
Pelham Place, a Mr. Hogsflesh had a lodging-house.]
LETTER 304 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. 10 July, 1823.]
DEAR Sir—I shall be happy to read the MS. and to
forward it; but T. and H. must judge for themselves of publication.
If it prove interesting (as I doubt not) I shall not spare to say so, you may
depend upon it. Suppose you direct it to Accots.
Office, India House.
I am glad you have met with some sweetening circumstances
to your unpalatable draught. I have just returned from Hastings, where are
exquisite views and walks, and where I have given up my soul to walking, and I
am now suffering sedentary contrasts. I am a long time reconciling to Town
after one of these excursions. Home is become strange, and will remain so yet a
while. Home is the most unforgiving of friends and always resents Absence; I
know its old cordial looks will return, but they are slow in clearing up. That
is one of the features of this our galley slavery, that
peregrination ended makes things worse. I felt out of water (with all the sea
about me) at Hastings, and just as I had learned to domiciliate there, I must
come back to find a home which is no home. I abused Hastings, but learned its
value. There are spots, inland bays, etc., which realise the notions of Juan
Fernandez.
The best thing I lit upon by accident was a small country
church (by whom or when built unknown) standing bare and single in the midst of
a grove, with no house or appearance of habitation within a quarter of a mile,
only passages diverging from it thro’ beautiful woods to so many farm
houses. There it stands, like the first idea of a church, before parishioners
were thought of, nothing but birds for its congregation, or like a
Hermit’s oratory (the Hermit dead), or a mausoleum, its effect singularly
impressive, like a church found in a desert isle to startle Crusoe with a home image; you must make out a
vicar and a congregation from fancy, for surely none come there. Yet it wants
not its pulpit, and its font, and all the seemly additaments of our worship.
Southey has attacked Elia on the score of infidelity, in the Quarterly, Article, “Progress of Infidels
[Infidelity].” I had not, nor have, seen the Monthly. He might have spared an old
friend such a construction of a few careless flights, that meant no harm to
religion. If all his unguarded expressions on the
subject were to be collected
But I love and respect Southey—and will not retort. I hate his
review, and his being a Reviewer.
The hint he has droppd will knock the sale of the book on
the head, which was almost at a stop before.
Let it stop. There is corn in Egypt, while there is cash at
Leadenhall. You and I are something besides being Writers. Thank God.
Yours truly
C. L.
Note
[What the MS. was I do not know. Lamb recurs more fully to the description of the little church—probably
Hollingdon Rural, about three miles north-west from the town—in Letters 332 and 378, on
pages 648 and 708.
The thoughts in the second paragraph of this letter were amplified in
the Elia essay
“The Old Margate Hoy,” in
the London Magazine for
July, 1823.
“Southey has attacked Elia.” In an article in the Quarterly for January, 1823, in a
review of a work by Grégoire on Deism in France,
under the title “The Progress of
Infidelity,” Southey had a
reference to Elia in
the following terms: “Unbelievers have not always been honest enough thus to
express their real feelings; but this we know concerning them, that when they have
renounced their birthright of hope, they have not been able to divest themselves of
fear. From the nature of the human mind this might be presumed, and in fact it is so.
They may deaden the heart and stupify the conscience, but they cannot destroy the
imaginative faculty. There is a remarkable proof of this in Elia’s Essays, a book which wants only a
sounder religious feeling, to be as delightful as it is original.” And then
Southey went on to draw attention to the case of Thornton Hunt, the little child of Leigh Hunt, the (to Southey) notorious freethinker,
who, as Lamb had stated in the essay “Witches and Other Night Fears,” would wake at
night in terror of images of fear.
“I will not retort.” Lamb, as we
shall see, changed his mind.
“Almost at a stop before.” Elia was never popular until long
after Lamb’s death. It did not reach a second
edition until 1836. There are now several new editions every year.]
LETTER 305 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[July, 1823.]
DR. A.—I
expect Proctor and Wainwright (Janus W.)
this evening; will you come? I suppose it is but a compt to ask Mrs. Alsop; but it
is none to say that we should be most glad to see her. Yours ever. How vexed I
am at your Dalston expeditn.
C. L. Tuesday.
Note
[Mrs. Allsop was a daughter of
Mrs. Jordan, and had herself been an actress.]
LETTER 306 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[Dated at end: 2 September [1823].]
DEAR B.
B.—What will you say to my not writing? You cannot say I do not
write now. Hessey has not used your kind
sonnet, nor have I seen it. Pray send me a Copy. Neither have I heard any more
of your Friend’s MS., which I will reclaim, whenever you please. When you
come London-ward you will find me no longer in Covt.
Gard. I have a Cottage, in Colebrook row, Islington. A cottage, for it is
detach’d; a white house, with 6 good rooms; the New River (rather elderly
by this time) runs (if a moderate walking pace can be so termed) close to the
foot of the house; and behind is a spacious garden, with vines (I assure you),
pears, strawberries, parsnips, leeks, carrots, cabbages, to delight the heart
of old Alcinous. You enter without passage
into a cheerful dining room, all studded over and rough with old Books, and
above is a lightsome Drawing room, 3 windows, full of choice prints. I feel
like a great Lord, never having had a house before.
The London I fear
falls off.—I linger among its creaking rafters, like the last rat. It will
topple down, if they don’t get some Buttresses. They have pull’d
down three, W. Hazlitt, Proctor, and their best stay, kind light
hearted Wainwright—their
Janus. The best is, neither of our fortunes is
concern’d in it.
I heard of you from Mr.
Pulham this morning, and that gave a fillip to my Laziness,
which has been intolerable. But I am so taken up with pruning and gardening, quite a new
sort of occupation to me. I have gather’d my Jargonels, but my Windsor
Pears are backward. The former were of exquisite raciness. I do now sit under
my own vine, and contemplate the growth of vegetable nature. I can now
understand in what sense they speak of Father
Adam. I recognise the paternity, while I watch my
tulips. I almost Fell with him, for the first day I
turned a drunken gard’ner (as he let in the serpent) into my Eden, and he
laid about him, lopping off some choice boughs, &c., which hung over from a
neighbor’s garden, and in his blind zeal laid waste a shade, which had
sheltered their window from the gaze of passers by. The old gentlewoman (fury
made her not handsome) could scarcely be reconciled by all my fine words. There
was no buttering her parsnips. She talk’d of the Law. What a lapse to
commit on the first day of my happy “garden-state.”
I hope you transmitted the Fox-Journal to its Owner with suitable
thanks.
Mr. Cary, the Dante-man, dines with me to-day. He is a model of a country
Parson, lean (as a Curate ought to be), modest, sensible, no obtruder of church
dogmas, quite a different man from Southey,—you would like him.
Pray accept this for a Letter, and believe me with sincere
regards
Yours
C. L. 2 Sept.
Note
[“Your kind sonnet.”
Barton’s well-known sonnet to Elia (quoted on page 645) had been
printed in the London
Magazine long before—in the previous February. I do not identify this one
among his writings.
“I have a Cottage.” This cottage still stands (1904).
Within it is much as in Lamb’s day, but
outwardly changed, for a new house has been built on one side and it is thus no longer
detached. The New River still runs before it, but subterraneously. There is no tablet on
the house; there is no tablet on any of Lamb’s houses.
Barton was so attracted by one at least of Lamb’s similes that, I fancy, he borrowed it for an
account of his grandfather’s house at Tottenham which he wrote some time later; for I
find that gentleman’s garden described as “equal to that of old Alcinous.”
“Kind light hearted Wainwright.” Lamb has
caused much surprise by using such words of one who was destined to become almost the most
cold-blooded criminal in English history; but, as Hartley
Coleridge wrote in another connection, it was
Lamb’s way to take things by the better handle, and
Wainewright’s worse faults in those days seem to have been
extravagance and affectation. Lamb at any rate liked him and
Wainewright was proud to be on a footing with
Elia and his sister, as we know from his writings.
Wainewright at this time was not quite twenty-nine; he had painted
several pictures, some of which were accepted by the academy, and he had written a number
of essays over several different pseudonyms, chief of which was Janus
Weathercock. He lived in Great Marlborough Street in some style and there
entertained many literary men, among them Lamb. It was not until 1826
that his criminal career began.
“Mr. Pulham”—Brook Pulham of the India House, who made the caricature
etching of Elia.
“While I watch my tulips.” Lamb is, of course, embroidering here, but we have it on the authority of
George Daniel, the antiquary, that with his
removal to Colebrooke Cottage began an interest in horticulture, particularly in roses.
“Garden-state.” From Marvell’s “Garden,” verse 8, line 1:— Such was that happy garden-state.
“Mr. Cary.” The Rev. Henry Francis Cary (1772-1844), the translator of
Dante and afterwards, 1826, Assistant-Keeper of the
Printed Books in the British Museum. A regular contributor to the London Magazine.]
LETTERS 307 TO 310 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[Dated at end: Sept. 6 [1823].]
DEAR Alsop—I
am snugly seated at the cottage; Mary is
well but weak, and comes home on Monday; she will soon
be strong enough to see her friends here. In the mean time will you dine with
me at ½ past four to-morrow? Ayrton and
Mr. Burney are coming.
Colebrook Cottage, left hand side, end of Colebrook Row on
the western brink of the New River, a detach’d whitish house.
No answer is required but come if you can.
C. Lamb. Saturday 6th Sep.
I call’d on you on Sunday. Respcts to Mrs. A. & boy.
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[p.m.: Sept. 9, 1823.]
MY dear A.—I
am going to ask you to do me the greatest favour which a man can do to another.
I want to make my will, and to leave my property in trust for my sister. N.B. I am not therefore going to die.—Would it be unpleasant for you to be named
for one? The other two I shall beg the same favor of are Talfourd and Proctor. If you feel reluctant, tell me, and it
sha’n’t abate one jot of my friendly feeling toward you.
Yours ever,
C. Lamb. E. I. House, Aug. [i.e., Sept.] 9, 1823.
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[p.m. September 10, 1823.]
MY dear A.—Your kindness in accepting my request no words of mine can
repay. It has made you overflow into some romance which I should have
check’d at another time. I hope it may be in the scheme of Providence
that my sister may go first (if ever so little a precedence), myself next, and
my good Exrs survive to remembr
us with kindness many years. God bless you.
I will set Proctor about the will forthwith.
C. Lamb.
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[September, 1823.]
DEAR A.—Your
Cheese is the best I ever tasted; Mary
will tell you so hereafter. She is at home, but has disappointed me. She has
gone back rather than improved. However, she has sense enough to value the
present, for she is greatly fond of Stilton. Yours is the delicatest
rain-bow-hued melting piece I ever flavoured. Believe me. I took it the more
kindly, following so great a kindness.
Depend upon’t, yours shall be one of the first houses
we shall present ourselves at, when we have got our Bill of Health.
Being both yours and Mrs.
Allsop’s truly.
C. L. & M. L.
Note
[Allsop and Procter may have been named as executors of Lamb’s will at one time, but when it came to be
proved the executors were Talfourd and Ryle, a fellow-clerk in the India House.]
LETTER 311 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. September 17, 1823.]
DEAR Sir—I have again been reading your stanzas on
Bloomfield, which are the most
appropriate that can be imagined, sweet with Doric delicacy. I like that Our more chaste Theocritus— just hinting at the fault of the Grecian. I love that stanza ending with Words phrases fashions pass away; But Truth and nature live through all. But I shall omit in my own copy the one stanza which alludes to Lord B.—I suppose. It spoils the sweetness and
oneness of the feeling. Cannot we think of Burns, or Thompson,
without sullying the thought with a reflection out of place upon Lord Rochester? These verses might have been
inscribed upon a tomb; are in fact an epitaph; satire does not look pretty upon
a tombstone. Besides, there is a quotation in it, always bad in verse; seldom
advisable in prose.
I doubt if their having been in a Paper will not prevent
T. and H. from insertion, but I shall have a thing to send in a day or
two, and shall try them. Omitting that stanza, a very
little alteration is wantg in the beginng of the next. You see, I use freedom. How happily (I
flatter not!) you have brot in his subjects; and, (I suppose) his favorite measure, though I am not
acquainted with any of his writings but the Farmer’s Boy. He dined with me once,
and his manners took me exceedingly.
I rejoyce that you forgive my long silence. I continue to
estimate my own-roof comforts highly. How could I remain all my life a lodger!
My garden thrives (I am told) tho’ I have yet reaped nothing but some
tiny sallad, and withered carrots. But a garden’s a garden anywhere, and
twice a garden in London.
Somehow I cannot relish that word Horkey. Cannot you supply
it by circumlocution, and direct the reader by a note to explain that it means
the Horkey. But Horkey choaks me in the Text.
It raises crowds of mean associations, Hawking and sp——g,
Gauky, Stalky, Maukin. The sound is every thing, in such dulcet modulations
’specially. I like Gilbert Meldrum’s sterner
tones, without knowing who Gilbert Meldrum
is. You have slipt in your rhymes as if they grew there, so
natural-artificially, or artificial-naturally. There’s a vile phrase.
Do you go on with your Quaker Sonnets—[to] have ’em
ready with Southey’sBook of the Church? I meditate a
letter to S. in the
London, which perhaps will meet
the fate of the Sonnet.
Excuse my brevity, for I write painfully at office, liable
to 100 callings off. And I can never sit down to an epistle elsewhere. I read
or walk. If you return this letter to the Post Office, I think they will return
4d, seeing it is but half a one. Believe me
tho’ entirely yours
C. L.
Note
[Barton’s “Verses to the Memory of Bloomfield, the
Suffolk Poet” (who died in August, 1823), were printed in book form in his
Poetic
Vigils, 1824. This is the stanza that Lamb most liked:— It is not quaint and local terms Besprinkled o’er thy rustic lay, Though well such dialect confirms Its power unletter’d minds to sway, It is not these that most display Thy sweetest charms, thy gentlest thrall,— Words, phrases, fashions, pass away, But Truth and Nature live through all.
The stanza referring to Byron was not
reprinted, nor was the word Horkey, which means Harvest Home in Suffolk. Gilbert Meldrum is a character in one of Bloomfield’sRural Tales.
“Seldom advisable in prose.” Lamb’s editors would have a lighter task had he
practised this precept.
“Quaker Sonnets.” Barton did not carry out this project. Southey’sBook of the Church was published in 1824.
“I meditate a letter to S.” The
“Letter of Elia to Mr.
Southey” was published in the London Magazine for October, 1823.]
LETTER 312 (Fragment) CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES LLOYD
[No date. Autumn, 1823 ]
YOUR lines are not to be understood reading on one
leg. They are sinuous, and to be won with wrestling. I assure you in sincerity
that nothing you have done has given me greater satisfaction. Your obscurity,
where you are dark, which is seldom, is that of too much meaning, not the
painful obscurity which no toil of the reader can dissipate; not the dead
vacuum and floundering place in which imagination finds no footing; it is not
the dimness of positive darkness, but of distance; and he that reads and not
discerns must get a better pair of spectacles. I admire every piece in the
collection; I cannot
say the first is best; when I do so, the last read rises up in judgment. To
your Mother—to your Sister—to Mary dead—they are all weighty with thought and
tender with sentiment. Your poetry is like no other:—those cursed Dryads and
Pagan trumperies of modern verse have put me out of conceit of the very name of
poetry. Your verses are as good and as wholesome as prose; and I have made a
sad blunder if I do not leave you with an impression that your present is
rarely valued.
Charles Lamb.
Note
[This scrap is in Selections from the Poems and
Letters of Bernard Barton, 1849, edited by Edward FitzGerald and Lucy Barton.
Lloyd says: “I had a very ample testimony
from C. Lamb to the character of my last little
volume. I will transcribe to you what he says, as it is but a note, and his manner is
always so original, that I am sure the introduction of the merest trifle from his pen will
well compensate for the absence of any-thing of mine.” The volume was Poems, 1823, one
of the chief of which was “Stanzas on the Difficulty with which,
in Youth, we Bring Home to our Habitual Consciousness, the Idea of Death,”
to which Lloyd appended the following sentence from
Elia’s essay on “New Year’s Eve,” as motto: “Not
childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is
mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could preach a homily on the
fragility of life; but he brings it not home to himself, any more than in a hot June,
we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of December.”]
LETTER 313 CHARLES LAMB TO REV. H. F. CARY
India Office, 14th Oct., 1823.
DEAR Sir,—If convenient, will you give us house room
on Saturday next? I can sleep anywhere. If another Sunday suit you better, pray
let me know. We were talking of Roast Shoulder of Mutton
with onion sauce; but I scorn to prescribe to the hospitalities of mine host.
With respects to Mrs.
C., yours truly,
C. Lamb.
LETTER 314 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[No date. ? Oct., 1823.]
DEAR Sir—Mary
has got a cold, and the nights are dreadful; but at the first indication of
Spring (alias the first dry weather in Novr early) it is our intention to surprise you early some
eveng.
Believe me, most truly yours, C. L. The Cottage, Saturday night.
Mary regrets very much Mrs. Allsop’s fruitless visit. It
made her swear! She was gone to visit Miss
Hutchinsn, whom she found out.
LETTER 315 CHARLES LAMB TO J. B. DIBDIN
[p.m. October 28, 1823.]
MY dear Sir—Your Pig was a picture of a pig, and your Picture a pig of a
picture. The former was delicious but evanescent, like a hearty fit of mirth,
or the crackling of thorns under a pot; but the latter is an idea, and abideth.
I never before saw swine upon sattin. And then that pretty strawy canopy about
him! he seems to purr (rather than grunt) his satisfaction. Such a
gentlemanlike porker too! Morland’s are absolutely clowns to it. Who the deuce
painted it?
I have ordered a little gilt shrine for it, and mean to
wear it for a locket; a shirt-pig.
I admire the petty-toes shrouded in a veil of something,
not mud, but that warm soft consistency with [? which] the dust takes in
Elysium after a spring shower—it perfectly engloves them.
I cannot enough thank you and your country friend for the
delicate double present—the Utile et Decorum—three times
have I attempted to write this sentence and failed; which shows that I am not
cut out for a pedant.
Sir (as I say to Southey) will you come and see us at our poor cottage of
Colebrook to tea tomorrow evening, as early as six? I have some friends coming
at that hour—
The panoply which covered your material pig shall be
forthcoming—The pig pictorial, with its trappings, domesticate with me.
Your greatly obliged Elia. Tuesdy.
Note
[“The crackling of thorns” (Eccles. vii. 6). “Morland’s”—George Morland, the painter. “Utile et Decorum.” A very common tag. But
Lamb may have been thinking of— Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Horace, Odes, III., ii., 13.
“Sir (as I say to Southey).” Elia’s Letter in the London Magazine begins thus.]
LETTER 316 CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
[No date. Early November, 1823.]
DEAR Mrs.
H.,—Sitting down to write a letter is such a painful operation to
Mary, that you must accept me as her
proxy. You have seen our house. What I now tell you is literally true.
Yesterday week George Dyer called upon
us, at one o’clock (bright noon day) on his way to
dine with Mrs. Barbauld at Newington. He
sat with Mary about half an hour, and took leave. The maid
saw him go out from her kitchen window; but suddenly losing sight of him, ran
up in a fright to Mary. G. D.,
instead of keeping the slip that leads to the gate, had deliberately, staff in
hand, in broad open day, marched into the New River. He had not his spectacles
on, and you know his absence. Who helped him out, they can hardly tell; but
between ’em they got him out, drenched thro’ and thro. A mob
collected by that time, and accompanied him in. “Send for the
Doctor!” they said: and a one-eyed fellow, dirty and drunk, was
fetched from the Public House at the end, where it seems he lurks, for the sake
of picking up water practice, having formerly had a medal from the Humane
Society for some rescue. By his advice, the patient was put between blankets;
and when I came home at four to dinner, I found G. D.
a-bed, and raving, light-headed with the brandy-and-water which the doctor had
administered. He sung, laughed, whimpered, screamed, babbled of guardian
angels, would get up and go home; but we kept him there by force; and by next
morning he departed sobered, and seems to have received no injury. All my
friends are open-mouthed about having paling before the river, but I cannot see
that, because a . . . lunatic chooses to walk into a river with his eyes open
at midday, I am any the more likely to be drowned in it, coming home at
midnight.
I had the honour of dining at the Mansion House on Thursday
last, by special card from the Lord Mayor, who never saw my face, nor I his;
and all from being a writer in a magazine! The dinner costly, served on massy
plate, champagne, pines, &c.; forty-seven present, among whom the Chairman
and two other directors of the India Company. There’s for you! and got
away pretty sober! Quite saved my credit!
We continue to like our house prodigiously. Does
Mary Hazlitt go on with her novel, or has she begun
another? I would not dis-courage her, tho’ we continue to think it (so far) in its present state
not saleable.
Our kind remembrances to her and hers and you and yours.—
Yours truly, C. Lamb.
I am pleased that H. liked my letter to the Laureate.
Note
[Addressed to “Mrs.
Hazlitt, Alphington, near Exeter.”
This letter is the first draft of the Elia essay “Amicus Redivivus,” which was printed
in the London Magazine in
December, 1823. George Dyer, who was then
sixty-eight, had been getting blind steadily for some years. A visit to Lamb’s cottage to-day (the little end white house in
the accompanying picture), bearing in mind that the ribbon of green between iron railings
that extends along Colebrooke Row was at that time an open stream, will make the nature of
G. D.’s misadventure quite plain.
“Mary Hazlitt”—the
daughter of John Hazlitt, the essayist’s
brother. See Letter 827.
“I am pleased that H. liked my letter to
the Laureate.” Hazlitt wrote, in the
essay “On the Pleasures of
Hating,” “I think I must be friends with Lamb again, since he has written that magnanimous Letter to Southey, and told him a
piece of his mind!” Coleridge also
approved of it, and Crabb Robinson’s praise
was excessive.]
LETTER 317 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
E. I. H., 21st November, 1823.
DEAR Southey,—The kindness of your note has melted away the mist which
was upon me. I have been fighting against a shadow. That accursed “Quarterly Review” had vexed me
by a gratuitous speaking, of its own knowledge, that the “Confessions of a
Drunkard” was a genuine description of the state of the writer.
Little things, that are not ill meant, may produce much ill. That might have
injured me alive and dead. I am in a public office, and my life is insured. I
was prepared for anger, and I thought I saw, in a few obnoxious words, a hard
case of repetition directed against me. I wished both magazine and review at
the bottom of the sea. I shall be ashamed to see you, and my sister (though innocent) will be still more so;
for the folly was done without her knowledge, and has made her uneasy ever
since. My guardian angel was absent at that time.
I will muster up courage to see you, however, any day next
week (Wednesday excepted). We shall hope that you will bring Edith with you.
That will be a second mortification. She will hate to see us; but come and heap
embers. We deserve it, I for what I’ve done, and she for being my sister.
Do come early in the day, by sun-light, that you may see my
Milton.
I am at Colebrook Cottage, Colebrook Row, Islington. A
detached whitish house, close to the New River, end of Colebrook Terrace, left
hand from Sadler’s Wells.
Will you let me know the day before?
Your penitent C. Lamb.
P.S.—I do not think your handwriting at all like
Hunt’s. I do not think many
things I did think.
Note
[For the right appreciation of this letter Elia’s Letter to Southey must be read (see Vol.
I. of the present edition, page 226). It was hard hitting, and though Lamb would perhaps have been wiser had he held his hand,
yet Southey had taken an offensive line of moral
superiority and rebuke, and much that was said by Lamb was justified.
Southey’s reply, which I am permitted by Miss
Warter to print, ran thus:—
My DearLamb—On Monday I saw your letter in the London
Magazine, which I had not before had an opportunity of seeing,
and I now take the first interval of leisure for replying to it.
Nothing could be further from my mind than any
intention or apprehension of any way offending or injuring a man concerning
whom I have never spoken, thought, or felt otherwise than with affection,
esteem, and admiration.
If you had let me know in any private or
friendly manner that you felt wounded by a sentence in which nothing but
kindness was intended—or that you found it might injure the sale of your book—I
would most readily and gladly have inserted a note in the next Review to qualify and explain what
had hurt you.
You have made this impossible, and I am sorry
for it. But I will not engage in controversy with you to make sport for the
Philistines.
The provocation must be strong indeed that can
rouse me to do this, even with an enemy. And if you can forgive an unintended
offence as heartily as I do the way in which you have resented it, there will
be nothing to prevent our meeting as we have heretofore done, and feeling
towards each other as we have always been wont to do.
Only signify a correspondent willingness on
your part, and send me your address, and my first business next week shall be
to reach your door, and shake hands with you and your sister. Remember me to
her most kindly and believe me—Yours, with unabated esteem and regards,
Robert Southey.
The matter closed with this exchange of letters, and no hostility
remained on either side.
Lamb’s quarrel with the Quarterly began in 1811, when in a
review of Weber’s edition of
FordLamb was described as a “poor maniac.” It was renewed in 1814, when his
article on Wordsworth’s Excursion was mutilated. It broke out again in 1822, as
Lamb says here, when a reviewer of Reid’s treatise on
Hypochondriasis and other
Nervous Affections (supposed to be Dr.
Gooch, a friend of Dr. Henry
Southey’s) referred to Lamb’s “Confessions of a Drunkard” (see
Vol. I. of the present edition, page 133) as being, from his own knowledge, true. Thus
Lamb’s patience was naturally at breaking point when his own
friend Southey attacked Elia a few numbers later.
“I do not think your handwriting at all like
Hunt’s.” Lamb had said, in the Letter, of Leigh Hunt: “His
hand-writing is so much the same with your own, that I have opened more than one letter
of his, hoping, nay, not doubting, but it was from you, and have been disappointed (he
will bear with my saying so) at the discovery of my error.”]
LETTER 318 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. November 22, 1823.]
DEAR B. B.—I
am ashamed at not acknowledging your kind little poem, which I must needs like
much, but I protest I thought I had done it at the moment. Is it possible a
letter has miscarried? Did you get one in which I sent you an extract from the
poems of Lord Sterling? I should wonder if
you did, for I sent you none such.—There was an incipient lye strangled in the birth. Some people’s conscience is so
tender! But in plain truth I thank you very much for the verses. I have a very
kind letter from the Laureat, with a self-invitation to come and shake hands
with me. This is truly handsome and noble. ’Tis worthy of my old idea of Southey. Shall not I, think you, be covered with a red
suffusion?
You are too much apprehensive of your complaint. I know
many that are always ailing of it, and live on to a good old age. I know a
merry fellow (you partly know him) who when his Medical Adviser told him he had
drunk away all that part, congratulated himself (now his liver was gone) that
he should be the longest Liver of the two. The best way in these cases is to
keep yourself as ignorant as you can—as ignorant as the world was before
Galen—of the entire inner construction
of the Animal Man—not to be conscious of a midriff—to hold kidneys (save of
sheep and swine) to be an agreeable fiction—not to know whereabout the gall
grows—to account the circulation of the blood an idle whimsey of Harvey’s—to acknowledge no mechanism not visible. For, once fix the seat of your
disorder, and your fancies flux into it like bad humours. Those medical
gentries chuse each his favourite part—one takes the lungs—another the
aforesaid liver—and refer to that whatever in the animal economy is amiss.
Above all, use exercise, take a little more spirituous liquors, learn to smoke,
continue to keep a good conscience, and avoid tampering with hard terms of
art—viscosity, schirossity, and those bugbears, by which simple patients are
scared into their grave. Believe the general sense or the mercantile world,
which holds that desks are not deadly. It is the mind, good B. B., and not the limbs, that taints by long
sitting. Think of the patience of taylors—think how long the Chancellor
sits—think of the Brooding Hen.
I protest I cannot answer thy Sister’s kind enquiry, but I judge I shall put forth no
second volume. More praise than buy, and T. and H. are not
particularly disposed for Martyrs.
Thou wilt see a funny passage, and yet a true History, of George Dyer’s Aquatic Incursion, in the next “London.” Beware his fate, when
thou comest to see me at my Colebrook Cottage. I have filled my little space
with my little thoughts. I wish thee ease on thy sofa, but not too much
indulgence on it. From my poor desk, thy fellow-sufferer this bright November,
C. L.
Note
[Again I do not identify the kind little poem. It may have been a trifle
enclosed in a letter, which Barton did not print and
Lamb destroyed.]
LETTER 319 CHARLES LAMB TO W. HARRISON AINSWORTH
India-House, 9th Dec., 1823.
(If I had time I would go over this letter again, and dot
all my i’s.)
DEAR Sir,—I should have thanked you for your Books
and Compliments sooner, but have been waiting for a revise to be sent, which
does not come, tho’ I returned the proof on the receit of your letter. I
have read Warner with great pleasure. What an elaborate
piece of alliteration and antithesis! why it must have been a labour far above
the most difficult versification. There is a fine simile of or picture of
Semiramis arming to repel a siege. I do not mean to keep the Book, for I
suspect you are forming a curious
collection, and I do not pretend to any thing of the kind. I have not a
Blackletter Book among mine, old Chaucer
excepted, and am not Bibliomanist enough to like Blackletter. It is painful to
read. Therefore I must insist on returning it at opportunity, not from
contumacity and reluctance to be oblig’d, but because it must suit you
better than me. The loss of a present from should never
exceed the gain of a present to. I hold this maxim
infallible in the accepting Line. I read your Magazines with satisfaction. I
throughly agree with you as to the German Faust, as far [as] I can do justice to it from an English
translation. ’Tis a disagreeable canting tale of Seduction, which has
nothing to do with the Spirit of Faustus—Curiosity. Was the dark secret to be explored to end in the
seducing of a weak girl, which might have been accomplished by earthly agency?
When Marlow gives his Faustus a
mistress, he flies him at Helen, flower of Greece, to be sure, and not at
Miss Betsy, or Miss Sally Thoughtless. “Cut is the branch that bore the goodly
fruit, And wither’d is Apollo’s laurel tree: Faustus is dead.”
What a noble natural transition from metaphor to plain
speaking! as if the figurative had flagged in description of such a Loss, and
was reduced to tell the fact simply.—
I must now thank you for your very kind invitation. It is
not out of prospect that I may see Manchester some day, and then I will avail
myself of your kindness. But Holydays are scarce things with me, and the Laws
of attendance are getting stronger and stronger at Leadenhall. But I shall bear
it in mind. Meantime something may (more probably) bring you to town, where I
shall be happy to see you. I am always to be found (alas!) at my desk in the
forepart of the day.
I wonder why they do not send the revise. I leave late at
office, and my abode lies out of the way, or I should have seen about it. If
you are impatient, Perhaps a Line to the Printer, directing him to send it me,
at Accountant’s Office, may answer. You will see by the scrawl that I
only snatch a few minutes from intermitting Business.
Your oblig. Ser., C. Lamb.
Note
[Ainsworth had sent LambWilliam
Warner’sSyrinx; or, A Sevenfold History, 1597. The book was a
gift, and is now in the Dyce and Foster library at South Kensington.
Goethe’sFaust. Lamb, as we have seen, had read the account of the play in Madame de Staël’sGermany. He might also have
read the translation by Lord Francis Leveson-Gower,
1823. Hayward’stranslation was not published till 1834. Lamb misquotes Marlowe’s “Faustus.” The passage runs (Scene xvi. (a)):— Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, And burned is Apollo’s laurel bough That sometime grew within this learned man: Faustus is gone. Lamb gives it in his Dramatic Specimens. Goethe admired Lamb’s sonnet on
his family name.
“Manchester.” Ainsworth was still a solicitor’s pupil at Manchester. The letter is
addressed to him at 10 King’s Street in that city.]
LETTER 320 CHARLES LAMB TO W. HARRISON AINSWORTH
[Dated at end: December 20, (1823).]
MY dear Sir—You talk of months at a time and I know
not what inducements to visit Manchester, Heaven knows how gratifying! but I
have had my little month of 1823 already. It is all over, and without incurring
a disagreeable favor I cannot so much as get a single holyday till the season
returns with the next year. Even our half-hour’s absences from office are
set down in a Book! Next year, if I can spare a day or two of it, I will come
to Manchester, but I have reasons at home against longer absences.—I am so ill
just at present—(an illness of my own procuring last night; who is
Perfect?)—that nothing but your very great kindness could make me write. I will
bear in mind the letter to W. W., you
shall have it quite in time, before the 12.
My aking and confused Head warns me to leave off.—With a
muddled sense of gratefulness, which I shall apprehend more clearly to-morrow,
I remain, your friend unseen,
C. L. I. H. 29th.
Will your occasions or inclination bring you to London? It will give me great pleasure to
show you every thing that Islington can boast, if you know the meaning of
that very Cockney sound. We have the New River!
I am asham’d of this scrawl: but I beg you to
accept it for the present. I am full of qualms.
A fool at 50 is a fool indeed.
Note
[W. W. was Wordsworth.
“A fool at 50 is a fool indeed.” “A fool at
forty is a fool indeed” was Young’s line
in Satire II. of the series on “Love of Fame.” Lamb was nearing forty-nine.]
LETTER 321 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[January 9, 1824.]
DEAR B. B.—Do
you know what it is to succumb under an insurmountable day mare—a whoreson
lethargy, Falstaff calls it—an
indisposition to do any thing, or to be any thing—a total deadness and
distaste—a suspension of vitality—an indifference to locality—a numb
soporifical goodfornothingness—an ossification all over—an oyster-like
insensibility to the passing events—a mind-stupor,—a brawny defiance to the
needles of a thrusting-in conscience—did you ever have a very bad cold, with a
total irresolution to submit to water gruel processes?—this has been for many
weeks my lot, and my excuse—my fingers drag heavily over this paper, and to my
thinking it is three and twenty furlongs from here to the end of this
demi-sheet—I have not a thing to say—nothing is of more importance than
another—I am flatter than a denial or a pancake—emptier than Judge
Park’s wig when the head is in it—duller than a country
stage when the actors are off it—a cypher—an O—I acknowledge life at all, only
by an occasional convulsional cough, and a permanent phlegmatic pain in the
chest—I am weary of the world—Life is weary of me—My day is gone into Twilight
and I don’t think it worth the expence of candles—my wick hath a thief in
it, but I can’t muster courage to snuff it—I inhale suffocation—I
can’t distinguish veal from mutton—nothing interests me—’tis 12
o’clock and Thurtell is just now
coming out upon the New Drop—Jack Ketch
alertly tucking up his greasy sleeves to do the last office of mortality, yet
cannot I elicit a groan or a moral reflection—if you told me the world will be
at end tomorrow, I should just say, “will it?”—I have not volition
enough to dot my i’s—much less to comb my Eyebrows—my eyes are set in my
head—my brains are gone out to see a poor relation in Moorfields, and they did
not say when they’d come back again—my scull is a Grub street Attic, to
let—not so much as a joint stool or a crackd jordan left in it—my hand writes,
not I, from habit, as chickens run about a little when their heads are off—O for a vigorous fit of gout, cholic,
tooth ache—an earwig in my auditory, a fly in my visual organs—pain is life—the
sharper, the more evidence of life—but this apathy, this death—did you ever
have an obstinate cold, a six or seven weeks’ unintermitting chill and
suspension of hope, fear, conscience, and every thing—yet do I try all I can to
cure it, I try wine, and spirits, and smoking, and snuff in unsparing
quantities, but they all only seem to make me worse, instead of better—I sleep
in a damp room, but it does me no good; I come home late o’ nights, but
do not find any visible amendment.
Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
It is just 15 minutes after 12. Thurtell is by this time a good way on his journey, baiting at
Scorpion perhaps, Ketch is bargaining
for his cast coat and waistcoat, the Jew demurs at first at three half crowns,
but on consideration that he may get somewhat by showing ’em in the Town,
finally closes.—
C. L.
Note
[“A whoreson lethargy.” A “whoreson
apoplexy” is Falstaff’s phrase
(2 “Henry IV.,” I., 2,
123), but he adds (126), “This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of
lethargy.”
“Judge Park’s wig.”
Sir James Alan Park, of the Bench of Common
Pleas, who tried Thurtell, the murderer of Mr. William Weare of Lyon’s Inn, in Gill’s
Hill Lane, Radlett, on October 24, 1823.
“Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
(Romans vii. 24).]
LETTER 322 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. January 23, 1824.]
MY dear Sir—That peevish letter of mine, which was
meant to convey an apology for my incapacity to write, seems to have been taken
by you in too serious a light. It was only my way of telling you I had a severe
cold. The fact is I have been insuperably dull and lethargic for many weeks,
and cannot rise to the vigour of a Letter, much less an Essay. The London must do without me for a time, a
time, and half a time, for I have lost all interest about it, and whether I
shall recover it again I know not. I will bridle my pen another time, & not
teaze and puzzle you with my aridities. I shall begin to feel a little more
alive with the spring. Winter is to me
(mild or harsh) always a great trial of the spirits. I am ashamed not to have
noticed your tribute to
Woolman, whom we love so much. It is
done in your good manner. Your friend Taylor called upon me some time since, and seems a very amiable
man. His last story is painfully fine. His Book I “like.” It is only too
stuft with scripture, too Parsonish. The best thing in it is the Boy’s
own story. When I say it is too full of Scripture, I mean it is too full of
direct quotations; no book can have too much of silent
scripture in it. But the natural power of a story is diminished when
the uppermost purpose in the writer seems to be to recommend something else,
viz Religion. You know what Horace says of
the Deus intersit. I am not able
to explain myself, you must do it for me.—
My Sister’s part
in the Leicester School
(about two thirds) was purely her own; as it was (to the same quantity) in the
Shakspeare Tales which
bear my name. I wrote only the Witch Aunt, the first going to Church, and the
final Story about a little Indian girl in a Ship.
Your account of my Black Balling amused me. I think, as Quakers, they did right. There are some
things hard to be understood.
The more I think the more I am vexed at having puzzled you
with that Letter, but I have been so out of Letter writing of late years, that
it is a sore effort to sit down to it, & I felt in your debt, and sat down
waywardly to pay you in bad money. Never mind my dulness, I am used to long
intervals of it. The heavens seem brass to me—then again comes the refreshing
shower. “I have been merry once or twice ere now.”
You said something about Mr.
Mitford in a late letter, which I believe I did not advert to. I
shall be happy to show him my Milton (it
is all the show things I have) at any time he will take the trouble of a jaunt
to Islington. I do also hope to see Mr.
Taylor there some day. Pray say so to both.
Coleridge’sbook is good part printed, but sticks a
little for more copy. It bears an unsaleable
Title—Extracts from Bishop Leighton—but
I am confident there will be plenty of good notes in it, more of Bishop
Coleridge than Leighton, I hope;
for what is Leighton?
Do you trouble yourself about Libel cases? The Decision
against Hunt for the “Vision of Judgment” made me
sick. What is to become of the old talk about our good old King—his personal
virtues saving us from a revolution &c. &c. Why, none that think it can
utter it now. It must stink. And the Vision is
really, as to Him-ward, such a tolerant good humour’d thing. What a
wretched thing a Lord Chief Justice is,
always was, & will be!
Keep your good spirits up, dear B B—mine will return—They are at present in abeyance. But I am
rather lethargic than miserable. I don’t know but a good horse whip would
be more beneficial to me than Physic. My head, without aching, will teach yours
to ache. It is well I am getting to the conclusion. I will send a better letter
when I am a better man. Let me thank you for your kind concern for me (which I
trust will have reason soon to be dissipated) & assure you that it gives me
pleasure to hear from you.—
Yours truly C. L.
Note
[“The London must do
without me.” Lamb contributed nothing between
December, 1823 (“Amicus
Redivivus”), and September, 1824 (“Blakesmoor in H——shire”).
Barton’s tribute to Woolman was the poem “A Memorial to John Woolman,” printed in Poetic Vigils.
Taylor was Charles Benjamin
Tayler (1797-1875), the curate of Hadleigh, in Suffolk, and the author of
many religious books. Lamb refers to May You Like It,
1823.
“What Horace
says”:— Nec deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodusIncident.Ars
Poetica, 191, 192.
Neither let a god interfere, unless a difficulty worth a god’s
unravelling should happen (Smart’stranslation).
“My Black Balling.” Elia had been rejected by a Book
Club in Woodbridge.
“I have been merry once or twice.” Master Silence in 2 “Henry IV.,” V., 3, 42, confesses to having
“been merry twice and once ere now.”
“Coleridge’s
book”—the Aids to
Reflection, 1825. The first intention had been a selection of
“Beauties “from Bishop Leighton
(1611-1684), Archbishop of Glasgow, and author, among other works, of Rules and Instructions for a Holy
Life.
“The Decision against Hunt.”
John Hunt, the publisher of The Liberal, in which Byron’s
“Vision of Judgment” had
been printed in 1822, had just been fined £100 for the libel therein contained on George III.
“My head, without aching.” An adaptation of Pope’s And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer. Prol. to Satires, 202.
Here should come a note from Lamb
to Charles Ollier, thanking him for a copy of his
Inesilla; or, The
Tempter: A Romance, with Other Tales.]
LETTER 323 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. February 25, 1824.]
MY dear Sir—Your title of Poetic Vigils arrides me much more
than A Volume of Verse, which is no meaning. The motto says nothing, but I
cannot suggest a better. I do not like mottoes but where they are singularly
felicitous; there is foppery in them. They are unplain, un-Quakerish. They are
good only where they flow from the Title and are a kind of justification of it.
There is nothing about watchings or lucubrations in the one you suggest, no
commentary on Vigils. By the way, a wag would recommend you to the Line of
Pope Sleepless himself—to give his readers sleep— I by no means wish it. But it may explain what I mean, that a neat motto
is child of the Title. I think Poetic Vigils as short
and sweet as can be desired; only have an eye on the Proof, that the Printer do
not substitute Virgils, which would ill accord with your modesty or meaning.
Your suggested motto is antique enough in spelling, and modern enough in
phrases; a good modern antique: but the matter of it is germane to the purpose
only supposing the title proposed a vindication of yourself from the
presumption of authorship. The 1st title was liable to this objection, that if
you were disposed to enlarge it, and the bookseller insisted on its appearance
in Two Tomes, how oddly it would sound— A Volume of Verse in Two Volumes 2d
edition &c— You see thro’ my wicked intention of curtailing this Epistolet by
the above device of large margin. But in truth the idea of letterising has been
oppressive to me of late above your candour to give me credit for. There is
Southey, whom I ought to have
thank’d a fortnight ago for a present of the Church Book. I have never had courage to
buckle myself in earnest even to acknowledge it by six words. And yet I am
accounted by some people a good man. How cheap that character is acquired! Pay
your debts, don’t borrow money, nor twist your kittens neck off, or
disturb a congregation, &c.—your business is done. I know things (thoughts
or things, thoughts are things) of myself which would make every friend I have
fly me as a plague patient. I once * * *, and set a dog upon a crab’s leg
that was shoved out under a moss of sea weeds, a pretty little feeler.—Oh! pah! how sick I am of that; and a lie, a
mean one, I once told!—
I stink in the midst of respect.
I am much hypt; the fact is, my head is heavy, but there is
hope, or if not, I am better than a poor shell fish—not morally when I set the
whelp upon it, but have more blood and spirits; things may turn up, and I may
creep again into a decent opinion of myself. Vanity will return with sunshine.
Till when, pardon my neglects and impute it to the wintry solstice.
C. Lamb.
Note
[The motto eventually adopted for Barton’sPoetic Vigils was from Vaughan’sSilex
Scintillans:— Dear night! this world’s defeat; The stop to busie fools; care’s check and curb; The day of spirits; my soul’s calm retreat Which none disturb!
“The Line of Pope.” The Dunciad, Book I., line 94.]
LETTER 324 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. 24 March, 1824.]
DEAR B. B.—I
hasten to say that if my opinion can strengthen you in your choice, it is
decisive for your acceptance of what has been so handsomely offered. I can see
nothing injurious to your most honourable sense. Think that you are called to a
poetical Ministry—nothing worse—the Minister is worthy of the hire.—The only
objection I feel is founded on a fear that the acceptance may be a temptation
to you to let fall the bone (hard as it is) which is in your mouth and must
afford tolerable pickings, for the shadow of independence. You cannot propose
to become independent on what the low state of interest could afford you from
such a principal as you mention; and the most graceful excuse for the
acceptance, would be, that it left you free to your voluntary functions. That
is the less light part of the scruple. It has no darker shade. I put in darker,
because of the ambiguity of the word light, which Donne in his admirable poem on the Metempsychosis, has so ingeniously
illustrated in his invocation Make my dark heavy poem, light and light— where the two senses of light are opposed to different opposites. A trifling criticism.—I can see
no reason for any scruple then but what arises from your own interest; which is
in your own power of course to solve. If you still have doubts, read over
Sanderson’sCases of Conscience, and
Jeremy Taylor’sDuctor Dubitantium, the first
a moderate Octavo, the latter a folio of 900 close pages, and when you have
thoroughly digested the admirable reasons pro and con which they give for every
possible Case, you will be—— just as wise as when you began. Every man is his
own best Casuist; and after all, as Ephraim
Smooth, in the pleasant comedy of Wild Oats, has it, “there is no
harm in a Guinea.” A fortiori there is less in 2000.
I therefore most sincerely congratulate with you, excepting
so far as excepted above. If you have fair Prospects of adding to the
Principal, cut the Bank; but in either case do not refuse an honest Service.
Your heart tells you it is not offered to bribe you from
any duty, but to a duty which you feel to be your
vocation. Farewell heartily
C. L.
Note
[In the memoir of Barton by
Edward FitzGerald, prefixed to the Poems and
Letters, it is stated that in this year Barton
received a handsome addition to his income. “A few members of his Society,
including some of the wealthier of his own family, raised £1200 among them for his
benefit [not 2000 guineas, as Lamb says]. It seems that he felt some delicacy at first
in accepting this munificent testimony which his own people offered to his
talents.” Barton had written to Lamb on the subject.
“Donne’s . . . poem
on the Metempsychosis.” “Metempsychosis,” August 16, 1601, verse 6,
line 5.
“Wild
Oats” was by John O’Keeffe.]
LETTER 325 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[(Early spring), 1824.]
I AM sure I cannot fill a letter, though I should
disfurnish my scull to fill it. But you expect something, and shall have a
Note-let. Is Sunday, not divinely speaking, but humanly and holydaysically, a
blessing? Without its institution, would our rugged taskmasters have given us a
leisure day, so often, think you, as once in a month?—or, if it had not been
instituted, might they not have given us every 6th day? Solve me this problem.
If we are to go 3 times a day to church, why
has Sunday slipped into the notion of a Holliday? A
Holyday I grant it. The puritans, I have read in Southey’sBook, knew the distinction. They made people observe Sunday
rigorously, would not let a nursery maid walk out in the fields with children
for recreation on that day. But then—they gave the people a holliday from all
sorts of work every second Tuesday. This was giving to the Two Cæsars that
which was his respective. Wise, beautiful, thoughtful,
generous Legislators! Would Wilberforce
give us our Tuesdays? No, d—n him. He would turn the six days into sevenths, And those 3 smiling seasons of the year Into a Russian winter. Old Play.
I am sitting opposite a person who is making strange
distortions with the gout, which is not unpleasant—to me at least. What is the
reason we do not sympathise with pain, short of some terrible Surgical
operation? Hazlitt, who boldly says all
he feels, avows that not only he does not pity sick people, but he hates them.
I obscurely recognise his meaning. Pain is probably too selfish a
consideration, too simply a consideration of self-attention. We pity poverty,
loss of friends etc. more complex things, in which the Sufferers feelings are
associated with others. This is a rough thought suggested by the presence of
gout; I want head to extricate it and plane it. What is all this to your
Letter? I felt it to be a good one, but my turn, when I write at all, is
perversely to travel out of the record, so that my letters are any thing but
answers. So you still want a motto? You must not take my ironical one, because
your book, I take it, is too serious for it. Bickerstaff might have used it for his lucubrations. What do
you think of (for a Title) RELIGIO TREMULIOR TREMEBUNDI There is Religio-Medici and Laici.—But perhaps the volume is not quite Quakerish enough or
exclusively for it—but your own Vigils is perhaps the Best. While I
have space, let me congratulate with you the return of Spring—what a Summery
Spring too! all those qualms about the dog and cray-fish melt before it. I am
going to be happy and vain again.
A hasty farewell
C. Lamb.
Note
[“Southey’s
Book”—The Book of
the Church. “Would Wilberforce give us
our Tuesdays?”—William Wilberforce,
the abolitionist and the principal “Puritan” of that day.
“And those 3 smiling seasons . . .” From Webster’s “Duchess of Malfy.” Quoted by Lamb in the Specimens.
“Bickerstaff”—Isaac
Bickerstaff, Steele’s pseudonym
in The Tatler.
“Religio Tremidi or Tremebundi”—“The Religion
of a Quaker.”]
LETTER 326 CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. THOMAS ALLSOP
[p.m. April 13, 1824.]
DEAR Mrs.
A.—Mary begs me to say how
much she regrets we can not join you to Reigate. Our reasons are—1st I have but one holyday namely Good Friday, and it is
not pleasant to solicit for another, but that might have been got over. 2dlyManning is with us, soon to go away and
we should not be easy in leaving him, 3dly Our school
girl Emma comes to us for a few days on
Thursday. 4thly and lastly, Wordsworth is returning home in about a week, and out of
respect to them we should not like to absent ourselves just now. In summer I
shall have a month, and if it shall suit, should like to go for a few days of
it out with you both any where. In the mean time, with
many acknowledgments etc. etc., I remain yours (both) truly,
C. Lamb. India Ho. 13 Apr.
Remember Sundays.
LETTER 327 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[No date. April, 1824.]
DEAR Sir,—Miss
Hazlitt (niece to Pygmalion) begs us to send to you for Mr. Hardy a parcel. I
have not thank’d you for your Pamphlet, but I assure you I approve of it
in all parts, only that I would have seen my Calumniators at hell, before I
would have told them I was a Xtian, tho’ I am one,
I think as much as you. I hope to see you here, some day soon. The parcel is a
novel which I hope Mr. H. may sell for her. I am with
greatest friendliness
Yours. C. Lamb. Sunday.
Note
[“Pygmalion.” A reference to Hazlitt’sLiber Amoris; or, The New
Pygmalion, 1823.
Hone’s pamphlet would be his Aspersions Answered: an Explanatory
Statement to the Public at Large and Every Reader of the “Quarterly
Review,” 1824.
Here should come a note from Lamb
to Thomas Hardy, dated April 24, 1824 (printed by
Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in The Lambs), in which
Lamb says that Miss
Hazlitt’s novel, which Mr. Hardy promised to
introduce to Mr. Ridgway, the publisher, is lying at
Mr. Hone’s. Hardy was
a bootmaker in Fleet Street.]
LETTER 328 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
May 15, 1824.
DEAR B. B.—I
am oppressed with business all day, and Company all night. But I will snatch a
quarter of an hour. Your recent acquisitions of the Picture and the Letter are
greatly to be congratulated. I too have a picture of my father and the copy of his first love verses;
but they have been mine long. Blake is a
real name, I assure you, and a most extraordinary man, if he be still living.
He is the Robert [William] Blake, whose wild designs
accompany a splendid folio edition of the “Night Thoughts,” which you may nave
seen, in one of which he pictures the parting of soul and body by a solid mass
of human form floating off, God knows how, from a lumpish mass (fac Simile to
itself) left behind on the dying bed. He paints in water colours marvellous
strange pictures, visions of his brain, which he asserts that he has seen. They
have great merit. He has seen the old Welsh bards on Snowdon—he has seen the
Beautifullest, the strongest, and the Ugliest Man, left alone from the Massacre
of the Britons by the Romans, and has painted them from memory (I have seen his
paintings), and asserts them to be as good as the figures of Raphael and Angelo, but not better, as they had precisely the same
retro-visions and prophetic visions with themself [himself]. The painters in
oil (which he will have it that neither of them practised) he affirms to have
been the ruin of art, and affirms that all the while he was engaged in his
Water paintings, Titian was disturbing him, Titian the Ill Genius of Oil Painting. His Pictures—one in
particular, the Canterbury Pilgrims
(far above Stothard’s)—have great
merit, but hard, dry, yet with grace. He has written a Catalogue of them with a
most spirited criticism on Chaucer, but
mystical and full of Vision. His poems have been sold hitherto only in
Manuscript. I never read them; but a friend at my desire procured the
“Sweep
Song.” There is one to
a tiger, which I have heard recited, beginning— “Tiger, Tiger, burning bright, Thro’ the desarts of the night,” which is glorious, but, alas! I have not the book; for the man is flown,
whither I know not—to Hades or a Mad House. But I must look on him as one of
the most extraordinary persons of the age. Montgomery’sbook I have not much hope from. The
Society, with the affected name, has been labouring at it for these 20 years,
and made few converts. I think it was injudicious to mix stories avowedly
colour’d by fiction with the sad true statements from the parliamentary
records, etc., but I wish the little Negroes all the good that can come from
it. I batter’d my brains (not butter’d them—but it is a bad a) for a few verses for them, but I could make nothing
of it. You have been luckier. But Blake’s are the
flower of the set, you will, I am sure, agree, tho’ some of
Montgomery’s at the end are pretty; but the
Dream awkwardly paraphras’d from B.
With the exception of an Epilogue for a Private Theatrical,
I have written nothing now for near 6 months. It is in vain to spur me on. I
must wait. I cannot write without a genial impulse, and I have none. ’Tis
barren all and dearth. No matter; life is something without scribbling. I have
got rid of my bad spirits, and hold up pretty well this rain-damn’d May.
So we have lost another Poet. I never much relished his
Lordship’s mind, and shall be sorry if the Greeks have cause to miss him.
He was to me offensive, and I never can make out his great power, which his
admirers talk of. Why, a line of Wordsworth’s is a lever to lift the immortal spirit!
Byron can only move the Spleen. He was
at best a Satyrist,—in any other way he was mean enough. I dare say I do him
injustice; but I cannot love him, nor squeeze a tear to his memory. He did not
like the world, and he has left it, as Alderman
Curtis advised the Radicals, “If they don’t like
their country, damn ’em, let ’em leave it,” they
possessing no rood of ground in England, and he 10,000 acres.
Byron was better than many
Curtises.
Farewell, and accept this apology for a letter from one who
owes you so much in that kind.
Yours ever truly,
C. L.
Note
[Lamb’s portrait of his
father is reproduced in Vol. II. of this edition, opposite page 368. The first love verses
are no more.
William Blake was at this time sixty-six years of
age. He was living in poverty and neglect at 3 Fountain Court, Strand.
Blake made 537 illustrations to Young’sNight Thoughts, of which only forty-seven were published.
Lamb is, however, thinking of his edition of
Blair’sGrave. I give the picture on the
opposite page. The exhibition of his works was held in 1809, and it was for this that
Blake wrote the descriptive catalogue. Lamb had sent Blake’s
“Sweep Song,” which,
like “Tiger, Tiger,” is in
the Songs of
Innocence, to James Montgomery for
his Chimney-Sweepers’
Friend and Climbing Boys’ Album, 1824, a little book designed to
ameliorate the lot of those children, in whose interest a society existed. Barton also contributed something. It was
Blake’s poem which had excited
Barton’s curiosity. Probably he thought that
Lamb wrote it. Lamb’s mistake
concerning Blake’s name is curious, in so far as that it was
Blake’s brother Robert, who died in
1787, who in a vision revealed to the poet the method by which the Songs of Innocence were to be reproduced.
“The Dream awkwardly paraphras’d from
B.” The book ended with three
“Climbing-Boys’ Soliloquies” by Montgomery. The second was a dream in which the dream in Blake’s song was extended and prosified.
“An Epilogue for a Private Theatrical.” Probably the
epilogue for the amateur performance of “Richard II.,” given by the family of Henry Field, Barron
Field’s father (see Vol. V. of the present edition, page 128).
“Another great Poet.” Byron died on April 19, 1824.
“Alderman Curtis.” See
note on page 430.]
LETTER 329 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
July 7th, 1824.
DEAR B. B.—I
have been suffering under a severe inflammation of the eyes, notwithstanding
which I resolutely went through your very pretty volume at once, which I dare
pronounce in no ways inferior to former lucubrations. “Abroad” and “lord” are vile
rhymes notwithstanding, and if you count you will wonder how many times you have repeated
the word unearthly—thrice in one poem. It is become a
slang word with the bards; avoid it in future lustily. “Time” is
fine; but there are better a good deal, I think. The volume does not lie by me;
and, after a long day’s smarting fatigue, which has almost put out my
eyes (not blind however to your merits), I dare not trust myself with long
writing. The verses to
Bloomfield are the sweetest in the collection. Religion is sometimes
lugged in, as if it did not come naturally. I will go over carefully when I get
my seeing, and exemplify. You have also too much of singing metre, such as
requires no deep ear to make; lilting measure, in which you have done Woolman injustice. Strike at less superficial
melodies. The piece on Nayler is more to
my fancy.
My eye runs waters. But I will give you a fuller account
some day. The book is a very pretty one in more than one sense. The decorative
harp, perhaps, too ostentatious; a simple pipe preferable.
Farewell, and many thanks. C. Lamb.
Note
[Barton’s new book was Poetic Vigils, 1824. It
contained among other poems “An Ode to
Time,” “Verses to
the Memory of Bloomfield” (see Letter 311), “A Memorial of John Woolman,” beginning— There is glory to me in thy Name, Meek follower of Bethlehem’s Child, More touching by far than the splendour of Fame With which the vain world is beguil’d, and “A Memorial of James
Nayler.” The following “Sonnet to Elia,” from the London Magazine, is also in the volume:
it is odd that Lamb did not mention it:— SONNET TO ELIA Delightful Author! unto whom I owe Moments and moods of fancy and of feeling, Afresh to grateful memory now appealing, Fain would I “bless thee—ere I let thee go!” From month to month has the exhaustless flow Of thy original mind, its wealth revealing, With quaintest humour, and deep pathos healing The World’s rude wounds, revived Life’s early glow: And, mixt with this, at times, to earnest thought, Glimpses of truth, most simple and sublime, By thy imagination have been brought Over my spirit. From the olden time Of authorship thy patent should be dated, And thou with Marvell,
Brown, and Burton mated.]
LETTER 330 CHARLES LAMB TO W. MARTER
[Dated at end: July 19 (1824).]
DEAR Marter,—I have just recd your letter, having returned from a
month’s holydays. My exertions for the London are, tho’ not dead,
in a dead sleep for the present. If your club like scandal, Blackwood’s is your magazine; if you prefer
light articles, and humorous without offence, the New Monthly is very amusing. The best of it is by
Horace Smith, the author of the
Rejected Addresses.
The Old Monthly has more of matter,
information, but not so merry. I cannot safely recommend any others, as not
knowing them, or knowing them to their disadvantage. Of Reviews, beside what
you mention, I know of none except the Review on Hounslow Heath, which I take
it is too expensive for your ordering. Pity me, that have been a Gentleman
these four weeks, and am reduced in one day to the state of a ready writer. I
feel, I feel, my gentlemanly qualities fast oozing away—such as a sense of
honour, neckcloths twice a day, abstinence from swearing, &c. The desk
enters into my soul.
See my thoughts on business next Page.
SONNET Who first invented work?—and bound the free And holyday-rejoicing Spirit down To the ever-haunting importunity Of Business in the green fields, and the Town— To plough, loom, [anvil], spade, and (oh most sad!) To this dry drudgery of the desk’s dead wood? Who but the Being unblest, alien from good, Sabbathless Satan! He, who his unglad Task ever plies ’mid rotatory burnings, That round and round incalculably reel— For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel— In that red realm from whence are no returnings; Where toiling & turmoiling ever & aye He and his Thoughts keep pensive worky-day.
With many recollections of pleasanter times, my old
compeer, happily released before me, Adieu.
C. Lamb. E. I. H. 19 July [1824].
Note
[Marter was an old India House clerk; we do not meet with him again. The
sonnet had been printed in The
Examiner in 1819. Lamb, who was
fond of it, reprinted it in Album Verses, 1830.]
LETTER 331 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[p.m. July 28, 1824.]
MY dear Sir—I must appear negligent in not having
thanked you for the very pleasant books you sent me. Arthur, and the Novel, we have both of us read with unmixed
satisfaction. They are full of quaint conceits, and running over with good
humour and good nature. I naturally take little interest in story, but in these
the manner and not the end is the interest; it is such pleasant travelling, one
scarce cares whither it leads us. Pray express our pleasure to your father with
my best thanks.
I am involved in a routine of visiting among the family of
Barron Field, just retd. from Botany Bay—I shall hardly have an open Evening
before Tuesday next. Will you come to us then?
Yours truly, C. Lamb. Wensday 28 July 24.
Note
[Arthur and the Novel were two books by Charles Dibdin the Younger, the
father of Lamb’s correspondent. Arthur was Young Arthur; or, The Child of Mystery: A
Metrical Romance, 1819, and the novel was Isn’t It Odd? three volumes of high-spirited
ramblings something in the manner of Tristram Shandy, nominally written by Marmaduke
Merrywhistle, and published in 1822.
Barron Field had returned from his Judgeship in New
South Wales on June 18.]
LETTER 332 (Possibly incomplete) CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOOD
p.m. August 10, 1824.
AND what dost thou at the Priory? Cucullus non facit Monachum. English me
that, and challenge old Lignum Janua to make a better.
My old New River has presented no extraordinary novelties
lately; but there Hope sits every day, speculating upon traditionary gudgeons.
I think she has taken the fisheries. I now
know the reason why our forefathers were denominated East and West Angles. Yet
is there no lack of spawn; for I wash my hands in fishets that come through the
pump every morning thick as motelings,—little things o o o like that, that perish untimely, and never taste the brook.
You do not tell me of those romantic land bays that be as thou goest to
Lover’s Seat: neither of that little churchling in the midst of a wood
(in the opposite direction, nine furlongs from the town), that seems dropped by
the Angel that was tired of carrying two packages; marry, with the other he
made shift to pick his flight to Loretto. Inquire out, and see my little
Protestant Loretto. It stands apart from trace of human habitation; yet hath it
pulpit, reading-desk, and trim front of massiest marble, as if Robinson Crusoe had reared it to soothe himself
with old church-going images. I forget its Christian name, and what she-saint
was its gossip.
You should also go to No. 13, Standgate Street,—a baker,
who has the finest collection of marine monsters in ten sea counties,—sea
dragons, polypi, mer-people, most fantastic. You have only to name the old
gentleman in black (not the Devil) that lodged with him a week (he’ll
remember) last July, and he will show courtesy. He is by far the foremost of
the savans. His wife is the funniest thwarting little animal! They are
decidedly the Lions of green Hastings. Well, I have made an end of my say. My
epistolary time is gone by when I could have scribbled as long (I will not say
as agreeable) as thine was to both of us. I am dwindled to notes and letterets.
But, in good earnest, I shall be most happy to hail thy return to the waters of
Old Sir Hugh. There is nothing like
inland murmurs, fresh ripples, and our native minnows. “He sang in meads how sweet the brooklets ran, To the rough ocean and red restless sands.” I design to give up smoking; but I have not yet fixed upon the equivalent
vice. I must have quid pro quo; or quo pro quid, as Tom
Woodgate would correct me. My service to him.
C. L.
Note
[This is the first letter to Hood,
then a young man of twenty-five, and assistant editor of the London Magazine. He was now staying at
Hastings, on his honeymoon, presumably, like the Lambs, near the
Priory (see note on page 615).
“Cucullus non facit
Monachum”—“The cowl does not make the monk,” an old
proverb quoted more than once by Shakespeare.
“Old Lignum Janua”—the Tom
Woodgate mentioned at the end of the letter, a boatman at Hastings.
Hood wrote some verses to him.
“My old New River.” This passage was placed by
Hood as the motto of his verses “Walton Redivivus,” in Whims and Oddities,
1826.
“Little churchling.” This is
Lamb’s second description of Hollingdon Rural. The third and
best is on page 709.
“Loretto.” The legend is that the house of the
Virgin Mary at Nazareth was carried by an angel to Macerata, in
Italy, and deposited on the property of the Lady Loretto.
“Waters of Old Sir Hugh”—the New
River, stream of Sir Hugh Middleton.
“There is nothing like inland murmurs.” Lamb is here remembering Wordsworth’sTintern Abbey lines:— With a sweet inland murmur. In the Elia
essay “The Old Margate Hoy”
Lamb, in speaking of Hastings, had made the same objection.
“He sang in meads . . .” An imperfect memory of
Landor’s lines in Gebir, also referred to in the
same essay:— In smiling meads how sweet the brook’s repose To the rough ocean, and red restless sands.
In a letter to his sister, written from Hastings at this time,
Hood says:—
This is the last of our excursions. We have tried, but in vain, to find out the baker
and his wife recommended to us by Lamb as the
very lions of green Hastings. There is no such street as he has named throughout the
town, and the ovens are singularly numerous. We have given up the search, therefore,
but we have discovered the little church in the wood, and it is such a church! It ought
to have been our St. Botolph’s. . . . Such a verdant covert wood Stothard might paint for the haunting of Dioneus, Pamphillus,
and Fiammetta as they walk in the novel of
Boccacce. The ground shadowed with
bluebells, even to the formation of a plumblike bloom upon its little knolls and
ridges; and ever through the dell windeth a little path chequered with the shades of
aspens and ashes and the most verdant and lively of all the family of trees. Here a
broad, rude stone steppeth over a lazy spring, oozing its way into grass and weeds;
anon a fresh pathway divergeth, you know not whither. Meanwhile the wild blackbird
startles across the way and singeth anew in some other shade. To have seen Fiammetta there, stepping in silk attire, like a flower,
and the sunlight looking upon her betwixt the branches! I had not walked (in the body)
with Romance before. Then suppose so much of a space cleared as maketh a small church
lawn to be sprinkled with old gravestones, and in the midst the church itself, a small
Christian dovecot, such as Lamb has truly described it, like a
little temple of Juan Fernandes. I could have been sentimental and wished to lie some
day in that place, its calm tenants seeming to come through such quiet ways, through
those verdant alleys, to their graves.
In coming home I killed a viper in our serpentine path, and Mrs.
Fernor says I am by that token to overcome an enemy. Is Taylor or Hessey dead? The reptile was dark and dull, his blood being yet
sluggish from the cold; howbeit, he tried to bite, till I cut him in two with a stone.
I thought of Hessey’s long backbone when I did it.
They are called adders, tell your father, because two and two of them together make
four.]
LETTER 333 CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES ABRAHAM ELTON
India House to which place all letters addressed to C.
L. commonly come. [August 17, 1821 (?).]
MY dear Sir, You have overwhelmed me with your
favours. I have received positively a little library from Baldwyn’s. I do not know how I have
deserved such a bounty.
We have been up to the ear in the classics ever since it
came. I have been greatly pleased, but most, I think, with the Hesiod,—the Titan battle quite amazed me. Gad, it
was no child’s play—and then the homely aphorisms at the end of the
works—how adroitly you have turned them! Can he be the same
Hesiod who did the Titans? the latter is— “——wine Which to madness does incline.” But to read the Days and
Works, is like eating nice brown bread, homely sweet and nutritive.
Apollonius was new to me. I had
confounded him with the conjuror of that
name. Medea is glorious; but I cannot give
up Dido. She positively is the only Fine
Lady of Antiquity: her courtesy to the Trojans is altogether queen-like.
Eneas is a most disagreeable person.
Ascanius a pretty young master.
Mezentius for my money. His dying
speech shames Turpin—not the Archbishop I mean, but the roadster of that name.
I have been ashamed to find how many names of classics (and
more than their names) you have introduced me to, that before I was ignorant
of. Your commendation of Master Chapman
arrideth me. Can any one read the pert modern Frenchify’d notes, &c.,
in Pope’s translation, and contrast
them with solemn weighty prefaces of Chapman, writing in
full faith, as he evidently does, of the plenary inspiration of his
author—worshipping his meanest scraps and relics as divine—without one
sceptical misgiving of their authenticity, and doubt which was the properest to
expound Homer to their countrymen. Reverend
Chapman! you have read his hymn to Pan
(the Homeric)—why, it is Milton’s
blank verse clothed with rhyme. Paradise Lost could scarce lose, could it be so accoutred.
I shall die in the belief that he has improved upon
Homer, in the Odyssey in particular—the disclosure of
Ulysses of himself, to Alcinous, his previous behaviour at the
song of the stern strife arising between Achilles and himself (how it raises him above the IliadUlysses!) but
you know all these things quite as well as I do. But what a deaf ear old
C. would have turned to the doubters
in Homer’s real personality! They might as well have
denied the appearance of J. C. in the flesh.—He apparently
believed all the fables of H.’s birth, &c.
Those notes of Bryant have caused the greatest disorder in my brain-pan. Well,
I will not flatter when I say that we have had two or three long
evening’s good reading out of your kind present.
I will say nothing of the tenderest parts in your own
little volume, at the end of such a slatternly scribble as this, but indeed
they cost us some tears. I scrawl away because of interruptions every moment
You guess how it is in a busy office—papers thrust into your hand when your
hand is busiest—and every anti-classical disavocation.
[Conclusion cut away.]
Note
[This letter, now for the first time printed in full, may be here
wrongly placed. Lady Elton thinks the postmark to be 1824. It is,
however, one of those letters whose date matters little.
There is a reference to Elton in
the note on page 558 to Letter 262; and again, as the author of a witty remark upon
Coleridge, in Letter 358.
Elton seems to have sent Lamb a number of his books, principally his Specimens of the Classical Poets . . .
from Homer to Tryphiodorus translated into English Verse, Baldwin,
1814, in three volumes. Lamb refers first to the passage from
Hesiod’sTheogony, and then to his Works and Days (which
Chapman translated)—“Dispensation of
Providence to the Just and Unjust.”
“Which to madness does incline.” I do not find this.
Apollonius Rhodius was the author of The Argonautics. Lamb then passes on to Virgil. For the death of Mezentius see
the Æneid, Book X.,
at the end. The makers of broadsides had probably credited Dick
Turpin with a dying speech.
“Those notes of Bryant.”
Lamb possibly refers to Jacob Bryant’sEssay on the Original
Genius and Writings of Homer, 1775, or his pamphlet on the Trojan War, 1795, 1799.
“Your own little volume.” Probably The Brothers and Other Poems,
by Elton, 1820.]
LETTER 334 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. August 17, 1824.]
DEAR B. B.—I
congratulate you on getting a house over your head. I find the comfort of it I
am sure. At my town lodgings the Mistress was always quarrelling with our maid;
and at my place of rustication, the whole family were always beating one
another, brothers beating sisters (one a most beautiful girl lamed for life),
father beating sons and daughters, and son again beating his father, knocking
him fairly down, a scene I never before witnessed, but was called out of bed by
the unnatural blows, the parricidal colour of which, tho’ my morals could
not but condemn, yet my reason did heartily approve, and in the issue the house
was quieter for a day or so than I had ever known. I am now all harmony and
quiet, even to the sometimes wishing back again some of the old rufflings.
There is something stirring in these civil broils.
The Album shall be attended to. If I can light upon a few
appropriate rhymes (but rhymes come with difficulty from me now) I shall beg a
place in the neat margin of your young
housekeeper.
The Prometheus Unbound, is a capital story. The Literal rogue! What if
you had ordered Elfrida in
sheets! She’d have been sent up, I warrant
you. Or bid him clasp his bible (i.e. to his
bosom)—he’d ha clapt on a brass clasp, no doubt.—
I can no more understand Shelly than you can. His poetry is “thin sewn with
profit or delight.” Yet I must point to your notice a sonnet conceivd and
expressed with a witty delicacy. It is that addressed to one who hated him, but
who could not persuade him to hate him again. His
coyness to the other’s passion (for hate demands a return as much as
Love, and starves without it) is most arch and pleasant. Pray, like it very
much.
For his theories and nostrums they are oracular enough, but
I either comprehend ’em not, or there is miching malice and mischief in
’em. But for the most part ringing with their own emptiness. Hazlitt said well of ’em—Many are wiser
and better for reading Shakspeare, but
nobody was ever wiser or better for reading Sh—y.
I wonder you will sow your correspondence on so barren a
ground as I am, that make such poor returns. But my head akes at the bare
thought of letter writing. I wish all the ink in the ocean dried up, and would
listen to the quills shivering [? shrivelling] up in the candle flame, like
parching martyrs. The same indispositn to write it is has stopt my Elias,
but you will see a futile Effort in the next No., “wrung from me with
slow pain.”
The fact is, my head is seldom cool enough. I am dreadfully
indolent. To have to do anything—to order me a new coat, for instance,
tho’ my old buttons are shelled like beans—is an effort.
My pen stammers like my tongue. What cool craniums those
old enditers of Folios must have had. What a mortify’d pulse. Well, once
more I throw myself on your mercy—Wishing peace in thy new dwelling—
C. Lamb.
Note
[The Lambs gave up their “country
lodgings” at Dalston on moving to Colebrooke Row.
“The album.” See next letter to Barton.
“The Prometheus Unbound.” A
bookseller, asked for Prometheus Unbound, Shelley’s poem, had replied that Prometheus
was not to be had “in sheets.” Elfrida was a dramatic poem by William Mason, Gray’s friend.
“Thin sewn with profit . . .” From Paradise Regained, IV., 345:— Thin sown with aught of profit or delight.
This is Shelley’spoem (not a sonnet) which Lamb
liked:— LINES TO A REVIEWER Alas! good friend, what profit can you see In hating such an hateless thing as me? There is no sport in hate, where all the rage Is on one side. In vain would you assuage Your frowns upon an unresisting smile, In which not even contempt lurks, to beguile Your heart by some faint sympathy of hate. Oh conquer what you cannot satiate! For to your passion I am far more coy Than ever yet was coldest maid or boy In winter-noon. Of your antipathy If I am the Narcissus, you are free To pine into a sound with hating me.
Hazlitt writes of Shelley in his essay “On Paradox and Commonplace” in Table Talk; but he does not make this remark there.
Perhaps he said it in conversation.
“The next Number.” The “futile
Effort” was “Blakesmoor in
H——shire” in the London Magazine for September, 1824.
“Wrung from me with slow pain.” Polonius says of his permission for Laertes to travel:— He bath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave. “Hamlet,” I., 2, 58.
Here should come a note from Lamb
to Cary, August 19, 1824, in which Lamb thanks him
for his translation of The
Birds of Aristophanes and accepts
an invitation to dine.]
LETTER 335 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[Dated at end: September 30, 1824.] Little Book! surnam’d of White; Clean, as yet, and fair to sight; Keep thy attribution right. Never disproportion’d scrawl; Ugly blot, that’s worse than all; On thy maiden clearness fall. In each Letter, here design’d, Let the Reader emblem’d find Neatness of the Owner’s mind. Gilded margins count a sin; Let thy leaves attraction win By the Golden Rules within: Sayings, fetch’d from Sages old; Saws, which Holy Writ unfold, Worthy to be writ in Gold: Lighter Fancies not excluding; Blameless wit, with nothing rude in, Sometimes mildly interluding Amid strains of graver measure:— Virtue’s self hath oft her pleasure In sweet Muses’ groves of leisure. Riddles dark, perplexing sense; Darker meanings of offence; What but shades, be banish’d hence. Whitest Thoughts, in whitest dress— Candid Meanings—best express Mind of quiet Quakeress.
DEAR B.
B.—“I am ill at these numbers;” but if the
above be not too mean to have a place in thy Daughter’s Sanctum, take them with pleasure. I assume
that her Name is Hannah, because it is a pretty scriptural
cognomen. I began on another sheet of
paper, and just as I had penn’d the second line of Stanza 2 an ugly Blot
[here is a blot] as big as this, fell, to illustrate
my counsel.—I am sadly given to blot, and modern blotting-paper gives no
redress; it only smears and makes it worse, as for example [here is a smear]. The only remedy is scratching out, which gives it a
Clerkish look. The most innocent blots are made with red ink, and are rather
ornamental. [Here are two or three blots in red ink.]
Marry, they are not always to be distinguished from the effusions of a cut
finger.
Well, I hope and trust thy Tick doleru, or however you
spell it, is vanished, for I have frightful impressions of that Tick, and do
altogether hate it, as an unpaid score, or the Tick of a Death Watch. I take it
to be a species of Vitus’s dance (I omit the Sanctity, writing to
“one of the men called Friends”). I knew a young Lady who could
dance no other, she danced thro’ life, and very queer and fantastic were
her steps. Heaven bless thee from such measures, and keep thee from the Foul
Fiend, who delights to lead after False Fires in the night, Flibbertigibit, that gives the web and the pin
&c. I forget what else.—
From my den, as Bunyan has it, 30 Sep. 24.
C. L.
Note
[The verses were for the album of Barton’s daughter, Lucy (afterwards Mrs. Edward
FitzGerald). Lucy was her only name. Lamb afterwards printed them in his Album Verses, 1830.
“I am ill at these numbers” (“Hamlet,” II., 2, 120). Lamb later came to pride himself on his facility as a
rhymester to ladies’ order.
“The Foul Fiend . . . Flibbertigibit.” See “Lear,” III., 4, 120. “False
Fires.” See “Hamlet,” III., 2, 277.]
LETTER 336 CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. JOHN DYER COLLIER
[Dated at end: November 2, 1824.]
DEAR Mrs.
Collier—We receive so much pig from your kindness, that I really
have not phrase enough to vary successive acknowledgmts.
I think I shall get a printed form to serve on all
occasions.
To say it was young, crisp, short, luscious, dainty-toed,
is but to say what all its predecessors have been. It was eaten on Sunday and Monday, and doubts only exist as to which
temperature it eat best, hot or cold. I incline to the latter. The Petty-feet
made a pretty surprising prœ-gustation for supper on Saturday night, just as I
was loathingly in expectation of bren-cheese. I spell as I speak.
I do not know what news to send you. You will have heard of
Alsager’s death, and your
Son John’s success in the
Lottery. I say he is a wise man, if he leaves off while he is well. The weather
is wet to weariness, but Mary goes
puddling about a-shopping after a gown for the winter. She wants it good &
cheap. Now I hold that no good things are cheap, pig-presents always excepted.
In this mournful weather I sit moping, where I now write, in an office dark as
Erebus, jammed in between 4 walls, and writing by Candlelight, most melancholy.
Never see the light of the Sun six hours in the day, and am surprised to find
how pretty it shines on Sundays. I wish I were a Caravan driver or a Penny post
man, to earn my bread in air & sunshine. Such a pedestrian as I am, to be
tied by the legs, like a Fauntleroy,
without the pleasure of his Exactions. I am interrupted here with an official
question, which will take me up till it’s time to go to dinner, so with
repeated thanks & both our kindest remembces to
Mr. Collier & yourself, I
conclude in haste.
Yours & his sincerely,
C. Lamb. from my den in Leadenhall, 2 Nov. 24.
On further enquiry Alsager is not dead, but Mrs.
A. is brot. to bed.
Note
[Mrs. Collier was the mother of
John Payne Collier. Alsager we have already met. Henry
Fauntleroy was the banker, who had just been found guilty of forgery and on
the day that Lamb wrote was sentenced to death. He
was executed on the 30th (see Letter 341).]
LETTER 337 CHARLES LAMB TO B. W. PROCTER
[Dated at end: November 11, ’24.] MY dear Procter,—
I do agnise a shame in not having been to pay my
congratulations to Mrs. Procter and your
happy self, but on Sunday (my only morning) I was engaged to a country walk;
and in virtue of the hypostatical union between us, when Mary calls, it is understood that I call too,
we being univocal.
But indeed I am ill at these ceremonious inductions. I
fancy I was not born with a call on my head, though I have brought one down
upon it with a vengeance. I love not to pluck that sort of fruit crude, but to
stay its ripening into visits. In probability Mary will be at Southampton Row this morning, and something of
that kind be matured between you, but in any case not many hours shall elapse
before I shake you by the hand.
Meantime give my kindest felicitations to Mrs. Procter, and assure her I look forward
with the greatest delight to our acquaintance. By the way, the deuce a bit of
Cake has come to hand, which hath an inauspicious look at first, but I comfort
myself that that Mysterious Service hath the property of Sacramental Bread,
which mice cannot nibble, nor time moulder.
I am married myself—to a severe step-wife, who keeps me,
not at bed and board, but at desk and board, and is jealous of my morning
aberrations. I can not slip out to congratulate kinder unions. It is well she
leaves me alone o’ nights—the damn’d Day-hag business. She is even now peeping over me
to see I am writing no Love Letters. I come, my dear—Where is the Indigo Sale
Book?
Twenty adieus, my dear friends, till we meet.
Yours most truly,
C. Lamb. Leadenhall, 11 Nov. ’24.
Note
[Procter married Anne Skepper, stepdaughter of Basil Montagu, in October, 1824. One of their daughters was Adelaide Ann Procter.
“Agnise”—acknowledge. It has been suggested that
Lamb favoured this old word also on account of
its superficial association with agnus, a lamb.]
LETTER 338 CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[p.m. Nov. 20, 1824.]
DR R.
Barron Field bids me say that he is
resident at his brother Henry’s, a
surgeon &c, a few doors west of Christ Church Passage Newgate Street; and
that he shall be happy to accompany you up thence to Islington, when next you
come our way, but not so late as you sometimes come. I think we shall be out on
Tuesdy.
Yours ever C. Lamb. Saty.
Note
[Barron Field, as I have said,
had returned from New South Wales in June of this year. Later he became Chief Justice at
Gibraltar.]
LETTER 339 CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
Desk 11, Nov. 25 [1824].
MY dear Miss
Hutchinson, Mary bids me
thank you for your kind letter. We are a little puzzled about your whereabouts:
Miss Wordsworth writes Torkay, and
you have queerly made it Torquay. Now Tokay we have heard of, and Torbay, which
we take to be the true male spelling of the place, but somewhere we fancy it to
be on “Devon’s leafy shores,” where we heartily wish
the kindly breezes may restore all that is invalid among you. Robinson is returned, and speaks much of you
all. We shall be most glad to hear good news from you from time to time. The
best is, Proctor is at last married. We
have made sundry attempts to see the Bride, but have accidentally failed, she being gone out a
gadding.
We had promised our dear friends the Monkhouses, promised ourselves rather, a visit
to them at Ramsgate, but I thought it best, and Mary seemed to have it at heart too, not to go far from home
these last holy days. It is connected with a sense of unsettlement, and
secretly I know she hoped that such abstinence would be friendly to her health.
She certainly has escaped her sad yearly visitation, whether in consequence of
it, or of faith in it, and we have to be thankful for a good 1824. To get such
a notion into our heads may go a great way another year. Not that we quite
confined ourselves; but assuming Islington to be head quarters, we made timid
flights to Ware, Watford &c. to try how the trouts tasted, for a night out
or so, not long enough to make the sense of change oppressive, but sufficient
to scour the rust of home.
Coleridge is not returned from the Sea.
As a little scandal may divert you recluses—we were in the Summer dining at a
Clergyman of Southey’s “Church of
England,” at Hertford, the same who officiated to Thurtell’s last moments, and indeed an
old contemporary Blue of C.’s and mine at School.
After dinner we talked of C., and F.
who is a mighty good fellow in the main, but hath his cassock prejudices,
inveighed against the moral character of C. I endeavoured
to enlighten him on the subject, till having driven him out of some of his holds, he stopt my
mouth at once by appealing to me whether it was not very well known that C.
“at that very moment was living in a state of open a———y with
Mrs. * * * * * * at
Highgate?” Nothing I could say serious or bantering after that
could remove the deep inrooted conviction of the whole company assembled that
such was the case! Of course you will keep this quite close, for I would not
involve my poor blundering friend, who I dare say believed it all thoroughly.
My interference of course was imputed to the goodness of my heart, that could
imagine nothing wrong &c. Such it is if Ladies will go gadding about with
other people’s husbands at watering places. How careful we should be to
avoid the appearance of Evil. I thought this Anecdote might amuse you. It is
not worth resenting seriously; only I give it as a specimen of orthodox
candour. O Southey, Southey, how long
would it be before you would find one of us Unitarians propagating such
unwarrantable Scandal! Providence keep you all from the foul fiend Scandal, and
send you back well and happy to dear Gloster Place.
C. L.
Note
[Addressed to “Miss
Hutchinson, T. Monkhouse Esqre. Strand, Torkay, Torbay, Devon.”
Thomas Monkhouse, who was in a decline, had been
ordered to Torquay.
“Devon’s leafy shores.” From The Excursion, Book III.,
line 518.
Crabb Robinson had been in Normandy for some weeks.
The too credulous clergyman at Hertford was Frederick William Franklin, Master of the Blue Coat school there (from 1801
to 1827), who was at Christ’s Hospital with Lamb.
“Mrs. * * * * * *” Mrs. Gillman.]
LETTER 340 CHARLES LAMB TO LEIGH HUNT
[No date. ? November, 1824.]
ILLUSTREZZIMO Signor,—I have obeyed your mandate to
a tittle. I accompany this with a volume. But what have you done with the first
I sent you?—have you swapt it with some lazzaroni for macaroni? or pledged it
with a gondolierer for a passage? Peradventuri the Cardinal Gonsalvi took a fancy to it:—his Eminence has done my Nearness an honour. ’Tis but
a step to the Vatican. As you judge, my works do not enrich the workman, but I
get vat I can for ’em. They keep dragging me on, a poor, worn mill-horse,
in the eternal round of the damn’d magazine; but ’tis they are blind, not I. Colburn (where I recognise with delight the
gay W. Honeycomb renovated) hath the
ascendency.
I was with the Novellos last week. They have a large, cheap house and garden,
with a dainty library (magnificent) without books. But what will make you bless
yourself (I am too old for wonder), something has touched the right organ in
Vincentio at last. He attends a Wesleyan chapel on Kingsland Green. He at first
tried to laugh it off—he only went for the singing; but the cloven foot—I
retract—the Lamb’s trotters—are at length apparent. Mary Isabella attributes it to a lightness
induced by his headaches. But I think I see in it a less accidental influence.
Mister Clark is at perfect staggers!
the whole fabric of his infidelity is shaken. He has no one to join him in his
coarse-insults and indecent obstreperousnesses against Christianity, for
Holmes (the bonny Holmes) is gone to
Salisbury to be organist, and Isabella and the
Clark make but a feeble quorum. The children have all
nice, neat little clasped pray-books, and I have laid out 7s. 8d. in Watts’s Hymns for Christmas presents for
them. The eldest girl alone holds out; she has been at Boulogne, skirting upon
the vast focus of Atheism, and imported bad principles in patois French. But
the strongholds are crumbling. N. appears as yet to have
but a confused notion of the Atonement. It makes him giddy, he says, to think
much about it. But such giddiness is spiritual sobriety.
Well, Byron is gone, and
—— is now the best poet in England.
Fill up the gap to your fancy. Barry Cornwall has at last carried the pretty A. S. They are just in the treacle-moon. Hope
it won’t clog his wings—gaum we used to say at school.
Mary, my sister, has worn me out with
eight weeks’ cold and toothache, her average complement in the winter,
and it will not go away. She is otherwise well, and reads novels all day long.
She has had an exempt year, a good year, for which, forgetting the minor
calamity, she and I are most thankful.
Alsager is in a flourishing house, with
wife and children about him, in Mecklenburg Square—almost too fine to visit.
Barron Field is come home from Sydney,
but as yet I can hear no tidings of a pension. He is plump and friendly, his
wife really a very superior woman.
He resumes the bar.
I nave got acquainted with Mr.
Irving, the Scotch preacher, whose fame must have reached you.
He is a humble disciple at the foot of Gamaliel S.
T. C. Judge how his own sectarists must stare when I tell you he
has dedicated a book
to S. T. C.,
acknowledging to have learnt more of the nature of Faith, Christianity, and
Christian Church, from him than from all the men he ever conversed with. He is
a most amiable, sincere, modest man in a room, this
Boanerges in the temple. Mrs. Montague told him the dedication would do him no good.
“That shall be a reason for doing it,” was his answer.
Judge, now, whether this man be a quack.
Dear H., take this
imperfect notelet for a letter; it looks so much the more like conversing on
nearer terms. Love to all the Hunts, old friend Thornton, and all.
Yours ever,
C. Lamb.
Note
[Leigh Hunt was still living at Genoa.
Shelley and Byron, whom he had left England to join, were both dead. Lamb, I assume, sent him a second copy of Elia with this letter.
Cardinal Gonsalvi was Ercole
Consalvi (1757-1824), secretary to Pius
VII. and a patron of the arts. Lawrence painted him.
For the present state of the London Magazine see next letter. Leigh Hunt contributed to Colburn’sNew Monthly
Magazine, among other things, a series of papers on “The Months,” in which under March is to
be found the little passage on London Fogs which I—not alone in the error—have included in
Vol. I. as by Lamb (on Ayrton’s authority). Hunt also contributed an
account of the Honeycomb family, by Harry Honeycomb.
By Mary IsabellaLamb meant Mary Sabilla Novello,
Vincent Novello’s wife. The eldest girl
was Mary Victoria, afterwards the wife of Charles Cowden Clarke, the Mr. Clark
mentioned here. Novello (now living at Shackleford Green) remained a
good Roman Catholic to the end. Holmes was Edward Holmes (1797-1859), a pupil of Cowden
Clarke’s father at Enfield and schoolfellow of Keats. He had lived with the
Novellos, studying music, and later became a musical writer and
teacher and the biographer of Mozart.
Mrs. Barron Field was a Miss Jane
Carncroft, to whom Lamb addressed some
album verses (see Vol. V. of this edition, page 93). Leigh
Hunt knew of Field’s return,
for he had contributed to the New
Monthly earlier in the year a rhymed letter to him in which he welcomed
him home again.
Irving was Edward Irving
(1792-1834), afterwards the founder of the Catholic Apostolic sect, then drawing people to
the chapel in Hatton Garden, attached to the Caledonian Asylum. The dedication, to which
Lamb alludes more than once in his
correspondence, was that of his work, For Missionaries after the Apostolical School, a series of orations
in four parts, . . . . 1825. It runs:—
DEDICATION TO SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Esq.
My dear and honoured
friend,
Unknown as you are, in the true character either of
your mind or of your heart, to the greater part of your countrymen, and
misrepresented as your works have been, by those who have the ear of the
vulgar, it will seem wonderful to many that I should make choice of you, from
the circle of my friends, to dedicate to you these beginnings of my thoughts
upon the most important subject of these or any times. And when I state the
reason to be, that you have been more profitable to my faith in orthodox
doctrine, to my spiritual understanding of the Word of God, and to my right
conception of the Christian Church, than any or all of the men with whom I have
entertained friendship and conversation, it will perhaps still more astonish
the mind, and stagger the belief, of those who have adopted, as once I did
myself, the misrepresentations which are purchased for a hire and vended for a
price, concerning your character and works. You have only to shut your ear to
what they ignorantly say of you, and earnestly to meditate the deep thoughts
with which you are instinct, and give them a suitable body and form that they
may live, then silently commit them to the good sense of ages yet to come, in
order to be ranked hereafter amongst the most gifted sages and greatest
benefactors of your country. Enjoy and occupy the quiet which, after many
trials, the providence of God hath bestowed upon you, in the bosom of your
friends; and may you be spared until you have made known the multitude of your
thoughts, unto those who at present value, or shall hereafter arise to value,
their worth.
I have partaken so much high intellectual
enjoyment from being admitted into the close and familiar intercourse with
which you have honoured me, and your many conversations concerning the
revelations of the Christian faith have been so profitable to me in every
sense, as a student and a preacher of the Gospel, as a spiritual man and a
Christian pastor, and your high intelligence and great learning have at all
times so kindly stooped to my ignorance and inexperience, that not merely with
the affection of friend to friend, and the honour due from youth to experienced
age, but with the gratitude of a disciple to a wise and generous teacher, of an
anxious inquirer to the good man who hath helped him in the way of truth, I do
now presume to offer you the first-fruits of my mind since it received a new
impulse towards truth, and a new insight into its depths, from listening to
your discourse. Accept them in good part, and be assured that however
insignificant in themselves, they are the offering of a heart which loves your
heart, and of a mind which looks up with reverence to your mind.
Edward Irving.
“Old friend Thornton” was
Leigh Hunt’s son, Thornton Leigh Hunt, whom Lamb had
addressed in verse in 1815 as “my favourite child.” He was now
fourteen.]
LETTER 341 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. December 1, 1824.]
DEAR B. B.—If
Mr. Mitford will send me a full and
circumstantial description of his desired vases, I will transmit the same to a
Gentleman resident at Canton, whom I think I have interest enough in to take the proper care for
their execution. But Mr. M. must have patience. China is a
great way off, further perhaps than he thinks; and his next year’s roses
must be content to wither in a Wedgewood pot. He will please to say whether he
should like his Arms upon them, &c. I send herewith some patterns which
suggest themselves to me at the first blush of the subject, but he will
probably consult his own taste after all. [Figure] The last pattern is
obviously fitted for ranunculuses only. The two former may indifferently hold
daisies, marjoram, sweet williams, and that sort. My friend in Canton is
Inspector of Teas, his name Ball; and I
can think of no better tunnel. I shall expect Mr.
M.’s decision.
Taylor and Hessey finding their magazine goes off very heavily at 2s. 6d.
are prudently going to raise their price another shilling; and having already
more authors than they want, intend to increase the number of them. If they set
up against the New Monthly, they
must change their present hands. It is not tying the dead carcase of a Review
to a half-dead Magazine will do their business. It is like G. D. multiplying his volumes to make ’em
sell better. When he finds one will not go off, he publishes two; two stick, he
tries three; three hang fire, he is confident that four will have a better
chance.
And now, my dear Sir, trifling apart, the gloomy
catastrophe of yesterday morning prompts a sadder vein. The fate of the
unfortunate Fauntleroy makes me, whether
I will or no, to cast reflecting eyes around on such of my friends as by a
parity of situation are exposed to a similarity of temptation. My very style,
seems to myself to become more impressive than usual, with the change of theme.
Who that standeth, knoweth but he may yet fall? Your hands as yet, I am most
willing to believe, have never deviated into others’ property. You think
it impossible that you could ever commit so heinous an offence. But so thought
Fauntleroy once; so have thought many besides him, who
at last have expiated, as he hath done. You are as yet upright. But you are a
Banker, at least the next thing to it. I feel the delicacy of the subject; but
cash must pass thro’ your hands, sometimes to a great amount. If in an unguarded hour—— but I will hope
better. Consider the scandal it will bring upon those of your persuasion.
Thousands would go to see a Quaker hanged, that would be indifferent to the
fate of a Presbyterian, or an Anabaptist. Think of the effect it would have on
the sale of your poems alone; not to mention higher considerations. I tremble,
I am sure, at myself, when I think that so many poor victims of the Law at one
time of their life made as sure of never being hanged as I in my presumption am
too ready to do myself. What are we better than they? Do we come into the world
with different necks? Is there any distinctive mark under our left ears? Are we
unstrangulable? I ask you. Think of these things. I am shocked sometimes at the
shape of my own fingers, not for their resemblance to the ape tribe (which is
something) but for the exquisite adaptation of them to the purposes of picking,
fingering, &c. No one that is so framed, I maintain it, but should tremble.
Postscript for your Daughter’s eyes only.
Dear Miss—Your pretty little letterets make me
ashamed of my great straggling coarse handwriting. I wonder where you get pens
to write so small. Sure they must be the pinions of a small wren, or a robin.
If you write so in your Album, you must give us glasses to read by. I have seen
a Lady’s similar book all writ in following fashion. I think it pretty
and fanciful. “O how I love in early dawn To bend my steps o’er flowery dawn
[lawn],” which I think has an agreeable variety to the eye. Which I recommend to
your notice, with friend Elia’s best wishes.
Note
[The London
Magazine began a new series at half a crown with the number for
January, 1825. It had begun to decline very noticeably. The New Monthly Magazine, to the January
number of which Lamb contributed his “Illustrious Defunct” essay, was
its most serious rival. Lamb returned to some of his old vivacity and
copiousness in the London Magazine for
January, 1825. To that number he contributed his “Biographical Memoir of Mr. Liston” and the
“Vision of Horns”;
and to the February number “Letter to
an old Gentleman,” “Unitarian Protests” and the “Autobiography of Mr. Munden.”
“G. D.”—George Dyer again.
“Fauntleroy.” See note on page 656.
Fauntleroy’s fate seems to have had great
fascination for Lamb. He returned to the sub-ject, in the vein of this letter, in
“The Last Peach,” a
little essay printed in the London
Magazine for April, 1825 (see Vol. I. of this edition, page 283); and
in Memories of old Friends, being Extracts from the Journals and Letters of Caroline Fox, . . ,
from 1835 to 1871, 1882, I find the following entry:—
October 25 [1839].—G.
Wightwick and others dined with us. He talked agreeably about capital
punishments, greatly doubting their having any effect in preventing crime. Soon after
Fauntleroy was hanged, an advertisement
appeared, “To all good Christians! Pray for the soul of
Fauntleroy.” This created a good deal of speculation
as to whether he was a Catholic, and at one of Coleridge’s soirees it was discussed for a considerable time; at
length Coleridge, turning to Lamb, asked, “Do you know anything about this affair?”
“I should think I d-d-d-did,” said Elia,
“for I paid s-s-s-seven and sixpence for it!”
Lamb’s postscript is written in extremely small
characters, similar to those facsimiled opposite page 550, and the letters of the two lines
of verse are in alternate red and black inks. It was this letter which, Edward FitzGerald tells us, Thackeray pressed to his forehead, with the remark “Saint
Charles!” Hitherto, the postscript not having been thought worthy of print by
previous editors, it was a little difficult to understand why this particular letter had
been selected for Thackeray’s epithet. But when one thinks of
the patience with which, after making gentle fun of her father, Lamb
sat down to amuse Lucy Barton, and, as
Thackeray did, thinks also of his whole life, it becomes more
clear.]
LETTER 342 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[p.m. January 11, 1825.]
MY Dear Sir—Pray return my best thanks to your
father for his little volume. It is
like all of his I have seen, spirited, good humoured, and redolent of the wit
and humour of a century ago. He should have lived with Gay and his set. The Chessiad is so clever that I
relish’d it, in spite of my total ignorance of the game. I have it not
before me, but I remember a capital simile of the Charwoman letting in her
Watchman husband, which is better than Butler’s Lobster turned to Red. Hazard is a grand Character, Jove in his Chair. When you are disposed to leave your one room
for my six, Colebrooke is where it was, and my sister begs me to add that as
she is disappointed of meeting your sister your way, we shall be most happy to
see her our way, when you have an eveng, to spare. Do not stand on ceremonies and
introductions, but come at once. I need not say that if you can induce your
father to join the party, it will be so much the pleasanter. Can you name an
evening next week? I give you long credit.
Meantime am as usual yours truly C. L. E. I. H. 11 Jan. 25.
When I saw the Chessiad advertised by C. D.
the Younger, I hoped it might be yours. What title is left
for you—
Charles Dibdin the Younger,
Junior.
O No, you are Timothy.
Note
[Charles Dibdin the Younger wrote a mock-heroic
poem, “The Chessiad,”
which was published with Comic Tales in 1825. The simile of the charwoman runs thus:— Now Morning, yawning, rais’d her from her bed, Slipp’d on her wrapper blue and ’kerchief red, And took from Night the key of Sleep’s abode; For Night within that mansion had bestow’d The Hours of day; now, turn and turn about, Morn takes the key and lets the Day-hours out; Laughing, they issue from the ebon gate, And Night walks in. As when, in drowsy state, Some watchman, wed to one who chars all day, Takes to his lodging’s door his creeping way; His rib, arising, lets him in to sleep, While she emerges to scrub, dust, and sweep.
This is the lobster simile in Hudibras, Part II., Canto 2,
lines 29-32:— The sun had long since, in the lap Of Thetis, taken out his nap, And, like a lobster boiled, the morn From black to red began to turn.
Hazard is the chief of the gods in the Chessiad’s little drama.
“You are Timothy.” See page 611.
I have included in Vol. I. of the present edition a review of Dibdin’s book, in the New Times, January 27, 1825, which both
from internal evidence and from the quotation of the charwoman passage I take to be by
Lamb, who was writing for that paper at that
time.]
LETTER 343 CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
[p.m. January 20, 1825.]
The brevity of this is owing to scratching it off at my desk
amid expected interruptions. By habit, I can write Letters only at office.
DEAR Miss H.
Thank you for a noble Goose, which wanted only the massive Encrustation that we
used to pick-axe open about this season in old Gloster Place. When shall we eat
another Goosepye together? The pheasant too must not be forgotten, twice as big
and half as good as a partridge. You ask about the editor of the Lond. I know of none. This first
specimen is flat and pert enough to justify subscribers who grudge at
t’other shilling. De
Quincey’sParody was submitted to him before
printed, and had his Probatum. The “Horns” is in a poor taste,
resembling the most laboured papers in the Spectator. I had sign’d it
“Jack Horner:” but Taylor and Hessey said, it would be thought an offensive article, unless I
put my known signature to it; and wrung from me my slow consent. But did you
read the “Memoir of
Liston”? and did you guess whose it was? Of all the Lies I
ever put off I value this most. It is from top to toe, every paragraph, Pure
Invention; and has passed for Gospel, has been republished in newspapers, and
in the penny play-bills of the Night, as an authentic Account. I shall
certainly go to the Naughty Man some day for my Fibbings. In the next No. I
figure as a Theologian! and have attacked my late brethren, the Unitarians.
What Jack Pudding tricks I shall play next, I know not. I am almost at the end
of my Tether.
Coleridge is quite blooming; but his
Book has not budded yet. I
hope I have spelt Torquay right now, and that this will find you all mending,
and looking forward to a London flight with the Spring. Winter we have had
none, but plenty of foul weather. I have lately pick’d up an Epigram
which pleased me. Two noble Earls, whom if I quote, Some folks might call me Sinner; The one invented half a coat; The other half a dinner. The plan was good, as some will say And fitted to console one: Because, in this poor starving day, Few can afford a whole one.
I have made the Lame one still lamer by imperfect memory,
but spite of bald diction, a little done to it might improve it into a good
one. You have nothing else to do at [“Talk
kay” here written and scratched out] Torquay.
Suppose you try it. Well God bless you all, as wishes Mary, [most] sincerely, with many thanks for
Letter &c.
Elia.
Note
[Addressed “For Miss
Hutchinson, T. Monkhouse Esqre., Torquay, Devonshire.”
The Monkhouses’ house in
London was at 34 Gloucester Place.
Lamb’sDe
Quincey parody was the “Letter to an Old Gentleman, whose Education has been Neglected”.
“Coleridge’s
book”—the Aids to
Reflection, published in May or June, 1825.
“I have lately pick’d up an Epigram.” This is by
Henry Man, an old South-Sea House clerk, whom in
his South-Sea House essay Lamb mentions as a wit. The
epigram, which refers to Lord Spencer and Lord Sandwich, will be found in
Man’sMiscellaneous Works, 1802.]
LETTER 344 CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
[p.m. Jan. 25, 1825.]
DEAR Corelli,
My sister’s cold is as obstinate as
an old Handelian, whom a modern amateur
is trying to convert to Mozart-ism. As
company must & always does injure it, Emma and I propose to come to you in the evening of tomorrow,
instead of meeting here. An early bread-and-cheese
supper at ½ past eight will oblige us. Loves to the Bearer of many Children.
C. Lamb. Tuesday Colebrooke.
I sign with a black seal, that you may begin to think,
her cold has killed Mary, which will
be an agreeable unsurprise when you read the
Note.
Note
[This is the first letter to Novello, who was the peculiar champion of Mozart and Haydn. Lamb calls him Corelli after Archangelo Corelli (1653-1713), the violinist and
composer. It was part of a
joke between Lamb and Novello that
Lamb should affect to know a great deal about music. See the Elia essay
“A Chapter on Ears”
for a description of Novello’s playing. Mrs. Novello was the mother of eleven children.]
LETTER 345 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[Dated at end: 10 February, 1825.]
DEAR B. B.—I
am vexed that ugly paper
should have offended. I kept it as clear from objectionable phrases as
possible, and it was Hessey’s
fault, and my weakness, that it did not appear anonymous. No more of it for
God’s sake.
The Spirit of
the Age is by Hazlitt. The
characters of Coleridge, &c. he had
done better in former publications, the praise and the abuse much stronger,
&c. but the new ones are capitally done. Horne
Tooke is a matchless portrait. My advice is, to borrow it rather
than read [? buy] it. I have it. He has laid on too many colours on my
likeness, but I have had so much injustice done me in my own name, that I make
a rule of accepting as much over-measure to Elia as
Gentlemen think proper to bestow. Lay it on and spare not.
Your Gentleman
Brother sets my mouth a watering after Liberty. O that I were
kicked out of Leadenhall with every mark of indignity, and a competence in my
fob. The birds of the air would not be so free as I should. How I would prance
and curvet it, and pick up cowslips, and ramble about purposeless as an ideot!
The Author-mometer is a good fancy. I have caused great speculation in the
dramatic (not thy) world by a Lying Life of Liston, all pure invention. The Town
has swallowed it, and it is copied into News Papers, Play Bills, etc., as
authentic. You do not know the Droll, and possibly missed reading the article
(in our 1st No., New Series). A life more improbable for him to have lived
would not be easily invented. But your rebuke, coupled with “Dream on J. Bunyan,” checks me. I’d rather
do more in my favorite way, but feel dry. I must laugh sometimes. I am poor
Hypochondriacus, and not Liston.
Our 2nd No is all trash. What are
T. and H. about? It is whip syllabub, “thin sown with aught
of profit or delight.” Thin sown! not a germ of fruit or corn.
Why did poor Scott die! There was
comfort in writing with such associates as were his little band of Scribblers, some gone away, some affronted away, and I
am left as the solitary widow looking for water cresses.
The only clever hand they have is Darley, who has written on the Dramatists,
under name of John Lacy. But his function seems suspended.
I have been harassed more than usually at office, which has
stopt my correspondence lately. I write with a confused aching head, and you
must accept this apology for a Letter.
I will do something soon if I can as a peace offering to the
Queen of the East Angles. Something she shan’t scold about.
For the Present, farewell.
Thine C. L. 10 Feb. 1825.
I am fifty years old this day. Drink my health.
Note
[“That ugly paper” was “A Vision of Horns.”
Hazlitt’sSpirit of the Age had just been
published, containing criticisms, among others, of Coleridge, Horne Tooke and Lamb. Lamb was very highly praised.
Here is a passage from the article:—
How admirably he has sketched the former inmates of the South-Sea House; what
“fine fretwork he makes of their double and single entries!”
With what a firm yet subtle pencil he has embodied “Mrs. Battle’s Opinions on Whist!” How
notably he embalms a battered beau; how delightfully an amour, that was cold forty
years ago, revives in his pages! With what well-disguised humour he introduces us to
his relations, and how freely he serves up his friends! Certainly, some of his
portraits are fixtures, and will do to hang up as lasting and
lively emblems of human infirmity. Then there is no one who has so sure an ear for
“the chimes at midnight,” not even excepting Mr. Justice Shallow; nor could Master Silence himself take his “cheese and pippins”
with a more significant and satisfactory air. With what a gusto Mr. Lamb describes the Inns and Courts of law, the
Temple and Gray’s Inn, as if he had been a student there for the last two hundred
years, and had been as well acquainted with the person of Sir Francis Bacon as he is with his portrait or writings! It is hard to
say whether St. John’s Gate is connected with more intense and authentic
associations in his mind, as a part of old London Wall, or as the frontispiece (time
out of mind) of the Gentleman’s Magazine. He hunts Watling Street like a gentle
spirit; the avenues to the play-houses are thick with panting recollections; and
Christ’s Hospital still breathes the balmy breath of infancy in his description
of it!
“The Author-mometer.” I have not discovered to what
Lamb refers.
“Dream on J.
Bunyan.” Probably a poem by Barton, but I have not traced it.
“Thin sown,” etc. See note on page 653.
“T. and H.”—Taylor & Hessey.
“Poor Scott”—John Scott, who founded the London Magazine (see note on page 434).
“Darley”—George Darley (1795-1846), author of Sylvia; or, The May Queen, 1827.
“The Queen of the East Angles.” Possibly Lucy Barton, possibly Anne
Knight, a friend of Barton’s.]
LETTER 346 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[Not dated. ? February, 1825.]
MY dear M.,—You might have come inopportunely a week
since, when we had an inmate. At present and for as long as
ever you like, our castle is at your service. I saw Tuthill yesternight, who has done for me what
may “To all my nights and days to come, Give solely sovran sway and masterdom.” But I dare not hope, for fear of disappointment. I cannot be more explicit
at present. But I have it under his own hand, that I am non-capacitated (I cannot write it in-) for
business. O joyous imbecility! Not a susurration of this to anybody!
Mary’s love. C. Lamb.
Note
[Lamb had just taken a most
momentous step in his career and had consulted Tuthill as to his health, in the hope of perhaps obtaining release and a
pension from the East India House. We learn more of this soon.
“To all my nights and days . . .” See “Macbeth,” I., 5, 70, 71.
Here might come two brief notes to Dibdin, of no importance.]
LETTER 347 CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
[Dated at end: March 1, 1825.]
DEAR Miss
Hutchinson, Your news has made us all very sad. I had my hopes
to the last. I seem as if I were disturbing you at such an awful time even by a
reply. But I must acknow-ledge your kindness in
presuming upon the interest we shall all feel on the subject. No one will more
feel it than Robinson, to whom I have
written. No one more than he and we acknowleged the nobleness and worth of what
we have lost. Words are perfectly idle.
We can only pray for resignation to the Survivors. Our dearest expressions of
condolence to Mrs. M—— at this time in
particular. God bless you both. I have nothing of ourselves to tell you, and if
I had, I could not be so unreverent as to trouble you with it. We are all well,
that is all. Farewell, the departed—and the left. Your’s and his, while
memory survives, cordially
C. Lamb. 1 Mar. 1825.
Note
[The letter refers to the death of Thomas
Monkhouse.
Here should come an undated note from Lamb to
Procter, in which Lamb
refers to the same loss: “We shall be most glad to see you, though more glad to
have seen double you.”]
LETTER 348 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. March 23, 1825.] Wednesday.
DEAR B. B.—I
have had no impulse to write, or attend to any single object but myself, for
weeks past. My single self. I by myself I. I am sick of hope deferred. The
grand wheel is in agitation that is to turn up my Fortune, but round it rolls
and will turn up nothing. I have a glimpse of Freedom, of becoming a Gentleman
at large, but I am put off from day to day. I have offered my resignation, and
it is neither accepted nor rejected. Eight weeks am I kept in this fearful
suspence. Guess what an absorbing stake I feel it. I am not conscious of the
existence of friends present or absent. The E. I. Directors alone can be that
thing to me—or not.—
I have just learn’d that nothing will be decided this
week. Why the next? Why any week? It has fretted me into an itch of the
fingers, I rub ’em against Paper and write to you, rather than not allay
this Scorbuta.
While I can write, let me adjure you to have no doubts of
Irving. Let Mr. Mitford drop his disrespect.
Irving has prefixed a dedication (of a
Missionary Subject 1st part) to Coleridge, the most beautiful cordial and sincere. He there
acknowledges his obligation to S. T. C. for his knowledge
of Gospel truths, the nature of a Xtian Church, etc., to the talk of
S. T. C. (at whose Gamaliel feet
he sits weekly) [more] than to that of all the men living. This from him—The
great dandled and petted Sectarian—to a religious character so equivocal in the
world’s Eye as that of S. T. C., so foreign to the
Kirk’s estimate!—Can this man be a Quack? The language is as affecting as
the Spirit of the Dedication. Some friend told him, “This dedication
will do you no Good,” i.e. not in the
world’s repute, or with your own People. “That is a reason for
doing it,” quoth Irving.
I am thoroughly pleased with him. He is firm, outspeaking,
intrepid—and docile as a pupil of Pythagoras.
You must like him.
Yours, in tremors of painful hope,
C. Lamb.
Note
[In the first paragraphs Lamb
refers to the great question of his release from the India House.
For Irving see note to Letter 340.
In a letter of Mary Russell Mitford, who looked upon
Irving as quack absolute, dated February 19, 1825, we find her
discussing the preacher with Charles Lamb.]
LETTER 349 CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[March 29], 1825.
I HAVE left the d——d India House for Ever!
Give me great joy. C. Lamb.
Note
[Robinson states in his
Reminiscences of Coleridge, Wordsworth and Lamb,
preserved in MS. at Dr. Williams’ Library: “A most important incident in
Lamb’s life, tho’ in the end not so happy for him
as he anticipated, was his obtaining his discharge, with a pension of almost £4OO a
year, from the India House. This he announced to me by a note put into my letter box:
‘I have left the India House. D—— Time. I’m all for
eternity.’ He was rather more than 50 years
of age. I found him and his Sister in high spirits when I called to wish them joy on
the 22 of April. ‘I never saw him so calmly cheerful,’ says my journal,
‘as he seemed then.’” See the next letters for Lamb’s own account of the event.]
LETTER 350 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Colebrook Cottage, 6 April, 1825.
DEAR Wordsworth, I have been several times meditating a letter to
you concerning the good thing which has befallen me, but the thought of poor
Monkhouse came across me. He was one
that I had exulted in the prospect of congratulating me. He and you were to
have been the first participators, for indeed it has been ten weeks since the
first motion of it.
Here I am then after 33 years slavery, sitting in my own
room at 11 o’clock this finest of all April mornings a freed man, with
£441 a year for the remainder of my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who outlived his annuity and
starved at 90. £441, i.e. £450, with a deduction of £9 for a provision secured
to my sister, she being survivor, the Pension guaranteed by Act Georgii Tertii,
&c.
I came home for ever on Tuesday in last week. The
incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelm’d me. It was like passing
from life into Eternity. Every year to be as long as three, i.e. to have three
times as much real time, time that is my own, in it! I wandered about thinking
I was happy, but feeling I was not. But that tumultuousness is passing off, and
I begin to understand the nature of the gift. Holydays, even the annual month,
were always uneasy joys: their conscious fugitiveness—the craving after making
the most of them. Now, when all is holyday, there are no holydays. I can sit at
home in rain or shine without a restless impulse for walkings. I am daily
steadying, and shall soon find it as natural to me to be my own master, as it
has been irksome to have had a master. Mary wakes every morning with an obscure feeling that some good
has happened to us.
Leigh Hunt and Montgomery after their releasements describe the shock of their
emancipation much as I feel mine. But it hurt their frames. I eat, drink, and
sleep sound as ever. I lay no anxious schemes for going hither and thither, but
take things as they occur. Yesterday I excursioned 20 miles, to day I write a
few letters. Pleasuring was for
fugitive play days, mine are fugitive only in the sense that life is fugitive.
Freedom and life co-existent.
At the foot of such a call upon you for gratulation, I am
ashamd to advert to that melancholy event. Monkhouse was a character I learnd to love slowly, but it grew
upon me, yearly, monthly, daily. What a chasm has it made in our pleasant
parties! His noble friendly face was always coming before me, till this
hurrying event in my life came, and for the time has absorpt all interests. In
fact it has shaken me a little. My old desk companions with whom I have had
such merry hours seem to reproach me for removing my lot from among them. They
were pleasant creatures, but to the anxieties of business, and a weight of
possible worse ever impending, I was not equal. Tuthill and Gilman gave
me my certificates. I laughed at the friendly lie implied in them, but my
sister shook her head and said it was all true. Indeed this last winter I was
jaded out, winters were always worse than other parts of the year, because the
spirits are worse, and I had no daylight. In summer I had daylight evenings.
The relief was hinted to me from a superior power, when I poor slave had not a
hope but that I must wait another 7 years with Jacob—and
lo! the Rachel which I coveted is brot. to me—
Have you read the noble dedication of Irving’s “Missionary Orations” to
S. T. C. Who shall call this man a
Quack hereafter? What the Kirk will think of it neither I nor
Irving care. When somebody suggested to him that it
would not be likely to do him good, videlicet among his own people,
“That is a reason for doing it” was his noble answer.
That Irving thinks he
has profited mainly by S. T. C., I have
no doubt. The very style of the Ded. shows it.
Communicate my news to Southey, and beg his pardon for my being so long acknowledging
his kind present of the “Church,” which circumstances I do not wish to explain, but
having no reference to himself, prevented at the time. Assure him of my deep
respect and friendliest feelings.
Divide the same, or rather each take the whole to you, I
mean you and all yours. To Miss
Hutchinson I must write separate. What’s her address? I
want to know about Mrs. M.
Farewell! and end at last, long selfish Letter!
C. Lamb.
Note
[Lamb expanded the first portion of
this letter into the Elia essay “The
Superannuated Man,” which ought to be read in connection with it (see Vol.
II. of the present edition).
“Now when all is holyday.” Shakespeare had written:— If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work. “I. Henry
IV.,” I., 2, 227-228.
Leigh Hunt and James
Montgomery, the poet, had both undergone imprisonment for libel.
At a Court of Directors of the India House held on March 29, 1825, it was
resolved “that the resignation of Mr. Charles
Lamb of the Accountant General’s Office, on account of certified
ill-health, be accepted, and, it appearing that he has served the Company faithfully
for 33 years, and is now in the receipt of an income of £730 per annum, he be allowed a
pension of £450 (four hundred and fifty pounds) per annum, under the provisions of the
act of the 53 Geo. III., cap. 155, to commence from this day.”]
LETTER 351 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. April 6, 1825.]
DEAR B. B.—My
spirits are so tumultuary with the novelty of my recent emancipation, that I
have scarce steadiness of hand, much more mind, to compose a letter.
I am free, B. B.—free as air. The little bird that wings the sky Knows no such Liberty! I was set free on Tuesday in last week at 4 o’Clock. I came home for ever!
I have been describing my feelings as well as I can to
Wordswth. in
a long letter, and don’t care to repeat. Take it briefly that for a few
days I was painfully oppressed by so mighty a change, but it is becoming daily
more natural to me.
I went and sat among ’em all at my old 33 years desk
yester morning; and deuce take me if I had not yearnings at leaving all my old
pen and ink fellows, merry sociable lads, at leaving them in the Lurch, fag,
fag, fag.
The comparison of my own superior felicity gave me any
thing but pleasure.
B. B., I would not serve another 7 years
for seven hundred thousand pounds!
I have got £441 net for life, sanctioned by Act of
Parliament, with a provision for Mary if
she survives me.
I will live another 50 years; or, if I live but 10, they
will be thirty, reckoning
the quantity of real time in them, i.e. the time that is
a man’s own.
Tell me how you like “Barbara S.”—will it be received in
atonement for the foolish Vision, I mean by the Lady?
Apropos, I never saw Mrs. Crauford in
my life, nevertheless ’tis all true of Somebody. Address me in future Colebrook Cottage, Islington.
I am really nervous (but that will wear off) so take this
brief announcement.
Yours truly C. L.
Note
[“The little bird . . .” This is Lamb’s version of Lovelace’s— The birds that wanton in the air Know no such liberty, in the poem “To Althea, from
Prison.”
“Barbara
S——,” the Elia essay, was printed in the London Magazine April, 1825 (see Vol. II. of this
edition). It purports to be an incident in the life of Mrs.
Crawford, the actress, but had really happened to Fanny Kelly.
The following letter tells the story of Lamb’s emancipation once more:—]
LETTER 352 CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
[p.m. April 18, 1825.]
DEAR Miss
Hutchinson—You want to know all about my gaol delivery. Take it
then. About 12 weeks since I had a sort of intimation that a resignation might
be well accepted from me. This was a kind bird’s whisper. On that hint I
spake. Gilman and Tuthill furnishd me with certificates of
wasted health and sore spirits—not much more than the truth, I promise you—and
for 9 weeks I was kept in a fright—I had gone too far to recede, and they might
take advantage and dismiss me with a much less sum than I had reckoned on.
However Liberty came at last with a liberal provision. I have given up what I
could have lived on in the country, but have enough to live here by managemt. and scribbling occasionally. I would not go back to
my prison for seven years longer for £10000 a
year. 7 years after one is 50 is no trifle to give up. Still I am a young
Pensioner, and have served but 33 years, very few I assure you retire before
40, 45, or 50 years’ service.
You will ask how I bear my freedom. Faith, for some days I
was staggered. Could not comprehend the magnitude of my deliverance, was
confused, giddy, knew not whether I was on my head or my heel as they say. But
those giddy feelings have gone away, and my weather glass stands at a degree or
two above CONTENT I go about quiet, and have none of that restless hunting after recreation
which made holydays formerly uneasy joys. All being holydays, I feel as if I
had none, as they do in heaven, where ’tis all red letter days.
I have a kind letter from the Wordswthscongratulatory not a little.
It is a damp, I do assure you, amid all my prospects that I
can receive none from a quarter upon which I had calculated, almost more than
from any, upon receiving congratulations. I had grown to like poor M. more and more. I do not esteem a soul
living or not living more warmly than I had grown to esteem and value him. But
words are vain. We have none of us to count upon many years. That is the only
cure for sad thoughts. If only some died, and the rest were permanent on earth,
what a thing a friend’s death would be then!
I must take leave, having put off answering [a load] of
letters to this morning, and this, alas! is the 1st. Our kindest remembrances
to Mrs. Monkhouse and believe us
Yours most Truly, C. Lamb.
LETTER 353 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[p.m. May 2, 1825.]
DEAR Hone,—I
send you a trifle; you have seen my lines, I suppose, in the “London.” I cannot tell you how
much I like the “St. Chad
Wells.”
Yours truly C. Lamb.
P.S. Why did you not stay, or come again, yesterday?
Note
[These words accompany Lamb’s contribution, “Remarkable Correspondent,” to Hone’sEvery-Day Book (see Vol. I. of
this edition, page 297). Lamb was helping Hone in
his new venture as much as he was able; and Hone in return dedicated
the first volume to him. “St. Chad’s
Wells” was an article by Hone in the number for March
2.]
LETTER 354 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[No date. May, 1825.]
DEAR W. I
write post-hoste to ensure a frank. Thanks for your hearty congratulations. I
may now date from the 6th week of my Hegira or Flight from Leadenhall. I have
lived so much in it, that a Summer seems already past, and ’tis but early
May yet with you and other people. How I look down on the Slaves and drudges of
the world! its inhabitants are a vast cottonweb of spin spin spinners. O the
carking cares! O the money-grubbers—sempiternal muckworms!
Your Virgil I have lost
sight of, but suspect it is in the hands of Sir G.
Beaumont. I think that circumstances made me shy of procuring it
before. Will you write to him about it? and your commands shall be obeyed to a
tittle.
Coleridge has just finishd his prize
Essay, which if it get the Prize he’ll touch an additional £100 I fancy.
His Book too (commentary on
Bishop Leighton) is quite finished
and penesTaylor and Hessey.
In the London
which is just out (1st May) are 2 papers entitled the Superannuated
Man, which I wish you to see, and also 1st Apr. a little thing
called Barbara S—— a story
gleaned from Miss Kelly. The L. M. if you can get it will save my enlargement upon
the topic of my manumission.
I must scribble to make up my hiatus
crumenæ, for there are so many ways, pious and profligate, of
getting rid of money in this vast city and suburbs that I shall miss my third:
but couragio. I despair not. Your kind hint of the Cottage was well thrown out.
An anchorage for age and school of economy when necessity comes. But without
this latter I have an unconquerable terror of changing Place. It does not agree
with us. I say it from conviction. Else—I do sometimes ruralize in fancy.
Some d——d people axe come in and I must finish abruptly. By
d——d, I only mean deuced. Tis these suitors of Penelope that make it necessary to authorise a
little for gin and mutton and such trifles.
Excuse my abortive scribble.
Yours not in more haste than heart
C. L.
Love and recollects to all the Wms. Doras, Maries round
your Wrekin.
Mary is capitally well.
Do write to Sir G.
B. for I am shyish of applying to him.
Note
[Coleridge had been appointed to
one of the ten Royal Associateships of the newly chartered Royal Society of Literature,
thus becoming entitled to an annuity of 100 guineas. An essay was expected from each
associate. Coleridge wrote on the Prometheus of Æschylus, and read it on May 18. His book was Aids to Reflection.
See note on page 687.
“Hiatus
crumenæ”—“Deficiency in my purse.”
“I shall miss my thirds.” Lamb’s pension was two-thirds of his stipend.
“Some d——d people.” A hint for Lamb’sPopular Fallacy on Home, soon to be written.
“Round your Wrekin.” Lamb repeats this phrase twice in the next few months. He got it from the
Dedication to Farquhar’s play “The Recruiting
Officer”—“To all friends round the Wrekin”].
LETTER 355 CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES CHAMBERS
[Undated. ? May, 1825.]
WITH regard to a John-dory, which you desire to be
particularly informed about, I honour the fish, but it is rather on account of
Quin who patronised it, and whose
taste (of a dead man) I had as lieve go by as
anybody’s (Apicius and Heliogabalus excepted—this latter started
nightingales’ tongues and peacocks’ brains as a garnish).
Else in itself, and trusting to my
own poor single judgment, it hath not that moist mellow oleaginous gliding
smooth descent from the tongue to the palate, thence to the stomach, &c.,
that your Brighton Turbot hath, which I take to be the most friendly and familiar flavor of any that swims—most
genial and at home to the palate.
Nor has it on the other hand that fine falling off
flakiness, that oleaginous peeling off (as it were, like a sea onion), which
endears your cod’s head & shoulders to some appetites; that manly
firmness, combined with a sort of womanish coming-in-pieces, which the same
cod’s head & shoulders hath, where the whole is easily separable,
pliant to a knife or a spoon, but each individual flake presents a pleasing
resistance to the opposed tooth. You understand me—these delicate subjects are
necessarily obscure.
But it has a third flavor of its own, perfectly distinct
from Cod or Turbot, which it must be owned may to some not injudicious palates
render it acceptable—but to my unpractised tooth it presented rather a crude
river-fish-flavor, like your Pike or Carp, and perhaps like them should have
been tamed & corrected by some laborious & well chosen sauce. Still I
always suspect a fish which requires so much of artificial settings-off. Your
choicest relishes (like nature’s loveliness) need not the foreign aid of
ornament, but are when unadorned (that is, with nothing but a little plain
anchovy & a squeeze of lemon) then adorned the most. However, I shall go to
Brighton again next Summer, and shall have an opportunity of correcting my
judgment, if it is not sufficiently informed. I can only say that when Nature
was pleased to make the John Dory so notoriously deficient in outward graces
(as to be sure he is the very Rhinoceros of fishes, the ugliest dog that swims,
except perhaps the Sea Satyr, which I never saw, but which they say is
terrible), when she formed him with so few external advantages, she might have
bestowed a more elaborate finish in his parts internal, & have given him a
relish, a sapor, to recommend him, as she made Pope a Poet to make up for making him crooked.
I am sorry to find that you have got a knack of saying
things which are not true to shew your wit. If I had no wit but what I must
shew at the expence of my virtue or my modesty, I had as lieve be as stupid as
* * * at the Tea Warehouse. Depend upon it, my dear Chambers, that an ounce of integrity at our death-bed will
stand us in more avail than all the wit of Congreve or . . . For instance, you tell me a fine story about
Truss, and his playing at Leamington, which I know to
be false, because I have advice from Derby that he was whipt through the Town
on that very day you say he appeared in some character or other, for robbing an
old woman at church of a seal ring. And Dr.
Parr has been two months dead. So it won’t do to scatter
these untrue stories about among people that know any thing. Besides, your
forte is not invention. It is judgment, particularly shown in your choice of
dishes. We seem in that instance born under one star. I like you for liking hare. I esteem you for disrelishing
minced veal. Liking is too cold a word.—I love you for your noble attachment to
the fat unctuous juices of deer’s flesh & the green unspeakable of
turtle. I honour you for your endeavours to esteem and approve of my favorite,
which I ventured to recommend to you as a substitute for hare, bullock’s
heart, and I am not offended that you cannot taste it with my palate. A true
son of Epicurus should reserve one taste
peculiar to himself. For a long time I kept the secret about the exceeding
deliciousness of the marrow of boiled knuckle of veal, till my tongue weakly
ran riot in its praises, and now it is prostitute & common.—But I have made
one discovery which I will not impart till my dying scene is over, perhaps it
will be my last mouthful in this world: delicious thought, enough to sweeten
(or rather make savoury) the hour of death. It is a little square bit about
this size in or near the knuckle bone of a fried [figure] joint of . . . fat I
can’t call it nor lean neither altogether, it is that beautiful compound,
which Nature must have made in Paradise Park venison, before she separated the
two substances, the dry & the oleaginous, to punish sinful mankind;
Adam ate them entire & inseparate, and this little
taste of Eden in the knuckle bone of a fried . . . seems the only relique of a
Paradisaical state. When I die, an exact description of its topography shall be
left in a cupboard with a key, inscribed on which these words, “C. Lamb
dying imparts this to C. Chambers as the only worthy
depository of such a secret.” You’ll drop a tear. . . .
Note
[Charles Chambers was the brother
of John Chambers (see page 518). He had been at
Christ’s Hospital with Lamb and subsequently
became a surgeon in the Navy. He retired to Leamington and practised there until his death,
somewhen about 1857, says Mr. Hazlitt. He seems to
have inherited some of the epicure’s tastes of his father, the “sensible
clergyman in Warwickshire” who, Lamb tells us in
“Thoughts on Presents of
Game,” “used to allow a pound of Epping to every hare.”
The phrase “when unadorned” &c. is from Thomson’sSeasons, “Autumn,” line 204.
This letter adds one more to the list of Lamb’s gustatory raptures, and it is remarkable as being his only
eulogy of fish. Mr. Hazlitt says that the date
September 1, 1817, has been added by another hand; but if the remark about Dr. Parr is true (he died March 6, 1825) the time is as I
have stated. Fortunately the date in this particular case is unimportant. Mr.
Hazlitt suggests that the stupid person in the Tea Warehouse was Bye, whom we met last in Letter 235.
Of Truss we know nothing. The name may be a
misreading of Twiss (Horace
Twiss, 1787-1849, politician, buffoon and Mrs.
Siddons’ nephew), who was quite a likely person to be lied about in
joke at that time.]
LETTER 356 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[? June, 1825.]
MY dear Coleridge,—With pain and grief, I must entreat you to excuse us
on Thursday. My head, though externally correct, has had a severe concussion in
my long illness, and the very idea of an engagement hanging over for a day or
two, forbids my rest; and I get up miserable. I am not well enough for company.
I do assure you, no other thing prevents my coming. I expect Field and his brother’s this or
to-morrow evening, and it worries me to death that I am not ostensibly ill
enough to put ’em off. I will get better, when I shall hope to see your
nephew. He will come again. Mary joins in
best love to the Gillmans. Do, I earnestly entreat you,
excuse me. I assure you, again, that I am not fit to go out yet.
Yours (though shattered),
C. Lamb. Tuesday.
Note
[This letter has previously been dated 1829, but I think wrongly.
Lamb had no long illness then, and Field was then in Gibraltar, where he was Chief-Justice.
Lamb’s long illness was in 1825, when Coleridge’s Thursday evenings at Highgate were
regular. Coleridge’s nephew may have been one of several. I
fancy it was the Rev. Edward Coleridge. Henry Nelson Coleridge had already left, I think, for the
West Indies.]
LETTER 357 CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY COLBURN (?)
[Dated at end: June 14 (? 1825).]
DEAR Sir, I am quite ashamed, after your kind
letter, of having expressed any disappointment about my remuneration. It is
quite equivalent to the value of any thing I have yet sent you. I had Twenty
Guineas a sheet from the London; and
what I did for them was more worth that sum, than any thing, I am afraid, I can
now produce, would be worth the lesser sum. I used up all my best thoughts in
that publication, and I do not like to go on writing worse & worse, &
feeling that I do so. I want to try something else. However, if any subject
turns up, which I think will do your Magazine no discredit, you shall have it at your price, or
something between that and my old price. I prefer
writing to seeing you just now, for after such a letter as I have received from
you, in truth I am ashamed to see you. We will never mention the thing again.
Your obliged friend & Servt C. Lamb. June 14.
Note
[In the absence of any wrapper I have assumed this note to be addressed
to Colburn, the publisher of the New Monthly Magazine. Lamb’s first contribution to that periodical was “The Illustrious Defunct” (see
Vol. I. of this edition) in January, 1825. A year later he began the “Popular Fallacies,” and continued regularly for some months.]
LETTER 358 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[p.m. July 2, 1825.]
DEAR C.—We
are going off to Enfield, to Allsop’s, for a day or 2, with some intention of
succeeding them in their lodging for a time, for this damn’d nervous
Fever (vide Lond. Mag.for July) indisposes me
for seeing any friends, and never any poor devil was so befriended as I am. Do
you know any poor solitary human that wants that cordial to life a—true friend? I can
spare him twenty, he shall have ’em good cheap. I have gallipots of
’em—genuine balm of cares—a going—a going—a going. Little plagues plague
me a 1000 times more than ever. I am like a disembodied soul—in this my
eternity. I feel every thing entirely, all in all and all in etc. This price I
pay for liberty, but am richly content to pay it. The Odes are 4-5ths done
by Hood, a silentish young man you met at
Islinton one day, an invalid. The rest are Reynolds’s, whose sisterH. has recently married. I have
not had a broken finger in them.
They are hearty good-natured things, and I would put my
name to ’em chearfully, if I could as honestly. I complimented them in a
Newspaper, with an abatement for those puns you laud so. They are generally an
excess. A Pun is a thing of too much consequence to be thrown in as a
make-weight. You shall read one of the addresses over, and miss the puns, and
it shall be quite as good and better than when you discover ’em. A Pun is
a Noble Thing per se: O never lug it in as an accessory. A Pun is a sole object
for reflection (vide my aids to that recessment from a
savage state)—it is entire, it fills the mind: it is perfect as a Sonnet,
better. It limps asham’d in the train and retinue of Humour: it knows it
should have an establishment of its own. The one, for instance, I made the
other day, I forget what it was.
Hood will be gratify’d, as much as
I am, by your mistake. I liked ‘Grimaldi’ the best; it is true painting, of abstract
Clownery, and that precious concrete of a Clown: and the rich succession of
images, and words almost such, in the first half of the Mag. Ignotum. Your picture of the Camel, that would not or
could not thread your nice needle-eye of Subtilisms, was confiim’d by
Elton, who perfectly appreciated his
abrupt departure. Elton borrowed the “Aids” from Hessey (by the way what is your Enigma about
Cupid? I am Cytherea’s son, if I understand a tittle of it), and
returnd it next day saying that 20 years ago, when he was pure, he thought as
you do now, but that he now thinks as you did 20 years ago. But
E. seems a very honest fellow.
Hood has just come in; his sick eyes sparkled into
health when he read your approbation. They had meditated a copy for you, but
postponed it till a neater 2d Edition, which is at hand.
Have you heard the Creature at the Opera House—Signor
Nonvir sed veluti Vir?
Like Orpheus, he is
said to draw storks &c. after him. A picked raisin
for a sweet banquet of sounds; but I affect not these exotics. Nos durum genus, as mellifluous
Ovid hath it.
Fanny Holcroft is just come in, with her
paternal severity of aspect. She has frozen a bright thought which should have
follow’d. She makes us marble, with too little conceiving. ’Twas
respecting the Signor, whom I honour on
this side idolatry. Well, more of this anon.
We are setting out to walk to Enfield after our Beans and
Bacon, which are just smoking.
Kindest remembrances to the G.’s ever.
From Islinton,
2d day, 3d month of my Hegira or Flight from Leadenhall.
C. L.Olim Clericus.
Note
[“To Allsop’s.” Allsop says in his Letters ... of Coleridge that he and the
Lambs were housemates for a long time.
“Vide Lond. Mag. for
July”—where the Elia essay “The
Convalescent” was printed.
“The Odes”—Odes and Addresses to Great People, 1825. Coleridge after reading the book had written to Lamb as follows (the letter is printed by Hood):—
My DearCharles,—This afternoon, a little,
thin, meanlooking sort of a foolscap, sub-octavo of poems, printed on very
dingy outsides, lay on the table, which the cover informed me was circulating
in our book-club, so very Grub-Streetish in all its appearance, internal as
well as external, that I cannot explain by what accident of impulse (assuredly
there was no motive in play) I came to look into it.
Least of all, the title, Odes and
Addresses to Great Men, which connected itself in my head with Rejected Addresses, and all
the Smith and Theodore Hook squad. But, my dear Charles,
it was certainly written by you, or under you, or una cum you. I know none of your frequent visitors
capacious and assimilative enough of your converse to have reproduced you so
honestly, supposing you had left yourself in pledge in his lock-up house.
Gillman, to whom I read the spirited
parody on the introduction to Peter
Bell, the Ode to the Great
Unknown, and to Mrs. Fry;
he speaks doubtfully of Reynolds and
Hood. But here come Irving and Basil
Montagu.
Thursday night 10 o’clock.—No! Charles, it is
you. I have read them over again, and I understand why you have anon’d the book. The puns are nine in ten
good—many excellent—the Newgatory transcendent. And then the exemplum sine exemplo of a volume of
personalities and contemporaneities, without a single line that could inflict
the infinitesimal of an unpleasance on any man in his senses: saying and except
perhaps in the envy-addled brain of the despiser of your Lays. If not a triumph over him, it is at least an ovation. Then,
moreover, and besides, to speak with becoming modesty, excepting my own self,
who is there but you who can write the musical lines and stanzas that are
intermixed?
Here, Gillman, come up to my Garret, and driven back by the guardian
spirits of four huge flower-holders of omnigenous roses and honeysuckles—(Lord
have mercy on his hysterical olfactories! What will he do in Paradise? I must
have a pair or two of nostril-plugs, or nose-goggles laid in his coffin)—stands
at the door, reading that to M’Adam, and the washer-woman’s letter, and he
admits the facts. You are found in the manner, as the
lawyers say! so, Mr. Charles! hang
yourself up, and send me a line, by way of token and acknowledgment. My dear
love to Mary. God bless you and your
Unshamabramizer.
S. T. Coleridge.
Reynolds was John Hamilton
Reynolds. According to a marked copy in the possession of Mr. Buxton Forman, Reynolds wrote
only the odes to Mr. M’Adam, Mr.
Dymoke, Sylvanus Urban, Elliston and the Dean and Chapter of Westminster.
The newspaper in which Lamb
complimented the book was the New
Times, for April 12, 1825. See Vol. I. of the present edition, page
285, for the review, where the remarks on puns are repeated. The “Mag. Ignotum” was the ode to the Great
Unknown, the author of the Scotch novels. In the same paper on January 8,
1825, Lamb had written an essay called “Many Friends” (see Vol. I., page 270) a little in
the manner of this first paragraph.
“Your picture of the Camel.” Probably the story of a
caller told by Coleridge to Lamb in a letter.
“Your Enigma about Cupid.” Possibly referring to the following passage in the Aids to Reflection,
1825, pages 277-278:—
From the remote East turn to the mythology of Minor Asia, to the Descendants of Javan
who dwelt in the tents of Shem, and possessed
the Isles. Here again, and in the usual form of an historic Solution, we find
the same Fact, and as characteristic of the Human Race, stated
in that earliest and most venerable Mythus (or symbolic Parable) of Prometheus—that truly wonderful Fable, in which the
characters of the rebellious Spirit and of the Divine Friend of Mankind (Θέος
ϕιλάνθρωπος) are united in the same Person: and thus in the most striking manner noting
the forced amalgamation of the Patriarchal Tradition with the incongruous Scheme of
Pantheism. This and the connected tale of Io, which
is but the sequel of the Prometheus, stand alone in
the Greek Mythology, in which elsewhere both Gods and Men are mere Powers and Products
of Nature. And most noticeable it is, that soon after the promulgation and spread of
the Gospel had awakened the moral sense, and had opened the eyes even of its wiser
Enemies to the necessity of providing some solution of this great problem of the Moral
World, the beautiful Parable of Cupid and Psyche was brought forward as a rivalFall of Man: and the fact of a moral
corruption connatural with the human race was again recognized. In the assertion of Original Sin the Greek Mythology rose and set.
“Elton”—Charles Abraham Elton, whom we have already met.
“Have you heard the
Creature?”—Giovanni Battista
Velluti (1781-1861), an Italian soprano singer who first appeared in England
on June 30, 1825, in Meyerbeer’s “Il Crociato in Egitto.” He received £2,500 for five
months’ salary.
“Nos durum
genus”— Inde genus durum sumus experiensque laborum.Ovid, Metamorphoses, I.,
414.
“On this side idolatry.” Ben Jonson’s phrase of Shakespeare. In Timber.
“Olim Clericus”—“Formerly a
clerk.”]
LETTER 359 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. July 2, 1825.]
MY dear B.
B.—My nervous attack has so unfitted me, that I have not courage to
sit down to a Letter. My poor pittance in the London you will see is drawn from my sickness. Your
Book is very
acceptable to me, because most of it [is] new to me, but your Book itself we
cannot thank you for more sincerely than for the introduction you favoured us
with to Anne Knight. Now cannot I write
Mrs. Anne Knight for the
life of me. She is a very pleas—, but I won’t write all we have said of
her so often to ourselves, because I suspect you would read it to her. Only
give my sister’s and my kindest
remembces to her, and how glad we are we can say
that word. If ever she come to Southwark again I count upon another pleasant
bridge walk with her. Tell her, I got home, time
for a rubber; but poor Tryphena will not understand that
phrase of the worldlings.
I am hardly able to appreciate your volume now. But I liked
the dedicatn much, and the apology for your bald
burying grounds. To Shelly, but that is not new. To the young Vesper-singer, Great
Bealing’s, 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 for ever 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 consideratn that they are snatch’d 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.
Note
[“My poor pittance”—“The Convalescent.”
“Your Book”—Barton’sPoems, 4th edition, 1825. The dedication was to
Barton’s sister, Maria
Hack.
“Anne Knight.” A
Quaker lady, who kept a school at Woodbridge. Tryphena (Rom. xvi. 12) laboured in the Lord.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Hone, dated Enfield, July 25,
1825. Lamb had written some quatrains to the editor of the Every-Day Book,
which were printed in the London
Magazine for May, 1825.
Hone copied them into his periodical, accompanied by a reply.
Lamb began:— I like you, and your book, ingenuous Hone! Hone’s reply contained the sentiment:— I am “ingenuous”: it is all I can Pretend to; it is all I wish to be. See the Every-Day Book, Vol. I., July
9. Hone at this time was occupying Lamb’s
house at Colebrooke Row, while the Lambs were staying at the Allsops’ lodgings at Enfield.
In the letter Lamb also refers to
his “petit farce.” Probably “The Pawnbroker’s Daughter” (see Vol. V.
of this edition). He says it is at the theatre now and Harley is there
too. This would be John Pritt Harley, the actor. He
was connected both with Drury Lane and the Lyceum. In an earlier note to Hone (printed by Mr.
Fitzgerald) Lamb had asked him to take the farce to the
theatre.
See Appendix III page 974, for a note to John Aitken.]
LETTER 360 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. August 10, 1825.]
We shall be soon again at Colebrook.
DEAR B.
B.—You must excuse my not writing before, when I tell you we are on
a visit at Enfield, where I do not feel it natural to sit down to a Letter. It
is at all times an exertion. I had rather talk with you, and Ann Knight, quietly at Colebrook Lodge, over
the matter of your last. You mistake me when you express misgivings about my
relishing a series of scriptural poems. I wrote confusedly. What I meant to say
was, that one or two consolatory poems on deaths would have had a more
condensed effect than many. Scriptural—devotional topics—admit of infinite
variety. So far from poetry tiring me because religious, I can read, and I say
it seriously, the homely old version of the Psalms in our Prayerbooks for an
hour or two together sometimes without sense of weariness.
I did not express myself clearly about what I think a false
topic insisted on so frequently in consolatory addresses on the death of
Infants. I know something like it is in Scripture, but I think humanly spoken.
It is a natural thought, a sweet fallacy to the Survivors—but still a fallacy. If it stands on the doctrine of this being a
probationary state, it is liable to this dilemma. Omniscience, to whom
possibility must be clear as act, must know of the child, what it would
hereafter turn out: if good, then the topic is false to say it is secured from
falling into future wilfulness, vice, &c. If bad, I do not see how its
exemption from certain future overt acts by being snatched away at all tells in
its favor. You stop the arm of a murderer, or arrest the finger of a pickpurse,
but is not the guilt incurred as much by the intent as if never so much acted?
Why children are hurried off, and old reprobates of a hundred left, whose trial
humanly we may think was complete at fifty, is among the obscurities of
providence. The very notion of a state of probation has darkness in it. The
all-knower has no need of satisfying his eyes by seeing what we will do, when
he knows before what we will do. Methinks we might be condemn’d before
commission. In these things we grope and flounder, and if we can pick up a
little human comfort that the child taken is snatch’d from vice (no great
compliment to it, by the bye), let us take it. And as to where an untried child
goes, whether to join the assembly of its elders who have borne the heat of the
day—fire-purified martyrs, and torment-sifted confessors—what know we? We
promise heaven methinks too cheaply, and assign large revenues to minors,
incompetent to manage them. Epitaphs run upon this topic of consolation, till
the very frequency induces a cheapness. Tickets for admission into Paradise are
sculptured out at a penny a letter, twopence a syllable, &c. It is all a
mystery; and the more I try to express my meaning (having none that is clear)
the more I flounder. Finally, write what your own conscience, which to you is
the unerring judge, seems best, and be careless about the whimsies of such a
half-baked notionist as I am. We are here in a most pleasant country, full of
walks, and idle to our hearts desire. Taylor has dropt the London. It was
indeed a dead weight. It has got in the Slough of Despond. I shuffle off my
part of the pack, and stand like Xtian with light and merry shoulders. It had
got silly, indecorous, pert, and every thing that is bad. Both our kind
remembrances to Mrs. K. and yourself,
and stranger’s-greeting to Lucy—is
it Lucy or Ruth?—that gathers wise
sayings in a Book.
C. Lamb.
Note
[The London
Magazine passed into the hands of Henry
Southern in September, 1825. Lamb’s last article
for it was in the August number—“Imperfect Dramatic Illusion,” reprinted in the Last Essays of Elia as
“Stage Illusion.”]
LETTER 361 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
August 10, 1825.
DEAR Southey,—You’ll know who this letter comes from by opening
slap-dash upon the text, as in the good old times. I never could come into the
custom of envelopes; ’tis a modern foppery; the Plinian correspondence
gives no hint of such. In singleness of sheet and meaning then I thank you for
your little book. I am ashamed to add a codicil of thanks for your “Book of the Church.” I
scarce feel competent to give an opinion of the latter; I have not reading
enough of that kind to venture at it. I can only say the fact, that I have read
it with attention and interest. Being, as you know, not quite a Churchman, I
felt a jealousy at the Church taking to herself the whole deserts of
Christianity, Catholic and Protestant, from Druid extirpation downwards. I call
all good Christians the Church, Capillarians and all. But I am in too light a
humour to touch these matters. May all our churches flourish! Two things
staggered me in the poem
(and one of them staggered both of us). I cannot away with a beautiful series
of verses, as I protest they are, commencing “Jenner.” ’Tis like a choice banquet opened with a
pill or an electuary—physic stuff. T’other is, we cannot make out how
Edith should be no more than ten
years old. Byr Lady, we had taken her to be some sixteen or upwards. We suppose
you have only chosen the round number for the metre. Or poem and dedication may
be both older than they pretend to; but then some hint might have been given;
for, as it stands, it may only serve some day to puzzle the parish reckoning.
But without inquiring further (for ’tis ungracious to look into a
lady’s years), the dedication is eminently pleasing and tender, and we
wish Edith May Southey joy of it. Something, too, struck
us as if we had heard of the death of John
May. A John May’s death was a few
years since in the papers. We think the tale one of the quietest, prettiest
things we have seen. You have been temperate in the use of localities, which
generally spoil poems laid in exotic regions. You mostly cannot stir out (in
such things) for humming-birds and fire-flies. A tree is a Magnolia,
&c.—Can I but like the truly Catholic spirit? “Blame as thou
mayest the Papist’s erring creed”—which and other passages
brought me back to the old Anthology
days and the admonitory lesson to “Dear George” on the
“The Vesper
Bell,” a little poem which retains its first hold upon me
strangely.
The compliment to the translatress is daintily conceived. Nothing is choicer in that sort of writing than to
bring in some remote, impossible parallel,—as between a great empress and the
inobtrusive quiet soul who digged her noiseless way so perseveringly through
that rugged Paraguay mine. How she Dobrizhoffered it all out, it puzzles my
slender Latinity to conjecture. Why do you seem to sanction Landor’s unfeeling allegorising away of
honest Quixote! He may as well say
Strap is meant to symbolise the
Scottish nation before the Union, and Random since that act of dubious issue; or that Partridge means the Mystical Man, and Lady Bellaston typifies the Woman upon Many
Waters. Gebir, indeed, may mean the state
of the hop markets last month, for anything I know to the contrary. That all
Spain overflowed with romancical books (as Madge
Newcastle calls them) was no reason that Cervantes should not smile at the matter of them; nor even a
reason that, in another mood, he might not multiply them, deeply as he was
tinctured with the essence of them. Quixote
is the father of gentle ridicule, and at the same time the very depository and
treasury of chivalry and highest notions. Marry, when somebody persuaded
Cervantes that he meant only fun, and put him upon
writing that unfortunate Second Part with the confederacies of that unworthy
duke and most contemptible duchess, Cervantes sacrificed
his instinct to his understanding.
We got your little book but last night, being at Enfield,
to which place we came about a month since, and are having quiet holydays.
Mary walks her twelve miles a day
some days, and I my twenty on others. ’Tis all holiday with me now, you
know. The change works admirably.
For literary news, in my poor way, I have a one-act farce
going to be acted at the Haymarket; but when? is the question. ’Tis an
extravaganza, and like enough to follow “Mr. H.” “The London Magazine” has shifted its
publishers once more, and I shall shift myself out of it. It is fallen. My
ambition is not at present higher than to write nonsense for the play-houses,
to eke out a somewhat contracted income. Tempus
erat. There was a time, my dear Cornwallis, when the
Muse, &c. But I am now in Mac Fleckno’s predicament,— “Promised a play, and dwindled to a
farce.”
Coleridge is better (was, at least, a
few weeks since) than he has been for years. His accomplishing his book at last has been a source
of vigour to him. We are on a half visit to his friend Allsop, at a Mrs.
Leishman’s, Enfield, but expect to be at Colebrooke
Cottage in a week or so, where, or anywhere, I shall be always most happy to
receive tidings from you. G. Dyer is in
the height of an uxorious paradise. His honeymoon will not wane till he wax
cold. Never was a more happy
pair, since Acme and Septimius, and longer. Farewell, with many
thanks, dear S. Our loves to all round
your Wrekin.
Your old friend, C. Lamb.
Note
[In the letter to Barton on page
700 Lamb continues or amplifies his remarks on his
own letter-writing habits.
“Capillarians.” The New English Dictionary gives
Lamb’s word in this connection as its sole
example, meaning without stem.
“The poem”—Southey’sTale of Paraguay, 1825, which begins with an address to
Jenner, the physiologist:— Jenner! for ever shall thy honour’d name, and is dedicated to Edith May Southey— Edith! ten years are number’d, since the day. Edith Southey was born in 1804. The dedication was dated 1814.
John May was Southey’s friend and correspondent. It was not he that had died.
“The Vesper Bell”—“The Chapel Bell,” which was not in the Annual Anthology, but in
Southey’sPoems, 1797. Dear
George would perhaps be Burnett, who was at Oxford with Southey when the
verses were written (see the Appendix, page 956).
“The compliment to the translatress.” Southey took his Tale of Paraguay from
Dobrizhoffer’sHistory of the Abipones, which
his niece, Sara Coleridge, had translated (see
Letter 293 and note). Southey remarks in the poem that could
Dobrizhoffer have foreseen by whom his words were to be turned
into English, he would have been as pleased as when he won the ear of the Empress Queen.
“Landor’s . . .
allegorising.” Landor, in the conversation
between “Peter Leopold and the President
du Paty,” makes President du Paty
say that Cervantes had deeper purpose than the
satirising of knight-errants, Don Quixote standing for
the Emperor Charles V. and Sancho Panza symbolising the people. Southey quoted the passage in the Notes to the Proem. Lamb’sElia essay on the “Defect of Imagination” (see Vol. II., page 233)
amplifies this criticism of Don
Quixote.
Strap and Random
are in Smollett’sRoderick Random, and Partridge and Lady
Bellaston in Fielding’sTom Jones.
“Madge Newcastle.” Lamb’s oft-extolled Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle.
“A one-act farce.” This was, I imagine, “The Pawnbroker’s Daughter,”
although that is in two acts. It was not, however, acted.
“My dear Cornwallis.” There was a time, my dear Cornwallis,
when The Muse would take me on her airy wing. From a poem by Sneyd Davisto the Hon. and Rev. F. C. in
Dodsley’sCollection of Poems by
Several Hands, vol. vi., p. 138. Edition 1766.
“Mac Fleckno’s predicament.” See
Dryden’s “Mac-Flecknoe,” line 182.
George Dyer had just been married to the widow of a
solicitor who lived opposite him in Clifford’s Inn.
“Acme and Septimius.” See Catullus,
Carm. 45, “De Acme et Septimio;” the story of two
fond and doating lovers.
Here should come three unimportant notes to Hone with reference to the Every-Day Book—adding an invitation to Enfield to be
shown “dainty spots.”]
LETTER 362 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[p.m. Sept. 9 1825].
MY dear Allsop—We are exceedingly grieved for your loss. When your note
came, my sister went to Pall Mall, to find you, and saw Mrs.
L. and was a little comforted to find Mrs. A. had returned to Enfield before the
distresful event. I am very feeble, can scarce move a pen; got home from
Enfield on the Friday, and on Monday followg was laid
up with a most violent nervous fever second this summer, have had Leeches to my
Temples, have not had, nor can not get, a night’s sleep. So you will
excuse more from
Yours truly, C. Lamb. Islington, 9 Sept.
Our most kind remembces to poor Mrs. Allsop. A line to say how you both
are will be most acceptable.
Note
[Allsop’s loss was, I
imagine, the death of one of his children.]
LETTER 363 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[p.m. Sept. 24, 1825.]
MY dear Allsop—Come not near this unfortunate roof yet a while. My
disease is clearly but slowly going. Field is an excellent attendant. But Mary’s anxieties have overturned her. She has her old
Miss James with her, without whom I
should not feel a support in the world. We keep in separate apartments, and
must weather it. Let me know all of your healths. Kindest love to Mrs. Allsop.
C. Lamb. Saturday.
Can you call at Mrs.
Burney 26 James Street, and tell her, & that I can see
no one here in this state. If Martin
return—if well enough, I will meet him some where, don’t let him
come.
Note
[Field was Henry
Field, Barron Field’s brother.
Here should come a note from Lamb
to Hone, dated September 30, 1825, in which
Lamb describes the unhappy state of the house at Colebrooke Row,
with himself and his sister both ill.
Here also should come a similar note to William Ayrton.
On October 18 Lamb sends Hone the first “bit of writing” he has
done “these many weeks.”]
LETTER 364 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[p.m. Oct. 24, 1825.]
I SEND a scrap. Is it worth postage? My friends are
fairly surprised that you should set me down so unequivocally for an ass, as
you have done, Page 1358. Here he iswhat follows?The Ass Call you this friendship?
Mercy! What a dose you have sent me of Burney!—a perfect
opening* draught.
* A Pun here is intended.
Note
[This is written on the back of the MS. “In re Squirrels” for Hone’sEvery-Day Book (see Vol. I. of this edition, page 306).
Lamb’s previous contribution had been “The Ass” which Hone had introduced
with a few words.]
LETTER 365 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[Dec. 5, 1825.]
DEAR A.—You will be glad to hear that we are at home
to visitors; not too many or noisy. Some fine day shortly Mary will surprise Mrs. Allsop. The weather is not seasonable for formal
engagements.
Yours most ever, C. Lamb. Satrd.
Note
[Here should come a note to Manning at Totteridge, signed Charles
and Mary Lamb, and dated December 10, 1825. It
indicates that both are well again, and hoping to see Manning at
Colebrooke.]
LETTER 366 CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER
[No date. ? Dec, 1825.]
DEAR O.—I
leave it entirely to Mr.
Colburn; but if not too late, I think the Proverbs had
better have L. signd to them and reserve Elia for Essays more Eliacal. May I trouble you to send my Magazine, not to Norris, but
H. C. Robinson Esq. King’s
bench walks, instead.
Yours truly C. Lamb.
My friend Hood, a
prime genius and hearty fellow, brings this.
Note
[Lamb’s “Popular Fallacies” began in the New Monthly Magazine in January, 1826.
Henry Colburn was the publisher of that
magazine, which had now obtained Lamb’s regular services. The
nominal editor was Campbell, the poet, who was
assisted by Cyrus Redding. Ollier seems to have been a sub-editor.]
LETTER 367 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[See Note].
DEAR Allsop—I
acknowledge with thanks the receipt of a draft on Messrs. Wms. for £81: 11: 3 which I haste to cash in the present alarming
state of the money market. Hurst and
Robinson gone. I have imagined a
chorus of ill-used authors singing on the occasion: What should we when Booksellers break? We should rejoice da Capo.
We regret exceedly. Mrs. Allsop’s being unwell. Mary or both will come and see her soon. The
frost is cruel, and we have both colds. I take Pills again, which battle with
your wine & victory hovers doubtful. By the bye, tho’ not disinclined
to presents I remember our bargain to take a dozen at sale price and must
demur. With once again thanks and best loves to Mrs. A.
Turn over—Yours,
C. Lamb.
Note
[This is dated in Harper’s Magazine January 7, 1826. I have since discovered that
the date is January 17, 1825.
Hurst and Robinson were publishers. Lamb (see
Letter 381) took the idea for his chorus from Davenant’s version of “Macbeth” which he described in The Spectator in 1828
(see Vol. I. of the present edition, page 322). It is there a chorus of witches— We should rejoice when good kings bleed.]
LETTERS 368 AND 369 CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER
DEAR Ollier,—I send you two more proverbs, which will be the last of
this batch, unless I send you one more by the post on Thursday; none will come
after that day; so do not leave any open room in that case. Hood sups with me to-night. Can you come and
eat grouse? ’Tis not often I offer at delicacies.
Yours most kindly, C. Lamb.
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER
January, 1826.
DEAR O.,—We
lamented your absence last night. The grouse were piquant, the backs
incomparable. You must come in to cold mutton and oysters some evening. Name
your evening; though I have qualms at the distance. Do you never leave early?
My head is very queerish, and indisposed for much company; but we will get
Hood, that half Hogarth, to meet you. The scrap I send should
come in After the “Rising with the Lark.”
Yours truly.
Colburn, I take it, pays postages.
Note
[The scrap was the Fallacy “That we Should Lie Down with the Lamb,” which has
perhaps the rarest quality of the series.
Here perhaps should come two further notes to Ollier, referring to some articles on Chinese jests by Manning.]
LETTER 370 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. February 7, 1826.]
My kind remembrances to your daughter and A. K. always.
DEAR B. B.—I
got your book not more than five days ago, so am not so negligent as I must
have appeared to you with a fortnight’s sin upon my shoulders. I tell you
with sincerity that I think you have completely succeeded in what you intended
to do. What is poetry may be disputed. These are poetry to me at least. They
are concise, pithy, and moving. Uniform as they are, and unhistorify’d, I
read them thro’ at two sittings without one sensation approaching to
tedium. I do not know that among your many kind presents of this nature this is
not my favourite volume. The language is never lax, and there is a unity of
design and feeling, you wrote them with love—to avoid
the cox-combical phrase, con amore. I am particularly
pleased with the “Spiritual Law,” page 34-5. It reminded me of Quarles, and Holy
Mr. Herbert, as Izaak
Walton calls him: the two best, if not only, of our devotional
poets, tho’ some prefer Watts, and
some Tom Moore.
I am far from well or in my right spirits, and shudder at
pen and ink work. I poke out a monthly crudity for Colburn in his magazine, which I call “Popular Fallacies,” and periodically crush a proverb or two,
setting up my folly against the wisdom of nations. Do you see the “New Monthly”?
One word I must object to in your little book, and it recurs
more than once—FADELESS is no genuine compound; loveless is, because love is a
noun as well as verb, but what is a fade?—and I do not quite like whipping the
Greek drama upon the back of “Genesis,”
page 8. I do not like praise handed in by disparagement: as I objected to a
side censure on Byron, etc., in the lines on
Bloomfield: with these poor cavils
excepted, your verses are without a flaw.
C. Lamb.
Note
[Barton’s new book was Devotional Verses: founded
on, and illustrative of Select Texts of Scripture, 1826. See the
Appendix, page 957, for “The Spiritual
Law.”
“Holy Mr. Herbert.” Writing to
Lady Beaumont in 1826 Coleridge says: “My dear old friend Charles Lamb and I differ widely (and in point of taste
and moral feeling this is a rare occurrence) in our estimate and liking of George Herbert’s sacred poems. He greatly
prefers Quarles—nay, he dislikes
Herbert”.
Barton whipped the Greek drama on the back of Genesis in the following stanza, referring to
Abraham’s words before preparing to sacrifice
Isaac:— Brief colloquy, yet more sublime, To every feeling heart, Than all the boast of classic time, Or Drama’s proudest art: Far, far beyond the Grecian stage, Or Poesy’s most glowing page.
For Lamb’s reference to
Byron see Letter 311.]
LETTER 371 CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER
[p.m. March 16, 1826.]
DR Ollier if
not too late, pray omit the last paragraph in “Actor’s Religion,” which is
clumsy. It will then end with the word Mugletonian. I shall not often trouble
you in this manner, but I am suspicious of this article as lame.
C. Lamb.
Note
[“The Religion of
Actors” was printed in the New Monthly Magazine for April, 1826. The essay ends at
“Muggletonian.” See Vol. I. of this edition, page 287.]
LETTER 372 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. March 20, 1826.]
DEAR B.
B.—You may know my letters by the paper and the folding. For the
former, I live on scraps obtained in charity from an old friend whose
stationary is a permanent perquisite; for folding, I shall do it neatly when I
learn to tye my neckcloths. I surprise most of my friends by writing to them on
ruled paper, as if I had not got past pothooks and hangers. Sealing wax, I have
none on my establishment. Wafers of the coarsest bran supply its place. When my
Epistles come to be weighed with Pliny’s, however superior to the Roman in delicate irony,
judicious reflexions, etc., his gilt post will bribe over the judges to him.
All the time I was at the E. I. H. I never mended a pen; I now cut ’em to
the stumps, marring rather than mending the primitive goose quill. I cannot
bear to pay for articles I used to get for nothing. When
Adam laid out his first penny upon nonpareils at some
stall in Mesopotamos, I think it went hard with him, reflecting upon his old
goodly orchard, where he had so many for nothing. When I write to a Great man,
at the Court end, he opens with surprise upon a naked note, such as Whitechapel
people interchange, with no sweet degrees of envelope: I never inclosed one bit
of paper in another, nor understand the rationale of it. Once only I seald with
borrow’d wax, to set Walter Scott a
wondering, sign’d with the imperial quarterd arms of England, which my
friend Field gives in compliment to his
descent in the female line from O.
Cromwell. It must have set his antiquarian curiosity upon
watering. To your questions upon the currency, I refer you to Mr. Robinson’s last speech, where, if you
can find a solution, I cannot. I think this tho’ the best ministry we
ever stumbled upon. Gin reduced four shillings in the gallon, wine 2 shillings
in the quart. This comes home to men’s minds and bosoms. My tirade
against visitors was not meant particularly at you or
A. K. I scarce know what I meant,
for I do not just now feel the grievance. I wanted to make an article. So in
another thing I talkd of somebody’s insipid wife,
without a correspondent object in my head: and a good lady, a friend’s
wife, whom I really love (don’t startle, I mean in
a licit way) has looked shyly on me ever since. The blunders of personal
application are ludicrous. I send out a character every now and then, on
purpose to exercise the ingenuity of my friends. “Popular Fallacies” will go on; that word concluded is an
erratum, I suppose, for continued. I do not know how it got stuff’d in
there. A little thing without name will also be printed on the Religion of the Actors, but
it is out of your way, so I recommend you, with true Author’s hypocrisy,
to skip it. We are about to sit down to Roast beef, at which we could wish
A. K., B. B., and B.
B.’spleasant daughter to be humble
partakers. So much for my hint at visitors, which was scarcely calculated for
droppers in from Woodbridge. The sky does not drop such larks every day.
My very kindest wishes to you all three, with my
sister’s best love.
C. Lamb.
Note
[“Mr. Robinson’s last
speech.” Frederick John Robinson, afterwards
Earl of Ripon, then Chancellor of the Exchequer under the
Earl of Liverpool. The Government had decided to
check the use of paper-money by stopping the issue of notes for less than £5; and
Robinson had made a speech on the subject on February 10. The
motion was carried, but to some extent was compromised. It was
Robinson who, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, found the money for
building the new British Museum and purchasing Angerstein s pictures as the beginning of
the National Gallery.
“Men’s minds and bosoms.” Bacon’s phrase in the Dedication to the Essays:
“come home to men’s business and bosoms.”
“My tirade against visitors”—the Popular Fallacy
“That Home is Home,” in
the New Monthly Magazine
for March.
“Somebody’s insipid wife.” In the Popular
Fallacy “That You Must Love Me and Love My
Dog,” in the February number, Lamb
had spoken of Honorius’ “vapid
wife.”
Barton and his daughter visited Lamb at Colebrooke Cottage somewhen about this time.
Mrs. FitzGerald, in 1893, wrote out for me her
recollections of the day. Lamb, who was alone, opened the door
himself. He sent out for a luncheon of oysters. The books on his shelves, Mrs.
FitzGerald remembered, retained the price-labels of the stalls where he had
bought them. She also remembered a portrait over the fireplace. This would be the Milton. In the Gem for 1831 was a poem by Barton, “To Milton’s Portrait in a Friend’s
Parlour.”]
LETTER 373 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
March 22nd, 1826.
DEAR C,—We will with great pleasure be with you on
Thursday in the next week early. Your finding out my style in your nephew’spleasant book is surprising to me. I want eyes
to descry it. You are a little too hard upon his morality, though I confess he
has more of Sterne about him than of
Sternhold. But he saddens into
excellent sense before the conclusion. Your query shall be submitted to
Miss Kelly, though it is obvious
that the pantomime, when done, will be more easy to decide upon than in
proposal. I say, do it by all means. I have Decker’s play by me, if you can filch anything out of it.
Miss Gray, with her kitten eyes, is
an actress, though she shows it not at all, and pupil to the former, whose
gestures she mimics in comedy to the disparagement of her own natural manner,
which is agreeable. It is funny to see her bridling up her neck, which is
native to F. K.; but there is no setting another’s
manners upon one’s shoulders any more than their head. I am glad you
esteem Manning, though you see but his
husk or shrine. He discloses not, save to select worshippers, and will leave
the world without any one hardly but me knowing how stupendous a creature he
is. I am perfecting myself in the “Ode to Eton College” against Thursday,
that I may not appear unclassic. I have just discovered that it is much better
than the “Elegy.”
In haste, C. L.
P.S.—I do not know what to say to your latest theory
about Nero being the Messiah, though by
all accounts he was a ’nointed one.
Note
[“Next week early.” Canon
Ainger’s text here has: “May we venture to bring Emma with us?”
“Your nephew’s pleasant book”—Henry Nelson Coleridge’sSix Months in the West Indies in
1825. In the last chapter but one of the book is an account of the slave
question, under the title “Planters and Slaves.”
“Sternhold”—Thomas Sternhold, the coadjutor of Hopkins in paraphrasing the Psalms.
“The pantomime.” Coleridge seems to have had some
project for modernising
Dekker for Fanny
Kelly. Mr. Dykes Campbell suggests
that the play to be treated was “Old
Fortunatus.”
“Miss Gray.” I have
found nothing of this Lady.
“Manning.” Writing to Robert Lloyd twenty-five years earlier Lamb had said of Manning: “A man of great Power—an enchanter almost.—Far beyond
Coleridge or any man in power of
impressing—when he gets you alone he can act the wonders of Egypt. Only he is lazy, and
does not always put forth all his strength; if he did, I know no man of genius at all
comparable to him.”
“Against Thursday.” Coleridge was “at home” on Thursday evenings. Possibly on this
occasion some one interested in Gray was to be there,
or the allusion may be a punning one to Miss Gray.
“Your latest theory.” I cannot
explain this.
“’Nointed one”—“Anoint: ironically to
beat soundly, to baste. In the North they say humorously ‘to anoint with the sap
of a hazel rod.’ ‘An anointed rogue’ means either one who has been
well thrashed, or who deserves to be. In the latter case it expresses the opinion and
wish of the speaker” (Skeat, A Student’s
Pastime).]
LETTER 374 CHARLES LAMB TO H. F. CARY
April 3, 1826.
DEAR Sir,—It is whispered me that you will not be
unwilling to look into our doleful hermitage. Without more preface, you will
gladden our cell by accompanying our old chums of the London, Darley and Allan
Cunningham, to Enfield on Wednesday. You shall have
hermit’s fare, with talk as seraphical as the novelty of the divine life
will permit, with an innocent retrospect to the world which we have left, when
I will thank you for your hospitable offer at Chiswick, and with plain hermit
reasons evince the necessity of abiding here.
Without hearing from you, then, you shall give us leave to
expect you. I have long had it on my conscience to invite you, but spirits have
been low; and I am indebted to chance for this awkward but most sincere
invitation.
Yours, with best love to Mrs.
Cary,
C. Lamb.
Darley knows all about the coaches.
Oh, for a Museum in the wilderness!
Note
[Cary, who had been afternoon
lecturer at Chiswick and curate of the Savoy, this year took up his post as Assistant
Keeper of the Printed Books at the British Museum. George
Darley, who wrote some notes to Cary’sDante, we have met.
Allan Cunningham was the Scotch poet and the
author of the Lives of the
Painters, the “Giant” of the London Magazine. The
Lambs seem to have been spending some days at Enfield.
Here should come a note from Lamb
to Ollier asking for a copy of the April New Monthly Magazine for
himself, and one for his Chinese friend (Manning) if
his jests are in.]
LETTER 375 CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
[p.m. May 9, 1826.]
DEAR N. You
will not expect us to-morrow, I am sure, while these damn’d North Easters
continue. We must wait the Zephyrs’ pleasures. By the bye, I was at
Highgate on Wensday, the only one of the Party.
Yours truly
C. Lamb.
Summer, as my friend Coleridge waggishly writes, has set in with its usual
severity.
Kind remembces to Mrs. Novello &c.
LETTER 376 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. May 16,
1826.]
DEAR B. B.—I
have had no spirits lately to begin a letter to you, though I am under
obligations to you (how many!) for your neat little poem. ’Tis just what
it professes to be, a simple tribute in chaste verse, serious and sincere. I do
not know how Friends will relish it, but we out-lyers, Honorary Friends, like
it very well. I have had my head and ears stuff’d up with the East winds.
A continual ringing in my brain of bells jangled, or The Spheres touchd by some
raw Angel. It is not George 3 trying the 100th psalm? I get my music for
nothing. But the weather seems to be softening, and will thaw my stunnings.
Coleridge writing to me a week or
two since begins his note—“Summer has set in with its usual
Severity.” A cold Summer is all I know of disagreeable in cold. I
do not mind the utmost rigour of real Winter, but these smiling hypocrites of
Mays wither me to death. My head has been a ringing Chaos, like the day the
winds were made, before they submitted to the discipline of a weathercock,
before the Quarters were made. In the street, with the blended noises of life
about me, I hear, and my head is lightened, but in a room the hubbub comes
back, and I am deaf as a Sinner. Did I tell you of a pleasant sketch Hood has done, which he calls Very Deaf Indeed? It is of a
good naturd stupid looking old gentleman, whom a footpad has stopt, but for his
extreme deafness cannot make him understand what he wants; the unconscious old
gentleman is extending his ear-trumpet very complacently, and the fellow is
firing a pistol into it to make him hear, but the ball will pierce his skull
sooner than the report reach his sensorium. I chuse a very little bit of paper,
for my ear hisses when I bend down to write. I can hardly read a book, for I
miss that small soft voice which the idea of articulated words raises (almost
imperceptibly to you) in a silent reader. I seem too deaf to see what I read.
But with a touch or two of returning Zephyr my head will melt. What Lyes you
Poets tell about the May! It is the most ungenial part of the Year, cold
crocuses, cold primroses, you take your blossoms in Ice—a painted Sun— Unmeaning joy around appears, And Nature smiles as if she sneers. It is ill with me when I begin to look which way the wind sits. Ten years
ago I literally did not know the point from the broad end of the Vane, which it
was the [? that] indicated the Quarter. I hope these ill winds have blowd over
you, as they do thro’ me. Kindest remembces to
you and yours.
C. L.
Note
[“Your neat little poem.” It is not possible to trace
this poem. Probably, I think, the “Stanzas written for a blank leaf in Sewell’s History of the
Quakers,” printed in A Widow’s Tale, 1827.
“George 3.” Byron’s “Vision of Judgment” thus closes:— King George slipp’d into Heaven for
one; And when the tumult dwindled to a calm, I left him practising the hundredth psalm.
This is Hood’s sketch, in
his Whims and
Oddities:— [figure]
“Unmeaning joy around appears . . .” I have not found
this.]
LETTER 377 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
June 1st, 1826.
DEAR Coleridge,—If I know myself, nobody more detests the display of
personal vanity which is implied in the act of sitting for one’s picture
than myself. But the fact is, that the likeness which accompanies this letter
was stolen from my person at one of my unguarded moments by some too partial
artist, and my friends are pleased to think that he has not much flattered me.
Whatever its merits may be, you, who have so great an interest in the original,
will have a satisfaction in tracing the features of one that has so long
esteemed you. There are times when in a friend’s absence these graphic
representations of him almost seem to bring back the man himself. The painter,
whoever he was, seems to have taken me in one of those disengaged moments, if I
may so term them, when the native character is so much more honestly displayed
than can be possible in the restraints of an enforced sitting attitude. Perhaps
it rather describes me as a thinking man than a man in the act of thought.
Whatever its pretensions, I know it will be dear to you, towards whom I should
wish my thoughts to flow in a sort of an undress rather than in the more
studied graces of diction.
I am, dear Coleridge, yours sincerely,
C. Lamb.
Note
[The portrait to which Lamb refers
will be found opposite page 706. It was etched by Brook
Pulham of the India House. It was this picture which so enraged Procter when he saw it in a printshop (probably that
referred to by Lamb in Letter 404) that he reprimanded the dealer.]
LETTERS 378 AND 379 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
Friday, some day in June, 1826. [p.m.
June 30, 1826.]
DEAR D.—My
first impulse upon opening your letter was pleasure at seeing your old neat
hand, nine parts gentlemanly, with a modest dash of the clerical: my second a
Thought, natural enough this hot weather, Am I to answer all this? why
’tis as long as those to the Ephesians and Galatians put together—I have
counted the words for curiosity. But then Paul has nothing like the fun which is ebullient all over
yours. I don’t remember a good thing (good like yours) from the 1st Romans to the last of the Hebrews. I remember but
one Pun in all the Evangely, and that was made by his and our master: Thou art
Peter (that is Doctor Rock) and upon this rock will I
build &c.; which sanctifies Punning with me against all gainsayers. I never
knew an enemy to puns, who was not an ill-natured man. Your fair critic in the
coach reminds me of a Scotchman who assured me that he did not see much in
Shakspeare. I replied, I dare say
not. He felt the equivoke, lookd awkward, and reddish, but soon returnd to the
attack, by saying that he thought Burns
was as good as Shakspeare: I said that I had no doubt he
was—to a Scotchman. We exchangd no more words that day.—Your account of the
fierce faces in the Hanging, with the presumed interlocution of the Eagle and
the Tyger, amused us greatly. You cannot be so very bad, while you can pick
mirth off from rotten walls. But let me hear you have escaped out of your oven.
May the Form of the Fourth Person who clapt invisible wet blankets about the
shoulders of ShadrachMeshach and Abednego, be with you in
the fiery Trial. But get out of the frying pan. Your business, I take it, is
bathing, not baking.
Let me hear that you have clamber’d up to
Lover’s Seat; it is as fine in that neighbourhood as Juan Fernandez, as
lonely too, when the Fishing boats are not out; I have sat for hours, staring
upon a shipless sea. The salt sea is never so grand as when it is left to itself. One cock-boat spoils it. A sea-mew or
two improves it. And go to the little church, which is a very protestant
Loretto, and seems dropt by some angel for the use of a hermit, who was at once
parishioner and a whole parish. It is not too big. Go in the night, bring it
away in your portmanteau, and I will plant it in my garden. It must have been
erected in the very infancy of British Christianity, for the two or three first
converts; yet hath it all the appertenances of a church of the first magnitude,
its pulpit, its pews, its baptismal font; a cathedral in a nutshell. Seven
people would crowd it like a Caledonian Chapel. The minister that divides the
word there, must give lumping pennyworths. It is built to the text of two or
three assembled in my name. It reminds me of the grain of mustard seed. If the
glebe land is proportionate, it may yield two potatoes. Tythes out of it could
be no more split than a hair. Its First fruits must be its Last, for
’twould never produce a couple. It is truly the strait and narrow way,
and few there be (of London visitants) that find it. The still small voice is
surely to be found there, if any where. A sounding board is merely there for
ceremony. It is secure from earthquakes, not more from sanctity than size, for
’twould feel a mountain thrown upon it no more than a taper-worm would.
Go and see, but not without your spectacles. By the way, there’s a
capital farm house two thirds of the way to the Lover’s Seat, with
incomparable plum cake, ginger beer, etc. Mary bids me warn you not to read the Anatomy of Melancholy in your present low
way. You’ll fancy yourself a pipkin, or a headless bear, as Burton speaks of. You’ll be lost in a
maze of remedies for a labyrinth of diseasements, a plethora of cures. Read
Fletcher; above all the Spanish Curate, the Thief or Little
Nightwalker, the Wit Without
Money, and the Lover’s Pilgrimage. Laugh and come home fat. Neither do we
think Sir T. Browne quite the thing for
you just at present. Fletcher is as light as Soda water.
Browne and Burton are too strong
potions for an Invalid. And don’t thumb or dirt the books. Take care of
the bindings. Lay a leaf of silver paper under ’em, as you read them. And
don’t smoke tobacco over ’em, the leaves will fall in and burn or
dirty their namesakes. If you find any dusty atoms of the Indian Weed crumbled
up in the Beaumt
and Fletcher, they are mine. But then, you know, so is
the Folio also. A pipe and a comedy of Fletcher’s
the last thing of a night is the best recipe for light dreams and to scatter
away Nightmares. Probatum est. But do as you like about the
former. Only cut the Baker’s. You will come home else all crust; Rankings
must chip you before you can appear in his counting house. And my dear
Peter Fin Junr., do contrive to see the
sea at least once before you return. You’ll be ask’d about it in
the Old Jewry. It will appear singular not to have seen it. And rub up your Muse, the
family Muse, and send us a rhyme or so. Don’t waste your wit upon that
damn’d Dry Salter. I never knew but one Dry Salter, who could relish
those mellow effusions, and he broke. You knew Tommy
Hill, the wettest of dry salters. Dry Salters, what a word for
this thirsty weather! I must drink after it. Here’s to thee, my dear
Dibdin, and to our having you again
snug and well at Colebrooke. But our nearest hopes are to hear again from you
shortly. An epistle only a quarter as agreeable as your last, would be a treat.
Yours most truly C. Lamb. Timothy B. Dibdin, Esq., No. 9, Blucher Row, Priory, Hastings.
Note
[Dibdin, who was in delicate
health, had gone to Hastings to recruit, with a parcel of Lamb’s books for company. He seems to have been lodged above the oven
at a baker’s. This letter contains Lamb’s
crowning description of Hollingdon Rural church (see also pages 617 and 648). I subjoin a
cut of the building as it is to-day:— [figure]
“A Caledonian Chapel.” Referring to the crowds that
listened to Irving (see note on page 661).
“A headless bear.” From the rhyming abstract of
melancholy prefixed to the Anatomy.
“Peter Fin.” A character in Jones’ “Peter Finn’s Trip to Brighton,” 1822, as
played by Liston.
“Tommy Hill.” In the British Museum is
preserved the following brief note addressed to Mr. Thomas
Hill—probably the same. The date is between 1809 and 1817:—
“Dr Sir
“It is necessary I see you
sign, can you step up to me 4 Inner Temple Lane this evening. I shall
wait at home.
“Yours, “C. Lamb.”
I have no notion to what the note refers. It is quite likely,
Mr. J. A. Rutter suggests, that Hill the drysalter, a famous busybody, and a friend of Theodore Hook, stood for the portrait of Tom Pry in Lamb’s
“Lepus Papers” (see Vol. I,
page 498). S. C. Hall, in his Book of Memories, says of
Hill that “his peculiar faculty was to find out what
everybody did, from a minister of state to a stable-boy.”]
LETTER 380 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[p.m. July 14, 1826.] BECAUSE you boast poetic Grandsire, And rhyming kin, both Uncle and Sire, Dost think that none but their Descendings Can tickle folks with double endings? I had a Dad, that would for half a bet Have put down thine thro’ half the Alphabet. Thou, who would be Dan Prior the
second, For Dan Posterior must be reckon’d. In faith, dear Tim, your rhymes
are slovenly, As a man may say, dough-baked and ovenly; Tedious and long as two Long Acres, And smell most vilely of the Baker’s. (I have been cursing every limb o’ thee, Because I could not hitch in Timothy. Jack, Will, Tom, Dick’s, a serious evil, But Tim, plain Tim’s—the very devil.) Thou most incorrigible scribbler, Right Watering place and cockney dribbler, What child, that barely understands AB, C, would ever dream that Stanza Would tinkle into rhyme with “Plan, Sir”? Go, go, you are not worth an answer. I had a Sire, that at plain Crambo Had hit you o’er the pate a damn’d blow. How now? may I die game, and you die brass, But I have stol’n a quip from Hudibras. ’Twas thinking on that fine old Suttler, That was in faith a second Butler; Had as queer rhymes as he, and subtler. He would have put you to’t this weather For rattling syllables together; Rhym’d you to death, like “rats in Ireland,” Except that he was born in High’r Land. His chimes, not crampt like thine, and rung ill, Had made Job split his sides on dunghill. There was no limit to his merryings At christ’nings, weddings, nay at buryings. No undertaker would live near him, Those grave practitioners did fear him; Mutes, at his merry mops, turned “vocal,” And fellows, hired for silence, “spoke all.” No body could be laid in cavity, Long as he lived, with proper gravity. His mirth-fraught eye had but to glitter, And every mourner round must titter. The Parson, prating of Mount Hermon, Stood still to laugh, in midst of sermon. The final Sexton (smile he must for him) Could hardly get to “dust to dust” for him. He lost three pall-bearers their livelyhood, Only with simp’ring at his lively mood: Provided that they fresh and neat came, All jests were fish that to his net came. He’d banter Apostolic castings, As you jeer fishermen at Hastings. When the fly bit, like me, he
leapt-o’er-all, And stood not much on what was scriptural. P. S. I had forgot, at Small Bohemia (Enquire the way of your maid Euphemia) Are sojourning, of all good fellows The prince and princess,—the Novellos— Pray seek ’em out, and give my love to ’em; You’ll find you’ll soon be hand and glove to ’em.
In prose, Little Bohemia, about a mile from Hastings in the
Hollington road, when you can get so far. Dear Dib, I find relief in a word or two of prose. In truth my
rhymes come slow. You have “routh of ’em.” It gives us
pleasure to find you keep your good spirits. Your Letter did us good. Pray
heaven you are got out at last. Write quickly.
This letter will introduce you, if ’tis agreeable.
Take a donkey. ’Tis Novello the
Composer and his Wife, our very good
friends.
C. L.
Note
[Dibdin must have sent the verses
which Lamb asked for in the previous letter, and this
is Lamb’s reply. Pride of ancestry seems to have been the note
of Dibdin’s effort. Probably there is a certain amount of truth
in Lamb’s account of the resolute merriment of his father. It is
not inconsistent with his description of Lovel in the
Elia essay
“The Old Benchers of the Inner
Temple.”
“Dan Prior”—Matthew Prior, the poet, “Dan” meaning “master” (a
corruption of “dominus”.)
“I have stol’n a quip.” The manner rather than
the precise matter, I think.
“Rats in Ireland.” Rosalind says in “As
You Like It” (III., 2, 181-188) “I was never so berhymed since .
. . I was an Irish rat.”
“Routh of ’em.” From Burns’ “Poem to J. S.” Verse 21—“rowth o’
rhymes.”
Here should come a letter from Lamb to the Rev. Edward Coleridge, Coleridge’s nephew, dated July 19, 1826, printed by Mr. Hazlitt in Bohn’s edition of the letters, not
available for the present volume. It thanks the recipient for his kindness to the child of
a friend of Lamb’s, Samuel Anthony
Bloxam, Coleridge having assisted in getting
Frederick Bloxam into Eton (where he was a master) on the
foundation. Samuel Bloxam and Lamb were at
Christ’s Hospital together.]
LETTER 381 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[p.m. September 6, 1826.]
MY dear Wordsworth, The Bearer of this is my young friend Moxon, a young lad with a Yorkshire head, and
a heart that would do honour to a more Southern county: no offence to West-moreland. He is one of Longman’s best hands, and can give you
the best account of The Trade as ’tis now going; or stopping. For my
part, the failure of a Bookseller is not the most unpalatable accident of
mortality: sad but not saddest The desolation of a hostile city. When Constable fell from heaven,
and we all hoped Baldwin was next, I
tuned a slight stave to the words in Macbeth (D’avenant’s) to be sung by a Chorus of Authors, What should we do when Booksellers break? We should rejoyce. Moxon is but a tradesman in the bud yet, and retains his
virgin Honesty; Esto perpetua, for he is a friendly
serviceable fellow, and thinks nothing of lugging up a Cargo of the Newest
Novels once or twice a week from the Row to Colebrooke to gratify my Sister’s passion for the newest things.
He is her Bodley. He is author besides of a poem which for a first attempt is
promising. It is made up of common images, and yet contrives to read
originally. You see the writer felt all he pours forth, and has not palmed upon
you expressions which he did not believe at the time to be more his own than
adoptive. Rogers has paid him some
proper compliments, with sound advice intermixed, upon a slight introduction of
him by me; for which I feel obliged. Moxon has
petition’d me by letter (for he had not the confidence to ask it in
London) to introduce him to you during his holydays; pray pat him on the head,
ask him a civil question or two about his verses, and favor him with your
genuine autograph. He shall not be further troublesome. I think I have not sent
any one upon a gaping mission to you a good while. We are all well, and I have
at last broke the bonds of business a second time, never to put ’em on
again. I pitch Colburn and his magazine to the divil. I find I can
live without the necessity of writing, tho’ last year I fretted myself to
a fever with the hauntings of being starved. Those vapours are flown. All the
difference I find is that I have no pocket money: that is, I must not pry upon
an old book stall, and cull its contents as heretofore, but shoulders of
mutton, Whitbread’s entire, and Booth’s best, abound as formerly.
I don’t know whom or how many to send our love to,
your household is so frequently divided, but a general health to all that may
be fixed or wandering; stars, wherever. We read with pleasure some success (I
forget quite what) of one of you at Oxford. Mrs.
Monkhouse (. . . was one of you) sent us a kind letter some
[months back], and we had the pleasure to [see] her in tolerable spirits,
looking well and kind as in bygone days.
Do take pen, or put it into goodnatured hands Dorothean or Wordsworthian-female, or
Hutchinsonian, to inform us of your
present state, or possible proceedings. I am ashamed that this breaking of the
long ice should be a letter of business. There is none circum
præcordia nostra I swear by the honesty of pedantry, that wil I
nil I pushes me upon scraps of Latin. We are yours cordially:
Chas. & Mary Lamb. Septemr. 1826.
Note
[In this letter, the first to Wordsworth for many months, we have the first mention of Edward Moxon, who was to be so closely associated with
Lamb in the years to come.
Moxon, a young Yorkshireman, educated at the Green Coat School,
was then nearly twenty-five, and was already author of The Prospect and other Poems,
dedicated to Rogers, who was destined to be a
valuable patron. Moxon subsequently became
Wordsworth’s publisher.
“Sad but not saddest . . .” From “Samson Agonistes,” lines 1560-1561,
condensed.
“Constable . . .
Baldwin.” Archibald
Constable & Co., Scott’s
publishers, failed in 1826 (see note on page 697). Baldwin was the first publisher of the London Magazine. See mention of him in Letter 290.
“Esto
perpetua”—“Be thou perpetual!” Here referring,
I take it, to Moxon’s honesty—“May it
be perpetual!”
“I pitch Colburn and his
magazine.” Lamb wrote nothing in the
New Monthly Magazine
after September, 1826.
“Circum præcordia
nostra.” Chill about the midriff.
I append an abstract of what seems to be Lamb’s first letter to Edward
Moxon, obviously written before this date, but not out of place here. The
letter seems to have accompanied the proof of an article on Lamb which
he had corrected and was returning to Moxon. I quote from
Sotheby’s catalogue, May 13, 1903: “Were my own
feelings consulted I should print it verbatim, but I won’t hoax you, else I love
a Lye. My biography, parentage, place of birth, is a strange mistake, part founded on
some nonsense I wrote about Elia, and was true of him, the real
Elia, whose name I took. . . . C. L. was
born in Crown Office Row, Inner Temple in 1775. Admitted into Christs Hospital, 1782,
where he was contemporary with T. F. M. [Thomas Fanshawe Middleton], afterwards Bishop of
Calcutta, and with S. T. C. with the last of
these two eminent scholars he has enjoyed an intimacy through life. On quitting this
foundation he became a junior clerk in the South Sea House under his Elder Brother who died accountant there some years
since. . . . I am not the author of the Opium Eater, &c.” I have not
succeeded in finding the article in question.]
LETTER 382 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[p.m. September 9, 1826.]
An answer is requested.
Saturday.
DEAR D.—I
have observed that a Letter is never more acceptable than when received upon a
rainy day, especially a rainy Sunday; which moves me to send you somewhat,
however short. This will find you sitting after Breakfast, which you will have
prolonged as far as you can with consistency to the poor handmaid that has the
reversion of the Tea Leaves; making two nibbles of your last morsel of stale roll (you cannot have hot new ones on the
Sabbath), and reluctantly coming to an end, because when that is done, what can
you do till dinner? You cannot go to the Beach, for the rain is drowning the
sea, turning rank Thetis fresh, taking the
brine out of Neptune’s pickles, while
mermaids sit upon rocks with umbrellas, their ivory combs sheathed for spoiling
in the wet of waters foreign to them. You cannot go to the library, for
it’s shut. You are not religious enough to go to church. O it is worth
while to cultivate piety to the gods, to have something to fill the heart up on
a wet Sunday! You cannot cast accounts, for your ledger is being eaten up with
moths in the Ancient Jewry. You cannot play at draughts, for there is none to
play with you, and besides there is not a draught board in the house. You
cannot go to market, for it closed last night. You cannot look in to the shops,
their backs are shut upon you. You cannot read the Bible, for it is not good
reading for the sick and the hypochondriacal. You cannot while away an hour
with a friend, for you have no friend round that Wrekin. You cannot divert
yourself with a stray acquaintance, for you have picked none up. You cannot
bear the chiming of Bells, for they invite you to a banquet, where you are no
visitant. You cannot cheer yourself with the prospect of a tomorrow’s
letter, for none come on Mondays. You cannot count those endless vials on the
mantlepiece with any hope of making a variation in their numbers. You have
counted your spiders: your Bastile is exhausted. You sit and deliberately curse
your hard exile from all familiar sights and sounds. Old
Ranking poking in his head unexpectedly would just now
be as good to you as Grimaldi. Any thing
to deliver you from this intolerable weight of Ennui. You are too ill to shake
it off: not ill enough to submit to it, and to lie down as a lamb under it. The
Tyranny of Sickness is nothing to the Cruelty of Convalescence: ’tis to
have Thirty Tyrants for one. That pattering
rain drops on your brain. You’ll be worse after dinner, for you must dine
at one to-day, that Betty may go to afternoon service. She
insists upon having her chopped hay. And then when she goes out, who was
something to you, something to speak to—what an interminable afternoon
you’ll have to go thro’. You can’t break yourself from your
locality: you cannot say “Tomorrow morning I set off for Banstead, by
God”: for you are book’d for Wednesday. Foreseeing this, I thought
a cheerful letter would come in opportunely. If any of
the little topics for mirth I have thought upon should serve you in this utter
extinguishment of sunshine, to make you a little merry, I shall have had my
ends. I love to make things comfortable. [Here is an
erasure.] This, which is scratch’d out was the most material
thing I had to say, but on maturer thoughts I defer it.
P.S.—We are just sitting down to dinner with a pleasant
party, Coleridge, Reynolds the dramatist, and Sam Bloxam: tomorrow (that is, today), Liston,
and Wyat of the Wells, dine with us. May this find you as
jolly and freakish as we mean to be.
“You have counted your spiders.” Referring, I
suppose, to Paul Pellisson-Fontanier the
academician, and a famous prisoner in the Bastille, who trained a spider to eat flies from
his hand.
“Grimaldi”—Joseph Grimaldi, the clown. Ranking was one of
Dibdin’s employers.
“A pleasant party.” Reynolds,
the dramatist, would be Frederic Reynolds
(1764-1841); Bloxam we have just met; and
Wyat of the Wells was a comic singer and utility actor at
Sadler’s Wells.
Canon Ainger remarks that as a matter of fact
Dibdin was a religious youth.]
LETTER 383 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. September 26, 1826.]
DEAR B. B.—I
don’t know why I have delay’d so long writing. ’Twas a fault.
The under current of excuse to my mind was that I had heard of the Vessel in
which Mitford’s jars were to come;
that it had been obliged to
put into Batavia to refit (which accounts for its delay) but was daily
expectated. Days are past, and it comes not, and the mermaids may be drinking
their Tea out of his China for ought I know; but let’s hope not. In the
meantime I have paid £28, etc., for the freight and prime cost, (which I a
little expected he would have settled in London.) But do not mention it. I was
enabled to do it by a receipt of £30 from Colburn, with whom however I have done. I should else have run
short. For I just make ends meet. We will wait the arrival of the Trinkets, and
to ascertain their full expence, and then bring in the bill. (Don’t
mention it, for I daresay ’twas mere thoughtlessness.)
I am sorry you and yours have any plagues about dross
matters. I have been sadly puzzled at the defalcation of more than one third of
my income, out of which when entire I saved nothing. But cropping off wine, old
books, &c. and in short all that can be call’d pocket money, I hope
to be able to go on at the Cottage. Remember, I beg you not to say anything to
Mitford, for if he be honest it will
vex him: if not, which I as little expect as that you should [not] be, I have a
hank still upon the jars.
Colburn had something of mine in last
month, which he has had in hand these 7 months, and had lost, or cou’dnt
find room for: I was used to different treatment in the London, and have
forsworn Periodicals.
I am going thro’ a course of reading at the Museum:
the Garrick plays, out of part of which I formed my Specimens: I have Two Thousand to go
thro’; and in a few weeks have despatch’d the tythe of ’em.
It is a sort of Office to me; hours, 10 to 4, the same. It does me good. Man
must have regular occupation, that has been used to it. So A. K. keeps a School! She teaches nothing
wrong, I’ll answer for’t. I have a Dutch print of a Schoolmistress;
little old-fashioned Fleminglings, with only one face among them. She a
Princess of Schoolmistress, wielding a rod for form more than use; the scene an
old monastic chapel, with a Madonna over her head, looking just as serious, as
thoughtful, as pure, as gentle, as herself. Tis a type of thy friend.
Will you pardon my neglect? Mind, again I say, don’t
shew this to M.; let me wait a little
longer to Know the event of his Luxuries. (I am sure he is a good fellow,
tho’ I made a serious Yorkshire Lad, who met him, stare when I said he
was a Clergyman. He is a pleasant Layman spoiled.) Heaven send him his jars
uncrack’d, and me my—— Yours with kindest wishes to your daughter and
friend, in which Mary joins
C. L.
Note
[“I saved nothing.” This is a rather curious
statement; for Lamb, according to Procter, left £2000 at his death eight years later. He
must have saved £200 a year from his pension of £441, living at the rate of £241 per annum,
plus small earnings, for the rest of his life, and investing the £200 at 5 per cent,
compound interest.
“Colburn had something
of mine.” The Popular Fallacy “That a Deformed Person is a Lord,” not
included by Lamb with the others when he reprinted
them. Printed in Vol. I. of this edition, page 290.
“Reading at the Museum.” Lamb had begun to visit the Museum every day to collect extracts from the
Garrick plays for Hone’sTable Book, 1827.
“A. K.”—Anne
Knight again.
The pleasant Yorkshire lad whom Mitford’s secular air surprised was probably Moxon.
Here might come a purely business letter of no interest, from Lamb to Barton,
preserved in the British Museum, relating to Mitford’s jars.]
LETTER 384 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. ? Sept., 1826.]
I HAVE had much trouble to find Field to-day. No matter. He was packing up for
out of town. He has writ a handsomest letter, which you will transmit to
Murry with your proofsheets. Seal
it.—
Yours C. L.
Mrs. Hood will drink tea with us on
Thursday at ½ past 5 at Latest.
N.B. I have lost my Museum reading today: a day with
Titus: owing to your dam’d bisness.—I
am the last to reproach anybody. I scorn it.
If you shall have the whole book ready soon, it will be
best for Murry to see.
Note
[I am not clear as to what proof-sheets of Moxon’sLamb refers. His
second book, Christmas, 1829, was issued through Hurst,
Chance & Co.
Barron Field and John
Murray were friends.
“A day with Titus.” Can this (a friend suggests) have
any connection with the phrase Diem perditi?
There is no Titus play among the Garrick Extracts.]
LETTER 385 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[No postmark or date. Soon after preceding letter to Barton. 1826.]
DEAR B.
B.—the Busy Bee, as Hood after
Dr. Watts apostrophises thee, and
well dost thou deserve it for thy labors in the Muses’ gardens, wandering
over parterres of Think-on-me’s and Forget-me-nots, to a total
impossibility of forgetting thee,—thy letter was acceptable, thy scruples may
be dismissed, thou art Rectus in Curiâ, not a word more to
be said, Verbum Sapienti and so forth, the matter is decided
with a white stone, Classically, mark me, and the apparitions vanishd which
haunted me, only the Cramp, Caliban’s
distemper, clawing me in the calvish part of my nature, makes me ever and anon
roar Bullishly, squeak cowardishly, and limp cripple-ishly. Do I write quakerly
and simply, ’tis my most Master
Mathew-like intention to do it. See Ben Jonson.—I think you told me your acquaintce with the Drama was confin’d to Shakspeare and Miss Bailly:
some read only Milton and Croly. The gap is as from an ananas to a
Turnip. I have fighting in my head the plots characters situations and
sentiments of 400 old Plays (bran new to me) which I have been digesting at the
Museum, and my appetite sharpens to twice as many more, which I mean to course
over this winter. I can scarce avoid Dialogue fashion in this letter. I
soliloquise my meditations, and habitually speak dramatic blank verse without
meaning it. Do you see Mitford? he will
tell you something of my labors. Tell him I am sorry to have mist seeing him,
to have talk’d over those Old Treasures. I am
still more sorry for his missing Pots. But I shall be sure of the earliest
intelligence of the Lost Tribes. His Sacred Specimens are a thankful addition to
my shelves. Marry, I could wish he had been more careful of corrigenda. I have
discover’d certain which have slipt his Errata. I put ’em in the
next page, as perhaps thou canst transmit them to him. For what purpose, but to
grieve him (which yet I should be sorry to do), but then it shews my learning,
and the excuse is complimentary, as it implies their correction in a future
Edition. His own things in the book are magnificent, and as an old
Christ’s Hospitaller I was particularly refreshd with his eulogy on our
Edward. Many of the choice excerpta were
new to me. Old Christmas is a coming, to the confusion of Puritans,
Muggletonians, Anabaptists, Quakers, and that Unwassailing Crew. He cometh not
with his wonted gait, he is shrunk 9 inches in the girth, but is yet a Lusty
fellow. Hood’s book is mighty clever, and went off
600 copies the 1st day. Sion’s Songs do not disperse so quickly. The next leaf is for Revd J.
M. In this Adieu thine briefly in a
tall friendship
C. Lamb.
Note
[Barton’s letter, to which
this is an answer, not being preserved, we do not know what his scruples were. B.
B. was a great contributor to annuals.
“Rectus in Curiâ.”
A law phrase, “Upright in the court.”
“Verbum
Sapienti”—“Verbum sat
sapienti”—“A word to the wise is
sufficient.”
“With a white stone.” In trials at law a white stone
was cast as a vote for acquittal, a black stone for condemnation (see Ovid, Metamorphoses, 15, 41).
“Caliban’s
distemper”:— Prospero (to
Caliban), To-night thou shalt have cramps. “Tempest,” I., 2, 325.
“Master Mathew”—in
Ben Jonson’s “Every Man in His Humour.”
“Croly”—the Rev. George Croly
(1780-1860), of the Literary Gazette, author of The Angel of the World and other pretentious poems.
“Mitford’s Sacred
Specimens”—Sacred Specimens Selected from the Early English Poets, 1827. The last
poem, by Mitford himself, was “Lines Written under the Portrait of Edward
VI.”
“Hood’s
book”—Whims and
Oddities, second series, 1827.]
LETTERS 386 AND 387 CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
DEAR Robinson,—I called upon you this morning, and found that you were
gone to visit a dying friend. I had been upon a like errand. Poor Norris has been lying dying for now almost a
week, such is the penalty we pay for having enjoyed a strong constitution!
Whether he knew me or not, I know not, or whether he saw me through his poor
glazed eyes; but the group I saw about him I shall not forget. Upon the bed, or
about it, were assembled his wife and two daughters, and poor deaf
Richard, his son, looking doubly stupified. There they
were, and seemed to have been sitting all the week. I could only reach out a
hand to Mrs. Norris. Speak-ing was
impossible in that mute chamber. By this time I hope it is all over with him.
In him I have a loss the world cannot make up. He was my friend and my
father’s friend all the life I can remember. I seem to have made foolish
friendships ever since. Those are friendships which outlive a second
generation. Old as I am waxing, in his eyes I was still the child he first knew
me. To the last he called me Charley. I have none to call
me Charley now. He was the last link that bound me to the
Temple. You are but of yesterday. In him seem to have died the old plainness of
manners and singleness of heart. Letters he knew nothing of, nor did his
reading extend beyond the pages of the “Gentleman’s Magazine.” Yet there was
a pride of literature about him from being amongst books (he was librarian),
and from some scraps of doubtful Latin which he had picked up in his office of
entering students, that gave him very diverting airs of pedantry. Can I forget
the erudite look with which, when he had been in vain trying to make out a
blackletter text of Chaucer in the
Temple Library, he laid it down and told me that—“in those old books,
Charley, there is sometimes a deal of very
indifferent spelling;” and seemed to console himself in the
reflection! His jokes, for he had his jokes, are now ended, but they were old
trusty perennials, staples that pleased after decies
repetita, and were always as good as new. One song he
had, which was reserved for the night of Christmas-day, which we always spent
in the Temple. It was an old thing, and spoke of the flat bottoms of our foes
and the possibility of their coming over in darkness, and alluded to threats of
an invasion many years blown over; and when he came to the part “We’ll still make ’em run, and we’ll still
make ’em sweat, In spite of the devil and Brussels Gazette!” his eyes would sparkle as with the freshness of an impending event. And
what is the “Brussels Gazette” now? I cry
while I enumerate these trifles. “How shall we tell them in a
stranger’s ear?” His poor good girls will now have to
receive their afflicted mother in an inaccessible hovel in an obscure village
in Herts, where they have been long struggling to make a school without effect;
and poor deaf Richard—and the more helpless for being
so—is thrown on the wide world.
My first motive in writing, and, indeed, in calling on you,
was to ask if you were enough acquainted with any of the Benchers, to lay a
plain statement before them of the circumstances of the family. I almost fear
not, for you are of another hall. But if you can oblige me and my poor friend,
who is now insensible to any favours, pray exert yourself. You cannot say too
much good of poor Norris and his poor
wife.
Yours ever, Charles Lamb.
Note
[This letter, describing the death of Randal
Norris, Sub-Treasurer and Librarian of the Inner Temple, was printed with
only very slight alterations in Hone’sTable Book, 1827,
and again in the Last Essays of
Elia, 1833, under the title “A Death-Bed.” It was, however,
taken out of the second edition, and “Confessions of a Drunkard” substituted, in deference to the wishes of
Norris’s family. Mrs.
Norris, as I have said, was a native of Widford, where she had known
Mrs. Field, Lamb’s grandmother. With her son Richard, who
was deaf and peculiar, Mrs. Norris moved to Widford again, where the
daughters, Miss Betsy and Miss
Jane, had opened a school—Goddard House; which they retained until a legacy
restored the family prosperity. Soon after that they both married, each a farmer named
Tween. They survived until quite recently.
Mrs. Coe, an old scholar at the Misses
Norris’s school in the twenties, gave me, in 1902, some
reminiscences of those days, from which I quote a passage or so:—
When he joined the Norrises’ dinner-table he kept every one
laughing. Mr. Richard sat at one end, and some
of the school children would be there too. One day Mr.
Lamb gave every one a fancy name all round the table, and made a verse
on each. “You are so-and-so,” he said, “and you are so-and-so,”
adding the rhyme. “What’s he saying? What are you laughing at?”
Mr. Richard asked testily, for he was short-tempered.
Miss Betsy explained the joke to him, and Mr.
Lamb, coming to his turn, said—only he said it in verse—“Now,
Dick, it’s your turn. I shall call you
Gruborum; because all you think of is your food and your
stomach.” Mr. Richard pushed back his chair in a rage and
stamped out of the room. “Now I’ve done it,” said Mr.
Lamb: “I must go and make friends with my old chum. Give me a
large plate of pudding to take to him.” When he came back he said,
“It’s all right. I thought the pudding would do it.” Mr.
Lamb and Mr. Richard never got on very well, and
Mr. Richard didn’t like his teasing ways at all; but
Mr. Lamb often went for long walks with him, because no one
else would. He did many kind things like that.
There used to be a half-holiday when Mr. Lamb came, partly because
he would force his way into the schoolroom and make seriousness impossible. His head
would suddenly appear at the door in the midst of lessons, with “Well,
Betsy! How do, Jane?” “O, Mr.
Lamb!” they would say, and that was the end of work for that day. He
was really rather naughty with the children. One of his tricks was to teach them a new
kind of catechism (Mrs. Coe does not remember it,
but we may rest assured, I fear, that it was secular), and he made a great fuss with
Lizzie Hunt for her skill in saying the Lord’s Prayer
backwards, which he had taught her.
“Decies repetita”
(Horace, Ars Poetica, 365)—“Haec decies repetita
placebit”—“Ten times repeated will please.”
“We’ll still make ’em run . . .”
Canon Ainger says that the old song is the
original version of “Hearts of Oak,” printed in the
Universal Magazine,
March, 1760, and sung in “Harlequin’s Invasion.”
“How shall we tell them in a stranger’s ear?” A
quotation from Lamb himself, in the lines
“Written soon after the Preceding
Poem,” in 1798 (see Vol. V., page 22).]
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[No date. Jan. 20, 1827.]
DEAR R.
N. is dead. I have writ as nearly as
I could to look like a letter meant for your eye only.
Will it do? Could you distantly hint (do as your own judgment suggests) that if
his son could be got in as Clerk to the new Subtreasurer, it would be all his
father wish’d? But I leave that to you. I don’t want to put you
upon anything disagreeable.
Yours thankfully C. L.
Note
[The reference at the beginning is to the preceding letter, which was
probably enclosed with this note.]
LETTERS 388 AND 389 CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[Dated by H. C. R. Jan. 29, 1827.]
DEAR Robinson, If you have not seen Mr.
Gurney, leave him quite alone for the present, I have seen
Mr. Jekyll, who is as friendly as
heart can desire, he entirely approves of my formula of petition, and gave your
very reasons for the propriety of the “little village of Hertfshire.” Now, Mr. G. might not
approve of it, and then we should clash. Also, Mr. J.
wishes it to be presented next week, and Mr. G. might fix
earlier, which would be aukward. Mr. J. was so civil to
me, that I think it would be betternotfor you to show him that
letter you intended. Nothing can increase his zeal in the cause of
poor Mr. Norris. Mr.
Gardiner will see you with this, and learn from you all about
it, & consult, if you have seen Mr. G. & he has
fixed a time, how to put it off. Mr. J. is most friendly
to the boy: I think you had better not teaze the Treasurer any more about him, as it may make him less friendly to the Petition
Yours Ever C. L.
Note
[Writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on
February 13, 1827, Robinson says: “The
Lambs are well. I have been so busy that I have not lately
seen them. Charles has been occupied about the
affair of the widow of his old friend Norris
whose death he has felt. But the health of both is good.”
Gurney would probably be John
Gurney (afterwards Baron Gurney), the counsel and
judge. Jekyll was Joseph
Jekyll, the wit, mentioned by Lamb in his
essay on “The Old Benchers of the
Inner Temple.”]
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[Dated by H. C. R. Jan., 1827.]
DEAR R. do
not say any thing to Mr. G. about the
day or Petition, for Mr. Jekyll wishes
it to be next week, and thoroughly approves of my formula, and Mr.
G. might not, and then they will clash. Only speak to him of
Gardner’s wish to have the Lad. Mr.
Jekyll was excessive friendly.
C. L.
Note
[The matter referred to is still the Norrises’
welfare. Mr. Hazlitt says that an annuity of £80 was
settled by the Inn on Mrs. Norris.
Here perhaps should come a letter from Lamb to Allsop, printed by Mr. Fitzgerald, urging Allsop to go
to Highgate to see Coleridge and tell him of the
unhappy state of his, Allsop’s, affairs. In Crabb Robinson’sDiary for February 1, 1827, I
read: “I went to Lamb. Found him in trouble about his friend
Allsop, who is a ruined man. Allsop is a
very good creature who has been a generous friend to
Coleridge.” Writing of his troubles in Letters, Conversations and
Recollections of S. T. Coleridge, Allsop says:
“Charles Lamb, Charles and
Mary Lamb, ‘union is partition,’ were never
wanting in the hour of need.”]
LETTER 390 CHARLES LAMB TO B. R. HAYDON
[March, 1827.]
DEAR Raffaele
Haydon,—Did the maid tell you I came to see your picture, not on
Sunday but the day before? I think the face and bearing of the Bucephalus-tamer very noble, his flesh too effeminate or painty. The
skin of the female’s back kneeling is much more carnous. I had small time
to pick out praise or blame, for two lord-like Bucks came in, upon whose
strictures my presence seemed to impose restraint: I plebeian’d off
therefore.
I think I have hit on a subject for you, but can’t
swear it was never executed,—I never heard of its being,—“Chaucer beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleet
Street.” Think of the old dresses, houses, &c. “It seemeth that
both these learned men (Gower and
Chaucer) were of the Inner Temple; for not many years
since Master Buckley did see a record in the same house
where Geoffry Chaucer was fined two shillings for beating
a Franciscan Friar in Fleet Street.” Chaucer’s
Life by T. Speght, prefixed to the black letter folio of Chaucer,
1598.
Yours in haste (salt fish waiting), C. Lamb.
Note
[Haydon’s picture was his
“Alexander and Bucephalus.” The two Bucks, he
tells us in his Diary, were the Duke of Devonshire and
Mr. Agar Ellis.
Haydon did not take up the Chaucer subject.]
LETTER 391 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[No date. April, 1827.]
DEAR H. Never
come to our house and not come in. I was quite vex’d.
Yours truly. C. L.
There is in Blackwood this month an article most
affecting indeed called Le Revenant, and would do more
towards abolishing Capital Punishments than 400000 Romillies or Montagues. I beg you read it and see if you can extract any
of it. The Trial scene in particular.
Note
[Written on the fourteenth instalment of the Garrick Play extracts. Now
preserved at Rowfant. The article was in Blackwood for April, 1827. Hone took Lamb’s advice, and
the extract from it will be found in the Table Book, Vol. I. col. 455.
Lamb was peculiarly interested in the subject of
survival after hanging. He wrote an early Reflector essay, “On the Inconveniences of Being Hanged,” on the
subject, and it is the pivot of his farce “The Pawnbroker’s Daughter.”
“Romillies or
Montagues.” Two prominent advocates for the
abolition of capital punishment were Sir Samuel
Romilly (who died in 1818) and Basil
Montagu.]
LETTER 392 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOOD
[No date. May, 1827.]
DEAREST Hood,—Your news has spoil’d us a merry meeting. Miss Kelly and we were coming, but your letter
elicited a flood of tears from Mary, and
I saw she was not fit for a party. God bless you and the mother (or should be mother) of your sweet girl
that should have been. I have won sexpence of Moxon by the sex of the dear gone one.
Yours most truly and hers, [C. L.]
Note
[This note refers to one of the Hoods’
children, which was stillborn. It was upon this occasion that Lamb wrote the beautiful lines “On an Infant Dying as soon as Born” (see Vol.
V., pages 49 and 307).]
LETTER 393 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[No date. (1827.)]
MY dear B.
B.—A gentleman I never saw before brought me your welcome
present—imagine a scraping, fiddling, fidgetting, petit-maitre of a dancing
school advancing into my plain parlour with a coupee and a sideling bow, and
presenting the book as if he had been handing a glass of lemonade to a young
miss—imagine this, and contrast it with the serious nature of the book
presented! Then task your imagination, reversing this picture, to conceive of
quite an opposite messenger, a lean, straitlocked, wheyfaced methodist, for
such was he in reality who brought it, the Genius (it seems) of the Wesleyan Magazine. Certes, friend
B., thy Widow’s tale is too horrible, spite of the lenitives of
Religion, to embody in verse: I hold prose to be the appropriate expositor of
such atrocities! No offence, but it is a cordial that makes the heart sick.
Still thy skill in compounding it I not deny. I turn to what gave me less
mingled pleasure. I find markd with pencil these pages in thy pretty book, and
fear I have been penurious.
page 52, 53 capital.
„ 59 6th stanza exquisite
simile.
„ 61 11th stanza equally
good.
„ 108 3d stanza, I long
to see van Balen.
„ 111 a downright good
sonnet. Dixi.
„ 153 Lines at the
bottom.
So you see, I read, hear, and mark, if I
don’t learn—In short this little volume is no discredit to any of your
former, and betrays none of the Senility you fear about. Apropos of Van Balen, an artist who painted me lately had
painted a Blackamoor praying, and not filling his canvas, stuffd in his little
girl aside of Blacky, gaping at him unmeaningly; and then didn’t know
what to call it. Now for a picture to be promoted to the Exhibition (Suffolk
Street) as Historical, a subject is requisite. What
does me? I but christen it the “Young Catechist” and furbishd it
with Dialogue following, which dubb’d it an Historical Painting. Nothing
to a friend at need. While this tawny Ethiop prayeth, Painter, who is She that stayeth By, with skin of whitest lustre; Sunny locks, a shining cluster; Saintlike seeming to direct him To the Power that must protect him? Is she of the heav’nborn Three, Meek Hope, strong Faith, sweet Charity? Or some Cherub? They you mention Far transcend my weak invention. ’Tis a simple Christian child, Missionary young and mild, From her store of script’ral knowledge (Bible-taught without a college) Which by reading she could gather, Teaches him to say Our Father To the common Parent, who Colour not respects nor hue. White and Black in him have part, Who looks not to the skin, but heart.— When I’d done it, the Artist (who had clapt in Miss merely as a
fill-space) swore I exprest his full meaning, and the damosel bridled up into a
Missionary’s vanity. I like verses to explain Pictures: seldom Pictures
to illustrate Poems. Your wood cut is a rueful Lignum
Mortis. By the by, is the widow likely to marry again?
I am giving the fruit of my Old Play reading at the Museum
to Hone, who sets forth a Portion weekly
in the Table Book. Do you see
it? How is Mitford?—
I’ll just hint that the Pitcher, the Chord and the
Bowl are a little too often repeated (passim) in your
Book, and that on page 17 last line but 4 him is put for
he, but the poor widow I take it had small
leisure for grammatical niceties. Don’t you see there’s He myself, and him; why not both
him? likewise imperviously is
cruelly spelt imperiously. These are trifles, and I
honestly like your [book,] and you for giving it, tho’ I really am
ashamed of so many presents.
I can think of no news, therefore I will end with mine and
Mary’s kindest remembrances to
you and yours.
C. L.
Note
[It has been customary to date this letter December, 1827, but I think
that must be too late. Lamb would never have waited
till then to tell Barton that he was contributing
the Garrick Plays to Hone’s Table Book, especially as the last instalment was printed
in that month.
Barton’s new volume was A Widow’s Tale and Other
Poems, 1827. The title poem tells how a missionary and his wife were
wrecked, and how after three nights and days of horror she was saved. The woodcut on the
title-page of Barton’s book represented the widow supporting her
dead or dying husband in the midst of the storm.
This is the “exquisite simile “on page 59, from “A Grandsire’s Tale”:— Though some might deem her pensive, if not sad, Yet those who knew her better, best could tell How calmly happy, and how meekly glad Her quiet heart in its own depths did dwell: Like to the waters of some crystal well, In which the stars of heaven at noon are seen, Fancy might deem on her young spirit fell Glimpses of light more glorious and serene Than that of life’s brief day, so heavenly was her mien.
This was the “downright good sonnet”:— TO A GRANDMOTHER “Old age is dark and unlovely.”—Ossian. O say not so! A bright old age is thine; Calm as the gentle light of summer eves, Ere twilight dim her dusky mantle weaves; Because to thee is given, in strength’s decline, A heart that does not thanklessly repine At aught of which the hand of God bereaves, Yet all He sends with gratitude receives;— May such a quiet, thankful close be mine. And hence thy fire-side chair appears to me A peaceful throne—which thou wert form’d to fill; Thy children—ministers, who do thy will; And those grand-children, sporting round thy knee, Thy little subjects, looking up to thee, As one who claims their fond allegiance still.
And these are the lines at the foot of page 153 in a poem addressed to a
child seven years old:— There is a holy, blest companionship In the sweet intercourse thus held with those Whose tear and smile are guileless; from whose lip The simple dictate of the heart yet flows;— Though even in the yet unfolded rose The worm may lurk, and sin blight blooming youth, The light born with us long so brightly glows, That childhood’s first deceits seem almost truth, To life’s cold after lie, selfish, and void of ruth.
Van Balen was the painter of the picture of the
“Madonna and Child” which Mrs. FitzGerald (Edward
FitzGerald’s mother) had given to Barton and for which he expressed his thanks in a poem.
The artist who painted Lamb
recently was Henry Meyer (1782?-1847), the portrait
being that which serves as frontispiece to Vol. VI. of this edition. See opposite page 728
for a reproduction of “The Young Catechist,” which
Meyer also engraved, with Lamb’s verses
attached.]
LETTERS 394 AND 395 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[No date. End of May, 1827.]
DEAR H. in the
forthcoming “New
Monthly” are to be verses of mine on a Picture about Angels. Translate em to the Table-book. I am off for
Enfield.
Yours, C. L.
Note
[Written on the back of the XXI. Garrick Extracts. The poem “Angel Help” was printed in the New Monthly Magazine for
June and copied by Hone in the Table-Book, No. 24, 1827.]
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[No date. June, 1827.]
DEAR Hone, I should like this in your next book. We are at Enfield,
where (when we have solituded awhile) we shall be glad to see you.
Yours, C. Lamb.
Note
[This was written on the back of the MS. of “Going or Gone” (see Vol. V., page 70), a poem of
reminiscences of Lamb’s early Widford days,
printed in Hone’sTable-Book, June, 1827, signed
Elia.]
LETTER 396 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
Enfield, and for some weeks to come, “June 11, 1827.”
DEAR B.
B.—One word more of the picture verses, and that for good and all;
pray, with a neat pen alter one line His learning seems to lay small stress on to His learning lays no mighty stress on to avoid the unseemly recurrence (ungrammatical also) of
“seems” in the next line, besides the nonsence of “but”
there, as it now stands. And I request you, as a personal favor to me, to erase
the last line of all, which I should never have written from myself. The fact
is, it was a silly joke of Hood’s,
who gave me the frame, (you judg’d rightly it was not its own) with the
remark that you would like it, because it was b—d b—d,—and I lugg’d it
in: but I shall be quite hurt if it stands, because tho’ you and yours
have too good sense to object to it, I would not have a sentence of mine seen,
that to any foolish ear might sound unrespectful to thee. Let it end at
appalling; the joke is coarse and useless, and hurts the tone of the rest. Take
your best “ivory-handled “and scrape it forth.
Your specimen of what you might have written is hardly
fair. Had it been a present to me, I should have taken a more sentimental tone;
but of a trifle from me it was my cue to speak in an underish tone of
commendation. Prudent givers (what a word for such a
nothing) disparage their gifts; ’tis an art we have. So you see you
wouldnt have been so wrong, taking a higher tone. But enough of nothing.
By the bye, I suspected M. of being the disparager of the frame; hence a certain line.
For the frame, ’tis as the room is, where it hangs.
It hung up fronting my old cobwebby folios and batter’d furniture (the
fruit piece has resum’d its place) and was much better than a spick and
span one. But if your room be
very neat and your other pictures bright with gilt, it should be so too. I
can’t judge, not having seen: but my dingy study it suited.
Martin’sBelshazzar (the picture) I have seen. Its architectural effect is
stupendous; but the human figures, the squalling contorted little antics that
are playing at being frightend, like children at a sham ghost who half know it
to be a mask, are detestable. Then the letters are nothing more than a
transparency lighted up, such as a Lord might order to be lit up on a sudden at
a Xmas Gambol, to scare the ladies. The type is as plain as Baskervil’s—they should have been dim,
full of mystery, letters to the mind rather than the eye.—Rembrandt has painted only
Belshazzar and a courtier or two (taking a part of the
banquet for the whole) not fribbled out a mob of fine folks. Then every thing
is so distinct, to the very necklaces, and that foolish little prophet. What
one point is there of interest? The ideal of such a subject is, that you the
spectator should see nothing but what at the time you would have seen, the
hand—and the King—not to be at leisure to make taylor-remarks on the dresses,
or Doctor Kitchener-like to examine the
good things at table.
Just such a confusd piece is his Joshua, fritterd into 1000 fragments, little armies here, little
armies there—you should see only the Sun and Joshua; if I
remember, he has not left out that luminary entirely, but for
Joshua, I was ten minutes a finding him out.
Still he is showy in all that is not the human figure or
the preternatural interest: but the first are below a drawing school
girl’s attainment, and the last is a phantasmagoric trick, “Now
you shall see what you shall see, dare is Balshazar
and dare is Daniel.” You have my thoughts of
M. and so adieu
C. Lamb.
Note
[Lamb had sent Barton the picture (now in the possession of
Mrs. Edmund Lyons) that is reproduced in Vol. V. of this edition,
and again here. Later Lamb had sent the following lines:—
When last you left your Woodbridge pretty, To stare at sights, and see the City, If I your meaning understood, You wish’d a Picture, cheap, but good; The colouring? decent; clear, not muddy; To suit a Poet’s quiet study, Where Books and Prints for delectation Hang, rather than vain ostentation. The subject? what I pleased, if comely; But something scriptural and homely: A sober Piece, not gay or wanton, For winter fire-sides to descant on; The theme so scrupulously handled, A Quaker might look on unscandal’d; Such as might satisfy Ann
Knight, And classic Mitford just not
fright. Just such a one I’ve found, and send it; If liked, I give—if not, but lend it. The moral? nothing can be sounder. The fable? ’tis its own expounder— A Mother teaching to her Chit Some good book, and explaining it. He, silly urchin, tired of lesson, His learning seems to lay small stress on, But seems to hear not what he hears; Thrusting his fingers in his ears, Like Obstinate, that perverse
funny one, In honest parable of Bunyan. His working Sister, more sedate, Listens; but in a kind of state, The painter meant for steadiness; But has a tinge of sullenness; And, at first sight, she seems to brook As ill her needle, as he his book. This is the Picture. For the Frame— ’Tis not ill-suited to the same; Oak-carved, not gilt, for fear of falling; Old-fashion’d; plain, yet not appalling; And broad brimm’d, as the Owner’s Calling.
It was not Obstinate, by the way,
who thrust his fingers in his ears, but Christian.
“Hence a certain line”—line
16, I suppose.
Martin’s “Belshazzar.”
“Belshazzar’s Feast,” by John Martin (1789-1854), reproduced opposite page 450 of
Vol. II., had been exhibited for some years and had created an immense impression.
Lamb subjected
Martin’s work to a minute analysis a few years later (see
the Elia essay on
the “Barrenness of the Imaginative
Faculty in the Productions of Modern Art,” Vol. II., page 226).
Martin’s “Joshua Commanding the Sun
to Stand Still” is there reproduced also, opposite page 452. Barton did not give up Martin in
consequence of this letter. The frontispiece to his New Year’s Eve, 1828, is by that painter, and
the volume contains eulogistic poems upon him, one beginning— Boldest painter of our day.
“Baskervil’s”—John Baskerville (1706-1775), the printer, famous for his
folio edition of the Bible, 1768.
Doctor William Kitchiner—the author of Apicius Redivivus; or, The
Cook’s Oracle, 1817.]
LETTER 397 CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[p.m. June 26, 1827.]
DEAR H. C. We
are at Mrs. Leishman’s, Chase, Enfield. Why not come
down by the Green Lanes on Sunday? Picquet all day. Pass the Church, pass the
“Rising Sun,” turn sharp round the corner, and we are the 6th or
7th house on the Chase: tall Elms darken the door. If you set eyes on M. Burney, bring him.
Yours truly C. Lamb.
Note
[Mrs. Leishman’s house, or its successor, is
the seventh from the Rising Sun. It is now on Gentleman’s Row, not on Chase Side
proper. The house next it—still, as in Lamb’s
day, a girl’s school—is called Elm House, but most of the elms which darkened both
doors have vanished. It has been surmised that when later in the year
Lamb took an Enfield house in his own name, he took Mrs.
Leishman’s; but, as we shall see, his own house was some little
distance from hers.]
LETTER 398 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[No date. Early July, 1827.]
DEAR H., This
is Hood’s, done from the life, of
Mary getting over a style here.
Mary, out of a pleasant revenge, wants you to get it
engrav’d in Table Book to surprise
H., who I know will be amus’d with you so doing.
Append some observations about the awkwardness of country
styles about Edmonton, and the difficulty of elderly Ladies getting over
’em.——
That is to say, if you think the sketch good enough.
I take on myself the warranty.
Can you slip down here some day and go a Green-dragoning?
C. L. Enfield (Mrs. Leishman’s, Chase).
If you do, send Hood the number, No. 2 Robert St., Adelphi, and keep the
sketch for me.
Note
[“This” was a drawing by Hood, reproduced on page 814 of Vol. I. of this edition, where it
represents Mrs. Gilpin resting near Edmonton. I repeat
the drawing here from the Table-Book:— [Figure]
Lamb subsequently appended the observations himself.
The text of his little article, changing Mary Lamb into
Mrs. Gilpin, follows in Mr. Locker-Lampson’s album. The postmark is July 17, 1827.]
LETTER 399 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
Enfield, p.m. July 17, 182[7].
DEAR M.
Thanks for your attentions of every kind. Emma will not fail Mrs.
Hood’s kind invitation, but her Aunt is so queer a one, that we cannot let her
go with a single gentleman singly to Vauxhall; she would withdraw her from us
altogether in a fright; but if any of the Hood’s
family accompany you, then there can be small objection.
I have been writing letters till too dark to see the marks.
I can just say we shall be happy to see you any Sunday after
the next: say, the Sunday after, and perhaps the
Hoods will come too and have a merry other day, before
they go hence. But next Sunday we expect as many as we can well entertain.
With ours and Emma’s acknowlgmt yours C. L.
Note
[The earliest of a long series of letters to Edward Moxon, now preserved at Rowfant by Mr. Godfrey
Locker-Lampson. Emma Isola’s
aunt was Miss Humphreys (see Letter 258).]
LETTER 400 CHARLES LAMB TO P. G. PATMORE
[Dated at end: July 19, 1827.]
DEAR P.—I am
so poorly! I have been to a funeral, where I made a pun, to the consternation
of the rest of the mourners. And we had wine. I can’t describe to you the
howl which the widow set up at proper intervals. Dash could, for it was not unlike what he makes.
The letter I sent you was one directed to the care of
E. White, India House, for
Mrs. Hazlitt. Which Mrs. Hazlitt
I don’t yet know, but A. has taken it to France on
speculation. Really it is embarrassing. There is Mrs. present H., Mrs. late
H., and Mrs. John H., and
to which of the three Mrs. Wiggins’s
it appertains, I don’t know. I wanted to open it, but it’s
transportation.
I am sorry you are plagued about your book. I would strongly recommend you to
take for one story Massinger’s
“Old Law.”
It is exquisite. I can think of no other.
Dash is frightful this morning. He whines and stands
up on his hind legs. He misses Beckey, who is gone to
town. I took him to Barnet the other day, and he couldn’t eat his
victuals after it. Pray God his intellectuals be not slipping.
Mary is gone out for some soles. I
suppose ’tis no use to ask you to come and partake of ’em; else
there’s a steam-vessel.
I am doing a
tragi-comedy in two acts, and have got on tolerably; but it will be
refused, or worse. I never had luck with anything my name was put to.
Oh, I am so poorly! I waked it at my cousin’s the bookbinder’s, who
is now with God; or, if he is not, it’s no fault of mine.
We hope the Frank wines do not disagree with Mrs. Patmore. By the way, I like her.
Did you ever taste frogs? Get them, if you can. They are
like little Lilliput rabbits, only a thought nicer.
Christ, how sick I am!—not of the world, but of the
widow’s shrub. She’s sworn under £6000, but I think she perjured
herself. She howls in E la, and I comfort her in B flat.
You understand music? . . .
“No shrimps!” (That’s in answer to
Mary’s question about how the
soles are to be done.)
I am uncertain where this wandering
letter may reach you. What you mean by Poste Restante, God knows. Do you mean I
must pay the postage? So I do to Dover.
We had a merry passage with the widow at the Commons. She
was howling—part howling and part giving directions to the proctor—when crash!
down went my sister through a crazy chair, and made the clerks grin, and I
grinned, and the widow tittered—and then I knew that she was not inconsolable.
Mary was more frightened than hurt.
She’d make a good match for anybody (by she, I mean
the widow). “If he bring but a relict away, He is happy, nor heard to complain.” Shenstone.
Procter has got a wen growing out at the
nape of his neck, which his wife wants him to have cut off; but I think it
rather an agreeable excrescence—like his poetry—redundant. Hone has hanged himself for debt. Godwin was taken up for picking pockets. . . .
Beckey takes to bad courses. Her father was blown up
in a steam machine. The coroner found it Insanity. I should not like him to sit
on my letter.
Do you observe my direction? Is it Gallic?—Classical?
Do try and get some frogs. You must ask for
“grenouilles” (green-eels). They don’t
understand “frogs,” though it’s a common phrase with us.
If you go through Bulloign (Boulogne) enquire if old Godfrey is living, and how he
got home from the Crusades. He must be a very old man now.
If there is anything new in politics or literature in
France, keep it till I see you again, for I’m in no hurry. Chatty-Briant is well I hope.
I think I have no more news; only give both our loves
(“all three,” says
Dash) to Mrs.
Patmore, and bid her get quite well, as I am at present, bating
qualms, and the grief incident to losing a valuable relation.
C. L. Londres, July 19, 1827.
Note
[This is from Patmore’sMy Friends and Acquaintances, 1854; but I have no
confidence in Patmore’s transcription. After “picking
pockets” should come, for example, according to other editors, the sentence,
“Moxon has fallen in love with
Emma, our nut-brown maid.” This is
the first we hear of the circumstance and quite probably Lamb was then exaggerating. As it happened, however,
Moxon and Miss Isola, as we shall see, were
married in 1833.
We do not know the name of the widow; but her husband was Lamb’s cousin, the bookbinder.
The doubt about the Hazlitts refers chiefly to
William Hazlitt’s divorce from his first
wife in 1822, and his remarriage in 1824 with a Mrs.
Bridgewater.
“Your book.” Patmore, in My Friends and Acquaintances, writes:—
This refers to a series of tales that I was writing, (since published under the title of
Chatsworth, or
the Romance of a Week,) for the subject of one of which he had
recommended me to take “The Old
Law.” As Lamb’s critical
faculties (as displayed in the celebrated “specimens” which created an era in the
dramatic taste of England) were not surpassed by those of any writer of his day, the
reader may like to see a few “specimens” of some notes which
Lamb took the pains to make on two of the tales that were
shown to him. I give these the rather that there is occasionally blended with their
critical nicety of tact, a drollery that is very characteristic of the writer. I shall
leave these notes and verbal criticisms to speak for themselves, after merely
explaining that they are written on separate bits of paper, each note having a
numerical reference to that page of the MS. in which occurs the passage commented
on.
“Besides the words ‘riant’ and
‘Euphrosyne,’ the sentence is senseless. ‘A sweet sadness’
capable of inspiring ‘a more grave joy’—than
what?—than demonstrations of mirth? Odd if it had not been. I had once a wry aunt,
which may make me dislike the phrase.
“‘Pleasurable:’—no word is good that
is awkward to spell. (Query.) Welcome or Joyous.
“‘Steady
self-possession rather than undaunted courage,’
etc. The two things are not opposed enough. You mean, rather than rash fire of valour
in action.
“‘Looking like a heifer,’ I fear wont
do in prose. (Qy.) ‘Like to some spotless heifer,’—or, ‘that you
might have compared her to some spotless heifer,’ etc.—or ‘Like to some
sacrificial heifer of old.’ I should prefer, ‘garlanded with flowers as for
a sacrifice’—and cut the cow altogether.
“(Say) ‘Like the muttering of some strange
spell,’—omitting the demon,—they are subject to spells, they don’t use
them.
“‘Feud ‘here (and before and after)
is wrong. (Say) old malice, or, difference. Feud is of clans. It might be applied to
family quarrels, but is quite improper to individuals falling out.
“‘Apathetic’ Vile word.
“‘Mechanically,’
faugh!—insensibly—involuntarily—in-anything-ly but mechanically.
“Calianax’s character should be somewhere briefly drawn, not left to be dramatically inferred.
“‘Surprised and almost vexed while it
troubled her.’ (Awkward.) Better, ‘in a way that while it deeply troubled
her, could not but surprise and vex her to think it should be a source of trouble at
all.’
“‘Reaction’ is vile slang.
‘Physical’—vile word.
“Decidedly, Dorigen should simply propose to him to remove the rocks as ugly or dangerous, not as affecting her
with fears for her husband. The idea of her husband should be excluded from a promise
which is meant to be frank upon impossible conditions. She cannot promise in one breath
infidelity to him, and make the conditions a good to him. Her reason for hating the
rocks is good, but not to be expressed here.
“Insert after ‘to whatever consequences it
might lead,’—‘Neither had Arviragus
been disposed to interpose a husband’s authority to prevent the execution of this
rash vow, was he unmindful of that older and more solemn vow which, in the days of
their marriage, he had imposed upon himself, in no instance to control the settled
purpose or determination of his wedded wife;—so that by the chains of a double contract
he seemed bound to abide by her decision in this instance, whatever it might
be.’”
“A tragi-comedy”—Lamb’s dramatic version of Crabbe’s “Confidante,” which he called “The Wife’s Trial” (see Vol. V. of
this edition).
“If he bring but a relict away . .
.” From Shenstone’s “Absence”:— If he bear but a relique away Is happy, nor heard to repine.
“Procter has got a
wen.” This paragraph must be taken with salt. Poor Hone, however, had the rules of the King’s Bench at the time.
Beckey was the Lambs’ servant and
tyrant; she had been Hazlitt’s. Patmore described her at some length in his reminiscences
of Lamb.
“Chatty-Briant”—Chateaubriand.]
LETTER 401 CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Enfield, July 26th, 1827.
DEAR Mrs.
Shelley,—At the risk of throwing away some fine thoughts, I must
write to say how pleased we were with your very kind remembering of us (who
have unkindly run away from all our friends) before you go. Perhaps you are
gone, and then my tropes are wasted. If any piece of better fortune has lighted
upon you than you expected, but less than we wish you, we are rejoiced. We are
here trying to like solitude, but have scarce enough to justify the experiment. We get
some, however. The six days are our Sabbath; the seventh—why, Cockneys will
come for a little fresh air, and so—
But by your month, or October at
furthest, we hope to see Islington: I like a giant refreshed with the leaving
off of wine, and Mary, pining for
Mr. Moxon’s books and
Mr. Moxon’s society. Then we shall meet.
I am busy with a farce in two acts, the incidents
tragi-comic. I can do the dialogue commey for: but the
damned plot—I believe I must omit it altogether. The scenes come after one
another like geese, not marshalling like cranes or a Hyde Park review. The
story is as simple as G[eorge] D[yer],
and the language plain as his spouse. The characters are three women to one
man; which is one more than laid hold on him in the “Evangely.” I
think that prophecy squinted towards my drama.
I want some Howard
Paine to sketch a skeleton of artfully succeeding scenes through
a whole play, as the courses are arranged in a cookery book: I to find wit,
passion, sentiment, character, and the like trifles: to lay in the dead
colours,—I’d Titianesque ’em
up: to mark the channel in a cheek (smooth or furrowed, yours or mine), and
where tears should course I’d draw the waters down: to say where a joke
should come in or a pun be left out: to bring my personæ on and off like a
Beau Nash; and I’d Frankenstein them there:
to bring three together on the stage at once; they are so shy with me, that I
can get no more than two; and there they stand till it is the time, without
being the season, to withdraw them.
I am teaching Emma
Latin to qualify her for a superior governessship; which we see no prospect of
her getting. ’Tis like feeding a child with chopped hay from a spoon.
Sisyphus—his labours were as nothing to
it.
Actives and passives jostle in her nonsense, till a
deponent enters, like Chaos, more to embroil the fray. Her prepositions are
suppositions; her conjunctions copulative have no connection in them; her
concords disagree; her interjections are purely English “Ah!” and
“Oh!” with a yawn and a gape in the same tongue; and she herself is
a lazy, block-headly supine. As I say to her, ass in
præsenti rarely makes a wise man in futuro.
But I daresay it was so with you when you began Latin, and
a good while after.
Good-by! Mary’s
love.
Yours truly,
C. Lamb.
Note
[This is the only letter to Mrs.
Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the widow of
the poet and the author of Frankenstein. She had
been living in England since 1823; and in 1826 had issued anonymously The Last Man. That she kept much
in touch with the Lambs’ affairs we know by her letters to
Leigh Hunt.
“A farce”—“The Wife’s Trial,” Lamb’s blank-verse treatment of Crabbe’s “Confidante” (see Vol. V., page 243). Convmey for
is Lamb’scomme il
faut.
“In the ‘Evangely.’” If by Evangely he
meant Gospel, Lamb was a little confused here, I
think. Probably Isaiah iv. 1 was in his mind: “and in
that day seven women shall take hold of one man.” But he may also have half
remembered Luke xvii. 35.
“Howard Paine.” See
note on page 576.
“I am teaching Emma Latin.”
Mary Lamb contributed to Blackwood’s Magazine for June,
1829, the following little poem
describing Emma Isola’s difficulties in these
lessons:— TO EMMA, LEARNING LATIN, AND DESPONDING Droop not, dear Emma, dry those falling
tears, And call up smiles into thy pallid face, Pallid and care-worn with thy arduous race: In few brief months thou hast done the work of years. To young beginnings natural are these fears. A right good scholar shalt thou one day be, And that no distant one; when even she, Who now to thee a star far off appears, That most rare Latinist, the Northern Maid— The language-loving Sarah1 of the Lake— Shall hail thee Sister Linguist. This will make Thy friends, who now afford thee careful aid, A recompense most rich for all their pains, Counting thy acquisitions their best gains.
“Ass in præsenti.” This was Boyer’s joke, at Christ’s Hospital (see Vol. I. of this
edition, page 305).
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Edward White, of the India
House, dated August 1, 1827, not available for this edition (printed by Mr. Hazlitt), in which Lamb has some
pleasantry about paying postages, and ends by heartily commending
White to mind his ledger, and keep his eye on Mr.
Chambers’ balances.
See Appendix II., page 975, for another letter at this time.]
LETTER 402 CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. BASIL MONTAGU
[Summer, 1827.]
DEAR Madam,—I return your List with my name. I
should be sorry that any respect should be going on towards [Clarkson,] and I be left out of the
conspiracy. Otherwise I frankly own that
1 Daughter of S. T.
Coleridge, Esq.; an accomplished linguist in the Greek
and Latin tongues, and translatress of a History of the Abipones.
to pillarize a man’s
good feelings in his lifetime is not to my taste. Monuments to goodness, even
after death, are equivocal. I turn away from Howard’s, I scarce know why. Goodness blows no trumpet,
nor desires to have it blown. We should be modest for a modest man—as he is for
himself. The vanities of Life—Art, Poetry, Skill military, are subjects for
trophies; not the silent thoughts arising in a good man’s mind in lonely
places. Was I C[larkson,] I should never be able to walk
or ride near —— again. Instead of bread, we are giving him a stone. Instead of
the locality recalling the noblest moment of his existence, it is a place at
which his friends (that is, himself) blow to the world, “What a good
man is he!” I sat down upon a hillock at Forty Hill yesternight—a
fine contemplative evening,—with a thousand good speculations about mankind.
How I yearned with cheap benevolence! I shall go and inquire of the
stone-cutter, that cuts the tombstones here, what a stone with a short
inscription will cost; just to say—“Here C. Lamb
loved his brethren of mankind.” Everybody will come there to love. As I
can’t well put my own name, I shall put about a subscription:
s. d.Mrs. —— 5 0 Procter 2 6 G. Dyer 1 0 Mr. Godwin 0 0 Mrs. Godwin 0 0 Mr. Irving a watch-chain Mr. —— the proceeds of the first edition.* ——— 8 6
I scribble in haste from here, where we shall be some time.
Pray request Mr. M[ontagu] to advance
the guinea for me, which shall faithfully be forthcoming; and pardon me that I
don’t see the proposal in quite the light that he may. The kindness of
his motives, and his power of appreciating the noble passage, I thoroughly
agree in. With most kind regards to him, I conclude,
Dear Madam, Yours truly, C. Lamb. From Mrs. Leishman’s, Chase, Enfield.
* A capital book, by the bye, but not
over saleable.
Note
[The memorial to Thomas Clarkson
stands on a hill above Wade Mill, on the Buntingford Road, in Hertfordshire.
Forty Hill is close to Enfield.
Edward Irving’s watch-chain. The explanation
of Lamb’s joke is to be found in Carlyle’sReminiscences (quoted
also in Froude’sLife, Vol. I., page 326).
Irving had put down as his contribution to some subscription list,
at a public meeting, “an actual gold watch, which he said had just arrived to him
from his beloved brother lately dead in India.” This rather theatrical action
had evidently amused Lamb as it had disgusted
Carlyle.
The “first edition” of “Mr. ——” was, I suppose,
Basil Montagu’swork on Bacon, which Macaulay reviewed.]
LETTER 403 MARY LAMB TO LADY STODDART
[August 9, 1827.]
MY dear Lady-Friend,—My brother called at our empty cottage yesterday, and found the
cards of your son and his friend, Mr. Hine, under the
door; which has brought to my mind that I am in danger of losing this post, as
I did the last, being at that time in a confused state of mind—for at that time
we were talking of leaving, and persuading ourselves that we were intending to
leave town and all our friends, and sit down for ever, solitary and forgotten,
here. Here we are; and we have locked up our house, and left it to take care of
itself; but at present we do not design to extend our rural life beyond
Michaelmas. Your kind letter was most welcome to me, though the good news
contained in it was already known to me. Accept my warmest congratulations,
though they come a little of the latest. In my next I may probably have to hail
you Grandmama; or to felicitate you on the nuptials of pretty
Mary, who, whatever the beaux of Malta may think of
her, I can only remember her round shining face, and her “O
William!”—“dear
William!” when we visited her the other day at
school. Present my love and best wishes—a long and happy married life to dear
Isabella—I love to call her
Isabella; but in truth, having left your other letter
in town, I recollect no other name she has.
The same love and the same wishes—in future—to my friend
Mary. Tell her that her “dear
William “grows taller, and improves in manly
looks and manlike behaviour every time I see him. What is
Henry about? and what should one wish for him? If he
be in search of a wife, I will send him out Emma
Isola.
You remember Emma, that you were so
kind as to invite to your ball? She is now with us; and I am moving heaven and
earth, that is to say, I am
pressing the matter upon all the very few friends I have that are likely to
assist me in such a case, to get her into a family as a governess; and
Charles and I do little else here
than teach her something or other all day long.
We are striving to put enough Latin into her to enable her
to begin to teach it to young learners. So much for Emma—for you are so fearfully far away, that I fear it is
useless to implore your patronage for her.
I have not heard from Mrs.
Hazlitt a long time. I believe she is still with Hazlitt’s mother in Devonshire.
I expect a pacquet of manuscript from you: you promised me
the office of negotiating with booksellers, and so forth, for your next work. Is it in good
forwardness? or do you grow rich and indolent now? It is not surprising that
your Maltese story should find its way into Malta; but I was highly pleased
with the idea of your pleasant surprise at the sight of it. I took a large
sheet of paper, in order to leave Charles
room to add something more worth reading than my poor mite.
May we all meet again once more!
M. Lamb.
LETTER 403 (continued) CHARLES LAMB TO SIR JOHN STODDART
DEAR Knight—Old Acquaintance—’Tis with a
violence to the pure imagination (vide the “Excursion” passim) that I can bring
myself to believe I am writing to Dr.
Stoddart once again, at Malta. But the deductions of severe
reason warrant the proceeding. I write from Enfield, where we are seriously
weighing the advantages of dulness over the over-excitement of too much
company, but have not yet come to a conclusion. What is the news? for we see no
paper here; perhaps you can send us an old one from Malta. Only, I heard a
butcher in the market-place whisper something about a change of ministry. I
don’t know who’s in or out, or care, only as it might affect you. For domestic doings, I have only to tell, with
extreme regret, that poor Elisa Fenwick
(that was)—Mrs. Rutherford—is dead; and that we have
received a most heart-broken letter from her mother—left with four grandchildren, orphans of a living
scoundrel lurking about the
pothouses of Little Russell Street, London: they and she—God help ’em!—at
New York. I have just received Godwin’s third volume of the Republic, which
only reaches to the commencement of the Protectorate. I think he means to spin it out to his life’s
thread. Have you seen Fearn’sAnti-Tooke? I am no judge of such things—you
are; but I think it very clever indeed. If I knew your bookseller, I’d
order it for you at a venture: ’tis two octavos, Longman and Co. Or do you read now? Tell it
not in the Admiralty Court, but my head aches hesterno vino. I can scarce pump up words, much less
ideas, congruous to be sent so far. But your son must have this by
to-night’s post. [Here came a passage relating to an
escapade of young Stoddart, then at the Charterhouse,
which, probably through Lamb’s intervention, was
treated leniently. Lamb helped him with his imposition—Gray’s “Elegy” into Greek
elegiacs.] Manning is gone to
Rome, Naples, etc., probably to touch at Sicily, Malta, Guernsey, etc.; but I
don’t know the map. Hazlitt is
resident at Paris, whence he pours his lampoons in safety at his friends in
England. He has his boy with him. I am teaching Emma Latin. By the time you can answer this, she will be
qualified to instruct young ladies: she is a capital English reader: and
S. T. C. acknowledges that a part of
a passage in Milton she read better than
he, and part he read best, her part being the shorter. But, seriously, if
Lady St —— (oblivious pen, that was
about to write Mrs.!) could hear of such a young person
wanted (she smatters of French, some Italian, music of course), we’d send
our loves by her. My congratulations and assurances of old esteem.
C. L.
Note
[Stoddart had been appointed in
1826 Chief-Justice and Justice of the Vice-Admiralty Court in Malta and had been knighted
in the same year. His daughter Isabella had just married. Lady Stoddart’s literary efforts did not, I think,
reach print.
“The deductions of severe reason.” See the quotation
from Cottle on page 257.
“A change of ministry.” On Liverpool’s resignation early in 1827 Canning had been called in to form a new Ministry, which he effected by an
alliance with the Whigs.
“Godwin’s
Republic”—History of the
Commonwealth of England, in four volumes, 1824-1828.
“Fearn’s
Anti-Tooke”—Anti-Tooke; or, An Analysis of the Principles and Structure of Language
Exemplified in the English Tongue, 1824.
“Hesterno
vino”—“with yesterday’s wine.”
Here should come a note from Lamb
to Hone, dated August 10, 1827, in which
Lamb expresses regret for Matilda
Hone’s illness.]
LETTER 404 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. 10 August, 1827.]
DEAR B. B.—I
have not been able to answer you, for we have had, and are having (I just
snatch a moment), our poor quiet retreat, to which we fled from society, full
of company, some staying with us, and this moment as I write almost a heavy
importation of two old Ladies has come in. Whither can I take wing from the
oppression of human faces? Would I were in a wilderness of Apes, tossing cocoa
nuts about, grinning and grinned at!
Mitford was hoaxing you surely about my
Engraving, ’tis a little sixpenny thing, too like by half, in which the
draughtsman has done his best to avoid flattery. There have been 2 editions of
it, which I think are all gone, as they have vanish’d from the window
where they hung, a print shop, corner of Great and Little Queen Streets,
Lincolns Inn fields, where any London friend of yours may inquire for it; for I
am (tho’ you won’t understand it) at Enfield (Mrs.
Leishman’s, Chase). We have been here near 3 months, and
shall stay 2 or more, if people will let us alone, but they persecute us from
village to village. So don’t direct to Islington
again, till further notice.
I am trying my hand at a Drama, in 2 acts, founded on Crabbe’s “Confidant,” mutatis
mutandis.
You like the Odyssey. Did you ever read my “Adventures of Ulysses,” founded on
Chapman’s old translation of
it? for children or men. Ch. is divine, and my abridgment
has not quite emptied him of his divinity. When you come to town I’ll
show it you.
You have well described your old fashioned Grand-paternall
Hall. Is it not odd that every one’s earliest recollections are of some
such place. I had my Blakesware (Blakesmoor in the “London”). Nothing fills a childs mind like a large old
Mansion [one or two words wafered over]; better if
un-or-partially-occupied; peopled with the spirits of deceased members of [for]
the County and Justices of the Quorum. Would I were buried in the peopled
solitude of one, with my feelings at 7 years old.
Those marble busts of the Emperors, they seem’d as if
they were to stand for ever, as they had stood from the living days of Rome, in
that old Marble Hall, and I to partake of their permanency; Eternity was, while
I thought not of Time. But he thought of me, and they are toppled down, and
corn covers the spot of the noble old Dwelling and its princely gardens. I feel
like a grass-hopper that chirping about the
grounds escaped his scythe only by my littleness. Ev’n now he is whetting
one of his smallest razors to clean wipe me out, perhaps. Well!
Note
[“My Engraving”—Brook
Pulham’s caricature (see opposite page 706).
“You have well described your . . . Grand-paternall
Hall.” Barton wrote the following account
of this house, the home of his step-grandfather at Tottenham; but I do not know whether it
is the same that Lamb saw:—
My most delightful recollections of boyhood are connected with the fine old
country-house in a green lane diverging from the high road which runs through
Tottenham. I would give seven years of life as it now is, for a week of that which I
then led. It was a large old house, with an iron palisade and a pair of iron gates in
front, and a huge stone eagle on each pier. Leading up to the steps by which you went
up to the hall door, was a wide gravel walk, bordered in summer time by huge tubs, in
which were orange and lemon trees, and in the centre of the grassplot stood a tub yet
huger, holding an enormous aloe. The hall itself, to my fancy then lofty and wide as a
cathedral would seem now, was a famous place for battledore and shuttlecock; and behind
was a garden, equal to that of old Alcinous
himself. My favourite walk was one of turf by a long straight pond, bordered with
lime-trees. But the whole demesne was the fairy ground of my childhood; and its
presiding genius was grandpapa. He must have been a very handsome man in his youth, for
I remember him at nearly eighty, a very fine-looking one, even in the decay of mind and
body. In the morning a velvet cap; by dinner, a flaxen wig; his features always
expressive of benignity and placid cheerfulness. When he walked out into the garden,
his cocked hat and amber-headed cane completed his costume. To the recollection of this
delightful personage, I am, I think, indebted for many soothing and pleasing
associations with old age.
“Those marble busts of the Emperors.” See the Elia essay
“Blakesmoor in
H——shire,” in Vol. II. of this edition, page 153.]
LETTER 405 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
28th of Aug., 1827.
I have left a place for a wafer, but can’t find it
again.
DEAR B. B.—I
am thankful to you for your ready compliance with my wishes. Emma is delighted with your verses, to which I
have appended this notice “The 6th line refers to the child of a dear
friend of the author’s, named Emma,”
without which it must be obscure; and have sent it with four Album poems of my
own (your daughter’s with your heading, requesting it a place next mine) to a
Mr. Fraser, who is to be editor of a
more superb Pocket book than has yet appeared by far! the
property of some wealthy booksellers, but whom, or what its name, I forgot to
ask. It is actually to have in it schoolboy exercises by his present Majesty and the late Duke of York, so Lucy will come to Court; how she
will be stared at! Wordsworth is named
as a Contributor. Frazer, whom I have slightly seen, is
Editor of a forth-come or coming Review of foreign books, and is intimately
connected with Lockhart, &c. so I
take it that this is a concern of Murray’s. Walter Scott
also contributes mainly. I have stood off a long time from these Annuals, which
are ostentatious trumpery, but could not withstand the request of Jameson, a particular friend of mine and
Coleridge.
I shall hate myself in frippery, strutting along, and vying
finery with Beaux and Belles with “Future Lord Byrons
and sweet L. E.
L.’s.”— Your taste I see is less simple than mine, which the difference of our
persuasions has doubtless effected. In fact, of late you have so
frenchify’d your style, larding it with hors de combats, and au
desopoirs, that o’ my conscience the Foxian blood is quite dried out of
you, and the skipping Monsieur spirit has been infused. Doth Lucy go to Balls? I must remodel my lines,
which I write for her. I hope A. K.
keeps to her Primitives. If you have any thing you’d like to send
further, I don’t know Frazer’s address, but I sent mine thro’ Mr. Jameson, 19 or 90 Cheyne Street, Totnam
Court road. I dare say an honourable place wou’d be given to them; but I
have not heard from Frazer since I sent mine, nor shall
probably again, and therefore I do not solicit it as from him.
Yesterday I sent off my tragi comedy to Mr. Kemble. Wish it luck. I made it all (’tis blank
verse, and I think, of the true old dramatic cut) or most of it, in the green
lanes about Enfield, where I am and mean to remain, in spite of your peremptory
doubts on that head.
Your refusal to lend your poetical sanction to my Icon, and
your reasons to Evans, are most sensible. May be I may hit
on a line or two of my own jocular. May be not.
Do you never Londonize again? I should like to talk over
old poetry with you, of which I have much, and you I think little. Do your
Drummonds allow no holydays? I would willingly come
and w[ork] for you a three weeks or so, to let you loose. Would I could sell or
give you some of my Leisure! Positively, the best thing a man can have to do is
nothing, and next to that perhaps—good works.
I am but poorlyish, and feel myself writing a dull letter;
poorlyish from Company, not generally, for I never was better, nor took more
walks, 14 miles a day on an average, with a sporting dog—Dash—you would not know the plain Poet, any more than he doth
re-cognize James Naylor trick’d out au deserpoy (how do you spell
it.) En Passant, J’aime entendre da mon bon homme sur
surveillance de croix, ma pas l’homme figuratif—do you
understand me?
Note
[The verses with which Emma was
delighted were probably written for her album. I have not seen them. That album was cut up
for the value of its autographs and exists now only in a mutilated state: where, I cannot
discover. The pocket-book was The
Bijou, 1828, edited by William
Fraser for Pickering. Only one of
Lamb’s contributions was included: his
verses for his own album (see Vol. V.
of this edition; see the letter on page 47).
Jameson was Robert Jameson, to
whom Hartley Coleridge addressed the sonnets in the
London Magazine to
which Lamb alludes in Letter 295. He was the husband
of Mrs. Jameson, author of Sacred and Legendary Art, but
the marriage was not happy. He lived in Chenies Street.
“Future Lord Byrons and sweet
L. E. L.’s.” A line from some verses
written by Lamb in more than one album. Probably
originally intended for Emma Isola’s album.
The passage runs, answering the question, “What is an Album?”— ’Tis a Book kept by modern Young Ladies for show, Of which their plain grandmothers nothing did know. ’Tis a medley of scraps, fine verse, and fine prose, And some things not very like either, God knows. The soft First Effusions of Beaux and of Belles, Of future Lord Byrons and sweet L. E. L.’s. L. E. L. was, of course, the unhappy Letitia
Landon, a famous contributor to the published albums.
“My tragi comedy.” Still “The Wife’s Trial.” Kemble
was Charles Kemble, manager of Covent Garden
Theatre. The play was never acted.
“Your refusal to lend your poetical sanction.” This
is not clear, but I think the meaning to be deducible. The Icon was Pulham’s etching of Lamb. Evans was William
Evans, who had grangerised Byron’sEnglish Bards and Scotch Reviewers (see the note on page 532). I take
it that he was now making another collection of portraits of poets and was asking other
poets, their friends, to write verses upon them. In this way he had applied through
Lamb to Barton for verses
on Pulham’sElia, and had been refused.
This is, of course, only conjecture.
“Your Drummonds”—your bankers.
Barton’s bankers were the
Alexanders, a Quaker firm.
“James Naylor.”
Barton had paraphrased
Nayler’s “Testimony”
(see page 644).
See Appendix II., page 975, for a letter to R. S. Jameson.]
LETTER 406 CHARLES LAMB TO P. G. PATMORE
Mrs. Leishman’s, Chace, Enfield, September, 1827.
DEAR Patmore—Excuse my anxiety—but how is Dash? (I should have asked if Mrs.
Patmore kept her rules, and was improving—but Dash came uppermost. The order of our thoughts should
be the order of our writing.) Goes he muzzled, or aperto ore? Are his intellects sound, or does he wander
a little in his conversation? You cannot be too careful to watch the first
symptoms of incoherence. The first illogical snarl he makes, to St.
Luke’s with him! All the dogs here are going mad, if you believe the
overseers; but I protest they seem to me very rational and collected. But
nothing is so deceitful as mad people to those who are not used to them. Try
him with hot water. If he won’t lick it up, it is a sign he does not like
it. Does his tail wag horizontally or perpendicularly? That has decided the
fate of many dogs in Enfield. Is his general deportment cheerful? I mean when
he is pleased—for otherwise there is no judging. You can’t be too
careful. Has he bit any of the children yet? If he has, have them shot, and
keep him for curiosity, to see if it was the hydrophobia. They say all our army
in India had it at one time—but that was in Hyder-Ally’s time. Do you get paunch for him? Take care
the sheep was sane. You might pull out his teeth (if he would let you), and
then you need not mind if he were as mad as a Bedlamite. It would be rather fun
to see his odd ways. It might amuse Mrs. Patmore and the
children. They’d have more sense than he! He’d be like a Fool kept
in the family, to keep the household in good humour with their own
understanding. You might teach him the mad dance set to the mad howl. Madge Owl-et would be
nothing to him. “My, how he capers!” [In the
margin is written:] One of the children speaks this.
[Three lines here are erased.] What
I scratch out is a German quotation from Lessing on the bite of rabid animals; but, I remember, you
don’t read German. But Mrs.
Patmore may, so I wish I had let it stand. The meaning in
English is—“Avoid to approach an animal suspected of madness, as you
would avoid fire or a precipice:—“which I think is a sensible
observation. The Germans are certainly profounder than we.
If the slightest suspicion arises in your breast, that all
is not right with him (Dash), muzzle him, and lead
him in a string (common pack-thread will do; he don’t care for twist) to
Hood’s, his quon-dam master, and he’ll take him in at any
time. You may mention your suspicion or not, as you like, or as you think it
may wound or not Mr. H.’s feelings.
Hood, I know, will wink at a few follies in Dash, in consideration of his former sense. Besides,
Hood is deaf, and if you hinted anything, ten to one
he would not hear you. Besides, you will have discharged your conscience, and
laid the child at the right door, as they say.
We are dawdling our time away very idly and pleasantly, at
a Mrs. Leishman’s, Chace, Enfield, where, if you
come a-hunting, we can give you cold meat and a tankard. Her husband is a
tailor; but that, you know, does not make her one. I knew a jailor (which
rhymes), but his wife was a fine lady.
Let us hear from you respecting Mrs. Patmore’s regimen. I send my love in a —— to Dash.
C. Lamb.
[On the outside of the letter was
written:—]
Seriously, I wish you would call upon Hood when you are that way. He’s a
capital fellow. I sent him a couple of poems—one ordered by his wife, and
written to order; and ’tis a week since, and I’ve not heard
from him. I fear something is the matter.
Omitted within
Our kindest remembrance to Mrs. P.
Note
[This is from Patmore’sMy Friends and Acquaintances, 1854; but again I have no
confidence in Patmore’s transcription.
Dash had been Hood’s
dog, and afterwards was Lamb’s; while at one
time (see page 773) Moxon seems to have had the care
of it. Patmore possibly was taking Dash while the Lambs were at Mrs.
Leishman’s. One of the children who might be amused by the dog’s
mad ways was Coventry Patmore, afterwards the poet,
then nearly four years old.]
LETTER 407 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[p.m. September 5, 1827.]
DEAR Dib,—Emma Isola, who is
with us, has opened an ALBUM: bring some verses with you
for it on Saty evening. Any fun will do. I am teaching
her Latin; you may make something of that. Don’t be modest. For in it you
shall appear, if I rummage out some of
your old pleasant letters for rhymes. But an original is better.
Has your pa1 any scrap?
C. L.
We shall be MOST glad to see
your sister or sisters with you. Can’t you
contrive it? Write in that case.
1 the infantile word for father.
Note
[On the blank pages inside the letter Dibdin seems to have jotted down ideas for his contribution to the album.
Unfortunately, as I have said, the album is not forthcoming.]
LETTER 408 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[p.m. September 13, 1827.]
DEAR John—Your verses are very pleasant, and have been
adopted into the splendid Emmatic constellation, where they are not of the
least magnitude. She is delighted with their merit and readiness. They are just
the thing. The 14th line is found. We advertised it. Hell is cooling for want
of company. We shall make it up along with our kitchen fire to roast you into
our new House, where I hope you will find us in a few Sundays. We have actually
taken it, and a compact thing it will be.
Kemble does not return till the
month’s end. My heart sometimes is good, sometimes bad, about it, as the
day turns out wet or walky.
Emma has just died, choak’d with a
Gerund in dum. On opening her we found a Participle
in rus in the pericordium. The king never dies, which
may be the reason that it always REIGNS here.
We join in loves.
C. L. his orthograph.
what a pen!
the Umberella is cum bak.
LETTER 409 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[p.m. September 18, 1827.]
MY dear, and now more so, JOHN—
How that name smacks! what an honest, full, English, and
yet withal holy and apostolic sound it bears, above the methodistical priggish Bishoppy name of
Timothy, under which I had obscured your merits!
What I think of the paternal verses, you shall read within,
which I assure you is not pen praise but heart praise. It is the gem of the
Dibdin Muses.
I have got all my books into my new house, and their
readers in a fortnight will follow, to whose joint converse nobody shall be
more welcome than you, and any of yours.
The house is perfection to our use and comfort.
Milton is come. I wish Wordsworth were here to meet him. The next
importation is of pots and saucepans, window curtains, crockery and such base
ware.
The pleasure of moving, when Becky
moves for you. O the moving Becky!
I hope you will come and warm the
house with the first.
From my temporary domicile, Enfield.
ELIA, that “is to go.”—
Note
[The paternal verses were probably a contribution by Charles Dibdin the Younger for Emma Isola’s album. The Lambs were just moving
to Enfield for good, as they hoped (see next letter). Milton was the portrait.]
LETTER 410 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOOD
Tuesday [September 18, 1827]. DEAR Hood,
If I have any thing in my head, I will send it to Mr. Watts. Strictly speaking he should have
had my Album verses, but a very intimate friend importund me for the trifles,
and I believe I forgot Mr. Watts, or lost sight at the
time of his similar Souvenir.
Jamieson conveyed the farce from me to Mrs. C. Kemble, he will not be in town before
the 27th. Give our kind loves to all at Highgate, and tell them that we have
finally torn ourselves out right away from Colebrooke, where I had no health,
and are about to domiciliate for good at Enfield, where I have experienced
good. Lord what good hours do we keep! How quietly we sleep! See the rest in the Complete
Angler. We have got our books into our new house. I am a drayhorse
if I was not asham’d of the in digested dirty lumber, as I toppled ’em out
of the cart, and blest Becky that came with ’em for
her having an unstuff’d brain with such rubbish. We shall get in by
Michael’s mass. Twas with some pain we were
evuls’d from Colebrook. You may find some of our flesh sticking to the
door posts. To change habitations is to die to them, and in my time I have died
seven deaths. But I dont know whether every such change does not bring with it
a rejuvenescence. Tis an enterprise, and shoves back the sense of death’s
approximating, which tho’ not terrible to me, is at all times
particularly distasteful. My house-deaths have generally been periodical,
recurring after seven years, but this last is premature by half that time. Cut
off in the flower of Colebrook. The Middletonian stream and all its echoes mourn. Even minnows
dwindle. A parvis flunt minimi. I
fear to invite Mrs. Hood to our new
mansion, lest she envy it, & rote [? rout] us. But when we are fairly in, I
hope she will come & try it. I heard she & you were made uncomfortable
by some unworthy to be cared for attacks, and have tried to set up a feeble
counteraction thro’ the Table
Book of last Saturday. Has it not reach’d you, that you are
silent about it? Our new domicile is no manor house, but new, & externally
not inviting, but furnish’d within with every convenience. Capital new
locks to every door, capital grates in every room, with nothing to pay for
incoming & the rent £10 less than the Islington one. It was built a few
years since at £1100 expence, they tell me, & I perfectly believe it. And I
get it for £35 exclusive of moderate taxes. We think ourselves most lucky. It
is not our intention to abandon Regent Street, & West End perambulations
(monastic & terrible thought!), but occasionally to breathe the Fresher Air
of the metropolis. We shall put up a bedroom or two (all we want) for
occasional ex-rustication, where we shall visit, not be visited. Plays too
we’ll see,—perhaps our own. Urbani Sylvani, & Sylvan
Urbanuses in turns. Courtiers for a spurt, then philosophers. Old
homely tell-truths and learn-truths in the virtuous shades of Enfield, Liars
again and mocking gibers in the coffee houses & resorts of London. What can
a mortal desire more for his bi-parted nature?
O the curds & cream you shall eat with us here!
O the turtle soup and lobster sallads we shall devour with
you there!
O the old books we shall peruse here! O the new nonsense we
shall trifle over there! O Sir T.
Browne!—here. O Mr. Hood &
Mr. Jerdan there, thine,
C (urbanus) L (sylvanus) (ELIA ambo)——
Inclos’d are verses which Emma sat down to write, her first, on the
eve after your departure. Of course they are only for Mrs. H.’s perusal. They will shew at
least, that one of our party is not willing to cut old friends. What to
call ’em I don’t know. Blank verse they are not, because of the
rhymes—Rhimes they are not, because of the blank verse. Heroics they are
not, because they are lyric, lyric they are not, because of the Heroic
measure. They must be call’d Emmaics.
Note
[This is the present form of Lamb’s first house at Enfield (1904).
I imagine that it was smaller in Lamb’s time.
[figure]
Mr. Watts was Alaric A. Watts,
a great maker of albums and anthologies.
“Lord what good hours . . .” From Cotton’s “Retirement” in the Complete Angler. It appeared first in the 5th edition,
1676.
“A parvis fiunt
minimi.” Their smallness grows to a minimum (minnowmum).
“Thro’ the Table
Book.” Lamb contributed to Hone’sTable Book a prose paraphrase of Hood’s Plea of the Midsummer
Fairies, just published, which had been dedicated to him, under the title
“The Defeat of Time.” In a previous number
Moxon had addressed to Hood a
eulogistic sonnet on the same
subject. The attacks on Hood I have not sought.
“We shall put up a bedroom.” This project was very
imperfectly carried out. Indeed Lamb practically lost
London from this date, his subsequent visits there being as a rule not fortunate.
“Urbani Sylvani . . .” The dynastic name of the editor of
the Gentleman’s
Magazine was Sylvanus Urban, signifying, say, the
Woodland Townsman.
“Mr. Jerdan”—William Jerdan, editor of the Literary Gazette.
“Emmaics.” These verses are no longer forthcoming.]
LETTER 411 CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY COLBURN
[Dated at end: September 25, 1827.]
DEAR Sir—I beg leave in the warmest manner to
recommend to your notice Mr. Moxon, the
Bearer of this, if by any chance yourself should want a steady hand in your
business, or know of any Publisher that may want such a one. He is at present
in the house of Messrs. Longman and Co.,
where he has been established for more than six years, and has the conduct of
one of the four departments of the Country line. A difference respecting
Salary, which he expected to be a little raised on his last promotion, makes
him wish to try to better himself. I believe him to be a young man of the
highest integrity, and a thorough man of business; and should not have taken
the liberty of recommending him, if I had not thought him capable of being
highly useful.
I am, Sir, with great respect, your hble ServtCharles Lamb. Enfield, Chace Side, 25th Sep. 1827.
Note
[Moxon did not go to Colburn, but to Hurst & Co. in St. Paul’s Churchyard.]
LETTER 412 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. ? Sept. 26, 1827.]
Pray, send me the Table Book.
DEAR M. Our
pleasant meeting[s] for some time are suspended. My sister was taken very ill in a few hours after you left us (I
had suspected it),—and I must wait eight or nine weeks in slow hope of her
recovery. It is her old complaint. You will say as much to the
Hoods, and to Mrs. Lovekin, and
Mrs. Hazlitt, with my kind love.
We are in the House, that is all. I hope one day we shall
both enjoy it, and see our friends again. But till then I must be a solitary
nurse.
I am trying Becky’s sister to be
with her, so don’t say anything to Miss
James.
Yours truly Ch. Lamb.
Monday. I will send your books soon.
Note
[Miss James was, as we have seen,
Mary Lamb’s regular nurse. She had
subsequently to be sent for. I do not identify Mrs. Lovekin.]
LETTER 413 CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[Dated at end: October 1 (1827).]
DEAR R.—I am
settled for life I hope, at Enfield. I have taken the prettiest compactest
house I ever saw, near to Antony
Robinson’s, but alas! at the expence of poor Mary, who was taken ill of her old complaint
the night before we got into it. So I must suspend the pleasure I expected in
the surprise you would have had in coming down and finding us householders.
Farewell, till we can all meet comfortable. Pray, apprise
Martin Burney. Him I longed to have
seen with you, but our house is too small to meet either of you without her
knowledge.
God bless you. C. Lamb. Chase Side 1st Octr.
Note
[Antony Robinson, a prominent
Unitarian, a friend but no relation of Crabb
Robinson’s, had died in the previous January. His widow still lived at
Enfield.]
LETTER 414 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[p.m. October 2, 1827.]
MY dear Dibdin, It gives me great pain to have to say that I cannot
have the pleasure of seeing you for some time. We are in our house, but
Mary has been seized with one of her
periodical disorders—a temporary derangement—which commonly lasts for two
months. You shall have the first notice of her convalescence. Can you not send
your manuscript by the Coach? directed to Chase Side, next to Mr.
Westwood’s Insurance office. I will take great care of it.
Yours most Truly C. Lamb.
LETTER 415 CHARLES LAMB TO BARRON FIELD
Oct. 4th, 1827.
I AM not in humour to return a fit reply to your
pleasant letter. We are fairly housed at Enfield, and an angel shall not
persuade me to wicked London again. We have now six sabbath days in a week
for—none! The change has worked on my sister’s mind, to make her ill; and
I must wait a tedious time before we can hope to enjoy this place in unison.
Enjoy it, when she recovers, I know we shall. I see no shadow, but in her
illness, for repenting the step! For Mathews—I know my own utter unfitness for such a task. I am no
hand at describing costumes, a great requisite in an account of mannered
pictures. I have not the slightest acquaintance with pictorial language even.
An imitator of me, or rather pretender to be me, in his Rejected Articles, has made me minutely describe the dresses of the
poissardes at Calais!—I could as soon resolve Euclid. I have no eye for forms and fashions. I substitute
analysis, and get rid of the phenomenon by slurring in for it its impression. I
am sure you must have observed this defect, or peculiarity, in my writings;
else the delight would be incalculable in doing
such a thing for Mathews, whom I greatly like—and
Mrs. Mathews, whom I almost
greatlier like. What a feast ’twould be to be sitting at the pictures
painting ’em into words; but I could almost as soon make words into
pictures. I speak this deliberately, and not out of modesty. I pretty well know
what I can’t do.
My sister’s
verses are homely, but just what they should be; I send them, not for the
poetry, but the good sense and good-will of them. I was beginning to
transcribe; but Emma is sadly jealous of
its getting into more hands, and I won’t spoil it in her eyes by
divulging it. Come to Enfield, and read it. As my poor
cousin, the bookbinder, now with God,
told me, most sentimentally, that having purchased a picture of fish at a dead
man’s sale, his heart ached to see how the widow grieved to part with it,
being her dear husband’s favourite; and he almost apologised for his
generosity by saying he could not help telling the widow she was
“welcome to come and look at it”—e.g. at his house—“as often as she pleased.”
There was the germ of generosity in an uneducated mind. He had just reading
enough from the backs of books for the “nec
sinit esse feros”—had he read inside, the same
impulse would have led him to give back the two-guinea thing—with a request to
see it, now and then, at her house. We are parroted into
delicacy.—Thus you have a tale for a Sonnet.
Adieu! with (imagine both) our loves.
C. Lamb.
Note
[The suggestion had been made to Lamb, through Barron Field, that he
should write a descriptive catalogue of Charles
Mathews’ collection of theatrical portraits; Lamb
having already touched upon them in his “Old Actors” articles in the London Magazine (see Vol. II. of this edition, page 294).
When they were exhibited, after Mathews’ death, at the Pantheon
in Oxford Street, Lamb’s remarks were appended to the catalogue
raisonné. They are now at the Garrick Club.
“An imitator of me.” P. G.
Patmore’sRejected Articles, 1826, leads off with “An Unsentimental Journey” by
Elia, which is, except for a fitful superficial imitation of some
of Lamb’s mannerisms, as unlike him as could
well be. The description of the butterwomen’s dress, to which
Lamb refers, will illustrate the divergence between
Elia and his parodist:—
Her attire is fashioned as follows: and it differs from all her tribe only in the
relative arrangement of its colours. On the body a crimson jacket, of a thick, solid
texture, and tight to the shape; but without any pretence at ornament. This is met at
the waist (which is neither long, nor short, but exactly where nature placed it) by a
dark blue petticoat, of a still thicker texture, so that it hangs in large plaits where it is gathered in behind. Over this,
in front, is tied tightly round the waist, so as to keep all trim and compact, a dark
apron, the string of which passes over the little fulled skirt of the jacket behind,
and makes it stick out smartly and tastily, while it clips the waist in. The head-gear
consists of a sort of mob cap, nothing of which but the edge round the face can be
seen, on account of the kerchief (of flowered cotton) which is passed over it, hood
fashion, and half tied under the chin. This head-kerchief is in place of the bonnet—a
thing not to be seen among the whole five hundred females who make up this pleasant
show. Indeed, varying the colours of the different articles, this description applies
to every dress of the whole assembly; except that in some the fineness of the day has
dispensed with the kerchief, and left the snow-white cap exposed; and in others, the
whole figure (except the head) is coyishly covered and concealed by a large hooded
cloak of black cloth, daintily lined with silk, and confined close up to the throat by
an embossed silver clasp, but hanging loosely down to the heels, in thick, full folds.
The petticoat is very short; the trim ancles are cased in close-fit hose of dark,
sober, slate colour; and the shoes, though thick and serviceable like all the rest of
the costume, fit the foot as neatly as those which are not made to walk in.
Patmore tells us that his first meeting with the
Lambs was immediately after they had first seen his book; and they
left the house intent upon reading it.
“My sister’s verses.” I think these would
probably be the lines on Emma learning
Latin which I have quoted on page 740.
“Nec sinit esse
feros.” Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros. Ovid, Ep. 2, 9, 47.
“A careful study of the liberal arts refines the manners and
prevents their becoming rude.”
Here should come a very pleasant letter from Lamb to Dodwell, of the India House,
dated October 7, 1827, not available for this edition (printed by Canon Ainger). Lamb thanks
Dodwell, to whom there is an earlier letter extant (see page 490),
for a pig. He first describes his new house at Enfield, and then breaks off about the
cooking of the pig, bidding Becky do it “nice and crips.” The rest is chaff concerning the India House
and Dodwell’s fellow-clerks.]
LETTER 416 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[No date. ? Oct., 1827.]
DEAR Hone,—having occasion to write to Clarke I put in a bit to you. I see no Extracts in this No. You should have three sets in hand, one long one in
particular from Atreus and Thyestes, terribly fine. Don’t spare
’em; with fragments, divided as you please, they’ll hold out to
Xmas. What I have to say is enjoined me most seriously to say to you by
Moxon. Their country customers
grieve at getting the Table
Book so late. It is indispensable it should appear on Friday. Do it
but once, & you’ll never know the difference.
Fable
A boy at my school, a cunning fox, for one penny ensured
himself a hot roll & butter every morning for ever. Some favor’d ones
were allowed a roll & butter to their breakfasts. He had none. But he
bought one one morning. What did he do? He did not eat it, but cutting it in
two, sold each one of the halves to a half-breakfasted Blue Boy for his whole roll to-morrow. The next day he had a whole
roll to eat, and two halves to swap with other two boys, who had eat their cake
& were still not satiated, for whole ones tomorrow. So on ad infinitum. By
one morning’s abstinence he feasted seven years after.
Application
Bring out the next No. on Friday,
for country correspondents’ sake. I[t] will be one piece of exertion, and
you will go right ever after, for you will have just the time you had before,
to bring it out ever after by the Friday.
You don’t know the difference in getting a thing
early. Your correspondents are your authors. You don’t know how an author
frets to know the world has got his contribution, when he finds it not on his
breakfast table.
Once in this case is Ever
without a grain of trouble afterwds.
I won’t like you or speak to you if you don’t
try it once.
Yours, on that condition, C. Lamb.
Note
[This letter is dated by Mr.
Hazlitt conjecturally 1826, but I think it more probably October, 1827, as
the extracts (passages from Crowne’s
“Thyestes”)
contributed by Lamb to Hone’sTable Book were printed late in 1827 (see Vol. IV. of
this edition, page 546).
In Lamb’s next note to
Hone he says how glad he was to receive the Table Book early on
Friday: the result of the fable.]
LETTER 417 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOOD
[No date. ? 1827.]
DEAR H.,—Emma has a favour,
besides a bed, to ask of Mrs. Hood. Your
parcel was gratifying. We have all been pleased with Mrs. Leslie; I speak it most sincerely.
There is much manly sense with a feminine expression, which is my definition of
ladies’ writing.
Note
[Mrs.
Leslie and Her Grandchildren, 1827, was the title of a book for
children by Mrs. Reynolds, mother of John Hamilton Reynolds and Mrs.
Hood, and wife of the Writing Master
at Christ’s Hospital.]
LETTER 418 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[No date. Late 1827.]
MY dear B.
B.—You will understand my silence when I tell you that my sister, on the very eve of entering into a new
house we have taken at Enfield, was surprised with an attack of one of her sad
long illnesses, which deprive me of her society, tho’ not of her
domestication, for eight or nine weeks together. I see her, but it does her no
good. But for this, we have the snuggest, most comfortable house, with every
thing most compact and desirable. Colebrook is a wilderness. The Books, prints,
etc., are come here, and the New River came down with us. The familiar Prints,
the Bust, the Milton, seem scarce to
have changed their rooms. One of her last observations was “how
frightfully like this room is to our room in Islington”—our
up-stairs room, she meant. How I hope you will come some better day, and judge
of it! We have tried quiet here for four months, and I will answer for the
comfort of it enduring.
On emptying my bookshelves I found an Ulysses, which I will send to A. K. when I go to town, for her
acceptance—unless the Book be out of print. One likes to have one copy of every
thing one does. I neglected to keep one of “Poetry for Children,” the joint
production of Mary and me, and it is not
to be had for love or money. It had in the title-page “by the author
of Mrs. Lester’s School.” Know
you any one that has it, and would exchange it?
Strolling to Waltham Cross the other day, I hit off these
lines. It is one of
the Crosses which Edwd
1st caused to be built for his wife at every town where her
corpse rested between Northamptonshr and London. A stately Cross each sad spot doth attest, Whereat the corpse of Elinor did rest, From Herdby fetch’d—her Spouse so honour’d her— To sleep with royal dust at Westminster. And, if less pompous obsequies were thine, Duke Brunswick’s daughter, princely
Caroline, Grudge not, great ghost, nor count thy funeral losses: Thou in thy life-time had’st thy share of crosses.
My dear B. B.—My
head akes with this little excursion. Pray accept 2 sides for 3 for once.
And believe me yours sadly C. L. Chace side Enfield.
Note
[“An Ulysses”—Lamb’s book for children, The Adventures of Ulysses,
1808.
The Poetry
for Children. The known copies of the first edition of this work can be
counted on the fingers (see note on page 863).
“A stately Cross . . .” These verses were printed in the Englishman’s Magazine in
September, 1831. Lamb’s sympathies were wholly with Caroline of Brunswick, as his epigrams in The Champion show (see Vol. V. of this
edition).]
LETTER 419 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. December 4, 1827.]
MY dear B.
B.—I have scarce spirits to write, yet am harass’d with not
writing. Nine weeks are completed, and Mary does not get any better. It is perfectly exhausting.
Enfield and every thing is very gloomy. But for long experience, I should fear
her ever getting well.
I feel most thankful for the spinsterly attentions of your
sister. Thank the kind “knitter in the sun.”
What nonsense seems verse, when one is seriously out of
hope and spirits! I mean that at this time I have some nonsense to write, pain
of incivility. Would to the fifth heaven no coxcombess had invented Albums.
I have not had a Bijoux, nor the slightest notice from Pickering about omitting 4 out of 5 of my things. The best
thing is never to hear of such a thing as a bookseller again, or to think there
are publishers: second hand Stationers and Old Book Stalls for me. Authorship
should be an idea of the Past.
Old Kings, old Bishops, are venerable. All present is
hollow. I cannot make a Letter. I have no straw, not a pennyworth of chaff,
only this may stop your kind importunity to know about us.
Here is a comfortable house, but no tenants. One does not
make a household.
Do not think I am quite in despair, but in addition to hope
protracted, I have a stupifying cold and obstructing headache, and the sun is
dead.
I will not fail to apprise you of the revival of a Beam.
Meantime accept this, rather than think I have forgotten
you all.
Best rememb
Yours and theirs truly, C. L.
Note
[“Knitter in the sun”:— The spinsters and the knitters in the sun. “Twelfth
Night,” II., 4, 45.
“A Bijoux.” See
note on page 748.]
LETTER 420 CHARLES LAMB TO LEIGH HUNT
[No date. December, 1827.]
DEAR H.,—I am here
almost in the eleventh week of the longest illness my sister ever had, and no symptoms of amendment.
Some had begun, but relapsed with a change of nurse. If she ever gets well, you
will like my house, and I shall be happy to show you Enfield country.
As to my head, it is perfectly at your or any one’s
service; either M[e]yers’ or
Hazlitt’s, which last (done
fifteen or twenty years since) White, of
the Accountant’s office, India House, has; he lives in Kentish Town: I
forget where, but is to be found in Leadenhall daily. Take your choice. I
should be proud to hang up as an alehouse sign even; or, rather, I care not
about my head or anything, but how we are to get well again, for I am tired
out.
God bless you and yours from the worst calamity.—Yours
truly,
C. L.
Kindest remembrances to Mrs.
Hunt. H.’s is
in a queer dress. M.’s would
be preferable ad populum.
Note
[Leigh Hunt had asked Lamb for his portrait to accompany his Lord Byron and Some of His
Contemporaries. Lamb had been painted by Hazlitt in 1804, and by Henry
Meyer, full size, in May, 1826, as well as by others.
Hunt chose Meyer’s picture, which was beautifully engraved, for his book, in the large
paper edition. The original is now in the India Office; a reproduction serves as the
frontispiece to Vol. VI. of this edition. The Hazlitt portrait,
representing Lamb in the garb of a Venetian senator, is now in the
National Portrait Gallery; a reproduction serves as the frontispiece to Vol. IV. of this
edition.]
LETTER 421 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[p.m. Dec. 15, 1827.]
MY dear Hone,
I read the sad accident with a careless eye, the newspaper giving a wrong name
to the poor Sufferer, but learn’d
the truth from Clarke. God send him
ease, and you comfort in your thick misfortunes. I am in a sorry state. Tis the
eleventh week of the illness, and I cannot get her well. To add to the
calamity, Miss James is obliged to leave
us in a day or two. We had an Enfield Nurse for seven weeks, and just as she
seem’d mending, she was call’d away. Miss
J.’s coming seem’d to put her back, and now she is
going. I do not compare my sufferings to yours, but you see the world is full
of troubles. I wish I could say a word to comfort you. You must cling to all
that is left. I fear to ask you whether the Book is to be discontinued. What a pity, when
it must have delighted so many! Let me hear about you and it, and believe me
with deepest fellow feeling
Your friend C. Lamb. Friday eveng.
Note
[Hone’s son Alfred, who had met with an accident, was a sculptor.
The Table
Book was to close with the year.]
LETTER 422 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[No date. ? Middle Dec., 1827.]
MY dear Allsop—Thanks for the Birds. Your announcement puzzles me sadly
as nothing came. I send you back a word in your letter, which I can positively
make nothing [of] and therefore return to you as useless. It means to
refer to the birds, but gives me no information. They are at the fire, however.
My sister’s
illness is the most obstinate she ever had. It will not go away, and I am
afraid Miss James will not be able to
stay above a day or two longer. I am desperate to think of it sometimes.
’Tis eleven weeks!
The day is sad as my prospects.
With kindest love to Mrs.
A. and the children,
Yours, C. L.
No Atlas this week. Poor Hone’s good boy Alfred has fractured his skull, another son is returned
“dead” from the Navy office, & his Book is going to be given up, not having
answered. What a world of troubles this is!
Note
[The Atlas was the paper which Allsop
sent to Lamb every week (see letter on page 767).]
LETTER 423 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[December 20, 1827.]
MY dear Allsop—I have writ to say to you that I hope to have a
comfortable Xmas-day with Mary, and I can
not bring myself to go from home at present. Your kind offer, and the kind
consent of the young Lady to come, we feel as we should do; pray accept all of
you our kindest thanks: at present I think a visitor (good & excellent as
we remember her to be) might a little put us out of our way. Emma is with us, and our small house just
holds us, without obliging Mary to sleep with
Becky, &c.
We are going on extremely comfortably, & shall soon be
in capacity of seeing our friends. Much weakness is left still. With thanks and
old remembrs, Yours,
C. L.
LETTER 424 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. Dec. 22, 1827.]
MY dear Moxon, I am at length able to tell you that we are all doing well,
and shall be able soon to see our friends as usual. If you will venture a
winter walk to Enfield tomorrow week (Sunday
30th) you will find us much as usual; we intend a delicious quiet Christmas
day, dull and friendless, for we have not spirits for festivities. Pray
communicate the good news to the Hoods,
and say I hope he is better. I should be thankful for any of the books you
mention, but I am so apprehensive of their miscarriage by the stage,—at all
events I want none just now. Pray call and see Mrs.
Lovekin, I heard she was ill; say we shall be glad to see them
some fine day after a week or so.
May I beg you to call upon Miss
James, and say that we are quite well, and that Mary hopes she will excuse her writing herself
yet; she knows that it is rather troublesome to her to write. We have recd her letter. Farewell, till we meet.
Yours truly, C. Lamb. Enfield.
LETTER 425 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[No date. End of 1827.]
MY dear B.—We
are all pretty well again and comfortable, and I take a first opportunity of
sending the Adventures of
Ulysses, hoping that among us—Homer, Chapman, and Co.—we shall afford you some pleasure. I fear, it is out
of print, if not, A. K. will accept it,
with wishes it were bigger; if another copy is not to be had, it reverts to me
and my heirs for ever. With it I send a trumpery book;
to which, without my knowledge, the Editor of the Bijoux
has contributed Lucy’s verses: I
am asham’d to ask her acceptance of the trash accompanying it. Adieu to
Albums—for a great while, I said when I came here, and had not been fixed two
days but my Landlord’s daughter (not at the Pot house) requested me to
write in her female friend’s, and in her own; if I go to thou art there
also, O all pervading Album! All over the Leeward
Islands, in Newfoundland, and the Back Settlements, I understand there is no
other reading. They haunt me. I die of Albo-phobia!
Note
[“A trumpery book.” I have not found it (see Letter
405).
Writing in the Englishman’s Magazine in 1831, in a review of his own Album Verses,
Lamb amplifies his sentiments on albums (see Vol.
I., page 340).]
LETTER 426 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[January 9, 1828.]
DEAR Allsop—I
have been very poorly and nervous lately, but am recovering sleep, &c. I do
not invite or make engagements for particular days; but I need not say how
pleasant your dropping in any Sunday morng would be.
Perhaps Jameson would accompany you.
Pray beg him to keep an accurate record of the warning I sent by him to old
Pan, for I dread lest he should at the 12
months’ end deny the warning. The house is his daughter’s, but we
took it through him, and have paid the rent to his receipts for his
daughter’s. Consult J. if he thinks the warning
sufficient. I am very nervous, or have been, about the house; lost my sleep,
& expected to be ill; but slumbered gloriously last night golden slumbers.
I shall not relapse. You fright me with your inserted slips in the most welcome
Atlas. They begin to charge
double for it, & call it two sheets. How can I confute them by opening it,
when a note of yours might slip out, & we get in a hobble? When you write,
write real letters. Mary’s best
love & mine to Mrs. A. Yours ever,
C. Lamb.
Note
[I cannot explain the business part of this letter.
“Golden slumbers.” From Dekker’s superb poem “Content”:— Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers.]
LETTER 427 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. (? January, Sunday) 1828.]
DEAR Moxon I
have to thank you for despatching so much business for me. I am uneasy
respecting the enclosed receipts which you sent me and are dated Jan. 1827.
Pray get them chang’d by Mr.
Henshall to 1825. I have been in a very nervous way since I saw
you. Pray excuse me to the Hoods for not
answering his very pleasant letter. I am very poorly. The “Keepsake” I hope is
return’d. I sent it back by Mrs.
Hazlitt on Thursday. ’Twas blotted outside when it came.
The rest I think are mine. My heart bleeds about poor Hone, that such an agreeable book, and a Book there seem’d no reason
should not go on for ever, should be given up, and a thing substituted which in
its Nature cannot last. Don’t send me any more “Companions,” for it only vexes me about
the Table Book. This is not
weather to hope to see any body to day, but without any
particular invitations, pray consider that we are at any
time most glad to see you, You (with Hunt’s “Lord
Byron” or Hazlitt’s “Napoleon “in your hand) or You
simply with your switch &c. The night was damnable and the morning is not
too bless-able. If you get my dates changed, I will not trouble you with
business for some time. Best of all remembces to the
Hoods, with a malicious congratulation on their friend
Rice’s advancemt.
Yours truly
C. Lamb.
Note
[“The rest I think are mine.” The rest of the blots?
Hone’sTable Book ceased with 1827: it
was succeeded by a reprint, in monthly parts, of Strutt’sSports and Pastimes.
The Companion would be
the periodical started by Leigh Hunt in 1828.
“Hazlitt’s
‘Napoleon.’” Of this work the first two volumes appeared in 1828,
and the next two in 1830.
“Their friend Rice’s advancement.” I cannot say
to what this would refer. Rice was Edward
Rice.]
LETTER 428 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. Feb. 18, 1828.]
DEAR M. I had
rather thought to have seen you yesterday, or I should have written to thank
you for your attentions in the Book way &c. Hone’s address is, 22 Belvidere
Place, Southward ’Tis near the Obelisk. I can only say we shall be most
glad to see you, when weather suits, and that it will be a joyful surprisal to
see the Hoods. I should write to them,
but am poorly and nervous. Emma is very
proud of her Valentine. Mary does not
immediately want Books, having a damn’d consignment of Novels in MS. from
Malta: which I wish the Mediterranean had in its guts. Believe me yours truly
C. L. Monday.
Note
[Emma’s valentine probably
came from Moxon, who, I feel sure, in spite of
Lamb’s utterance in Letter 400, had not yet
told his love, if it had really budded.
“Novels in MS.”—Lady
Stoddart’s, we may suppose (see Letter 403).]
LETTER 429 CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE
Enfield, 25 Feb. [1828].
MY dear
Clarke,—You have been accumulating
on me such a heap of pleasant obligations that I feel uneasy in writing as to a
Benefactor. Your smaller contributions, the little weekly rills, are
refreshments in the Desart, but your large books were feasts. I hope Mrs. Hazlitt, to whom I encharged it, has
taken Hunt’sLord B. to the Novellos. His picture of Literary
Lordship is as pleasant as a disagreeable subject can be made,
his own poor man’s Education at dear Christ’s is as good and hearty
as the subject. Hazlitt’s
speculative episodes are capital; I skip the Battles. But how did I deserve to
have the Book? The Companion has
too much of Madam Pasta. Theatricals
have ceased to be popular attractions. His walk home after the Play is as good as the best
of the old Indicators. The
watchmen are emboxed in a niche of fame, save the skaiting one that must be
still fugitive. I wish I could send a scrap for good will. But I have been most
seriously unwell and nervous a long long time. I have scarce mustered courage
to begin this short note, but conscience duns me.
I had a pleasant letter from your sister, greatly over-acknowledging my poor
sonnet. I think I
should have replied to it, but tell her I think so. Alas for sonnetting,
’tis as the nerves are; all the summer I was dawdling among green lanes,
and verses came as thick as fancies. I am sunk winterly below prose and zero.
But I trust the vital principle is only as under snow. That
I shall yet laugh again.
I suppose the great change of place affects me, but I could
not have lived in Town, I could not bear company.
I see Novello
flourishes in the Del Capo line, and dedications are not forgotten. I read the
Atlas.
When I pitched on the Dedn I looked for the Broom of
“Cowden knows” to be harmonized, but
’twas summat of Rossini’s.
I want to hear about Hone, does he stand above water, how is his son? I have delay’d writing to him, till it seems
impossible. Break the ice for me.
The wet ground here is intolerable, the sky above clear and
delusive, but under foot quagmires from night showers, and I am cold-footed and
moisture-abhorring as a cat; nevertheless I yesterday tramped to Waltham Cross;
perhaps the poor bit of exertion necessary to scribble this was owing to that
unusual bracing.
If I get out, I shall get stout, and then something will
out—I mean for the Companion—you see I rhyme insensibly.
Traditions are rife here of one Clarke a schoolmaster, and a runaway pickle named Holmes, but much obscurity hangs over it. Is
it possible they can be any relations?
T?is worth the research, when you can find a sunny day,
with ground firm, &c. Master Sexton is intelligent, and for half-a-crown
he’ll pick you up a Father.
In truth we shall be most glad to see any of the Novellian
circle, middle of the week such as can come, or Sunday, as can’t. But
Spring will burgeon out quickly, and then, we’ll talk more.
You’d like to see the improvements on the Chase, the
new Cross in the market-place, the Chandler’s shop from whence the rods
were fetch’d. They are raised a farthing since the spread of Education.
But perhaps you don’t care to be reminded of the Holofernes’ days, and nothing remains of
the old laudable profession, but the clear, firm, impossible-to-be-mistaken
schoolmaster text hand with which is subscribed the ever-welcome name of
Chas. Cowden C. Let me crowd in both
our loves to all.
C. L.
Let me never be forgotten to include in my remembces my good friend and whilom correspondent
Master Stephen.
How, especially, is Victoria?
I try to remember all I used to meet at Shacklewell.
The little household, cake-producing, wine-bringing out
Emma—the old servant, that didn’t stay, and
ought to have staid, and was always very dirty and friendly, and
Miss H., the counter-tenor with a fine voice,
whose sister married Thurtell. They
all live in my mind’s eye, and Mr.
N.’s and Holmes’s walks with us half back after supper.
Troja fuit!
Note
[“The
Companion.” Leigh Hunt’s
paper lasted only for seven months. Madame Pasta, of whom too much was
written, was Giudetta Pasta (1798-1865), a singer of
unusual compass for whom Bellini wrote “La Somnambula.”
The following is the account of the Sliding Watchman in the essay,
“Walks Home by Night in Bad Weather.
Watchmen”;—
But the oddest of all was the Sliding Watchman. Think of walking
up a street in the depth of a frosty winter, with long ice in the gutters, and sleet
over head, and then figure to yourself a sort of bale of a man in white, coming towards
you with a lantern in one hand, and an umbrella over his head. It was the oddest
mixture of luxury and hardship, of juvenility and old age! But this looked agreeable.
Animal spirits carry everything before them; and our invincible friend seemed a
watchman for Rabelais. Time was run at and
butted by him like a goat. The slide seemed to bear him half through the night at once;
he slipped from out of his box and his common-places at one rush of a merry thought,
and seemed to say, “Everything’s in imagination;—here goes the whole weight
of my office.”
“Your sister”—Mrs. Isabella Jane
Towers, author of The Children’s Fireside, 1828, and other books for
children, to whom Lamb had sent the following sonnet:— Lady Unknown, who crav’st from me Unknown The trifle of a verse these leaves to grace, How shall I find fit matter? with what face Address a face that ne’er to me was shown? Thy looks, tones, gesture, manners, and what not, Conjecturing, I wander in the dark. I know thee only Sister to Charles Clarke! But at that name my cold Muse waxes hot, And swears that thou art such a one as he, Warm, laughter-loving, with a touch of madness, Wild, glee-provoking, pouring oil of gladness From frank heart without guile. And, if thou be The pure reverse of this, and I mistake— Demure one, I will like thee for his sake.
“Novello . . . dedications ... I read the
Atlas.” In The Atlas for February 17
was reviewed Select Airs from Spohr’s celebrated
Opera of Faust, arranged as duetts for the Pianoforte and inscribed to his friend,
Charles Cowden Clarke by Vincent Novello. Holmes was musical critic for The
Atlas.
“Broom of Cowden-knows”—the old Scotch ballad— O the broom, an the broom, an the bonny, bonny broom, The broom o’ the Cowden-knowes.
“One Clarke a
schoolmaster.” See note on page 559.
“Holofernes’ days”—Holofernes, the schoolmaster, in “Love’s Labour’s Lost.” Cowden Clarke had assisted his father.
“Master Stephen.” I do not
identify Stephen.
“Victoria”—Mary Victoria Novello, afterwards Mrs. Charles Cowden
Clarke.
“At Shacklewell”—the
Novellos’ old home. They now lived in Bedford Street, Covent
Garden.
“Whose sister married Thurtell.”
Thurtell, the murderer of Mr. Weare, I suppose.
“Troja fuit!” See
note on page 456.]
LETTER 430 CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[p.m. Feb. 26, 1828.]
MY dear Robinson, It will be a very painful thing to us indeed, if you
give up coming to see us, as we fear, on account of the nearness of the poor
Lady you inquire after. It is true that on the occasion she mentions, which was
on her return from last seeing her daughter, she was very heated and feverish,
but there seems to be a great amendment in her since, and she has within a day
or two passed a quiet evening with us. At the same time I dare not advise any
thing one way or another respecting her daughter coming to live with her. I
entirely disclaim the least opinion about it. If we named any thing before her,
it was erroneously, on the notion that she was the obstacle to the plan which
had been suggested of placing her daughter in a Private Family, which seem’d your wish. But I have quite done with
the subject. If we can be of any amusement to the poor Lady, without self
disturbance, we will. But come and see us after Circuit, as if she were not.
You have no more affectte friends than
C. and M. Lamb.
Note
[“The poor Lady” was, I imagine, the widow of
Antony Robinson.]
LETTER 431 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
March 19th, 1828.
MY dear M.—It
is my firm determination to have nothing to do with “Forget-me-Nots”—pray excuse me as civilly as
you can to Mr. Hurst. I will take care
to refuse any other applications. The things which Pickering has, if to be had again, I have promised absolutely,
you know, to poor Hood, from whom I had a
melancholy epistle yesterday; besides that, Emma has decided objections to her own and her friend’s
Album verses being published; but if she gets over that, they are decidedly
Hood’s.
Till we meet, farewell. Loves to Dash.
C. L.
Note
[Moxon seems to have asked
Lamb for a contribution for one of Hurst’s annuals, probably the Keepsake.
Hood was to edit The Gem for 1829.
“Dash.”—Moxon seems to have been the present master of the dog.
Here should come a letter from Lamb
to Edward Irving, not available for this edition,
introducing Hone, who in later life became devout and
preached at the Weigh House Chapel in Eastcheap.]
LETTER 432 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. April 21, 1828.]
DEAR B.
B.—You must excuse my silence. I have been in very poor health and
spirits, and cannot write letters. I only write to assure you, as you
wish’d, of my existence. All that which Mitford tells you of H.’s book is rhodomontade, only H. has written unguardedly about me, and nothing makes a man
more foolish than his own foolish panegyric. But I am pretty well cased to
flattery, or its contrary. Neither affect[s] me a turnip’s worth. Do you
see the Author of May you Like it? Do you write to him? Will
you give my present plea to him of ill health for not acknowledge a pretty
Book with a pretty frontispiece he sent me. He is most
esteem’d by me. As for subscribing to Books, in plain truth I am a man of
reduced income, and don’t allow myself 12 shillings a-year to buy Old
Books with, which must be my Excuse. I am truly sorry for Murray’s demur, but I wash my hands of
all booksellers, and hope to know them no more. I am sick and poorly and must
leave off, with our joint kind remembces to your
daughter and friend A. K.
C. L.
Note
[“H.’s book.” In Hunt’sLord Byron and Some of His ContemporariesLamb was praised very warmly.
“The Author of May you Like
it”—the Rev. C. B. Tayler (see note
on page 636). The book with a pretty frontispiece was A Fireside Book, 1828, with a frontispiece by George Cruikshank.
“Murray’s
demur”—an unfavourable reply, possibly to a suggestion of Barton’s concerning a new volume.]
LETTER 433 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[May 1st, 1828.]
DEAR A.—I am
better. Mary quite well. We expected to
see you before. I can’t write long letters. So a friendly love to you
all.
Yours ever, C. L. Enfield.
This sunshine is healing.
LETTER 434 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. May 3rd, 1828.]
DEAR M.,—My
friend Patmore, author of the
“Months,” a
very pretty publication, [and] of sundry Essays in the “London,” “New Monthly,” &c., wants to
dispose of a volume or two of “Tales.” Perhaps they might Chance to
suit Hurst; but be that as it may, he
will call upon you, under favor of my recommendation;
and as he is returning to France, where he lives, if you can do anything for
him in the Treaty line, to save him dancing over the Channel every week, I am
sure you will. I said I’d never trouble you again; but how vain are the
resolves of mortal man! P. is a very hearty friendly
fellow, and was poor John Scott’s
second, as I will be yours when you want one. May you never be mine!
Yours truly,
C. L. Enfield.
Note
[Patmore was the author of The Mirror of the
Months, 1826.
“John Scott’s
second.” See note on page 434.]
LETTER 435 CHARLES LAMB TO WALTER WILSON
[Dated at end: 17 May [1828].]
DEAR Walter,
The sight of your old name again was like a resurrection. It had passed away
into the dimness of a dead friend. We shall be most joyful to see you here next
week,—if I understand you
right—for your note dated the 10th arrived only yesterday, Friday the 16th.
Suppose I name Thursday next. If that don’t suit, write to say so. A
morning coach comes from the Bell or Bell & Crown by Leather Lane Holborn,
and sets you down at our house on the Chase Side, next door to Mr.
Westwood’s, whom all the coachmen know—
I have four more notes to write, so dispatch this with
again assuring you how happy we shall be to see you, & to discuss Defoe & old matters.
Yours truly C. Lamb. Enfd. Saturdy. 17th May.
Note
[The last letter to Wilson will
be found on page 600. Lamb wrote to Hone a few days later: “Valter
Vilson dines with us tomorrow. Vell! How I should like to see
Hone!”]
LETTER 436 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS NOON TALFOURD
[p.m. May 20, 1828.]
MY dear Talfourd, we propose being with you on Wednesday not unearly,
Mary to take a bed with you, and I
with Crabbe, if, as I understand, he be
of the party. Yours ever,
Ch. Lamb.
Note
[This is the first letter to Talfourd, Lamb’s future
biographer. He was then living at 26 Henrietta Street, Brunswick Square. He had married in
1822. Crabb Robinson’sDiary for May 21 tells us that
Talfourd’s party consisted of the
Lambs, Wordsworth, Miss Anne Rutt, three barristers and himself.
Lamb was in excellent spirits. He slept at
Robinson’s that night.]
LETTER 437 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[No date. May, 1828.]
DEAR Wordsworth, we had meant to have tried to see Mrs. Wordsworth and Dora next Wednesday, but we are intercepted by
a violent toothache which Mary has got by
getting up next morning after parting with you,
to be with my going off at ½ past 8 Holborn. We are poor travellers, and
moreover we have company (damn ’em) good people, Mr. Hone and an old
crony not seen for 20 years, coming here on Tuesday, one stays
night with us, and Mary doubts my power to get up time
enough, and comfort enough, to be so far as you are. Will you name a day in the
same or coming week that we can come to you in the morning, for it would plague
us not to see the other two of you, whom we cannot individualize from you,
before you go. It is bad enough not to see your Sister Dorothy.
God bless you sincerely C. Lamb.
Note
[Robinson dates this letter 1810,
but this is clearly wrong. It was obviously written after Lamb’s liberation from the India House. If, as I suppose, the old
crony is Walter Wilson, we get the date from
Lamb’s letters to him and to Hone, mentioned above.
By “the other two of you” Lamb means Dora Wordsworth and
Johnny Wordsworth. Lamb had
already seen William, as Letter 242 tells. The
address of the present letter is W. Wordsworth, Esq., 12 Bryanstone
Street, Portman Square.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Cary, dated June 10, 1828,
declining on account of ill-health an invitation to dinner, to meet Wordsworth. Instead he asks Cary to
Enfield with Darley and Procter.]
LETTER 438 MARY LAMB TO THE THOMAS HOODS
[No date. ? Summer, 1828.]
MY dear Friends,—My brother and Emma are to send you a partnership letter, but
as I have a great dislike to my stupid scrap at the fag end of a dull letter,
and, as I am left alone, I will say my say first; and in the first place thank
you for your kind letter; it was a mighty comfort to me. Ever since you left
me, I have been thinking I know not what, but every possible thing that I could
invent, why you should be angry with me for something I had done or left undone
during your uncomfortable sojourn with us, and now I read your letter and think
and feel all is well again. Emma and her sister Harriet are gone to Theobalds Park, and
Charles is gone to Barnet to cure his
headache, which a good old lady has
talked him into. She came on Thursday and left us yesterday evening. I mean she
was Mrs. Paris, with whom Emma’s aunt lived at Cambridge, and she
had so much to [tell] her about Cambridge friends, and to [tell] us about
London ditto, that her tongue was never at rest through the whole day, and at
night she took Hood’sWhims and Oddities to bed with
her and laught all night. Bless her spirits! I wish I had them and she were as
mopey as I am. Emma came on Monday, and the week has
passed away I know not how. But we have promised all the week that we should go
and see the Picture friday or Saturday, and stay a night or so with you. Friday
came and we could not turn Mrs. Paris out so soon, and on
friday evening the thing was wholly given up. Saturday morning brought fresh
hopes; Mrs. Paris agreed to go to see the picture with us,
and we were to walk to Edmonton. My Hat and my new gown were put on in great
haste, and his honor, who decides all things here, would have it that we could
not get to Edmonton in time; and there was an end of all things. Expecting to
see you, I did not write.
Monday evening.
Charles and Emma are taking a second walk. Harriet is gone home. Charles wishes to
know more about the Widow. Is
it to be made to match a drawing? If you could throw a little more light on the
subject, I think he would do it, when Emma is gone; but
his time will be quite taken up with her; for, besides refreshing her Latin, he
gives her long lessons in arithmetic, which she is sadly deficient in. She
leaves in a week, unless she receives a renewal of her holydays, which
Mrs. Williams has half promised to
send her. I do verily believe that I may hope to pass the last one, or two, or
three nights with you, as she is to go from London to Bury. We will write to
you the instant we receive Mrs. W.’s letter. As to
my poor sonnet—and it is a
very poor sonnet, only [it] answered very well the purpose it was written
for—Emma left it behind her, and nobody remembers more
than one line of it, which is, I think, sufficient to convince you it would
make no great impression in an Annual. So pray let it rest in peace, and I will
make Charles write a better one instead.
This shall go to the Post to-night. If any [one] chooses to
add anything to it they may. It will glad my heart to see you again. Yours
(both yours) truly and affectionately,
M. Lamb.
Becky is going by the Post office, so I will send it
away. I mean to commence letter-writer to the family.
Note
[Mr. Hazlitt dates this letter
April, 1828. The reference to the Widow,
towards the end, shows that Hood was preparing The Gem, and, what is not generally known, that Lamb had been asked to write on that subject. As it
happened, Hood wrote the essay for him and signed it
Elia (see note on page 785). Mrs.
Paris we have met (see note on page 547). Harriet,
Emma Isola’s sister, we do not hear of
again. I was recently shown a copy of Lamb’sWorks, 1818,
inscribed in his hand to Miss Isola: this would be Harriet Isola. Emma had just begun
her duties at Fornham, in Suffolk, where she taught the children of a Mr. Williams, a clergyman. I cannot say what the Picture
was. The sonnet was probably that printed
in the note on page 740. Charles Lamb’s and
Emma’s joint letter has not been preserved.]
LETTER 439 CHARLES LAMB TO B. R. HAYDON
August, 1828.
DEAR Haydon,—I have been tardy in telling you that your Chairing the Member gave me great pleasure;—’tis
true broad Hogarthian fun, the High
Sheriff capital. Considering, too, that you had the materials imposed upon you,
and that you did not select them from the rude world as H.
did, I hope to see many more such from your hand. If the former picture went
beyond this I have had a loss, and the King a bargain. I longed to rub the back
of my hand across the hearty canvas that two senses might be gratified. Perhaps
the subject is a little discordantly placed opposite to another act of
Chairing, where the huzzas were Hosannahs,—but I was pleased to see so many of
my old acquaintances brought together notwithstanding.
Believe me, yours truly, C. Lamb.
Note
[Haydon’s “Chairing the Member” was exhibited in Bond Street this year,
together with “Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem,”
and other of his works. “The former picture” was his “Mock Election,” which the King had bought for 500 guineas. For
“Chairing the Member” Haydon
received only half that price.
See Appendix II., page 975, for three other letters.]
LETTER 440 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. October 11 1828.]
A SPLENDID edition of Bunyan’sPilgrim—why, the thought is enough to turn one’s moral
stomach. His cockle hat and staff transformed to a smart cockd beaver and a
jemmy cane, his amice gray to the last Regent Street cut, and his painful
Palmer’s pace to the modern swagger. Stop thy friend’s sacriligious
hand. Nothing can be done for B. but to reprint the old
cuts in as homely but good a style as possible. The Vanity Fair, and the
pilgrims there—the silly soothness in his setting out countenance—the Christian
idiocy (in a good sense) of his admiration of the Shepherds on the Delectable
Mountains—the Lions so truly Allegorical and remote from any similitude to
Pidcock’s. The great head (the
author’s) capacious of dreams and similitudes dreaming in the dungeon.
Perhaps you don’t know my edition, what I had when a child: if you do,
can you bear new designs from—Martin,
enameld into copper or silver plate by—Heath, accompanied with verses from Mrs. Heman’s pen O how unlike his own— Wouldst thou divert thyself from melancholy? Wouldst thou be pleasant, yet be far from folly? Wouldst thou read riddles and their explanation? Or else be drowned in thy contemplation? Dost thou love picking meat? or wouldst thou see A man i’ th’ clouds, and hear him speak to thee? Wouldst thou be in a dream, and yet not sleep? Or wouldst thou in a moment laugh and weep? Or wouldst thou lose thyself, and catch no harm, And find thyself again without a charm? Wouldst read thyself, and read thou knowst
not what, And yet know whether thou art blest or not By reading the same lines? O then come hither, And lay my book, thy head and heart together. John
Bunyan. Shew me such poetry in any of the 15 forthcoming combinations of show and
emptiness, yclept Annuals. Let me whisper in your ear that wholesome
sacramental bread is not more nutritious than papistical wafer stuff, than
these (to head and heart) exceed the visual frippery of Mitford’s Salamander God, baking himself
up to the work of creation in a solar oven, not yet by the terms of the context
itself existing. Blake’s ravings
made genteel. So there’s verses for thy verses; and now let me tell you
that the sight of your hand gladdend me. I have been daily trying to write to
you, but paralysed. You have spurd me on this tiny effort, and at intervals I hope to hear from and talk to you.
But my spirits have been in a deprest way for a long long time, and they are
things which must be to you of faith, for who can explain depression? Yes I am
hooked into the Gem, but only for some
lines written on a dead
infant of the Editor’s, which being as it were his property, I
could not refuse their appearing, but I hate the paper, the type, the gloss,
the dandy plates, the names of contributors poked up into your eyes in 1st
page, and whistled thro’ all the covers of magazines, the barefaced sort
of emulation, the unmodest candidateship, brot into so
little space—in those old Londons a
signature was lost in the wood of matter—the paper coarse (till latterly, which
spoil’d them)—in short I detest to appear in an Annual. What a fertile
genius (an[d] a quiet good soul withal) is Hood. He has 50 things in hand, farces to supply the Adelphi
for the season, a comedy for one of the great theatres, just ready, a whole
entertainment by himself for Mathews and
Yates to figure in, a meditated
Comic Annual for next
year, to be nearly done by himself.—You’d like him very much. Wordsworth I see has a good many pieces
announced in one of em, not our Gem. W. Scott has distributed himself like a bribe
haunch among ’em. Of all the poets, Cary has had the good sense to keep quite clear of ’em,
with Clergy-gentle-manly right notions. Don’t think I set up for being
proud in this point, I like a bit of flattery tickling my vanity as well as any
one. But these pompous masquerades without masks (naked names or faces) I hate.
So there’s a bit of my mind. Besides they infallibly cheat you, I mean
the booksellers. If I get but a copy, I only expect it from
Hood’s being my friend. Coleridge has lately been here. He too is deep
among the Prophets—the Year-servers—the mob of Gentlemen Annuals. But
they’ll cheat him, I know.
And now, dear B. B.,
the Sun shining out merrily, and the dirty clouds we had yesterday having washd
their own faces clean with their own rain, tempts me to wander up Winchmore
Hill, or into some of the delightful vicinages of Enfield, which I hope to show
you at some time when you can get a few days up to the great Town. Believe me
it would give both of us great pleasure to show you all three (we can lodge
you) our pleasant farms and villages.—
We both join in kindest loves to you and yours.—
Ch. Lamb redivivus. Saturday.
Note
[The edition of Bunyan was that
published for Barton’s friend, John Major, and John
Murray in 1830, with a life of
Bunyan by Southey, and illustrations by
John Martin and W.
Harvey, and a
prefatory poem not by Mrs. Hemans but by
Bernard Barton immediately before
Bunyan’s “Author’s Apology
for his Book,” from which Lamb
quotes.
“Pidcock’s.” Pidcock showed his lions at Bartholomew Fair; he was
succeeded by Polito of Exeter Change.
“Heath.” This was Charles Heath (1785-1848), son of James Heath, a great engraver of steel plates for the
Annuals.
“Mitford’s Salamander
God.” I cannot explain this, except by Mr.
Macdonald’s supposition that Lamb meant to write “Martin’s.”
“The Gem.” See note
on page 785.
Hood’s entertainment for Mathews and Frederick
Yates, then joint-managers of the Adelphi, I have not identified.
Authors’ names on play-bills were, in those days, unimportant. The play was the
thing.
“Like a bribe haunch.” “Divide me like a
bribe-buck, each a haunch,” says Falstaff to
Mrs. Ford and Mrs.
Page (“Merry
Wives,” V., 5, 27).
Coleridge and the Annuals. For example,
Coleridge’s “Names” was in the Keepsake for 1829; his “Lines written in the Album at
Elbingerode” in part in the Amulet for 1829. He had also contributed previously to
the Literary
Souvenir, the Amulet and
the Bijou.
Here should come an unprinted note from Lamb to Charles Mathews, dated
October 27, 1828, not available for this edition, referring to the farce “The Pawnbroker’s Daughter,”
which Lamb offered to Mathews for the Adelphi. As
I have said, this farce was never acted.]
LETTER 441 CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE
[Enfield, October, 1828.]
DEAR Clarke,—We did expect to see you with Victoria and the Novellos before this, and
do not quite understand why we have not. Mrs.
N. and V. [Vincent]
promised us after the York expedition; a day being named before, which
fail’d. ’Tis not too late. The autumn leaves drop gold, and Enfield
is beautifuller—to a common eye—than when you lurked at the Greyhound.
Benedicks are close, but how I so totally missed you
at that time, going for my morning cup of ale duly, is a mystery. ’Twas
stealing a match before one’s face in earnest. But certainly we had not a
dream of your appropinquity. I instantly prepared an Epithala-mium, in the form of a Sonata—which I was sending to
Novello to compose—but Mary forbid it me, as too light for the occasion—as if the
subject required anything heavy—so in a tiff with her I sent no congratulation
at all. Tho’ I promise you the wedding was very pleasant news to me
indeed. Let your reply name a day this next week, when you will come as many as
a coach will hold; such a day as we had at Dulwich. My very kindest love and
Mary’s to Victoria and the
Novellos. The enclosed is from a friend nameless, but
highish in office, and a man whose accuracy of statement may be relied on with
implicit confidence. He wants the exposé to appear in a
newspaper as the “greatest piece of legal and Parliamentary villainy
he ever remembd,” and he has had
experience in both; and thinks it would answer afterwards in a cheap pamphlet
printed at Lambeth in 8o sheet, as 16,000 families in
that parish are interested. I know not whether the present Examiner keeps up the
character of exposing abuses, for I scarce see a paper now. If so, you may
ascertain Mr. Hunt of the strictest truth of
the statement, at the peril of my head. But if this won’t do, transmit it
me back, I beg, per coach, or better, bring it with you. Yours unaltered,
C. Lamb.
Note
[Clarke had married Mary Victoria Novello on July 5, 1828, and they had spent
their honeymoon at the Greyhound, Enfield, unknown to the Lambs. See
the next letter.
“The enclosed.” This has vanished. Hunt
was Leigh Hunt.]
LETTER 442 CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
[Enfield, November 6, 1828.]
MY dear Novello,—I am afraid I shall appear rather tardy in offering my
congratulations, however sincere, upon your daughter’s marriage. The
truth is, I had put together a little Serenata upon the occasion, but was
prevented from sending it by my sister,
to whose judgment I am apt to defer too much in these kind of things; so that,
now I have her consent, the offering, I am afraid, will have lost the grace of
seasonableness. Such as it is, I send it. She thinks it a little too
old-fashioned in the manner, too much like what they wrote a century back. But
I cannot write in the modern style, if I try ever so hard. I have attended to
the proper divisions for the music, and you will have little difficulty in composing it. If I may advise, make
Pepusch your model, or Blow. It will be necessary to have a good
second voice, as the stress of the melody lies there:—
SERENATA, FOR TWO VOICES, On the Marriage of Charles Cowden Clarke, Esqre., to
Victoria, eldest daughter of Vincent Novello, Esqre.Duetto Wake th’ harmonious voice and string, Love and Hymen’s triumph sing, Sounds with secret charms combining, In melodious union joining, Best the wondrous joys can tell, That in hearts united dwell. RecitativeFirst Voice.—To young Victoria’s happy fame Well may the Arts a trophy raise, Music grows sweeter in her praise, And, own’d by her, with rapture speaks her name. To touch the brave Cowdenio’s heart, The Graces all in her conspire; Love arms her with his surest dart, Apollo with his lyre. Air The list’ning Muses all around her Think ’tis Phœbus’ strain they hear; And Cupid, drawing near to wound
her, Drops his bow, and stands to hear. RecitativeSecond Voice. While crowds of rivals with
despair Silent admire, or vainly court the Fair, Behold the happy conquest of her eyes, A Hero is the glorious prize! In courts, in camps, thro’ distant realms renown’d, Cowdenio comes!—Victoria,
see, He comes with British honour crown’d, Love leads his eager steps to thee. Air In tender sighs he silence breaks, The Fair his flame approves, Consenting blushes warm her cheeks, She smiles, she yields, she loves. RecitativeFirst Voice.—Now Hymen at the altar stands, And while he joins their faithful hands, Behold! by ardent vows brought down, Immortal Concord, heavenly bright, Array’d in robes of purest light, Descends, th’ auspicious rites to crown. Her golden harp the goddess brings; Its magic sound Commands a sudden silence all around, And strains prophetic thus attune the strings. DuettoFirst Voice.—The Swain his Nymph possessing, Second Voice.—The Nymph her swain caressing, First and Second—Shall still improve the
blessing, For ever kind and true. Both.—While rolling years are flying, Love, Hymen’s lamp supplying, With fuel never dying, Shall still the flame renew.
To so great a master as yourself I have no need to suggest
that the peculiar tone of the composition demands sprightliness, occasionally
checked by tenderness, as in the second air,— She smiles,—she yields,—she loves.
Again, you need not be told that each fifth line of the two
first recitatives requires a crescendo.
And your exquisite taste will prevent your falling into the
error of Purcell, who at a passage
similar to that in my first air, Drops his bow, and stands to hear, directed the first violin thus:— Here the first violin must drop his bow.
But, besides the absurdity of disarming his principal
performer of so necessary an adjunct to his instrument, in such an emphatic
part of the composition too, which must have had a droll effect at the time,
all such minutiae of adaptation are at this time of day very properly exploded,
and Jackson of Exeter very fairly ranks
them under the head of puns.
Should you succeed in the setting of it, we propose having
it performed (we have one very tolerable second voice here, and Mr. Holmes, I dare say, would supply the minor
parts) at the Greyhound. But it must be a secret to the young couple till we
can get the band in readiness.
[Mrs. Cowden Clarke remarks in
her notes on this letter that the references to Purcell and to Jackson of Exeter are
inventions. For Mr. Holmes see note on page 661.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Laman Blanchard, dated
Enfield, November 9, 1828, not available for this edition, thanking him for a book and
dedication. Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804-1845),
afterwards known as a journalist, had just published, through Harrison Ainsworth, a little volume entitled Lyric Offerings, which was
dedicated to Lamb. After Lamb’s death
Blanchard contributed to the New Monthly Magazine some additional Popular Fallacies.]
LETTER 443 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOOD
Late autumn, 1828. Enfield.
DEAR Lamb—You are an impudent varlet; but I will
keep your secret. We dine at Ayrton’s on Thursday, and shall try to find
Sarah and her two spare beds for that night only.
Miss M. and her tragedy may be
dished: so may not you and your rib. Health attend you.
Yours,
T. Hood, Esq.
Miss Bridget Hood sends love.
Note
[In The
Gem, 1829, in addition to his poem, “On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born,” Lamb was credited with the following piece of prose,
entitled “A Widow,” which was
really the work of Hood (see Letter 438):—
A WIDOW
Hath always been a mark for mockery:—a standing butt for wit to level at. Jest after
jest hath been huddled upon her close cap, and stuck, like burrs, upon her weeds. Her
sables are a perpetual “Black Joke.”
Satirists—prose and verse—have made merry with her bereavements. She is a stock
character on the stage. Farce bottleth up her crocodile tears, or labelleth her empty
lachrymatories. Comedy mocketh her precocious flirtations—Tragedy even girdeth at her
frailty, and twitteth her with “the funeral baked meats coldly furnishing forth
the marriage tables.”
I confess when I called the other day on my kinswoman G.—then in the second week of her
widowhood—and saw her sitting, her young boy by her side, in her recent sables, I felt
unable to reconcile her estate with any risible associations. The Lady with a skeleton
moiety—in the old print, in Bowles’ old shop window—seemed
but a type of her condition. Her husband,—a whole hemisphere in love’s world—was
deficient. One complete side—her left—was death-stricken. It was a matrimonial
paralysis, unprovocative of laughter. I could as soon have tittered at one of those
melancholy objects that drag their poor dead-alive bodies about the streets.
It seems difficult to account for the popular prejudice against lone women. There is a
majority, I trust, of such honest, decorous mourners as my kinswoman: yet are Widows, like the Hebrew, a proverb and a
byeword amongst nations. From the first putting on of the sooty garments, they become a
stock joke—chimneysweep or blackamoor is not surer—by mere virtue of their
nigritude.
Are the wanton amatory glances of a few pairs of graceless eyes, twinkling through their
cunning waters, to reflect so evil a light on a whole community? Verily the sad
benighted orbs of that noble relict—the Lady Rachel
Russell—blinded through unserene drops for her dead Lord,—might atone for
such oglings!
Are the traditional freaks of a Dame of Ephesus, or a Wife of Bath, or a Queen of
Denmark, to cast so broad a shadow over a whole sisterhood. There must be, methinks,
some more general infirmity—common, probably, to all Eve-kind—to justify so sweeping a
stigma.
Does the satiric spirit, perhaps, institute splenetic comparisons between the lofty
poetical pretensions of posthumous tenderness and their fulfilment? The sentiments of
Love especially affect a high heroical pitch, of which the human performance can
present, at best, but a burlesque parody. A widow, that hath lived only for her
husband, should die with him. She is flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone; and it
is not seemly for a mere rib to be his survivor. The prose of her practice accords not
with the poetry of her professions. She hath done with the world,—and you meet her in
Regent Street. Earth hath now nothing left for her—but she swears and administers. She
cannot survive him—and invests in the Long Annuities.
The romantic fancy resents, and the satiric spirit records, these discrepancies. By the
conjugal theory itself there ought to be no Widows; and, accordingly, a class, that by
our milder manners is merely ridiculed, on the ruder banks of the Ganges is literally
roasted. C. Lamb.
“Miss M. and her tragedy.” I
fancy Miss M. would be Miss
Mitford, and her tragedy “Rienzi,” produced at Drury Lane October 9, 1828. It was a success.
Hood’s rib would probably be the play I
have not identified. See Letter 440.
Here, a little out of its order, might come a letter from Lamb to Hood,
December 17, 1828, which is facsimiled in a privately-printed American bibliography of
Lamb, the owner of which declines to let me include it with the
correspondence. In it Lamb expresses regret, not so much that
Hood had signed “The Widow” with Lamb’s name, but that an
unfortunately ambiguous jest, pointed out to him by certain friends, had crept into it. He
asks that the subject may never be referred to again.]
LETTER 444 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. Dec., 1828.]
DEAR M.,—As I
see no blood-marks on the Green Lanes Road, I conclude you got in safe skins
home. Have you thought of inquiring Miss Wilson’s
change of abode? Of the 2 copies of my drama I want one sent to Wordsworth, together with a complete copy of Hone’s “Table Book,” for which I shall be your
debtor till we meet. Perhaps Longman
will take charge of this parcel. The other is for Coleridge at Mr.
Gilman’s, Grove, Highgate, which may be sent, or, if you
have a curiosity to see him you will make an errand with it to him, & tell
him we mean very soon to come & see him, if the
Gilmans can give or get us a bed. I am ashamed to be
so troublesome. Pray let Hood see the
“Ecclectic
Review”—a rogue! The 2d parts of the Blackwood you may make waste paper of.
Yours truly, C. L.
Note
[I do not identify Miss Wilson. Lamb’s drama was “A Wife’s Trial” in Blackwood for December, 1828. The same
number of the Eclectic
Review referred to Hood’s
parody of Lamb, “The
Widow,” as profaning Leslie’s
picture of the widow by its “heartless ribaldry.” By the 2d parts of
BlackwoodLamb referred, I imagine, to the pages
on which his play was not printed.]
LETTER 445 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. December 5, 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. 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’sSonnet 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-picer, and right-reverence thy
Patron and Dedicatee, and am, dear B. B.
Yours heartily,
C. L.
Our joint kindest Loves to A. K. and your Daughter.
Note
[Barton’s new book was
A New Year’s Eve
and other Poems, 1828, dedicated to Charles
Richard Sumner, Bishop of Winchester. This volume contains
Barton’s “Fireside Quatrains to Charles Lamb” (quoted in
Vol. V., page 308) and also the following “Sonnet to a Nameless Friend,” whom I take
to be Lamb:— SONNET TO A NAMELESS FRIEND In each successive tome that bears my name Hast thou, though veiled thy own from public eyes, Won from my muse that willing sacrifice Which worth and talents such as thine should claim: And I should close my minstrel task with shame, Could I forget the indissoluble ties Which every grateful thought of thee supplies To one who deems thy friendship more than fame. Accept then, thus imperfectly, once more, The homage of thy poet and thy friend; And should thy partial praise my lays commend, Versed as thou art in all the gentle lore Of English poesy’s exhaustless store, Whom I most love they never can offend.
Martin’s frontispiece represented Christ
walking on the water. Lamb recalls his remarks on
page 731 about this painter, who though he never became Royal Architect was the originator
of the present Thames Embankment. Macaulay, in his
essay on Southey’s edition of the
Pilgrim’s Progress, in the Edinburgh for December, 1831, makes some very similar
remarks about Martin and the way in which he would probably paint
Lear.
In the poem “Lady Rachel Russell; or, A Roman
Hero and an English Heroine Compared,” Barton
compared the act of Curtius, who leaped into the gulf
in the Forum, with Lady Russell standing beside her
lord.
Chalon was the painter of a portrait of Thomas Clarkson.
The “Battle of
Gibeon” is a poem inspired by Martin’s picture of Joshua (see page 731); the
last stanza runs thus:— Made known by marvels awfully sublime! Yet far more glorious in the Christian’s sight Than these stern terrors of the olden time, The gentler splendours of that peaceful night, When opening clouds displayed, in vision bright, The heavenly host to Bethlehem’s shepherd train, Shedding around them more than cloudless light! “Glory to God on high!” their opening strain, Its chorus, “Peace on Earth!” its theme Messiah’s reign!
“Tower above tower . . .” I have not found this.
“In the Lobster.” Referring to that part of a lobster
which is called Eve.
“The Elephant.” Some mildly humorous verses
“To an Elephant.”
“As Sh. says of religion”—Shakespeare, I assume, in “Hamlet,” III., 4, 47, 48:— And sweet Religion makes A rhapsody of words.
I quote in the Appendix, page 957, the poem which Lamb liked best.
Barton had written a poem called “Syr Heron.” This is Lord
Thurlow’ssonnet, of
which Lamb was very fond. He quoted it in a note to his Elia essay on the sonnets of
Sidney in the London Magazine, and copied it into his album:— TO A BIRD, THAT HAUNTED THE WATERS OF LACKEN, IN THE
WINTER O melancholy Bird, a winter’s day, Thou standest by the margin of the pool, And, taught by God, dost thy whole being school To Patience, which all evil can allay. God has appointed thee the fish thy prey; And giv’n thyself a lesson to the fool Unthrifty, to submit to moral rule, And his unthinking course by thee to weigh. There need not schools, nor the professor’s chair, Though these be good, true wisdom to impart: He, who has not enough, for these, to spare, Of time, or gold, may yet amend his heart, And teach his soul, by brooks, and rivers fair: Nature is always wise in every part.
“Fludyer” was a poem to Sir Charles Fludyer on the devastation effected on his
marine villa at Felixstowe by the encroachments of the sea. The answer to the enigma,
Mrs. FitzGerald (Lucy Barton) told Canon Ainger, was not money but an auctioneer’s
hammer.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Louisa Holcroft, dated
December 5, 1828, not available for this edition. Louisa Holcroft was
a daughter of Thomas Holcroft,
Lamb’s friend, whose widow married Kenney. A good letter with some excellent nonsense about
measles in it.]
LETTER 446 CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE
[December, 1828.]
MY dear three C.’s—The way from Southgate to
Colney Hatch thro’ the unfrequentedest Blackberry paths that ever
concealed their coy bunches from a truant Citizen, we have accidentally fallen
upon—the giant Tree by Cheshunt we have missed, but keep your chart to go by,
unless you will be our conduct—at present I am disabled from further flights
than just to skirt round Clay Hill, with a peep at the fine back woods, by
strained tendons, got by skipping a skipping-rope at 53—heu mihi non
sum qualis. But do you know, now you come to talk of walks, a
ramble of four hours or so—there and back—to the willow and lavender
plantations at the south corner of Northaw Church by a well dedicated to
Saint Claridge, with the clumps of finest moss rising
hillock fashion, which I counted to the number of two hundred and sixty, and
are called “Claridge’s covers”—the tradition being that that
saint entertained so many angels or hermits there, upon occasion of blessing
the waters? The legends have set down the fruits spread upon that occasion, and
in the Black Book of St. Albans some are named which are not supposed to have
been introduced into this island till a century later. But waiving the miracle,
a sweeter spot is not in ten counties round; you are knee deep in clover, that
is to say, if you are not above a middling man’s height; from this
paradise, making a day of it, you go to see the ruins of an old convent at
March Hall, where some of the painted glass is yet whole and fresh.
If you do not know this, you do not know the capabilities
of this country, you may be said to be a stranger to Enfield. I found it out
one morning in October, and so delighted was I that I did not get home before
dark, well a-paid.
I shall long to show you the clump meadows, as they are
called; we might do that, without reaching March Hall. When the days are
longer, we might take both, and come home by Forest Cross, so skirt over
Pennington and the cheerful little village of Churchley to Forty Hill.
But these are dreams till summer; meanwhile we should be
most glad to see you for a lesser excursion—say, Sunday next, you and another,
or if more, best on a weekday with a notice, but o’ Sundays, as far as a
leg of mutton goes, most welcome. We can squeeze out a bed. Edmonton coaches
run every hour, and my pen has run out its quarter. Heartily farewell.
Note
[Much of the “Lamb country” touched upon in this letter is
now built on. On the opposite page I give a map, kindly drawn for me by Miss M.
C. G. Jackson, of Lamb’s favourite walking region
“The giant Tree by Cheshunt” is Goff’s Oak.
“Heu mihi non sum
qualis”—“Woe is me! I am not what I was.”
“The Black Book of St. Albans.” The Black Books
exposed abuses in the church. “Well a-paid.” See Shakespeare’s “Lucrece,” line 914.]
LETTER 447 CHARLES LAMB TO T. N. TALFOURD
[No date. End of 1828.]
DEAR Talfourd,—You could hot have told me of a more friendly thing than
you have been doing. I am proud of my namesake. I shall take care never to do
any dirty action, pick pockets, or anyhow get myself hanged, for fear of
reflecting ignominy upon your young Chrisom. I have now a motive to be good. I
shall not omnis moriar;—my name borne
down the black gulf of oblivion.
I shall survive in eleven letters, five more than Cæsar. Possibly I shall come to be knighted, or
more! Sir C. L. Talfourd, Bart.!
Yet hath it an authorish twang with it, which will wear out
my name for poetry. Give him a smile from me till I see him. If you do not drop
down before, some day in the week after next I will come
and take one night’s lodging with you, if convenient, before you go
hence. You shall name it. We are in town to-morrow speciali gratia, but by no arrangement can get up near
you.
Believe us both, with greatest regards, yours and Mrs. Talfourd’s.
Charles Lamb-Philo-Talfourd.
I come as near it as I can.
Note
[This may be incorrectly dated, but I place it here because in that to
Hood of December 17, summarised above, Lamb speaks of his godson at Brighton.
Talfourd (who himself dates this letter 1829) had
named his latest child Charles Lamb Talfourd. The boy lived only until 1835. I quote in the
Appendix the verses which Talfourd wrote on his
death (see page 958). Another of Lamb’s name children, Charles Lamb Kenney, grew to man’s estate and
became a ready writer.
“I shall not omnis
moriar” (see Horace,
Odes, III., xxx.,
6)—“I shall not wholly die.”]
LETTER 448 CHARLES LAMB TO GEORGE DYER
[No date. ? January, 1829.]
DEAR Dyer, My
very good friend, and Charles
Clarke’s father in law, Vincent Novello, wishes to shake hands with you. Make him play
you a tune. He is a damn’d fine musician, and what is better, a good man
and true. He will tell you how glad we should be to have Mrs. Dyer and you here for a few days. Our
young friend, Miss Isola, has been here
holydaymaking, but leaves us tomorrow.
Yours Ever Ch. Lamb. Enfield.
[Added in a feminine hand:]
Emma’s love to Mr. and Mrs.
Dyer.
Note
[The date of this note is pure conjecture on my part, but is unimportant.
Novello had become Charles Clarke’s father-in-law in 1828, and Emma Isola, who was now teaching the children of a
clergyman named Williams, at Fornham, in Suffolk,
spent her Christmas holidays with the Lambs that year.
Here, perhaps, should come an undated letter from Lamb to Louisa
Martin, printed by Mr. Hazlitt in
Bohn’s edition, not available for the present volume. Lamb
begins “Dear Monkey,” and refers to his “niece,”
Mrs. Dowden, and some business which she requires him to transact,
Mrs. Dowden being Mrs. John
Lamb’s daughter-in-law (see page 569). Lamb
describes himself as “a sick cat that loves to be alone on housetops or at cellar
bottoms.”]
LETTER 449 CHARLES LAMB TO B. W. PROCTER
[19th Jan., 1829.]
MY dear Procter,—I am ashamed to have not taken the drift of your
pleasant letter, which I find to have been pure invention. But jokes are not
suspected in Bœotian Enfield. We are plain
people; and our talk is of corn, and cattle, and Waltham markets. Besides, I
was a little out of sorts when I received it. The fact is, I am involved in a
case which has fretted me to death; and I have no reliance, except on you, to
extricate me. I am sure you will give me your best legal advice, having no
professional friend besides but Robinson
and Talfourd, with neither of whom at
present I am on the best terms. My brother’s
widow left a will, made during the lifetime of my brother, in
which I am named sole executor, by which she bequeaths forty acres of arable
property, which it seems she held under Covert Baron, unknown to my brother, to
the heirs of the body of Elizabeth Dowden, her married
daughter by a first husband, in fee-simple, recoverable by fine—invested
property, mind; for there is the difficulty—subject to leet and quitrent; in
short, worded in the most guarded terms, to shut out the property from
Isaac Dowden, the husband. Intelligence has just come
of the death of this person in India, where he made a will, entailing this
property (which seem’d entangled enough already) to the heirs of his
body, that should not be born of his wife; for it seems by the law in India,
natural children can recover. They have put the cause into Exchequer process,
here removed by Certiorari from the native Courts; and the question is, whether
I should, as executor, try the cause here, or again re-remove it to the Supreme
Sessions at Bangalore? (which I understand I can, or plead a hearing before the
Privy Council here). As it involves all the little property of
Elizabeth Dowden, I am anxious to take the fittest
steps, and what may be least expensive. Pray assist me, for the case is so
embarrassed, that it deprives me of sleep and appetite. M. Burney thinks there is a case like it in
Chapt. 170, sect. 5, in Fearne’sContingent Remainders. Pray read it over with him
dispassionately, and let me have the result. The complexity lies in the
questionable power of the husband to alienate. . . .
I had another favour to beg, which is the beggarliest of
beggings.
A few lines of verse for a young friend’s Album (six
will be enough). M. Burney will tell you
who she is I want ’em for. A girl of gold. Six lines—make ’em
eight—signed Barry C‚——. They need not
be very good, as I chiefly want ’em as a foil to mine. But I shall be
seriously obliged by any refuse scrap. We are in the last ages of the world,
when St. Paul prophesied that women should be
“headstrong, lovers of their own wills, having Albums.”
I fled hither to escape the Albumean persecution, and had not been in my new
house twenty-four hours, when the daughter of the next house came in with a
friend’s Album to beg a contribution, and the following day intimated she
had one of her own. Two more have sprung up since. If I take the wings of the
morning and fly unto the uttermost parts of the earth, there will Albums be.
New Holland has Albums. But the age
is to be complied with. M. B. will tell you the sort of
girl I request the ten lines for. Somewhat of a pensive cast, what you admire.
The lines may come before the Law question, as that can not be determined
before Hilary Term, and I wish your deliberate judgment on that. The other may
be flimsy and superficial. And if you have not burnt your returned letter, pray
re-send it me, as a monumental token of my stupidity. ’Twas a little
unthinking of you to touch upon a sore subject. Why, by dabbling in those
accursed Albums, I have become a byword of infamy all over the kingdom. I have
sicken’d decent women for asking me to write in Albums. There be
“dark jests” abroad, Master Cornwall; and some
riddles may live to be clear’d up. And ’tis not every saddle is put
on the right steed; and forgeries and false Gospels are not peculiar to the Age
following the Apostles. And some tubs don’t stand on their right bottoms.
Which is all I wish to say in these ticklish Times—and so your Servant,
Chs. Lamb.
Note
[We do not know the nature of the “bite” that Procter had put upon Lamb; but Lamb quickly retaliated with the first paragraph of this letter, which is
mainly invention. In his Old AcquaintanceMr.
Fields wrote: “He [Procter] told me that the
law question raised in this epistle was a sheer fabrication of
Lamb’s, gotten up by him to puzzle his young
correspondent, the conveyancer. The coolness referred to between himself and Robinson and Talfourd, Procter said, was also a fiction
invented by Lamb to carry out his legal mystification.”
At the end of the first paragraph came some words in another hand:
“in usum enfeoffments
whereof he was only collaterally seized, &c.,” beneath which Lamb wrote: “The above is some of M. Burney’s memoranda which he has left me, and
you may cut out and give him.”
Procter’s verses for Emma Isola’s album I have not seen, but Canon Ainger says that they refer to “Isola
Bella, whom all poets love,” the island in Lago di Maggiore (see Letter 453).
See also Appendix II., page 977.
“When St. Paul prophesied.” Was
Lamb thinking of the opening verses of chapter
iii. of the second epistle to Timothy?
“If I take the wings of the morning.” See Psalms cxxxix. 9. Compare with this passage that in Letter 425, on
page 766.]
LETTER 450 CHARLES LAMB TO B. W. PROCTER
Jan. 22nd, 1829.
DON’T trouble yourself about the verses. Take
’em coolly as they come. Any day between this and Midsummer will do. Ten
lines the extreme. There is no mystery in my incognita. She has often seen you,
though you may not have observed a silent brown girl, who for the last twelve
years has run wild about our house in her Christmas holidays. She is Italian by
name and extraction. Ten lines about the blue sky of her country will do, as
it’s her foible to be proud of it. But they must not be over courtly or
Lady-fied as she is with a Lady who says to her “go and she goeth;
come and she cometh”. Item, I have made her a tolerable Latinist.
The verses should be moral too, as for a Clergyman’s family. She is
called Emma Isola. I approve heartily of
your turning your four vols, into a lesser compass. ’Twill Sybillise the
gold left. I shall, I think, be in town in a few weeks, when I will assuredly
see you. I will put in here loves to Mrs.
Procter and the Anti-Capulets, because Mary tells me I omitted them in my last. I like
to see my friends here. I have put my lawsuit into the hands of an Enfield
practitioner—a plain man, who seems perfectly to understand it, and gives me
hopes of a favourable result.
Rumour tells us that Miss
Holcroft is married; though the varlet has not had the grace to
make any communication to us on the subject. Who is Badman, or Bed’em? Have I seen him
at Montacute’s? I hear he is a
great chymist. I am sometimes chymical myself. A thought strikes me with
horror. Pray heaven he may not have done it for the sake of trying chymical
experiments upon her,—young female subjects are so scarce!
Louisa would make a capital shot. An’t you glad
about Burke’s case? We may set off
the Scotch murders against the Scotch novels—Hare, the Great
Un-hanged.
Martin Burney is richly worth your
knowing. He is on the top scale of my friendship ladder, on which an angel or
two is still climbing, and some, alas! descending. I am out of the literary
world at present. Pray, is there anything new from the admired pen of the
author of the Pleasures of
Hope? Has Mrs. He-mans
(double masculine) done anything pretty lately? Why sleeps the lyre of
Hervey, and of Alaric Watts? Is the muse of L. E. L. silent? Did you see a sonnet of mine in Blackwood’s last? Curious
con-struction! Elaborata facilitas! And now I’ll
tell. ’Twas written for the “Gem;” but the editors declined it, on the plea that it would
shock all mothers; so they published “The Widow” instead. I am
born out of time. I have no conjecture about what the present world calls
delicacy. I thought “Rosamund Gray” was a pretty modest thing. Hessey assures me that the world would not
bear it. I have lived to grow into an indecent character. When my sonnet was
rejected, I exclaimed, “Damn the age; I will write for
Antiquity!”
Erratum in sonnet:—Last line but something, for tender,
read tend. The Scotch do not know our law terms; but I find some remains of
honest, plain, old writing lurking there still. They were not so mealy-mouthed
as to refuse my verses. Maybe, ’tis their oatmeal.
Blackwood sent me £20 for the drama. Somebody cheated me out
of it next day; and my new pair of breeches, just sent home, cracking at first
putting on, I exclaimed, in my wrath, “All tailors are cheats, and all
men are tailors.” Then I was better. [Rest
lost.]
Note
[“Your four vols.” Procter’spoetical
works, in three volumes, were published in 1822. Since then he had issued The Flood of
Thessaly, 1823. He was perhaps meditating a new one-volume selection.
“Anti-Capulets”—the Basil
Montagus (Montacutes).
“Badman.” Louisa Holcroft married Carlyle’s friend Badams, a
manufacturer and scientific experimentalist of Birmingham, with whom the philosopher spent
some weeks in 1827 in attempting a cure for dyspepsia (see the Early Recollections).
“Burke’s case.” William Burke and William Hare, the
bodysnatchers and murderers of Edinburgh, who killed persons to sell their corpses to
Knox’s school of anatomy.
Burke was hanged a week later than this letter, on January 28.
Hare turned King’s evidence and disappeared. A
“shot” was a subject in these men’s vocabulary. The author of the Waverley novels—the Great Unknown—had, of course, become known long before
this.
“M. B.”—Martin Burney. In 1818 Lamb had
dedicated the prose volume of his Works to Burney, in a sonnet ending
with the lines:— Free from self-seeking, envy, low design, I have not found a whiter soul than thine.
Hervey was Thomas Kibble Hervey
(1799-1859), a great album poet.
“A sonnet of mine
in Blackwood”—in
the number for January, 1829 (see page 799).
“Hessey”—of the firm of Taylor & Hessey, the late publishers of the London Magazine.
Another letter from Lamb to
Procter, repeating the request for verses, was
referred to by Canon Ainger in the preface to his
edition of the correspondence. Canon Ainger printed a delightful
passage, which I am not at liberty to quote. It was disappointing not to find it among the
letters proper in his new edition.]
LETTER 451 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
Jan. 28, 1829.
DEAR Allsop—Old Star is setting. Take him and cut him into Little Stars.
Nevertheless the extinction of the greater light is not by the lesser light
(Stella, or Mrs. Star) apprehended so nigh, but that she will be thankful if
you can let young Scintillation (Master Star) twinkle down by the coach on
Sunday, to catch the last glimmer of the decaying parental light. No news is
good news; so we conclude Mrs. A. and
little a are doing well. Our kindest loves,
C. L.
Note
[I cannot explain the mystery of these Stars.]
LETTER 452 CHARLES LAMB TO B. W. PROCTER
[? Jan. 29th, 1829.]
WHEN Miss
Ouldcroft (who is now Mrs. Beddome, and
Bed—dom’d to her!) was at Enfield, which she was in summertime, and owed
her health to its sun and genial influences, she wisited (with young lady-like
impertinence) a poor man’s cottage that had a pretty baby (O the
yearnling!), and gave it fine caps and sweetmeats. On a day, broke into the
parlour our two maids uproarious. “O ma’am, who do you think
Miss Ouldcroft (they pronounce it
Holcroft) has been working a cap for?”
“A child,” answered Mary, in true Shandean female simplicity. “It’s
the man’s child as was taken up for sheep-stealing.”
Miss Ouldcroft was staggered, and would have cut the
connection; but by main force I made her go and take her leave of her
protégeée (which I only spell with a g because I can’t make a pretty j).
I thought, if she went no more, the Abactor or Abactor’s wife (vide
Ainsworth) would suppose she had
heard something; and I have delicacy for a sheep-stealer. The overseers
actually overhauled a mutton-pie at the baker’s (his first, last, and
only hope of mutton-pie), which he never came to eat, and thence inferred his
guilt. Per occasionem cujus I framed
the sonnet; observe its
elaborate construction. I was four days about it. THE GYPSY’S MALISON Suck, baby, suck, Mother’s love grows by giving, Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting; Black Manhood comes, when riotous guilty living Hands thee the cup that shall be death in tasting. Kiss, baby, kiss, Mother’s lips shine by kisses, Choke the warm breath that else would fall in
blessings; Black Manhood comes, when turbulent guilty blisses Tend thee the kiss that poisons ’mid
caressings. Hang, baby, hang, mother’s love loves such forces, Choke the fond neck that bends still to thy
clinging; Black Manhood comes, when violent lawless courses Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging. So sang a wither’d Sibyl energetical, And bann’d the ungiving door with lips
prophetical.
Barry, study that sonnet. It is
curiously and perversely elaborate. ’Tis a choking subject, and therefore
the reader is directed to the structure of it. See you? and was this a
fourteener to be rejected by a trumpery annual? forsooth, ’twould shock
all mothers; and may all mothers, who would so be shocked, bed dom’d! as
if mothers were such sort of logicians as to infer the future hanging of their child from the theoretical hangibility (or
capacity of being hanged, if the judge pleases) of every infant born with a
neck on. Oh B. C., my whole heart is faint, and my whole
head is sick (how is it?) at this damned, canting, unmasculine unbxwdy (I had
almost said) age! Don’t show this to your child’s mother or I shall
be Orpheusized, scattered into Hebras. Damn the King, lords, commons, and specially (as I said on Muswell Hill on a Sunday when I
could get no beer a quarter before one) all Bishops, Priests and Curates. Vale.
Note
[“Ainsworth.” Referring to Robert
Ainsworth’sThesaurus, 1736. Abactor I do not
find; but abactus is there—to drive away by force.
“The Gypsy’s
Malison.” This is the sonnet in Blackwood for January, 1829.]
LETTER 453 (FRAGMENT) CHARLES LAMB TO B. W. PROCTER
[No date. Early 1829.]
THE comings in of an incipient conveyancer are not
adequate to the receipt of three twopenny post non-paids in a week. Therefore,
after this, I condemn my stub to long and deep silence, or shall awaken it to
write to lords. Lest those raptures in this honeymoon of my correspondence,
which you avow for the gentle person of my Nuncio, after passing through
certain natural grades, as Love, Love and Water, Love with the chill off, then
subsiding to that point which the heroic suitor of his wedded dame, the
noble-spirited Lord Randolph in the play,
declares to be the ambition of his passion, a reciprocation of
“complacent kindness,”—should suddenly plump down
(scarce staying to bait at the mid point of indifference, so hungry it is for
distaste) to a loathing and blank aversion, to the rendering probable such
counter expressions as this,—“Damn that infernal twopenny
postman” (words which make the not yet glutted inamorato
“lift up his hands and wonder who can use them.”) While,
then, you are not ruined, let me assure thee, O thou above the painter, and next only under Giraldus Cambrensis, the most immortal and
worthy to be immortal Barry, thy most
ingenious and golden cadences do take my fancy mightily. They are at this
identical moment under the snip and the paste of the fairest hands (bating
chilblains) in Cambridge, soon to be transplanted to Suffolk, to the envy of
half of the young ladies in Bury. But tell me, and tell me truly, gentle Swain,
is that Isola Bella a true spot in geographical denomination, or a floating
Delos in thy brain? Lurks that fair island in verity in the bosom of Lake
Maggiore, or some other with less poetic name, which thou hast Cornwallized for
the occasion? And what if Maggiore itself be but a coinage of adaptation? Of
this pray resolve me immediately, for my albumess will be catechised on this
subject; and how can I prompt her? Lake Leman, I know, and Lemon Lake (in a
punch bowl) I have swum in, though those lymphs be long since dry. But Maggiore
may be in the moon. Unsphinx this riddle for me, for my shelves have no
gazetteer. And mayest thou never murder thy father-in-law in the Trivia of Lincoln’s Inn New Square
Passage, where Searl Street and the Street of Portugal embrace, nor afterwards
make absurd proposals to the Widow M. But I know you abhor any such notions.
Nevertheless so did O-Edipus (as Admiral Burney used to call him, splitting the
diphthong in spite or ignorance) for that matter.
C. L.
Note
[“Lord Randolph”—in
Home’s “Douglas.” See Act I., Scene 1. His lordship
remarks:— I never asked of thee that ardent love Which in the breasts of fancy’s children burns. Decent affection and complacent kindness Were all I wished for; but I wished in vain.
“Lift up his hands . . .” I do not find this.
“Above the painter”—James
Barry, R.A.
“Giraldus Cambrensis”—the historian, Giraldus de Barri.
Procter’s poem for Emma Isola’s album, as we have seen, mentions Isola Bella, the island
in Lago de Maggiore. Delos was the floating island which Neptune fixed in order that Latona
might rest there and Apollo and Diana be born.
Œdipus, who solved the riddle of the Sphinx, was the
murderer of his father. Basil Montagu was Procter’s father-in-law.
Procter’s address was 10 Lincolns Inn, New Square.
At the end of the letter came a passage which for family reasons cannot
be printed.]
Commoratur nobiscum jamdiu, in agro Enfeldiense, scilicet,
leguleius futurus, illustrissimus Martinus
Burneius, otium agens, negotia nominalia, et officinam clientum
vacuam, paululum fugiens. Orat, implorat te—nempe,
Martinus—ut si (quòd Dii faciant) forte fortuna,
absente ipso, advenerit tardus cliens, eum certiorem feceris per literas hûc
missas. Intelligisne? an me Anglicè et barbarice ad te hominem perdoctum
scribere oportet?
Si status de franco tenemento datur avo, et in eodem facto
si mediate vel immediate datur hœredibus vel hœredibus
corporis dicti avi, postrema hæc verba sunt Limitationis, non
Perquisitionis.
Dixi.
Carlagnulus.
Note
[Mr. Stephen Gwynn has made the
following translation for me:—
“Most eloquent Poet: though I know well such epithet befits orators
rather than poets—and yet, Most eloquent!
“There has been staying with us this while past at our country seat
of Enfield to wit, the future attorney, the illustrious Martin
Burney, taking his leisure, flying for a space from his nominal occupations,
and his office empty of clients. He—that is, Martin—begs and entreats
of you that if (heaven send it so!) by some stroke of fortune, in his absence there should
arrive a belated client, you would inform him by letter here. Do you understand? or must I
write in barbarous English to a scholar like you?
“If an estate in freehold is given to an ancestor, and if in the
same deed directly or indirectly the gift is made to the heir or heirs of the body of the
said ancestor, these last words have the force of Limitation not of Purchase.
“I have spoken.Charles Lamb.”
The last passage was copied probably direct from some law book of
Burney’s, and is unintelligible except to
students of law-Latin.]
LETTER 455 CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE
Edmonton, Feb. 2, 1829.
DEAR Cowden,—Your books are as the gushing of streams in a desert. By
the way, you have sent no autobiographies. Your letter seems to imply you had.
Nor do I want any. Cowden, they are of the books which I
give away. What damn’d Unitarian skewer-soul’d things the general
biographies turn out. Rank and
Talent you shall have when Mrs. May has done
with ’em. Mary likes Mrs. Bedinfield much. For me I read nothing
but Astrea—it has turn’d my brain—I go about
with a switch turn’d up at the end for a crook; and Lambs being too old,
the butcher tells me, my cat follows me in a green ribband.
Becky and her cousin are getting pastoral dresses, and
then we shall all four go about Arcadizing. O cruel Shepherdess! Inconstant yet
fair, and more inconstant for being fair! Her gold ringlets fell in a disorder
superior to order!
Come and join us.
I am called the Black Shepherd—you shall be Cowden with the Tuft.
Prosaically, we shall be glad to have you both,—or any two
of you—drop in by surprise some Saturday night.
This must go off. Loves to Vittoria. C. L.
Note
[“Rank and
Talent”—a novel by W. P. Scargill,
1829.
“Astrea.”
Probably the romance by Honore D’Urfe.
“Cowden with the
Tuft.” So called from his hair, and from Riquet
with the Tuft, the fairy tale. We read in the Cowden
Clarkes’Recollections of
Writers: “The latter name (‘Cowden with the Tuft’)
slyly implies the smooth baldness with scant curly hair distinguishing the head of the
friend addressed, and which seemed to strike Charles
Lamb so forcibly, that one evening, after gazing at it for some time, he
suddenly broke forth with the exclamation, ‘Gad, Clarke!
what whiskers you have behind your head!’”]
LETTER 456 CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[p.m. February 27, 1829.]
DEAR R.—Expectation was alert on the receit of your strange-shaped
present, while yet undisclosed from its fuse envelope. Some said, ’tis a
viol da Gamba, others pronounced it a fiddle. I myself hoped it a Liquer case
pregnant with Eau de Vie and such odd Nectar. When midwifed into daylight, the
gossips were at loss to pronounce upon its species. Most took it for a marrow
spoon, an apple scoop, a banker’s guinea shovel. At length its true scope
appeared, its drift—to save the backbone of my sister stooping to scuttles. A
philanthropic intent, borrowed no doubt from some of the Colliers. You save
people’s backs one way, and break ’em again by loads of obligation.
The spectacles are delicate and Vulcanian. No lighter texture than their steel
did the cuckoldy blacksmith frame to catch Mrs. Vulcan and
the Captain in. For ungalled forehead, as for back unbursten, you have
Mary’s thanks. Many, for my own
peculium of obligation, ’twas supererogatory. A second part of Pamela was enough in
conscience. Two Pamelas in a house is too much without two Mr. B.’s to reward ’em.
Mary, who is handselling her new aerial
perspectives upon a pair of old worsted stockings trod out in Cheshunt lanes,
sends love. I, great good liking. Bid us a
personal farewell before you see the Vatican.
Chas. Lamb, Enfield.
Note
[Crabb Robinson, just starting for
Rome, had sent Lamb a copy of Pamela under the impression that he had borrowed one.
“Two Mr. B.’s.” In
Richardson’s novel Pamela marries the young Squire
B. and reforms him.]
LETTER 457 CHARLES LAMB TO SAMUEL ROGERS
Chase, Enfield: 22nd Mar., 1829.
MY dear Sir,—I have but lately learned, by letter
from Mr. Moxon, the death of your
brother. For the little I had seen
of him, I greatly respected him. I do not even know how recent your loss may
have been, and hope that I do not unseasonably present you with a few lines
suggested to me this morning by the thought of him. I beg to be most kindly
remembered to your remaining brother, and to Miss
Rogers.
Yours truly, Charles Lamb. Rogers, of all the men that
I have known But slightly, who have died, your brother’s loss Touched me most sensibly. There came across My mind an image of the cordial tone Of your fraternal meetings, where a guest I more than once have sate; and grieve to think, That of that threefold cord one precious link By Death’s rude hand is sever’d from the rest. Of our old gentry he appear’d a stem; A magistrate who, while the evil-doer He kept in terror, could respect the poor, And not for every trifle harass them— As some, divine and laic, too oft do. This man’s a private loss and public too.
Note
[Daniel Rogers, the
banker’s elder brother, had just died (see Letter 465).]
LETTER 458 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. March 25, 1829.]
DEAR B. B.—I
send you by desire Darley’s very
poetical poem. You will like, I think, the novel headings of each scene.
Scenical directions in verse are novelties. With it I send a few duplicates,
which are therefore no value to me, and may amuse an idle hour. Read
“Christmas,” ’tis the production of a young author, who
reads all your writings. A good word from you about his little book would be as
balm to him. It has no pretensions, and makes none. But parts are pretty. In
“Field’s Appendix” turn to a
Poem called the Kangaroo. It is in the best way of our old poets, if I mistake
not. I have just come from Town, where I have been to get my bit of quarterly
pension. And have brought home, from stalls in Barbican, the old Pilgrim’s Progress with
the prints—Vanity Fair, &c.—now scarce. Four shillings. Cheap. And also one
of whom I have oft heard and had dreams, but never saw in the flesh—that is, in
sheepskin—The whole theologic works of— Thomas
Aquinas! My arms aked with lugging it a mile to the stage, but the burden was a
pleasure, such as old Anchises was to the
shoulders of Æneas—or the Lady to the Lover
in old romance, who having to carry her to the top of a high mountain—the price
of obtaining her—clamber’d with her to the top, and fell dead with
fatigue. O the glorious old Schoolmen! There must be something in him. Such great names imply greatness. Who hath
seen Michael Angelo’s things—of us
that never pilgrimaged to Rome—and yet which of us disbelieves his greatness.
How I will revel in his cobwebs and subtleties, till my brain spins!
N.B. I have writ in the old Hamlet, offer it to Mitford in my name, if he have not seen it.
Tis woefully below our editions of it. But keep it, if you like. (What is
M. to me?)
I do not mean this to go for a letter, only to apprize you,
that the parcel is booked for you this 25 March 1829 from the Four Swans
Bishopsgate.
With both our loves to Lucy and A. K. Yours
Ever
C. L.
Note
[“Darley’s . . .
poem”—Sylvia;
or, The May Queen, by George
Darley.
“Christmas”—a poem by Edward Moxon,
dedicated to Lamb.
“Field’s Appendix”—Geographical Memoirs on New South
Wales, edited by Barron Field,
with his First-Fruits of Australian Poetry (see page 543) as Appendix.
“Anchises . . . Æneas.” See the Æneid, II., 707-722.
“The old romance.” I do not know the story.]
LETTER 459 CHARLES LAMB TO MISS SARAH JAMES
[No date. ? April, 1829.]
WE have just got your letter. I think Mother Reynolds will go on quietly,
Mrs. Scrimpshaw having kittened. The name of the late
Laureat was Henry James Pye, and when his
1st Birthday Ode came out, which was very poor, somebody being asked his
opinion of it, said:— And when the Pye was open’d The birds began to sing, And was not this a dainty dish To set before the King! Pye was brother to old Major
Pye, and father to Mrs.
Arnold, and uncle to a General
Pye, all friends of Miss
Kelly. Pye succeeded Thos. Warton, Warton
succeeded Wm. Whitehead,
Whitehead succeeded Colley
Cibber, Cibber succeeded Eusden, Eusden succeeded
Thos. Shadwell,
Shadwell succeeded Dryden, Dryden succeeded Davenant, Davenant God
knows whom. There never was a Rogers a Poet Laureat; there
is an old living Poet of that name, a
Banker as you know, Author of the “Pleasures of Memory,” where
Moxon goes to breakfast in a fine
house in the green Park, but he was never Laureat. Southey is the present one, and for anything I know or care,
Moxon may succeed him. We have a copy of “Xmas” for you, so you
may give your own to Mary as soon as you please. We think
you need not have exhibited your mountain shyness before M. B. He is neither shy himself, nor
patronizes it in others.—So with many thanks, good-bye. Emma comes on Thursday.
C. L.
The Poet Laureat, whom Davenant succeeded was Rare ‘Ben Jonson,’ who I believe was the
first regular Laureat with the appointment of £100 a year and a Butt of
Sack or Canary—so add that to my little list.—C. L.
Note
[Mr. Macdonald dates this letter
December 31, 1828, perhaps rightly. I have dated it at a venture April, 1829, because
Moxon’sChristmas was published in
March of that year. It is the only letter to Mary
Lamb’s nurse, Miss James, that
exists. Mrs. Reynolds was
Lamb’s aged pensioner, whom we have met.
Pye died in 1813 and was succeeded by Southey. The author of the witticism on his first ode was George Steevens, the critic. The comment gained point from
the circumstance that Pye had drawn largely on images from bird life
in his verses.]
LETTER 460 CHARLES LAMB TO H. CRABB ROBINSON
[p.m. April? 1829.]
DEAR Robinson, we are afraid you will slip from us from England without
again seeing us. It would be charity to come and see me. I have these three
days been laid up with strong rheumatic pains, in loins, back, shoulders. I
shriek sometimes from the violence of them. I get scarce any sleep, and the
consequence is, I am restless, and want to change sides as I lie, and I cannot
turn without resting on my hands, and so turning all my body all at once like a
log with a lever. While this rainy weather lasts, I have no hope of
alleviation. I have tried flannels and embrocation in vain. Just at the hip
joint the pangs sometimes are so excruciating, that I cry out. It is as violent
as the cramp, and far more continuous. I am ashamed to whine about these
complaints to you, who can ill enter into them. But indeed they are sharp. You
go about, in rain or fine at all hours without discommodity. I envy you your
immunity at a time of life not much removed from my own. But you owe your
exemption to temperance, which it is too late for me to pursue. I in my life
time have had my good things. Hence my frame is brittle—yours strong as brass.
I never knew any ailment you had. You can go out at night in all weathers, sit
up all hours. Well, I don’t want to moralise. I only wish to say that if
you are enclined to a game at Doubly Dumby, I would try and bolster up myself
in a chair for a rubber or so. My days are tedious, but less so and less
painful than my nights. May you never know the pain and difficulty I have in
writing so much. Mary, who is most kind,
joins in the wish.
C. Lamb.
LETTER 461 CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[p.m. April 17, 1829.]
I DO confess to mischief. It was the subtlest
diabolical piece of malice, heart of man has contrived. I have no more
rheumatism than that poker. Never was freer from all pains and aches. Every
joint sound, to the tip of the ear from the extremity of the lesser toe. The
report of thy torments was blown circuitously here from Bury. I could not
resist the jeer. I conceived you writhing, when you should just receive my
congratulations. How mad you’d be. Well, it is not in my method to
inflict pangs. I leave that to heaven. But in the existing pangs of a friend, I
have a share. His disquietude crowns my exemption. I imagine you howling, and
pace across the room, shooting out my free arms legs &c. [figure] this way
and that way, with an assurance of not kindling a spark of pain from them. I
deny that Nature meant us to sympathise with agonies. Those face-contortions,
retortions, distortions, have the merriness of antics. Nature meant them for
farce—not so pleasant to the actor indeed, but Grimaldi cries when we laugh, and ’tis but one that
suffers to make thousands rejoyce.
You say that Shampooing is ineffectual. But per se it is good, to show the introv[ol]utions,
extravolutions, of which the animal frame is capable. To show what the creature
is receptible of, short of dissolution.
You are worst of nights, a’nt you?
Twill be as good as a Sermon to you to lie abed all this
night, and meditate the subject of the day. ’Tis Good Friday. How
appropriate!
Think when but your little finger pains you, what endured to white-wash you and the rest of us.
Nobody will be the more justified for your endurance. You
won’t save the soul of a mouse. ’Tis a pure selfish pleasure.
You never was rack’d, was you? I should like an
authentic map of those feelings.
You seem to have the flying gout.
You can scarcely scrue a smile out of your face—can you? I
sit at immunity, and sneer ad
libitum.
’Tis now the time for you to make good resolutions.
I may go on breaking ’em, for any thing the worse I find myself.
Your Doctor seems to keep you on the long cure.
Precipitate healings are never good.
Don’t come while you are so bad. I shan’t be
able to attend to your throes and the dumbee at once.
I should like to know how slowly the pain goes off. But
don’t write, unless the motion will be likely to make your sensibility
more exquisite.
Your affectionate and truly healthy friend
C. Lamb.
Mary thought a Letter from me might
amuse you in your torment—
Note
[Robinson was the victim of a
sudden attack of acute rheumatism. He had a course of Turkish baths at Brighton to cure
him.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to George Dyer, dated April 29,
1829, in which Lamb thanks him for a sonnet apparently upon Agostino Isola, Emma’s grandfather, and asks for some lines to
Emma herself. See Appendix II., page 977.]
LETTERS 462 AND 463 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOOD
[No date. ? May, 1829.]
DEAR Hood,—We
will look out for you on Wednesday, be sure, tho’ we have not eyes like
Emma, who, when I made her sit with
her back to the window to keep her to her Latin, literally saw round backwards
every one that past, and, O, [that] she were here to jump up and shriek out
“There are the Hoods!” We have had two pretty
letters from her, which I long to show you—together with Enfield in her May
beauty. Loves to Jane.
[Here follow rough caricatures of
Charles and his sister, and] “I
can’t draw no better.”
Note
[I have dated this letter May, 1829, because Miss Isola had just gone to Fornham, in Suffolk, whence presumably the two
letters had come.
I append another letter to Hood
without a date:—]
CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
CALAMY is
good reading. Mary is always thankful for
Books in her way. I won’t trouble you for any in my way yet, having
enough to read. Young Hazlitt lives, at
least his father does, at 3 or 36 [36 I
have it down, with the 6 scratch’d out] Bouverie Street, Fleet Street. If
not to be found, his mother’s address is, Mrs. Hazlitt, Mrs. Tomlinson’s,
Potters Bar. At one or other he must be heard of. We shall expect you with the
full moon. Meantime, our thanks.
C. L.
We go on very quietly &c.
Note
[“Calamy” would be
Edmund Calamy (1671-1732), the historian of
Nonconformity.
Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in his Memoir of Hazlitt says that his
grandfather moved in 1829 to 3 Bouverie Street, and in the beginning of 1830 to 6 Frith
Street, Soho. Young Hazlitt was William
junior, afterwards Mr. Registrar Hazlitt and then
seventeen years of age.]
LETTER 464 CHARLES LAMB TO WALTER WILSON
May 28, 1829.
DEAR W.,—Introduce this, or omit it, as you like. I think I wrote better
about it in a letter to you from India H. If you have that, perhaps out of the
two I could patch up a better thing, if you’d return both. But I am very
poorly, and have been harassed with an illness of my sister’s.
The Ode
was printed in the “New Times” nearly the end of 1825, and I have only
omitted some silly lines. Call it a corrected copy.
Yours ever, C. Lamb.
Put my name to either or both, as you like.
Note
[This letter contains Lamb’s
remarks on the Secondary Novels of Defoe, printed in
Wilson’sLife and Times of De Foe,
Chapter XVII. of Vol. III., and also his “Ode to the Treadmill,” which
Wilson omitted from that work. See Vols. I. and V. of the present
edition for both pieces.]
LETTER 465 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. June 3, 1829.]
DEAR B. B.—I
am very much grieved indeed for the indisposition of poor Lucy. Your letter found me in domestic
troubles. My sister is again taken ill, and I am obliged to remove her out of
the house for many weeks, I fear, before I can hope to have her again. I have
been very desolate indeed. My loneliness is a little abated by our young friend
Emma having just come here for her
holydays, and a schoolfellow of hers that was, with her. Still the house is not
the same, tho’ she is the same. Mary had been pleasing herself with the prospect of seeing her
at this time; and with all their company, the house feels at times a frightful
solitude. May you and I in no very long time have a more cheerful theme to
write about, and congratulate upon a daughter’s and a Sister’s
perfect recovery. Do not be long without telling me how
Lucy goes on. I have a right to call her by her
quaker-name, you know.
Emma knows that I am writing to you, and
begs to be remembered to you with thankfulness for your ready contribution. Her
album is filling apace. But of her contributors one, almost the flower of it, a
most amiable young man and late acquaintance of mine, has been carried off by
consumption, on return from one of the Azores islands, to which he went with
hopes of mastering the disease, came back improved, went back to a most close
and confined counting house, and relapsed. His name was Dibdin, Grandson of the Songster. You will be
glad to hear that Emma, tho’ unknown to you, has
given the highest satisfaction in her little place of Governante in a
Clergyman’s family, which you may believe by the Parson and his Lady
drinking poor Mary’s health on her
birthday, tho’ they never saw her, merely because she was a friend of
Emma’s, and the Vicar also sent me a brace of
partridges. To get out of home themes, have you seen Southey’sDialogues? His lake descriptions, and the
account of his Library at Keswick, are very fine. But he needed not have called
up the Ghost of More to hold the
conversations with, which might as well have pass’d between A and B, or
Caius and Lucius. It is making too free with a defunct Chancellor and
Martyr.
I feel as if I had nothing farther to write about—O! I
forget the prettiest letter I ever read, that I have received from “Pleasures of Memory”
Rogers, in acknowledgment of a
Sonnet I sent him on the Loss of his Brother. It is too long to transcribe, but
I hope to shew it you some day, as I hope sometime again to see you, when all
of us are well. Only it ends thus “We were nearly of an age (he was the elder). He was the only
person in the world in whose eyes I always appeared young.”—
I will now take my leave with assuring you that I am most
interested in hoping to hear favorable accounts from you.—
With kindest regards to A.
K. and you
Yours truly,
C. L.
Note
[“Lucy”—Lucy Barton.
“Your ready contribution.” I do not find that
Barton ever printed his lines for Emma Isola’s album.
“Dibdin”—John Bates Dibdin died in May, 1828.
Southey’sSir Thomas More; or, Colloquies on the
Progress and Prospects of Society, had just been published.
“Rogers.” This was Rogers’ letter:—
Many, many thanks. The verses are beautiful. I need not say with what feelings they were
read. Pray accept the grateful acknowledgments of us all, and believe me when I say
that nothing could have been a greater cordial to us in our affliction than such a
testimony from such a quarter. He was—for none knew him so well—we were born within a
year or two of each other—a man of a very high mind, and with less disguise than
perhaps any that ever lived. Whatever he was, that we saw. He stood before his fellow
beings (if I may be forgiven for saying so) almost as before his Maker: and God grant
that we may all bear as severe an examination. He was an admirable scholar. His
Dante and his Homer were as familiar to him as his Alphabets: and he had the
tenderest heart. When a flock of turkies was stolen from his farm, the indignation of
the poor far and wide was great and loud. To me he is the greatest loss, for we were
nearly of an age; and there is now no human being alive in whose eyes I have always
been young.
Under the date June 10, 1829, Mr.
Macdonald prints a note from Lamb to
Ayrton, which states that he has two young
friends in the house. Here, therefore, I think, should come a letter from
Lamb to William Hazlitt,
Junior, printed by Mr. Hazlitt, but
not available for this edition, in which Lamb says that he cannot see
Mrs. Hazlitt this time. He adds that the ladies
are very pleasant. Emma Isola adds a letter which
tells us that the ladies are herself and her friend Maria. This would
be the Maria of Lamb’s sonnet “Harmony in Unlikeness,” evidently written at this time (see
Vol. V., page 54, where I make the mistake of assuming Lamb to mean
his sister).]
LETTER 466 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[See Note.]
AT midsummer or soon after (I will let you know the
previous day), I will take a day with you in the purlieus of my old haunts. No
offence has been taken, any more than meant. My house is full at present, but empty
of its chief pride. She is dead to me for many months. But when I see you, then
I will say, Come and see me. With undiminished friendship to you both,
Your faithful but queer
C. L.
How you frighted me! Never write again,
“Coleridge is
dead,” at the end of a line, and tamely come in with
“to his friends” at the beginning of another. Love
is quicker, and fear from love, than the transition ocular from Line to
Line.
Note
[This Letter is dated 1829 in Harper’s Magazine. The postmark, I have recently
discovered, is July 2, 1832.]
LETTER 467 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
Enfield Chase Side Saturday 25 July a.d.
1829.—11 a.m.
THERE—a fuller plumper juiceier date never dropt
from Idumean palm. Am I in the dateive case now? if not, a fig for dates, which
is more than a date is worth. I never stood much affected to these limitary
specialities. Least of all since the date of my superannuation. What have I with Time to do? Slaves of desks, twas meant for you. Dear B. B.—Your hand writing has conveyed much pleasure to me in report of
Lucy’s restoration. Would I
could send you as good news of my poor Lucy. But some
wearisome weeks I must remain lonely yet. I have had the loneliest time near 10
weeks, broken by a short apparition of Emma for her holydays, whose departure only deepend the
returning solitude, and by 10 days I have past in Town. But Town, with all my
native hankering after it, is not what it was. The streets, the shops are left,
but all old friends are gone. And in London I was frightfully convinced of this
as I past houses and places—empty caskets now. I have ceased to care almost
about any body. The bodies I cared for are in graves, or dispersed. My old
Clubs, that lived so long and flourish’d so steadily, are crumbled away.
When I took leave of our adopted young friend at Charing Cross, ’twas
heavy unfeeling rain, and I had no where to go. Home have I none—and not a
sympathising house to turn to in the great city. Never did the waters of the
heaven pour down on a forlorner head. Yet I tried 10 days at a sort of a
friend’s house, but it was large and straggling—one of the individuals of
my old long knot of friends, card players, pleasant companions—that have
tumbled to pieces into dust and other things—and I got home on Thursday,
convinced that I was better to get home to my
hole at Enfield, and hide like a sick cat in my corner. Less than a month I
hope will bring home Mary. She is at
Fulham, looking better in her health than ever, but sadly rambling, and scarce
showing any pleasure in seeing me, or curiosity when I should come again. But
the old feelings will come back again, and we shall drown old sorrows over a
game at Picquet again. But ’tis a tedious cut out of a life of sixty
four, to lose twelve or thirteen weeks every year or two. And to make me more
alone, our ill-temperd maid is gone, who with all her airs, was yet a home
piece of furniture, a record of better days; the young thing that has succeeded
her is good and attentive, but she is nothing—and I have no one here to talk
over old matters with. Scolding and quarreling have something of familiarity
and a community of interest—they imply acquaintance—they are of resentment,
which is of the family of dearness. I can neither scold nor quarrel at this
insignificant implement of household services; she is less than a cat, and just
better than a deal Dresser. What I can do, and do overdo, is to walk, but
deadly long are the days—these summer all-day days, with but a half
hour’s candlelight and no firelight. I do not write, tell your kind
inquisitive Eliza, and can hardly read. In the ensuing
Blackwood will be an old
rejected farce of mine,
which may be new to you, if you see that same dull Medley. What things are all
the Magazines now! I contrive studiously not to see them. The popular New Monthly is perfect trash. Poor
Hessey, I suppose you see, has
failed. Hunt and Clarke too. Your “Vulgar truths”
will be a good name—and I think your prose must please—me at least—but
’tis useless to write poetry with no purchasers. ’Tis cold work
Authorship without something to puff one into fashion. Could you not write
something on Quakerism—for Quakers to read—but nominally addrest to Non
Quakers? explaining your dogmas—waiting on the Spirit—by the analogy of human
calmness and patient waiting on the judgment? I scarcely know what I mean, but
to make Non Quakers reconciled to your doctrines, by shewing something like
them in mere human operations—but I hardly understand myself, so let it pass
for nothing. I pity you for over-work, but I assure you no-work is worse. The
mind preys on itself, the most unwholesome food. I brag’d formerly that I
could not have too much time. I have a surfeit. With few years to come, the
days are wearisome. But weariness is not eternal. Something will shine out to
take the load off, that flags me, which is at present intolerable. I have
killed an hour or two in this poor scrawl. I am a sanguinary murderer of time,
and would kill him inchmeal just now. But the snake is vital. Well, I shall
write merrier anon.—“Tis the present copy of my countenance I send—and to
complain is a little to alleviate.— May you enjoy yourself as far as the wicked
wood will let you —and think that
you are not quite alone, as I am. Health to Lucia and to Anna and kind remembces.
Yours forlorn.
C. L.
Note
[“What have I with Time to do? . . .” I have not
found this.
“Out of a life of sixty-four.” Mary Lamb was born December 3, 1764.
“Your kind . . . Eliza”—Eliza
Barton, Bernard’s sister.
“Rejected farce.” “The Pawnbroker’s Daughter” was printed
in Blackwood, January,
1830.
“I brag’d formerly.” Referring I think to his
sonnet “Leisure.”]
LETTER 468 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[No date. Late July, 1829.]
MY dear Allsop—I thank you for thinking of my recreation. But I am best
here, I feel I am. I have tried town lately, but came back worse. Here I must
wait till my loneliness has its natural cure. Besides that, though I am not
very sanguine, yet I live in hopes of better news from Fulham, and can not be
out of the way. ’Tis ten weeks to-morrow.—I saw Mary a week since, she was in excellent bodily
health, but otherwise far from well. But a week or so may give a turn. Love to
Mrs. A. and children, and fair
weather accompy you.
C. L. Tuesday.
LETTER 469 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. Sept. 22, 1829.]
DEAR Moxon,
If you can oblige me with the Garrick
Papers or Ann of Gierstien, I
shall be thankful. I am almost fearful whether my Sister will be able to enjoy
any reading at present for since her coming home, after 12 weeks, she has had
an unusual relapse into the saddest low spirits that ever poor creature had,
and has been some weeks under medical care. She is unable to see any yet. When
she is better I shall be very glad to talk over
your ramble with you. Have you done any sonnets, can you send me any to
overlook? I am almost in despair, Mary’s case seems so hopeless.
Believe me Yours C. L.
I do not want Mr. Jameson or
Lady Morgan.
Enfield Wedny.
Note
[“The Garrick Papers.” Lamb refers, I suppose, to the Private Correspondence of David Garrick, in some
form previous to its publication in 1832.
“Anne of
Geierstein.” Scott’s novel was
published this year.
“Mr. Jameson.” I cannot find any book
by a Mr. Jameson likely to have been offered to Lamb; but Mrs. Jameson’sLoves of the Poets was published this year. Probably he
meant to write Mrs. Jameson. Lady
Morgan was the author of The Wild Irish Girl and other novels. Her 1829 book was
The Book of the
Boudoir.]
LETTER 470 CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN
Chase-Side, Enfield, 26th Oct., 1829.
DEAR Gillman,—Allsop brought
me your kind message yesterday. How can I account for having not visited
Highgate this long time? Change of place seemed to have changed me. How grieved
I was to hear in what indifferent health Coleridge has been, and I not to know of it! A little school
divinity, well applied, may be healing. I send him honest Tom of Aquin; that was always an obscure great
idea to me: I never thought or dreamed to see him in the flesh, but
t’other day I rescued him from a stall in Barbican, and brought him off
in triumph. He comes to greet Coleridge’s
acceptance, for his shoe-latchets I am unworthy to unloose. Yet there are
pretty pro’s and con’s, and such unsatisfactory learning in him.
Commend me to the question of etiquette—“utrum annunciatio debuerit fieri per
angelum”—Quæst. 30, Articulus 2. I protest, till now I had thought
Gabriel a fellow of some mark and livelihood, not a
simple esquire, as I find him. Well, do not break your lay brains, nor I
neither, with these curious nothings. They are nuts to our dear friend, whom
hoping to see at your first friendly hint that it will be convenient, I end
with begging our very kindest loves
to Mrs. Gillman. We have had a sorry
house of it here. Our spirits have been reduced till we were at hope’s
end what to do—obliged to quit this house, and afraid to engage another, till
in extremity I took the desperate resolve of kicking house and all down, like
Bunyan’s pack; and here we are
in a new life at board and lodging, with an honest couple our neighbours. We
have ridded ourselves of the cares of dirty acres; and the change, though of
less than a week, has had the most beneficial effects on Mary already. She looks two years and a half
younger for it. But we have had sore trials.
God send us one happy meeting!—Yours faithfully,
C. Lamb.
Note
[“The question of etiquette.” See the Summa Theologicæ,
Pars Tertia, Quest. XXX., Articulus II. It would be interesting to know whether Lamb remembered an earlier letter (see page 117) in which
he had set Coleridge some similar
“nuts.”
“In a new life.” The Lambs moved
next door, to the Westwoods. The house, altered externally, still stands (1904) and is
known as “Westwood Cottage.” I give a drawing of the front as it now is.]
[figure]
LETTER 471 CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
[p.m. Probably Nov. 10, 1829.] Dear Fugue-ist, or hear’st thou rather Contrapuntist—?
WE expect you four (as many as the Table will hold
without squeeging) at Mrs. Westwood’s Table
D’Hote on Thursday. You will find the White House shut up, and us moved
under the wing of the Phœnix, which gives us friendly refuge. Beds for guests,
marry, we have none, but cleanly accomodings at the Crown & Horseshoe.
Yours harmonically,
C. L. [Addressed: Vincentio (what Ho!) Novello, a
Squire, 66, Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.]
Note
[“The Phœnix.” Mr.
Westwood was agent for the Phœnix Insurance Company, and the badge of that
office was probably on the house.]
LETTER 472 CHARLES LAMB TO WALTER WILSON
Enfield, 15th November, 1829.
MY dear Wilson,—I have not opened a packet of unknown contents for many
years, that gave me so much pleasure as when I disclosed your three volumes. I have given
them a careful perusal, and they have taken their degree of classical books
upon my shelves. De Foe was always my
darling; but what darkness was I in as to far the larger part of his writings!
I have now an epitome of them all. I think the way in which you have done the
“Life “the most judicious you could have pitched upon. You have
made him tell his own story, and your comments are in keeping with the tale.
Why, I never heard of such a work as “the Review.” Strange that in my
stall-hunting days I never so much as lit upon an odd volume of it. This
circumstance looks as if they were never of any great circulation. But I may
have met with ’em, and not
knowing the prize, overpast ’em. I was almost a stranger to the whole
history of Dissenters in those reigns, and picked my way through that strange
book the “Consolidator” at random. How affecting are some of his
personal appeals! what a machine of projects he set on foot! and following
writers have picked his pocket of the patents. I do not understand whereabouts
in Roxana he himself left off. I always thought the
complete-tourist-sort of description of the town she passes through on her last
embarkation miserably unseasonable and out of place. I knew not they were
spurious. Enlighten me as to where the apocryphal matter commences. I, by
accident, can correct one A. D. “Family Instructor,” vol. ii. 1718;
you say his first volume had then reached the fourth edition; now I have a
fifth, printed for Eman. Matthews, 1717.
So have I plucked one rotten date, or rather picked it up where it had
inadvertently fallen, from your flourishing date tree, the Palm of Engaddi. I
may take it for my pains. I think yours a book which every public library must
have, and every English scholar should have. I am sure it has enriched my
meagre stock of the author’s works. I seem to be twice as opulent.
Mary is by my side just finishing the
second volume. It must have interest to divert her away so long from her modern
novels. Colburn will be quite jealous. I
was a little disappointed at my “Ode to the Treadmill” not finding a
place; but it came out of time. The two papers of mine will puzzle the reader,
being so akin. Odd that, never keeping a scrap of my own letters, with some
fifteen years’ interval I should nearly have said the same things. But I
shall always feel happy in having my name go down any how with De
Foe’s, and that of his historiographer. I promise myself,
if not immortality, yet diuternity of being read in consequence. We have both
had much illness this year; and feeling infirmities and fretfulness grow upon
us, we have cast off the cares of housekeeping, sold off our goods, and
commenced boarding and lodging with a very comfortable old couple next door to
where you found us. We use a sort of common table. Nevertheless, we have
reserved a private one for an old friend; and when Mrs.
Wilson and you revisit Babylon, we shall pray you to make it
yours for a season. Our very kindest remembrances to you both.
From your old friend and fellow-journalist, now in two instances,
C. Lamb.
Hazlitt is going to make your book a
basis for a review of De Foe’s
Novels in the “Edinbro’.” I wish I had health and spirits to do
it. Hone I have not seen, but I doubt
not he will be much pleased with your performance. I very much hope you
will give us an account of Dunton,
&c. But what I should more like to see
would be a Life and Times of Bunyan.
Wishing health to you and long life to your healthy book, again I subscribe
me,
Yours in verity, C. L.
Note
[Wilson’sMemoirs of the Life and Times
of Daniel De Foe had just been published in three volumes, with the
date 1830.
Defoe’sReview was started in February,
1704, under the title, A Review of the Affairs of
France . . . . purged from the Errors and Partiality of News-writers, and
Petty-Statesmen, of all sides. It continued until May, 1713. The Consolidator; or,
Memoirs of sundry Transactions from the world in the moon. Translated
from the Lunar Language, was published in 1705, a political satire, which, it has been
thought, gave hints to Swift for Gulliver.
“Palm of Engaddi.” Engedi, according to Josephus, was celebrated for its palm trees.
Lamb had sent Wilson his “Ode to the
Treadmill” (see page 810). The substance of his letter of December 16,
1822, was printed by Wilson in Chapter XXII. of Vol. III.; the new
material which he wrote especially for the book (see page 810) was printed in Chapter XVII.
of the same volume. The space dividing them was not fifteen years but seven.
“Diuternity.” Spelt “diuturnity.” A rare
word signifying long duration.
“Fellow-journalist.” The other instance would be in
connection with the journals of the India House, where Wilson had once been a clerk with Lamb.
Hazlitt’sreview of Wilson’s book is in the Edinburgh for January, 1830, with this reference to
Lamb’s criticisms: “Captain Singleton is a hardened, brutal desperado,
without one redeeming trait, or almost human feeling; and, in spite of what
Mr. Lamb says of his lonely musings and agonies of a
conscience-stricken repentance, we find nothing of this in the text.”
“Dunton.” This would be John Dunton (1659-1733), the bookseller, and author of
The Athenian
Gazette, Dunton’s Whipping-Post, and scores of pamphlets and satires.]
LETTER 473 (? Fragment) CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN
[No date. ? November 29, 1829.]
PRAY trust me with the “Church History,” as well as the
“Worthies.” A moon shall restore both. Also give me back Him of Aquinum. In return you have the light of my countenance. Adieu.
P.S.—A sister also of mine comes with it. A son of
Nimshi drives her. Their driving will have been
furious, impassioned. Pray God they have not toppled over the tunnel! I promise
you I fear their steed, bred out of the wind without father,
semi-Melchisedecish, hot, phætontic. From my country lodgings at Enfield.
C. L.
Note
[The Church History and the Worthies are by Fuller.
“Light of my countenance.” Mr. Hazlitt says that this was a copy of Brook Pulham’s etching.
“A son of Nimshi”—Jehu.
“The tunnel”—the new Highgate Archway.
“Semi-Melchisedecish.” See Hebrews
vii. 3, “Without father, without mother, without descent.”]
LETTER 474 CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN
30 Nov., 1829.
DEAR G.,—The
excursionists reached home, and the good town of Enfield a little after four,
without slip or dislocation. Little has transpired concerning the events of the
back-journey, save that on passing the house of ’Squire Mellish, situate a stone-bow’s
cast from the hamlet, Father Westwood,
with a good-natured wonderment, exclaimed, “I cannot think what is
gone of Mr. Mellish’s rooks. I fancy they have
taken flight somewhere; but I have missed them two or three years
past.” All this while, according to his fellow-traveller’s
report, the rookery was darkening the air above with undiminished population,
and deafening all ears but his with their
cawings. But nature has been gently withdrawing such phenomena from the notice
of Thomas Westwood’s senses, from the time he began
to miss the rooks. T. Westwood has passed a retired life
in this hamlet of thirty or forty years, living upon the minimum which is
consistent with gentility, yet a star among the minor gentry, receiving the
bows of the tradespeople and courtesies of the alms’ women daily.
Children venerate him not less for his external show of gentry, than they
wonder at him for a gentle rising endorsation of the person, not amounting to a
hump, or if a hump, innocuous as the hump of the buffalo, and coronative of as
mild qualities. ’Tis a throne on which patience seems to sit—the proud
perch of a self-respecting humility, stooping with condescension. Thereupon the
cares of life have sate, and rid him easily. For he has thrid the angustiæ domûs with dexterity. Life opened
upon him with comparative brilliancy. He set out as a rider or traveller for a
wholesale house, in which capacity he tells of many hair-breadth escapes that
befell him; one especially, how he rode a mad horse into the town of Devizes;
how horse and rider arrived in a foam, to the utter consternation of the
expostulating hostlers, inn-keepers, &c. It seems it was sultry weather,
piping hot; the steed tormented into frenzy with gad-flies, long past being
roadworthy; but safety and the interest of the house he rode for were
incompatible things; a fall in serge cloth was expected; and a mad entrance
they made of it. Whether the exploit was purely voluntary, or partially; or
whether a certain personal defiguration in the man part of this extraordinary
centaur (non-assistive to partition of natures) might not enforce the
conjunction, I stand not to inquire. I look not with ’skew eyes into the
deeds of heroes. The hosier that was burnt with his shop, in Field-lane, on
Tuesday night, shall have past to heaven for me like a Marian Martyr, provided
always, that he consecrated the fortuitous incremation with a short ejaculation
in the exit, as much as if he had taken his state degrees of martyrdom
in formâ in the market
vicinage. There is adoptive as well as acquisitive sacrifice. Be the animus
what it might, the fact is indisputable, that this composition was seen flying
all abroad, and mine host of Daintry may yet remember its passing through his
town, if his scores are not more faithful than his memory. After this exploit
(enough for one man), Thomas Westwood seems to have
subsided into a less hazardous occupation; and in the twenty-fifth year of his
age we find him a haberdasher in Bow Lane: yet still retentive of his early
riding (though leaving it to rawer stomachs), and Christmasly at night sithence
to this last, and shall to his latest Christmas, hath he, doth he, and shall
he, tell after supper the story of the insane steed and the desperate rider.
Save for Bedlam or Luke’s no eye could have guessed that melting day what house he rid
for. But he reposes on his bridles, and after the ups and downs (metaphoric
only) of a life behind the counter—hard riding sometimes, I fear, for poor
T. W.—with the scrapings together of the shop, and one
anecdote, he hath finally settled at Enfield; by hard economising, gardening,
building for himself, hath reared a mansion, married a daughter, qualified a
son for a counting-house, gotten the
respect of high and low, served for self or substitute the greater parish
offices: hath a special voice at vestries; and, domiciliating us, hath
reflected a portion of his house-keeping respectability upon your humble
servants. We are greater, being his lodgers, than when we were substantial
renters. His name is a passport to take off the sneers of the native Enfielders
against obnoxious foreigners. We are endenizened. Thus much of T.
Westwood have I thought fit to acquaint you, that you may see
the exemplary reliance upon Providence with which I entrusted so dear a charge
as my own sister to the guidance of a man that rode the mad horse into Devizes.
To come from his heroic character, all the amiable qualities of domestic life
concentre in this tamed Bellerophon. He is excellent
over a glass of grog; just as pleasant without it; laughs when he hears a joke,
and when (which is much oftener) he hears it not; sings glorious old sea songs
on festival nights; and but upon a slight acquaintance of two years, Coleridge, is as dear a deaf old man to us, as
old Norris, rest his soul! was after
fifty. To him and his scanty literature (what there is of it, sound) have we
flown from the metropolis and its cursed annualists, reviewers, authors, and
the whole muddy ink press of that stagnant pool.
Now, Gillman again,
you do not know the treasure of the Fullers. I calculate on having massy reading till Christmas.
All I want here, is books of the true sort, not those things in boards that
moderns mistake for books—what they club for at book clubs.
I did not mean to cheat you with a blank side; but my eye
smarts, for which I am taking medicine, and abstain, this day at least, from
any aliments but milk-porridge, the innocent taste of which I am anxious to
renew after a half-century’s disacquaintance. If a blot fall here like a
tear, it is not pathos, but an angry eye.
Farewell, while my specilla are
sound.
Yours and yours,
C. Lamb.
Note
[This letter records the safe return of Mary
Lamb with the Fullers.
“Squire Mellish.” William Mellish, M.P. for Middlesex for some years.
“Angustiæ domûs.”
Narrow ways of poverty.
Thomas Westwood’s son, for whom Lamb found an appointment, wrote some excellent articles in
Notes and Queries
many years later describing the Lambs’ life at his father’s.
“Old Norris.”
See Letter 386.
I give here a drawing of the Lambs’
sitting-room, from the garden of Westwood Cottage, as it now is (1904):—] [figure]
LETTER 475 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. December 8, 1829.]
MY dear B.
B.—You are very good to have been uneasy about us, and I have the
satisfaction to tell you, that we are both in better health and spirits than we
have been for a year or two past; I may say, than we have been since we have
been at Enfield. The cause may not appear quite adequate, when I tell you, that
a course of ill health and spirits brought us to the determination of giving up
our house here, and we are boarding and lodging with a worthy old couple, long
inhabitants of Enfield, where everything is done for us without our trouble,
further than a reasonable weekly payment.
We should have done so before, but it is not easy to flesh and blood to give up
an ancient establishment, to discard old Penates, and from house keepers to
turn house-sharers. (N.B. We are not in the Workhouse.) Dioclesian in his garden found more repose than
on the imperial seat of Rome, and the nob of Charles
the Fifth aked seldomer under a monk’s cowl than under the
diadem. With such shadows of assimilation we countenance our degradation. With
such a load of dignifyd cares just removed from our shoulders, we can the more
understand and pity the accession to yours, by the advancement to an
Assigneeship. I will tell you honestly B. B. that it has
been long my deliberate judgment, that all Bankrupts, of what denomination
civil or religious whatever, ought to be hang’d. The pity of mankind has
for ages ran in a wrong channel, and has been diverted from poor Creditors (how
many I have known sufferers! Hazlitt has
just been defrauded of £100 by his Bookseller-friend’s breaking) to
scoundrel Debtors. I know all the topics, that distress may come upon an honest
man without his fault, that the failure of one that he trusted was his calamity
&c. &c. Then let both be hang’d. O how
careful it would make traders! These are my deliberate thoughts after many
years’ experience in matters of trade. What a world of trouble it would
save you, if Friend * * * * * had been immediately hangd,
without benefit of clergy, which (being a Quaker I presume) he could not
reasonably insist upon. Why, after slaving twelve months in your
assign-business, you will be enabled to declare seven pence in the Pound in all
human probability. B. B., he should be hanged. Trade will
never re-flourish in this land till such a Law is establish’d. I write
big not to save ink but eyes, mine having been troubled with reading
thro’ three folios of old Fuller
in almost as few days, and I went to bed last night in agony, and am writing
with a vial of eye water before me, alternately dipping in vial and inkstand.
This may enflame my zeal against Bankrupts—but it was my speculation when I
could see better. Half the world’s misery (Eden else) is owing to want of
money, and all that want is owing to Bankrupts. I declare I would, if the State
wanted Practitioners, turn Hangman myself, and should have great pleasure in
hanging the first after my salutary law should be establish’d. I have
seen no annuals and wish to see none. I like your fun upon them, and was quite
pleased with Bowles’s sonnet.
Hood is or was at Brighton, but a
note, prose or rhime, to him, Robert Street, Adelphi, I am sure would extract a
copy of his, which also I have not seen. Wishing you and yours all Health, I
conclude while these frail glasses are to me—eyes.
C. L.
Note
[“Dioclesian.” The Emperor Diocletian abdicated the throne after twenty-one
years’ reign, and retired to his garden. Charles
V. of Germany imitated the Roman Emperor, and after thirty-six years took
the cowl.
“Hazlitt has just been
defrauded.” The failure of Hunt &
Clarke, the publishers of the Life of Napoleon, cost
Hazlitt £500. He had received only £14 0 towards this, in a bill
which on their insolvency became worthless.
“Friend * * * * *.” Not identifiable.
“Bowles’s
sonnet” I have not found.]
LETTER 476 (In two parts) I.—CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM
WORDSWORTH
[p.m. January 22, 1830.]
AND is it a year since we parted from you at the
steps of Edmonton Stage? There are not now the years that there used to be. The
tale of the dwindled age of men, reported of successional mankind, is true of
the same man only. We do not live a year in a year now. ’Tis a
punctum stans. The seasons pass us with indifference.
Spring cheers not, nor winter heightens our gloom, Autumn hath foregone its
moralities, they are hey-pass re-pass [as] in a show-box. Yet as far as last
year occurs back, for they scarce shew a reflex now, they make no memory as
heretofore—’twas sufficiently gloomy. Let the sullen nothing pass.
Suffice it that after sad spirits prolonged thro’ many
of its months, as it called them, we have cast our skins, have taken a farewell
of the pompous troublesome trifle calld housekeeping, and are settled down into
poor boarders and lodgers at next door with an old couple, the Baucis and Baucida of dull Enfield. Here we have nothing to do with our
victuals but to eat them, with the garden but to see it grow, with the tax
gatherer but to hear him knock, with the maid but to hear her scolded. Scot and
lot, butcher, baker, are things unknown to us save as spectators of the
pageant. We are fed we know not how, quietists, confiding ravens. We have the
otium pro dignitate, a respectable insignificance. Yet
in the self condemned obliviousness, in the stagnation, some molesting
yearnings of life, not
quite kill’d, rise, prompting me that there was a London, and that I was
of that old Jerusalem. In dreams I am in Fleetmarket, but I wake and cry to
sleep again. I die hard, a stubborn Eloisa
in this detestable Paraclete. What have I gained by health? intolerable
dulness. What by early hours and moderate meals?—a total blank. O never let the
lying poets be believed, who ’tice men from the chearful haunts of
streets—or think they mean it not of a country village. In the ruins of Palmyra
I could gird myself up to solitude, or muse to the snorings of the Seven
Sleepers, but to have a little teazing image of a town about one, country folks
that do not look like country folks, shops two yards square, half a dozen
apples and two penn’orth of overlookd gingerbread for the lofty
fruiterers of Oxford Street—and, for the immortal book and print stalls, a
circulating library that stands still, where the shew-picture is a last
year’s Valentine, and whither the fame of the last ten Scotch novels has not yet
travel’d (marry, they just begin to be conscious of the Red Gauntlet), to have a new
plasterd flat church, and to be wishing that it was but a Cathedral. The very
blackguards here are degenerate. The topping gentry, stock brokers. The
passengers too many to ensure your quiet, or let you go about whistling, or
gaping—too few to be the fine indifferent pageants of Fleet Street. Confining,
room-keeping thickest winter is yet more bearable here than the gaudy months.
Among one’s books at one’s fire by candle one is soothed into an
oblivion that one is not in the country, but with the light the green fields
return, till I gaze, and in a calenture can plunge myself into Saint
Giles’s. O let no native Londoner imagine that health, and rest, and
innocent occupation, interchange of converse sweet and recreative study, can
make the country any thing better than altogether odious and detestable. A
garden was the primitive prison till man with promethean felicity and boldness
luckily sinn’d himself out of it. Thence followd Babylon, Nineveh,
Venice, London, haberdashers, goldsmiths, taverns, playhouses, satires,
epigrams, puns—these all came in on the town part, and the thither side of
innocence. Man found out inventions.
From my den I return you condolence for your decaying sight,
not for any thing there is to see in the country, but for the miss of the
pleasure of reading a London newspaper. The poets are as well to listen to, any
thing high may, nay must, be read out—you read it to yourself with an imaginary
auditor—but the light paragraphs must be glid over by the proper eye, mouthing
mumbles their gossamery substance. ’Tis these trifles I should mourn in
fading sight. A newspaper is the single gleam of comfort I receive here, it
comes from rich Cathay with tidings of mankind. Yet I could not attend to it
read out by the most beloved voice. But your eyes do not get worse, I gather. O
for the collyrium of Tobias inclosed in a whiting’s liver to send you with no
apocryphal good wishes! The last long time I heard from you, you had
knock’d your head against something. Do not do so. For your head (I do
not flatter) is not a nob, or the top of a brass nail, or the end of a nine
pin—unless a Vulcanian hammer could fairly batter a Recluse out of it, then would I bid the
smirch’d god knock and knock lustily, the two-handed skinker. What a nice
long letter Dorothy has written!
Mary must squeeze out a line
propriâ manu, but indeed her fingers have been
incorrigibly nervous to letter writing for a long interval. ’Twill please
you all to hear that, tho’ I fret like a lion in a net, her present
health and spirits are better than they have been for some time past: she is
absolutely three years and a half younger, as I tell her, since we have adopted
this boarding plan. Our providers are an honest pair, dame
Westwood and her husband—he, when the light of prosperity shined on them, a
moderately thriving haberdasher within Bow Bells, retired since with something
under a competence, writes himself parcel gentleman, hath borne parish offices,
sings fine old sea songs at threescore and ten, sighs only now and then when he
thinks that he has a son on his hands
about 15, whom he finds a difficulty in getting out into the world, and then
checks a sigh with muttering, as I once heard him prettily, not meaning to be
heard, “I have married my daughter however,”—takes the
weather as it comes, outsides it to town in severest season, and a’
winter nights tells old stories not tending to literature, how comfortable to
author-rid folks! and has one anecdote, upon which and
about forty pounds a year he seems to have retired in green old age. It was how
he was a rider in his youth, travelling for shops, and
once (not to baulk his employer’s bargain) on a sweltering day in August,
rode foaming into Dunstable upon a mad horse to the
dismay and expostulary wonderment of innkeepers, ostlers &c. who declared
they would not have bestrid the beast to win the Darby. Understand the creature
gall’d to death and desperation by gad flies, cormorants winged, worse
than beset Inachus’ daughter. This he
tells, this he brindles and burnishes on a’ winter’s eves,
’tis his star of set glory, his rejuvenescence to descant upon. Far from
me be it (dii avertant) to look a gift story in the mouth,
or cruelly to surmise (as those who doubt the plunge of Curtius) that the inseparate conjuncture of man
and beast, the centaur-phenomenon that staggerd all Dunstable, might have been
the effect of unromantic necessity, that the horse-part carried the reasoning,
willy nilly, that needs must when such a devil drove, that certain spiral
configurations in the frame of Thomas Westwood unfriendly
to alighting, made the alliance more forcible than voluntary. Let him enjoy his
fame for me, nor let me hint a whisper that shall dismount Bellerophon. Put case he was an involuntary martyr, yet if in the
fiery conflict he
buckled the soul of a constant haberdasher to him, and adopted his flames, let
Accident and He share the glory! You would all like Thomas
Westwood. [figure] How weak is painting to describe a man! Say
that he stands four feet and a nail high by his own yard measure, which like
the Sceptre of Agamemnon shall never sprout
again, still you have no adequate idea, nor when I tell you that his dear hump,
which I have favord in the picture, seems to me of the buffalo—indicative and
repository of mild qualities, a budget of kindnesses, still you have not the
man. Knew you old Norris of the Temple,
60 years ours and our father’s friend, he was not more natural to us than
this old W. the acquaintance of scarce more weeks. Under
his roof now ought I to take my rest, but that back-looking ambition tells me I
might yet be a Londoner. Well, if we ever do move, we have encumbrances the
less to impede us: all our furniture has faded under the auctioneer’s
hammer, going for nothing like the tarnishd frippery of the prodigal, and we
have only a spoon or two left to bless us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and
naked we must go out of it. I would live in London shirtless, bookless.
Henry Crabb is at Rome, advices to
that effect have reach’d Bury. But by solemn legacy he bequeathed at
parting (whether he should live or die) a Turkey of Suffolk to be sent every
succeeding Xmas to us and divers other friends. What a genuine old
Bachelor’s action! I fear he will find the air of Italy too classic. His
station is in the Hartz forest, his soul is Bego’ethed. Miss Kelly
we never see; Talfourd not this
half-year; the latter flourishes, but the exact number of his children, God
forgive me, I have utterly forgotten, we single people are often out in our
count there. Shall I say two? One darling I know they have lost within a
twelvemonth, but scarce known to me by sight, and that was a second child lost.
We see scarce anybody. We have just now Emma with us for her holydays: you remember her playing at brag
with Mr. Quillinan at poor Monkhouse’s! She is grown an agreeable
young woman; she sees what I write, so you may understand me with limitations.
She was our inmate for a twelvemonth, grew natural to us, and then they told us
it was best for her to go out as a Governess, and so she went out, and we were
only two of us, and our pleasant house-mate is changed to an occasional
visitor. If they want my sister to go out (as
they call it) there will be only one of us. Heaven keep us all from this
acceding to Unity!
Can I cram loves enough to you all in this little O? Excuse
particularizing.
C. L.
LETTER 476 (continued) II.—MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
MY dear Miss
Wordsworth, Charles has
left me space to fill up with my own poor scribble; which I must do as well as
I can, being quite out of practise, and after he has been reading his queer
letter out to us I can hardly put down in a plain style all I had to tell you,
how pleasant your handwriting was to me. He has lumped you all together in one
rude remembrance at the end, but I beg to send my love individually and by name
to Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth, to Miss
Hutchinson, whom we often talk of, and think of as being with
you always, to the dutiful good daughter and patient amanuensis Dora, and even to Johanna, whom we have not seen, if she will accept it.
Charles has told you of my long illness and our
present settlement, which I assure you is very quiet and comfortable to me, and
to him too, if he would own it. I am very sorry we shall not see John, but I never go to town, nor my brother
but at his quarterly visits at the India House, and when he does, he finds it
melancholy, so many of our old friends being dead or dispersed, and the very
streets, he says altering every day. Many thanks for your Letter and the nice
news in it, which I should have replied to more at large than I see he has
done. I am sure it deserved it. He has not said a word about your intentions
for Rome, which I sincerely wish you health one day to accomplish. In that case
we may meet by the way. We are so glad to hear dear littleWilliam is doing
well. If you knew how happy your letters made us you would write I know more
frequently. Pray think of this. How chearfully should we pay the postage every week.
Your affectionate
Mary Lamb.
Note
[Now for the first time printed in full, with Mary Lamb’s addition.
“Baucis and Baucida.” A slip, I suppose, for Philemon and Baucis
(Ovid, Metamorphoses).
“Eloisa . . . Paraclete.” The hermitage
to which Abelard, Eloisa’s lover, retired became a monastic school known as Paraclete.
Redgauntlet
dated from 1824.
“In a calenture.” A calenture is a form of fever at
sea in which the sufferer believes himself to be surrounded by green fields, and often leap
overboard. Wordsworth describes one in “The Brothers.”
“From rich Cathay.” A recollection of a passage in
The Seasons,
“Winter,” 807-809:— the caravan Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay With news of human kind.
“The collyrium of Tobias.” See
Tobit xi. 11-13. Tobias restored his
father’s sight with the gall of a fish.
“A
Recluse”—Wordsworth’s
promised poem, that was never completed. First printed in 1888.
“Henry Crabb.” Crabb Robinson was a personal friend of Goethe’s. He had spent some days with him at Weimar
in the summer of 1829. Goethe told Robinson that
he admired Lamb’s sonnet “The Family Name.”
“Johanna.” Joanna
Hutchinson, Mrs. Wordsworth’s
sister. Joanna of the laugh.
“John.” John Wordsworth, Wordsworth’s
eldest son, was now twenty-six; William,
Wordsworth’s second son, no longer little, was nineteen.]
LETTER 477 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. 25 February 1830.]’
DEAR B. B.—To
reply to you by return of post, I must gobble up my dinner, and dispatch this
in propriâ Personâ to the office, to be in in time. So take
it from me hastily, that you are perfectly welcome to furnish A. C. with the scrap, which I had almost
forgotten writing. The more my character comes to be known, the less my
veracity will come to be suspected. Time every day clears up some suspected
narrative of Herodotus, Bruce, and others of us great Travellers. Why,
that Joseph Paice was as real a person
as Joseph Hume, and a great deal
pleasanter. A careful observer of life, Bernard, has no
need to invent. Nature romances it for him. Dinner plates rattle, and I
positively shall incur indigestion by carrying it half concocted to the Post
House. Let me con-gratulate you on the Spring
coming in, and do you in return condole with me for the Winter going out. When
the old one goes, seldome comes a better. I dread the prospect of Summer, with
his all day long days. No need of his assistance to make country places dull.
With fire and candle light, I can dream myself in Holborn. With lightsome skies
shining in to bed time, I can not. This Meseck, and these tents of Kedar—I
would dwell in the skirts of Jericho rather, and think every blast of the
coming in Mail a Ram’s Horn. Give me old London at Fire and Plague times,
rather than these tepid gales, healthy country air, and purposeless exercise.
Leg of mutton absolutely on the table.
Take our hasty loves and short farewell.
C. L.
Note
[A. C. was Allan
Cunningham, who wanted Lamb’s
letter on Blake (see page 642) for his Lives of the
Painters. It was not, however, used there until included in Mrs. Charles Heaton’s edition in
Bohn’s Library.
“Bruce”—the Abyssinian
explorer, whom the Christ’s Hospital boys used to emulate, as Lamb tells us in the
Elia essay on
Newspapers.
“Joseph Paice”—a
Director of the South-Sea Company and Lamb’s
first employer, of whom he writes in the Elia essay on “Modern Gallantry” (see notes to Vol. II., page
361).
“This Meseck”—“Woe is me that I sojourn in
Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar” (Psalms
cxx. 5). Lamb was very fond of this verse. See also
Joshua vi.
Mr. Hazlitt prints a letter in his
Bohn edition to Moxon,
which he dates February 21, 1831 (should be 1830), saying that a letter has just arrived
from Mrs. Williams indicating that Miss Isola was not well and must have a long holiday. The
illness increased very rapidly, becoming a serious attack of brain fever.]
LETTER 478 CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
[February 26, 1830.]
DEAR Madam,—May God bless you for your attention to
our poor Emma! I am so shaken with your
sad news I can scarce write. She is too ill to be removed at present; but we
can only say that if she is spared, when that can be practicable, we have
always a home for her. Speak to her of it, when she is capable of understanding, and let me
conjure you to let us know from day to day, the state she is in. But one line
is all we crave. Nothing we can do for her, that shall not be done. We shall be
in the terriblest suspense. We had no notion she was going to be ill. A line
from anybody in your house will much oblige us. I feel for the situation this
trouble places you in.
Can I go to her aunt,
or do anything? I do not know what to offer. We are in great distress. Pray
relieve us, if you can, by somehow letting us know. I will fetch her here, or
anything. Your kindness can never be forgot. Pray excuse my abruptness. I
hardly know what I write. And take our warmest thanks. Hoping to hear
something, I remain, dear Madam,
Yours most faithfully, C. Lamb.
Our grateful respects to Mr.
Williams.
LETTER 479 CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
Enfield, 1 March, 1830.
DEAR Madam,—We cannot thank you enough. Your two
words “much better” were so considerate and good. The good news
affected my sister to an agony of tears; but they have relieved us from such a
weight. We were ready to expect the worst, and were hardly able to bear the
good hearing. You speak so kindly of her, too, and think she may be able to
resume her duties. We were prepared, as far as our humble means would have
enabled us, to have taken her from all duties. But, far better for the dear
girl it is that she should have a prospect of being useful.
I am sure you will pardon my writing again; for my heart is
so full, that it was impossible to refrain. Many thanks for your offer to write
again, should any change take place. I dare not yet be quite out of fear, the
alteration has been so sudden. But I will hope you will have a respite from the
trouble of writing again. I know no expression to convey a sense of your
kindness. We were in such a state expecting the post. I had almost resolved to
come as near you as Bury; but my sister’s health does not permit my
absence on melancholy occasions. But, O, how happy will she be to part with me,
when I shall hear the agreeable news that I may come and fetch her. She shall
be as quiet as possible. No restorative means shall be wanting to restore her
back to you well and comfortable.
She will make up for this sad interruption of her young
friend’s studies. I am sure she will—she must—after you have spared her
for a little time. Change of scene may do very much for her. I think this last
proof of your kindness to her in her desolate state can hardly make her love
and respect you more than she has ever done. O, how glad shall we be to return
her fit for her occupation. Madam, I trouble you with my nonsense; but you
would forgive me, if you knew how light-hearted you have made two poor souls at
Enfield, that were gasping for news of their poor friend. I will pray for you
and Mr. Williams. Give our very best respects to him, and accept our thanks. We
are happier than we hardly know how to bear. God bless you! My very kindest
congratulations to Miss Humphreys.
Believe me, dear Madam, Your ever obliged servant, C. Lamb.
LETTER 480 CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
March 4th, 1830.
DEAR Sarah,—I was meditating to come and see you,
but I am unable for the walk. We are both very unwell, and under affliction for
poor Emma, who has had a very dangerous
brain fever, and is lying very ill at Bury, from whence I expect a summons to
fetch her. We are very sorry for your confinement. Any books I have are at your
service. I am almost, I may say quite, sure that letters
to India pay no postage, and may go by the regular Post Office, now in St.
Martin’s le Grand. I think any receiving house would take them—
I wish I could confirm your hopes about Dick Norris. But it is quite a dream. Some old
Bencher of his surname is made Treasurer for the year, I suppose, which is an
annual office. Norris was Sub-Treasurer, quite a different
thing. They were pretty well in the Summer, since when we have heard nothing of
them. Mrs. Reynolds is better than she
has been for years; she is with a disagreeable woman that she has taken a
mighty fancy to out of spite to a rival woman she used to live and quarrel
with; she grows quite fat, they tell me, and may live as long as I do, to be a
tormenting rent-charge to my diminish’d income. We go on pretty
comfortably in our new plan. I will come and have a talk with you when poor
Emma’s affair is settled, and will bring books. At present I am weak, and could hardly bring my
legs home yesterday after a much shorter stroll than to Northaw. Mary has got her bonnet on for a short
expedition. May you get better, as the Spring comes on. She sends her best love
with mine.
C. L.
Note
[Addressed to “Mrs. Hazlitt,
Mrs. Tomlinson’s, Northaw, near Potter’s Bar,
Herts.”
Mrs. Hazlitt was in later years a sufferer from
rheumatism. Dick Norris was the son of Randal Norris (see Letter 386). He had retired to Widford.
Mrs. Reynolds, Lamb’s old schoolmistress and dependant, we have met.]
LETTER 481 CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
Enfield, 5 Mar., 1830.
DEAR Madam,—I feel greatly obliged by your letter of
Tuesday, and should not have troubled you again so soon, but that you express a
wish to hear that our anxiety was relieved by the assurances in it. You have
indeed given us much comfort respecting our young friend, but considerable
uneasiness respecting your own health and spirits, which must have suffered
under such attention. Pray believe me that we shall wait in quiet hope for the
time when I shall receive the welcome summons to come and relieve you from a
charge, which you have executed with such tenderness. We desire nothing so much
as to exchange it with you. Nothing shall be wanting on my part to remove her
with the best judgment I can, without (I hope) any necessity for depriving you
of the services of your valuable housekeeper. Until the day comes, we entreat
that you will spare yourself the trouble of writing, which we should be ashamed
to impose upon you in your present weak state. Not hearing from you, we shall
be satisfied in believing that there has been no relapse. Therefore we beg that
you will not add to your troubles by unnecessary, though most kind,
correspondence. Till I have the pleasure of thanking you personally, I beg you
to accept these written acknowledgments of all your kindness. With respects to
Mr. Williams and sincere prayers for both your healths, I remain,
Your ever obliged servant, C. Lamb.
My sister joins me in respects and thanks.
LETTER 482 CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN
March 8th, 1830.
MY dear G.,—Your friend Battin (for I knew him
immediately by the smooth satinity of his style) must excuse me for advocating
the cause of his friends in Spitalfields. The fact is, I am retained by the
Norwich people, and have already appeared in their paper under the signatures
of “Lucius Sergius,”
“Bluff,”
“Broad-Cloth,”
“No-Trade-to-the-Woollen-Trade,”
“Anti-plush,” &c., in defence of
druggets and long camblets. And without this pre-engagement, I feel I should
naturally have chosen a side opposite to ——, for in the silken seemingness of
his nature there is that which offends me. My flesh tingles at such
caterpillars. He shall not crawl me over. Let him and his workmen sing the old
burthen, “Heigh ho, ye weavers!” for any aid I shall offer them in this emergency. I was over Saint
Luke’s the other day with my friend Tuthill, and mightily pleased with one of his contrivances for
the comfort and amelioration of the students. They have double cells, in which
a pair may lie feet to feet horizontally, and chat the time away as rationally
as they can. It must certainly be more sociable for them these warm raving
nights. The right-hand truckle in one of these friendly recesses, at present
vacant, was preparing, I understood, for Mr.
Irving. Poor fellow! it is time he removed from Pentonville. I
followed him as far as to Highbury the other day, with a mob at his heels,
calling out upon Ermigiddon, who I suppose is some Scotch moderator. He
squinted out his favourite eye last Friday, in the fury of possession, upon a
poor woman’s shoulders that was crying matches, and has not missed it.
The companion truck, as far as I could measure it with my eye, would
conveniently fit a person about the length of Coleridge, allowing for a reasonable drawing up of the feet,
not at all painful. Does he talk of moving this quarter? You and I have too
much sense to trouble ourselves with revelations; marry, to the same in Greek
you may have something professionally to say. Tell C. that
he was to come and see us some fine day. Let it be before he moves, for in his
new quarters he will necessarily be confined in his conversation to his brother
prophet. Conceive the two Rabbis foot to foot, for there are no
Gamaliels there to affect a humbler posture! All are
masters in that Patmos, where the law is perfect equality—Latmos, I should
rather say, for they will be
Luna’s twin darlings; her affection will be ever at the full. Well; keep
your brains moist with gooseberry this mad March, for the devil of exposition
seeketh dry places.
C. L.
Note
[The letter is assigned to the Rev. James
Gillman by some editors; but I think that a mistake. See the reference below
to a medical matter. Who Battin was I know not; but he seems to have
been interested in the Spitalfields weavers to the detriment of the Norwich.
“Heigh ho, ye weavers!” In “The Two Noble Kinsmen,” Act II., Scene 3, we
have— Ha, boys, heigh for the weavers! Weavers proverbially sang at their work.
Tuthill, whom we have met, was one of the physicians
at St. Luke’s Hospital for the insane.
“He squinted out . . .” Irving had sight only in one eye, an obliquity caused, it is suggested, by
lying when a baby in a wooden cradle, the sides of which prevented the other from gathering
light.
“To the same in Greek.” An atrocious pun, which I
leave to the reader to discover. Gillman was a
doctor.
“Latmos”—the mountain where Endymion was visited by Diana, or
Luna.]
LETTER 483 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM AYRTON
Mr. Westwood’s, Chase Side, Enfield, 14th March, 1830.
MY dear Ayrton,—Your letter, which was only not so pleasant as your
appearance would have been, has revived some old images; Phillips (not the Colonel), with his few hairs
bristling up at the charge of a revoke, which he declares impossible; the old
Captain’s significant nod over the right shoulder (was it not?);
Mrs. Burney’s determined
questioning of the score, after the game was absolutely gone to the devil, the
plain but hospitable cold boiled-beef suppers at sideboard; all which fancies,
redolent of middle age and strengthful spirits, come across us ever and anon in
this vale of deliberate senectitude, ycleped Enfield.
You imagine a deep gulf between you and us; and there is a
pitiable hiatus in kind between St.
James’s Park and this extremity of Middlesex. But the mere distance in
turnpike roads is a trifle. The roof of a coach swings you down in an hour or
two. We have a sure hot joint on a Sunday, and when had we better? I suppose
you know that ill health has obliged us to give up housekeeping; but we have an
asylum at the very next door—only twenty-four inches further from town, which
is not material in a country expedition—where a table d’hôte is kept for us, without trouble on
our parts, and we adjourn after dinner, when one of the old world (old friends)
drops casually down among us. Come and find us out, and seal our judicious
change with your approbation, whenever the whim bites, or the sun prompts. No
need of announcement, for we are sure to be at home.
I keep putting off the subject of my answer. In truth I am
not in spirits at present to see Mr.
Murray on such a business; but pray offer him my acknowledgments
and an assurance that I should like at least one of his propositions, as I have
so much additional matter for the Specimens, as
might make two volumes in all, or one (new edition)
omitting such better known authors as Beaumont and Fletcher,
Jonson, &c.
But we are both in trouble at present. A very dear young
friend of ours, who passed her Christmas holidays here, has been taken
dangerously ill with a fever, from which she is very precariously recovering,
and I expect a summons to fetch her when she is well enough to bear the journey
from Bury. It is Emma Isola, with whom
we got acquainted at our first visit to your sister at Cambridge, and she has been an occasional inmate with
us—and of late years much more frequently—ever since. While she is in this
danger, and till she is out of it, and here in a probable way to recovery, I
feel that I have no spirits for an engagement of any kind. It has been a
terrible shock to us; therefore I beg that you will make my handsomest excuses
to Mr. Murray.
Our very kindest loves to Mrs.
A. and the younger A.’s.
Your unforgotten, C. Lamb.
Note
[“Phillips.” This would be Edward
Phillips, who, I think, succeeded Rickman as secretary to Abbot (afterwards Lord Colchester), the Speaker. Colonel Erasmus Phillips we have also met (see page 346). The Captain was
Captain Burney.
Mr. Murray’s propositions. I presume that
Murray had, through Ayrton,
suggested either the republication of the Dramatic Specimens, 1808, in one volume, or in two
volumes, with the Garrick Extracts added. The plan came to nothing. Moxon published them in the two volume style in 1835.]
LETTER 484 CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
[Dated at end: March 22 (1830).]
DEAR Madam,—Once more I have to return you thanks
for a very kind letter. It has gladdened us very much to hear that we may have
hope to see our young friend so soon, and through your kind nursing so well
recovered. I sincerely hope that your own health and spirits will not have been
shaken: you have had a sore trial indeed, and greatly do we feel indebted to
you for all which you have undergone. If I hear nothing from you in the mean
time, I shall secure myself a place in the Cornwallis Coach for Monday. It will
not be at all necessary that I shall be met at Bury, as I can well find my way
to the Rectory, and I beg that you will not inconvenience yourselves by such
attention. Accordingly as I find Miss
Isola able to bear the journey, I intend to take the care of her
by the same stage or by chaises perhaps, dividing the journey; but exactly as
you shall judge fit. It is our misfortune that long journeys do not agree with
my sister, who would else have taken this care upon herself, perhaps more
properly. It is quite out of the question to rob you of the services of any of
your domestics. I cannot think of it. But if in your opinion a female attendant
would be requisite on the journey, and if you or Mr. Williams would feel more comfortable
by her being in charge of two, I will most gladly engage one of her nurses or
any young person near you, that you can recommend; for my object is to remove
her in the way that shall be most satisfactory to yourselves.
On the subject of the young people that you are interesting
yourselves about, I will have the pleasure to talk to you, when I shall see
you. I live almost out of the world and out of the sphere of being useful; but
no pains of mine shall be spared, if but a prospect opens of doing a service.
Could I do all I wish, and I indeed have grown helpless to myself and others,
it must not satisfy the arrears of obligation I owe to Mr. Williams and yourself for all your
kindness.
I beg you will turn in your mind and consider in what most
comfortable way Miss Isola can leave
your house, and I will implicitly follow your suggestions. What you have done
for her can never be effaced from our memories, and I would have you part with
her in the way that would best satisfy yourselves.
I am afraid of impertinently extending my letter, else I
feel I have not said half what I would say. So, dear madam, till I have the
pleasure of seeing you both, of whose kindness I have heard so much before, I respectfully take my leave with
our kindest love to your poor patient and most sincere regards for the health
and happiness of Mr. Williams and
yourself. May God bless you.
Ch. Lamb. Enfield, Monday, 22 March.
LETTER 485 CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
Enfield, 2 Apr., 1830. DEAR Madam
I have great pleasure in letting you know that Miss Isola has suffered very little from
fatigue on her long journey. I am ashamed to say that I came home rather the
more tired of the two. But I am a very unpractised traveller. She has had two
tolerable nights’ sleeps since, and is decidedly not worse than when we
left you. I remembered the Magnesia according to your directions, and promise
that she shall be kept very quiet, never forgetting that she is still an
invalid. We found my Sister very well in
health, only a little impatient to see her; and, after a few hysterical tears
for gladness, all was comfortable again. We arrived here from Epping between
five and six. The incidents of our journey were trifling, but you bade me tell
them. We had then in the coach a rather talkative Gentleman, but very civil,
all the way, and took up a servant maid at Stamford, going to a sick mistress.
To the latter, a participation in the hospitalities of
your nice rusks and sandwiches proved agreeable, as it did to my companion, who
took merely a sip of the weakest wine and water with them. The former engaged me in a discourse for full twenty miles
on the probable advantages of Steam Carriages, which being merely
problematical, I bore my part in with some credit, in spite of my totally
un-engineer-like faculties. But when somewhere about Stanstead he put an
unfortunate question to me as to the “probability of its turning out a
good turnip season;” and when I, who am still less of an
agriculturist than a steam-philosopher, not knowing a turnip from a potato
ground, innocently made answer that I believed it depended very much upon
boiled legs of mutton, my unlucky reply set Miss Isola a
laughing to a degree that disturbed her tranquility for the only moment in our
journey. I am afraid my credit sank very low with my other fellow-traveller,
who had thought he had met with a well-informed
passenger, which is an accident so desirable in a Stage Coach. We were
rather less communicative, but still friendly, the rest of the way. How I employed myself between
Epping and Enfield the poor verses in the front of my paper may inform you,
which you may please to Christen an Acrostic in a Cross Road, and which I wish
were worthier of the Lady they refer to. But I trust you will plead my pardon
to her on a subject so delicate as a Lady’s good name. Your candour must
acknowledge that they are written strait. And now dear Madam, I have left
myself hardly space to express my sense of the friendly reception I found at
Fornham. Mr. Williams will tell you that
we had the pleasure of a slight meeting with him on the road, where I could
almost have told him, but that it seemed ungracious, that such had been your
hospitality, that I scarcely missed the good Master of the Family at Fornham,
though heartily I should [have] rejoiced to have made a little longer
acquaintance with him. I will say nothing of our deeper obligations to both of
you, because I think we agreed at Fornham, that gratitude may be over-exacted
on the part of the obliging, and over-expressed on the part of the obliged,
person. My Sister and Miss Isola join in respects to
Mr. Williams and yourself, and I beg to be remembered
kindly to the Miss Hammonds and the two gentlemen whom I
had the good fortune to meet at your house. I have not forgotten the Election
in which you are interesting yourself, and the little that I can, I will do
immediately. Miss Isola will have the pleasure of writing
to you next week, and we shall hope, at your leisure, to hear of your own
health, etc. I am, Dear Madam, with great respect,
your obliged Charles Lamb.
[Added in Miss Isola’s hand:] I must just add a line
to beg you will let us hear from you, my dear Mrs. Williams. I have just received the forwarded letter.
Fornham we have talked about constantly, and I felt quite strange at this
home the first day. I will attend to all you said, my dear Madam.
Note
[I do not know which of Lamb’s acrostics was the one in question. Possibly this, on Mrs. Williams’ youngest daughter, Louisa
Clare Williams:— Least Daughter, but not least beloved, of Grace! O frown not on a stranger, who from place Unknown and distant these few lines hath penn’d. I but report what thy Instructress Friend So oft hath told us of thy gentle heart. A pupil most affectionate thou art, Careful to learn what elder years impart. Louisa—Clare—by which name shall I
call thee? A prettier pair of names sure ne’er was found, Resembling thy own sweetness in sweet sound. Ever calm peace and innocence befal thee! See Vol. V. of this edition, pages 43, 45, 60, 61 and 94.]
LETTER 486 CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
Enfield, Good Friday [April 9, 1830].
P.S.—I am the worst folder-up of a letter in the world,
except certain Hottentots, in the land of Caffre, who never fold up their
letters at all, writing very badly upon skins, &c.
DEAR Madam,—I do assure you that your verses
gratified me very much, and my sister is quite proud of them. For the first
time in my life I congratulated myself upon the shortness and meanness of my
name. Had it been Schwartzenberg or Esterhazy, it would have put you to some
puzzle. I am afraid I shall sicken you of acrostics; but this last was written
to order. I beg you to have inserted in your county paper something like this
advertisement. “To the nobility, gentry, and others, about
Bury.—C. Lamb respectfully
informs his friends and the public in general, that he is leaving off
business in the acrostic line, as he is going into an entirely new line.
Rebuses and charades done as usual, and upon the old terms. Also, Epitaphs
to suit the memory of any person deceased.” I thought I had
adroitly escaped the rather unpliable name of
“Williams,” curtailing your poor daughters
to their proper surnames; but it seems you would not let me off so easily. If
these trifles amuse you, I am paid. Tho really ’tis an operation too much
like—“A, apple-pye; B, bit it.” To make amends, I
request leave to lend you the “Excursion,” and to recommend, in
particular, the “Churchyard Stories,” in
the seventh book, I think. They will strengthen the tone of your mind after its
weak diet on acrostics. Miss Isola is
writing, and will tell you that we are going on very comfortably. Her sister is
just come. She blames my last verses, as being more written on Mr. Williams than on yourself; but how should
I have parted whom a Superior Power has brought together? I beg you will
jointly accept of our best respects, and pardon your obsequious if not
troublesome Correspondent,
C. L.
Note
[Mrs. Williams’ acrostic is
no longer preserved. This was Lamb’s effort:—
Go little Poem, and present Respectful terms of compliment; A gentle lady bids thee speak! Courteous is she, tho’ thou be weak— Evoke from Heaven as thick as manna Joy after joy on Grace
Joanna: On Fornham’s Glebe and Pasture land A blessing pray. Long, long may stand, Not touched by Time, the Rectory blithe; No grudging churl dispute his Tithe; At Easter be the offerings due With cheerful spirit paid; each pew In decent order filled; no noise Loud intervene to drown the voice, Learning, or wisdom of the Teacher; Impressive be the Sacred Preacher, And strict his notes on holy page; May young and old from age to age Salute, and still point out, “The good man’s
Parsonage!”] LETTER 487 CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN
[? Early Spring, 1830.]
DEAR Gillman,—Pray do you, or S. T.
C., immediately write to say you have received back the golden
works of the dear, fine, silly old angel, which I part from, bleeding, and to
say how the Winter has used you all.
It is our intention soon, weather permitting, to come over
for a day at Highgate; for beds we will trust to the Gate-House, should you be
full: tell me if we may come casually, for in this change of climate there is
no naming a day for walking. With best loves to Mrs. Gillman, &c.
Yours, mopish, but in health,
C. Lamb.
I shall be uneasy till I hear of Fuller’s safe arrival.
Note
[See Letter 473. The “dear, fine, silly old angel”
was Thomas Fuller.]
LETTERS 488 AND 489 CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES VALE ASBURY
[? April, 1830.]
DEAR Sir—Some draughts and boluses have been brought
here which we conjecture were meant for the young lady whom you saw this
morning, though they are labelled for Miss ISOLA
LAMB. No such person is known on the Chase Side, and she is fearful of taking medicines which may have been made up
for another patient. She begs me to say that she was born an Isola and christened
Emma. Moreover that she is Italian by birth, and that
her ancestors were from Isola Bella (Fair Island) in the kingdom of Naples. She
has never changed her name and rather mournfully adds that she has no prospect
at present of doing so. She is literally I. SOLA, or single, at present.
Therefore she begs that the obnoxious monosyllable may be omitted on future
Phials,—an innocent syllable enough, you’ll say, but she has no claim to
it. It is the bitterest pill of the seven you have sent her. When a lady loses
her good name, what is to become of her? Well she must swallow it as well as
she can, but begs the dose may not be repeated.
Yours faithfully, Charles Lamb(not Isola).
Note
[Asbury was a doctor at Enfield.
I append another letter to Dr.
Asbury, without date:—]
CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES VALE ASBURY
DEAR Sir, It is an observation of a wise man that
“moderation is best in all things.” I cannot agree with
him “in liquor.” There is a smoothness and oiliness in wine
that makes it go down by a natural channel, which I am positive was made for
that descending. Else, why does not wine choke us? could Nature have made that
sloping lane, not to facilitate the down-going? She does nothing in vain. You
know that better than I. You know how often she has helped you at a dead lift,
and how much better entitled she is to a fee than yourself sometimes, when you
carry off” the credit. Still there is something due to manners and
customs, and I should apologise to you and Mrs. Asbury for
being absolutely carried home upon a man’s shoulders thro’ Silver
Street, up Parson’s Lane, by the Chapels (which might have taught me
better), and then to be deposited like a dead log at Gaffar Westwood’s,
who it seems does not “insure” against intoxication. Not that the
mode of conveyance is objectionable. On the contrary, it is more easy than a
one-horse chaise. Ariel in the “Tempest” says “On a Bat’s back do I fly, after sunset merrily.”
Now I take it that Ariel must
sometimes have stayed out late of nights. Indeed, he pretends that
“where the bee sucks, there lurks he,” as much as to say
that his suction is as innocent as that little innocent (but damnably stinging
when he is provok’d) winged creature. But I take it, that Ariel was fond of metheglin, of which the Bees are notorious Brewers. But then you
will say: What a shocking sight to see a middle-aged gentleman-and-a-half
riding upon a Gentleman’s back up Parson’s Lane at midnight.
Exactly the time for that sort of conveyance, when nobody can see him, nobody
but Heaven and his own conscience; now Heaven makes fools, and don’t
expect much from her own creation; and as for conscience, She and I have long
since come to a compromise. I have given up false modesty, and she allows me to
abate a little of the true. I like to be liked, but I don’t care about
being respected. I don’t respect myself. But, as I was saying, I thought
he would have let me down just as we got to Lieutenant
Barker’s Coal-shed (or emporium) but by a cunning jerk I
eased myself, and righted my posture. I protest, I thought myself in a
palanquin, and never felt myself so grandly carried. It was a slave under me.
There was I, all but my reason. And what is reason? and what is the loss of it?
and how often in a day do we do without it, just as well? Reason is only
counting, two and two makes four. And if on my passage home, I thought it made
five, what matter? Two and two will just make four, as it always did, before I
took the finishing glass that did my business. My sister has begged me to write
an apology to Mrs. A. and you for disgracing your party;
now it does seem to me, that I rather honoured your party, for every one that
was not drunk (and one or two of the ladies, I am sure, were not) must have
been set off greatly in the contrast to me. I was the scapegoat. The soberer
they seemed. By the way is magnesia good on these occasions? iii pol: med: sum: ante noct: in rub: can:. I am no
licentiate, but know enough of simples to beg you to send me a draught after
this model. But still you will say (or the men and maids at your house will
say) that it is not a seemly sight for an old gentleman to go home picka-back.
Well, may be it is not. But I never studied grace. I take it to be a mere
superficial accomplishment. I regard more the internal acquisitions. The great
object after supper is to get home, and whether that is obtained in a
horizontal posture or perpendicular (as foolish men and apes affect for
dignity) I think is little to the purpose. The end is always greater than the
means. Here I am, able to compose a sensible rational apology, and what
signifies how I got here? I have just sense enough to remember I was very happy
last night, and to thank our kind host and hostess, and that’s sense
enough, I hope.
Charles Lamb.
N.B.—What is good for a desperate head-ache? Why,
patience, and a determination not to mind being miserable all day long. And
that I have made my mind up to. So, here goes. It is better than not being
alive at all, which I might have been, had your man toppled me down at Lieut.
Barker’s Coal-shed. My sister sends her sober
compliments to Mrs. A. She is not much the worse.
Yours truly, C. Lamb.
Note
[“Ariel.” In Letter 174,
on page 898, Lamb confesses similarly to a similar
escapade. And in his Elia essay “Rejoicings on the New Year’s Coming of Age,” he sends Ash Wednesday
home in the same manner. On page 938 will be found another letter of similar character.]
LETTER 490 CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
Enfield, Tuesday [April 21, 1830].
DEAR Madam,—I have ventured upon some lines, which
combine my old acrostic talent (which you first found out) with my new
profession of epitaph-monger. As you did not please to say, when you would die,
I have left a blank space for the date. May kind heaven be a long time in
filling it up. At least you cannot say that these lines are not about you,
though not much to the purpose. We were very sorry to hear that you have not
been very well, and hope that a little excursion may revive you. Miss Isola is thankful for her added day; but
I verily think she longs to see her young friends once more, and will regret
less than ever the end of her holydays. She cannot be going on more quietly
than she is doing here, and you will perceive amendment.
I hope all her little commissions will all be brought home
to your satisfaction. When she returns, we purpose seeing her to Epping on her
journey. We have had our proportion of fine weather and some pleasant walks,
and she is stronger, her appetite good, but less wolfish than at first, which
we hold a good sign. I hope Mr. Wing will approve of its
abatement. She desires her very kindest respects to Mr. Williams and yourself, and wishes to rejoin you. My sister
and myself join in respect, and pray tell Mr.
Donne, with our compliments, that we shall be disappointed, if
we do not see him.
This letter being very neatly written, I am very unwilling
that Emma should club any of her
disproportionate scrawl to deface it.
Your obliged servant, C. Lamb.
Note
[Addressed to “Mrs.
Williams, W. B. Donne, Esq.,
Matteshall, East Dereham, Norfolk.”
Of Mr. Wing I know nothing, but Mr.
Donne was William Bodham Donne
(1807-1882), the friend of Edward FitzGerald, and
Examiner of Plays.
This was Lamb’s acrostic-epitaph on Mrs. Williams:— Grace Joanna here doth lie: Reader, wonder not that I Ante-date her hour of rest. Can I thwart her wish exprest, Ev’n unseemly though the laugh Jesting with an Epitaph? On her bones the turf lie lightly, And her rise again be brightly! No dark stain be found upon her— No, there will not, on mine honour— Answer that at least I can. Would that I, thrice happy man, In as spotless garb might rise, Light as she will climb the skies, Leaving the dull earth behind, In a car more swift than wind. All her errors, all her failings, (Many they were not) and ailings, Sleep secure from Envy’s railings.
Here should come an undated note from Lamb to Basil Montagu, in which
Lamb asks for help for Hone
in his Coffee-House. “If you can help a worthy man you will have two worthy men obliged to you.” Hone, having
fallen upon bad times, Lamb helped in the scheme to establish him in
the Grasshopper Coffee-House, at 13 Grace-church Street (see next letter).]
LETTER 491 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
May 10, 1830.
DEAR Southey,—My friend Hone, whom
you would like for a friend, I found deeply impressed
with your generous notice of him in your beautiful “Life of Bunyan,” which I am just now
full of. He has written to you for leave to publish a certain good-natured
letter. I write not this to enforce his request, for we are fully aware that
the refusal of such publication would be quite consistent with all that is good
in your character. Neither he nor I expect it
from you, nor exact it; but if you would consent to it, you would have me
obliged by it, as well as him. He is just now in a critical situation: kind
friends have opened a coffee-house for him in the City, but their means have
not extended to the purchase of coffee-pots, credit for Reviews, newspapers,
and other paraphernalia. So I am sitting in the skeleton of a possible divan.
What right I have to interfere, you best know. Look on me as a dog who went
once temporarily insane, and bit you, and now begs for a crust. Will you set
your wits to a dog?
Our object is to open a subscription, which my friends of
the “Times” are most
willing to forward for him, but think that a leave from you to publish would
aid it.
But not an atom of respect or kindness will or shall it
abate in either of us if you decline it. Have this strongly in your mind.
Those “Every-Day” and “Table” Books will be a treasure a
hundred years hence; but they have failed to make Hone’s fortune.
Here his wife and all his children are about me, gaping for
coffee customers; but how should they come in, seeing no pot boiling!
Enough of Hone. I saw
Coleridge a day or two since. He has
had some severe attack, not paralytic; but, if I had not heard of it, I should
not have found it out. He looks, and especially speaks, strong. How are all the
Wordsworths and all the Southeys?
whom I am obliged to you if you have not brought up haters of the name of
C. Lamb.
P.S.—I have gone lately into the acrostic line. I
find genius (such as I had) declines with me, but I get clever. Do you know
anybody that wants charades, or such things, for Albums? I do ’em at
so much a sheet. Perhaps an epigram (not a very happy-gram) I did for a
school-boy yesterday may amuse.
I pray Jove he may not get a flogging
for any false quantity; but ’tis, with one exception, the only Latin
verses I have made for forty years, and I did it “to order.” SUUM CUIQUE Adsciscit sibi divitias et opes alienas Fur, rapiens, spolians, quod mihi, quod-que
tibi, Proprium erat, temnens haec verba, Meum-que, Suum-que; Omne suum est: tandem Cui-que Suum tribuit. Dat laqueo collum; vestes, vah! carnifici dat; Sese Diabolo: sic bene: Cuique Suum.
I write from Hone’s, therefore Mary cannot send her love to Mrs. Southey, but I do.
Yours ever, C. L.
Note
[Major’s edition of The Pilgrim’s
Progress, mentioned in the letter to Barton on page 779, was issued in 1830 with a memoir of Bunyan by Southey. It was reviewed in The Times for May 7, 1830, I
think probably by Lamb, in the following terms:—
The public is aware that the unexhausted diligence and unwearied pen of Mr. Southey have produced a new and excellent edition
of the celebrated Pilgrim’s Progress, with the Life of the Author prefixed.
This Life is, no doubt, an interesting work, though we wish the author, both in that
and in the account, which is attributed to him, of the founder of the Jesuits,
contained in a recent periodical work, had taken more time. The narrative in both is
hasty and tumultuary, if we may use the latter expression: there is no time or room for
reflection; and when a reflection comes, it is so mixed and jambed in with the story,
or with quotations from the works or words of the respective heroes of the history,
that it escapes unobserved. Could we, without grievous offence, recommend, both to
Mr. Southey and Sir Walter
Scott, to recollect the man spoken of by Horace?— “Etrusci Quale fuit Cassî, rapido ferventius amni, Ingenium, capsis quern fama est esse librisque Ambustum propriis.”—Sat.
i., 6i.
Yet still, as we said above, the Life of
Bunyan is an interesting work. How different the origin of all the sects and
their founders, from that of our sober, staid, and, we trust, permanent establishment,
and the learned and pious reformers from whom it sprang!
But that for which we chiefly notice this work of Mr.
Southey, is the very last sentence in it, wherein is contained his frank
and honourable recommendation (though not more than they deserve) of the works of one
whom the iron hand of oppression would have levelled with the dust:—
“In one of the volumes collected from various quarters, which were sent to me for
this purpose, I observe the name of W. Hone, and
notice it that I may take the opportunity of recommending his Every-Day Book and Table Book to
those who are interested in the preservation of our national and local customs. By
these very curious publications their compiler has rendered good service in an
important department of literature; and he may render yet more, if he obtain the
encouragement which he well deserves.”
Not only we, and the person mentioned in this paragraph, but all the friends of pure
English literature,—all the curious in old English customs,—in short, all intelligent
men, with the hearts of Englishmen in them,—owe Mr.
Southey their gratitude for this recommendation: it springs from a just
taste and right feeling united.
Hone wrote to The Times at once to thank both the paper and Southey for the compliment. A few days later, on May 21,
appeared an article in The Times
containing correspondence between Hone and
Southey. I quote the introduction, again probably the work of
Lamb, and Southey’s
letter (see Lamb’s to Hone on page 853):—
We alluded some days ago to the handsome notice of Mr.
Hone in Mr.
Southey’sLife of Bunyan. The following correspondence has
since been sent to us: it displays in an advantageous light the modesty of
Mr. Hone and the amiable and candid disposition of
Mr. Southey. The business, wholly foreign to Mr.
Hone’s former pursuits, which is alluded to in the letter, is
explained in an advertisement in this day’s paper.
* * * * * * * * * *
“To Mr. Hone, 13, Gracechurch-Street,
“Keswick, April 26.
“Sir,—Your letter has given me both pain
and pleasure. I am sorry to learn that you are still, in the worldly sense of
the word, an unfortunate man,—that you are withdrawn from pursuits which were
consonant to your habits and inclinations, and that a public expression of
respect and good-will, made in the hope that it might have been serviceable to
you, can have no such effect.
“When I observed your autograph in the
little book, I wrote to inquire of Mr.
Major whether it had come to his hands from you, directly or
indirectly, for my use, that, in that case, I might thank you for it. It proved
otherwise, but I would not lose an opportunity which I had wished for.
“Judging of you (as I would myself be
judged) by your works, I saw in the editor of the Every-Day and Table
Books a man who had applied himself with great diligence to
useful and meritorious pursuits. I thought that time, and reflection, and
affliction, (of which it was there seen that he had had his share,) had
contributed to lead him into this direction, which was also that of his better
mind. What alteration had been produced in his opinions it concerned not me to
inquire; here there were none but what were unexceptionable,—no feelings but
what were to be approved. From all that appeared, I supposed he had become
‘a sadder and a wiser man:’ I therefore wished him success in his
literary undertakings.
“The little parcel which you mention I
shall receive with pleasure.
“I wish you success in your present
undertaking, whatever it be, and that you may one day, under happier
circumstances, resume a pen which has, of late years, been so meritoriously
employed. If your new attempt prosper, you will yet find leisure for
intellectual gratification, and for that self-improvement which may be carried
on even in the busiest concerns of life.
“I remain, Sir, yours with sincere good
will,
“Robert Southey.”
In the advertisement columns of the same issue of The Times (May 21) was the following
notice, drawn up, I assume, by Lamb:—
The Family of William Hone, in the course of last
winter, were kindly assisted by private friends to take and alter the premises they now
reside in, No. 13, Gracechurch-street, for the purpose of a coffeehouse, to be managed
by Mrs. Hone and her elder daughters; but they
are in a painful exigency which increases hourly, and renders a public appeal
indispensable. The wellwishers to Mr. Hone throughout the kingdom,
especially the gratified readers of his literary productions (in all of which he has
long ceased to have an interest, and from none of which can he derive advantage), are
earnestly solicited to afford the means of completing the fittings and opening the
house in a manner suited to its proposed respectability. If this aid be yielded without
loss of time, it will be of indescribable benefit, inasmuch as it will put an end to
many grievous anxieties and expenses, inseparable from the lengthened delay which has
hitherto been inevitable, and will enable the family to immediately commence the
business, which alone they look forward to for support. Subscriptions will be received
by the following bankers:—Messrs. Ransom and Co., Pall-mall east;
Messrs. Dixon, Sons, andBrookes,
Chancery-lane; Messrs. Ladbroke and Co., Bank-buildings, Cornhill;
and by Mr. Clowes, printer, 14, Charing-cross; Mr. Thomas Rodd,
bookseller, 2, Great Newport-street; Mr. Griffiths, bookseller,
13, Wellington-street, Strand; Mr. Effingham Wilson, bookseller,
Royal Exchange; and Messrs. Fisher and
Moxhay, biscuit-bakers, 55, Threadneedle-street.
The first list of subscriptions, headed by “Charles Lamb, Esq., Enfield, £10,” came to £103. This
was Monday, May 31. The next list was published on June 10, accompanied by the following
note in the body of the paper:—
The subscriptions for Mr. Hone, it will be
perceived, are going on favourably. In the list now published is the name of the
Duke of Bedford, who has sent 20l. His cause has been warmly espoused by the provincial
journals, more than 20 of which have inserted his appeal gratuitously, with offers to
receive and remit subscriptions. The aphorism, “he gives twice who gives
quickly,” could not receive a more cogent application than in the present
instance, for the funds are required to enable Mr. Hone to
commence business in his new undertaking, where he is already placed with his family,
liable to rent and taxes, and other claims, but gaining nothing until his outfit is
completed.
Hone, however, did not prosper, in spite of his
friends, who were not sufficiently numerous to find the requisite capital.
“Suum Cuique.” The boy for whom this
epigram was composed was a son of Hessey, the
publisher, afterwards Archdeacon Hessey. He was at the Merchant Taylors’ School,
where it was a custom to compose Latin and English epigrams for speech day, the boys being
permitted to get help. Archdeacon Hessey wrote as
follows in the Taylorian a few years ago:—
The subjects for 1830 were Suum Cuique and
Brevis esse laboro. After some three
or four exercise nights I confess that I was literally “at my wits’
end.” But a brilliant idea struck me. I had frequently, boy as I was, seen
Charles Lamb at my father’s house, and
once, in 1825 or 1826, I had been taken to have tea with him and his sister, Mary Lamb, at their little house, Colebrook Cottage, a
whitish-brown tenement, standing by itself, close to the New River, at Islington. He
was very kind, as he always was to young people, and very quaint. I told him that I had
devoured his “Roast
Pig”; he congratulated me on possessing a thorough schoolboy’s
appetite. And he was pleased when I mentioned my having seen the boys at Christ’s
Hospital at their public suppers, which then took place on the Sunday evenings in Lent.
“Could this good-natured and humorous old gentleman be prevailed upon to
give me an Epigram?” “I don’t know,” said my
father, to whom I put the question, “but I will ask him at any rate, and send
him the mottoes.” In a day or two there arrived from Enfield, to which
Lamb had removed some time in 1827, not one, but two epigrams,
one on each subject. That on Suum Cuique was
in Latin, and was suggested by the grim satisfaction which had recently been expressed
by the public at the capture and execution of some notorious highwayman.
See also Vol. V. of this edition for a slightly differing version.
Lamb had many years before, he says in Letter
112, to Godwin, on page 281, written similar
epigrams.
“With one exception.” Perhaps the Latin verses on
Haydon’s picture. See Vol. V. page 82.]
LETTER 492 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
Enfield, Tuesday, [p.m. May 12, 1830.]
DEAR M. I
dined with your and my Rogers at
Mr. Cary’s yesterday.
Cary consulted me on the proper bookseller to offer a
Lady’s MS novel to. I said I would write to you. But I wish you would
call on the Translator of Dante at the
British Museum, and talk with him. He is the pleasantest of clergymen. I told him of all
Rogers’s handsome behaviour to you, and you are
already no stranger. Go. I made Rogers laugh about your
Nightingale sonnet, not
having heard one. ’Tis a good sonnet notwithstanding. You shall have the
books shortly.
C. L.
Note
[Samuel Rogers had just lent
Moxon £500 on which to commence publisher.
Moxon had dedicated his first book to Rogers. This is Moxon’s
“Sonnet to the
Nightingale,” but I cannot explain why Rogers laughed:— Lone midnight-soothing melancholy bird, That send’st such music to my sleepless soul, Chaining her faculties in fast controul, Few listen to thy song; yet I have heard, When Man and Nature slept, nor aspen stirred, Thy mournful voice, sweet vigil of the sleeping— And liken’d thee to some angelic mind, That sits and mourns for erring mortals weeping. The genius, not of groves, but of mankind, Watch at this solemn hour o’er millions keeping. In Eden’s bowers, as mighty poets tell, Did’st thou repeat, as now, that wailing call— Those sorrowing notes might seem, sad Philomel, Prophetic to have mourned of man the fall.]
LETTERS 493 AND 494 CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
Friday, [p.m. May 14, 1830.]
DEAR Novello,
Mary hopes you have not forgot you
are to spend a day with us on Wednesday. That it may be a long one, cannot you
secure places now for Mrs. Novello
yourself and the Clarkes? We have just
table room for four. Five make my good Landlady fidgetty; six, to begin to
fret; seven, to approximate to fever point. But seriously we shall prefer four
to two or three; we shall have from ½ past 10 to six, when the coach goes off,
to scent the country. And pray write now, to say you do
so come, for dear Mrs. Westwood else will be on the
tenters of incertitude.
C. Lamb.
CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
[No date. May, 1830.]
DEAR N.—pray
write immediately to say “The book has come safe.” I am
anxious, not so much for the autographs, as for that bit of the hair brush. I
enclose a cinder, which belonged to Shield, when he was poor, and lit his
own fires. Any memorial of a great Musical Genius, I know, is acceptable; and
Shield has his merits, though Clementi, in my opinion, is far above him in
the Sostenuto. Mr. Westwood desires his
compliments, and begs to present you with a nail that came out of Jomelli’s coffin, who is buried at
Naples.
Note
[Vincent Novello writes on this:
“A very characteristic note from Dear Charles
Lamb, who always pretended to Rate all kinds of memorials and Relics,
and assumed a look of fright and horror whenever he reproached me with being a Papist,
instead of a Quaker, which sect he pretended to doat upon.” The book would be
Novello’s album, with Lamb’s
“Free Thoughts on Eminent Composers” in it (see Letter 496).
Shield was William Shield
(1748-1829), the composer. He was buried in Westminster Abbey in the same grave as
Clementi. Nicolo
Jomelli (1714-1774) was a Neapolitan composer.]
LETTER 495 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
May 21, 1830.
DEAR Hone—I
thought you would be pleased to see this letter. Pray if you have time to, call
on Novello, No. 66, Great Queen St. I am
anxious to learn whether he received his album I sent on Friday by our nine
o’clock morning stage. If not, beg him inquire at the Old Bell, Holborn.
Charles Lamb.
Southey will see in the Times all we
proposed omitting is omitted.
Note
[See notes to Letter 491, to Southey, above.]
LETTER 496 CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
[Enfield, Saturday, May 24th, 1830.]
Mary’s love? Yes. Mary Lamb quite well.
DEAR Sarah,—I
found my way to Northaw on Thursday and a very good woman behind a counter, who
says also that you are a very good lady but that the woman who was with you was naught. These things may be so or not. I did
not accept her offered glass of wine (home-made, I take it) but craved a cup of
ale, with which I seasoned a slice of cold Lamb from a sandwich box, which I
ate in her back parlour, and proceeded for Berkhampstead, &c.; lost myself
over a heath, and had a day’s pleasure. I wish you could walk as I do,
and as you used to do. I am sorry to find you are so poorly; and, now I have
found my way, I wish you back at Goody Tomlinson’s.
What a pretty village ’tis! I should have come sooner, but was waiting a
summons to Bury. Well, it came, and I found the good parson’s lady (he
was from home) exceedingly hospitable.
Poor Emma, the first
moment we were alone, took me into a corner, and said, “Now, pray,
don’t drink; do check yourself after dinner, for my sake, and when we
get home to Enfield, you shall drink as much as ever you please, and I
won’t say a word about it.” How I behaved, you may guess,
when I tell you that Mrs. Williams and I
have written acrostics on each other, and she hoped that she should have
“no reason to regret Miss Isola’s
recovery, by its depriving her of our begun correspondence.”
Emma stayed a month with us, and has gone back (in
tolerable health) to her long home, for she comes not again for a twelvemonth.
I amused Mrs. Williams with an occurrence on our road to
Enfield. We travelled with one of those troublesome fellow-passengers in a
stage-coach, that is called a well-informed man. For twenty miles we discoursed
about the properties of steam, probabilities of carriages by ditto, till all my
science, and more than all, was exhausted, and I was thinking of escaping my
torment by getting up on the outside, when, getting into Bishops Stortford, my
gentleman, spying some farming land, put an unlucky question to me:
“What sort of a crop of turnips I thought we should have this
year?” Emma’s eyes turned to me, to
know what in the world I could have to say; and she burst into a violent fit of
laughter, maugre her pale, serious cheeks, when, with the greatest gravity, I
replied, that “it depended, I believed, upon boiled legs of
mutton.” This clench’d our conversation; and my Gentleman,
with a face half wise, half in scorn, troubled us with no more conversation,
scientific or philosophical, for the remainder of the journey. Ayrton was here yesterday, and as learned to
the full as my fellow-traveller. What a pity that he will spoil a wit and a
devilish pleasant fellow (as he is) by wisdom! He talk’d on Music; and by
having read Hawkins and Burney recently I was enabled to talk of
Names, and show more knowledge than he had suspected I possessed; and-in the
end he begg’d me to shape my thoughts upon paper, which I did after he
was gone, and sent him.
FREE THOUGHTS ON SOME EMINENT COMPOSERS Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart, Just as the whim bites. For my part, I do not care a farthing candle For either of them, or for Handel. Cannot a man live free and easy, Without admiring Pergolesi! Or thro’ the world with comfort go That never heard of Doctor
Blow! So help me God, I hardly have; And yet I eat, and drink, and shave, Like other people, (if you watch it,) And know no more of stave and crotchet Than did the un-Spaniardised Peruvians; Or those old ante-queer-Diluvians That lived in the unwash’d world with
Jubal, Before that dirty Blacksmith
Tubal, By stroke on anvil, or by summ’at, Found out, to his great surprise, the gamut. I care no more for Cimerosa Than he did for Salvator
Rosa, Being no Painter; and bad luck Be mine, if I can bear that Gluck! Old Tycho Brahe
and modern Herschel Had something in them; but who’s Purcel? The devil, with his foot so cloven, For aught I care, may take Beethoven; And, if the bargain does not suit, I’ll throw him Weber in to boot! There’s not the splitting of a splinter To chuse ’twixt him last named, and Winter. Of Doctor Pepusch old queen Dido Knew just as much, God knows, as I do. I would not go four miles to visit Sebastian Bach—or Batch—which is
it? No more I would for Bononcini. As for Novello
and Rossini, I shall not say a word about [to grieve] ’em, Because they’re living. So I leave ’em.
Martin Burney is as odd as ever. We had
a dispute about the word “heir,” which I contended was pronounced
like “air;” he said that might be in common parlance; or that we
might so use it, speaking of the “Heir-at-Law,” a comedy; but that in the
Law Courts it was necessary to give it a full aspiration, and to say Hayer; he thought it might even vitiate a cause, if a
Counsel pronounced it otherwise. In conclusion, he “would consult
Serjeant Wilde;” who gave
it against him. Sometimes he falleth into the water, sometimes into the fire.
He came down here, and insisted on reading Virgil’s “Eneid” all through with me (which he did,) because a Counsel
must know Latin. Another time he read out all the Gospel of
St. John, because Biblical quotations are very emphatic in a Court
of Justice. A third time, he would carve a fowl, which he did very
ill-favoredly, because “we did not know how indispensable it was for a
Barrister to do all those sort of things well. Those little things were of more consequence than we
supposed.” So he goes on, harassing about the way to prosperity,
and losing it. With a long head, but somewhat a wrong one—harum-scarum. Why
does not his guardian angel look to him? He deserves one—: may be, he has tired
him out.
I am —— with this long scrawl, but I thought in your exile,
you might like a letter. Commend me to all the wonders in Derbyshire, and tell
the devil I humbly kiss—my hand to him. Yours ever,
C. Lamb.
Note
[Addressed to Mrs. Hazlitt at
Buxton.
“Free Thoughts.” The version in Ayrton’s album differs a little from this, the
principal difference being in line 13, “primitive” for
“un-Spaniardised.” Lamb’s story of the origin of the verses is not necessarily correct.
I fancy that he had written them for Novello before
he produced them in reply to Ayrton’s
challenge. When sending the poem to Ayrton in a letter at this time,
not available for this edition (written apparently just after Novello
had paid the visit, referred to in Letter 494), Lamb wrote that it was written to gratify
Novello. Mary Lamb (or
Charles Lamb, personating her) appended the following postscript
to the verses in Novello’s album:— The reason why my brother’s so severe, Vincentio is—my brother has no ear: And Caradori her mellifluous throat Might stretch in vain to make him learn a note. Of common tunes he knows not anything, Nor “Rule, Britannia” from “God save the King.” He rail at Handel! He the gamut quiz! I’d lay my life he knows not what it is. His spite at music is a pretty whim— He loves not it, because it loves not him. M. Lamb.
“Serjeant Wilde”—Thomas Wilde (1782-1855), afterwards Lord
Truro, a friend of Lamb’s, who
is said to have helped him with squibs in the Newark election in 1829, when Martin Burney was among his supporters (see Vol. V. of
this edition, page 341).]
LETTER 497 CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
June 3, 1830.
DEAR Sarah,—I
named your thought about William to his
father, who expressed such horror
and aversion to the idea of his singing in public, that I cannot meddle in it
directly or
indirectly. Ayrton is a kind fellow, and
if you chuse to consult him by Letter, or otherwise, he will give you the best
advice, I am sure, very readily. I have no doubt
thatM.
Burney’sobjection to
interfering was the same with mine. With thanks for your pleasant long
letter, which is not that of an Invalid, and sympathy for your sad sufferings,
I remain, in haste,
Yours Truly.
Mary’s kindest Love.
Note
[There was some talk of William Hazlitt
Junr. becoming a pupil of Braham and
taking up music seriously. He did not do so.
Here should come a note from Lamb
to Hone, dated Enfield, June 17, 1830, in which
Lamb offers Hone £l per quarter for yesterday’s Times, after the Coffee-House
customers have done with it. He ends with the wish, “Vivant Coffee,
Coffee-potque!”]
LETTER 498 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. June 28, 1830.]
DEAR B.
B.—Could you dream of my publishing without sending a copy to you? You will find
something new to you in the vol. particularly the Translations. Moxon will send to you the moment it is out.
He is the young poet of Xmas, whom the Author of the Pleasures of Memory has set up in the
bookvending business with a volunteer’d loan of £500—such munificence is
rare to an almost stranger. But Rogers,
I am told, has done many goodnatured things of this nature.
I need not say how glad to see A. K. and Lucy we should
have been,—and still shall be, if it be practicable. Our direction is Mr. Westwood’s, Chase Side Enfield, but
alas I know not theirs. We can give them a bed. Coaches come daily from the
Bell, Holborn.
You will see that I am worn to the poetical dregs,
condescending to Acrostics, which are nine fathom beneath Album verses—but they
were written at the request of the Lady
where our Emma is, to whom I paid a
visit in April to bring home Emma for a change of air
after a severe illness, in which she had been treated like a daughter by the
good Parson and his whole family. She
has since return’d to her occupation. I thought on you in Suffolk, but
was 40 miles from Woodbridge. I heard of you the other day from Mr. Pulham of the India House.
Long live King William the
4th.
S. T. C. says, we have had wicked kings,
foolish kings, wise kings, good kings (but few) but never till now have we had a Blackguard King—
Charles 2d was profligate, but a Gentleman.
I have nineteen Letters to dispatch this leisure Sabbath
for Moxon to send about with Copies—so
you will forgive me short measure—and believe me
Yours ever C. L.
Pray do let us see your Quakeresses if possible.
Note
[Lamb’sAlbum Verses was
almost ready. The translations were those from Vincent
Bourne.
William IV. came to the throne on June 26, 1830.
“I have nineteen Letters.” The fact that none of
these is forthcoming helps to illustrate the imperfect state of Lamb’s correspondence as (even among so many differing editions) we
now have it. But of course the number may have been an exaggeration.
Here should come a note from Lamb
to Hone, dated July 1, 1830, in which
Lamb asks that the newspaper be kept as he is meditating a town
residence (see next letter).
See also Appendix II., page 978, for a letter to Mrs. Rickman.]
LETTER 499 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[p.m. 30 August, 1830.]
DEAR B. B.—my
address is 34 Southamptn Buildings, Holborn. For
God’s sake do not let me [be] pester’d with Annuals. They are all
rogues who edit them, and something else who write in them. I am still alone,
and very much out of sorts, and cannot spur up my mind to writing. The sight of
one of those Year Books makes me sick. I get nothing by any of ’em, not
even a Copy—
Thank you for your warm interest about my little volume, for the critics on which
I care [? not] the 5 hundred thousandth part of the tythe of a half-farthing. I
am too old a Militant for that. How noble, tho’, in R. S. to come forward for an old friend, who
had treated him so unworthily. Moxon has
a shop without customers, I a Book without readers. But what a clamour against
a poor collection of album verses, as if we had put forth an Epic. I cannot
scribble a long Letter—I am, when not at foot, very desolate, and take no interest in
any thing, scarce hate any thing, but annuals. I am in an interregnum of
thought and feeling—
What a beautiful Autumn morning this is, if it was but with
me as in times past when the candle of the Lord shined round me—
I cannot even muster enthusiasm to admire the French
heroism.
In better times I hope we may some day meet, and discuss an
old poem or two. But if you’d have me not sick no more of Annuals.
C. L.Ex-Elia.
Love to Lucy and
A. K. always.
Note
[The Literary
Gazette, Jerdan’s paper,
had written offensively of Album Verses and its
author’s vanity in the number for July 10, 1830. Southey published in The Times of August 6 some lines in praise of Lamb and against
Jerdan. It was Southey’s first public
utterance on Lamb since the famous letter by Elia to himself, and is the more noble in
consequence. The lines ran thus:— TO CHARLES LAMB On the Reviewal of his Album Verses in the Literary GazetteCharles Lamb, to those who know thee
justly dear For rarest genius, and for sterling worth, Unchanging friendship, warmth of heart sincere, And wit that never gave an ill thought birth, Nor ever in its sport infix’d a sting; To us who have admired and loved thee long, It is a proud as well as pleasant thing To hear thy good report, now borne along Upon the honest breath of public praise: We know that with the elder sons of song In honouring whom thou hast delighted still, Thy name shall keep its course to after days. The empty pertness, and the vulgar wrong, The flippant folly, the malicious will, Which have assailed thee, now, or heretofore, Find, soon or late, their proper meed of shame; The more thy triumph, and our pride the more, When witling critics to the world proclaim, In lead, their own dolt incapacity. Matter it is of mirthful memory To think, when thou wert early in the field, How doughtily small Jeffrey ran at thee A-tilt, and broke a bulrush on thy shield. And now, a veteran in the lists of fame, I ween, old Friend! thou art not worse bested When with a maudlin eye and drunken aim, Dulness hath thrown a jerdan at thy head. Southey.
Leigh Hunt attacked Jerdan in the Examiner in a number of “Rejected Epigrams” signed
T. A. See page 992. He also took up the matter in the Tatler, in the first
number of which the following “Inquest Extraordinary” was printed:— Last week a porter died beneath his burden; Verdict: Found carrying a Gazette from Jerdan.
Moxon’s shop without customers was at 64 New
Bond Street.
“The candle of the Lord.” See Proverbs xx. 27.
“The French heroism.” The July Revolution, in which
the Bourbons were routed and Louis Philippe placed on
the throne.]
LETTER 500 CHARLES LAMB TO SAMUEL ROGERS
[Dated at end: Oct. 5, 1830.]
DEAR Sir,—I know not what hath bewitch’d me
that I have delayed acknowledging your beautiful present. But I have been very
unwell and nervous of late. The poem was not new to me, tho’ I have renewed acquaintance with
it. Its metre is none of the least of its excellencies. ’Tis so far from
the stiffness of blank verse—it gallops like a traveller, as it should do—no
crude Miltonisms in [it]. Dare I pick out what most pleases me? It is the
middle paragraph in page thirty-four. It is most tasty. Though I look on every
impression as a proof of your kindness, I am jealous of the ornaments, and
should have prized the verses naked on whity-brown paper.
I am, Sir, yours truly, C. Lamb. Oct. 5th.
Note
[Rogers had sent Lamb a copy of his Italy, with illustrations by
Turner and Stothard, which was published by Moxon with other firms in 1830. This is the middle paragraph on page 34:— Here I received from thee, Basilico, One of those courtesies so sweet, so rare! When, as I rambled thro’ thy vineyard-ground On the hill-side, thou sent’st thy little son, Charged with a bunch almost as big as he, To press it on the stranger. May thy vats O’erflow, and he, thy willing gift-bearer, Live to become a giver; and, at length, When thou art full of honour and wouldst rest, The staff of thine old age!]
LETTER 501 CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
[p.m. November 8, 1830.] Tears are for lighter griefs. Man weeps the doom That seals a single victim to the tomb. But when Death riots, when with whelming sway Destruction sweeps a family away; When Infancy and Youth, a huddled mass, All in an instant to oblivion pass, And Parent’s hopes are crush’d; what lamentation Can reach the depth of such a desolation? Look upward, Feeble Ones! look up, and trust That He, who lays this mortal frame in dust, Still hath the immortal Spirit in His keeping. In Jesus’ sight they are not dead, but
sleeping.
DEAR N., will
these lines do? I despair of better. Poor Mary is in a deplorable state here at Enfield.
Love to all, C. Lamb.
Note
[The four sons and two daughters of John and
Ann Rigg, of York, had been drowned in the Ouse.
A number of poets were asked for verses, the best to be inscribed on a monument in York
Minster. Those of James Montgomery were chosen.
It was possibly the death of Hazlitt, on September 18, while the Lambs were in
their London lodgings, that brought on Mary
Lamb’s attack.]
LETTER 502 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
November 12, 1830.
DEAR Moxon,—I
have brought my sister to Enfield, being
sure that she had no hope of recovery in London. Her state of mind is
deplorable beyond any example. I almost fear whether she has strength at her
time of life ever to get out of it. Here she must be nursed, and neither see
nor hear of anything in the world out of her sick chamber. The mere hearing
that Southey had called at our lodgings
totally upset her. Pray see him, or hear of him at Mr. Rickman’s, and excuse my not writing to him. I dare
not write or receive a letter in her presence; every little task so agitates
her. Westwood will receive any letter
for me, and give it me privately.
Pray assure Southey
of my kindliest feelings towards him; and, if you do not see him, send this to
him.
Kindest remembrances to your sister, and believe me ever
yours,
C. Lamb.
Remember me kindly to the Allsops.
Note
[Southey was visiting Rickman, then Clerk Assistant to the House of Commons,
where he lived.]
LETTER 503 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. ? Dec., 1830.]
DEAR M.
Something like this was what I meant. But on reading it over, I see no great
fun or use in it. It will only stuff up and encroach upon the sheet you
propose. Do as, and what, you please. Send Proof, or not, as you like. If you
send, send me a copy or 2 of the Album Verses, and the Juvenile Poetry if bound.
I am happy to say Mary is mending, but not enough to give me hopes of being able
to leave her. I sadly regret that I shall possibly not see Southey or Wordsworth, but I dare not invite either of them here, for fear
of exciting my sister, whose only chance is quiet. You don’t know in what
a sad state we have been.
I think the
Devil may come out without prefaces, but use your discretion.
Make my kindest remembces to
Southey, with my heart’s
thanks for his kind intent. I am a little easier about my Will, and as
Ryle is Executor, and will do all a
friend can do at the Office, and what little I leave will buy an annuity to
piece out tolerably, I am much easier.
Yours ever C. L. To 64 New Bond St.
Note
[I cannot say to what the opening sentences refer: probably an
advertisement for Satan in
Search of a Wife (“the Devil”), which Lamb had just written and Moxon was publishing.
The reference to the Juvenile Poetry suggests that Moxon had procured some of the sheets of the Poetry for Children
which Godwin brought out in 1809, and was binding up
a few. This theory is borne out by the
statement in the letter to Mrs. Norris, on page 914,
that the book was not to be had for love or money, and the circumstance that in 1833
Lamb seems to send her a copy.
Ryle was Charles Ryle, an India
House clerk, and Lamb’s executor with Talfourd.]
LETTER 504 CHARLES LAMB TO GEORGE DYER
Dec. 20, 1830.
DEAR Dyer,—I
would have written before to thank you for your kind letter, written with your
own hand. It glads us to see your writing. It will give you pleasure to hear
that, after so much illness, we are in tolerable health and spirits once more.
Miss Isola intended to call upon you
after her night’s lodging at Miss
Buffam’s, but found she was too late for the stage. If she
comes to town before she goes home, she will not miss paying her respects to
Mrs. Dyer and you, to whom she
desires best love. Poor Enfield, that has been so peaceable hitherto, has
caught the inflammatory fever, the tokens are upon her! and a great fire was
blazing last night in the barns and haystacks of a farmer, about half a mile
from us. Where will these things end? There is no doubt of its being the work
of some ill-disposed rustic; but how is he to be discovered? They go to work in
the dark with strange chemical preparations unknown to our forefathers. There
is not even a dark lantern to have a chance of detecting these Guy Fauxes. We
are past the iron age, and are got into the fiery age, undream’d of by
Ovid. You are lucky in Clifford’s
Inn where, I think, you have few ricks or stacks worth the burning. Pray keep
as little corn by you as you can, for fear of the worst.
It was never good times in England since the poor began to
speculate upon their condition. Formerly, they jogged on with as little
reflection as horses: the whistling ploughman went cheek by jowl with his
brother that neighed. Now the biped carries a box of phosphorus in his
leather-breeches; and in the dead of night the half-illuminated beast steals
his magic potion into a cleft in a barn, and half a country is grinning with
new fires. Farmer Graystock said something
to the touchy rustic that he did not relish, and he writes his distaste in
flames. What a power to intoxicate his crude brains, just muddlingly awake, to
perceive that something is wrong in the social system!—what a hellish faculty
above gunpowder!
Now the rich and poor are fairly pitted; we shall see who
can hang or burn fastest. It is not always revenge that stimulates these
kindlings. There is a love of exerting mischief. Think of a disrespected clod
that was trod into earth, that was nothing, on a sudden by damned arts refined
into an exterminating angel, devouring the fruits of the earth and their
growers in a mass of fire! What a new existence!—what a temptation above
Lucifer’s! Would clod be any thing but a clod,
if he could resist it? Why, here was a spectacle last night for a whole
country!—a Bonfire visible to London, alarming her guilty towers, and shaking
the Monument with an ague fit—all done by a little vial of phosphor in a
Clown’s fob! How he must grin, and shake his empty noddle in clouds, the
Vulcanian Epicure! Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that
pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a march of Science; but
who shall beat the drums for its retreat? Who shall persuade the boor that
phosphor will not ignite?
Seven goodly stacks of hay, with corn-barns proportionable,
lie smoking ashes and chaff, which man and beast would sputter out and reject
like those apples of Asphaltes and bitumen. The food for the inhabitants of
earth will quickly disappear. Hot rolls may say: “Fuimus panes, fuit
quartern-loaf, et ingens gloria Apple-pasty-orum.” That the good old
munching system may last thy time and mine, good un-incendiary George, is the devout prayer of thine,
To the last crust,
Ch. Lamb.
Note
[Incendiarism, the result of agricultural distress and in opposition to
the competition of the new machinery, was rife in the country at this time.
“Fuimus panes . .
.” We loaves have had our day, &c. See page 456.]
LETTER 505 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. ? Christmas, 1830.]
DEAR M. A
thousand thanks for your punctualities. What a cheap Book is the last Hogarth you sent me! I am pleased now that
Huntdiddled me out of the old one. Speaking of this, only think of the
new farmer with his 30 acres. There is a portion of land in Lambeth parish
called Knaves Acre. I wonder he overlook’d it. Don’t show this to
the firm of Dilk & Co. I next
want one copy of Leicester School, and wish you to pay
Leishman, Taylor, 2 Blandford Place, Pall Mall,
opposite the British Institution, £6. 10. for coat waistcoat &c. And I
vehemently thirst for the 4th No. of Nichols’sHogarth, to bind ’em up (the 2
books) as “Hogarth, and Supplement.” But as
you know the price, dont stay for its appearance; but come as soon as ever you
can with your bill of all demands in full, and, as I have none but £5 notes,
bring with you sufficient change. Weather is beautiful. I grieve sadly for
Miss Wordsworth. We are all well
again. Emma is with us, and we all shall
be glad of a sight of you. Come On Sunday, if you can; better, if you come
before. Perhaps Rogers would smile at
this.—A pert half chemist half apothecary, in our town, who smatters of
literature and is immeasurable unletterd, said to me “Pray, Sir, may
not Hood (he of the acres) be
reckon’d the Prince of wits in the present day?” to which I
assenting, he adds “I had always thought that Rogers had been
reckon’d the Prince of Wits, but I suppose that now Mr. Hood has the
better title to that appellation.” To which I replied that
Mr. R. had wit with much better qualities, but did not
aspire to the principality. He had taken all the puns manufactured in John Bull for our friend, in sad and
stupid earnest. One more Album
verses, please.
Adieu. C. L.
Note
[“Hunt.” This would, I think, be not Leigh Hunt but his nephew, Hunt of Hunt & Clarke
(see page 826). The diddling I cannot explain.
Leishman was the husband of Mrs. Leishman, the
Lambs’ old landlady at Enfield.
“Miss Wordsworth”—Dorothy Wordsworth, who was ill.
“Perhaps Rogers would
smile at this.” I take the following passage from the Maclise Portrait Gallery:—
In the early days of the John
Bull it was the fashion to lay every foundling witticism at the
door of Sam Rogers; and thus the refined poet
and man of letters became known as a sorry jester.
John Bull was Theodore Hook’s paper. Maginn wrote in Fraser’s Magazine:—
Joe Miller vails his bonnet to Sam Rogers; in all the newspapers, not only of the
kingdom but its dependencies,—Hindostan, Canada, the West Indies, the Cape, from the
tropics,—nay, from the Antipodes to the Orkneys, Sam is
godfather-general to all the bad jokes in existence. The Yankees have caught the fancy,
and from New Orleans to New York it is the same,—Rogers is
synonymous with a pun. All British-born or descended people,—yea the very negro and the
Hindoo—father their calembourgs on Rogers.
Quashee, or Ramee-Samee, who knows
nothing of Sir Isaac Newton, John Milton, or Fraser’s Magazine, grins from ear to ear
at the name of the illustrious banker, and with gratified voice exclaims, “Him
dam funny, dat Sam!”]
LETTER 506 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. February 3, 1831.]
DEAR Moxon,
The snows are ancle deep slush and mire, that ’tis hard to get to the
post office, and cruel to send the maid out. ’Tis a slough of despair, or
I should sooner have thankd you for your offer of the Life, which we shall
very much like to have, and will return duly. I do not know when I shall be in
town, but in a week or two at farthest, when I will come as far as you if I
can. We are moped to death with confinement within doors. I send you a
curiosity of G. Dyer’s
tender-conscience. Between 30 and 40 years since, G.
published the Poet’s
Fate, in which were two very harmless lines about Mr. Rogers, but Mr. R.
not quite approving of them, they were left out in a subsequent edition 1801.
But G. has been worryting about them ever since; if I have
heard him once, I have heard him a hundred times express a remorse proportiond
to a consciousness of having been guilty of an atrocious libel. As the devil
would have it, a fool they call Barker, in his Parriana has quoted the identical two
lines as they stood in some obscure edition anterior to 1801, and the withers
of poor G. are again wrung. His letter is a gem—with his
poor blind eyes it has been laboured out at six sittings. The history of the
couplet is in page 3 of this irregular production, in which every variety of
shape and size that Letters can be twisted into, is to be found. Do shew his part of it to Mr. R. some day.
If he has bowels, they must melt at the contrition so queerly character’d
of a contrite sinner. G. was born I verily think without
original sin, but chuses to have a conscience, as every Christian Gentleman
should have. His dear old face is insusceptible of the twist they call a sneer,
yet he is apprehensive of being suspected of that ugly appearance. When he
makes a compliment, he thinks he has given an affront. A name is personality.
But shew (no hurry) this unique recantation to Mr. R.
’Tis like a dirty pocket handkerchief muck’d with tears of some
indigent Magdalen. There is the impress of sincerity in every pot-hook and
hanger. And then the gilt frame to such a pauper picture! It should go into the
Museum. I am heartily sorry my Devil does not answer. We must try it a little longer, and after
all I think I must insist on taking a portion of the loss upon myself. It is
too much you should lose by two adventures. You do not say how your general
business goes on, and I should very much like to talk over it with you here.
Come when the weather will possibly let you. I want to see the Wordsworths, but I do not much like to be all night away. It is dull
enough to be here together, but it is duller to leave Mary; in short it is painful, and in a flying
visit I should hardly catch them. I have no beds for them, if they came down,
and but a sort of a house to receive them in, yet I shall regret their
departure unseen. I feel cramped and straiten’d every way. Where are
they?
We have heard from Emma but once, and that a month ago, and are very anxious for
another letter.
You say we have forgot your powers of being serviceable to
us. That we never shall. I do not know what I should do without you when I want
a little commission. Now then. There are left at Miss Buffam’s, the Tales of the Castle, and certain vols.
Retrospective Review. The
first should be conveyd to Novello’s, and the Reviews should be taken to Talfourd’s office, ground floor, East
side, Elm Court, Middle Temple, to whom I should have written, but my spirits
are wretched. It is quite an effort to write this. So, with the Life, I have cut you out 3
Pieces of service. What can I do for you here, but hope to see you very soon,
and think of you with most kindness. I fear tomorrow, between rains and snows,
it would be impossible to expect you, but do not let a practicable Sunday pass.
We are always at home!
Mary joins in remembrances to your
sister, whom we hope to see in any fine-ish weather, when she’ll venture.
Remember us to Allsop, and all the dead people—to whom, and to London, we seem
dead.
Note
[“The Life.” The Life which every one
was then reading was Moore’sLife of Byron.
“George Dyer’s.” The explanation
is that years before, in his Poems, 1801, Dyer
had written in a piece called “The
Poet’s Fate”— And Rogers, if he shares
the town’s regard, Was first a banker ere he rose a bard. In the second edition Dyer altered this to— And Darwin, if he share
the town’s regard, Was first a doctor ere he rose a bard. Lamb notes the alteration in his copy of the second edition, now in the British
Museum. In 1828-1829 appeared Parriana, by Edmund Henry
Barker, which quoted the couplet in its original form, to
Dyer’s distress.
Tales of the
Castle. By the Countess de Genlis.
Translated by Thomas Holcroft.]
LETTER 507 CHARLES LAMB TO GEORGE DYER
Feb. 22nd, 1831.
DEAR Dyer,—Mr. Rogers, and
Mr. Rogers’s friends, are perfectly assured,
that you never intended any harm by an innocent couplet, and that in the
revivification of it by blundering Barker you had no hand whatever. To imagine that, at this time
of day, Rogers broods over a fantastic expression of more
than thirty years’ standing, would be to suppose him indulging his
“Pleasures of
Memory” with a vengeance. You never penned a line which for
its own sake you need (dying) wish to blot. You mistake your heart if you think
you can write a lampoon. Your whips are rods of roses. Your spleen has ever had
for its objects vices, not the vicious—abstract offences, not the concrete
sinner. But you are sensitive, and wince as much at the consciousness of having
committed a compliment, as another man would at the perpetration of an affront.
But do not lug me into the same soreness of conscience with yourself. I
maintain, and will to the last hour, that I never writ of you but con amore. That if any allusion was made
to your near-sightedness, it was not for the purpose of mocking an infirmity,
but of connecting it with scholar-like habits: for is it not erudite and
scholarly to be somewhat near of sight, before age naturally brings on the
malady? You could not then plead the obrepens
senectus. Did I not moreover make it an apology for a
certain absence, which some of your friends may have experienced, when you have
not on a sudden made recognition of them in a casual street-meeting, and did I
not strengthen your excuse for this slowness of recognition, by further
accounting morally for the present engagement of your mind in worthy objects?
Did I not, in your person, make the handsomest apology for absent-of-mind
people that was ever made? If these things be not so, I never knew what I wrote
or meant by my writing, and have been penning libels all my life without being
aware of it. Does it follow that I should have exprest myself exactly in the
same way of those dear old eyes of yours now—now that Father Time has conspired
with a hard task-master to put a last extinguisher upon them? I should as soon
have insulted the Answerer of Salmasius,
when he awoke up from his ended task, and saw no more with mortal vision. But
you are many films removed yet from Milton’s
calamity. You write perfectly intelligibly. Marry, the letters are not all of
the same size or tallness; but that only shows your proficiency in the
hands—text, german-hand, court-hand, sometimes law-hand, and affords variety. You pen
better than you did a twelvemonth ago; and if you continue to improve, you bid
fair to win the golden pen which is the prize at your young gentlemen’s
academy. But you must beware of Valpy,
and his printing-house, that hazy cave of Trophonius, out of which it was a mercy that you escaped with a
glimmer. Beware of MSS. and Variæ Lectiones. Settle the text
for once in your mind, and stick to it. You have some years’ good sight
in you yet, if you do not tamper with it. It is not for you (for us I should
say) to go poring into Greek contractions, and star-gazing upon slim Hebrew
points. We have yet the sight Of sun, and moon, and star, throughout the year, And man and woman. You have vision enough to discern Mrs.
Dyer from the other comely gentlewoman who lives up at staircase
No. 5; or, if you should make a blunder in the twilight, Mrs.
Dyer has too much good sense to be jealous for a mere effect of
imperfect optics. But don’t try to write the Lord’s Prayer, Creed,
and Ten Commandments, in the compass of a halfpenny; nor run after a midge or a
mote to catch it; and leave off hunting for needles in bushels of hay, for all
these things strain the eyes. The snow is six feet deep in some parts here. I
must put on jack-boots to get at the post-office with this. It is not good for
weak eyes to pore upon snow too much. It lies in drifts. I wonder what its
drift is; only that it makes good pancakes, remind Mrs.
Dyer. It turns a pretty green world into a white one. It glares
too much for an innocent colour, methinks. I wonder why you think I dislike
gilt edges. They set off a letter marvellously. Yours, for instance, looks for
all the world like a tablet of curious hieroglyphics in
a gold frame. But don’t go and lay this to your eyes. You always wrote
hieroglyphically, yet not to come up to the mystical notations and conjuring
characters of Dr. Parr. You never wrote
what I call a schoolmaster’s hand, like Clarke; nor a woman’s hand, like Southey; nor a missal hand, like Porson; nor an all-of-the-wrong-side-sloping
hand, like Miss Hayes; nor a dogmatic,
Mede-and-Persian, peremptory hand, like Rickman; but you ever wrote what I call a Grecian’s hand;
what the Grecians write (or used) at Christ’s Hospital; such as Whalley would have admired, and Boyer have applauded, but
Smith or Atwood
(writing-masters) would have horsed you for. Your boy-of-genius hand and your
mercantile hand are various. By your flourishes, I should think you never
learned to make eagles or corkscrews, or flourish the governors’ names in
the writing-school; and by the tenor and cut of your letters I suspect you were
never in it at all. By the length of this scrawl you will think I have a design
upon your optics; but I have writ as large as I
could out of respect to them—too large, indeed, for beauty. Mine is a sort of
deputy Grecian’s hand; a little better, and more of a worldly hand, than
a Grecian’s, but still remote from the mercantile. I don’t know how
it is, but I keep my rank in fancy still since school-days. I can never forget
I was a deputy Grecian! And writing to you, or to Coleridge, besides affection, I feel a reverential deference as
to Grecians still. I keep my soaring way above the Great Erasmians, yet far
beneath the other. Alas! what am I now? what is a Leadenhall clerk or India
pensioner to a deputy Grecian? How art thou fallen, O
Lucifer! Just room for our loves to Mrs.
D., &c.
C. Lamb.
Note
[“I never writ of you but con
amore.” Lamb refers
particularly to the Elia essay “Oxford in the
Vacation” in the London Magazine, where G.
D.’s absence of mind and simplicity of character were dwelt upon more
intimately than Dyer liked (see Vol. II. of this edition, pages 10 and
312).
Dyer was gradually going blind through long years of
study, and overwork upon James Valpy’s edition
of the Classics.
“Obrepens
senectus.” Creeping on of old age.
“The Answerer of
Salmasius”—Milton.
“Of sun, and moon, and star . . .” From Milton’s second sonnet to Cyriack Skinner.
“Comely” Mrs.
Dyer. But in the letter to Mrs.
Shelley on page 739 Mrs. D. had been
“plain”!
Dyer had been a Grecian before Lamb was born. Clarke would be
Charles CowdenClarke, with whose father Dyer had been an usher.
For Miss Hayes see note on page 156. The Rev. Peter Whalley was Upper Grammar Master in
Dyer’s day; Boyer,
Lamb and Coleridge’s
master, succeeded him in 1776. Smith was Writing Master at the end of
the seventeenth century.
Lamb had never become a Grecian, having an impediment
in his speech which made it impossible that he should take orders, the natural fate of
Grecians, with profit. Great Erasmus and Little Erasmus are still the names of classes in
the Blue-Coat School. Grecians were the Little Erasmians.
Here should come a letter from Lamb
to P. G. Patmore, dated April 10, 1831, not
available for this edition; in which Lamb says of the publisher of the
New Monthly Magazine:
“Nature never wrote Knave upon a face more legible than upon that
fellow’s—‘Coal-burn him in
Beelzebub’s deepest pit.’ I can promise little help if you mean literary,
when I reflect that for 5 years I have been feeling the necessity of scribbling but
have never found the power. . . . Moxon is my go between, call on him, 63 New Bond St. he is a very good fellow and the
bookseller is not yet burn’d into him.” Patmore was seeking a publisher
for, I imagine, his Chatsworth (see page 737).
Here should come a letter from Lamb, dated April 13, 1831, which Canon
Ainger considers was written to Cary
and Mr. Hazlitt to Coleridge. It states that Lamb is daily expecting
Wordsworth.]
LETTER 508 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
April 30, 1831.
VIR Bone!—Recepi literas tuas amicissimas, et in
mentem venit responsuro mihi, vel raro, vel nunquam, inter nos intercedisse
Latinam linguam, organum rescribendi, loquendive. Epistolæ tuæ,
Plinianis elegantiis (supra quod Tremulo deceat) refertæ, tam a verbis Plinianis adeo abhorrent, ut ne vocem quamquam (Romanam
scilicet) habere videaris, quam “ad canem,” ut aiunt,
“rejectare possis.” Forsan desuetudo Latinissandi ad vernaculam
linguam usitandam, plusquam opus sit, coegit. Per adagia quædam nota, et in ore
omnium pervulgata, ad Latinitatis perditæ recuperationem revocare te institui.
Felis in abaco est, et ægrè videt.
Omne quod splendet nequaquam aurum putes.
Imponas equo mendicum, equitabit idem ad diabolum.
Fur commodè a fure prenditur.
O Maria,
Maria, valdè contraria, quomodo
crescit hortulus tuus?
Nunc majora canamus.
Thomas, Thomas, de Islington, uxorem
duxit die nuperâ Dominicâ. Reduxit domum posterâ. Succedenti baculum emit.
Postridiè ferit illam. Ægrescit illa subsequenti. Proxima (nempe Veneris) est
Mortua. Plurimum gestiit Thomas, quòd appropinquanti
Sabbato efferenda sit.
Horner quidam Johannulus in angulo sedebat, artocreas
quasdam deglutiens. Inseruit pollices, pruna nana evellens, et magna voce
exclamavit “Dii boni, quam bonus puer fio!”
Diddle-diddle-dumkins! meus unicus filius
Johannes cubitum ivit, integris braccis, caligâ unâ
tantum, indutus. Diddle-diddle, etc. Da Capo.
Hic adsum saltans Joannula. Cum nemo
adsit mihi, semper resto sola.
Ænigma mihi hoc solvas, et Œdipus
lies.
Quâ ratione assimulandus sit equus Tremulo?
Quippe cui tota communicatio sit per hay et neigh, juxta consilium illud
Dominicum, “Fiat omnis communicatio vestra Yea et Nay.”
In his nugis caram diem consumo, dum invigilo valetudini
carioris nostræ Emmæ, quæ apud nos
jamdudum ægrotat. Salvere vos jubet mecum Maria mea, ipsa integra valetudine.
Elia.
Ab agro Enfeldiense datum, Aprilis nescio quibus
Calendis.—Davus sum, non Calendarius.
P.S.—Perdita in toto est Billa Reformatura.
Note
[Mr. Stephen Gwynn gives me the
following translation:—
Good Sir, I have received your most kind letter, and it has
entered my mind as I began to reply, that the Latin tongue has seldom or never been used
between us as the instrument of converse or correspondence. Your letters, filled with
Plinian elegancies (more than becomes a Quaker), are so alien to Pliny’s language, that you seem not to have a word (that is, a Roman
word) to throw, as the saying is, at a dog. Perchance the disuse of Latinising had
constrained you more than is right to the use of the vernacular. I have determined to
recall you to the recovery of your lost Latinity by certain well-known adages common in all
mouths.
The cat’s in the cupboard and she can’t see.
All that glitters is not gold.
Set a beggar on horseback and he’ll ride to the Devil.
Set a thief to catch a thief.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden
grow?
Now let us sing of weightier matters.
Tom, Tom, of Islington, wed a wife on Sunday. He
brought her home on Monday. Bought a stick on Tuesday. Beat her well on Wednesday. She was
sick on Thursday. Dead on Friday. Tom was glad on Saturday night to
bury his wife on Sunday.
Little Jack Horner sat in a corner, eating his Christmas pie. He put
in his thumb and drew out a plumb and cried “Good Heavens, what a good boy am
I!”
Diddle, diddle, dumkins! my son John Went to bed
with his breeches on; One shoe off and the other shoe on, Diddle, diddle, etc. (Da Capo.)
Here am I, jumping Joan. When no one’s by,
I’m all alone.
Solve me this enigma, you shall be an Œdipus.
Why is a horse like a Quaker?
Because all his communication is by Hay and Neigh, after the
Lord’s counsel, “Let all your communication be Yea and Nay.”
In these trifles I waste the precious day, while watching over the
health of our more precious Emma, who has been sick
in our house this long time. My Mary sends you
greeting with me, she herself in sound health.
Given from the Enfield country seat, on I know not what Calends of
April—I am Davus not an Almanac.1
P.S.—The Reform Bill is lost altogether.
The Reform Bill was introduced on March 1, 1831, by Lord John Russell; the second reading was carried on March 22
by a majority of 1. On its commitment on April 19 there was a majority of 8 against the
Government. Four days later the Government was again defeated by 22 and Parliament was
dissolved. But later, of course, the Reform Bill was passed.]
LETTER 509 CHARLES LAMB TO H. F. CARY
[Dated at end:] Datum ab agro Enfeldiensi, Maii die sexta,
1831.
ASSIDENS est mihi bona soror, Euripiden evolvens, donum vestrum, carissime
Cary, pro quo gratias agimus, lecturi
atque iterum lecturi idem. Pergratus est liber ambobus, nempe “Sacerdotis
Commiserationis,” sacrum opus a te ipso Humanissimæ Religionis Sacerdote
dono datum. Lachrymantes gavisuri sumus; est ubi dolor fiat voluptas; nec
semper dulce mihi est ridere; aliquando commutandum est he! he! he! cum heu!
heu! heu!
A Musis Tragicis me non penitus abhorruisse testis sit
Carmen Calamitosum, nescio quo autore lingua prius vernaculâ scriptum, et
nuperrime a me ipso Latine versum, scilicet, “Tom Tom
of Islington.” Tenuistine? “ThomasThomas de Islington,Uxorem duxit Die quadam Solis,Abduxit domum sequenti die,Emit baculum subsequenti,Vapulat ilia posterâ,Ægrotat succedenti, Mortua fit crastinâ.” Et miro gaudio afficitur Thomas luce posterâ quod
subsequenti (nempe, Dominicâ) uxor sit efferenda. “En Iliades
Domesticas!En circulum calamitatum!Plane hebdomadalem tragœdiam.” I nunc et confer Euripiden vestrum his luctibus, hac
morte uxoria; confer Alcesten! Hecuben! quasnon antiquas Heroinas Dolorosas.
1 Allusion to the phrase of
Davus the servant in Plautus—“Davus sum non
Œdipus.”
Suffundor genas lachrymis, tantas strages revolvens. Quid
restat nisi quod Tecum Tuam Caram salutamus ambosque valere jubeamus, nosmet
ipsi bene valentes.
Elia.
Note
[Mr. Stephen Gwynn gives me the
following translation:—Sitting by me is my good sister, turning over Euripides, your gift, dear Cary [a pun here, “carissime care”], for which we thank
you, and will read and re-read it. Most acceptable to both of us is this book of
“Pity’s Priest,” a sacred work of your bestowing, yourself a
priest of the most humane Religion. We shall take our pleasure weeping; there are times
when pain turns pleasure, and I would not always be laughing: sometimes there should be a
change—heu heu! for he! he!
That I have not shrunk from the Tragic Muses, witness this Lamentable
Ballad, first written in the vernacular by I know not what author and lately by myself put
into Latin T. T. of Islington. Have you heard it? (See translation of preceding letter.) And
Thomas is possessed with a wondrous joy on the following morning,
because on the next day, that is, Sunday, his wife must be buried. Lo, your domestic Iliads! Lo, the wheel of Calamities The true tragedy of a week. Go to now, compare your Euripides with these
sorrows, this death of a wife! Compare Alcestis!
Hecuba! or what not other sorrowing Heroines of
antiquity.
My cheeks are tear-bedewed as I revolve such slaughter. What more to say,
but to salute you Cary and your Cara, and wish you
health, ourselves enjoying it.
In Mary and
Charles Lamb, 1874, by W. C.
Hazlitt, in the Catalogue of Charles
Lamb’s Library, for sale by Bartlett and
Welford, New York, is this item:—“Euripidis Tragediæ, interp. Lat. 8vo. Oxonii, 1821”.
“C. and M.
Lamb, from H. F. Cary,” on
flyleaf. This must be the book referred to.
Euripides has been called the priest of pity.]
LETTER 510 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. July 14, 1831.]
COLLIER’SBook would be right acceptable. And also a
sixth vol. just publish’d of Nichols’sIllustrations of the Literary History of
18th Century. I agree with you, and do yet not disagree with W. W., as to H. It rejoyced my heart to read his friendly spirited mention
of your publications. It might be a drawback to my pleasure, that he has tried
to decry my “Nicky,” but on deliberate re- and reperusal of his censure I
cannot in the remotest degree understand what he means to say. He and I used to
dispute about Hell Eternities, I taking the affirmative. I love to puzzle
atheists, and—parsons. I fancy it runs in his head, that I meant to rivet the
idea of a personal devil. Then about the glorious three days! there was never a
year or day in my past life, since I was pen-worthy, that I should not have
written precisely as I have. Logic and modesty are not among
H.’s virtues. Talfourd flatters me upon a poem which “nobody but I
could have written,” but which I have neither seen nor heard
of—“The
Banquet,” or “Banqueting
Something,” that has appeared in The Tatler. Know you of it? How capitally the
Frenchman has analysed Satan! I was hinder’d, or I was about doing the
same thing in English, for him to put into French, as I prosified Hood’smidsummer fairies. The garden of cabbage
escap’d him, he turns it into a garden of pot herbs. So local allusions
perish in translation. About 8 days before you told me of R.’s interview with the Premier, I, at
the desire of Badams, wrote a letter to
him (Badams) in the most moving terms setting forth the
age, infirmities &c. of Coleridge.
This letter was convey’d to [by] B. to his friend
Mr. Ellice of the Treasury, Brother
in Law to Lord Grey, who immediately
pass’d it on [to] Lord Grey, who assured him of
immediate relief by a grant on the King’s Bounty, which news
E. communicated to B. with a
desire to confer with me on the subject, on which I went up to The Treasury
(yesterday fortnight) and was received by the Great Man with the utmost
cordiality, (shook hands with me coming and going) a fine hearty Gentleman,
and, as seeming willing to relieve any anxiety from me, promised me an answer
thro’ Badams in 2 or 3 days at furthest. Meantime
Gilman’s extraordinary
insolent letter comes out in the Times! As to my acquiescing in this strange step, I told Mr.
Ellice (who expressly said that the thing was renewable
three-yearly) that I considered such a grant as almost equivalent to the lost
pension, as from C.’s appearance and the
representations of the Gilmans, I scarce could think
C.’s life worth 2 years’ purchase. I did
not know that the Chancellor had been previously applied to. Well, after seeing
Ellice I wrote in the most urgent manner to the
Gilmans, insisting on an immediate letter of
acknowledgment from Coleridge, or them in his name to Badams, who not knowing
C. had come forward so disinterestedly amidst his
complicated illnesses and embarrassments, to use up an
interest, which he may so well need, in favor of a stranger; and from that day
not a letter has B. or even myself, received from Highgate, unless that
publish’d one in the Times is meant as a
general answer to all the friends who have stirr’d to do
C. service! Poor C. is
not to blame, for he is in leading strings.—I particularly wish you would read
this part of my note to Mr. Rogers. Now
for home matters—Our next 2 Sundays will be choked up with all the
Sugdens. The third will be free, when we hope you will
show your sister the way to Enfield and leave her with us for a few days. In
the mean while, could you not run down some week day (afternoon, say) and sleep
at the Horse Shoe? I want to have my 2d vol. Elias bound Specimen fashion, and to consult you
about ’em. Kenney has just assured
me that he has just touch’d £100 from the theatre; you are a damn’d
fool if you dont exact your Tythe of him, and with that assurance I rest
Your Brother fool C. L.
Note
[Collier’s book would be his
History of English
Dramatic Poetry, 1831. Nichols’sIllustrations had been begun by John
Nichols, and six volumes were published between 1817 and 1831. It was
completed in two more volumes by his son, John Bowyer
Nichols, in 1848 and 1858.
“H.”—Leigh Hunt. We do not
know what W. W., presumably Wordsworth, had to say of him; but this is how Hunt
had referred to Moxon’s publications and
Lamb’sSatan in Search of a Wife in The Tatler for June 4,
1831, the occasion being a review of “Selections from
Wordsworth” for schools: —
Mr. Moxon has begun his career as a bookseller in
singularly high taste. He has no connection but with the select of the earth. The least
thing he does, is to give us a dandy poem, suitable to Bond street, and not without
wit. We allude to the Byronian brochure, entitled “Mischief.” But this is a mere condescension
to the elegance of the street he lives in. Mr. Moxon commenced
with some of the primaeval delicacies of Charles
Lamb. He then astonished us with Mr.
Rogers’ poems on Italy. . . . Of some of these publications we have
already spoken,—Mr. Lamb’sAlbum Verses among them. And
why (the reader may ask) not have noticed his Satan in Search of a Wife? Because, to say the
truth, we did not think it worthy of him. We rejoice in Mr.
Lamb’s accession to the good cause advocated by Sterne and Burns, refreshed by the wholesome mirth of Mr. Moncrieff, and finally carried (like a number of other astonished
humanities, who little thought of the matter, and are not all sensible of it now) on
the triumphant shoulders of the Glorious Three Days. But Mr. Lamb,
in the extreme sympathy of his delight, has taken for granted, that everything that can
be uttered on the subject will be held to be worth uttering, purely for its own sake,
and because it could not well have been said twelve months ago. He merges himself, out
of the pure transport of his good will, into the joyous common-places of others; just
as if he had joined a great set of children in tossing over some mighty bowl of
snap-dragon, too scalding to bear; and thought that nothing could be so good as to echo
their “hurras!” Furthermore, we fear that some of his old friends, on the
wrong side of the House, would think a little of his merriment
profane: though for our parts, if we are certain of anything in this world, it is that
nothing can be more Christian.
“The Banquet.” I cannot find this poem. It is, I think, not
in The Tatler.
“How capitally the Frenchman . . .” I cannot find
any French paraphrase of Satan
in Search of a Wife, nor has a search at the Bibliotheque Nationale in
Paris revealed one.
“R.’s interview with the Premier.”
R. would be Rogers. Perhaps the best
explanation of this portion of Lamb’s letter is
the following passage from Mr. Dykes
Campbell’smemoir
of Coleridge:—
On June 26, 1830, died George
IV., and with him died the pensions of the Royal Associates. Apparently they
did not find this out until the following year. In the Englishman’s Magazine for June
1831, attention was directed to the fact that “intimation had been given to
Mr. Coleridge and his brother Associates
that they must expect their allowances ‘very shortly’ to
cease”—the allowances having been a personal bounty of the late King. On June 3,
1831, Gillman wrote a letter to the Times, “in consequence
of a paragraph which appeared in the Times
of this day.” He states that on the sudden suppression of the honorarium,
representations on Coleridge’s behalf were made to Lord Brougham, with the result that the Treasury (Lord Grey) offered a private grant of £200, which
Coleridge “had felt it his duty most respectfully to
decline.” Stuart, however, wrote to
King William’s son, the Earl of Munster, pointing out the hardship entailed on
Coleridge, “who is old and infirm, and without other
means of subsistence.” He begs the Earl to lay the matter before his royal
father. To this a reply came, excusing the King on account of his “very reduced
income,” but promising that the matter shall be laid before His Majesty. To
these letters, which are printed in Letters from the Lake Poets (pages 319-322), the following note is
appended: “The annuity . . . was not renewed, but a sum of £300 was ultimately
handed over to Coleridge by the Treasury.” Even apart
from this bounty, Coleridge was not a sufferer by the withdrawal of
the King’s pension, for Frere made it up to
him annually.
It is interesting to know that Lamb
played so useful and characteristic a part in this matter.
“The Sugdens.” I do not identify
these friends.
“2d vol. Elias.” This would
refer, I think, to the American volume, published without authority, in 1828, under the
title Elia; or, Second Series, which Lamb told N. P.
Willis he liked. It contained three pieces not by Lamb;
the rest made up from the Works and the London Magazine (see Vol. II., page 301).]
LETTER 511 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXONPray forward the enclosed, or put it in the post.
[No date. Early August, 1831.]
DEAR M.—The R.A. here memorised was George Dawe, whom I knew well and heard many
anecdotes of, from Daniels and Westall, at H. Rogers’s—to each of
them it will be well to send a Mag.
in my name. It will fly like wild fire among the R. Academicians and artists.
Could you get hold of Proctor—his
chambers are in Lincoln’s Inn at Montagu’s—or of Janus
Weathercock?—both of their prose is
capital. Don’t encourage poetry. The Peter’s
Net does not intend funny things only. All is fish. And leave out
the sickening Elia at the end. Then it may comprise
letters and characters addrest to Peter—but a signature
forces it to be all characteristic of the one man Elia, or
the one man Peter, which cramped me formerly. I have
agreed not for my sister to know the subjects I chuse
till the Mag. comes out; so beware of speaking of ’em, or writing about
’em, save generally. Be particular about this warning. Can’t you
drop in some afternoon, and take a bed?
The Athenæum has been hoaxed with some exquisite poetry that
was 2 or 3 months ago in Hone’sBook. I like your 1st
No. capitally. But is it not small? Come and see us, week day if
possible.
C. L.
Note
[Moxon had just acquired The Englishman’s
Magazine and Lamb contributed to
the September number his “Recollections of a Late Royal Academician,” George Dawe (see Vol. I. of this edition, page 331), under the general
title “Peter’s Net.”
Daniels may have been Thomas or William Daniell, both
landscape painters. Westall may have been Richard Westall, the historical painter, or William Westall, the topographical painter. H. Rogers
was Henry Rogers, brother of the poet.
“The Athenæum has been hoaxed.” The exquisite poetry was FitzGerald’s “Meadows in Spring” (see next letter).]
LETTER 512 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. Aug. 5, 1831.]
SEND, or bring me, Hone’s No. for August.
Hunt is a fool, and his critics——The
anecdotes of E. and of G. D. are substantially true. What does
Elia (or Peter) care for dates?
That is the poem I mean. I do not know who wrote it, but is in Hone’sbook as far back as April.
Tis a poem I envy—that &
Montgomery’sLast Man (nothing else of
his). I envy the writers, because I feel I could have done something like it.
S—— is a coxcomb. W—— is a ————
—— & a great Poet.
L.
Note
[Hone was now editing his Year Book. Under the
date April 30 had appeared Edward FitzGerald’s
poem, “The Meadows in
Spring,” with the following introduction:—
These verses are in the old style; rather homely in expression; but I honestly profess
to stick more to the simplicity of the old poets than the moderns, and to love the
philosophical good humor of our old writers more than the sickly melancholy of the
Byronian wits. If my verses be not good, they are good humored, and that is
something.
The editor of The Athenæum, in reprinting the poem, suggested delicately that it was
by Lamb. There is no such poem by James Montgomery as “The Last Man.”
Campbell wrote a “Last Man,” and so did Hood, but I agree with Canon Ainger
that what Lamb meant was Montgomery’s
“Common Lot.” I give the two poems in the Appendix (see pages 960 and 961) as
illustrations of what Lamb envied.
“Hunt is a fool.” In The Tatler for August 1
Leigh Hunt had quoted much of
Lamb’s essay on Elliston. I do not, however, find any adverse criticism.
“E. and G.
D.” Lamb had written in the
August number of The
Englishman’s Magazine his “Reminiscences of Elliston.”
Lamb’s article on George
Dawe did not appear till the September number, but perhaps Moxon already had the copy.]
LETTER 513 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. Sept. 5, 1831.]
DEAR M., Your
Letter’s contents pleased me. I am only afraid of taxing you, yet I want
a stimulus, or I think I should drag sadly. I shall keep the monies in trust
till I see you fairly over the next 1 January. Then I shall look upon ’em
as earned. Colburn shall be written to.
No part of yours gave me more pleasure (no, not the £10, tho’ you may
grin) than that you will revisit old Enfield, which I hope will be always a
pleasant idea to you.
Yours very faithfully C. L.
Note
[The letter’s contents was presumably payment for Lamb’s contribution to The Englishman’s Magazine.]
LETTER 614 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT, Jr.
[p.m. Sept. 13, 1831.]
DEAR Wm—We
have a sick house, Mrs. Westwds
daughter in a fever, & Grandaughter in the meazles, & it is better to
see no company just now, but in a week or two we shall be very glad to see you;
come at a hazard then, on a week day if you can, because Sundays are stuffd up
with friends on both parts of this great ill-mix’d family. Your second
letter, dated 3d Septr., came
not till Sundy & we staid at home in evens in
expectation of seeing you. I have turned & twisted what you ask’d me
to do in my head, & am obliged to say I can not undertake it—but as a
composition for declining it, will you accept some verses which I meditate to
be addrest to you on your father, & prefixable to your Life? Write me word
that I may have ’em ready against I see you some 10 days hence, when I
calculate the House will be uninfected. Send your mother’s address.
If you are likely to be again at Cheshunt before that time,
on second thoughts, drop in here, & consult—
Yours, C. L.
Not a line is yet written—so say, if I shall do
’em.
Note
[This is the only letter extant to the younger Hazlitt, who was then nearly twenty. William Hazlitt, the essayist, had died September 18,
1830. Lamb was at his bedside. The memoir of him, by
his son, was prefixed to the Literary Remains in 1836, but no verses by
Lamb accompanied it. When this letter was last sold at
Sotheby’s in June, 1902, a copy of verses was attached beginning— There lives at Winterslow a man of such Rare talents and deep learning . . . in the handwriting of William Hazlitt. They bear more traces of
being Mary Lamb’s work than her
brother’s.]
LETTER 515 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. October 24, 1831.]
TO address an abdicated monarch is a nice point of
breeding. To give him his lost titles is to mock him; to withhold ’em is
to wound him. But his Minister who falls with him may be gracefully
sympathetic. I do honestly feel for your diminution of honors, and regret even
the pleasing cares which are
part and parcel of greatness. Your magnanimous submission, and the cheerful
tone of your renunciation, in a Letter which, without flattery, would have made
an “Article,” and which, rarely as I keep letters, shall be
preserved, comfort me a little. Will it please, or plague you, to say that when
your Parcel came I damned it, for my pen was warming in my hand at a ludicrous
description of a Landscape of an R.A., which I calculated upon sending you to
morrow, the last day you gave me. Now any one calling in, or a letter coming,
puts an end to my writing for the day. Little did I think that the mandate had
gone out, so destructive to my occupation, so relieving to the apprehensions of
the whole body of R.A.’s. So you see I had not quitted the ship while a
plank was remaining.
To drop metaphors, I am sure you have done wisely. The very
spirit of your epistle speaks that you have a weight off your mind. I have one
on mine. The cash in hand, which, as * * * * * * less
truly says, burns in my pocket. I feel queer at returning it (who does not?).
You feel awkward at re-taking it (who ought not?) Is there no middle way of
adjusting this fine embarrassment? I think I have hit upon a medium to skin the
sore place over, if not quite to heal it. You hinted that there might be
something under £10 by and by accruing to me Devil’s Money. You are
sanguine—say £7: 10s.—that I entirely renounce and abjure all future interest
in, I insist upon it, and “by Him I will not name” I won’t
touch a penny of it. That will split your Loss one half—and leave me
conscientious possessor of what I hold. Less than your assent to this, no
proposal will I accept of.
The Rev. Mr. ——, whose name you have
left illegible (is it Seagull?) never sent me any book
on Christ’s Hospit. by which I could dream that I was indebted to him for
a dedication. Did G. D. send his penny
tract to me to convert me to Unitarianism? Dear blundering soul! why I am as
old a one-Goddite as himself. Or did he think his cheap publication would bring
over the Methodists over the way here? However I’ll give it to the
pew-opener (in whom I have a little interest,) to hand over to the Clerk, whose
wife she sometimes drinks tea with, for him to lay before the Deacon, who
exchanges the civility of the hat with him, for him to transmit to the
Minister, who shakes hand with him out of Chapel, and he, in all odds, will
—————— with it.
I wish very much to see you. I leave it to you to come how
you will. We shall be very glad (we need not repeat) to see your sister, or
sisters, with you—but for you individually I will just hint that a dropping in
to Tea unlook’d for about 5, stopping bread-n-cheese and gin-and-water,
is worth a thousand Sundays. I am naturally
miserable on a Sunday, but a week day evening and Supper is like old times. Set
out now, and give no time to deliberation—
P.S.—The 2d vol. of Elia is delightful(-ly
bound, I mean) and quite cheap. Why, man, ’tis a Unique—
If I write much more I shall expand into an article, which
I cannot afford to let you have so cheap.
By the by, to shew the perverseness of human will—while I
thought I must furnish one of those accursed things
monthly, it seemed a Labour above Hercules’s “Twelve” in a year, which were
evidently Monthly Contributions. Now I am emancipated, I feel as if I had a
thousand Essays swelling within me. False feelings both.
I have lost Mr.
Aitken’s Town address—do you know it? Is he there?
Your ex-Lampoonist, or Lamb-punnist—from Enfield, Oct. 24,
or “last day but one for receiving articles that can be inserted.”
Note
[Moxon, finding The Englishman’s
Magazine unsuccessful, gave it up suddenly after the October number,
the third under his direction. His letter to Lamb on
the subject is not now forthcoming. The ludicrous description of a landscape by an R.A. is,
I imagine, that of the garden of the Hesperides in the Elia essay on the “Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the
Production of Modern Art” (see Vol. II., page 227). Probably Turner’s “Garden of the
Hesperides” in the National Gallery.
By “Devil’s Money” Lamb means money due for Satan in Search of a Wife. I do not identify *
* * * * *.
“By Him I will not name.” An allusion probably to the
Jewish habit of avoiding Jehovah’s name in their synagogues.
“The Rev. Mr. ——.” I have not
identified this gentleman.
“G. D. . . . penny tract.” I
have not found Dyer’s tract.
“The 2d vol. of Elia.” See note on page 877.
“Mr. Aitken.” John Aitken, editor of Constable’s Miscellany, whom Moxon would have known at Hurst & Co.’s. See page 974.]
LETTER 516 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. Dec. 15, 1831.]
DEAR M.
†S. I know, has an aversion,
amounting almost to horror, of H. He would
not lend his name. The other I might wring a guinea from, but he is very properly shy of his guineas. It would be improper in
me to apply to him, and impertinent to the
other. I hope this will satisfy you, but don’t give my
reason to H.’s friend, simply, say I decline it.
I am very much obliged to you for thinking of Cary. Put me down seven shillings (wasn’t
it?) in your books, and I set you down for more in my good ones. One Copy will
go down to immortality now, the more lasting as the less its leaves are
disturbed. This Letter will cost you 3d.—but I did not like to be silent on the
above†.
Nothing with my name will sell, a blast is upon it. Do not
think of such a thing, unless ever you become rich enough to speculate.
Being praised, and being bought, are different things to a
Book. Fancy books sell from fashion, not from the number of their real likers.
Do not come at so long intervals. Here we are sure to be.
Note
[S. and H. I do not
identify—perhaps Southey and Hunt. Hunt’s need of guineas was chronic. The
reference to Cary is not very clear. Lamb seems to suggest that he is giving
Cary a copy of a book that Cary will not
read, but will preserve.
“Nothing with my name.” Moxon may perhaps have just suggested publishing a second series of Elia.]
LETTER 517 CHARLES LAMB TO JOSEPH HUME’S DAUGHTERS
[No date. 1832.]
MANY thanks for the wrap-rascal, but how delicate
the insinuating in, into the pocket, of that 3½d., in paper too! Who was it?
Amelia, Caroline,
Julia, Augusta, or
“Scots who have”?
As a set-off to the very handsome present, which I shall lay
out in a pot of ale certainly to her health, I have paid
sixpence for the mend of two button-holes of the coat now return’d. She
shall not have to say, “I don’t care a button for her.”
Adieu, tres aimables!
Buttons 6d. Gift 3½ —— Due from —— 2½
which pray accept . . . from your foolish coat-forgetting
C. L.
Note
[For Joseph Hume see the note to
Letter 205, page 455. Mr. Hazlitt writes:
“Amelia Hume became Mrs. Bennett,
JuliaMrs. Todhunter. The latter
personally informed me in 1888 that her Aunt Augusta perfectly
recollected all the circumstances [of the present note]. The incident seems to have taken
place at the residence of Mr. Hume, in Percy Street, Bloomsbury, and
it was Amelia who found the threepence-halfpenny in the coat which
Lamb left behind him, and who repaired the
button-holes. The sister who is described as ‘Scots wha ha’e’ was
Louisa Hume; it was a favourite song with her.”
Mrs. Todhunter supplied the date, 1832.]
LETTER 518 CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE
[p.m. March 5, 1832.]
DR Sir, My friend Aders, a German merchant, German born, has opend to the public
at the Suffolk St. Gallery his glorious Collection of old Dutch and German
Pictures. Pray see them. You have only to name my name, and have a ticket—if
you have not received one already. You will possibly notice ’em, and
might lug in the inclosed, which I wrote for Hone’sYear Book, and has appear’d only there,
when the Pictures were at home in Euston Sq. The fault of this matchless set of
pictures is, the admitting a few Italian pictures with ’em, which I would
turn out to make the Collection unique and pure. Those old Albert Durers have not had their fame. I have
tried to illustrate ’em. If you print my verses, a Copy, please, for me.
Note
[The first letter to Charles Wentworth
Dilke (1789-1864), a friend of Keats,
Hunt and Hood,
editor of Dodsley and now editor of The Athenæum. Lamb’s verses ran thus:— TO C. ADERS, Esq. On his Collection of Paintings by the old German
Masters Friendliest of men, Aders, I never come Within the precincts of this sacred Room, But I am struck with a religious fear, Which says “Let no profane eye enter here.” With imagery from Heav’n the walls are clothed, Making the things of Time seem vile and loathed. Spare Saints, whose bodies seem sustain’d by Love With Martyrs old in meek procession move. Here kneels a weeping Magdalen, less bright To human sense for her blurr’d cheeks; in sight Of eyes, new-touch’d by Heaven, more winning fair Than when her beauty was her only care. A Hermit here strange mysteries doth unlock In desart sole, his knees worn by the rock. There Angel harps are sounding, while below Palm-bearing Virgins in white order go. Madonnas, varied with so chaste design, While all are different, each seems genuine, And hers the only Jesus: hard outline, And rigid form, by Durer’s hand subdued To matchless grace, and sacro-sanctitude; Durer, who makes thy slighted Germany Vie with the praise of paint-proud Italy. Whoever enter’st here, no more presume To name a Parlour, or a Drawing Room; But, bending lowly to each, holy Story, Make this thy Chapel, and thine Oratory.]
LETTER 519 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
April 14th, 1832.
MY dear Coleridge,—Not an unkind thought has passed in my brain about
you. But I have been wofully neglectful of you, so that I do not deserve to
announce to you, that if I do not hear from you before then, I will set out on
Wednesday morning to take you by the hand. I would do it this moment, but an
unexpected visit might flurry you. I shall take silence for acquiescence, and
come. I am glad you could write so long a letter. Old loves to, and hope of
kind looks from, the Gilmans, when I
come.
Yours semper idem
C. L.
If you ever thought an offence, much more wrote it,
against me, it must have been in the times of Noah;
and the great waters swept it away. Mary’s most kind love, and maybe a wrong prophet of
your bodings!—here she is crying for mere love over your letter. I wring
out less, but not sincerer, showers.
My direction is simply, Enfield.
Note
[Mr. Dykes Campbell’s
comment upon this note is that it was written to remove some mistaken sick-man’s
fancy.]
LETTER 520 CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES SHERIDAN KNOWLES
[No date. ? April, 1832.]
DEAR Kn.—I
will not see London again without seeing your pleasant Play. In meanwhile,
pray, send three or four orders to a Lady who can’t afford to pay:
Miss James, No. 1 Grove Road, Lisson
Grove, Paddington, a day or two before—and come and see us some Evening with my hitherto uncorrupted and honest
bookseller Moxon.
C. Lamb.
Note
[I have dated this April, 1832, because it may refer to Knowles’
play “The Hunchback,”
produced April 5, 1832. It might also possibly refer to “The Wife” of a year later, but I think not.]
LETTER 521 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN FORSTER
[? Late April, 1832.]
One day in my life
Do come.
C. L.
I HAVE placed poor Mary at Edmonton—
I shall be very glad to see the Hunch Back and Straitback the 1st Eveng
they can come. I am very poorly indeed. I have been cruelly thrown out.
Come and don’t let me drink too much. I drank more yesterday than I
ever did any one day in my life
C. L.
Do come.
Cannot your Sister come and take a half bed—or a whole
one? Which, alas, we have to spare.
Note
[Mary Lamb would have been taken to
Walden House, Edmonton, where mental patients were received. A year later the
Lambs moved there altogether.
The Hunchback would be Knowles;
the Straitback I do not recognise.
John Forster (1812-1876), whom we now meet for the
first time, one of Lamb’s last new friends, was
the author, later, of Lives ofthe Statesmen of the
Commonwealth and the Lives also of Goldsmith and Dickens. His Life of Pym,
which was in Vol. II. of the Statesman,
did not appear until 1837, but I assume that he had ridden the hobby for some years.
Mr. Bertram Dobell has a letter from Lamb to Talfourd,
belonging probably to the same period, asking him to bring Ryle. He says that Moxon and
Knowles are coming; and adds the erratum
“for M. and K. read K.
and M. Booksellers after authors.” He
ends: “Yours till Death; you are mine after”—Talfourd
being one of his executors.]
LETTER 522 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON (?)
[p.m. June 1, 1832.]
I AM a little more than half alive—
I was more than half dead—
the Ladies are very agreeable—
I flatter myself I am less than
disagreeable—
Convey this to Mr. Forster—
Whom, with you, I shall just be able to
see some 10 days hence and believe me ever yours
C. L.
I take Forster’s name to be John,
But you know whom I mean,
the Pym-praiser
not pimp-raiser.
Note
[This letter possibly is not to Moxon at all, as the wrapper (on which is the postmark) may perhaps belong
to another letter.]
LETTER 523 CHARLES LAMB TO WALTER WILSON
[Dated at end: Aug., 1832.]
MY dear Wilson, I cannot let my old friend Mrs. Hazlitt (Sister in Law to poor Wm. Hazlitt) leave Enfield, without endeavouring to introduce
her to you, and to Mrs. Wilson. Her daughter has a School
in your neighbourhood, and for her talents and by [for] her merits I can answer. If it lies in your power to be useful to them in
any way, the obligation to your old office-fellow will be great. I have not forgotten Mrs. Wilson’s
Album, and if you, or she, will be the means of procuring but one pupil for
Miss Hazlitt, I will rub up my poor poetic faculty to
the best. But you and she will one day, I hope, bring the Album with you to
Enfield—
Poor Mary is ill, or
would send her love—
Yours very Truly C. Lamb.
News.—Collet is
dead, Du Puy is dead. I am not.—Hone! is
turned Believer in Irving and his
unknown Tongues.
In the name of dear Defoe which alone might be a Bond of Union between us,
Adieu!
Note
[Addressed to Wilson, Burnet
House, Bath.
Mrs. Hazlitt was the wife of John Hazlitt, the miniature painter, who died in 1837. I
have been unable to trace her daughter’s history.
Collet I do not recognise. Probably an old
fellow-clerk at the India House, as was Du Puy (see
note on page 327). It is true that Hone was converted
by Irving, and became himself a preacher.]
LETTER 524 CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[No date. ? Early October, 1832.]
FOR Landor’s kindness I have just esteem. I shall tip him a
Letter, when you tell me how to address him.
Give Emma’s
kindest regrets that I could not entice her good friend, your Nephew, here.
Her warmest love to the Bury
Robinsons—our all three to H.
Crab.
C. L.
Note
[Mr. Macdonald’s transcript
adds: “Accompanying copy of Landor’s
verses to Emma Isola, and others, contributed to
Miss Wordsworth’s Album, and poem written at Wast-water.
C. L.”
The Bury Robinsons were Crabb
Robinson’s brother and other relatives, whom Miss Isola had met when at Fornham.]
LETTER 525 CHARLES LAMB TO WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
[No date. October, 1832.]
DEAR Sir, pray accept a little volume. ’Tis a
legacy from Elia, you’ll see. Silver and Gold had he
none, but such as he had, left he you. I do not know how to thank you for
attending to my request about the Album. I thought you would never remember it.
Are not you proud and thankful, Emma?
Yes, very, both— Emma Isola.
Many things I had to say to you, which there was not
time for. One why should I forget? ’tis for Rose Aylmer, which has a charm I
cannot explain. I lived upon it for weeks.—
Next I forgot to tell you I knew all your Welch
annoyancers, the measureless Beethams. I knew a
quarter of a mile of them. 17 brothers and 16 sisters, as they appear to me
in memory. There was one of them that used to fix his long legs on my
fender, and tell a story of a shark, every night, endless, immortal. How
have I grudged the salt sea ravener not having had his gorge of him!
The shortest of the daughters measured 5 foot eleven
without her shoes. Well, some day we may confer about them. But they were
tall. Surely I have discover’d the longitude—
Sir, If you can spare a moment, I should be happy to
hear from you—that rogue Robinson
detained your verses, till I call’d for them. Don’t entrust a
bit of prose to the rogue, but believe me
Your obliged C. L.
My Sister sends her kind regards.
Note
[Crabb Robinson took Landor to see Lamb
on September 28, 1832. The following passage in Forster’sLife of Landor describes the visit and explains this
letter:—
The hour he passed with Lamb was one of unalloyed
enjoyment. A letter from Crabb Robinson before
he came over had filled him with affection for that most lovable of men, who had not an
infirmity to which his sweetness of nature did not give something of kinship to a
virtue. “I have just seen Charles and Mary Lamb,” Crabb
Robinson had written (20th October, 1831), “living in absolute
solitude at Enfield. I find your poems lying open before Lamb.
Both tipsy and sober he is ever muttering Rose Aylmer. But it
is not those lines only that have a curious fascination for him. He is always
turning to Gebir for things that haunt him in the same way.” Their
first and last hour was now passed together, and before they parted they were old
friends. I visited Lamb myself (with Barry Cornwall) the following month, and remember the boyish delight
with which he read to us the verses which
Landor has written in the album of Emma Isola. He had just received them through
Robinson, and had lost little time in making rich return by
sending Landor his Last
Essays of Elia.
These were Landor’s verses:— TO EMMA ISOLA Etrurian domes, Pelasgian walls, Live fountains, with their nymphs around Terraced and citron-scented halls, Skies smiling upon sacred ground— The giant Alps, averse to France, Point with impatient pride to those, Calling the Briton to advance, Amid eternal rocks and snows— I dare not bid him stay behind, I dare not tell him where to see The fairest form, the purest mind, Ausonia! that e’er sprang from thee, and this is “Rose Aylmer”:— Ah what avails the sceptred race! Ah what the form divine! What every virtue, every grace! Rose Aylmer, all were thine. Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes May weep, but never see, A night of memories and of sighs I consecrate to thee.
Of the measureless BethamsLamb wrote in similar terms, but more fully, in an article
in the New Times in 1825, entitled
“Many Friends” (see Vol.
I., page 270).
On April 9, 1834, Landor wrote to
Lady Blessington:—
I do not think that you ever knew Charles Lamb,
who is lately dead. Robinson took me to see
him. “Once, and once only, have I seen thy face, Elia! once only has thy tripping tongue Run o’er my heart, yet never has been left Impression on it stronger or more sweet. Cordial old man! what youth was in thy years, What wisdom in thy levity, what soul In every utterance of thy purest breast! Of all that ever wore man’s form, ’tis thee I first would spring to at the gate of Heaven.”
I say tripping tongue, for Charles
Lamb stammered and spoke hurriedly. He did not think it worth while to
put on a fine new coat to come down and see me in, as poor Coleridge did, but met me as if I had been a friend of twenty
years’ standing; indeed, he told me I had been so, and shewed me some things I
had written much longer ago, and had utterly forgotten. The world will never see again
two such delightful volumes as “The
Essays of Elia;” no man living is capable of writing the worst twenty
pages of them. The Continent has Zadig and
Gil Blas, we have Elia and Sir Roger de Coverly.
In a letter to Southey the lines
differed, ending thus: Few are the spirits of the glorified I’d spring to earlier at the gate of Heaven.]
LETTER 526 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[Late 1832.]
A POOR mad usher (and schoolfellow of mine) has been
pestering me through you with poetry and petitions. I
have desired him to call upon you for a half sovereign, which place to my
account.
I have buried Mrs.
Reynolds at last, who has virtually at least bequeath’d me
a legacy of £32 per Ann., to which add that my other pensioner is safe housed
in the workhouse, which gets me £10.
Richer by both legacies £42 per Ann.
For a loss of a loss is as good as a gain of a gain.
But let this be between ourselves,
specially keep it from A—— or I shall speedily have candidates for the
Pensions.
Mary is laid up with a cold.
Will you convey the inclosed by hand?
When you come, if you ever do, bring me one Devil’s
Visit, I mean Southey’s; also the Hogarth which is complete, Noble’s I think. Six more letters to do. Bring my bill
also.
C. L.
Note
[I do not identify the usher. Mrs.
Reynolds, Lamb’s first
schoolmistress, we have met. The other pensioner I do not positively identify; presumably
it was Morgan, Coleridge’s old friend, to whom Lamb and
Southey had each given ten pounds annually from
1819.
A—— I cannot positively identify. Perhaps the philanthropic Allsop.
Southey’s “Devil’s Visit” was a new
edition of The Devil’s
Walk illustrated by Thomas
Landseer.
Noble’s “Hogarth.” Noble was the engraver.]
LETTER 527 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. Winter, 1832.]
THANK you for the books. I am ashamed to take tythe
thus of your press. I am worse to a publisher than the two Universities and the
Brit. Mus. A[llan] C[unningham] I will
forthwith read. B[arry] C[ornwall] (I can’t get out of
the A, B, C) I have more than read. Taken altogether, ’tis too Lovey; but what delicacies! I like most “King Death;” glorious ’bove all,
“The Lady with the Hundred Rings;”
”The Owl;” “Epistle to What’s his Name”
(here may be I’m partial); “Sit down, Sad
Soul;” “The Pauper’s
Jubilee” (but that’s old, and yet ’tis never old);
“The Falcon;” “Felon’s Wife;” damn “Madame Pasty” (but that is borrowed); Apple-pie is very good, And so is apple-pasty; But —— O Lard! ’tis very nasty: but chiefly the dramatic fragments,—scarce three of which should have
escaped my Specimens, had
an antique name been prefixed. They exceed his first. So much for the nonsense
of poetry; now to the serious business of life. Up a court (Blandford Court) in
Pall Mall (exactly at the back of Marlbro’ House), with iron gate in
front, and containing two houses, at No. 2 did lately live
Leishman my taylor. He is moved somewhere in the
neighbourhood, devil knows where. Pray find him out, and give him the opposite.
I am so much better, tho’ my hand shakes in writing it, that, after next
Sunday, I can well see F[orster] and
you. Can you throw B. C. in? Why tarry the wheels of my
Hogarth?
Charles Lamb.
Note
[“I am worse to a publisher.” There is a rule by
which a publisher must present copies of every book to the Stationers’ Hall, to be
distributed to the British Museum, the Bodleian, and Cambridge University Library.
“A. C. . . . B. C.” Allan
Cunningham’sMaid of Elvar and Barry
Cornwall’sEnglish Songs, both published by Moxon. This is Barry Cornwall’s
“King Death”:—
KING DEATH King Death was a rare old fellow! He sate where no sun could shine; And he lifted his hand so yellow, And poured out his coal-black wine. Hurrah! for the coal-black Wine! There came to him many a Maiden, Whose eyes had forgot to shine; And Widows, with grief o’erladen, For a draught of his sleepy wine. Hurrah! for the coal-black Wine! The Scholar left all his learning; The Poet his fancied woes; And the Beauty her bloom returning, Like life to the fading rose. Hurrah! for the coal-black Wine! All came to the royal old fellow, Who laugh’d till his eyes dropped brine, As he gave them his hand so yellow, And pledged them in Death’s black wine. Hurrah!—Hurrah! Hurrah! for the coal-black Wine!
By the “Epistle to What’s his Name” Lamb refers to some lines to himself which had been printed
first in the London
Magazine in 1825, entitled “The Epistle to Charles Lamb.” They are printed
in the Appendix, page 962.
“Madame Pasty.” Procter had some lines on Madame Pasta.
“My Specimens.” Lamb’sDramatic Specimens, which very likely suggested to
Procter the idea of “Dramatic
Fragments.”
Under the date November 30, 1832, an unsigned letter endorsed from
Charles Lamb to Professor Wilson is printed in Mrs.
Gordon’s“Christopher North:” A Memoir of John
Wilson. Although in its first paragraph it might be
Lamb’s, there is evidence to the contrary in the remainder,
and I have no doubt that the endorsement was a mistake. It is therefore not printed here.]
LETTER 528 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[Dated by Forster at end: Dec., 1832.]
THIS is my notion. Wait till you are able to throw
away a round sum (say £1500) upon a speculation, and then—don’t do it.
For all your loving encouragemts—till this final damp
came in the shape of your letter, thanks—for Books also—greet the Fosters and Proctors—and come singly or conjunctively as soon as you can.
Johnson and Fare’s sheets
have been wash’d—unless you prefer Danby’s last bed—at the Horseshoe.
Note
[I assume Lamb’s advice to
refer to Moxon’s intention of founding a paper
called The Reflector, which Forster was to edit. All trace of this periodical has
vanished, but it existed in December, 1832, for three numbers, and was then withdrawn.
Lamb contributed to it.
Johnson and Fare had just murdered—on December
19—a Mr. Danby, at Enfield. They had met him in the
Crown and Horseshoes (see note to next Letter).
Mr. W. C. Hazlitt prints a note to Moxon in his Bohn edition in which
Lamb advises the withdrawal of The Reflector at once. This would be December,
1832.]
LETTER 529 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN FORSTER
To Messrs. Bradbury &
Evans, 14 Bouverie Street, Fleet Street. For the
Editor of the Reflector from C. Lamb.
[p.m. Dec. 23, 1832.]
I AM very sorry the poor Reflector is abortive. Twas a child of good promise for its weeks. But if the chances are so much against it,
withdraw immediately. It is idle up hill waste of money to spend another stamp
on it.
Note
[Around the seal of this note are the words in Lamb’s hand: “Obiit Edwardus
Reflector Armiger, 31 Dec., 1832. Natus tres hebdomidas. Pax animae
ejus.”
The newspaper stamp at that time was fourpence (less 25 per cent.)
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Louisa Badams (née
Holcroft), dated December 31, 1832, not available for this
edition, in which, after some plain speaking about the Westwoods, Lamb refers to the murder of Mr. Danby at Enfield by Fare and two
other men on the night of December 19, and says that he had been in their company at the
inn a little before, and the next morning was asked to give his evidence. Canon Ainger says that Lamb’s
story is a hoax, but it reads reasonably enough and might as easily have happened as not.]
LETTER 530 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. Jan., 1833.]
I HAVE a proof from Dilke. That serves for next Saturday.
What Forster had, will serve a second. I
sent you a third concluding article for him and us (a capital hit, I
think, about Cervantes) of which I leave you
to judge whether we shall not want it to print before a
third or even second week. In that case beg D. to clap
them in all at once; and keep the Atheneums to print from. What I send is the concluding Article of the painters.
Soften down the Title in the Book to “Defect of the Imaginative Faculty in
Artists.”
Consult Dilke.
Note
[Lamb’sElia essay
“Barrenness of the Imaginative
Faculty in the Production of Modern Art,” intended originally for The Englishman’s
Magazine (see Letter 515), was partly printed by Forster in The
Reflector and finally printed in full in The Athenæum in January and February,
1833. The reference to Don
Quixote is at the end. Moxon was
already printing the Last Essays
of Elia.
“Consult Dilke”
was a favourite phrase with Lamb and Hood and, long before, with Keats.]
LETTERS 531, 532, 533 AND 534 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. Jan. 3 (1833).]
BE sure and let me have the Atheneum—or, if they don’t appear, the
Copy back again. I have no other.
I am glad you are introduced to Rickman, cultivate the introduction. I will not forget to write
to him.
I want to see Blackwood, but not without you.
We are yet Emma-less.
And so that is all I can remember.
This is a corkscrew.
[Here is a florid corkscrew.]
C. Lamb, born
1775 flourished about the year 1832.
C. L.Fecit.—
Note
[Lamb refers still to the “Barrenness of Imagination” series.
There are several scraps addressed by Lamb to Forster in the South
Kensington Museum; but they are undated and of little importance. I append one or two
here:—]
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN FORSTER
Orders.
GO to Dilke’s, or Let Mockson, and ax him to add this to what I sent him a few days
since, or to continue it the week after. The Plantas &c. are capital.
Requests.
Come down with M. and
Dante and
L. E. L. on Sunday.
Elia.
I dont mean at his House, but the Atheneum office. Send it there. Hand shakes.
Note
[The Plantas sound like cigars. If so, we must suppose that Lamb still smoked. M. and
Dante and L. E. L. would be Moxon, Cary and
Letitia Landon, the poetess, to whom Forster was
for a while engaged.
This letter, up to a certain point, was repeated as follows. It also is
at South Kensington:—]
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN FORSTER
I WISH youd go to Dilke’s, or let Mockson, and ax him to add this to what I sent him a few days
since, or to continue it the week after. The Plantas &c. are capital. Come
down with Procter and Dante on Sunday. I send you the last proof—not
of my friendship. I knew you would like the title. I do thoroughly. The Last Essays of Elia keeps out any
notion of its being a second volume.
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN FORSTER
THERE was a talk of Richmond on Sunday but we were
hampered with an unavoidable engagement that day, besides that I wish to show
it you when the woods are in full leaf. Can you have a quiet evening here to
night or to-morrow night? We are certainly at home.
Yours C. Lamb. Friday.
LETTER 535 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. Jan. 24, 1833.]
DEAR Murray!
Moxon I mean.—I am not to be making
you pay postage every day, but cannot let pass the congratulations of sister,
brother, and “Silk Cloak,” all most cordial
on your change of place. Rogers
approving, who can demur? Tell me when you get into Dover St. and what the No.
is—that I may change foolscap for gilt, and plain Mr. for Esqr. I shall Mister you while you stay—
If you are not too great to attend to it, I wish us to do
without the Sonnets of
Sydney; 12 will take up as many pages, and be too palpable a fill
up. Perhaps we may leave them out, retaining the article, but that is not worth saving. I hope
you liked my Cervantes Article which I sent you yesterday.
Not an inapt quotation, for your fallen predecessor in
Albemarle Street, to whom you must give the coup du
main— Murray, long enough his country’s pride. Pope.
[Then, written at the bottom of the
page] there’s [and written on the next
page] there’s nothing over here.
Note
[Moxon was moving from 64 New Bond
Street to 33 Dover Street. “Silk Cloak” would, I imagine, probably be a
name for Emma Isola.
“The Sonnets of Sydney”—Lamb’sElia essay on this subject. It was not omitted from the Last Essays, which
Moxon was to publish, and eleven sonnets were
quoted.
“Your fallen predecessor.” It is hardly needful to say
that Moxon made very little difference to Murray’s business. The line is from Pope’sSixth Epistle of
the First Book of Horace. To Mr. Murray, who
afterwards was Earl of Mansfield.]
LETTER 536 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[Feb. 10. p.m. Feby. 11, 1833.]
I WISH you would omit “by the author of
Elia,” now, in advertising that damn’d “Devil’s Wedding.” I
had sneaking hopes you would have dropt in today—tis my poor birthday.
Don’t stay away so. Give Forster a
hint—you are to bring your brother some day—sisters in
better weather.
Pray give me one line to say if you receiv’d and
forwarded Emma’s pacquet to
Miss Adams, and how Dover St. looks.
Adieu.
Is there no Blackwood this month?
[Added on cover:—]
What separation will there be between the friend’s
preface, and the Essays? Should not “Last Essays &c.”
head them? If ’tis too late, don’t mind. I don’t care a
farthing about it.
Note
[“Devil’s Wedding”—Satan in Search of a Wife.
“What separation”—the Last Essays of Elia were preceded by “A Character of the Late Elia.”
Here should come a letter from Lamb
to Louisa Badams, dated February 15, 1833.
Lamb begins with a further reference to the Enfield murder (see
note to Letter 529). He says that his sister and himself have got through the Inferno with the help
of Cary, and Mary is beginning Tasso.]
LETTER 537 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. Feb., 1833.]
MY dear M.—I
send you the last proof—not of my friendship—pray see to the finish. I think
you will see the necessity of adding those words after
“Preface”—and “Preface” should be in the
“contents-table”—I take for granted you approve the title. I do
thoroughly—Perhaps if you advertise it in full, as it now stands, the title
page might have simply the Last Essays
of Elia, to keep out any notion of its being a second vol.—
Well, I wish us luck heartily for your sake who have smarted
by me.—
LETTER 538 CHARLES LAMB TO T. N. TALFOURD
February, 1833.
MY dear T.,—Now cannot I call him Serjeant; what is
there in a coif? Those canvas-sleeves protective from ink, when he was a
law-chit—a Chittyling, (let the leathern apron be
apocryphal) do more ’specially plead to the Jury Court of old memory. The
costume (will he agnize it?) was as of a desk-fellow or Socius
Plutei. Methought I spied a brother!
That familiarity is extinct for ever. Curse me if I can call
him Mr. Serjeant—except, mark me, in company. Honour
where honour is due; but should he ever visit us, (do you think he ever will,
Mary?) what a distinction should I
keep up between him and our less fortunate friend, H. C. R.! Decent respect shall always be the
Crabb’s—but, somehow, short of reverence.
Well, of my old friends, I have lived to see two knighted:
one made a judge, another in a fair way to it, Why am I restive? why stands my
sun upon Gibeah?
Variously, my dear Mrs.
Talfourd, (I can be more familiar with her!) Mrs. Serjeant Talfourd,—my sister prompts
me—(these ladies stand upon ceremonies)—has the congratulable news affected the
members of our small community. Mary
comprehended it at once, and entered into it heartily. Mrs.
W—— was, as usual, perverse—wouldn’t, or couldn’t,
understand it. A Serjeant? She thought Mr. T. was in the
law. Didn’t know that he ever ’listed.
Emma alone truly sympathised. She had a silk gown come home that very day, and has
precedence before her learned sisters accordingly.
We are going to drink the health of Mr. and Mrs. Serjeant,
with all the young serjeantry—and that is all that I can see that I shall get
by the promotion.
Valete, et mementote amici quondam vestri humillimi.
C. L.
Note
[Talfourd, who had been pupil of Joseph
Chitty, had just become a Serjeant.
“Socius Plutei.” Companion of the
book-shelf. “H. C. R.”—Crabb
Robinson.
“My old friends.” Stoddart and Tuthill were knighted;
Barron Field was a judge; Talfourd was to become both a knight and a judge.
“Why stands my sun.” See Joshua x.
“Mrs. W——.” Mrs.
Westwood, I suppose.
“Valete, et mementote . .
.” Farewell, and remember once more your humble friend.]
LETTER 539 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. 1833.]
DR M. let us
see you & your Brother on Sunday—The Elias are beautifully got up. Be cautious how
you name the probability of bringing ’em ever out
complete—till these are gone off. Everybody’d say “O I’ll
wait then.”
An’t we to have a copy of the Sonnets—
Mind, I shall insist upon having no
more copies: only I shall take 3 or 4 more of you at trade price. I am resolute
about this.
Yours ever—
LETTER 540 CHARLES LAMB TO C. W. DILKE
[p.m. Feb., 1833.] CHRISTIAN NAMES OF WOMEN (TO EDITH S——) In Christian world Mary the
garland wears! Rebecca sweetens on a Hebrew’s ear; Quakers for pure Priscilla are
more clear; And the light Gaul by amorous
Ninon swears. Among the lesser lights how Lucy
shines! What air of fragrance Rosamund
throws round! How like a hymn doth sweet Cecilia
sound! Of Marthas, and of
Abigails, few lines Have bragg’d in verse. Of coarsest household
stuff Should homely Joan be fashioned.
But can You Barbara resist, or
Marian? And is not Clare for love excuse
enough? Yet, by my faith in numbers, I profess, These all, than Saxon Edith, please me less.
MANY thanks for the life you have given us—I am
perfectly satisfied. But if you advert to it again, I give you a delicate hint.
Barbara S—— shadows
under that name Miss Kelly’s early
life, and I had the Anecdote beautifully from her.
Note
[The sonnet, addressed to Edith
Southey, was printed in The Athenæum for March 9, 1833.
For “Barbara
S——” see Vol. II. of the present edition, page 202.]
LETTER 541 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. Early 1833.]
NO writing, and no word, ever
passed between Taylor, or Hessey, and me, respecting copy right. This I
can swear. They made a volume at their own will, and volunteerd me a third of
profits, which came to £30, which came to Bilk, and
never came back to me. Proctor has acted
a friendly part—when did he otherwise? I am very sorry to hear Mrs. P——as I
suppose is not so well. I meditated a rallying epistle to him on his
Gemini—his two Sosias, accusing him of having acted a notable piece of
duplicity. But if his partner in the double dealing suffers—it would be unseasonable. You
cannot remembr. me to him too kindly. Your chearful
letter has relieved us from the dumps; all may be well. I rejoice at your
letting your house so magnificently. Talfourd’s letter may be directed to him “On the
Western Circuit.”1 That is the way, send
it. With Blackwood pray send Piozziana and a Literary Gazette if you have one. The
Piozzi and that shall be immedtly return’d, and I keep Mad. Darblay for you eventually, a longwinded
reader at present having use of it.
The weather is so queer that I will not say I expect you &c.—but am prepared for the pleasure of
seeing you when you can come.
We had given you up (the post man being late) and Emma and I have 20 times this morning been to
the door in the rain to spy for him coming.
Well, I know it is not all settled, but your letter is
chearful and cheer-making.
We join in triple love to you.
Elia&
Co.
I am settled in any case to take
at Bookseller’s price any copies I have more. Therefore oblige me by
sending a copy of Elia to Coleridge and B.
Barton, and enquire (at your leisure of course) how I can
send one, with a letter, to Walter Savage
Landor. These 3 put in your next bill on me. I am peremptory
that it shall be so. These are all I can want.
1 Is it the Western? he goes to Reading &c.
Note
[John Taylor, representing the
firm of Taylor & Hessey,
seems to have set up a claim of copyright in those essays in the Last Essays of Elia that were
printed in the London
Magazine.
For Procter’s part, see
next letter.
Piozziana; or, Recollections of the late
Mrs. Piozzi (Johnson’sMrs. Thrale),
was published in 1833. It was by the Rev. E. Mangin.
Mad. Darblay would be The Memoirs of Dr. Burney, 1832, by his daughter
Madame d’Arblay (Admiral Burney’s niece). The book was severely handled
in the Quarterly for
April, 1833.
The following letter, which is undated, seems to refer to the difficulty
mentioned above:—]
LETTER 542 CHARLES LAMB TO B. W. PROCTER
Enfield, Monday.
DEAR P——, I
have more than £30 in my house, and am independent of quarter-day, not having
received my pension.
Pray settle, I beg of you, the matter with Mr. Taylor. I know nothing of bills, but most
gladly will I forward to you that sum for him, for Mary is very anxious that M[oxon] may not get into any litigation. The money is literally
rotting in my desk for want of use. I should not interfere with
M——, tell M—— when you see him,
but Mary is really uneasy; so lay it to that account, not
mine.
Yours ever and two evers,
C. L.
Do it smack at once, and I will explain to M—— why I did it. It is simply done to
ease her mind. When you have settled, write, and I’ll send the bank
notes to you twice, in halves.
Deduct from it your share in broken bottles, which, you
being capital in your lists, I take to be two shillings. Do it as you love
Mary and me. Then
Elia’s himself again.
LETTER 543 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[March 6, 1833.]
DEAR Friend—Thee hast sent a Christian epistle to
me, and I should not feel clear if I neglected to reply to it, which would have
been sooner if that vain young man, to whom thou didst intrust it, had not kept
it back. We should rejoice to see thy outward man here, especially on a day
which should not be a first day, being liable to worldly callers in on that
day. Our little book is delayed
by a heathenish injunction, threatened by the man Taylor. Canst thou copy and send, or bring with thee, a vanity
in verse which in my younger days I wrote on friend Aders’ pictures? Thou wilt find it in the book called the
Table Book.
Tryphena and Tryphosa, whom the world calleth Mary and Emma, greet you with me.
Ch. Lamb. 6th of 3d month 4th day.
Note
[On this letter is written by Hone
in pencil: “This acknowledges a note from me to C.
L. written in January preceding and sent by young Will Hazlitt. Received in my paralysis. March,
1833.”]
LETTER 544 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. March 19, 1833.]
I SHALL expectForster and two Moxons on Sunday, and hope for Procter.
I am obliged to be in town next Monday. Could we contrive
to make a party (paying or
not is immaterial) for Miss
Kelly’s that night, and can you shelter us after the play,
I mean Emma and me? I fear, I cannot
persuade Mary to join us.
N.B. I can sleep at a public house.
Send an Elia (mind, I insist on buying it) to T. Manning Esq. at Sir G.
Tuthill’s Cavendish Square.
do write.
Note
[Miss Kelly was then giving an
entertainment called “Dramatic Recollections” at the
Strand Theatre.]
LETTER 545 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. ? Spring, 1833.] One o Clock.
THIS instant receiv’d, this instant I answer
your’s—Dr. Cresswell has one
copy, which I cannot just now re-demand, because at his desire I have sent a
“Satan” to
him, which when he ask’d for, I frankly told him, was imputed a lampoon
on Him!!! I have sent it him, and cannot, till we come to explanation, go to
him or send—
But on the faith of a Gentleman, you shall have it back
some day for another. The 3 I send. I think 2 of the
blunders perfectly immaterial. But your feelings, and I fear pocket, is every thing. I have just time to pack this off by the 2 o
Clock stage. Yours till we meet
At all events I behave more gentlemanlike than Emma did, in returning the copies.
Yours till we meet—do come.
Bring the Sonnets— Why not publish ’em?—or let another
Bookseller?
Note
[Dr. Cresswell was vicar of
Edmonton. Having married the daughter of a tailor—or so Mr. Fuller
Russell states in his account of a conversation with Lamb in Notes and Queries—he was in danger of being ribaldly
associated with Satan’s matrimonial adventures in Lamb’s
ballad. I cannot explain to what book Lamb refers: possibly to the
Last Essays of
Elia, which Moxon, having found
errors in, wished to withdraw, substituting another. The point probably cannot be cleared
up. The sonnets would be Moxon’s own, which he had printed
privately (see Letter 566).]
LETTER 546 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. March 30, 1833.]
DR M.
Emma and we are delighted with the
Sonnets, and she with her nice Walton.
Mary is deep in the novel. Come as
early as you can. I stupidly overlookd your proposal to meet you in Green
Lanes, for in some strange way I burnt my leg,
shin-quarter, at Forster’s;* it is
laid up on a stool, and Asbury attends. You’ll see us all as usual, about
Taylor, when you come.
Yours ever C. L.
* Or the night I came home, for I felt it not bad till
yesterday. But I scarce can hobble across the room.
I have secured 4 places for night: in haste.
Mary and E. do not dream of any thing we have discussed.
Note
[I fancy that the. last sentence refers to an offer for Miss Isola’s hand which Moxon had just made to Lamb.]
LETTER 547 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. Spring, 1833.]
DEAR M. many
thanks for the Books; the Faust I will acknowledge to the Author. But most thanks for one immortal sentence, “If
I do not cheat him, never trust me again.” I do not know whether
to admire most, the wit or justness of the sentiment. It has my cordial
approbation. My sense of meum and tuum applauds it. I maintain it, the eighth
commandment hath a secret special reservation, by which the reptile is exempt
from any protection from it; as a dog, or a nigger, he is not a holder of
property. Not a ninth of what he detains from the world is his own. Keep your
hands from picking and stealing is no ways referable to his acquists. I doubt
whether bearing false witness against thy neighbor at all contemplated this
possible scrub. Could Moses have seen the speck in vision?
An ex post facto law alone could relieve him, and we are
taught to expect no eleventh commandment. The out-law to the Mosaic
dispensation!—unworthy to have seen Moses’ behind—to
lay his desecrating hands upon
Elia! Has the irriverent ark-toucher been struck blind
I wonder—? The more I think of him, the
less I think of him. His meanness is invisible with aid of solar microscope, my
moral eye smarts at him. The less flea that bites little fleas! The great
Beast! the beggarly nit! More when we meet.
Mind, you’ll come, two of you—and couldn’t you
go off in the morning, that we may have a daylong curse at him, if curses are
not dis-hallowed by descending so low? Amen. Maledicatur in
extremis.
Note
[Abraham
Hayward’stranslation of Faust was published by Moxon in
February, 1833. Lamb’s letter of thanks was
said by the late Edmund Yates to be a very odd one.
I have not seen it.
We may perhaps assume that Moxon’s reply to Lamb’s
letter stating that Taylor’s claim had been
paid contained the “immortal sentence.”
“Not a ninth.” A tailor (Taylor) is only a ninth of a
man.
“The less flea.” Remembering Swift’s lines in “On Poetry, a Rhapsody”:— So, naturalists observe, a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite ’em, And so proceed ad
infinitum.]
LETTER 548 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN FORSTER
[No date. ? March, 1833.]
SWALLOW your damn’d dinner and your brandy and
water fast— & come immediately
I want to take Knowles in to Emma’s only female friend for 5 minutes only, and we are
free for the eveng.
I’ll do a Prologue.
Note
[The prologue was for Sheridan Knowles’ play “The Wife.” Lamb wrote both prologue and epilogue (see Vol. V., pages 129, 130 and
349).]
LETTER 549 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. ? April 10, 1833.]
DEAR M. The
first Oak sonnet, and
the Nightingale, may
show their faces in any Annual unblushing. Some of the others are very good.
The Sabbath too much what you have written before. You are
destined to shine in Sonnets, I tell you. Shall we look for you Sunday, we did
in vain Good Friday [April 5].
[A signature was added by Mrs. Moxon for Mr. Frederick
Locker-Lampson, evidently from another letter:—]
Your truest friend C. Lamb.
Note
[I quote Moxon’s first oak sonnet:— On an Oak, in the Parish of Cheshunt, said to have been planted
in 1066, by Sir Theodore Godfrey, or Goffby, who came over with William the
Conqueror. Gigantic time-worn Tree, what moons have fled Since thou wert planted first by warlike hand! Nigh twice four hundred years have swept the land; And yet, defying time, thou lift’st thy head Still green, nor fear’st the storms that round have spread Thy weak compeers. They scatter’d lie, and rent, Ev’n as that Chieftain old, whose monument Thou art. In him pleas’d Fancy fain would trace A knight of high emprise and good intent; Within whose breast wrong’d orphans’ woes found place, Ever in rightful cause the Champion free, Of his proud times the ornament and grace; A wight well worthy to recorded be, In fairest archives of bright chivalry.]
LETTER 550 CHARLES LAMB TO C. W. DILKE
[No date. April, 1833.]
DR Sir, I read your note in a moment of great
perturbation with my Landlady and chuck’d it in the fire, as I should
have done an epistle of Paul, but as far as
my Sister recalls the import of it, I reply. The Sonnets
(36 of them) have never been printed, much less published, till the other
day,1 save that a few of ’em have come out in
Annuals. Two vols., of poetry of M.’s, have been publish’d, but they were not these.
The “Nightingale” has been in one of the those gewgaws, the Annuals;
whether the other I sent you has, or not, penitus ignoro.
But for heaven’s sake do with ’em what you like.
Yours C. L.
1 The proof sheets only were in my hand about a
fortnight ago.
Note
[Moxon’s sonnets were
reviewed, probably by Lamb, in The Athenæum for April 13, 1833. The
sonnet to the nightingale (see page
852) was quoted. This review will be found on page 384 of Vol. I. of the present edition.]
LETTER 551 CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAM AYRTON
[p.m. April (16), 1833.]
DEAR Mrs.
Ayrton, I do not know which to admire most, your kindness, or
your patience, in copying out that intolerable rabble of panegryc from over the
Atlantic. By the way, now your hand is in, I wish you would copy out for me the
13th 17th and 24th of Barrow’s
sermons in folio, and all of Tillotson’s (folio also) except the first, which I have
in Manuscript, and which, you know, is Ayrton’s favorite. Then—but I won’t trouble you any
farther just now. Why does not A come and see me?
Can’t he and Henry Crabbe concert
it? ’Tis as easy as lying is to me. Mary’s kindest love to you both.
Elia.
Note
[The letter is accompanied by a note in the writing of William Scrope Ayrton, the son of William Ayrton, copied from Mrs. Ayrton’s Diary:—
“March 17, 1833.—Copied a critique upon Elia’s works from the Mirror
of America a sort of news paper.”]
LETTER 552 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. April 25, 1833.]
MY dear Moxon, We perfectly agree in your arrangement. It
has quite set my sister’s mind at rest. She will come with you
on Sunday, and return at eve, and I will make comfortable arrangemts with the Buffams. We desire to have you here dining unWestwooded, and I
will try and get you a bottle of choice port. I have transferr’d the
stock I told you to Emma. The plan of
the Buffams steers admirably between two niceties. Tell
Emma we thoroughly approve it. As our damnd Times is a day after the fair, I am
setting off to Enfield Highway to see in a morning paper (alas! the
Publican’s) how the play
ran. Pray, bring 4 orders for Mr.
Asbury—undated. In haste (not for neglect)
Yours ever C. Lamb. Thursday.
Note
[Lamb evidently refers to
Moxon’s engagement to Miss Isola being now settled.
The play was Sheridan
Knowles’ “The
Wife,” produced on April 24.
The Buffams were the landladies
of the house in Southampton Buildings, where Lamb
lodged in town.]
LETTER 553 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. April 27, 1833.]
DEAR M.
Mary and I are very poorly. Asbury says tis nothing but influenza.
Mr. W. appears all but dying, he is
delirious. Mrs. W. was taken so last night, that
Mary was obliged at midnight to knock up
Mrs. Waller to come and sit up with her. We have had a
sick child, who sleeping, or not sleeping, next me with a pasteboard partition
between, killed my sleep. The little bastard is gone. My bedfellows are Cough
and cramp, we sleep 3 in a bed. Domestic arrangemts
(Blue Butcher and all) devolve on Mary. Don’t come
yet to this house of pest and age. We propose when E. and you agree on the time, to come up and meet her at the Buffams’, say a week hence, but do you
make the appointmt. The Lachlans
send her their love.
I do sadly want those 2 last Hogarths—and an’t I to have the Play?
Mind our spirits are good and we are happy in your
happinesses.
C. L.
Our old and ever loves to dear Em.
Note
[“Mr. W.” was Mr. Westwood.—I know nothing of the
Lachlans.—The Play would be “The Wife” probably.—Miss Isola
was, I imagine, staying with the Moxons.]
LETTER 554 CHARLES LAMB TO THE REV. JAMES GILLMAN
May 7, 1833.
BY a strange occurrence we have quitted Enfield for
ever. Oh! the happy eternity! Who is Vicar or Lecturer for that detestable
place concerns us not. But Asbury,
surgeon and a good fellow, has offered to get you a Mover and Seconder, and you
may use my name freely to him. Except him and Dr.
Creswell, I have no respectable acquaintance in the dreary
village. At least my friends are all in the public line, and it might not suit
to have it moved at a special vestry by John Gage at the
Crown and Horseshoe, licensed victualler, and seconded by Joseph
Horner of the Green Dragon, ditto, that the Rev. J. G. is a fit person to be Lecturer,
&c.
My dear James, I
wish you all success, but am too full of my own emancipation almost to
congratulate anyone else. With both our loves to your father and mother and
glorious S. T. C.,
Yours, C. Lamb.
Note
[The Rev. James Gillman was the
eldest son of Coleridge’s physician and
friend. He was born in 1808 and ordained in 1831. He thought in 1833 of standing as
candidate for the vicarship of Enfield, but did not obtain it. After acting as Under Master
of Highgate Grammar School he became in 1836 Rector of Barfreystone, in Kent. In 1847 he
became Vicar of Holy Trinity, Lambeth. He died in 1877.
Mary Lamb having become ill again had been moved to
Edmonton, to a private home for mental patients. Lamb
followed her soon after, and settled in the same house. It
still stands (1904) almost exactly as in the Lambs’ day. I
append a picture.] [figure]
LETTER 555 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN FORSTER
[No date. May, 1833.]
DR F. Can you oblige me by sending 4 Box orders
undated for the Olympic Theatre? I suppose Knowles can get ’em. It is for the
Waldens, with whom I live. The sooner, the better,
that they may not miss the “Wife”—I meet you at the Talfourds’ Saturday week, and if they can’t,
perhaps you can, give me a bed.
Yours ratherish unwell C. Lamb. Mr. Walden’s, Church Street, Edmonton.
Or write immediately to say if you can’t get em.
Note
[Knowles’ play “The Wife,” produced at Covent Garden, was moved to
the Olympic on May 9.]
LETTER 556 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN FORSTER
[p.m. May 12, 1833.]
DEAR Boy, I send you the original Elias, complete.
When I am a little composed, I shall hope to see you and
Proctor here; may be, may see you
first in London.
C. L.
Note
[In the Dyce and Forster
collection, at South Kensington, are preserved some of these MSS.]
LETTER 557 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
End of May nearly, [1833].
DEAR Wordsworth, Your letter, save in what respects your dear
Sister’s health, chear’d
me in my new solitude. Mary is ill again.
Her illnesses encroach yearly. The last was three months, followed by two of
depression most dreadful. I look back upon her earlier attacks with longing.
Nice little durations of six weeks or so, followed by complete
restoration—shocking as they were to me then. In short, half her life she is
dead to me, and the other half is made anxious with fears and lookings forward
to the next shock. With such prospects, it seem’d to me necessary that
she should no longer live with me, and be fluttered with continual removals, so
I am come to live with her, at a Mr. Walden’s and
his wife, who take in patients, and have arranged to lodge and board us only.
They have had the care of her before. I see little of her; alas! I too often
hear her. Sunt lachrymæ rerum—and you and I must bear it—
To lay a little more load on it, a circumstance has
happen’d, cujus pars magna fui,
and which at another crisis I should have more rejoiced in. I am about to lose
my old and only walk-companion, whose mirthful spirits were the “youth of
our house,” Emma Isola. I have her
here now for a little while, but she is too nervous properly to be under such a
roof, so she will make short visits, be no more an inmate. With my perfect
approval, and more than concurrence, she is to be wedded to Moxon at the end of Augst. So “perish the roses and the flowers”—how is
it?
Now to the brighter side, I am emancipated from most hated and detestable people, the
Westwoods. I am with attentive
people, and younger—I am 3 or 4 miles nearer
the Great City, Coaches half-price less, and going always, of which I will
avail myself. I have few friends left there, one or two tho’ most
beloved. But London Streets and faces cheer me inexpressibly, tho’ of the
latter not one known one were remaining.
Thank you for your cordial reception of Elia. Inter nos the Ariadne is not a darling with me, several incongruous
things are in it, but in the composition it served me as illustrative
I want you in the popular fallacies to like the
“Home that is no
home” and “rising with the lark.”
I am feeble, but chearful in this my genial hot
weather,—walk’d 16 miles yesterdy. I can’t
read much in Summer time.
With very kindest love to all and prayers for dear
Dorothy,
I remain most attachedly yours C. Lamb. at mr. walden’s, church street, edmonton, middlesex.
Moxon has introduced Emma to Rogers, and he smiles upon the project. I have given
E. my Milton—will you pardon me?—in
part of a portion. It hangs famously in his Murray-like shop.
[On the wrapper is written:—]
DrM[oxon], inclose this in a better-looking
paper, and get it frank’d, and good by’e till Sundy. Come early—
C. L.
Note
[“Sunt lachrymce
rerum.” From the Æneid, I., 462. “Here are tears. . .
.”
“Youth of our house.” I do not find this.
“Perish the roses and the flowers.” See The Excursion,
Book VII., line 980.
“The Ariadne.” See the essay on
“Barrenness of the Imaginative
Faculty,” where Titian’s
“Bacchus and Ariadne” in the National Gallery is
highly praised (see Vol. II., pages 226 and 446). Wordsworth’s favourite essays in this volume were “The Wedding” and “Old China.”
“My Milton.” Against the
reference to the portrait of Milton, in the
postscript, some one, possibly Wordsworth, has
pencilled a note, now only partially legible. It runs thus: “It had been proposed
by L. that W. W. should be
the Possessor of [? this picture] his friend and that afterwards it was to be
bequeathed to Christ’s Coll. Cambridge.”
Lamb had given Wordsworth in 1820 a copy of Paradise Regained, 1671, with this inscription:
“C. Lamb to the best Knower of Milton, and therefore the worthiest occupant of this
pleasant Edition. June 2d 1820.”
See Appendix II., page 978, for a letter to Miss Rickman.]
LETTER 558 CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
[Dated at end:] Mr. Walden’s, Church
Street, Edmonton, May 31, 1833.
DEAR Mrs.
Hazlitt,—I will assuredly come, and find you out, when I am
better. I am driven from house and home by Mary’s illness. I took a sudden resolution to take my
sister to Edmonton, where she was under medical treatment last time, and have
arranged to board and lodge with the people. Thank God, I have repudiated
Enfield. I have got out of hell, despair of heaven, and must sit down contented
in a half-way purgatory. Thus ends this strange eventful history—
But I am nearer town, and will get up to you somehow before
long—
I repent not of my resolution.
’Tis late, and my hand unsteady, so good b’ye
till we meet.
Your old C. L.
Note
[“Thus ends this strange eventful history”
(“As You Like It,”
II, 7, 164).]
LETTER 559 CHARLES LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM
[No date. June, 1833.]
DEAR Miss
Betham,—I sit down, very poorly, to write to you, being come to
Mr. Walden’s, Church Street,
Edmonton, to be altogether with poor Mary, who is very ill, as usual, only that her illnesses are
now as many months as they used to be weeks in duration—the reason your letter
only just found me. I am saddened with the havoc death has made in your family.
I do not know how to appreciate the kind regard of dear Anne; Mary will understand it two months hence, I hope; but neither
she nor I would rob you, if the legacy will be of use to, or comfort to you. My
hand shakes so I can hardly write. On Saturday week I must come to town, and
will call on you in the morning before one o’clock. Till when I take
kindest leave.
Your old Friend, C. Lamb.
Note
[Miss Betham’s sister,
Anne, who had just died, had left thirty pounds
to Mary Lamb.
Here should come a note from Lamb
to Mrs. Randal Norris, postmarked July 10, 1833,
which encloses a note from Joseph Jekyll, the Old
Bencher, thanking Lamb for a presentation copy of the Last Essays of Elia
(“I hope not the last Essays of Elia”) and asking him to accompany
Mrs. Norris and her daughters on a visit to him.
Jekyll adds that “poor George
Dyer, blind, but as usual chearful and content, often gives . . . good
accounts of you.”]
LETTER 560 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. July 14, 1833.]
DEAR M. the
Hogarths are delicate. Perhaps it
will amuse Emma to tell her, that, a day
or two since, Miss Norris (Betsy)
call’d to me on the road from London from a gig conveying her to Widford,
and engaged me to come down this afternoon. I think I shall stay only one
night; she would have been glad of E.’s
accompaniment, but I would not disturb her, and Mrs. N. is coming to town on Monday, so it would not have
suited. Also, C. V. Le Grice gave me a
dinner at Johnny Gilpin’s yesterday, where we talk’d of what old
friends were taken or left in the 30 years since we had met.
I shall hope to see her on Tuesdy.
To Bless you both C. L. Friday.
Note
[For Le Grice see note on page
34. “Johnny Gilpin’s” was The Bell at Edmonton.
Here should come another note from Lamb to Mrs. Randal Norris, in which
Lamb says that he reached home safely and thanks her for three
agreeable days. Also he sends some little books, which were, I take it, copies of Moxon’s private reissue of Poetry for Children (see note to
Letter 503, page 863).
Mr. W. C. Hazlitt records that a letter from
Lamb to Miss Norris was in
existence in which the writer gave “minute and humorous instructions for his own
funeral, even specifying the number of nails which he desired to be inserted in his
coffin.”]
LETTER 561 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. July 24, 1833.]
FOR god’s sake, give Emma no more watches. One has turn’d her
head. She is arrogant, and insulting. She said something very unpleasant to our
old Clock in the passage, as if he did not keep time, and yet he had made her
no appointment. She takes it out every instant to look at the moment-hand. She
lugs us out into the fields, because there the bird-boys ask you
“Pray, Sir, can you tell us what’s a Clock,” and
she answers them punctually. She loses all her time looking “what the
time is.” I overheard her whispering, “Just so many
hours, minutes, &c. to Tuesday—I think St. George’s goes too
slow”—This little present of Time, why, ’tis Eternity to
her—
What can make her so fond of a gingerbread watch? She has
spoil’d some of the movements. Between ourselves, she has kissed away
“half past 12,” which I suppose to be the canonical hour in Hanover
Sq.
Well, if “love me, love my watch,” answers, she
will keep time to you—
It goes right by the Horse Guards—
[On the next page:—]
Emma hast kist this yellow wafer—a hint.
Dearest M. Never mind opposite nonsense. She does not love you
for the watch, but the watch for you.
I will be at the wedding, and keep the 30 July as long as
my poor months last me, as a festival gloriously.
Your everElia.
We have not heard from Cambridge. I will write the
moment we do.
Edmonton, 24th July, 3.20 post mer. minutes 4 instants
by Emma’s watch.
Note
[There is preserved at Rowfant a letter from Lamb to Moxon, postmarked July 28,
1833, mentioning Lamb’s anxiety about Martin Burney. It is unnecessary to print this.]
LETTER 562 CHARLES AND MARY LAMB TO
EDWARD AND EMMA MOXON
[No date. ? July 31, 1833.]
DEAR Mr. and Mrs.
Moxon—Time very short. I wrote to Miss Fryer, and had the sweetest letter about you,
Emma, that ever friendship dictated. “I am
full of good wishes, I am crying with good wishes,” she says; but
you shall see it.—
Dear Moxon, I take
your writing most kindly and shall most kindly your writing from Paris—
I want to crowd another letter to Miss Fry into the little time after dinner
before Post time. So with 20000 congratulations,
Yours,
C. L.
I am calm, sober, happy. Turn over for the reason. I
got home from Dover St., by Evens, half
as sober as a judge. I am turning over a new leaf, as I hope you will now.
[On the next leaf Mary
Lamb wrote:—]
My dear Emma and
Edward Moxon,
Accept my sincere congratulations, and imagine more
good wishes than my weak nerves will let me put into good set words. The
dreary blank of unanswered questions which I ventured to ask in vain was
cleared up on the wedding-day by Mrs. W. taking a
glass of wine, and, with a total change of countenance, begged leave to
drink Mr. and Mrs. Moxon’s health. It restored me,
from that moment: as if by an electrical stroke: to the entire possession
of my senses—I never felt so calm and quiet after a similar illness as I do
now. I feel as if all tears were wiped from my eyes, and all care from my
heart.
Mary Lamb.
[At the foot of this letter Charles Lamb added:—]
Wednesday.Dears Again
Your letter interrupted a seventh game at
Picquet which we were having, after walking to Wright’s and purchasing shoes. We pass our
time in cards, walks, and reading. We attack Tasso soon.
C. L.
Never was such a calm, or such a recovery. ’Tis
her own words, undictated.
Note
[The marriage of Edward Moxon and
Emma Isola was celebrated on July 30. They
afterwards went to Paris. “Mrs. W.”—Mrs.
Walden, I imagine.
Here should come an amusing but brief account of the wedding sent by
Lamb to Louisa
Badams on August 20 (printed by Canon
Ainger). “I am not fit for weddings or burials. Both incite a
chuckle:” a sentiment which Lamb more than once
expresses.
Here should come a note thanking Matilda
Betham for some bridal verses written for the wedding of Edward Moxon and Emma
Isola. “In haste and headake.”]
LETTER 563 CHARLES LAMB TO H. F. CARY
Sept. 9th, 1833.
DEAR Sir,—Your packet I have only just received,
owing, I suppose, to the absence of Moxon, who is flaunting it about à
la Parisienne with his new bride, our Emma, much to his satisfaction and not a
little to our dulness. We shall be quite well by the time you return from
Worcestershire and most most (observe the repetition) glad to see you here or
anywhere.
I will take my time with Darley’s act. I wish poets would write a little plainer;
he begins some of his words with a letter which is unknown co the English
typography.
Yours, most truly,
C. Lamb.
P.S.—Pray let me know when you return. We are at
Mr. Walden’s, Church-street, Edmonton; no
longer at Enfield. You will be amused to hear that my sister and I have,
with the aid of Emma, scrambled
through the “Inferno” by the blessed furtherance of your polar-star translation. I think we
scarce left anything unmadeout. But our partner has left us, and we have
not yet resumed. Mary’s chief
pride in it was that she should some day brag of it to you. Your Dante and
Sandys’ Ovid are the only helpmates of
translations. Neither of you shirk a word.
Fairfax’sTasso is no translation
at all. It’s better in some places; but it merely observes the number
of stanzas; as for images, similes, &c., he finds ’em himself,
and never “troubles Peter for the
matter.”
In haste, dear Cary, yours ever,
C. Lamb.
Has Moxon sent
you “Elia,”
second volume? if not, he shall. Taylor and we are at law about it.
Note
[“Darley’s
act.” Not now identifiable, I think.
“Taylor and
we.” The case had apparently not been settled by Procter. I have not found any report of a law-suit.]
LETTER 564 CHARLES AND MARY LAMB TO EDWARD
MOXON
[p.m. Sept. 26, 1833.] Thursday.
WE shall be most happy to see Emma, dear to every body. Mary’s spirits are much better, and she
longs to see again our twelve years’ friend. You shall afternoon sip with
me a bottle of superexcellent Port, after deducting a dinner-glass for them. We
rejoyce to have E. come, the first
Visit, without Miss ——, who, I trust, will yet
behave well; but she might perplex Mary with questions.
Pindar sadly wants
Preface and notes. Pray, E., get to Snow
Hill before 12, for we dine before 2. We will make it 2. By mistake I gave you
Miss Betham’s letter, with the
exquisite verses, which pray return to me, or if it be an improved copy, give
me the other, and Albumize mine, keeping the signature. It is too pretty a
family portrait, for you not to cherish.
Your loving friends C. Lamb. M. Lamb.
Note
[Pindar was Cary’sedition, which Moxon had just published.
Miss Betham’s verses I am sorry not to be
able to give; but the following poem was addressed to Moxon by
Lamb and printed in The Athenæum for December 7, 1833:— TO A FRIEND ON HIS MARRIAGE What makes a happy wedlock? What has fate Not given to thee in thy well-chosen mate? Good sense—good humour;—these are trivial things, Dear M——, that each trite encomiast
sings. But she hath these, and more. A mind exempt From every low-bred passion, where contempt, Nor envy, nor detraction, ever found A harbour yet; an understanding sound; Just views of right and wrong; perception full Of the deformed, and of the beautiful, In life and manners; wit above her sex, Which, as a gem, her sprightly converse decks; Exuberant fancies, prodigal of mirth, To gladden woodland walk, or winter hearth; A noble nature, conqueror in the strife Of conflict with a hard discouraging life, Strengthening the veins of virtue, past the power Of those whose days have been one silken hour, Spoil’d fortune’s pamper’d offspring; a keen sense Alike of benefit, and of offence, With reconcilement quick, that instant springs From the charged heart with nimble angel wings; While grateful feelings, like a signet sign’d By a strong hand, seem burnt into her mind. If these, dear friend, a dowry can confer Richer than land, thou hast them all in her; And beauty, which some hold the chiefest boon, Is in thy bargain for a make-weight thrown.]
LETTER 565 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. Oct. 17, 1833.]
DEAR M.—Get
me Shirley (there’s
a dear fellow) and send it soon. We sadly want books, and this will be readable
again and again, and pay itself. Tell Emma I grieve for the poor self-punishing self-baffling Lady;
with all our hearts we grieve for the pain and vexation she has encounterd; but
we do not swerve a pin’s-thought from the propriety of your measures. God
comfort her, and there’s an end of a painful necessity. But I am glad she
goes to see her. Let her keep up all the kindness she can between them. In a
week or two I hope Mary will be stout
enough to come among ye, but she is not now, and I have scruples of coming
alone, as she has no pleasant friend to sit with her in my absence. We are
lonely. I fear the visits must be mostly from you. By the way omnibuses are
1s/3d and coach insides sunk to 1/6—a hint. Without disturbance to
yourselves, or upsetting the economy of the dear new mistress of a family, come
and see us as often as ever you can. We are so out of the world, that a letter
from either of you now and then, detailing any thing, Book or Town news, is as
good as a newspaper. I have desperate colds, cramps, megrims &c., but do
not despond. My fingers are numb’d, as you see by my writing. Tell
E. I am very good also. But we
are poor devils, that’s the truth of it. I won’t apply to Dilke—just now at least—I sincerely hope the
pastoral air of Dover St. will recruit poor Harriet. With best loves to all.
Yours ever C. L.
Ryle and Lowe
dined here on Sunday; the manners of the latter, so gentlemanly! have
attracted the special admiration of our Land-lady. She guest R. to be nearly of my age. He always
had an old head on young shoulders. I fear I shall always have the
opposite. Tell me any thing of Foster [Forster] or any body. Write
any thing you think will amuse me. I do dearly hope in a week or two to
surprise you with our appearance in Dover St. . . .
Note
[Shirley would be Dyce’sedition of James Shirley, the dramatist, in six
volumes, 1833.
Harriet was Harriet Isola.
“Ryle and
Lowe.” Ryle we have
met, but I do not identify Lowe.
I have omitted some lines about family matters at the end of the
letter.]
LETTER 566 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD AND EMMA
MOXON
Nov. 29th, 1833.
MARY is of
opinion with me, that two of these Sonnets are of a higher grade than any
poetry you have done yet. The one to Emma is so pretty! I have only allowed myself to transpose a
word in the third line. Sacred shall it be for any intermeddling of mine. But
we jointly beg that you will make four lines in the room of the four last. Read
“Darby and Joan,” in Mrs.
Moxon’s first album. There you’ll see how beautiful
in age the looking back to youthful years in an old couple is. But it is a
violence to the feelings to anticipate that time in youth. I hope you and
Emma will have many a quarrel and many a make-up (and
she is beautiful in reconciliation!) before the dark days shall come, in which
ye shall say “there is small comfort in them.” You have
begun a sort of character of Emma in them very sweetly; carry it on, if you
can, through the last lines.
I love the sonnet to my heart, and you shall finish it, and FU be damn’d if I furnish a line towards
it. So much for that. The next best is To The Ocean “Ye gallant winds, if e’er your lusty cheeks Blew longing lover to his mistress’ side, O, puff your loudest, spread the canvas wide,” is spirited. The last line I altered, and have re-altered it as it stood.
It is closer. These two are your best. But take a good deal of time in finishing the first. How proud
should Emma be of her poets!
Perhaps “O Ocean” (though I like it) is
too much of the open vowels, which Pope
objects to. “Great Ocean!” is obvious. “To save sad
thoughts” I think is better (though not good) than for the mind to save
herself. But ’tis a noble Sonnet. “St.
Cloud” I have no fault to find with.
If I return the Sonnets, think it no disrespect; for I look
for a printed copy. You have done better than ever. And now for a reason I did
not notice ’em earlier. On Wednesday they came, and on Wednesday I was
a-gadding. Mary gave me a holiday, and I
set off to Snow Hill. From Snow Hill I deliberately was marching down, with
noble Holborn before me, framing in mental cogitation a map of the dear London
in prospect, thinking to traverse Wardour-street, &c., when diabolically I
was interrupted by Heigh-ho! Little Barrow!— Emma knows him,—and prevailed on to
spend the day at his sister’s, where was an album, and (O march of
intellect!) plenty of literary conversation, and more acquaintance with the
state of modern poetry than I could keep up with. I was positively distanced.
Knowles’ play, which, epilogued by me, lay on the Piano, alone made me hold up my head. When I came
home I read your letter, and glimpsed at your beautiful sonnet, “Fair art thou as the morning, my young bride,” and dwelt upon it in a confused brain, but determined not to open them
till next day, being in a state not to be told of at Chatteris. Tell it not in
Gath, Emma, lest the daughters triumph! I am at the end of
my tether. I wish you could come on Tuesday with your fair bride. Why
can’t you! Do. We are thankful to your sister for being of the party.
Come, and bring a sonnet on Mary’s birthday. Love to the whole Moxonry, and tell
E. I every day love her more, and miss her less. Tell
her so from her loving uncle, as she has let me call myself. I bought a fine
embossed card yesterday, and wrote for the Pawnbrokeress’s album. She is
a Miss Brown, engaged to a Mr. White.
One of the lines was (I forget the rest—but she had them at twenty-four
hours’ notice; she is going out to India with her husband):— “May your fame And fortune, Frances, Whiten with your name!” Not bad as a pun. I wil expect you before two on
Tuesday. I am well and happy, tell E.
Note
[Moxon subsequently published his
Sonnets, in
two parts, one of which was dedicated to his brother and one to Wordsworth. There are several to his wife, so that it is difficult to
identify that in which the last lines were to be altered. Mrs.
Moxon’s first album was an extract book in which Lamb had copied a number of old ballads and other poems.
I quote two of Moxon’s
sonnets. This is to the Ocean:— Four days, wild Ocean, on thy troubled breast A wanderer I have been! Swift cloud and wave Have occupied my thoughts, intent to save From pain my soul so far from its own rest. Ye gallant winds, if e’er your lusty cheeks Blew longing lover to his mistress’ side, O puff your loudest, spread the canvas wide Of our too tardy bark! My whole heart speaks In thus invoking you. Sweet Maid, with thee Seated once more within my beechen grove, The bower of graceful Emma and of love, Glad I shall be, as he who from the sea New lands beheld, or he of old who sat And his bark saw rest safe on Ararat! And this is one of many to Emma Moxon:— Fair art thou as the morning, my young Bride! Her freshness is about thee; like a river To the sea gliding with sweet murmur ever Thou sportest; and, wherever thou dost glide, Humanity a livelier aspect wears. Fair art thou as the morning of that land Where Tuscan breezes in his youth have fanned Thy grandsire oft. Thou hast not many tears, Save such as pity from the heart will wring, And then there is a smile in thy distress! Meeker thou art than lily of the spring, Yet is thy nature full of nobleness! And gentle ways, that soothe and raise me so, That henceforth I no worldly sorrow know!
“Heigh-ho! Little Barrow!” I
cannot identify this acquaintance.
“Knowles’s
play”—“The
Wife.” Prologued by Lamb too.
“At Chatteris.” I cannot say who were the teetotal,
or abstinent, Philistines.
“Mary’s birthday.”
Mary Lamb would be sixty-nine on December 3,
1833.
Lamb’s verses to Miss
Brown seem to be no longer preserved. Mr.
Hazlitt in his Bohn edition prints a letter to a
Miss Frances Brown, which is not available for the present volume,
wherein Lamb offers the verses, adding “I hope your
sweetheart’s name is White. Else it would spoil all. May be ’tis Black.
Then we must alter it. And may your fortunes Blacken with your name.”]
LETTER 567 CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE.
[No date. Middle Dec., 1833.]
I HOPED R.
would like his Sonnet, but I fear’d S. that fine old man, might not quite
like the turn of it. This last was penn’d almost literally extempore.
Your Laureat.
Is S.’s Christian name
Thomas? if not, correct it.
Note
[“R.”—Rogers; “S.”—Stothard. See next letter.]
LETTER 568 CHARLES LAMB TO SAMUEL ROGERS
[No date. Probably Saturday, December 21, 1833.]
MY dear Sir,—Your book, by the unremitting punctuality of
your publisher, has reached me thus early. I have not opened it, nor will till
to-morrow, when I promise myself a thorough reading of it. “The Pleasures of
Memory” was the first school present I made to Mrs. Moxon, it had those nice wood-cuts; and I
believe she keeps it still. Believe me, that all the kindness you have shown to
the husband of that excellent person
seems done unto myself. I have tried my hand at a sonnet in “The Times.” But the turn I gave it, though I
hoped it would not displease you, I thought might not be equally agreeable to
your artist. I met that dear old man at poor Henry’s—with you—and again at Cary’s—and it was sublime to see him sit deaf and enjoy
all that was going on in mirth with the company. He reposed upon the many
graceful, many fantastic images he had created; with them he dined and took
wine.
I have ventured at an antagonist copy of verses in
“The Athenæum” to
him, in which he is as everything and you as nothing. He is no lawyer who
cannot take two sides. But I am jealous of the combination of the sister arts.
Let them sparkle apart. What injury (short of the theatres) did not Boydell’s “Shakespeare
Gallery” do me with Shakespeare?—to have Opie’sShakespeare, Northcote’s Shakespeare, light-headed
Fuseli’sShakespeare,
heavy-headed Romney’sShakespeare,
wooden-headed West’sShakespeare (though he did the best in “Lear”), deaf-headed
Reynolds’sShakespeare, instead
of my, and everybody’s Shakespeare. To be tied down
to an authentic face of Juliet! To have
Imogen’s portrait! To confine the
illimitable! I like you and Stothard
(you best), but “out upon this half-faced fellowship.” Sir,
when I have read the book I may trouble you, through Moxon, with some faint criticisms. It is not
the flatteringest compliment, in a letter to an author, to say you have not
read his book yet. But the devil of a reader he must be who prances through it
in five minutes, and no longer have I received the parcel. It was a little
tantalizing to me to receive a letter from Landor, GebirLandor, from
Florence, to say he was just sitting down to read my “Elia,” just received, but the letter was
to go out before the reading. There are calamities in authorship which only
authors know. I am going to call on Moxon on Monday, if
the throng of carriages in Dover Street on the morn of publication do not
barricade me out.
With many thanks, and most respectful remembrances to your
sister,
Yours, C. Lamb.
Have you seen Coleridge’s happy exemplification in English of the
Ovidian elegiac metre?— In the Hexameter rises the fountain’s silvery current, In the Pentameter aye falling in melody down.
My sister is papering up the book—careful soul!
Note
[Moxon published a superb edition of Rogers’ Poems illustrated by
Turner and Stothard. Lamb had received an
advance copy. The sonnet to Rogers in The Times was printed on December 13, 1833. It ran thus:— TO SAMUEL ROGERS, Esq., ON THE NEW EDITION OF HIS
“PLEASURES OF MEMORY” When thy gay book hath paid its proud devoirs, Poetic friend, and fed with luxury The eye of pampered aristocracy In glittering drawing-rooms and gilt boudoirs, O’erlaid with comments of pictorial art, However rich and rare, yet nothing leaving Of healthful action to the soul-conceiving Of the true reader—yet a nobler part Awaits thy work, already classic styled. Cheap-clad, accessible, in homeliest show The modest beauty through the land shall go From year to year, and render life more mild; Refinement to the poor man’s hearth shall give, And in the moral heart of England live. C. Lamb.
Thomas Stothard, then in his seventy-ninth year,
Lamb had met at Henry
Rogers’, who had died at Christmas, 1832. The following was the copy of verses printed in The Athenæum, December
21, 1833 (“that most romantic tale” was Peter Wilkins):— TO T. STOTHARD, Esq. On his Illustrations of the Poems of Mr. Rogers Consummate Artist, whose undying name With classic Rogers shall go down to
fame, Be this thy crowning work! In my young days How often have I with a child’s fond gaze Pored on the pictured wonders thou hadst done: Clarissa mournful, and prim Grandison! All Fielding’s, Smollett’s heroes, rose to view; I saw, and I believed the phantoms true. But, above all, that most romantic tale Did o’er my raw credulity prevail, Where Glums and Gawries wear mysterious things, That serve at once for jackets and for wings. Age, that enfeebles other men’s designs, But heightens thine, and thy free draught refines. In several ways distinct you make us feel— Graceful as Raphael, as Watteau genteel. Your lights and shades, as Titianesque, we praise; And warmly wish you Titian’s length
of days.
“Short of the theatres.” The injury done by the
theatres is of course the subject of Lamb’sReflector essay on Shakespeare’s Tragedies (see Vol. I., page
97).
“Boydell’s ‘Shakespeare
Gallery’”—the series of 170 illustrations to Shakespeare by leading artists of the day projected by
Alderman Boydell in 1786.
“Out upon this half-faced fellowship.” Hotspur’s phrase in 1 “Henry IV.,” I, 3, 208.
“Coleridge’s . . .
exemplification.” Lamb quoted
incorrectly. The lines had just appeared in Friendship’s Offering for 1834:— In the hexameter rises the fountain’s silvery column; In the pentameter aye falling in melody back. Coleridge took the lines from Schiller.
At Dr. Williams’ Library is a note from Thos. Robinson to Crabb
Robinson, dated December 22, 1833, concerning Lamb’s Christmas turkey, which went first to Crabb
Robinson at the Temple and was then sent on to Lamb,
presumably with the note in the hamper. Lamb adds at the foot of the
note:—
“The parcel coming thro’ you, I
open’d this note, but find no treason in it.
“With thanks“C.
Lamb.”
I give here three other notes to Dilke, belonging probably to the early days of 1834. The first refers to
the proof of one of Lamb’s contributions to
The Athenæum.]
LETTERS 569, 570 AND 571 CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE
[No date.]
I HAVE read the enclosed five and forty times over.
I have submitted it to my Edmonton friends; at last (O Argus’ penetration), I have discovered a dash that might
be dispensed with. Pray don’t trouble yourself with such useless
courtesies. I can well trust your editor, when I don’t use queer phrases
which prove themselves wrong by creating a distrust in the sober compositor.
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE
[No date.]
MAY I now claim of you the benefit of the loan of
some books. Do not fear sending too many. But do not if it be irksome to
yourself,—such as shall make you say, ‘damn it, here’s
Lamb’s box come again.’ Dog’s leaves
ensured! Any light stuff: no natural history or useful learning, such as
Pyramids, Catacombs, Giraffes, Adventures in Southern Africa, &c. &c.
With our joint compliments, yours, C. Lamb. Church Street, Edmonton.
Novels for the last two years, or further back—nonsense
of any period.
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE
[No date. Spring, 1834.]
DEAR Sir, I return 44 volumes by
Tate. If they are not all your own, and some of mine
have slipt in, I do not think you will lose much. Shall I go on with the Table talk? I will, if you like it, when the Culinary
article has appeared.
Robins, the Carrier, from the Swan, Snow Hill, will bring any more contributions,
thankfully to be receiv’d—I pay backwards and forwards.
C. Lamb.
Note
[“Table Talk by the late Elia”
appeared in The
Athenæum on January 4, May 31, June 7 and July 19, 1834. The Culinary
article is the paragraph that now closes the “Table
Talk” (see Vol. I., page 349).]
LETTER 572 CHARLES LAMB TO MARY BETHAM
January 24, 1834, Church Street, Edmonton.
DEAR Mary
Betham—I received the Bill, and when it is payable, some ten or
twelve days hence, will punctually do with the overplus as you direct: I
thought you would like to know it came to hand, so I have not waited for the
uncertainty of when your nephew sets out. I suppose my receipt will serve, for
poor Mary is not in a capacity to sign
it. After being well from the end of July to the end of December, she was taken
ill almost on the first day of the New Year, and is as bad as poor creature can
be. I expect her fever to last 14 or 15 weeks—it she gets well at all, which
every successive illness puts me in fear of. She has less and less strength to
throw it off, and they leave a dreadful depression after them. She was quite
comfortable a few weeks since, when Matilda came down here
to see us.
You shall excuse a short letter, for my hand is unsteady.
Indeed, the situation I am in with her shakes me sadly. She was quite able to
appreciate the kind legacy while she was well. Imagine her kindest love to you,
which is but buried awhile, and believe all the good wishes for your
restoration to health from
C. Lamb.
Note
[This letter refers to the legacy mentioned on page 913. It had now been
paid.]
LETTER 573 CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[p.m. Jan. 28, 1834.]
I MET with a man at my half way house, who told me
many anecdotes of Kean’s younger
life. He knew him thoroughly. His name is Wyatt, living
near the Bell, Edmonton. Also he referred me to
West, a publican, opposite St. Georges Church,
Southwark, who knew him more intimately. Is it worth Forster’s while to enquire after them?
C. L.
Note
[Edmund Kean had died in the
previous May. Forster, who was at this time
theatrical critic of The
Examiner, was probably at work upon a biographical article.
Here should come a note from Lamb
to Matilda Betham, dated January 29, 1834, not
available for this edition (printed by Mr. Hazlitt
in The Lambs).
“My poor Mary is terribly ill again.”
Here also, dated February 7, should come a letter to William Hone, printed by Mr.
Macdonald, in which Lamb, after
mentioning his sister’s illness, urges upon Hone the
advisability of applying to the Literary Fund for some relief, and offers to support him in
his appeal.]
LETTERS 574 AND 575 CHARLES LAMB TO MISS FRYER
Feb. 14, 1834.
DEAR Miss
Fryer,—Your letter found me just returned from keeping my
birthday (pretty innocent!) at Dover-street. I see them pretty often. I have
since had letters of business to write, or should have replied earlier. In one
word, be less uneasy about me; I bear my privations very well; I am not in the
depths of desolation, as heretofore. Your admonitions are not lost upon me.
Your kindness has sunk into my heart. Have faith in me! It is no new thing for
me to be left to my sister. When she is not violent, her rambling chat is
better to me than the sense and sanity of this world. Her heart is obscured,
not buried; it breaks out occasionally; and one can discern a strong mind
struggling with the billows that have gone over it. I could be nowhere happier
than under the same roof with her. Her memory is unnaturally strong; and from
ages past, if we may so call the earliest records of our poor life, she fetches
thousands of names and things that never would have dawned upon me again, and
thousands from the ten years she lived before me. What took place from early
girlhood to her coming of age principally lives again (every important thing
and every trifle) in her brain with the vividness of real presence. For twelve
hours incessantly she will pour out without intermission all her past life,
forgetting nothing, pouring out name after name to the
Waldens as a dream; sense and nonsense; truths and
errors huddled together; a medley
between inspiration and possession. What things we are! I know you will bear
with me, talking of these things. It seems to ease me; for I have nobody to
tell these things to now. Emma, I see,
has got a harp! and is learning to play. She has framed her three Walton pictures, and pretty they look. That is
a book you should read; such sweet religion in it—next to Woolman’s! though the subject be baits
and hooks, and worms, and fishes. She has my copy at present to do two more
from.
Very, very tired, I began this epistle, having been
epistolising all the morning, and very kindly would I end it, could I find
adequate expressions to your kindness. We did set our minds on seeing you in
spring. One of us will indubitably. But I am not skilled in almanac learning,
to know when spring precisely begins and ends. Pardon my blots; I am glad you
like your book. I wish it had been half as worthy of your acceptance as
“John
Woolman.” But ’tis a good-natured book.
Note
[Miss Fryer, who was first
mentioned in Letter 562, was a school-fellow of Mrs.
Moxon’s.
I append another letter, undated, to the same lady. It belongs obviously
to an earlier period, but the exact position is unimportant:—]
CHARLES LAMB TO MISS FRYER
[No date.]
MY dear Miss
Fryer, By desire of Emma
I have attempted new words to the old nonsense of Tartar Drum; but with the
nonsense the sound and spirit of the tune are unaccountably gone, and we have
agreed to discard the new version altogether. As you may be more fastidious in
singing mere silliness, and a string of well-sounding images without sense or
coherence—Drums of Tartars, who use none, and Tulip
trees ten foot high, not to mention Spirits in Sunbeams &c,—than we are, so you are at liberty to sacrifice an
enspiriting movement to a little sense, tho’ I like Little-sense less than his vagarying younger sister No-Sense—so I send them——
The 4th line of 1st stanza is from an old Ballad.
Emma is looking weller and handsomer (as
you say) than ever. Really, if she goes on thus improving, by the time she is
nine and thirty she will be a tolerable comely person. But I may not live to see it.—I take Beauty to be catching—a
Cholera sort of thing—Now, whether the constant presence of a handsome
object—for there’s only two of us—may not have the effect — — — but the
subject is delicate, and as my old great Ant1 used to
say— “Andsome is as andsome duzz”—that was my great Ant’s way of spelling——
Most and best kind things say to yourself and dear Mother
for all your kindnesses to our Em.,
tho’ in truth I am a little tired with her everlasting repetition of
’em. Yours very Truly,
Chs Lamb. LOVE WILL COME Tune: “The Tartar Drum” I Guard thy feelings, pretty Vestal, From the smooth Intruder free; Cage thine heart in bars of chrystal, Lock it with a golden key: Thro’ the bars demurely stealing— Noiseless footstep, accent dumb, His approach to none revealing— Watch, or watch not, Love
will come. His approach to none revealing— Watch, or watch not, Love will come—Love, Watch, or watch not, Love will come. II Scornful Beauty may deny him— He hath spells to charm disdain; Homely Features may defy him— Both at length must wear the chain. Haughty Youth in Courts of Princes— Hermit poor with age oercome— His soft plea at last convinces; Sooner, later, Love will
come— His soft plea at length convinces; Sooner, later, Love will come—Love, Sooner, later, Love will come.
1Emma’s way of spelling
Miss Umfris, as I spell her Aunt.
LETTER 576 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Church St., Edmonton, 22 feb. [1834].
DEAR Wordsworth, I write from a house of mourning.
The oldest and best friends I have left, are in trouble. A branch of them (and
they of the best stock of God’s creatures, I believe) is establishing a school at
Carlisle. Her name is Louisa Martin, her
address 75 Castle Street, Carlisle; her qualities (and her motives for this
exertion) are the most amiable, most upright. For thirty years she has been
tried by me, and on her behaviour I would stake my soul. O if you can recommend
her, how would I love you—if I could love you better. Pray, pray, recommend
her. She is as good a human creature,—next to my Sister, perhaps the most
exemplary female I ever knew. Moxon
tells me, you would like a Letter from me. You shall have one. This I cannot mingle up with any nonsense which you
usually tolerate from, C.
Lamb. Need he add loves to Wife, Sister, and all? Poor
Mary is ill again, after a short
lucid interval of 4 or 5 months. In short, I may call her half dead to me.
Good you are to me. Yours with fervor of friendship; for
ever turn over
If you want references, the Bishop of
Carlisle may be one. Louisa’s Sister,
(as good as she, she cannot be better tho’ she tries,) educated the
daughters of the late Earl of Carnarvon,
and he settled a handsome Annuity on her for life. In short all the family are
a sound rock. The present Lord Carnarvon
married Howard of Graystock’s
Sister.
Note
[Wordsworth has written on the
wrapper, “Lamb’s last
letter.”
We met the Martins in the early correspondence. It
was Louisa whom, many years before, Lamb used to call “Monkey”
(see particularly Letter 138 to Hazlitt, on page
323).
Here should come Lamb’s last
letter to Thomas Manning, dated May 10, 1834, not
available for this edition (printed by Canon
Ainger). Mary has, he says, been ill for
nigh twenty weeks; “she is, I hope, recovering.” “I struggle to
town rarely, and then to see London, with little other motive—for what is left there
hardly? The streets and shops entertaining ever, else I feel as in a desert, and get me
home to my cave.” Once a month, he adds, he passes a day with Cary at the Museum. When Mary was
getting better in the previous year she would read all the auctioneers’
advertisements on the walk. “These are my
Play-bills,” she said. “I walk 9 or 10 miles a day, always up the road,
dear Londonwards.” Addressed to Manning at Puckeridge.
Manning lived on, an eccentric recluse, until 1840.]
LETTER 577 (Fragment) CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE
[No date. End of June, 1834.]
WE heard the Music in the Abbey at Winchmore Hill!
and the notes were incomparably soften’d by the distance. Novello’s chromatics were distinctly
audible. Clara was faulty in B flat.
Otherwise she sang like an angel. The trombone, and Beethoven’s walzes, were the best. Who played the oboe?
Note
[The letter refers to the performance of Handel’s “Creation” at the
Musical Festival in Westminster Abbey on June 24, 1834, when Novello and Atwood were the
organists, and Clara Novello (now Countess
Gigliucci) was one of the singers.]
LETTER 578 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN FORSTER
[p.m. June 25, 1834.]
DR F.—I
simply sent for the Miltons because
Alsop has some Books of mine, and I
thought they might travel with them. But keep ’em as much longer as you
like. I never trouble my head with other people’s quarrels, I do not
always understand my own. I seldom see them in Dover Street. I know as little
as the Man in the Moon about your joint transactions, and care as little. If
you have lost a little portion of my “good will,” it is that you do
not come and see me. Arrange with Procter, when you have done with your moving accidents.
Yours, ambulaturus, C. L.
LETTER 579 CHARLES LAMB TO J. FULLER RUSSELL
[Summer, 1834.]
MR
Lamb’s compts and shall be happy
to look over the lines as soon as ever Mr.
Russell shall send them. He is at Mr.
Walden’s, Church, not Bury—St.
Edmd.
Line 10. “Ween,” and “wist,” and
“wot,” and “eke” are antiquated frippery, and
unmodernize a poem rather than give it an antique air, as some strong old words
may do. “I guess,” “I know,” “I knew,” are
quite as significant.
81. Why “ee”—barbarous Scoticism!—when
“eye” is much better and chimes to “cavalry”? A
sprinkling of disused words where all the style else is after the approved
recent fashion teases and puzzles.
37. [Anon the storm begins to slake, The sullen clouds to melt away, The moon becalmed in a blue lake Looks down with melancholy ray.] The moon becalmed in a blue lake would be more apt to look up. I see my error—the sky is the lake—and beg you to laugh at
it.
59. What is a maiden’s “een,” south of
the Tweed? You may as well call her prettily turned ears her
“lugs.” “On the maiden’s lugs they fall
“(verse 79).
144. “A coy young Miss” will never do.
For though you are presumed to be a modern, writing only of days of old, yet
you should not write a word purely unintelligible to your heroine. Some
understanding should be kept up between you. “Miss” is a nickname
not two centuries old; came in at about the Restoration. The
“King’s Misses” is the oldest use of it I can
remember. It is Mistress Anne Page, not
Miss Page. Modern names and usages should be kept out
of sight in an old subject. W. Scott was
sadly faulty in this respect.
208. [Tear of sympathy.] Pity’s sacred dew. Sympathy
is a young lady’s word, rife in modern novels, and is almost always
wrongly applied. To sympathize is to feel with, not simply for another. I write
verses and sympathize with you. You have the tooth ache, I have not; I feel for
you, I cannot sympathize.
243. What is “sheen”? Has it more significance
than “bright”? Richmond in its old name was Shene. Would you call
an omnibus to take you to Shene? How the “all’s right” man
would stare!
363. [The violet nestled in the shade, Which fills with perfume all the glade, Yet bashful as a timid maid Thinks to elude the searching eye Of every stranger passing by, Might well compare with Emily.] A strangely involved simile. The maiden is likend [sic] to a violet which has been just before
likened to a maid. Yet it reads prettily, and I would
not have it alter’d.
420. “Een “come again? In line 407 you speak
it out “eye,” bravely like an Englishman.
468. Sorceresses do not entice by wrinkles, but, being
essentially aged, appear in assumed beauty.
Note
[This communication and that which follows (with trifling omissions)
were sent to Notes and
Queries by the late Mr. J. Fuller
Russell, F.S.A., with this explanation: “I was residing at Enfield
in the Cambridge Long Vacation, 1834, and—perhaps to the neglect of more improving
pursuits—composed a metrical novel, named ‘Emily de
Wilton,’ in three parts. When the first of them was completed, I
ventured to introduce myself to Charles Lamb (who
was living at Edmonton at the time), and telling him what I had done, and that I had
‘scarcely heart to proceed until I had obtained the opinion of a competent judge
respecting my verses,’ I asked him to ‘while away an idle hour in their
perusal,’ adding, ‘I fear you will think me very rude and very intrusive,
but I am one of the most nervous souls in Christendom.’ Moved, possibly, by this
diffident (not to say unusual) confession, Elia speedily gave his
consent.”
The poem was never printed. Lamb’s pains in this matter serve to show how kindly disposed he was
in these later years to all young men; and how exact a sense of words he had.
In the British Museum is preserved a sheet of similar comments made by
Lamb upon a manuscript of P. G. Patmore’s, from which I have quoted a few
passages on page 737. In Charles Lamb and the Lloyds will also be found a number of interesting
criticisms on a translation of Homer, to which
reference is made on pages 402 and 413.]
LETTER 580 CHARLES LAMB TO J. FULLER RUSSELL
[Summer, 1834.]
SIR,—I hope you will finish “Emily.” The story I cannot at this stage
anticipate. Some looseness of diction I have taken liberty to advert to. It
wants a little more severity of style. There are too many prettinesses, but
parts of the Poem are better than pretty, and I thank you for the perusal.
Your humble Servt. C. Lamb.
Perhaps you will favour me with a call while you stay.
Line 42. “The old abbaye” (if abbey was so spelt) I do not object to, because it does
not seem your own language, but humoursomely adapted to the “how
folks called it in those times.”
82. “Flares”! Think of the vulgarism
“flare up;” let it be “burns.”
112. [In her pale countenance is blent The majesty of high intent With meekness by devotion lent, And when she bends in prayer Before the Virgin’s awful shrine,— The rapt enthusiast might deem The seraph of his brightest dream, Were meekly kneeling there.] “Was “decidedly, not “were.” The deeming or
supposition, is of a reality, not a contingency. The enthusiast does not
deem that a thing may be, but that it is.
118. [When first young Vernon’s flight she knew, The lady deemed the tale untrue.] “Deemed”! This word is just repeated above; say
“thought” or “held.” “Deem” is
half-cousin to “ween “and “wot.”
143. [By pure intent and soul sincere Sustained and nerved, I will not fear Reproach, shame, scorn, the taunting jeer, And worse than all, a father’s sneer.]
A father’s “sneer”? Would a high-born man in those
days sneer at a daughter’s disgrace—would he only sneer? Reproach, and biting shame, and—worse Than all—the estranged father’s curse.
I only throw this hint out in a hurry.
177. “Stern and sear”? I see a meaning in it, but no word is good that
startles one at first, and then you have to make it out:
“drear,” perhaps. Then why “to minstrel’s
glance”? “To fancy’s eye,” you would
say, not “to fiddler’s eye.”
422. A knight thinks, he don’t
“trow.”
424. “Mayhap” is vulgarish. Perchance.
464. “Sensation” is a philosophic prose
word. Feeling.
27. [The hill, where ne’er rang
woodman’s stroke, Was clothed with elm and spreading oak, Through whose black boughs the moon’s
mild ray As hardly strove to win a way, As pity to a miser’s heart.] Natural illustrations come more naturally when by them we expound
mental operations than when we deduce from natural objects similes of the
mind’s workings. The miser’s struggle thus com-pared is a beautiful image. But the storm
and clouds do not inversely so readily suggest the miser.
160. [Havock and Wrath, his maniac bride, Wheel o’er the conflict, &c] These personified gentry I think are not in taste. Besides, Fear has
been pallid any time these 2,000 years. It is mixing the style of Æschylus and the Last Minstrel.
175. Bracy is a good rough vocative. No better
suggests itself, unless Grim, Baron Grimm, or Grimoald, which is Saxon, or
Grimbald! Tracy would obviate your objection [that the name Bracy occurs in
Ivanhoe] but Bracy is stronger.
231. [The frown of night Conceals him, and bewrays their sight.] Betrays. The other has an unlucky association.
243. [The glinting moon’s half-shrouded ray.]
Why “glinting,” Scotch, when “glancing” is
English?
421. [Then solemnly the monk did say, (The Abbot of Saint Mary’s gray,) The leman of a wanton youth Perhaps may gain her father’s ruth, But never on his injured
breast May lie, caressing and caressed. Bethink you of the vow you made When your light daughter, all distraught, From yonder slaughter-plain was brought, That if in some secluded cell She might till death securely dwell, The house of God should share her wealth.] Holy abbots surely never so undisguisedly blurted out their secular
aims.
I think there is so much of this kind of poetry, that
it would not be very taking, but it is well worthy
of pleasing a private circle. One blemish runs thro’, the perpetual
accompaniment of natural images. Seasons of the year, times of day, phases
of the moon, phenomena of flowers, are quite as much your dramatis personæ as the warriors and
the ladies. This last part is as good as what precedes.
LETTER 581 CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE
[No date. End of July, 1834.]
DEAR Sir, I am totally incapable of doing what you
suggest at present, and think it right to tell you so without
delay. It would shock me, who am shocked enough already, to sit down
to write about it. I have no letters of poor C. By and bye what scraps I have shall be
yours. Pray excuse me. It is not for want of obliging you, I assure you. For
your Box we most cordially feel thankful. I shall be your debtor in my poor
way. I do assure you I am incapable.
Again, excuse me Yours sincerely C. L.
Note
[Coleridge’s death had
occurred on July 25, in his sixty-second year; and Dilke had written to Lamb asking for
some words on that event, for The
Athenæum. A little while later a request was made by John Forster that Lamb would write
something for the album of a Mr. Keymer. It was then that
Lamb wrote the few words that stand under the title “On the Death of Coleridge” (see Vol. I., page 351).
Forster wrote thus of the effect of
Coleridge’s death upon Lamb:—
He thought of little else (his sister was but another portion of himself) until his own
great spirit joined his friend. He had a habit of venting his melancholy in a sort of
mirth. He would, with nothing graver than a pun, “cleanse his bosom of the
perilous stuff that weighed” upon it. In a jest, or a few light phrases,
he would lay open the last recesses of his heart. So in respect of the death of
Coleridge. Some old friends of his saw him
two or three weeks ago, and remarked the constant turning and reference of his mind. He
interrupted himself and them almost every instant with some play of affected wonder, or
astonishment, or humorous melancholy, on the words,
“Coleridge is dead.” Nothing could
divert him from that, for the thought of it never left him.
Wordsworth said that Coleridge’s death hastened Lamb’s.]
LETTER 582 CHARLES LAMB TO REV. JAMES GILLMAN
Mr. Walden’s, Church Street, Edmonton, August 5, 1834.
MY dear Sir,—The sad week being over, I must write
to you to say, that I was glad of being spared from attending; I have no words
to express my feeling with you all. I can only say that when you think a short
visit from me would be acceptable, when your father and mother shall
be able to see me with comfort, I will come to the
bereaved house. Express to them my tenderest regards and hopes that they will
continue our friends still. We both love and respect them as much as a human
being can, and finally thank them with our hearts for what they have been to
the poor departed.
God bless you all, C. Lamb.
Note
[Talfourd writes:
“Shortly after, assured that his presence would be welcome, Lamb went to Highgate. There he asked leave to see the
nurse who had attended upon Coleridge; and being
struck and affected by the feeling she manifested towards his friend, insisted on her
receiving five guineas from him.”]
LETTER 583 CHARLES AND MARY LAMB TO H. F.
CARY
Sept. 12, 1834.
“By Cot’s plessing we will not be absence at
the grace.”
DEAR C.,—We
long to see you, and hear account of your peregrinations, of the Tun at
Heidelburg, the Clock at Strasburg, the statue at Rotterdam, the dainty Rhenish
and poignant Moselle wines, Westphalian hams, and Botargoes of Altona. But
perhaps you have seen nor tasted any of these things.
Yours, very glad to claim you back again to your proper
centre, books and Bibliothecæ,
C. and M. Lamb.
I have only got your note just now per negligentiam
periniquiMoxoni.
Note
[“By Cot’s plessing . . .”—Sir Hugh Evans, in “The
Merry Wives of Windsor.”
Charles and Mary
Lamb at this time were supposed to dine at Cary’s on the third Wednesday in every month. When the plan was
suggested by CaryLamb was for declining, but
Mary Lamb said, “Ah, when we went to Edmonton, I told
Charles that something would turn up, and so it did, you
see.”
“Per negligentiam . .
.” Owing to the neglect of the most unrighteous Moxon.]
LETTER 584 CHARLES LAMB TO H. F. CARY
Oct., 1834.
I PROTEST I know not in what words to invest my
sense of the shameful violation of hospitality, which I was guilty of on that
fatal Wednesday. Let it be blotted from the calendar. Had it been committed at a layman’s house, say a
merchant’s or manufacturer’s, a cheesemonger’s or
greengrocer’s, or, to go higher, a barrister’s, a member of
Parliament’s, a rich banker’s, I should have felt alleviation, a
drop of self-pity. But to be seen deliberately to go out of the house of a
clergyman drunk! a clergyman of the Church of England too! not that alone, but
of an expounder of that dark Italian
Hierophant, an exposition little short of his who dared unfold
the Apocalypse: divine riddles both and (without supernal grace vouchsafed)
Arks not to be fingered without present blasting to the touchers. And, then,
from what house! Not a common glebe or vicarage (which yet had been shameful),
but from a kingly repository of sciences, human and divine, with the primate of
England for its guardian, arrayed in public majesty, from which the profane
vulgar are bid fly. Could all those volumes have taught me nothing better! With
feverish eyes on the succeeding dawn I opened upon the faint light, enough to
distinguish, in a strange chamber not immediately to be recognised, garters,
hose, waistcoat, neckerchief, arranged in dreadful order and proportion, which
I knew was not mine own. ’Tis the common symptom, on awaking, I judge my
last night’s condition from. A tolerable scattering on the floor I hail
as being too probably my own, and if the candlestick be not removed, I assoil
myself. But this finical arrangement, this finding everything in the morning in
exact diametrical rectitude, torments me. By whom was I divested? Burning
blushes! not by the fair hands of nymphs, the Buffam Graces? Remote whispers suggested that I coached it home in triumph—far be that from working
pride in me, for I was unconscious of the locomotion; that a young Mentor accompanied a reprobate old Telemachus; that, the Trojan like, he bore his
charge upon his shoulders, while the wretched incubus, in glimmering sense,
hiccuped drunken snatches of flying on the bats’ wings after sunset. An
aged servitor was also hinted at, to make disgrace more complete: one, to whom
my ignominy may offer further occasions of revolt (to which he was before too
fondly inclining) from the true faith; for, at a sight of my helplessness, what
more was needed to drive him to the advocacy of independency? Occasion led me
through Great Russell Street yesterday. I gazed at the great knocker. My feeble
hands in vain essayed to lift it. I dreaded that Argus
Portitor, who doubtless lanterned me out on that prodigious
night. I called the Elginian marbles. They were cold to my suit. I shall never
again, I said, on the wide gates unfolding, say without fear of thrusting back,
in a light but a peremptory air, “I am going to Mr. Cary’s.” I passed by the walls
of Balclutha. I had imaged to myself a zodiac of third Wednesdays irradiating
by glimpses the Edmonton dulness. I dreamed of Highmore! I am de-vited to come on Wednesdays. Villanous old
age that, with second childhood, brings linked hand in hand her inseparable
twin, new inexperience, which knows not effects of liquor. Where I was to have
sate for a sober, middle-aged-and-a-half gentleman, literary too, the
neat-fingered artist can educe no notions but of a dissolute Silenus, lecturing natural philosophy to a
jeering Chromius or a Mnasilus. Pudet. From the
context gather the lost name of ——.
Note
[“The Buffam Graces.” Lamb’s landladies at Southampton Buildings.
“Bats’ wings”—Ariel’s song again.
“I passed by the walls of Balclutha.” From Ossian. Lamb uses this
quotation in his Elia essay on the South-Sea
House.
“Hghmore.” I cannot explain this reference.
“Silenus . . .” In
Virgil’s sixth eclogue Silenus, found in a drunken sleep by Chromius and Mnasylos, is bound by
them. He sang to them of the creation of the world.
Not long before Mrs.
Procter’s death a letter from Charles
Lamb to Mrs. Basil Montagu was sold,
in which Lamb apologised for having become intoxicated while visiting
her the night before. Some one mentioned the letter in Mrs.
Procter’s presence. “Ah,” she said, “but
they haven’t seen the second letter, which I have upstairs, written next day, in
which he said that my mother might ask him again with safety as he never got drunk
twice in the same house.” Unhappily, a large number of
Lamb’s and other letters were burned by Mrs.
Procter.]
LETTER 585 CHARLES LAMB TO H. F. CARY
[Oct. 18, 1834.]
DEAR Sir,—The unbounded range of munificence
presented to my choice staggers me. What can twenty votes do for one hundred
and two widows? I cast my eyes hopeless among the viduage. N.B.—Southey might be ashamed of himself to let his
aged mother stand at the top of the list, with his £100 a year and butt of
sack. Sometimes I sigh over No. 12, Mrs. Carve-ill, some
poor relation of mine, no doubt. No. 15 has my wishes; but then she is a Welsh
one. I have Ruth upon No. 21. I’d tug hard for No.
24. No. 25 is an anomaly: there can be no Mrs. Hogg. No.
24 ensnares me. No. 73 should not have met so foolish a person. No. 92 may bob it as she likes;
but she catches no cherry of me. So I have even fixed at hap-hazard, as
you’ll see.
Yours, every third Wednesday,
C. L.
Note
[Talfourd states that the note is
in answer to a letter enclosing a list of candidates for a Widow’s Fund Society, for
which he was entitled to vote. A Mrs. Southey headed the list.
Here, according to Mr.
Hazlitt’s dating, should come a note from Lamb to Mrs. Randal Norris,
belonging to November, not available for this edition (printed in The Lambs), in which
Lamb says that he found Mary
on his return no worse and she is now no better. He sends all his nonsense that he can
scrape together and hopes the young ladies will like “Amwell” (Mrs. Leicester’s
School).]
LETTER 586 CHARLES LAMB TO MR. CHILDS
Monday. Church Street, Edmonton (not Enfield, as you
erroneously direct yours). [? Dec, 1834.]
DEAR Sir,—The volume which you seem to want, is not
to be had for love or money. I with difficulty procured a copy for myself.
Yours is gone to enlighten the tawny Hindoos. What a supreme felicity to the
author (only he is no traveller) on the Ganges or Hydaspes (Indian streams) to
meet a smutty Gentoo ready to burst with laughing at the tale of Bo-Bo! for
doubtless it hath been translated into all the dialects of the East. I grieve
the less, that Europe should want it. I cannot gather from your letter, whether
you are aware that a second series of the Essays is published by Moxon, in Dover-street, Piccadilly, called
“The Last Essays of
Elia,” and, I am told, is not inferior to the former. Shall I
order a copy for you, and will you accept it? Shall I lend you, at the same
time, my sole copy of the former volume (Oh! return it) for a month or two? In
return, you shall favour me with the loan of one of those Norfolk-bred grunters
that you laud so highly; I promise not to keep it above a day. What a funny
name Bungay is! I never dreamt of a correspondent thence. I used to think of it
as some Utopian town or borough in Gotham land. I now believe in its existence,
as part of merry England! [Some lines scratched out.]
The part I have scratched out is the best of the letter. Let me have your
commands.
Ch. Lamb, aliasElia.
Note
[Talfourd thus explains this
letter: “In December, 1834, Mr. Lamb
received a letter from a gentleman, a stranger to him—Mr.
Childs of Bungay, whose copy of Elia had been sent on an Oriental voyage, and
who, in order to replace it, applied to Mr. Lamb.”
Mr. Childs was a printer. His business subsequently became that of
Messrs. R. & R. Clark, which still flourishes. See Appendix II.,
page 978, for a further note to Mr. Childs.
This letter practically disposes of the statement made by more than one
bibliographer that a second edition of Elia was published in 1833. The tale of Bo-Bo is in the
“Dissertation on Roast
Pig.”
“Ganges or Hydaspes.” Milton’s line, Paradise Lost, III., 436.]
LETTER 587 CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. GEORGE DYER
Dec. 22nd, 1834.
DEAR Mrs.
Dyer,—I am very uneasy about a Book which I either have lost or left
at your house on Thursday. It was the book I went out to fetch from Miss Buffam’s, while the tripe was
frying. It is called Phillip’sTheatrum Poetarum; but it is an English
book. I think I left it in the parlour. It is Mr.
Cary’s book, and I would not lose it for the world. Pray,
if you find it, book it at the Swan, Snow Hill, by an Edmonton stage
immediately, directed to Mr. Lamb,
Church-street, Edmonton, or write to say you cannot find it. I am quite anxious
about it. If it is lost, I shall never like tripe again.
With kindest love to Mr.
Dyer and all,
Yours truly, C. Lamb.
Note
[This is the last letter of Charles
Lamb, who tripped and fell in Church Street, Edmonton, on December 22, and
died of erysipelas on December 27.
In the life of H. F.
Cary by his son we read: “He
[Lamb] had borrowed of my father Phillips’sTheatrum Poetarum
Anglicanorum, which was returned by Lamb’s
friend, Mr. Moxon, with the leaf folded down at
the account of Sir Philip Sydney.”
Mr. Cary acknowledged the receipt of the book by
the following
LINES TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES LAMB So should it be, my gentle friend; Thy leaf last closed at Sydney’s end. Thou too, like Sydney, wouldst have given The water, thirsting and near heaven; Nay were it wine, fill’d to the brim, Thou hadst look’d hard, but given, like him. And art thou mingled then among Those famous sons of ancient song? And do they gather round, and praise Thy relish of their nobler lays? Waxing in mirth to hear thee tell With what strange mortals thou didst dwell! At thy quaint sallies more delighted, Than any’s long among them lighted! ’Tis done: and thou hast join’d a crew, To whom thy soul was justly due; And yet I think, where’er thou be, They’ll scarcely love thee more than we.
At the time of his death Lamb was
sixty, all but a few weeks.
Mary Lamb, with occasional lapses into sound health,
survived him until May 20, 1847. At first she continued to live at Edmonton, but a few
years later moved to the house of Mrs. Parsons, sister of her old
nurse, Miss James, in St. John’s Wood. I
append three letters, two written, and one inspired, by her, to Miss Jane Norris, one of the daughters of Randal Norris. Of the friends mentioned therein I might add that Edward Moxon lived until 1858; Mrs. Edward Moxon until 1891; James
Kenney until 1849; Thomas Hood until 1845; and Barron Field until 1846.]
LETTERS 588, 589 AND 590 MARY LAMB TO JANE NORRIS
[41 Alpha Road, Regent’s Park] Christmas Day [1841].
MY dear Jane,—Many thanks for your kind presents—your Michalmas goose. I
thought Mr. Moxon had written to thank
you—the turkeys and nice apples came yesterday.
Give my love to your dear Mother. I was unhappy to find your note in the basket, for I am
always thinking of you all, and wondering when I shall ever see any of you
again.
I long to shew you what a nice snug place I have got into—in
the midst of a pleasant little garden. I have a room for myself and my old
books on the ground floor, and a little bedroom up two pairs of stairs. When you come to town, if you have not time
to go [to] the Moxons, an Omnibus from
the Bell and Crown in Holborn would [bring] you to our door in [a] quarter of
an hour. If your dear Mother does not venture so far, I will contrive to pop
down to see [her]. Love and all seasonable wishes to your sister and
Mary, &c. I am in the midst of many
friends—Mr. & Mrs. Kenney, Mr. & Mrs. Hood,
Bar[r]on Field & his brother
Frank, & their wives &c.,
all within a short walk.
If the lodger is gone, I shall have a bedroom will hold two!
Heaven bless & preserve you all in health and happiness many a long year.
Yours affectionately, M. A. Lamb.
MARY LAMB TO JANE NORRIS
Oct. 3, 1842.
MY dear Jane
Norris,—Thanks, many thanks, my dear friend, for your kind
remembrances. What a nice Goose! That, and all its accompaniments in the
basket, we all devoured; the two legs fell to my share!!!
Your chearful [letter,] my Jane, made me feel “almost as good as new.”
Your Mother and I must meet again. Do not be surprized if I pop in again
for a half-hour’s call some fine frosty morning.
Thank you, dear Jane,
for the happy tidings that my old friend Miss
Bangham is alive, an[d] that Mary is still
with you, unmarried. Heaven bless you all.
Love to Mother, Betsey, Mary, &c. How I do long
to see you.
I am always your affecately grateful
friend,
Mary Ann Lamb.
MISS JAMES TO JANE NORRIS
41 Alpha Road, Regent’s Park, London, July 25, 1843.
MADAM,—Miss
Lamb, having seen the Death of your dear Mother in the Times
News Paper, is most anxious to hear from or to see one of you, as she wishes to
know how you intend settling yourselves, and to have a full account of your
dear Mother’s last illness. She was much shocked on reading of her death,
and appeared very vexed that she had not been to see her, [and] wanted very much to come down and
see you both; but we were really afraid to let her take the journey. If either
of you are coming up to town, she would be glad if you would call upon her, but
should you not be likely to come soon, she would be very much pleased if one of
you would have the goodness to write a few lines to her, as she is most anxious
about you. She begs you to excuse her writing to you herself, as she
don’t feel equal to it; she asked me yesterday to write for her. I am
happy to say she is at present pretty well, although your dear Mother’s
death appears to dwell much upon her mind. She desires her kindest love to you
both, and hopes to hear from you very soon, if you are equal to writing. I
sincerely hope you will oblige her, and am,
Madam, Your obedient, &c., Sarah James.
Pray don’t invite her to come
down to see you.
APPENDIX ICONSISTING OF THE LONGER PASSAGES FROM BOOKS REFERRED TO BY
LAMB IN HIS LETTERSCOLERIDGE’S “ODE ON THE DEPARTING YEAR”Text of the Quarto, 1796(See Letter 19, page 75)Strophe ISpirit, who sweepest the wild Harp of Time, It is most hard with an untroubled Ear Thy dark inwoven Harmonies to hear! Yet, mine eye fixt on Heaven’s unchanged clime, Long had I listen’d, free from mortal fear, With inward stillness and a bowed mind: When lo I far onwards waving on the wind I saw the skirts of the Departing Year! Starting from my silent sadness Then with no unholy madness, Ere yet the entered cloud forbade my sight, I rais’d th’ impetuous song, and solemnized his flight. Strophe II Hither from the recent Tomb; From the Prison’s direr gloom; From Poverty’s heart-wasting languish: From Distemper’s midnight anguish; Or where his two bright torches blending Love illumines Manhood’s maze; Or where o’er cradled Infants bending Hope has fix’d her wishful gaze: Hither, in perplexed dance, Ye Woes, and young-eyed Joys, advance! By Time’s wild harp, and by the Hand Whose indefatigable Sweep Forbids its fateful strings to sleep, I bid you haste, a mixt tumultuous band! From every private bower, And each domestic hearth, Haste for one solemn hour; And with a loud and yet a louder voice O’er the sore travail of the common earth Weep and rejoice! Seiz’d in sore travail and portentous birth (Her eye-balls flashing a pernicious glare) Sick Nature struggles! Hark—her pangs increase! Her groans are horrible! But o! most fair The promis’d Twins, she bears—Equality and Peace! Epode I mark’d Ambition in his war-array: I heard the mailed Monarch’s troublous cry— “Ah I whither [wherefore] does the Northern Conqueress stay? Groans not her Chariot o’er its onward way?” Fly, mailed Monarch, fly! Stunn’d by Death’s “twice mortal” mace No more on Murder’s lurid face Th’ insatiate Hag shall glote with drunken eye! Manes of th’ unnumbered Slain! Ye that gasp’d on Warsaw’s plain! Ye that erst at Ismail’s
tower, When human Ruin chok’d the streams, Fell in Conquest’s glutted hour Mid Women’s shrieks and Infant’s screams; Whose shrieks, whose screams were vain to stir Loud-laughing, red-eyed Massacre! Spirits of th’ uncoffin’d Slain, Sudden blasts of Triumph swelling Oft at night, in misty train Rush around her narrow Dwelling! Th’ exterminating Fiend is fled— (Foul her Life and dark her Doom!) Mighty Army of the Dead, Dance, like Death-fires, round her Tomb! Then with prophetic song relate Each some scepter’d Murderer’s fate! When shall scepter’d Slaughter
cease? Awhile He crouch’d, O Victor France! Beneath the light’ning of thy Lance, With treacherous dalliance wooing Peace. But soon up-springing from his dastard trance The boastful, bloody Son of Pride betray’d His hatred of the blest and blessing Maid. One cloud, O Freedom! cross’d thy orb of Light And sure, he deem’d, that Orb was quench’d in night: For still does Madness roam on Guilt’s bleak dizzy height! Antistrophe IDeparting Year! ’twas on no earthly shore My Soul beheld thy Vision. Where, alone, Voiceless and stern, before the Cloudy Throne Aye Memory sits; there, garmented with gore, With many an unimaginable groan Thou storiedst thy sad Hours! Silence ensued: Deep Silence o’er th’ etherial Multitude, Whose purple Locks with snow-white Glories shone. Then, his eye wild ardors glancing, From the choired Gods advancing, The Spirit of the Earth made
reverence meet And stood up beautiful before the Cloudy Seat! Antistrophe II On every Harp, on every Tongue While the mute Enchantment hung; Like Midnight from a thundercloud, Spake the sudden Spirit loud— “Thou in stormy blackness throning “Love and uncreated Light, “By the Earth’s unsolac’d groaning “Seize thy terrors, Arm of Might! “By Belgium’s corse-impeded flood! “By Vendee steaming Brother’s blood I “By Peace with proffer’d insult scar’d, “Masked hate, and envying scorn! “By Tears of Havoc yet unborn; “And Hunger’s bosom to the frost-winds bar’d! “But chief by Afric’s wrongs “Strange, horrible, and foul! “By what deep Guilt belongs “To the deaf Synod, ‘full of gifts and lies!’ “By Wealth’s insensate Laugh! By Torture’s Howl! “Avenger, rise! “To the deaf Synod, ‘full of gifts and lies!’ “For ever shall the bloody Island scowl? “For aye unbroken, shall her cruel Bow “Shoot Famine’s arrows o’er thy ravag’d World? “Hark! how wide Nature joins her groans below— “Rise, God of Nature, rise! Why sleep thy Bolts unhurl’d?”
Epode II The Voice had ceas’d, the Phantoms fled, Yet still I gasp’d and reel’d with dread. And even when the dream of night Renews the vision to my sight, Cold sweat-damps gather on my limbs, My Ears throb hot, my eye-balls start, My Brain with horrid tumult swims, Wild is the Tempest of my Heart; And my thick and struggling breath Imitates the toil of Death! No uglier agony confounds The Soldier on the war-field spread, When all foredone with toil and wounds Death-like he dozes among heaps of Dead! (The strife is o’er, the day-light fled, And the Night-wind clamours hoarse; See! the startful Wretch’s head Lies pillow’d on a Brother’s Corse!) O doom’d to fall, enslav’d and vile, O Albion! O my mother Isle! Thy valleys, fair as Eden’s bowers, Glitter green with sunny showers; Thy grassy Upland’s gentle Swells Echo to the Bleat of Flocks; (Those grassy Hills, those glitt’ring Dells Proudly ramparted with rocks) And Ocean ’mid his uproar wild Speaks safely to his Island-child. Hence for many a fearless age Has social Quiet lov’d thy shore; Nor ever sworded Foeman’s rage Or sack’d thy towers, or stain’d thy fields with gore. Disclaim’d of Heaven! mad Av’rice at thy side, At coward distance, yet with kindling pride— Safe ’mid thy herds and corn-fields thou hast stood, And join’d the yell of Famine and of Blood. All nations curse thee: and with eager wond’ring Shall hear Destruction like a vulture, scream! Strange-eyed Destruction, who with many a dream Of central flames thro’ nether seas upthund’ring Soothes her fierce solitude, yet (as she lies Stretch’d on the marge of some fire-flashing fount In the black chamber of a sulphur’d mount,) If ever to her lidless dragon eyes, O Albion! thy predestin’d ruins rise, The Fiend-hag on her perilous couch doth leap, Mutt’ring distemper’d triumph in her charmed sleep. Away, my soul, away! In vain, in vain, the birds of warning sing— And hark! I hear the famin’d brood of prey Flap their lank pennons on the groaning wind! Away, my Soul, away! I unpartaking of the evil thing, With daily prayer, and daily toil Soliciting my scant and blameless soil, Have wail’d my country with a loud lament. Now I recenter my immortal mind In the long sabbath of high self-content; Cleans’d from the fleshly Passions that bedim God’s Image, Sister of the Seraphim.
WITHER’S “SUPERSEDEAS TO ALL
THEM, WHOSE CUSTOME IT IS, WITHOUT ANY DESERVING, TO IMPORTUNE AUTHORS TO GIVE UNTO
THEM THEIR BOOKES”From A Collection Of Emblems, 1635 (See Letter 35, page 124) It merits not your Anger, nor my Blame, That, thus I have inscrib’d this Epigram: For, they who know me, know, that, Bookes thus large, And, fraught with Emblems, do augment the Charge Too much above my Fortunes, to afford A Gift so costly, for an Aierie-word; And, I have prov’d, your Begging-Qualitie, So forward, to oppresse my Modestie; That, for my future ease, it seemeth fit, To take some Order, for preventing it. And, peradventure, other Authors may, Find Cause to thanke me for’t, another day. These many years, it hath your Custom bin, That, when in my possession, you have seene A Volume, of mine owne, you did no more, But, Aske and Take; As if you thought my store Encreast, without my Cost; And, that, by Giving, (Both Paines and Charges too) I got my living; Or, that, I find the Paper and the Printing, As easie to me, as the Bookes Inventing. If, of my Studies, no esteeme you have, You, then abuse the Courtesies you crave; And, are Unthankfull. If you prize them ought, Why should my Labour, not enough be thought, Unlesse, I adde Expences to my paines? The Stationer, affoords for little Gaines, The Bookes you crave: And, He, as well as I Might give away, what you repine to buy: For, what hee Gives, doth onely Mony Cost, In mine, both Mony, Time, and Wit
is lost. What I shall Give, and what I have bestow’d On Friends, to whom, I Love, or Service ow’d, I grudge not; And, I thinke it is from them, Sufficient, that such Gifts they do esteeme: Yea, and, it is a Favour too, when they Will take these Trifles, my large Dues to pay; (Or, Aske them at my hands, when I forget, That, I am to their Love, so much in debt.) But, this inferres not, that, I should bestow The like on all men, who, my Name do know; Or, have the Face to aske: For, then, I might, Of Wit and Mony, soone be
begger’d, quite. So much, already, hath beene Beg’d
away, (For which, I neither had, nor looke for pay) As being valu’d at the common Rate, Had rais’d, Five hundred Crownes, in my Estate. Which, (if I may confesse it) signifies, That, I was farre more Liberall, than Wise. But, for the time to come, resolv’d I am, That, till without denyall (or just blame) I may of those, who Cloth and Clothes do make, (As oft as I shall need them) Aske, and Take; You shall no more befoole me. Therfore, PrayBe Answer’d; And, henceforward, keepe away.
PASSAGE FROM GEORGE DYER’S “POETIC
SYMPATHIES”From Poems, 1800(See Letter 83, page
215) Yet, Muse of Shakspeare,1 whither wouldst thou fly, With hurried step, and dove-like trembling eye? Thou, as from heav’n, that couldst each grace dispense, Fancy’s rich stream, and all the stores of sense; Give to each virtue face and form divine, Make dulness feel, and vulgar souls refine,
1 It is not meant to say, that even Shakspeare followed invariably a correct and
chastized taste, or that he never purchased public applause by offering incense at
the shrine of public taste. Voltaire, in his
Essays on Dramatic Poetry, has carried the matter too far; but in many respects his
reflections are unquestionably just. In delineating human characters and passions,
and in the display of the sublimer excellencies of poetry,
Shakspeare was unrivalled. There he our fancy of itself bereaving, Did make us marble with too much conceiving. Milton’s Sonnet To Shakspeare.
Wake all the passions into restless life, Now calm to softness, and now rouze to strife? Sick of misjudging, that no sense can hit, Scar’d by the jargon of unmeaning wit, The senseless splendour of the tawdry stage,1 The loud long plaudits of a trifling age, Where dost thou wander? Exil’d in disgrace, Find’st thou in foreign realms some happier place?2 Or dost thou still though banish’d from the town, In Britain love to linger, though unknown? Light Hymen’s torch through ev’ry blooming grove,3 And tinge each flow’ret with the blush of love? Sing winter, summer-sweets, the vernal air, Or the soft Sofa, to delight the fair?4 Laugh, e’en at kings, and mock each prudish rule, The merry motley priest of ridicule?5 With modest pencil paint the vernal scene, The rustic lovers, and the village green? Bid Mem’ry, magic child, resume his toy, And Hope’s fond vot’ry seize the distant joy?6
1 Pomp and splendour a poor substitute for genius.
2 The dramatic muse seems of late years to have taken her
residence in Germany. Schiller, Kotzebue, and Goethé, possess great merit both for passion and sentiment, and the
English nation have done them justice. One or two principles which the French and
English critics had too implicitly followed from Aristotle, are indeed not adopted, but have been, I hope,
successfully, counteracted by these writers; yet are these dramatists characterised
by a wildness bordering on extravagance, attendant on a state of half-civilization.
Schiller and Kotzebue, amid some
faults, possess great excellencies.
With respect to England, it has long been noticed by very
intelligent observers, that the dramatic taste of the present age is vitiated.
Pope, who directed very powerful satire
against the stage in his time, makes Dulness
say in general terms, Contending theatres our empire raise, Alike their censure, and alike their praise.
It would be the highest arrogance in me to make such an
assertion, with my slender knowledge in these matters; ready too, as I am, to
admire some excellent pieces that have fallen in my way; and to affirm, that there
is by no means a deficiency of poetic talent in England.
Aristotle observes, that all the parts of the
Epic poet are to be found in tragedy, and, consequently, that this species of
writing is, of all others, most interesting to men of talents. (Περι ωοιητικης.)
And baron Kotzebue thinks the theatre the
best school of instruction, both in morals and taste, even for children; and that
better effects are produced by a play, than by a sermon. See his life, written by
himself, just translated by Anne Plumptre.
How much then is it to be wished, that so admirable a mean of
amusement and instruction might be advanced to its true point of excellence! But
the principles laid down by Bishop Hurd,
though calculated to advance the love of splendour, will not, I suspect, advance
the True Province of the Drama.
3Loves of the Plants, by Dr. Darwin.
4The
Task, by Cowper: written at the
request of a lady. The introductory poem is entitled, The
Sofa.
5Dr. Walcot
[Wolcot: Peter Pindar], whose poetry is of a farcical and
humorous character.
6The
Pleasures of Memory, by Rogers;
and the Pleasures of Hope, by
Campbell.
Or dost thou soar, in youthful ardour strong, And bid some female hero live in song?1 Teach fancy how through nature’s walks to stray, And wake, to simpler theme, the lyric lay?2 Or steal from beauty’s lip th’ ambrosial kiss, Paint the domestic grief, or social bliss?3 With patient step now tread o’er rock and hill, Gaze on rough ocean, track the babbling rill,4 Then rapt in thought, with strong poetic eye, Read the great movement of the mighty sky? Or wilt thou spread the light of Leo’s age, And smooth, as woman’s guide, Tansillo’s page?5 Till pleas’d, you make in fair translated song, Odin descend, and rouse the fairy
throng?6 Recall, employment sweet, thy youthful day, Then wake, at Mithra’s call, the mystic lay?7 Unfold the Paradise of ancient lore,8 Or mark the shipwreck from the sounding shore? Now love to linger in the daisied vale, Then rise sublime in legendary tale?9 Or, faithful still to nature’s sober joy, Smile on the labours of some Farmer’s Boy?10 Or e’en regardless of the poet’s praise, Deck the fair magazine with blooming lays?11 Oh! sweetest muse, oh, haste thy wish’d return, See genius droop, and bright-ey’d fancy mourn, Recall to nature’s charms an English stage, The guard and glory of a nobler age.
1Joan of
Arc, by Southey;—a volume of
poems with an introductory sonnet to Mary
Wolstonecraft, and a poem, on the praise of woman, breathes the same
spirit.
2 Alludes to the character of a volume of poems, entitled
Lyrical Ballads. Under this
head also should be mentioned Smythe’s English Lyrics.
3 Characteristic of a volume of poems, the joint production of
Coleridge, Lloyd, and Lamb.
4 Descriptive Poems, such as Leusden hill, by Thomas Crowe; and the Malvern hills, by Joseph Cottle.
5Roscoe’sReign
of Leo de Medici is interspersed with poetry. Roscoe has also
translated, The
Nurse, a poem, from the Italian of Luigi Tansillo.
6Icelandic poetry, or the Edda of Saemund, translated by Amos Cottle; and the Oberon of Wieland, by Sotheby.
7Thomas
Maurice, the author of the Indian Antiquities, is republishing his
poems; the Song to Mithra is in the third volume of Indian Antiquities.
8The
Paradise of Taste, and Pictures of Poetry, by Alexander
Thomson.
9 There is a tale of this character by Dr. Aikin, and the Hermit of Warkworth, by Bishop
Percy. It will please the friends of taste to hear, that Cartwright’sArmine and Elvira, which has been long out of
print, is now republishing.
10The
Farmer’s Boy, a poem just published, on The Seasons, by Robert Bloomfield.
11 Many of the anonymous poetical pieces thrown into
magazines, possess poetical merit. Those of a young lady in the Monthly Magazine, will, I hope,
in time be more generally known. Those of Rushton, of Liverpool, will also, I hope, be published by some
judicious friend:—this worthy man is a bookseller, who has been afflicted with
blindness from his youth.
HAYDON’S PARTYFrom The Life of Benjamin Robert
Haydon, by Tom Taylor(See Letter 228, page
509)
On December 28th the immortal dinner came off in my painting-room,
with Jerusalem towering up behind us as a background. Wordsworth was in fine cue, and we had a glorious set-to,—on Homer, Shakespeare, Milton and Virgil. Lamb got
exceedingly merry and exquisitely witty; and his fun in the midst of
Wordsworth’s solemn intonations of oratory was like the
sarcasm and wit of the fool in the intervals of Lear’s passion. He made a speech and voted me absent, and made
them drink my health. “Now,” said Lamb,
“you old lake poet, you rascally poet, why do you call Voltaire dull?” We all defended
Wordsworth, and affirmed there was a state of mind when
Voltaire would be dull. “Well,” said
Lamb, “here’s Voltaire—the
Messiah of the French nation, and a very proper one too.”
He then, in a strain of humour beyond description, abused me for
putting Newton’s head into my
picture,—“a fellow,” said he, “who believed nothing
unless it was as clear as the three sides of a triangle.” And then he and
Keats agreed he had destroyed all the poetry
of the rainbow by reducing it to the prismatic colours. It was impossible to resist
him, and we all drank “Newton’s health, and
confusion to mathematics.” It was delightful to see the good-humour of
Wordsworth in giving in to all our frolics
without affectation and laughing as heartily as the best of us.
By this time other friends joined, amongst them poor Ritchie who was going to penetrate by Fezzan to
Timbuctoo. I introduced him to all as “a gentleman going to Africa.”
Lamb seemed to take no notice; but all of a
sudden he roared out, “Which is the gentleman we are going to lose?”
We then drank the victim’s health, in which Ritchie joined.
In the morning of this delightful day, a gentleman, a perfect stranger, had called on me. He said he knew my
friends, had an enthusiasm for Wordsworth and
begged I would procure him the happiness of an introduction. He told me he was a
comptroller of stamps, and often had correspondence with the poet. I thought it a
liberty; but still, as he seemed a gentleman, I told him he might come.
When we retired to tea we found the comptroller. In introducing him to Wordsworth I forgot to say who he was. After a little time the
comptroller looked down, looked up and said to Wordsworth,
“Don’t you think, sir, Milton
was a great genius?” Keats looked
at me, Wordsworth looked at the comptroller. Lamb who was dozing by the fire turned round and said,
“Pray, sir, did you say Milton was a great
genius?” “No, sir; I asked Mr. Wordsworth
if he were not.” “Oh,” said
Lamb, “then you are a silly fellow.”
“Charles! my dear
Charles!” said Wordsworth; but
Lamb, perfectly innocent of the confusion he had created, was
off again by the fire.
After an awful pause the comptroller said, “Don’t you think Newton a great genius?” I could not
stand it any longer. Keats put his head into my
books. Ritchie squeezed in a laugh. Wordsworth seemed asking himself, “Who is
this?” Lamb got up, and taking a
candle, said, “Sir, will you allow me to look at your phrenological
development?” He then turned his back on the poor man, and at every
question of the comptroller he chaunted— “Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John Went to bed with his breeches on.” The man in office, finding Wordsworth did not know who he
was, said in a spasmodic and half-chuckling anticipation of assured victory,
“I have had the honour of some correspondence with you, Mr.
Wordsworth.” “With me, sir?” said
Wordsworth, “not that I remember.”
“Don’t you, sir? I am a comptroller of stamps.” There was
a dead silence;—the comptroller evidently thinking that was enough. While we were
waiting for Wordsworth’s reply, Lamb
sung out “Hey diddle diddle, The cat and the fiddle.” “My dear Charles!” said
Wordsworth,— “Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John,” chaunted Lamb, and then rising, exclaimed, “Do let
me have another look at that gentleman’s organs.”
Keats and I hurried Lamb into the
painting-room, shut the door and gave way to inextinguishable laughter. Monkhouse followed and tried to get
Lamb away. We went back, but the comptroller was
irreconcilable. We soothed and smiled and asked him to supper. He stayed though his
dignity was sorely affected. However, being a good-natured man, we parted all in
good-humour, and no ill effects followed.
All the while, until Monkhouse succeeded, we could hear Lamb struggling in the painting-room and calling at intervals,
“Who is that fellow? Allow me to see his organs once more.”
It was indeed an immortal evening. Wordsworth’s fine intonation as he quoted Milton and Virgil,
Keats’ eager inspired look, Lamb’s quaint sparkle of lambent humour, so
speeded the stream of conversation, that in my life I never passed a more delightful
time. All our fun was within bounds. Not a word passed that an apostle might not have
listened to. It was a night worthy of the Elizabethan age, and my solemn Jerusalem
flashing up by the flame of the fire, with Christ hanging over us like a vision, all
made up a picture which will long glow upon— “that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude.” Keats made Ritchie promise
he would carry his Endymion to the
great desert of Sahara and fling it in the midst.
Poor Ritchie went to Africa,
and died, as Lamb foresaw, in 1819. Keats died in 1821, at Rome. C. Lamb is gone, joking to the last. Monkhouse is dead, and Wordsworth and I are the only two now living (1841) of that glorious
party.
SOUTHEY’S “TO THE CHAPEL BELL”From Poems, 1797(See Letter 361, page
691) “Lo I, the man who erst the Muse did ask Her deepest notes to swell the Patriot’s meeds, Am now enforcst, a far unfitter task, For cap and gown to leave my minstrel weeds;” For yon dull noise that tinkles on the air Bids me lay by the lyre and go to morning prayer. Oh how I hate the sound! it is the Knell, That still a requiem tolls to Comfort’s hour; And loth am I, at Superstition’s bell, To quit or Morpheus or the Muses bower: Better to lie and dose, than gape amain, Hearing still mumbled o’er, the same eternal strain. Thou tedious herald of more tedious prayers, Say hast thou ever summoned from his rest, One being awakening to religious awe? Or rous’d one pious transport in the breast? Or rather, do not all reluctant creep To linger out the hour, in listlessness or sleep? I love the bell, that calls the poor to pray, Chiming from village church its chearful sound When the sun smiles on Labour’s holy day, And all the rustic train are gathered round, Each deftly dizen’d in his Sunday’s best, And pleas’d to hail the day of piety and rest. Or when, dim-shadowing o’er the face of day, The mantling mists of even-tide rise slow, As thro’ the forest gloom I wend my way, The minster curfew’s sullen roar I know; I pause and love its solemn toll to hear, As made by distance soft, it dies upon the ear. Nor not to me the unfrequent midnight knell Tolls sternly harmonising; on mine ear As the deep death-fraught sounds long lingering dwell Sick to the heart of Love and Hope and Fear Soul-jaundiced, I do loathe Life’s upland steep And with strange envy muse the dead man’s dreamless
sleep. But thou, memorial of monastic gall! What Fancy sad or lightsome hast thou given? Thy vision-scaring sounds alone recall The prayer that trembles on a yawn to heaven; And this Dean’s gape, and that Dean’s nosal tone, And Roman rites retain’d, tho’ Roman faith be
flown.
BERNARD BARTON’S “THE SPIRITUAL LAW”From Devotional Verses, 1826(See Letter 370, page
698)“But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in
thy heart, that thou mayest do it.”—Deut. xxx. 14. Say not The law divine Is hidden from thee, or far remov’d: That law within would shine, If there its glorious light were sought and lov’d. Soar not on high, Nor ask who thence shall bring it down to earth; That vaulted sky Hath no such star, didst thou but know its worth. Nor launch thy bark In search thereof upon a shoreless sea, Which has no ark, No dove to bring this olive-branch to thee. Then do not roam In search of that which wandering cannot win; At home! At home! That word is plac’d, thy mouth, thy heart within. Oh! seek it there, Turn to its teachings with devoted will; Watch unto prayer, And in the power of faith this law fulfil.
BARTON’S “THE TRANSLATION OF ENOCH”From New Year’s Eve, 1828(See Letter 445, page
788)“And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took
him.” Genesis. Though proudly through the vaulted sky Was borne Elisha’s sire, And dazzling unto mortal eye His car and steeds of fire: To me as glorious seems the change Accorded to thy worth; As instantaneous and as strange Thy exit from this earth. Something which wakes a deeper thrill, These few brief words unfold, Than all description’s proudest skill Could of that hour have told. Fancy’s keen eye may trace the course Elijah held on high: The car of flame, each fiery horse, Her visions may supply;— But Thy transition mocks each dream Framed by her wildest power, Nor can her mastery supreme Conceive thy parting hour. Were angels, with expanded wings, As guides and guardians given? Or did sweet sounds from seraphs’ strings Waft thee from earth to heaven? ’Twere vain to ask: we know but this— Thy path from grief and time Unto eternity and bliss, Mysterious and sublime! With God thou walkedst: and wast not! And thought and fancy fail Further than this to paint thy lot, Or tell thy wondrous tale.
TALFOURD’S “VERSES IN MEMORY OF A CHILD NAMED AFTER
CHARLES LAMB”From The Final Memorials Of Charles
Lamb(See Letter 447, page
792) Our gentle Charles has
pass’d away From Earth’s short bondage free, And left to us its leaden day And mist-enshrouded sea. Here, by the restless ocean’s side, Sweet hours of hope have flown, When first the triumph of its tide Seem’d omen of our own. That eager joy the sea-breeze gave, When first it raised his hair, Sunk with each day’s retiring wave, Beyond the reach of prayer. The sun-blink that through drizzling mist, To flickering hope akin, Lone waves with feeble fondness kiss’d, No smile as faint can win; Yet not in vain, with radiance weak, The heavenly stranger gleams— Not of the world it lights to speak, But that from whence it streams. That world our patient sufferer sought, Serene with pitying eyes, As if his mounting Spirit caught The wisdom of the skies. With boundless love it look’d abroad For one bright moment given; Shone with a loveliness that aw’d, And quiver’d into Heaven. A year made slow by care and toil Has paced its weary round, Since Death enrich’d with kindred spoil The snow-clad, frost-ribb’d ground. Then Lamb, with whose endearing name Our boy we proudly graced, Shrank from the warmth of sweeter fame Than mightier Bards embraced. Still ’twas a mournful joy to think Our darling might supply For years to us, a living link, To name that cannot die. And though such fancy gleam no more On earthly sorrow’s night, Truth’s nobler torch unveils the shore Which lends to both its light. The nurseling there that hand may take, None ever grasp’d in vain, And smiles of well-known sweetness wake, Without their tinge of pain. Though, ’twixt the Child and child-like Bard, Late seemed distinction wide, They now may trace in Heaven’s regard, How near they were allied. Within the infant’s ample brow Blythe fancies lay unfurl’d, Which, all uncrush’d, may open now, To charm a sinless world. Though the soft spirit of those eyes Might ne’er with Lamb’s
compete— Ne’er sparkle with a wit as wise, Or melt in tears, as sweet; That calm and unforgotten look A kindred love reveals, With his who never friend forsook, Or hurt a thing that feels. In thought profound, in wildest glee, In sorrows dark and strange, The soul of Lamb’s bright infancy Endured no spot or change. From traits of each our love receives For comfort, nobler scope; While light, which child-like genius leaves, Confirms the infant’s hope; And in that hope with sweetness fraught Be aching hearts beguiled, To blend in one delightful thought The Poet and the Child!
EDWARD FITZGERALD’S “THE MEADOWS IN SPRINGFrom Hone’s Year Book(See Letter 512, page
878) ’Tis a sad sighe To see the year dying; When autumn’s last wind Sets the yellow wood sighing; Sighing, oh sighing! When such a time cometh, I do retire Into an old room, Beside a bright fire; Oh! pile a bright fire! And there I sit Reading old things Of knights and ladies, While the wind sings: Oh! drearily sings! I never look out, Nor attend to the blast; For, all to be seen, Is the leaves falling fast: Falling, falling! But, close at the hearth, Like a cricket, sit I; Reading of summer And chivalry: Gallant chivalry! Then, with an old friend, I talk of our youth; How ’twas gladsome, but often Foolish, forsooth, But gladsome, gladsome. Or, to get merry, We sing an old rhyme That made the wood ring again In summer time: Sweet summer time! Then take we to smoking, Silent and snug: Nought passes between us, Save a brown jug; Sometimes! sometimes! And sometimes a tear Will rise in each eye, Seeing the two old friends, So merrily; So merrily! And ere to bed Go we, go we, Down by the ashes We kneel on the knee; Praying, praying! Thus then live I, Till, breaking the gloom Of winter, the bold sun Is with me in the room! Shining, shining! Then the clouds part, Swallows soaring between: The spring is awake, And the meadows are green,— I jump up like mad; Break the old pipe in twain; And away to the meadows, The meadows again! Epsilon.
JAMES MONTGOMERY’S “THE COMMON LOT”(See Letter 512, page 878)A Birth-day Meditation, during a solitary winter walk of seven
miles, between a village in Derbyshire and Sheffield, when the ground was covered
with snow, the sky serene, and the morning air intensely pure. Once in the flight of ages past, There lived a man:—and WHO was HE? —Mortal! howe’er thy lot be cast, That man resembled Thee. Unknown the region of his birth, The land in which he died unknown: His name has perish’d from the earth; This truth survives alone:— That joy and grief, and hope and fear, Alternate triumph’d in his breast; His bliss and woe,—a smile, a tear!— Oblivion hides the rest. The bounding pulse, the languid limb, The changing spirits’ rise and fall; We know that these were felt by him, For these are felt by all. He suffer’d,—but his pangs are o’er; Enjoy’d,—but his delights are fled; Had friends,—his friends are now no more; And foes,—his foes are dead. He loved,—but whom he loved, the grave Hath lost in its unconscious womb: O, she was fair!—but nought could save Her beauty from the tomb. He saw whatever thou hast seen; Encounter’d all that troubles thee: He was—whatever thou hast been; He is—what thou shalt be. The rolling seasons, day and night, Sun, moon, and stars, the earth and main, Erewhile his portion, life and light, To him exist in vain. The clouds and sunbeams, o’er his eye That once their shades and glory threw, Have left in yonder silent sky No vestige where they flew. The annals of the human race, Their ruins, since the world began, Of HIM afford no other trace Than this,—THERE LIVED A MAN! November 4, 1805.
BARRY CORNWALL’S “EPISTLE TO CHARLES LAMB;ON HIS EMANCIPATION FROM CLERKSHIP”(written over a Flask of Sherris)From English Songs(See Letter 527, page
893) Dear Lamb! I drink to
thee,—to thee Married to sweet Liberty! What, old friend, and art thou freed From the bondage of the pen? Free from care and toil indeed? Free to wander amongst men When and howsoe’er thou wilt? All thy drops of labour spilt, On those huge and figured pages, Which will sleep unclasp’d for ages, Little knowing who did wield The quill that traversed their white field? Come,—another mighty health! Thou hast earn’d thy sum of wealth,— Countless ease,—immortal leisure,— Days and nights of boundless pleasure, Checquer’d by no dreams of pain, Such as hangs on clerk-like brain Like a night-mare, and doth press The happy soul from happiness. Oh! happy thou,—whose all of time (Day and eve, and morning prime) Is fill’d with talk on pleasant themes,— Or visions quaint, which come in dreams Such as panther’d Bacchus rules, When his rod is on “the schools,” Mixing wisdom with their wine;— Or, perhaps, thy wit so fine Strayeth in some elder book, Whereon our modern Solons look With severe ungifted eyes, Wondering what thou seest to prize. Happy thou, whose skill can take Pleasure at each turn, and slake Thy thirst by every fountain’s brink, Where less wise men would pause to shrink: Sometimes, ’mid stately avenues With Cowley thou, or
Marvel’s muse, Dost walk; or Gray, by
Eton’s towers; Or Pope, in
Hampton’s chesnut bowers; Or Walton, by his loved
Lea stream: Or dost thou with our Milton dream, Of Eden and the Apocalypse, And hear the words from his great lips? Speak,—in what grove or hazel shade, For “musing meditation made,” Dost wander?—or on Penshurst Lawn, Where Sidney’s
fame had time to dawn And die, ere yet the hate of Men Could envy at his perfect pen? Or, dost thou, in some London street, (With voices fill’d and thronging feet,) Loiter, with mien ’twixt grave and gay?— Or take along some pathway sweet, Thy calm suburban way? Happy beyond that man of Ross, Whom mere content could ne’er engross, Art thou,—with hope, health, “learned leisure;” Friends, books, thy thoughts, an endless pleasure! —Yet—yet,—(for when was pleasure made Sunshine all without a shade?) Thou, perhaps, as now thou rovest Through the busy scenes thou lovest, With an Idler’s careless look, Turning some moth-pierced book, Feel’st a sharp and sudden woe For visions vanished long ago! And then thou think’st how time has fled Over thy unsilvered head, Snatching many a fellow mind Away, and leaving—what?—behind! Nought, alas I save joy and pain Mingled ever, like a strain Of music where the discords vie With the truer harmony. So, perhaps, with thee the vein Is sullied ever,—so the chain Of habits and affections old, Like a weight of solid gold, Presseth on thy gentle breast, Till sorrow rob thee of thy rest. Ay: so’t must be!—Ev’n I, (whose lot The fairy Love so long forgot,) Seated beside this Sherris wine, And near to books and shapes divine, Which poets, and the painters past Have wrought in lines that aye shall last,— Ev’n I, with Shakspeare’s self beside me, And one whose tender talk can guide me Through fears, and pains, and troublous themes, Whose smile doth fall upon my dreams Like sunshine on a stormy sea,— Want something—when I think of thee!
APPENDIX II
CONSISTING OF NEW MATTER RELATING TO THE CORRESPONDENCE WHICH HAS COME
TO LIGHT SINCE THIS EDITION WENT TO PRESS; WITH A FEW ADDITIONAL LETTERS
Letter 45, page 145. To
Southey
After “Burns hath done his part,” on page 147, line 2,
comes:—
I the other day threw off an extempore epitaph on
Ensign Peacock of the 3rd Regt. of the Royal East
India Volunteers, who like other boys in this scarlet tainted age was ambitious
of playing at soldiers, but dying in the first flash of his valour was at the
particular instance of his relations buried with military honours! like any
veteran scarr’d or chopt from Blenheim or Ramilies. (He was buried in
sash and gorget.)
Marmor Loquitur He lies a Volunteer so fine, Who died of a decline, As you or I, may do one day; Reader, think of this, I pray; And I humbly hope you’ll drop a tear For my poor Royal Volunteer. He was as brave as brave could be, Nobody was so brave as he; He would have died in Honor’s bed, Only he died at home instead. Well may the Royal Regiment swear, They never had such a Volunteer. But whatsoever they may say, Death is a man that will have his way: Tho’ he was but an ensign in this world of pain; In the next we hope he’ll be a captain. And without meaning to make any reflection on his
mentals, He begg’d to be buried in regimentals.
Sed hæ sunt lamentabilis nugæ—But ’tis as good as some
epitaphs you and I have read together in Christ-Church-yard.
Letter 48, page 152. To
Manning
After “Cambridge,” page 153, should come:—
I dined with him in town and breakfasted with him and Priscilla, who you may tell Charles has promised to come and see me when she returns [to] Clapham. I
will write to Charles on Monday.
Letter 50, page 155
An unpublished letter from Lamb to
Manning tells the story of the Charles Lloyd and Mary
Hayes imbroglio. Lloyd had written to Miss
Hayes a very odd letter concerning her Godwinite creed, in which he refers
to her belief that she was in love with him and repeats old stories that she had been in
love both with Godwin and Frend. Here is one sentence: “In the confounding
medley of ordinary conversation, I have interwoven my abhorrence of your principles
with a glanced contempt for your personal character.” This letter
Lloyd had given to his sister Olivia to copy—“An ignorant Quaker girl,” says
Lamb, “I mean ignorant in the best sense, who ought not
to know, that such a thing was possible or in rerum naturæ that a
woman should court a man.” Later: “As long as
Lloyd or I have known Col. [Coleridge] so long have we known him in the daily and hourly habit of
quizzing the world by lyes most unaccountable and most disinterested
fictions.” And here is one more passage: “To sum up my inferences from
the above facts, I am determined to live a merry Life in the midst of Sinners. I try to
consider all men as such, and to pitch my expectations from human nature as low as
possible. In this view, all unexpected Virtues are Godsends and beautiful
exceptions.”
Letter 53, page 161
Lamb’s next letter to Manning, which has not been printed and is not available
for this edition, contained the promised copy of the “Conceipt of Diabolical
Possession.” It also contained a copy of Thekla’s song in “Wallenstein,” in
Lamb’s translation (see Vol. V., page 27), which he says is
better than the original “a huge deal.” Finally
Lamb copies the old ballad “Edward,
Edward” and calls it “the very first dramatic poem in the English
language.”
Letter 89, page 225
Following this letter should come one from Lamb to John Rickman, dated
September 16, 1801 (the first of a valuable series printed in Canon Ainger’s latest edition), saying that he and his sister are at
Margate. He has been trying to write for the Morning Chronicle but with little success. Is now
meditating a book: “Why should every creature make books but I?” After a
passage concerning George Burnett,
Lamb describes Godwin and
his courtship of his second wife—“a very disgusting woman.”
“You never saw such a philosophic coxcomb, nor any one play the Romeo so unnaturally.”
Letter 90, page 228
Following this letter should come a letter from Lamb to John
Rickman, describing the state of their two George friends: George the
First (George Dyer) and
George the Second (George
Burnett). Burnett, he says, as ill becomes adversity as
Dyer would prosperity. He tells also of
another poor acquaintance of Rickman’s—one Simonds with a
slit-lip, who has been to Lamb to borrow money. “Saving his
dirty shirt and his physiognomy and his ’bacco box together with a certain kiddy
air in his walk, a man wd have gone near to have mistaken him
for a gentleman. He has a sort of ambition to be so misunderstood.”
Letter 91, page 230
Lamb’s next letter to Rickman, dated November 24, 1801, contains better news of
Dyer and returns to the subject of John Woodvil.
“Dyer regularly dines with me when he does not go a
visiting, and brings his shilling.” Also, says Lamb, he talks of marrying. “He has not forgiven me for betraying
to you his purpose of writing his own Life. He says, that if it once spreads, so many
people will expect and wish to have a place in it, that he is sure he shall disoblige
all his friends.”
Another, undated, letter to Rickman should probably come hereabouts, saying that Dyer has been lent a house at Enfield full of books, where
he is at work on his Poems.
Here perhaps should come a further undated letter to Rickman in which Lamb says that the receipt of £50 for an old debt has made it possible to
print John
Woodvil. Dyer, he says, is
“the most unmanageable of God’s creatures.” Burnett is in a very bad way again. Fenwick’s paper
The Plough has become a weekly. Godwin is not yet married. Fell, Godwin’s shadow, is writing a comedy:
“An Owl making a Pun would be no bad emblem of the unnatural
attempt.” In a postscript Lamb says that he has since read
the play and it is not bad: “Who knows, but Owls do make Puns when they hoot by
moonshine.” The best news is that Lamb is to be a
theatrical critic for the Morning
Post.
Here should come a letter to Rickman dated January 9, 1802, the principal news in which is that
George Dyer is consorting with the Earl of Buchan, the “eccentric biographer of
Fletcher of Saltoun,” and has
brought him to see Lamb. “I wasn’t at
home, but Mary was washing—a pretty pickle to
receive an Earl in! Lord have mercy upon us! a Lord in my garret! My utmost ambition
was some time or other to receive a Secretary. Well, I am to breakfast with this mad
Lord on Sunday.” Lamb refers to his article in the Post on Cooke’s “Richard III.” (see Vol. I. of this edition,
pages 36 and 398).
Here should come a letter to Rickman dated January 14, 1802, in which Lamb confesses to the authorship of “Dick
Strype” in the Morning Post of January 6 (see Appendix III., page 989); also of a
whimsical account of the Lord Mayor’s State Bed (see Appendix III., page 980); and of
some of the Twelfth Night Epigrams (see Vol. V., page 102). He includes two epigrams which
the editor rejected; one, on Solomon the
Quack, is printed in Vol. V. of this edition, page 106, from The Champion in 1820; the
other, on Count Rumford, will be found in Appendix
III., page 992.
Here should come a note to Rickman dated January 18, 1802, relating to a joint subscription with
Rickman’s father for certain newspapers.
Here should come a letter to Rickman dated February 1, 1802, giving the first draft of the epitaph for
Mary Druitt (see Vol. V., pages 80 and 322). He
also says that George Burnett, who had just been
appointed tutor to the sons of Lord (“Citizen”)
Stanhope, is perplexed because his pupils have run away.
Here should come a note to Rickman, dated February 4, 1802, accompanying three copies of John Woodvil and saying that
an annuity is to be bought for George Dyer by certain
friends.
Here should come a letter to Rickman, dated February 14, 1802, which contains the news that Lamb has given up the Post. He feels much relieved in consequence, in
spite of the loss of money. George Dyer’s
dinner money is now paid from his friends’ fund, and Burnett is happy in doing nothing for Lord
Stanhope’s salary. Mary Lamb
does not want Rickman to know that “Helen,” in the John Woodvil volume, is of
her writing.
Letter 94, page 240. To
Manning
After “extinct a moon ago” comes:—
Lloyd has written to me and names you. I think a
letter from Maison Magnan (is that a person or a thing?) would gratify him. G. Dyer is in love with an Ideot who loves a Doctor, who is
incapable of loving anything but himself. A puzzling circle of perverse Providences! A maze
as un-get-out-again-able as the House which Jack built.
Letter 96, page 243. To
Manning
After the statement that Wordsworth has “gone into Yorkshire to be married”
comes:—
to a girl of small fortune, but he is in expectation of augmenting his
own in consequence of the death of Lord Lonsdale, who
kept him out of his own in conformity with a plan my lord had taken up in early life of
making everybody unhappy.
Letter 99, page 252. To
Coleridge
Completion of letter of October 23, 1802.
The letter begins:—
Your kind offer I will not a second time refuse. You shall
send me a packet and I will do them into English with great care. Is not there
one about Wm.
Tell, and would not that in the present state of discussions be
likely to tell? The Engravers I meant are to be found at
the end of Harrington’s
Translation of Orlando
Furioso: if you could get the book, they would some of them answer
your purpose to modernize. If you can’t, I fancy I can. Baxter’sHoly Commonwealth I have luckily met
with, and when I have sent it, you shall if you please consider yourself
indebted to me 3s. 6d. the cost of it: especially as I purchased it after your
solemn injunctions. The plain case with regard to my presents (which you seem
so to shrink from) is that I have not at all affected the character of a Donor,
or thought of violating your sacred Law of Give and Take: but I have been
taking and partaking the good things of your House (when I know you were not
over-abounding) and I now give unto you of mine; and by the grace of God I
happen to be myself a little super-abundant at present. I expect I shall be
able to send you my final parcel in about a week: by that time I shall have
gone thro’ all Milton’s
Latin Works. There will come with it the Holy
Commonwealth, and the identical North American Bible which you
helped to dogs ear at Xt’s.—I call’d at
Howell’s for your little
Milton, and also to fetch away the White Cross Street
Library Books, which I have not forgot: but your books were not in a state to
be got at then, and Mrs. H. is to let me know when she
packs up. They will be sent by sea; and my little precursor will come to you by
the Whitehaven waggon accompanied with pens, penknife &c.—Mrs.
Howell was as usual very civil; and asked with great
earnestness, if it were likely you would come to Town in the winter. She has a
friendly eye upon you.
Letter 109, page 277
Following this should come a letter from Lamb to Rickman, dated July 27,
1803. It is part of one from Captain Burney
describing the adventures of the Burneys and
Lambs at Cowes. Lamb, says the Captain, on their way to Newport
“very ingeniously and unconsciously cast loose the fastenings of the mast, so
that mast, sprit, sails, and ail the rest tumbled overboard with a crash.”
Lamb on his part is amusing about the Captain and Martin Burney, and says he longs for Holborn scenery
again.
Letter 150, page 348. To
Manning
On one of the margins is added:—I have made strict inquiries through my
friend Thompson as to your affairs with the Compy. If there had been a committee yesterday an order would have been sent to the
captain to draw on them for your passage money, but there was no Committee. But in the
secretary’s orders to receive you on board, it was specified that the Company would
defray your passage, all the orders about you to the super-cargoes are certainly in your
ship. Here I will manage anything you may want done. What can I add but take care of
yourself. We drink tea with the Holcrofts tomorrow.
Letter 157, page 364. To
Manning
After “I have seen him here and at Holcroft’s” (page 365) comes:—
I have likewise seen his wife,
this elegant little French woman whose hair reaches to her heels—by the same token that Tom
(Tommy H.) took the comb out of her head, not
expecting the issue, and it fell down to the ground to his utter consternation, two ells
long.
Mrs. Holcroft was Louise
Mercier. Afterwards she married James
Kenney. Tommy was Holcroft’s son.
After “Mr. De
Camp” (page 365), “A vulgar brother of Miss De Camp.”
Of Bannister (page 365),
“He is a fellow with the make of a jockey, and the air of a
lamplighter.” Lamb, however, praised
Bannister many years later in the essay on the Old Actors.
After the reference to Ball, on
page 368, “Amongst many queer cattle I have and do meet with at the India Ho. I
always liked his behaviour. Tell him his friend Evans &c. are well. Woodruff not dead
yet.”
Letter 167, page 381. To
Manning
After “doctor’s mouth” (page 383) should
come:— Do you know Watford in Hertfordshire? it is a pretty village.
Louisa goes to school there. They say the governess is a very
intelligent managing person, takes care of the morals of the pupils, teaches them something
beyond exteriors. Poor Mrs. Beaumont! Rickman’s aunt, she might have been a governess (as both her nieces
are) if she had any ability or any education, but I never thought she was good for
anything; she is dead and so is her nephew. He was shot in half at Monte Video, that is,
not exactly in half, but as you have seen a 3 quarter picture. Stoddart is in England.
Letter 170, page 389
After this letter should come the following (Letter 170a), which I copy from The Mirror, 1841:—
Charles Lamb to George
Dyer
From my Desk in Leadenhall Street, Decr 5, 1808. Dear Dyer
Coleridge is not so bad as your fears
have represented him; it is true that he is Bury’d, altho’ he is
not dead; to understand this quibble you must know that he is at Bury St.
Edmunds, relaxing, after the fatigues of lecturing and Londonizing. The little
Rickmaness, whom you enquire after so kindly, thrives
and grows apace; she is already a prattler, and ’tis thought that on some
future day she may be a speaker. [This was Mrs.
Lefroy.] We hold our weekly meetings still at No 16, where altho’ we are not so high as the top of
Malvern, we are involved in almost as much mist. Miss B[etham]’s merit “in every point of
view,” I am not disposed to question, altho’ I have not
been indulged with any view of that lady, back, side, or front—fie!Dyer, to
praise a female in such common market phrases—you who are held so courtly and
so attentive. My book is not yet out, that is not my “Extracts,” my “Ulysses” is, and
waits your acceptance. When you shall come to town, I hope to present you both
together—never think of buying the “Extracts”—half guinea books
were never calculated for my friends. Those poets have started up since your
departure; William Hazlitt, your friend
and mine, is putting to press a collection of verses, chiefly amatory, some of
them pretty enough. How these painters encroach on our province! There’s
Hoppner, Shee, Westall, and I
don’t know who besides, and Tresham. It seems on confession, that they are not at the top
of their own art, when they seek to eke out their fame with the assistance of
another’s; no large tea-dealer sells cheese; no great silversmith sells
razor-strops; it is only your petty dealers who mix commodities. If Nero had been a great Emperor, he would never have
played the Violoncello! Who ever caught you, Dyer,
designing a landscape, or taking a likeness? I have no more to add, who am the
friend of virtue, poetry, painting, therefore in an especial manner,
Unalterably Thine C. Lamb.
Letter 173, page 395. To
Manning.
After “He [Holcroft]
died on Thursday last” comes:—
and is not yet buried. He has been opened by Carlisle and his heart was found completely ossified. He
has had a long and severe illness. He seemed very willing to live, and to the last acted on
his favorite principle of the power of the will to overcome disease. I believe his strong
faith in that power kept him alive long after another person would have given him up, and
the physicians all concurred in positively saying he would not live a week, many weeks
before he died. The family are as well as can be expected. I told you something about
Mrs. Holcroft’s plans. Since her death
there has been a meeting of his friends and a subscription has been mentioned. I have no
doubt that she will be set agoing, and that she will be fully competent to the scheme which
she proposes. Fanny bears it much better than I
could have supposed.
Letter 179, page 409. To
Manning
After “for I never think about them” comes:—
Miss Knap is turned midwife. Never having had a child herself, she
can’t draw any wrong analogies from her own case. Dr.
Stoddart has had Twins. There was five shillings to pay the Nurse. Mrs. Godwin was impannelled on a jury of Matrons last
Sessions. She saved a criminal’s life by giving it as her
opinion that —— ——. The Judge listened to her with the greatest deference.
Letter 197, page 438. To
Coleridge Completion of letter of August 13, 1814.
After “stagnate” (page 439) comes:—
One piece of news I know will give you pleasure—Rickman is made a Clerk to the House of
Commons, £2000 a year with greater expectatns—but that
is not the news—but it is that poor card-playing Phillips, that has felt himself for so many years the outcast
of Fortune, which feeling pervaded his very intellect, till it made the destiny
it feared, withering his hopes in the great and little games of life—by favor
of the single star that ever shone upon him since his birth, has strangely
stept into Rickman’s Secretaryship—sword, bag, House
and all—from a hopeless £100 a year eaten up beforehand with desperate debts,
to a clear £400 or £500—it almost reconciles me to the belief of a moral
government of the world—the man stares and gapes and seems to be always
wondering at what has befaln him—he tries to be eager at Cribbage, but alas!
the source of that Interest is dried up for ever, he no longer plays for his
next day’s meal, or to determine whether he shall have a half dinner or a
whole dinner, whether he shall buy a pair of black silk stockings, or wax his
old ones a week or two longer, the poor man’s relish of a Trump, the Four
Honors, is gone—and I do not know whether if we could get at the bottom of
things whether poor star-doomed Phillips with his hair
staring with despair was not a happier being than the sleek well combed
oily-pated Secretary that has succeeded. The gift is, however, clogged with one
stipulation, that the Secretary is to remain a Single Man. Here I smell
Rickman. Thus are gone at once all
Phillips’ matrimonial dreams. Those verses which
he wrote himself, and those which a superior pen (with modesty let me speak as
I name no names) endited for him to Elisa,
Amelia &c.—for Phillips was a
wife-hunting, probably from the circumstance of his having formed an extreme
rash connection in early life which paved the way to all his after misfortunes,
but there is an obstinacy in human nature which such accidents only serve to
whet on to try again. Pleasure thus at two entrances quite shut out—I hardly
know how to determine of Phillips’s result of
happiness. He appears satisfyd, but never those bursts of gaiety, those
moment-rules from the Cave of Despondency, that used to make his face shine and
shew the lines which care had marked in it. I would bet an even wager he
marries secretly, the Speaker finds it out, and he is reverted to his old
Liberty and a hundred pounds a year—these are but speculations—I can think of
no other news. I am going to eat Turbot &c. . . .
After “half-past four this day” (page 439) comes:—
Mary has ordered the bolt to my bedroom door
inside to be taken off, and a practicable latch to be put on, that I may not bar myself in
and be suffocated by my neckcloth, so we have taken all precautions,
three watchmen are engaged to carry the body upstairs—Pray for me —They keep bothering me.
Letter 221, page 494
Here should come a letter to Rickman, dated December 30, 1816. The chief news in it is that George Dyer has been made one of Lord Stanhope’s ten Residuary Legatees. This, says Lamb, will settle Dyer’s fate:
he will have to throw his dirty glove at some one and marry.
Letter 234, page 522. To
Manning
At the beginning of this letter is an unprinted passage saying that
Charles Lloyd and his wife are in London and
that such proximity is not too comfortable. “Would you like to see him?”
or “isn’t it better to lean over a stile in a sort of careless easy half
astronomical position eyeing the blue expanse?”
Letter 237, page 529
After this should come Letter 237a:—
Charles and Mary Lamb to
Samuel James Arnold
[No date. ? 1819.] Dear Sir,
We beg to convey our kindest acknowledgements to Mr. Arnold for the very pleasant privilege he
has favoured us with. My yearly holidays end with next week, during which we
shall be mostly in the country, and afterwards avail ourselves fully of the
privilege. Sincerely wishing you crowded houses, etc.,
We remain, Yours truly, Ch. & M. Lamb.
Arnold, brother-in-law of Ayrton, was the lessee of the Lyceum, where Miss Kelly was acting when Lamb proposed to her in 1819. This letter may belong to that time.
Letter 246, page 541
After this should come the following (Letter 246a), which tells us what the Lambs were doing in the summer
of 1820:—
Charles Lamb to Thomas
Allsop
[p.m. July 13, 1820.]
Dear Sir, I do not know whose fault it is we have not met so
long. We are almost always out of town. You must come and beat up our quarters
there, when we return from Cambridge. It is not in our power to accept your
invitation. To-day we dine out; and set out for Cambridge on Saturday morning,
Friday of course will be past in packing, &c.,
moreover we go from Dalston. We return from Cam. in 4 weeks, and will contrive
an early meeting. Meantime believe us,
Sincerely yours, C. L., &c. Thursday.
It was during this visit to Cambridge that Lamb wrote his Elia essay on “Oxford
in the Vacation.”
Letter 265, page 560
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Rickman, dated November 20,
1821, referring to Admiral Burney’s death.
“I have been used to death lately. Poor Jim
White’s departure last year first broke the spell. I had been so
fortunate as to have lost no friends in that way for many long years, and began to
think people did not die.” He says that Mary
Lamb has recovered from a long illness and is pretty well resigned to
John Lamb’s death.
Letter 359, page 689
Here should come the following note and acrostic (Letter 359a), kindly placed at my disposal by Major
Butterworth. Aitken was an Edinburgh
bookseller who edited The Cabinet;
or, The Selected Beauties of Literature, 1824, 1825 and 1831. The
particular interest of the letter is that it shows Lamb to have wanted to publish Rosamund Gray a third time in his life. Hitherto we
had only his statement that Hessey said that the
world would not bear it. Aitken printed the story in The Cabinet for 1831. Previously he had
printed “Dream Children” and
“The Inconveniences of being
Hanged.”
I have been told (but have had no opportunity of verifying the
statement) that the Buttons, for one of whom the appended acrostic was
written, were cousins of the Lambs.
CHARLES LAMB To John Aitken
Colebrooke Cottage, Islington, July 5, 1825.
Dear Sir,—With thanks for your last No. of the Cabinet—as I cannot arrange with
a London publisher to reprint “Rosamund Gray” as a book, it will be
at your service to admit into the Cabinet as soon as
you please.
Your hble. servt, Chs. Lamb. Emma, eldest of
your name, Meekly trusting in her God Midst the red-hot plough-shares trod, And unscorch’d preserved her fame. By that test if you were tried, Ugly flames might be defied; Though devouring fire’s a glutton, Through the trial you might go “On the light fantastic toe,” Nor for plough-shares care a Button.
Letter 401, page 738
A letter to an anonymous correspondent, in the summer of 1827, has an
amusing passage concerning Emma Isola’s Latin.
Lamb says that they made Cary laugh by translating “Blast you”
into such elegant verbiage as “Deus afflet tibi.” He
adds, “How some parsons would have goggled and what would Hannah More say? I don’t like clergymen, but here
and there one. Cary, the Dante
Cary, is a model, quite as plain as Parson Primrose, without a shade of
silliness.”
On July 21, 1827, is a letter to Mr. Dillon, whom
I do not identify, saying that Lamb has been teaching
Emma Isola Latin for the past seven weeks.
Letter 405, page 746
Following this letter, under the date August 29, 1827, should come a
letter from Lamb to Robert Jameson (husband of Mrs.
Jameson) asking him to interest himself in Miss
Isola’s career. “Our friend Coleridge will bear witness to the very excellent manner in which she
read to him some of the most difficult passages in the Paradise Lost.”
Letter 439, page 778
Here should come a letter to Rickman, dated September 11, 1828, in which Lamb thanks him for a present of nuts and apples, but is surprised that
apples should be offered to the owner of a “whole tree, almost an
orchard,” and “an apple chamber redolent” to boot.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Louisa Holcroft, dated
October 2, 1828, in which, so soon after Mary
Lamb’s determination to be the letter writer of the family, he says,
“Mary Lamb has written her last letter in this
world,” adding that he has been left her writing legatee. He calls geese
“those pretty birds that look like snow in summer, and cackle like ice
breaking up.”
Here should come (Letter 439a) a long Latin
letter to Rickman, dated October 4, 1828. Canon Ainger prints only the Latin. I append an English
version:—
Postmark Oct. 3, 1828.
I have been thinking of sending some kind of an answer in
Latin to your very elaborate letter, but something has arisen every day to
hinder me. To begin with our awkward friend M.
B. has been with us for a while, and every day and all day we
have had such a lecture, you know how he stutters, on legal, mind, nothing but
legal notices, that I have been afraid the Latin I want to write might prove
rather barbaro-forensic than Ciceronian. He is swallowed up, body and soul, in
law; he eats, drinks, plays (at the card table) Law, nothing but Law. He acts
Ignoramus in the play so thoroughly, that you wd swear that in the inmost marrow of his head (is not this
the proper anatomical term?) there have housed themselves not devils but
pettifoggers, to bemuddle with their noisy chatter his own and his
friends’ wits. He brought here, ’twas all his luggage, a book,
Fearn on Contingent Remainders. This book he has read
so hard, and taken such infinite pains to understand, that the reader’s
brain has few or no Remainders to continge. Enough, however, of M.
B. and his luggage. To come back to your claims upon me. Your
return journey, with notes, I read again and again, nor have I done with them
yet. You always make something fresh out of a hackneyed theme. Our milestones,
you say, bristle with blunders, but I must shortly explain why I cannot comply
with your directions herein.
Suppose I were to consult the local magnates about a matter
of this kind—Ha! says one of our waywardens or parish overseers,—What business
is this of yours? Do you want to drop the Lodger and
come out as a Householder?—Now you must know that I took this house of mine at
Enfield, by an obvious domiciliary fiction, in my Sister’s name, to avoid
the bother and trouble of parish and vestry meetings, and to escape finding
myself one day an overseer or big-wig of some sort. What then wd be my reply to the above question?
Leisure I have secured: but of dignity, not a tittle.
Besides, to tell you the truth, the aforesaid irregularities are, to my
thinking, most entertaining, and in fact very touching indeed. Here am I, quit
of worldly affairs of every kind; for if superannuation does not mean that,
what does it mean? The world then, being, as the saying is, beyond my ken, and
being myself entirely removed from any accurate distinctions of space or time,
these mistakes in road-measure do not seriously offend me. For in the infinite
space of the heavens above (which in this contracted sphere of mine I desire to
imitate so far as may be) what need is there of milestones? Local distance has
to do with mortal affairs. In my walks abroad, limited though they must be, I
am quite at my own disposal, and on that account I have a good word for our
Enfield clocks too. Their hands generally point without any servile reference
to this Sun of our World, in his sub-Empyrean position.
They strike too just as it happens, according to their own sweet
wiles,—one—two—three—anything they like, and thus to me, a more fortunate
Whittington, they pleasantly
announce, that Time, so far as I am concerned, is no more. Here you have my
reasons for not attending in this matter to the requests of a busy subsolar
such as you are.
Furthermore, when I reach the milestone that counts from the
Hicks-Hall that stands now, I own at once the Aulic dignity, and, were I a
gaol-bird, I should shake in my shoes. When I reach the next which counts from
the site of the old Hall, my thoughts turn to the fallen grandeur of the pile,
and I reflect upon the perishable condition of the most imposing of human
structures. Thus I banish from my soul all pride and arrogance, and with such
meditations purify my heart from day to day. A wayfarer such as I am, may learn
from Vincent Bourne, in words terser and
neater than any of mine, the advantages of milestones
properly arranged. The lines are at the end of a little poem of his, called
Milestones—(Do you remember it or shall I write it all out?) How well the Milestones’ use doth this express, Which make the miles [seem] more and way seem less.
What do you mean by this—I am borrowing hand and style from
this youngster of mine—your son, I take it. The style looks, nay on careful
inspection by these old eyes, is most clearly your very own, and the writing
too. Either R’s or the Devil’s. I will defer
your explanation till our next meeting—may it be soon.
My Latin failing me, as you may infer from erasures above,
there is only this to add. Farewell, and be sure to give Mrs. Rickman my kind remembrances.
C. Lamb.
Enfield, Chase Side, 4th Oct, 1828. I can’t put
this properly into Latin. Dabam—what is it?
Letter 449, page 793
This is a complete list of the contents of Emma Isola’s Album, all autographs (from
Quaritch’s catalogue, September, 1886):—
Charles Lamb. “What is an
Album?” a poem addressed to Miss Emma Isola. — — “To Emma on her Twenty-first Birthday,” May 25, 1830. — — “Harmony in Unlikeness.” Without date. John Keats. “To my
Brother,” a sonnet on the birthday of his brother Tom, dated Nov. 18 (? 1814 or
1815). William Wordsworth. “She dwelt
among the untrodden ways,” three verses of his poem on Lucy, copied in his own
hand on March 18, 1837. — — “Blessings be with them, and enduring praise,” five lines of a
sonnet dated Rydal, 1838. Alfred Tennyson. “When Lazarus
left his charnel-cave,” four stanzas, undated. Thomas Moore. “Woman gleans but
sorrow,” and note to Moxon, June, 1844. Leigh Hunt. “Apollo’s
Autograph,” from an unpublished poem called “The Feast of the
Violets.” Undated, circa 1838. Thomas Hood. “Dreams,” a
prose fragment, without date, circa 1840. James Hoog. “I’m a’
gaen wrang,” a song by the Ettrick Shepherd, circa 1830. Joanna Baillie. “Up! quit thy
bower,” a song, undated, circa 1830. Robert Southey. Epitaph on himself, in
verse, Feb. 18, 1837. Thomas Campbell.
“Victoria’s sceptre o’er the waves,” circa 1837. Allan Cunningham. “The
Pirate’s Song,” circa 1838. Charles Dibdin. “An Album’s
like the Dream of Hope,” circa 1827. Bernard Barton. “To Emma,”
with a note by Charles Lamb at foot, 1827. Walter Savage Landor. “To Emma
Isola,” circa 1827. Barry Cornwall. “To the Spirit of
Italy,” circa 1827. Samuel Rogers. Two letters, and a poem,
“My Last,” 1829-36. Frederick Locker. A quatrain, dated
July, 1873. George Dyer, J. B. Dibdin, George
Darley, Matilda Betham, H. F.
Cary, Mrs. Piozzi, Edward
Moxon, T. N. Talfourd, are the other writers.
Letter 461, page 808
After this should come the following (Letter 461a), from The
Mirror, 1841:—
Charles Lamb to George
Dyer
Enfield, April 29, 1829.
Dear Dyer—As well as a
bad pen can do it, I must thank you for your friendly attention to the wishes
of our young friend Emma, who was
packing up for Bury when your sonnet arrived, and was too hurried to express
her sense of its merits. I know she will treasure up that and your second
communication among her choicest rarities, as from her grandfather’s friend, whom not having seen, she loves to hear
talked of. The second letter shall be sent after her, with our first parcel to
Suffolk, where she is, to us, alas dead and Bury’d; we sorely miss her.
Should you at any hour think of four or six lines, to send her, addressed to
herself simply, naming her grandsire, and to wish she may pass through life as
much respected, with your own G. Dyer at the end, she
would feel rich indeed, for the nature of an Album asks for verses that have
not been in print before; but this quite at your convenience: and to be less
trouble to yourself, four lines would be sufficient. Enfield has come out in
summer beauty. Come when you will and we will give you a bed.
Emma has left hers, you know. I remain, my dear
Dyer, your affectionate friend,
Charles Lamb.
Lamb made the same pun—Bury’d—to George Dyer in his letter, on page 970, of December 5,
1808. His Album verses for Miss Isola I have not
seen.
Letter 498, page 857
Here probably should come an undated letter to Mrs. John Rickman, accompanying a gift of Album Verses.
Lamb says: “Will you re-give, or lend
me, by the bearer, the one Volume of Juvenile Poetry? I have tidings of a second at Brighton.” He
proposes that he and Mrs. Rickman shall some day play old whist for
the two.
Letter 557, page 911
Here should come a letter to Miss
Rickman, dated May 23, 1833. “Perhaps, as Miss Kelly is just now in notoriety, it may amuse you
to know that ‘Barbara
S.’ is all of it true of her, being all communicated to me from her own
mouth. The ‘wedding’ you
of course found out to be Sally
Burney’s.”
Letter 586, page 941. To
Mr. Childs
Lamb sent Mr.
Childs a copy of John Woodvil in which he wrote:—
From The Author
In great haste, the Pig was faultless,—we got
decently merry after it and chirpt and sang “Heigh! Bessy
Bungay!” in honour of the Sender. Pray let me have a line to say you got
the Books; keep the 1st vol.—two or three months, so long as it comes home at last.
APPENDIX IIICONSISTING OF SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES ON THE FIRST FIVE VOLUMES OF THIS
EDITION, TOGETHER WITH NEW MATTER BY LAMB
Errors of my own and typographical blunders in the previous volumes
must be left for correction in a new edition, if that should be called for; but a few
omissions may be supplied here and one or two of the major mistakes set right.
I am also able to include some authentic new writings by Lamb and
two or three interesting conjectural pieces.
VOL. IMISCELLANEOUS PROSE
It was wrong to include in this volume the little article on
“Samuel Johnson the Whig,” on page 350, first associated with Lamb by J. E.
Babson in Eliana. The criticism, although in Lamb’s hand,
was merely copied by him from Coleridge. It will be found in Coleridge’s Table Talk.
The little article on “London Fogs,” on page 351,
although attributed to Lamb by William Ayrton, is in reality a passage from an essay on
the Months by Leigh Hunt in the New Monthly Magazine.
The article on “Shakspeare’s Characters,” on page
367, thought to be Lamb’s by Alexander Ireland, is part of Hazlitt’s essay
on “Henry VI.” in the volume called Shakspeare’s
Characters, 1817, which (to make my error worse) was dedicated to Lamb.
I am inclined now to doubt if Lamb were the author of the critical
note on Gray’s Latin Ode on page 381. Mr. Dobell’s suggestion that Sir
Charles Abraham Elton was the author seems to me very reasonable.
The little sketch “A True Story,” on page 329,
attributed to Lamb by the editor of The Talisman, 1831, is
thought by Mr. Swinburne and others to be Leigh Hunt’s. Leigh Hunt, however, does
not seem to have reprinted it; and absolute proof of his authorship not being offered,
I should like, I think, to retain it in its present place.
Early Journalism, I
Writing to Rickman about his Morning Post
work, in January, 1802, Lamb says that in addition to certain other things it was he
who made the Lord Mayor’s bed. The reference is undoubtedly to the following
little article on January 4, 1802:—
Grand State Bed
Ever since an account of the Marquis of Exeter’s Grand State
Bed appeared in the fashionable world, grandeur in this article of furniture has become
quite the rage. Among others the Lord Mayor, feeling for the dignity of the city of
London, has petitioned the Corporation for one of great splendour to be placed in the
Mansion-house, at the City’s expence.
We have been favoured with a description of this magnificent state
bed, the choice of his Lordship. The body is formed by the callipee, or under shell of
a large turtle, carved in mahogany, and sufficiently capacious to receive two well-fed
people. The callipash, or upper shell, forms the canopy. The posts are four gigantic
figures richly gilt: two of them accurate copies of Gog and Magog; the other two
represent Sir William Walworth and the last man in armour. Cupids with custards are the
supporters. The curtains are of mazarine purple, and curiously wrought with the series
of the idle and industrious apprentice from Hogarth, in gold embroidery: but the
vallens exceed description; there, the various incidents in the
life of Whittington are painted. The mice in one of the compartments are done so much
to the life, that his Lordship’s cat, who is an accurate judge of mice, was
deceived. The quilt is of fashionable patchwork figures, the description of which we
shall not anticipate, as, we understand, Mr. Birch has obtained a sketch of it for his
large Twelfth Cake. The whole is worthy of the taste of the first Magistrate of the
first City in the world.
Early Journalism, II
On January 6 (Twelfth Night), 1802, the following fable was printed
in the Morning Post. That Lamb was the author no one need have
any doubt after reading the Elia essay “Rejoicings on the New Year’s Coming of
Age”:—
Fable For Twelfth Day
Once upon a high and solemn occasion all the great fasts and
festivals in the year presented themselves before the throne of Apollo, God of Days.—Each brought an offering in his hand, as is the custom
all over the East, that no man shall appear before the presence of the King
empty-handed. Shrove-Tuesday was there with his pan-cakes, and Ash-Wednesday with his
oblation of fish. Good Friday brought the
mystical bun. Christmas-Day came bending
underneath an intolerable load of turkeys and mince-pies, his snow-white temples shaded with holly and the sacred misletoe, and singing a carol as he advanced. Next came the Thirtieth of January,
bearing a calfs-head in a charger; but Apollo no sooner
understood the emblematical meaning of the offering, than the stomach of the God turned sick, and with visible indignation and abhorrence he
ordered the unfortunate Day out of his presence—the contrite Day returned in a little time, bearing in his hands a Whig (a sort of cake well-tempered and delicious)—the God with smiles accepted the atonement, and the happy Day understood that his peace was made, he promising never to
bring such a dish into the presence of a God again. Then came
the august Fourth of June, crowned with such a crown as British
Monarchs commonly wear, leading into the presence the venerable Nineteenth of May—Apollo welcomed the royal pair, and
placed them nearest to himself, and welcomed their noble progeny, their eldest-born and
heir, the accomplished Twelfth of August, with all his brave
brothers and handsome sisters. Only the merry First of April,
who is retained in the Court of Apollo as King’s Jester,
made some mirth by his reverent inquiries after the health of the Eighteenth of January, who, being a kept mistress, had not been deemed a
proper personage to be introduced into such an assembly. Apollo,
laughing, rebuked the petulance of his wit; so all was mirth and good humour in the
palace—only the sorrowful Epiphany stood silent and abashed—he
was poor, and had come before the King without an oblation. The
God of Days perceived his confusion, and turning to the Muses (who are nine), and to the Graces, his hand-maids (who are three in
number), he beckoned to them, and gave to them in charge to prepare a Cake of the richest and preciousest ingredients: they obeyed, tempering with
their fine and delicate fingers the spices of the East, the
bread-flour of the West, with the fruits of the South, pouring over all the Ices of the North. The God himself crowned the whole with talismanic
figures, which contained this wondrous virtue—that whosoever ate of the Cake should forthwith become Kings and
Queens. Lastly, by his heralds, he invested the trembling
and thankful Epiphany with the privilege of presenting this Cake
before the King upon an annual festival for ever. Now this Cake is called Twelfth Cake upon earth, after the number
of the virgins who fashioned the same, being nine and three.
Miss Kelly
In The Examiner for December 20, 1818, after
Leigh Hunt’s criticism of Kenney’s comedy “A Word for the
Ladies” is the following paragraph. Leigh Hunt’s criticism is signed: this
is not, nor is it joined to the article. There is, I think, good reason to believe it
to be Lamb’s:—
It was not without a feeling of pain, that we observed Miss Kelly among the spectators on
the first night of the new comedy. What does she do before the curtain? She should have
been on the stage. With such youth, such talents,— Those powers of pleasing, with that will to please, it is too much that she should be forgotten discarded, laid aside like an old fashion. It really is not yet the season for her
“among the wastes of time to go.” Is it Mr. Stephen
Kemble, or the Sub-Committee; or what heavy body is it,
which interposes itself between us and this light of the stage?
“Letter to an Old Gentleman whose
Education has been Neglected”Vol. I., page 213
In the London
Magazine for December, 1823, under “The Lion’s Head,”
is the following jesting paragraph in which it is possible perhaps to see the hand of
the author of the “Letter to the Old Gentleman.”
The following admirable letter seems to refer to the observations
on Kant, contained in the Opium Eater’s Letters. Perhaps that acute logician may
be able to discover its meaning: or if not, he may think it worth preserving as an
illustration of Shakespeare’s profound knowledge of character displayed in
Ancient Pistol.
Can Neptune sleep?—Is Willich dead?—Him who
wielded the trident of Albion! Is it thus you trample on the ashes of my friend? All
the dreadful energies of thought—all the sophistry of fiction and the triumphs of the
human intellect are waving o’er his peaceful grave. “He understood not
Kant.” Peace then to the harmless invincible. I have long been thinking of
presenting the world with a Metaphysical Dictionary—of elucidating Locke’s
romance.—I await with impatience Kant in English. Give me that! Your letter has
awakened me to a sense of your merits. Beware of squabbles; I know the literary
infirmities of man. Scott rammed his nose against mortals—he grasped at death for fame
to chaunt the victory.
Thine.
How is the Opium Eater?
Letter To SoutheyVol. I., page 226
In the London
Magazine for December, 1823, under “The Lion’s Head,”
is the following:—
We have to thank an unknown correspondent for the following
Sonnet Occasioned by reading in Elia’s Letter to Dr. Southey,
that the admirable translator of Dante, the modest and amiable C——, still remained a
curate—or, as a waggish friend observed,—after such a Translation should still be without Preferment.* O Thou! who enteredst the tangled wood, By that same spirit trusting to be led, That on the first discoverer’s footsteps shed The light with which another world was view’d;
* We suspect, by the way, this is not strictly the case,
though we believe it is very nearly so.
Thou hast well scann’d the path, and firmly stood With measured niceness in his holy tread, Till, mounting up thy star-illumined head, Thou lookedst in upon the perfect good! What treasures does thy golden key unfold! Riches immense, the pearl beyond all price, And saintly truths to gross ears vainly told! Say, gilds thy earthly path some Beatrice?— If bread thou want’st, they will but give thee stones, And when thou’rt gone, will quarrel for thy bones! —An Unworthy Rector.
Hood’s “Progress Of Cant”
There can be, I think, very little doubt that Lamb was the author
of the following criticism of Hood’s picture “The Progress of Cant”
in the New Monthly Magazine for February, 1826. Lamb, we know,
praised the detail of the Beadle, reproduced in Hone’s Every-Day Book, under the title “An Appearance of the Season”
(see Vol. I., page 307). This is the New Monthly Magazine
article:—
The Progress Of Cant
A wicked wag has produced a caricature under this title, in which
he marshalleth all the projected improvements of the age, and maketh them take their
fantastic progress before the eyes of the scorner. It is a spirited etching, almost as
abundant in meaning as in figures, and hath a reprobate eye to a corner—an Hogarthian
vivification of post and placard. Priests, anti-priests, architects, politicians,
reformers, flaming loyalty-men, high and low, rich and poor, one with another, all go
on “progressing,” as the Americans say. Life goes on, at any rate; and
there is so much merriment on all sides, that for our parts, inclined to improvements
as we are, we should be willing enough to join in the laugh throughout, if the world
were as merry as the artist. The houses are as much to the purpose as the pedestrians.
There is the office of the Peruvian Mining Company, in dismal, dilapidated condition; a
barber’s shop, with “Nobody to be shaved during divine service,” the
h worn out; two boarding-schools for young ladies and gentlemen, very neighbourly; and
the public-house, called the Angel and Punch-Bowl, by T. Moore. Among the crowd is a
jolly, but vehement, reverend person holding a flag, inscribed, “The Church in
Anger,” the D for danger being hidden by another flag,
inscribed, “Converted Jews.” Then there is the Caledonian Chap (el being
obstructed in the same way), who holds a pennon, crying out, “No Theatre!”
Purity of Election, with a bludgeon, very drunk; and, above all, a petty fellow called
the Great Unknown, with his hat over his eyes, and a constable’s staff peeping
out of his pocket. Some of the faces and figures are very clever, particularly the
Barber; the Saving-banks man; the Jew Boy picking the pocket; the Charity Boy and the
Beadle. The Beadle is rich from head to foot. Nathless, we like not to see Mrs. Fry so
roasted: we are at a loss to know why the Blacks deserve to be made Black Devils; and
are not aware that the proposal of an University in London has
occasioned, or is likely to occasion, any sort of cant. However, there is no harm done
where a cause can afford a joke; and where it cannot, the more it is joked at, the
better.
Mr. Ephraim Wagstaff
In The Table Book, 1827, beginning on column
185, Vol. II., is the following humorous story which there is some reason to believe
mar be Lamb’s. The late Mr. Dykes Campbell had no doubt whatever, the proof
residing not only in internal evidence but in the rhymed story of “Dick
Strype,” printed below, on page 989, which we may assume Lamb to have written.
The subject of the two stories, prose and verse, is the same, and the style of Ephraim
Wagstaff is not altogether unlike that of Juke Judkins. I am not however quite
convinced.
For “The Table Book” Mr. Ephraim Wagstaff, His Wife And Pipe
About the middle of Shoemaker-row, near to Broadway, Blackfriars,
there resided for many years a substantial hardwareman, named Ephraim Wagstaff. He was
short in stature, tolerably well favoured in countenance, and singularly neat and clean
in his attire. Everybody in the neighbourhood looked upon him as a “warm”
old man; and when he died, the property he left behind him did not bely the
preconceived opinion. It was all personal, amounted to about nineteen thousand pounds;
and, as he was childless, it went to distant relations, with the exception of a few
hundred pounds bequeathed to public charities.
The family of Ephraim Wagstaff, both on the male and female sides,
was respectable, though not opulent. His maternal grandfather, he used to say, formed
part of the executive government in the reign of George I., whom he served as petty
constable in one of the manufacturing districts during a long period. The love of
office seems not to have been hereditary in the family; or perhaps the opportunities of
gratifying it did not continue; for, with that single exception, none of his ancestors
could boast of official honours. The origin of the name is doubtful. On a first view,
it seems evidently the conjunction of two names brought together by marriage or
fortune. In the “Tatler” we read about the staff in
a variety of combinations, under one of which the popular author of that work chose to
designate himself, and thereby conferred immortality on the name of Bickerstaff. Our
friend Ephraim was no great wit, but he loved a joke, particularly if he made it
himself; and he used to say, whenever he heard any one endeavouring to account for his
name, that he believed it originated in the marriage of a Miss Staff to some Wag who
lived near her; and who, willing to show his gallantry, and at the same time his
knowledge of French customs, adopted the fashion of that sprightly people, by adding
her family name to his own. The conjecture is at least probable, and so we must leave
it.
At the age of fifty-two it pleased heaven to deprive Mr. Wagstaff
of his beloved spouse Barbara. The bereavement formed an era in his history. Mrs. Wagstaff was an active, strong woman, about ten
years older than himself, and one sure to be missed in any circle wherein she had once
moved. She was indeed no cipher. Her person was tall and bony, her face, in hue,
something between brown and red, had the appearance of having been scorched. Altogether
her qualities were truly commanding. She loved her own way exceedingly; was continually
on the alert to have it; and, in truth, generally succeeded. Yet such was her love of
justice, that she has been heard to aver repeatedly, that she never (she spoke the word never emphatically) opposed her husband, but when
he was decidedly in the wrong. Of these occasions, it must also be mentioned, she
generously took upon herself the trouble and responsibility of being the sole judge.
There was one point, however, on which it would seem that Mr. Wagstaff had contrived to
please himself exclusively; although, how he had managed to resist so effectually the
remonstrances and opposition which, from the structure of his wife’s mind he must
necessarily have been doomed to encounter, must ever remain a secret. The fact was
this: Ephraim had a peculiarly strong attachment to a pipe; his affection for his
amiable partner scarcely exceeding that which he entertained for that lively emblem of
so many sage contrivances and florid speeches, ending like it—in smoke. In the times of
his former wives (for twice before had he been yoked in matrimony) he had indulged
himself with it unmolested. Not so with Mrs. Wagstaff the third. Pipes and smoking she
held in unmitigated abhorrence: but having, by whatever means, been obliged to submit
to their introduction, she wisely avoided all direct attempts to abate what she called
among her friends “the nuisance;” and, like a skilful general, who has
failed of securing victory, she had recourse to such stratagems as might render it as
little productive as possible to the enemy. Ephraim, aware how matters stood, neglected
no precaution to guard against his wife’s manoeuvres—meeting, of course, with
various success. Many a time did her ingenuity contrive an accident, by which his pipe
and peace of mind were at once demolished; and, although there never could be any
difficulty in replacing the former by simply sending out for that purpose, yet he has
confessed, that when he contemplated the possibility of offering too strong an
excitement to the shrill tones of his beloved’s voice, (the only pipe she
willingly tolerated,) he waved that proceeding, and submitted to the sacrifice as much
the lesser evil. At length Mrs. Wagstaff was taken ill, an inflammation on her lungs
was found to be her malady, and that crisis appeared to be fast approaching, when The doctor leaves the house with sorrow, Despairing of his fee to-morrow. The foreboding soon proved correct; and, every thing considered, perhaps it ought
not to excite much surprise, that when Ephraim heard from the physician that there was
little or no chance of her recovery, he betrayed no symptoms of excessive emotion, but
mumbling something unintelligibly, in which the doctor thought he caught the sound of the words “Christian duty of resignation,” he
quietly filled an additional pipe that evening. The next day Mrs. Wagstaff expired, and
in due time her interment took place in the churchyard of St. Ann, Blackfriars, every
thing connected therewith being conducted with the decorum becoming so melancholy an
event, and which might be expected from a man of Mr. WagstafFs gravity and experience.
The funeral was a walking one from the near vicinity to the ground; and but for an
untimely slanting shower of rain, no particular inconvenience would have been felt by
those who were assembled on that occasion; that casualty, however, caused them to be
thoroughly drenched; and, in reference to their appearance, it was feelingly observed
by some of the by-standers, that they had seldom seen so many tears on the faces of
mourners.—
To be continued—(perhaps). Nemo.
A Letter To The Editor
In column 857 of The Table Book, 1827, Vol.
II., is the following letter to Hone, which is very likely to be from Lamb’s pen.
Waltham Abbey was a favourite objective of his in his long Essex and Hertfordshire
rambles:—
Waltham, EssexTo the Editor
Sir,—The following epitaph is upon a plain gravestone in the
churchyard of Waltham Abbey. Having some point, it may perhaps be acceptable for the
Table Book. I was told that the memory of the worthy curate
is still held in great esteem by the inhabitants of that place. Rev. Isaac Colnett, Fifteen years curate of this Parish, Died March 1, 1801—Aged 43 years. Shall pride a heap of sculptured marble raise, Some worthless, unmourn’d, titled fool to praise, And shall we not by one poor gravestone show Where pious, worthy Colnett sleeps below?
Surely common decency, if they are deficient in antiquarian
feeling, should induce the inhabitants of Waltham Cross to take some measures, if not
to restore, at least to preserve from further decay and dilapidation the remains of
that beautiful monument of conjugal affection, the cross erected by Edward I. It is now
in a sad disgraceful state.
I am, &c, Z.
VOL. IIELIA AND THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA“Mrs. Battle’s Opinions On Whist”Vol. II., page 32
A little essay on card playing in the Every-Day
Book, the authorship of which is unknown, but which may be Hone’s, ends
with the following pleasant passage, which might be added to my notes:—
“Cousin Bridget and the gentle Elia seem beings
of that age wherein lived Pamela, whom, with ‘old Sarah Battle,’ we may
imagine entering their room, and sitting down with them to a square game. Yet Bridget
and Elia live in our own times: she, full of kindness to all, and of soothings to Elia
especially;—he, no less kind and consoling to Bridget, in all simplicity holding
converse with the world, and, ever and anon, giving us scenes that Metzu and De Foe
would admire, and portraits that Deuner and Hogarth would rise from their graves to
paint.”
“The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers”Vol. II., page 108
Leigh Hunt, in The Examiner for May 5,
1822, quoted some of the best sentences of this essay. On May 12 a correspondent (L.
E.) wrote a very agreeable letter supporting Lamb’s plea for generosity to sweeps
and remarking thus upon Lamb himself:—
“I read the modicum on
‘Chimney-Sweepers,’ which your last paper contained, with pleasure. It
appears to be the production of that sort of mind which you justly denominate
‘gifted;’ but which is greatly undervalued by the majority of men, because
they have no sympathies in common with it Many who might partially appreciate such a
spirit, do nevertheless object to it, from the snap-dragon nature of its coruscations,
which shine themselves, but shew every thing around them to disadvantage. Your deep
philosophers also, and all the laborious professors of the art of sinking, may elevate
their nasal projections, and demand ‘cui bono’? For my part I prefer a
little enjoyment to a great deal of philosophy. It is these gifted minds that enliven
our habitations, and contribute so largely to those every-day
delights, which constitute, after all, the chief part of mortal happiness. Such minds
are ever active—their light, like the vestal lamp, is ever burning—and in my opinion
the man who refines the common intercourse of life, and wreaths the altars of our
household gods with flowers, is more deserving of respect and gratitude than all the
sages who waste their lives in elaborate speculations, which tend to nothing, and which
we cannot comprehend—nor they neither.”
On June 2, however, “J. C. H.” intervened to correct
what he considered the “dangerous spirit “of Lamb’s essay, which said
so little of the hardships of the sweeps, but rather suggested that they were a happy
class. J. C. H. then put the case of the unhappy sweep with some eloquence, urging upon
all householders the claims of the mechanical sweeping machine.
The Tombs In The AbbeyVol. II. page 207
In The Examiner for April 8, 1821, is
quoted from The Traveller the following epigram, which may
possibly be Lamb’s, and which shows at any rate that his protest against entrance
fees for churches was in the air.
On a Visit to St. Paul’s What can be hop’d from Priests who, ’gainst the Poor, For lack of two-pence, shut the church’s door; Who, true successors of the ancient leaven, Erect a turnpike on the road to Heaven? “Knock, and it shall be open’d,” saith our Lord; “Knock, and pay two-pence,” say the Chapter Board: The Showman of the booth the fee receives, And God’s house is again a “den of thieves.”
“Rejoicings upon the New Year’s Coming of
Age’Vol. II., page 235
For the first draft of this essay—or at any rate for the germ of
it—see page 980.
VOL. VPOEMS AND PLAYSLamb’s Earliest Poem
To the Illustrated London News for December
26, 1891, the late Mr. Dykes Campbell contributed an account of a book that had
belonged to James Boyer, of Christ’s Hospital, in which his best scholars
transcribed compositions of more than usual merit. All Lamb’s Grecians figure
here. Lamb is represented by the following:—
Mille viæ mortis What time in bands of slumber all were laid, To Death’s dark court, methought I was convey’d; In realms it lay far hid from mortal sight, And gloomy tapers scarce kept out the night. On ebon throne the King of Terrors sate; Around him stood the ministers of Fate; On fell destruction bent, the murth’rous band Waited attentively his high command. Here pallid Fear & dark Despair were seen. And Fever here with looks forever lean, Swoln Dropsy, halting Gout, profuse of woes, And Madness fierce & hopeless of repose, Wide-wasting Plague; but chief in honour stood More-wasting War, insatiable of blood; With starting eye-balls, eager for the word; Already brandish’d was the glitt’ring sword. Wonder and fear alike had fill’d my breast, And thus the grisly Monarch I addrest— “Of earth-born Heroes why should Poets sing, “And thee neglect, neglect the greatest King? “To thee ev’n Csesar’s self was forc’d to yield “The glories of Pharsalia’s well-fought field.” When, with a frown, “Vile caitiff, come not here,” Abrupt cried Death; “shall flatt’ry soothe my ear?” “Hence, or thou feel’st my dart!” the Monarch said. Wild terror seiz’d me, & the vision fled. Charles Lamb. 1789.
An Early Tale in Verse
Writing to John Rickman in January, 1802, Lamb says, “My
editor [Dan Stuart of the Morning Post] uniformly rejects all
that I do, considerable in length. I shall only do paragraphs with now and then a
slight poem, such as Dick Strype, if you read it, which was but a long epigram.”
The verses, which appeared on January 6, 1802, may be compared with the story of
Ephraim Wagstaff, on page 984, written twenty-five years later. It has been pointed out
that Points of Misery, 1823, by Charles Molloy Westmacott
(Bernard Blackmantle of the English Spy), contains the poem with
slight alterations. But Westmacott reaped where he could, and his book is confessedly
not wholly original. Lamb seems to me to admit authorship by implication fairly
completely. Westmacott was only thirteen when it was first printed.
Dick Strype; or, The Force of HabitA Tale—By Timothy BrambleHabitsare stubborn
things: And by the time a man is turn’d of forty, His ruling passion’s grown so haughty There is no clipping of its wings. The amorous roots have taken earth, and fix And never shall P—TT leave his juggling tricks, Till H——Y quits his metre with his pride, Till W——M learns to flatter regicide, Till hypocrite-enthusiasts cease to vant And Mister W——E leaves off to cant. The truth will best be shewn, By a familiar instance of our own. Dick Strype Was a dear friend and lover of the Pipe; He us’d to say, one pipe of Kirkman’s best Gave life a zest. To him ’twas meat, and drink, and physic, To see the friendly vapour Curl round his midnight taper, And the black fume Clothe all the room, In clouds as dark as science metaphysic. So still he smok’d, and drank, and crack’d his joke; And, had he single tarried He might have smok’d, and still grown old in smoke: But Richardmarried. His wife was one, who carried The cleanly virtues almost to a vice, She was so nice: And thrice a week, above, below, The house was scour’d from top to toe, And all the floors were rubb’d so bright, You dar’d not walk upright For fear of sliding: But that she took a pride in. Of all things else Rebecca Strype Could least endure a pipe. She rail’d upon the filthy herb tobacco, Protested that the noisome vapour Had spoilt the best chintz curtains and the paper And cost her many a pound in stucco: And then she quoted our King James, who saith “Tobacco is the Devil’s breath.” When wives will govern, husbands must obey; For many a day Dick mourn’d and miss’d his favourite
tobacco, And curs’d Rebecca. At length the day approach’d, his wife must die: Imagine now the doleful cry Of female friends, old aunts and cousins, Who to the fun’ral came by dozens— The undertaker’s men and mutes Stood at the gate in sable suits With doleful looks, Just like so many melancholy rooks. Now cakes and wine are handed round, Folks sigh, and drink, and drink, and sigh, For Grief makes people dry: But Dick is missing, nowhere
to be found Above, below, about They searched the house throughout, Each hole and secret entry, Quite from the garret to the pantry, In every corner, cupboard, nook and shelf, And all concluded he had hang’d himself. At last they found him—reader, guess you where— ’Twill make you stare— Perch’d on Rebecca’sCoffin, at his rest, Smoking a Pipe of Kirkman’s Best.
“Farewell To Tobacco”
To the note to the “Farewell to Tobacco” I might have
added the following pleasant verses in The Table Book, 1827,
which, appearing m the same number that contained the tenth instalment of the Garrick
Plays, must have been seen by Lamb and probably pleased him:—
The Smoker’s SongFor The Table Book For thy sake, Tobacco, I Would do any thing but die! Charles Lamb. There is a tiny weed, man, That grows far o’er the sea, man; The juice of which does more bewitch Than does the gossip’s tea, man. Its name is call’d tobacco, ’Tis used near and far, man; The car-man chews—but I will choose The daintier cigar, man. ’Tis dainty ev’n in shape, man— So round, so smooth, so long, man I If you’re a churl, ’twill from you hurl Your spleen—you’ll sing a song, man! If you will once permit it To touch your swelling lip, man, You soon shall see ’twill sweeter be Than what the bee doth sip, man! If e’er you are in trouble, This will your trouble still, man, On sea and land ’tis at command, An idle hour to kill, man! And if the blind god, Cupid, Should strike you to the heart, man, Take up a glass, and toast your lass— And—ne’er from smoking part, man! And also if you’re married, In Hymen’s chains fast bound, man; To plague your wife out of her life, Smoke still the whole year round, man! How sweet ’tis of an evening When wint’ry winds do blow, man, As ’twere in spite, to take a pipe, And smoke by th’ fire’s glow, man! The sailor in his ship, man, When wildly rolls the wave, man, His pipe will smoke, and crack his joke Above his yawning grave, man! The soldier, in the tavern, Talks of the battle’s roar, man: With pipe in hand, he gives command, And thus he lives twice o’er, man! All classes in this world, man, Have each their own enjoyment, But with a pipe, they’re all alike— ’Tis every one’s employment! Of all the various pleasures That on this earth there are, man, There’s nought to me affords such glee As a pipe or sweet cigar, man! O. N. Y.
“Harmony in Unlikeness”
The reference to Maria in this sonnet (Vol. V., pages 54 and 311)
is not to Mary Lamb, as I supposed, but to a schoolfellow of Emma Isola’s.
“To Emma, Learning Latin and Desponding”
In its original form this sonnet (see Vol. V., page 83) in its
fifth line ran thus:— (In new tasks hardest still the first appears). Derwent Coleridge read it in 1853 in Mrs. Moxon’s album, and copying it out,
sent it to his wife, saying that he wished Sissy (his daughter Christabel) to get it by
heart. He added this note: “Charles Lamb having discovered that this Sonnet
consisted but of thirteen lines, Miss Lamb inserted the 5th, which interrupts the flow
and repeats a rhime.” Derwent Coleridge goes on to suggest two alternative
lines:— And hope may surely chase desponding fears or Let hope encouraged chase desponding fears. Lamb, however, had already amended the fifth line (as in Blackwood’s Magazine) to— To young beginnings natural are these fears.
A New Epigram
The letter to Rickman, dated January 14, 1802, recently printed by
Canon Ainger, contains an epigram by Lamb on Count Rumford which was excluded from the
“Twelfth Night Characters” in the Morning Post on
January 7 and 8. It runs thus:— Count Rumford I deal in aliments fictitious And teaze the poor with soups nutritious. Of bones and flesh I make dilution And belong to the National Institution. The same letter shows us that the epigram on Dr. Solomon (see Vol. V., page 106)
which The Champion printed in 1820, was also written for the
“Twelfth Night Characters” in 1802. Solomon was then alive.
On the Literary Gazette
The epigram in Vol. V., page 109, was printed in The Examiner for August 22, 1830—a fact I have only recently lighted upon. It
then ran thus:— In merry England I computed once The number of the dunces—dunce for dunce; There were four hundred, if I
don’t forget, All readers of the L——y G——e; But if the author to himself keep true, In some short months they’ll be reduced to two.
The Examiner began the attack on August 14, 1830. All the
epigrams are signed T. A. This means that if Lamb wrote the above, he wrote all; which
is not, I think, likely. I do not reproduce them, the humour of punning upon the name
of the editor of the Literary Gazette being a little outmoded.
T. A. may, of course, have been Lamb’s pseudonymous
signature. If so, he may have chosen it as a joke upon his friend Thomas Allsop. But
since one of the epigrams is addressed to himself I doubt if Lamb was the author.
Prologue To “Remorse”
These verses (see Vol. V., page 125) as printed are different from
those which were spoken at the theatre by Mr. Carr. A writer in the Theatrical Inquisitor for February, 1813, in his contemptuous criticism,
refers to several passages that are no longer extant. I quote from an account of the
matter by the late Mr. Dykes Campbell in the Illustrated London
News, October 22, 1892:—
I am afraid the true text of Lamb’s
“Rejected Address,” even as modified for use as a prologue, has not come
down to us. This is how the severe and suspicious Inquisitor
describes it and its twin brother the epilogue—
The Prologue and Epilogue were among the most stupid
productions of the modern muse; the former was, in all probability, a Rejected Address,
for it contained many eulogiums on the beauty and magnificence of the
“dome” of Drury; talked of the waves being not quite dry, and expressed the
happiness of the bard at being the first whose muse had soared within its limits. More
stupid than the doggerel of Twiss, and more affected than the pretty verses of Miles
Peter Andrews, the Epilogue proclaimed its author and the writer of the Prologue to be
par nobile fratrum, in rival dulness both pre-eminent.
The reader of Lamb’s prologue will find little
of all this in it but there is no reason for doubting the critic’s account of
what he heard at the theatre. It is not at all unlikely that it was this paragraph
which suggested to Lamb the advisability of still further revising the “Rejected
Address.” In the prologue there is a good deal about the size of the theatre, as
compared with “the Lyceum’s petty sphere,” and of how pleased
Shakspere would have been had he been able to hear— When that dread curse of Lear’s Had burst tremendous on a thousand ears: rather an anti-climax, by the way, for it means an audience of but five hundred,
which would have been a beggarly account for the new Drury. There is nothing either
about its “dome,” or about the scenery, except commonplaces so flat that
one doubts if it be quite fair to quote them— The very use, since so essential grown, Of painted scenes, was to his [Shakspere’s] stage unknown. This is not an improvement on the “waves not yet quite dry,” a
Lamb-like touch which could not have been invented by the critic, and may go far to
convince us of his veracity.
Above all, there is no trace of that splendidly
audacious suggestion that Coleridge was the first “whose muse had soared”
within the new dome—unless we find a blind one in the closing lines, supposing them to
have been converted by the simple process of inversion. Instead of Coleridge being the
first whose muse had soared in the new Drury, Drury was the first place in which his
dramatic muse had soared.
“Mr. H.”
In Notes and Queries, August S, 1889, the
following amusing playbill was printed, contributed by Mr. Bertram Dobell:—
Theatre Royal, English Opera House, Strand. Particularly Private. This present FRIDAY, April 26, 1822, Will be presented a Farce called Mr. H. . . . (N.B. This piece was damned at Drury Lane Theatre.) [Caste follows.] Previous to which a Prologue will be spoken by Mrs. Edwin. After the Farce (for the first Time in this country, and now performing with immense success in Paris) A French Petite Comedie, called Le Comedien D’Etampes. (N.B. This piece was never acted in London, and may very
probably be damnedHere.) [Caste follows.] Immediately after which A Lover’s Confession, in the shape of a Song, by M. EMILE (From the Theatre de la Poste St. Martin, at Paris.) To conclude with a Pathetic Drama, in One Act, called The Sorrows of Werther. (N.B. This Piece was damned at Covent Garden Theatre.) [Caste follows.] Brothers and Sisters of Charlotte, by six Cherubims got for the occasion. Orchestra. Leader of the Band, Mr. Knight. Conductor, Mr. E. Knight. Piano Forte, Mr.
Knight, Jun. Harpsichord, Master Knight (that was). Clavecin, by the Father of
the Knights, to come. Vivat Rex! No Money returned (because none will be taken). On account of the above surprising Novelty, not
anOrdercan
possibly be admitted:—But it is requested, that if such a thing finds its way into
the front of the house, it will be kept. Doors open at Half past Six, begin at Half past Seven precisely. The Entrance for all parts of the House at the Private Box Door in Exeter Street. Lowndes, Printer, Marquis Court, Drury Lane, London.
Mr. Dobell wonders if Lamb had any knowledge of this performance,
and he suggests that possibly he had a hand in the bill. Certainly the interpolations
concerning damnation are in his manner. The following notice was circulated in the
theatre on the night of the performance:—
“The Ladies and Gentlemen who have honoured the
Theatre with a Visit, are most respectfully informed that Mrs.
Edwin has been very suddenly and seriously indisposed. In this emergency Mrs. J. Weippart (formerly Miss J.
Stevenson), of this Theatre, has kindly undertaken the part of Melesinda in the Farce called Mr. H. . . . The prologue,
intended to have been recited by Mrs. Edwin, will be read by
Mr. H, . . himself—who solicits the customary indulgence.
“As a conclusion to this complicated Apology,
it is with sorrow announced that M. Perlet, M. Emile, and Mr. C. J. Mathews, have had the misfortune of
falling from their horse and sprained their right ancle—but it is anxiously hoped—that
as the actors intend to put their best leg forward, the
performance will not be considered a lame one,”
The last paragraph, it is suggested, embodies a sarcastic hit at
some recent public example of bad grammar.
A New Poem
In The Mirror for June 1, 1833, are the
following lines, collected under the general heading “The Gatherer”:— Where the soul drinks of misery’s power, Each moment seems a lengthened hour; But when bright joy illumes the mind, Time passes as the fleetest wind.— How to a wicked soul must be Whole ages of eternity? C. L——B. The poem is indexed “Lamb, C, lines by.” See also new verses on pp.
965, 974.
Sapphics
On page 332 of Vol. V. I have printed an exercise in Sapphics
which may very possibly be by Mary Lamb. The same number of The
Champion (November 5, 1820) contains another poem in the same measure signed
C., which not improbably was Lamb’s contribution to the pastime. It runs as
follows:—
Danae Exposed with Her InfantAn English Sapphic Dim were the stars, and clouded was the azure, Silence in darkness brooded on the ocean, Save when the wave upon the pebbled sea-beach Faintly resounded. Then, O forsaken daughter of Acrisius! Seiz’d in the hour of woe and tribulation, Thou, with the guiltless victim of thy love, didst Rock on the surges. Sad o’er the silent bosom of the billow, Borne on the breeze and modulated sweetly, Plaintive as music, rose the mother’s tones of Comfortless anguish. “Sad is thy birth, and stormy is thy cradle, “Offspring of sorrow! nursling of the ocean! “Waves rise around to pillow thee, and night winds Lull thee to slumber!”
A Poem Possibly by Lamb
The late Mr. Dykes Campbell thought it very likely that the
following charming verses were Lamb’s. I think they may be, although it is odd
that he should not have reprinted anything so pretty. Here and there it seems
impossible that the poem could come from any other hand: line 11 for example, and the
idea in lines 13 to 16, and the statement in lines 27 and 28. The lines are in The Tickler Magazine for 1821.
On Seeing Mrs. K—— B——, Aged Upwards Of Eighty, Nurse an
Infant A sight like this might find apology In worlds unsway’d by our Chronology; As Tully says, (the thought’s in Plato)—. “To die is but to go to Cato.” Of this world Time is of the essence,— A kind of universal presence; And therefore poets should have made him Not only old, as they’ve pourtray’d him, But young, mature, and old—all three In one—a sort of mystery— (’Tis hard to paint abstraction pure.) Here young—there old—and now mature- Just as we see some old book-print, Not to one scene its hero stint; But, in the distance, take occasion To draw him in some other station. Here this prepost’rous union seems A kind of meeting of extremes. Ye may not live together. Mean ye To pass that gulf that lies between ye Of fourscore years, as we skip ages In turning o’er historic pages? Thou dost not to this age belong: Thou art three generations wrong: Old Time has miss’d thee: there he tarries! Go on to thy contemporaries! Give the child up. To see thee kiss him Is a compleat anachronism. Nay, keep him. It is good to see Race link’d to race, in him and thee. The child repelleth not at all Her touch as uncongenial, But loves the old Nurse like another— Its sister—or its natural mother; And to the nurse a pride it gives To think (though old) that still she lives With one, who may not hope in vain To live her years all o’er again!
LIST OF LETTERSALPHABETICALLY ARRANGED
Ainsworth, W. Harrison, to May 7, 1822 565 —— —— Dec. 9, 1823 630 —— —— Dec. 29, — 632 Aitken, J., to July 5, 1825 974 Allsop, Thomas, to July 13, 1820 973 —— —— ? 1821 548 —— —— ? — 548 —— —— March 30, — 551 —— —— July, 1823 618 —— —— Sept. 6, — 620 —— —— Sept. 9, — 620 —— —— Sept. 10, — 621 —— —— Sept. — 621 —— —— ? Oct. — 624 —— —— Jan. 17, 1825 694 —— —— Sept. 9, — 694 —— —— Sept. 24, — 696 —— —— Dec. 5, — 692 —— —— ? Middle Dec., 1827 764 —— —— Dec. 20, — 765 —— —— Jan. 9, 1828 767 —— —— May 1, — 774 —— —— Jan. 28, 1829 798 —— —— Late July, — 815 —— —— July 2, 1832 812 —— —— Late July, 1829 815 —— Mrs. Thomas, to April 13, 1824 641 Arnold, S.J., to (from Charles and Mary Lamb) ? 1819 973 Asbury, Jacob Vale, to ? April, 1830 843 —— —— No date. 844 Ayrton, William, to May 12, 1817 497 —— —— Oct. 27, 1821 560 —— —— March 14, 1830 837 —— Mrs. William, to Jan. 23, 1821 549 —— —— March 15, — 550 —— —— (from Mary Lamb) ? 559 —— —— April 16, 1833 907 Barton, Bernard, to Sept. 11, 1822 571 —— —— Oct. 9, — 576 —— —— Dec. 23, — 588 —— —— Jan. 9, 1823 594 —— —— Feb. 17, — 598 —— —— March 11, — 602 —— —— April 5, — 604
Barton, Bernard, to May 3, 1823 612 —— —— July 10, — 616 —— —— Sept. 2, — 618 —— —— Sept. 17, — 621 —— —— Nov. 22, — 629 —— —— Jan. 9, 1824 633 —— —— Jan. 23, — 634 —— —— Feb. 25, — 637 —— —— March 24, — Early Spring, — 639 —— —— May 15, — 642 —— —— July 7, — 644 —— —— Aug. 17, — 652 —— —— Sept. 30, — 654 —— —— Dec. 1, — 662 —— —— Feb. 10, 1825 669 —— —— March 23, — 672 —— —— April 6, — 676 —— —— July 2, — 688 —— —— Aug. 10, — 689 —— —— Feb. 7, 1826 698 —— —— March 20, — 700 —— —— May 16, — 704 —— —— Sept. 26, — 716 —— —— No date. — 719 —— —— No date. 1827 726 —— —— June 11, — 730 —— —— Aug. 10, — 745 —— —— Aug. 28, — 746 —— —— Late — 761 —— —— Dec. 4, — 762 —— —— End of — 766 —— —— April 21, 1828 773 —— —— Oct. 11, — 779 —— —— Dec. 5, — 787 —— —— March 25, 1829 805 —— —— June 3, — 811 —— —— July 25, — 813 —— —— Dec. 8, — 824 —— —— Feb. 25, 1830 831 —— —— June 28, — 857 —— —— Aug. 30, — 858 —— —— April 30, 1831 871 —— Lucy, to (P.S. to letter to B.B.) Dec. 1, 1824 662 Betham, Barbara, to (from Mary Lamb) Nov. 2, 1814 446 —— —— Jan. 24, 1834 927 —— Matilda, to ? 1811 428 —— —— ? Late Summer, 1815 476 —— —— Undated. — 478 —— —— June 1, 1816 489 —— —— June, 1833 913 Cary, Rev. H. F., to Oct. 14, 1823 624 —— —— April 3, 1826 703 —— —— May 6, 1831 873 —— —— Sept. 9, 1833 917 —— —— (from Charles and Mary Lamb) Sept. 12, 1834 938 —— —— Oct. — 938
Cary, Rev. H. F., to Oct. 18, — 940 Chambers, Charles, to ? May, 1825 680 Childs, Mr., to ? Dec., 1834 941 Clare, John, to Aug. 31, 1822 569 Clarke, Charles Cowden, to Summer, 1821 558 —— —— Feb. 25, 1828 769 —— —— Oct., — 781 —— —— Dec., — 791 —— —— Feb. 2, 1829 802 —— —— End of June, 1834 932 Clarkson, Thomas and Catherine, to June, 1807 373 Clarkson, Mrs. Thomas, to (from Mary Lamb) Dec. 10, 1808 393 Colburn (?), Henry, to June 14, (?1825) 684 —— —— Sept. 25, 1837 755 Coleridge, S.T., to May 27, 1796 1 —— —— End of May — 5 —— —— June 10, — 13 —— —— June 13, — 26 —— —— July 1, — 32 —— —— July 5, — 35 —— —— July 6, — 36 —— —— Sept. 27, — 41 —— —— Oct. 3, — 43 —— —— Oct. 17, — 48 —— —— Oct. 24, — 49 —— —— Oct. 28, — 51 —— —— Nov. 8, — 54 —— —— Nov. 14, — 57 —— —— Dec. 2, — 60 —— —— Dec. 5, — 64 —— —— Dec. 9, — 67 —— —— Dec. 10, — 72 —— —— Jan. 2, 1797 75 —— —— Jan. 10, — 80 —— —— Jan. 18, — 87 —— —— Feb. 5, — 89 —— —— Feb. 13, — 95 —— —— April 7, — 99 —— —— April 15, — 101 —— —— June 13, — 103 —— —— June 24, — 106 —— —— ? June 29, — 107 —— —— Late July — 108 —— —— Aug. 24, — 110 —— —— About Sept. 20, — 111 —— —— Jan. 28, 1798 114 —— —— Early Summer, — 117 —— —— ? Jan. 23, 1800 154 —— —— ? April 16 or 17, — 161 —— —— ? Spring, — 165 —— —— May 12, — 166 —— —— ? Late July, — 170 —— —— Aug. 6, — 171 —— —— Aug. 14, — 177
Coleridge, S. T., to Aug. 26, — 183 —— —— Sept. 8, 1802 242 —— —— Oct. 9, — 246 —— —— Oct. 11, — 250 —— —— Oct. 23, — 252 —— —— Nov. 4, — 255 —— —— April 13, 1803 268 —— —— May 27, — 270 —— —— March 10, 1804 284 —— —— April 4, — 287 —— —— (from Mary Lamb) No date. 361 —— —— June 7, 1809 400 —— —— Oct. 30, — 403 —— —— Aug. 13, 1814 438 —— —— Aug. 26, — 440 —— —— Dec. 24, 1818 517 —— —— ? Summer, 1819 530 —— —— Jan 10, 1820 536 —— —— ? Autumn, — 544 —— —— May 1, 1821 551 —— —— March 9, 1822 561 —— —— ? June, 1825 683 —— —— July 2, — 684 —— —— March 22, 1826 702 —— —— June 1, — 706 —— —— April 14, 1832 885 —— Mrs. S. T., to (from Mary Lamb) Oct. 13, 1804 297 Collier, John Dyer, to Late 1812 432 —— Mr. and Mrs. J. D., to Jan. 6, 1823 592 —— Mrs. J. D., to (from Mary Lamb) No date. 433 —— —— Nov. 2, 1824 655 —— —— John Payne, to Dec. 10, 1817 508 —— —— May 16, 1821 533 Cottle, Joseph, to Nov. 5, 1819 531 —— —— ? Late — 532 —— —— ? May 26, 1820 540 Dibdin, John Bates, to ? 1823 610 —— —— May 6, — 613 —— —— Oct 28, — 625 —— —— July 28, 1824 647 —— —— Jan. 11, 1825 665 —— —— June 30, 1826 707 —— —— July 14, — 710 —— —— Sept. 9, — 715 —— —— Sept. 5, 1827 750 —— —— Sept. 13, — 751 —— —— Sept. 18 — 751 —— —— Oct. 2, — 757 Dilke, Charles Wentworth, to March 5, 1832 884 —— —— Feb., 1833 900 —— —— April, — 906 —— —— ? Dec 21 — 923 —— —— Undated. ? 1834 926 —— —— Spring, — 926 —— —— End of July — 936 Dyer, George, to Dec. 5, 1808 970 —— —— ? Jan., 1829 793
Dyer, George, to Dec. 20, 1830 863 —— —— Feb. 22, 1831 868 —— Mrs. George, to Dec. 22, 1834 942 Elton, C. A., to Aug. 17, 1821 (?) 650 Field, Barren, to Aug. 31, 1817 500 —— —— Aug. 16, 1820 542 —— —— Sept. 22, 1822 573 —— —— Oct. 4, 1827 757 Forster, John, to ? Late April, 1832 886 —— —— Dec. 23, — 894 —— —— Undated. 895 —— —— — 896 —— —— — 896 —— —— ? March, 1833 905 —— —— May, — 910 —— —— May 12, — 911 —— —— June 25, 1834 932 Fryer, Miss, to Feb. 14, — 928 —— —— No date. 929 Gillman, James, to May 2, 1821 552 —— —— Oct. 26, 1829 816 —— —— ? Nov. 29, — 821 —— —— Nov. 30 — 821 —— —— March 8, 1830 836 —— —— ? Early Spring, — 843 Gillman, Rev. James, to May 7, 1833 937 Godwin, William, to Dec. 4, 1800 196 —— —— No date. Autumn, — 196 —— —— Dec. 10, — 198 —— —— Dec. 14, — 201 —— —— June 29, 1801 219 —— —— Sept. 9, — 225 —— —— Sept. 17, — 228 —— —— Nov. 8, 1803 281 —— —— Nov. 10, — 281 —— —— ? 1806 371 —— —— March 11, 1808 386 —— —— ? 1810 425 —— —— May 16, 1822 566 —— Mrs., to No date. 283 Gutch, John Mathew, to No date. 1800 169 —— —— April 9, 1810 413 Haydon, Benjamin Robert, to Dec. 26, 1817 509 —— —— Oct. 9, 1822 578 —— —— Oct. 29, — 580 —— —— March, 1827 724 —— —— Aug., 1828 778 Hazlitt, William, to Nov. 10, 1805 323 —— —— Jan. 15, 1806 329 —— —— Feb. 19, — 336 —— —— March 15, — 346 —— —— Aug. 9, 1810 416
Hazlitt, William, to Nov. 28, — 424 —— —— Oct. 2, 1811 431 —— Mrs. W. See Stoddart, Sarah —— jr., William, to Sept. 13, 1831 880 —— Rev. W., to Feb. 18, 1808 380 Hill, Thomas, to No date. 710 Holcroft, jr., Thomas, to Autumn, 1819 531 Hone, William, to April, 1824 641 —— —— May 2, 1825 678 —— —— Oct. 24, — 695 —— —— April, 1827 725 —— —— End of May, — 729 —— —— June, — 729 —— —— Early July, — 733 —— —— ? Oct., — 759 —— —— Dec. 15, — 764 —— —— May 21, 1830 853 —— —— March 6, 1833 902 Hood, Thomas, to Aug. 10, 1824 647 —— —— May, 1827 726 —— —— Sept. 18, — 750 —— —— No date. ?— 760 —— —— Late Autumn, 1828? 785 —— —— ? May, 1829? 809 —— —— ? May, — 810 Hoods, the Thomas, to (from Mary Lamb) ? Summer, 1828 776 Hume, Joseph, to No date. 455 —— —— his daughters, to No date. 1832 883 Humphreys, Miss, to Jan. 27 1821 549 Hunt, Leigh, to April 18, — 551 —— —— ? Nov., 1824 659 —— —— Dec., 1827 763 Hutchinson, Sarah, to (from Mary and Charles Lamb) Aug. 20 1815 472 —— —— Oct. 19, — 479 —— —— (from Mary Lamb) Middle of Nov., 1816 494 —— —— ? Late — 496 —— —— April 25, 1823 608 —— —— (?) Undated. 610 —— —— Nov. 25, 1824 658 —— —— Jan. 20, 1825 667 —— —— March 1, — 671 —— —— April 18, — 677 James, Miss Sarah, to ? April, 1829 806 Kelly, Fanny, to July 20, 1819 —— —— July 20, — 527 Kenny, James and Louisa, to Oct., 1817 503 —— Mrs. James, to (from Mary Lamb) ? Early Dec., 1822 583 Knowles, James Sheridan, to ? April, 1832 886 Lamb, Mrs. John, to May 22, 1822 568 —— Mary, to August, — 569 Landor, Walter Savage, to Oct., 1832 889 Lloyd, Charles, to Autumn, 1823 623
Southey, Robert, to Nov. 28, — 134 —— —— Dec. 27, — 137 —— —— Jan. 21, 1799 139 —— —— Late Jan. or early Feb., — 141 —— —— March 15, — 143 —— —— March 20, — 145 —— —— Oct. 31, — 149 —— —— Nov. 7, 1804 298 —— —— May 6, 1815 465 —— —— Aug. 9, — 467 —— —— Oct. 26, 1818 516 —— —— Nov. 21, 1823 627 —— —— Aug. 10, 1825 691 —— —— May 10, 1830 847 Stoddart, Sir John, to Aug. 9, — 743 —— Lady, to (from Mary Lamb) Aug. 9, 1827 742 —— Sarah (later Mrs. Hazlitt), to (from Mary Lamb) Sept. 21, 1803 278 —— —— (from Mary Lamb) ? March, 1804 285 —— —— Late July, — 291 —— —— (from Mary Lamb) ? Sept.18, 1805 314 —— —— Early Nov., — 321 —— —— Nov. 9 and 14, — 327 —— —— ? Feb. 20, 21 and 22, 1806 338 —— —— March, — 342 —— —— June 2, — 350 —— —— ? July 4, — 356 —— —— Oct 23, — 362 —— —— Dec. 11, — 370 —— —— (from Mary Lamb) Oct., 1807 374 —— —— Dec. 21, — 376 —— —— Feb. 12, 1808 379 —— —— March 16, — 389 —— —— Dec. 10, — 391 —— —— (from Mary Lamb) June 2, 1809 398 —— —— Nov. 7, — 405 —— —— ? End of 1810 426 —— —— Oct. 2, 1811 430 —— —— Early Nov., 1823 626 —— —— March 4, 1830 834 —— —— May 24, — 853 —— —— June 3, — 856 —— —— May 31, 1833 913 Talfourd, T. N., to Aug., 1819 913 —— —— May 20, 1828 775 —— —— End of — 792 —— —— Feb., 1833 898 Taylor, John, to June 8, 1821 556 —— —— July 21, — 557 —— —— Dec. 7, 1822 585 Williams, Mrs., to Feb. 26, 1830 832 —— —— March 1, — 833 —— —— March 5, — 835 —— —— March 22, — 839 —— —— April 2, — 840
Williams, Mrs., to April 9, — 842 —— —— April 21, — 846 Wilson, Walter, to Aug. 14, 1801 219 —— —— Dec. 16, 1822 586 —— —— Feb. 24, 1823 600 —— —— May 17, 1828 774 —— —— May 28, 1829 810 —— —— Nov. 15, — 818 —— —— Aug., 1832 887 Wordsworth, Dorothy, to (from Mary Lamb) July 9, 1803 274 —— —— June 2, 1804 288 —— —— (from Mary Lamb) Oct. 13, — 295 —— —— May 7, 1805 308 —— —— June 14, — 311 —— —— (from Mary Lamb) Aug. 29, 1806 359 —— —— (from Mary and Charles Lamb) Nov. 13, 1810 419 —— —— Nov. 23, — 422 —— —— Nov. 21, 1817 505 —— —— Nov. 25, 1819 534 —— —— May 25, 1820 541 —— —— Jan. 8, 1821 546 —— —— (from Charles and Mary Lamb) Jan. 22, 1830 826 —— Mrs., to Feb. 18, 1818 510 —— William, to Jan. 30, 1801 208 —— —— March 5, 1803 262 —— —— Oct. 13, 1804 294 —— —— Feb. 18, 1805 299 —— —— Feb. 19, — 301 —— —— March 5, — 304 —— —— March 21, — 306 —— —— April 5, — 307 —— —— (and Dorothy) Sept. 28, — 316 —— —— Feb. 1, 1806 332 —— —— June 26, — 353 —— —— Dec. 11, — 369 —— —— Jan. 29, 1807 372 —— —— Oct. 19, 1810 417 —— —— Aug. 9, 1814 434 —— —— Sept. 19, — 443 —— —— Dec. 28, — 449 —— —— ? Early Jan., 1815 452 —— —— April 7, — 456 —— —— April 28, — 460 —— —— Aug. 9, — 469 —— —— April 9, 1816 484 —— —— April 26, — 486 —— —— Sept. 23, — 490 —— —— April 26, 1819 518 —— —— June 7, — 524 —— —— March 20, 1822 562 —— —— Jan., 1823 591 —— —— April 6, 1825 674 —— —— May, — 679 —— —— Sept. 6, 1826 712 —— —— May, 1828 775 —— —— Jan. 22, 1830 826 —— —— End of May, 1833 911 —— —— Feb. 22, 1834 930
INDEX A Acrostics, 841, 842, 847. Aders, Charles, 441, 442. his pictures, 884. Lamb’s poem to, 884. Adventures of Ulysses, 382, 386, 745. “After Blenheim,” by Southey, 178. Agricultural Depression, Lamb on, 863. Ainsworth, W. H. See Letters. his dedication to Lamb, 566. his gift of Syrinx, 630.
and “Faust,” 631. Aitken, John. See Letters. his Cabinet, 974. Albion, Lamb and the, 221, 223. Albums, Lamb on, 747, 748, 762, 766, 780, 794. Album Verses, 857, 858. “Ali Pacha,” by Howard Payne, 578, 579. Allen, Robert, 1, 4, 19, 37, 53, 301. Allsop, Thomas. See Letters. 540, 547, 548, 620, 694, 724. Alsager, T. M., 470, 471, 501, 502. “Amicus Redivivus,” 626, 627. “Ancient Mariner, The,” 130, 209, 211. Anderson, Dr., 184, 186, 187, 188. “Angel Help,” 729. Angerstein, John Julius, 346. Angling, Lamb and, 147, 148. Animal poetry, 145. “Anna.” See Simmons. Annual Anthology, The, 123, 178. Anti-Jacobin, The, 34, 136, t37. “Antonio,” by Godwin, 196, 198, 199, 201, 202, 203. Aquinas, Thomas, 805, 816. “Ariadne,” by Titian, 912. Ariel, Lamb as, 398, 844. Arnold, Samuel James. See Letters. 597. 973. “Arthur’s Bower,” 290. Asbury, J. V. See Letters. and Emma Isola, 843. and Lamb as Ariel, 844. Asses, old poem on, 553, 554. Astrea, 802. Australia, Lamb on, 500. Authors and Publishers, Lamb on, 387. Ayrton, William. See Letters. 500. — Mrs. See Letters. 549. B Badams, Carlyle’s friend, 796. — Mrs., nee Louisa Holcroft. See Letters. Baldwin the publisher, 594. Ball, Sir Alexander, 302. “Ballad,” by Lamb, 174. Bankrupts, Lamb on, 825. “Barbara S.,” 677, 679, 978. Barbauld, Mrs., 252, 254. Barnes, Thomas, 501, 502. Bartholomew Fair, 242. Barton, Bernard. See Letters. first mention, 572. his suggested retirement from the
bank, 594, 595, 604, 606. his testimonial, 638. Lamb on his poems, 645. Poetic Vigils,
645. “Sonnet to Elia,” 645. Poems, 4th edition, 688. his Devotional Verses,
698. his Widow’s Tale, 726. extracts from his poems, 728. Lamb sends him a
picture, 730, 731. his stepgrandfather, 746. his New Year’s Eve, 787, 789. sonnet
to Lamb, 789. his “Spiritual Law,” 957. his “Translation of
Enoch,” 959. Lucy, verses to, 654. note to, 664. at Islington, 701. Baskerville, John, 732. Battle, Mrs., 346, 986. Beaumont and Fletcher, 28. Beaumont, Sir George, 405. Bellows Shakespeare, 573, 574. “Belshazzar’s Feast,” 731, 732. Benger, Miss, 162,164. Berkleyans, 83, 86. Betham, Anne, her legacy, 913, 927. — Barbara. See Letters. — Mary Matilda. See Letters. 384, 386, 477, 489, 496, 516, 971. Bethams, the, their tallness, 448, 890. Betty, Master, 468, 469. Bijou, The, 746, 748. Binding, the perfect, 333. “Bites,” Lamb’s, 169, 194, 807, 808. Blake, William, 642, 644. * Blakesware, 149, 745. Blanchard, Laman, 785. Bland, Mrs., 411. Blank Verse, by Lamb and Lloyd, 113. Blenheim, its pictures, 416. Bloomfield, his Farmer’s Boy, 191, 193. — 621, 623. Bloxam, Samuel, 712. Blue-stockings, Lamb among, 162. Bodleian Library, 485. Book-binder, Lamb’s poor relation, 399, 736, 758. Book-borrowing, Lamb on, 544, 545. “Borderers, The,” by Wordsworth, 184. Bourne, Vincent, 457, 976. Bowles, William Lisle, 20, 25, 57. his allegory, “Hope,” 77, 79. his
“Elegiac Stanzas,” 77, 80. Boyer, James, 442, 988. Braham, John, 383, 385, 410. Brawn, Lamb on, 302. Brighton, the Lambs at, 506. British Museum, Lamb at, 938. Brown, Miss, her album verses, 921. Brutons, the Lambs’ cousins, 522, 523. Buchan, the Earl of, 967. Bunch, John, 106, 107. Bungay, Lamb on, 941. Bunyan, 779. Burke and Hare, 797. Burke, Edmund, 224. Burnet, Bishop, his Own Times, 157. Burnett, George, an, 231, 233, 278, 340, 968. Burney, Captain, 259, 260, 563, 969. — Martin, 339, 342, 351, 398, 444, 559, 796, 855, 975. — Sarah, 346, 837. Burns, Robert, 73, 145, 170, 487, 488. Burrell, Miss, 5ro, 522. Burton, Lamb’s imitations of, 159, 160, 161, 173, 174. Button, Emma, Lamb’s acrostic, 974. Button Snap, Lamb’s cottage, 454. Bye, Thomas, 518, 522, 524. Byron, Lord, 486, 540, 541, 595, 577, 622, 643. C Cabinet, The, 974. Callers, Lamb on, 510. Calne, the Lambs at, 490. Cambridge, the Lambs’ visit in 1815, 473. — Lamb at, in 1820, 973. Campbell, J. Dykes, 71. on Coleridge in 1806, 360. on Coleridge’s pension,
877. and Coleridge’s “Remorse,” 993. Capital Punishment, Lamb on, 725. Carlisle, Sir Antony, 602. Caroline of Brunswick, 560, 761. Cary, H. F. See Letters. a model parson, 619. his career, 620. at the Museum, 704.
and Moxon, 851. his Euripides, 874. his translation of Dante, 917. at the Museum, 938.
his verses on Lamb, 943. and Miss Isola’s Latin, 975. a sonnet upon, 982. Catalani and Coleridge, 429. Cellini, his autobiography, 257. Chambers, Charles. See Letters. and Lamb’s praise of fish, 680. his family,
682. — John. See Letters. 518. Champion, The, 434, 449. “Chapel Bell, The,” by Southey, 956. Chapman’s Homer, 253, 650. Chatsworth, by Patmore, 737. Chaucer, Godwin’s Life, 281. Cheshire cats, 383. Chessiad, The, 665, 666. Children’s books, Lamb on, 252. Childs, Mr. See Letters. 941. Chimney-sweepers, 989. China, Manning’s intentions, 223, 224. Lamb on, 384, 480. Christabel, 163, 274, 488. “Christian Names of Women,” 900. Christ’s Hospital, 248, 232, 988. Christy, Dr., 219. Clare, John. See Letters. 750. Clarke, Charles Cowden. See Letters. his career, 559. and Novello, 660. Clarke, Charles Cowden, his marriage, 781, 783. his tuft, 803. — Mary Anne, 396, 397. — Mary Victoria (nee Novello), 559, 660. Clarkson, Thomas and Catherine. See Letters. 276, 277, 309, 346, 394, 740. Claudes, the four, 346. Coe, Mrs. Elizabeth, 148, 320, 722. Calebs in Search of a Wife, 401. Colburn, Henry. See Letters. Lamb on, 870. — Zerah, 536. Cold in the head, Lamb on, 633, 704. Colebrooke Cottage, 618, 619, 701. Coleridge, Derwent, 250, 599, 992. — Rev. Edward. See Letters. 712. — Hartley, 42, 154, 468, 473, 604. — Henry Nelson, his Six Months in the West Indies, 702. — Samuel Taylor. See Letters. and religion, 1. in 1796, 3. and Southey, 8, n, 52.
his Poems, 1796, 10, 15, 17, 22, 23. 25. his share of Joan of Arc, 14, 21. alters
Lamb’s sonnets, 18, 24. his letter of consolation, 42. and opium, 56. and the
1797 volume, 68, 70. and John Lamb, jr., 73. his baby song, 75. his Ode on the
Departing Year, 75. as a husbandman, 85. his Joan of Arc verses, 89, 93, 95. and
Rogers, 92, 94. on Lamb, 93. his refusal to write, 99. his “Osorio,” 104,
105. and the Stowey visit, 109. his “Lime-tree Bower,” 109. and
Lamb’s greatcoat, 113. and C. Lloyd, 113. and Lamb’s “Theses Quxdam
Theologies,” 117, 122. the Wedgwood annuity, 117. the quarrel with Lamb and
Lloyd, 119. his letter of remonstrance to Lamb, 120. with Wordsworth in Germany, 135.
136. in Buckingham Street, 150. his articles in the Morning Post, 154. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, with Lamb in 1800, 159. his translation of Schiller, 160.
his books, 171. his affection for the Lambs, 174. his Anthology poems, 178. on
Wordsworth, 213. at Keswick, 243. his Chamounix Hymn, 248, 249. suggests collaboration
with Lamb, 250, 251. on Mary Lamb’s illness, 1803, 269. his Poems, 3rd edition,
270, 273. his Malta plans, 285. at Malta, 297, 302. and the Wordsworths, 309, 310. in
Italy, 338, 341. returns home, 359, 360. and his wife, 359, 361. The Friend, 392, 395,
400, 403. neglects the Lambs, 393. his potations, 421. his difference with Wordsworth,
421. and Catalani, 429. in 1814, 439. his “Remorse,” 439. and the
translation of “Faust,” 440. his Biographia Literaria, 473, his Sibylline
Leaves, 473, 476. a characteristic end, 481. his “Zapolya,” 484, 486. at a
chemist’s, 485. recites “Kubla Khan,” 487. puts himself under
Gillman, 487, 489. at Highgate, 491, 495. attacked by Hazlitt, 491, 492, 493. his
Statesman’s Manual, 493. his lectures, 1818, 508, 509. at Gillman’s, 516,
517, 5i9. on Peter Bell the Third, 520. his “Fancy in Nubibus,” 530. in
Lloyd’s poem, 536, 537. his book-borrowing, 544, 545. and Allsop, 548. his dying
message in 1807, 551. at Monkhouse’s dinner, 606. his Aids to Reflection, 637,
687. and Mrs. Gillman, 658. and Irving, 660, 661, 672, 675. and the Prize Essay, 680.
and Hood’s Odes, 686. on Lamb and Herbert, 699. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, his joke on summer, 704. and the Albums, 781. for St.
Luke’s, 836. on William IV., 858. and the pension, 875, 877. imagines an affront,
885. his death, 936. his Ode on the Departing Year, 947. his tendency to invention,
966. his “Remorse,” 993. — Sara, 22, 33, 35. the younger, 599, 603, 691, 693, 740. Collier, John Dyer. See Letters. 432. — Mrs. John Dyer. See Letters. 656. — John Payne. See Letters. 432, 433. 509, 593. Colonel Jack, 587. “Common Lot, The,” by Montgomery, 878, 961. Companion, The, 769, 770. Condones ad Populum, 2, 19. “Confessions of a Drunkard,” 627. Congreve and Voltaire, 383, 385. Cooke, G. F., 2r9. Cooper, Samuel, 338, 476. Cornwall, Barry. See also B. W. Procter. his English Songs, 891. his “King
Death,” 892. his “Epistle to Charles Lamb,” 962. Cottle, Joseph. See Letters. his “Monody on Henderson,” 16, 21. his
epic, 185. his brother’s death, 189. his Malvern Hills, 257. his Alfred, 257. his
portrait, 532. his Messiah, 532, 533. his Fall of Cambria, 540, 541. Cotton on “Winter,” 262, 268. on “Old Age,” 265. Coulson, Walter, 94. Country, Lamb on the, 242, 244, 827. Coutts, Mrs., 578. Covent Garden, Lamb’s love for, 507. Cowes, the Lambs and Burneys there, 969. Cowper, William, 9, 12, 15, 21, 31, 37, 38, 93. 95. and Milton, 66. The Royal
George, 266. Cresswell, Dr., vicar of Edmonton, 903. Croly, Rev. George, 720. Cromwell and Napoleon, 253, 254. Cromwell, Cooper’s portrait of, 474, 476. Cruelty to animals, John Lamb’s pamphlet, 411. Cunningham, Allan, 704. Curse of Kehama, 465. Curtis, Alderman, 430, 643. D Dalston, the Lambs at, 490, 494, 504, 539, 540, 652. “Dana: Exposed with her Infant,” 995. Danby, the murder of, 893, 894. Daniel, George, 194, 620. — Samuel, 401, 402. Darley, George, 671, 704, 805, 917. Dash, Lamb’s dog, 735, 749. Dawe, George, 324, 367, 406, 407, 504, 505. “Deathbed, A,” 722. “Decay of Imagination,” Lamb’s essay on, 881. Dedications to Lamb, 566. Defoe, Daniel, 225, 228, 586, 600, 601, 818. De Quincey, Thomas, 497, 506, 507, 982. Dermody, Thomas, 72. Despard, Colonel, 143. De Stael, Madame, on Germany, 441. Desultory Thoughts in London, 536. “Dialogue between a Mother and Child,” 290. Dibdin, Charles, 647, 665. — John Bates. See Letters. his meeting with Lamb, 611. his death, 811. “Dick Strype,” 989. Dilke, Charles Wentworth. See Letters. 884, 926. “Dissertation on Roast Pig,” 941. Dobell, Mr. Bertram, 278, 979, 994. Dodd, Dr., 467, 468. Dodwell, H., Lamb’s letters to, 490, 759. “Don Giovanni,” 497. “Douglas,” by Home, 65. Dowden, Mrs. See Mrs. John Lamb. Dramatic Specimens, 373, 374, 378, 382, 390, 400. Drink, Lamb on, 245, 398, 450, 632, 844, 938, 940. Druitt, Mary, 241, 267, 268. Duddon Sonnets, 541. Duncan, Miss, 429. Dupuy, P. S., his translation, 29, 32. Dyer, George. See Letters. and Horne Tooke, 33. his poetry, 134. his twin volumes,
175. his many “veins,” 179. Dyer, George, his critical preface, 181. and the epic, 184, 186. on Shakespeare,
185. his phrenesis, 206. his fallacy, 208. his Poems, 208, 215. his hunger-madness,
230. as the hero of a novel, 232. his disappearance, 298. and Lord Stanhope, 502. on
other people’s poetry, 519. his immersion, 626. his novel way with dead books,
663. his marriage, 692. and Novello, 793. and Rogers, 866, 867. his Unitarian tract,
881. his blindness, 914. his “Poetic Sympathies,” 951. and the Earl of
Buchan, 967. his autobiography, 967. and Earl Stanhope, 973. and Emma Isola’s
album, 978. — Mrs. George. See Letters. 692, 914. “Dying Lover, The,” 131. E Earl of Abergavenny, 300. East India House, 33, 463, 470, 478, 509, 513, 518, 523, 563, 572, 586, 588, 594,
602, 656, 657, 672, 673. Edinburgh Review and Wordsworth, 493. Edmonton, the Lambs’ home there, 910, 911. Edmund Oliver, n9. “Edward, Edward,” 966. Elia, death of the original, 558. “Elia, Sonnet to,” 645. Elia, dedication of, 585. the American second series, 877. Last Essays of, 896,
897,898, 900, 901. Elton, Sir C. A., 650, 685. Enfield, Lamb at, 733. Lamb settles there, 752. Lamb’s house there, 761. and
neighbourhood, 791. English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 532, 533. English Songs, by Procter, 891. Englishman’s Magazine, 878, 881. “Enviable,” Lamb on, 172, 202. Epic poetry and George Dyer, 184, 186. “Epitaph on Ensign Peacock,” 965. “— on Mary Druitt,” 241. “ _ on the Rigg Children,” 861. Epitaphs, Lamb on, 417. Wordsworth on, 417, 418. Evans, William, 19, 25, 532, 533, 748. Examiner, The, references to Miss Kelly, 528, 529. and Lamb’s Album Verses, 860, 992, 993. Excursion, the, 434, 436, 443, 445. Exeter Change, 217, 534. F “Fable for Twelfth Day,” 980. Fairfax’s Tasso, 90, 93, 9i7. Falstaff’s Letters, 2, 37, 53, 54, 60, 157. “Fancy in Nubibus,” 530. “Farewell to Tobacco,” 317, 320, 99o. Farmer, Priscilla, Lloyd’s grandmother, 68, 70. “Faulkener,” Godwin’s play, 225, 228, 369. 375. Fauntleroy, the forger, 656, 663, 665. “Faust,” by Goethe, 440, 441, 631. Fawcetts, the two, 330, 331. Fell, Lamb’s friend, 235, 238, 330, 332. Fenelon, 207, 208. Fenwick, John, 221, 245, 276, 330, 332, 500. Field, Barron. See Letters. 502, 542, 647, 657, 660, 805. — Mary, Lamb’s grandmother, 27, 31, 48. Fireworks, Lamb on, 436. First-fruits of Australian Poetry, 542, 543, 806, FitzGerald, Edward, his “Meadows in Spring,” 878, 879, 960. his memoir
of Barton, 639. — Mrs., at Islington, 701. Fleet Prison, 332. Fletcher, John, Lamb on, 708. Ford, John, 295, 298. Fornham, 841. Forster, John. See Letters. 886, 927. Fox, George, his Journal, 588, 589, 598, 602, 612. Franklin, Marmaduke, 476, 659. Fraser’s Magazine, 865. “Free Thoughts on Some Eminent Composers,” 855, 856. Frenchmen, Lamb on, 234, 240. Frend, William, 132. Friend, The, 392, 395, 400. Fryer, Miss. See Letters. Lamb’s song for, 930. Fuller, Thomas. 843. G Gardener, Lamb as a, 619. Garrick Extracts, 717. Gebir, by Landor, 149, 648. Geese, Lamb on, 975. Gem, The, 780, 785. “Gentle Giantess, The,” 547. “Gentle-hearted Charles,” 172, 177. George III., 495. Ghoul, the, 239. Gifford, William, 452, 453, 492, 515, 516. Gigliucci, Countess. See Novello, Clara. Gillman, James. See Letters. and Coleridge, 489. — Rev. James. See Letters. 909. Gilray, his caricature of Coleridge and Co., 137. Goddard House School, Lamb at, 722. Godiva, Lady, and John Martin, 788. Godwin, William. See Letters. and Allen, 19, 37. first meeting, 157. and Coleridge,
164, 183. in Ireland, 171. and Mary Lamb’s appetite, 196. his
“Antonio,” 196, 198, 199, 201, 202, 203. his pride, 203. his Persian play,
207. his “Faulkener,” 225, 228, 367, 369. his dulness, 259. his Chaucer,
281. his taste, 283. and Hazlitt, 331. Lamb’s apology to, 371. and the Tales from
Shakespear, 372. his shop, 381, 385. and the Adventures of Ulysses, 386. his letter of
criticism to Lamb, 387. on sepulchres, 392, 397. and Mrs. Godwin, 410. his
“tomb,” 481. his disrespect, 565. his difficulties, 566, 567, 578, 580. — Mrs. See Letters. 235, 238, 245, 372, 397, 410, 424, 504, 966, 972. Goethe, Lamb on, 631. Gould, Mrs. See Miss Burrell. “Grandame, The,” 27, 30, 68. “Grandpapa,” the, by J. Howard Payne, 597. “Grand State Bed,” by Lamb, 980. Gray’s Latin ode, 979. Great Russell Street, Lamb’s home in, 506, 508. Grecians, Lamb on, 869. Greg, Mr., Lamb’s tenant, 454. Gregory, Dr., 163. Grenville, Lord, and Coleridge, 154. Gum-boil and Tooth-ache, 316. Gutch, John Mathew, 167, 169, 414. Gwynn, Mr. Stephen, his translations of Lamb’s Latin letters, 802, 871, 874. “Gypsy’s Malison, The,” 796, 799. H Hancock, his drawing of Lamb, 316. Handwriting, Lamb on, 869. Harley, J. P., 689. “Harmony in Unlikeness,” 992. Harrow Church, Lamb in, 435. Hastings, the Lambs at, 615, 616. Hood at, 647, 649. Lamb on, 648. Dibdin at, 707. Haydon, B. R. See Letters. his career, 509. and Godwin’s difficulties, 578,
580. subjects for pictures, 725. his “Chairing the Member,” 778. his party,
954. Hayes, Mary, and Charles Lloyd, 155, 156, 966. Hayward, A., his Faust, 904. Hazlitt, John, 337. — Mrs. John, 297, 887. — Mary, 626, 641, 642. — Sarah. See Sarah Stoddart. — Rev. W. See Letters. 381. — William. See Letters. on Lamb, 220. his portrait of Lamb, 298. his first meeting
with Lamb, 325. and Ned Search, 326, 329, 331, 336. the misogynist, 355. and Lamb
scolded, 358. woos Sarah Stoddart, 374. his love affair, 376. the joke of his death,
377. plans for his wedding, 379. his wedding, 390. missed in London, 391. his Grammar,
410, 411. and the Political Register, 425. his son born, 430. his post on the
Chronicle, 432. misunderstanding with Lamb, 443. his review of the Excursion, 445. his
Lake Country “’scapes,” 450, 451. on Coleridge, 491. his
conversation, 491. Hazlitt, William, his borrowings from Lamb, 492. knocked down by John Lamb, 493. his
lectures in 1818, 512, 514. his “Conversation of Authors,” 543. on
Lamb’s Letter to Southey, 627. on bodily pain, 640. on Shelley, 652. on Lamb,
669, 670. his Spirit of the Age, 669, 670. his second marriage, 737. in Paris, 744. his
portrait of Lamb, 763, 764. on Defoe and Lamb, 819. his losses, 825, 826. his death,
861, 880. — jr. See Letters. 431, 810, 812, 856, 880. “Helen Repentant too Late,” 183. Hell-fire Dick, 473. Hemans, Mrs., 797. Henderson, Cottle’s Monody on, 15, 21. Henshaw, William, Lamb’s godfather, 421, 568, 569. Herbert, George, Lamb on, 699. Hesiod, Lamb on, 650. “Hester,” 261. Hetty, the Lambs’ servant, 166. Hicks’ Hall, 456. Higginbottom Sonnets, 119, 120. Hill, Thomas. See Letters. 710. Hissing, Lamb on, 382, 385. Holcroft, Fanny, 584, 685. — Harwood, 590. — Louisa, 505, 798. — Thomas, 246, 259, 337, 338, 365, 368, 381, 396, 407, 427, 971. — Mrs. Thomas. See Mrs. Kenney. 970. — Tom. See Letters. 5°5. 53 Hollingdon Rural Church, 616, 648, 708, 709. Hollingshead, Mr. John, 589. Holmes, Edward, 660, 661, 770. Homer, Lamb on, 402, 413, 650. Hone, Alfred, 764, 765. — Matilda, 744. — William. See Letters. first letter to, 614. Every-Day Book, 678, 689, 695.
Lamb’s lines to, 689. and the Garrick plays, 759. the Table Book stops, 768. and
his difficulties, 847, 850. and the Times, 857. Hood, Thomas. See Letters. Hood, Thomas, his Odes and Addresses, 685, 686. Lamb on, 696, 698. his “Very
Deaf Indeed,” 705, 706. his still-born child, 726. frames picture with Lamb, 730.
his picture of Mary Lamb, 733, 734. and Dash, 750. his Plea of the Midsummer Fairies,
754. his genius, 780, 781. his parody of Lamb, 785, 786. his “Progress of
Cant,” 983. Hoole, John, 90, 93. Hopkins, Dick, the swearing scullion, 302. Howell, James, his Familiar Letters quoted, 123. Hudibras quoted, 666. Hugo, Victor, and Lamb, 197. Hume, Joseph, M.P., 564. See Letters. 377. — the Misses, 883. Humphreys, Miss. See Letters. Hunt, John, 635, 636. — Leigh. See Letters. on Lamb’s books, 405. and the Lambs, 489. a lost letter
to, 497. his need of friends, 558. in Italy, 573, 661. and freethinking, 617. his
handwriting, 629. his Lord Byron, 769, 773. his Companion, 769, 770. and Lamb’s
Album Verses, 860, 992. and Lamb’s Satan, 874, 876. — Thornton, 489, 617, 662. Hurst & Robinson’s failure, 697. Hyde Park, the jubilation in 1814, 435. I Imagination, Lamb on, 213. Imlay, Fanny, 324, 326. Incendiarism at Enfield, 863. India, Lamb on, 941. Inner Temple Lane, 396, 400, 404. “Innocence,” Lamb’s sonnet, 7, 20, 25. Irving, Edward, and Coleridge, 660, 661, 672, 675. his watch chain, 742. with
Coleridge at St. Luke’s, 836. his squint, 837. Isle of Wight, the Lambs in, 277. Isola, Emma, 550. Isola, Emma, her Latin, 739, 740, 751, 975. 992. to become a governess, 742. her
reading of Milton, 744. her album, 750, 794, 796, 977. her engagement at Fornham, 777,
778. her illness, 832. and her physic, 843. and her watch, 915. her marriage, 916. a
sonnet to, 922. her appearance, 929. — Harriet, 778. Italian, the Lambs read, 917. J James, Sarah. See Letters. 589, 615. Jameson, R. S., Hartley Coleridge’s sonnets, 604, 975. “Janus Weathercock,” 613, 618. See also Wainewright, T. G., 6i9. Jekyll, Joseph, 914. Jerdan, William, and Lamb, 859, 860. Joan of Arc, 1, 13, 21, 26, 121. and Coleridge, 89, 93, 95. John Bull and Rogers, 865. John Buncle, 106, 107. John-Dory, Lamb on, 680. John Woodvil, 131, 132, 139, 140, 141, 143, 150, 152, 192, 205, 214, 239. Johnson, Dr., 462, 464. “— Samuel, the Whig,” 979. Joshua, Martin’s picture, 731, 732. K “Kais,” the opera, 383. Keats, John, at Haydon’s, 954. Kelly, Fanny H., 582, 583, 590, 591. —. Maria. See Letters. her divine plain face, 510, 513. Lamb’s proposal to
her, 522. Lamb’s sonnet to, 528. her letter to Lamb, 529. and “Barbara
S.,” 677, 978. at the Strand Theatre, 903. Lamb on her absence, 981. Kenney family, 583. — Mrs. James. See Letters. — Louisa (afterwards Mrs. Badams). See Letters. — Sophy, Lamb’s wife, 571. Keymer, Mr., his album, 937. Kew Palace, the Lambs at, 495. “King Death,” by Barry Cornwall, 892. King and Queen of Hearts, The, 334, 335. “Kirkstone Pass,” 541. Kitchener, Doctor, 732. Knight, Anne, 688, 717. Knowles, J. S., 393, 905, 910. Kosciusko, Thaddeus, 106. “Kubla Khan,” 487, 488. L “Lady Blanche,” verses by Mary Lamb, 290. Lakes, the Lambs among the, 242, 243. Lamb family in 1796, 3. Charles, new prose and verse possibly by. See Appendix III. his temporary madness,
2, 27. his love sonnets, 6. on Priestley, 10. and Coleridge in 1794, 16, 22. on his
sonnets, 18. on old plays, 28. on Hope and Fear, 33. and the Bristol holiday, 35. on
the tragedy of Sept. 22, 1796, 41, 43. on his sister’s virtues, 46, 78, 311, 928.
his salary, 47. on his love, 55. his share of Coleridge’s Poems, 1797. 55. 57. on
simplicity, 56. on Bowles, 57. and his mother, 59. on Coleridge’s 2nd edition,
60, 61, 62. his “Tomb of Douglas,” 65. on Cowper and Milton, 66. on Burns,
73. his second sonnet to his sister, 78. on his share of the I797 Poems, 81. he exhorts
Coleridge to attempt an epic, 82. on friendship, 83. his first poem to Lloyd, 87. on a
subject for Coleridge, 91. on Cowper, 93. on Quakerism, 97. his “Vision of
Repentance,” 101, 104. on the 1797 Poems, 104. at Stowey, 108. leaves Little
Queen Street, 110. at Southey’s, 110. his lines on his mother’s death, in.
his second poem to C. Lloyd, 112. and Lloyd and White, 115. his sarcastic propositions
for Coleridge, 117, 122. Lamb, Charles, the quarrel with Coleridge, 119. on Wither and Quarles, 124, 129. on
Rosamund Gray, 125. on Southey’s “Eclogues,” 125,128, 129, 143. on
Marlowe, 126. on the “Ancient Mariner,” 130. and his tailor, 135. his
appeal for a poor friend, 137, 139. on his mind, 144. on poems on dumb creatures, 145.
on Blakesware, 149. on alcoholic beverages, 150. and mathematics, 152. on Lloyd and
Mary Hayes, 155. on Bishop Burnet, 157. on Falstaff’s Letters, 157. among the
Blue-stockings, 162. as a linguist, 165. on Hetty’s death, 166. on Lake society,
168. on narrow means, 168. on Oxford, 168, 170. his joke against Gutch, 169. on the
“Gentle Charles,” 172. the use of the final “e,” 173. by
punch-light, 175. as a consoler, 189. and the snakes, 190. his praise of London, 194,
210, 216, 235, 507. he takes in Manning, 194. and Godwin’s supper, 196. his
Epilogue for “Antonio,” 198, 199. on the failure of “Antonio,”
203. on his Cambridge plans, 207. on the Lyrical Ballads, 208, 212. his move to Mitre
Court Buildings, 216, 217. on his religious state in 1801, 220. his dramatic
suggestions, 225, 227, 228. on Napoleon, 240. his spare figure, 241. at the Lakes, 242,
243. his project for collaborating with Coleridge, 250, 251. on children’s books,
252. on Napoleon and Cromwell, 253. on Chapman’s Homer, 253. on Milton’s
prose, 255. on Cellini, 257. on Independent Tartary, 258. on Coleridge’s Poems,
3rd edition, 270, 273. his 1803 holiday, 277. Lamb, Charles, his difficulties as a reviewer, 281. ceases to be a journalist, 285,
286, 288. his miserliness, 292. on old books, 295. his motto, 295, 298. his portrait by
Hazlitt, 298. on John Wordsworth’s death, 299, 308. on brawn, 302. on his sister,
311. his portrait by Hancock, 316. on pictures, 324, 336, 346. on Nelson, 324. his
namesake, 329. in unsettled state, 1806, 342, 344. on Manning’s departure for
China, 348. on “Mr. H.,” 353, 366, 369. and Hazlitt scolded, 358.
reconciled to Godwin, 371. and Hazlitt’s “death,” 377. his difference
with Godwin, 387. at Hazlitt’s wedding, 390. and the Sheridans, 391, 393. on
moving, 396. on critics, 400. on the choice of a wife, 401. criticises Mr.
Lloyd’s Homer, 402. visits Hazlitt, 403. his books, 405. on titles of honour,
408. a list of friends, 410, 411. on Wither, 413, 414. on epitaphs, 417. his
aquavorousness, 421, 422. a servant difficulty, 423. and Hazlitt’s Chronicle
appointment, 432. on the Excursion, 434. and The Champion, 434. blown up by Hazlitt,
443. his new book room, 447. on the India House shackles, 470, 478. 503. 513, 518, 523,
524, 563. 586, 588, 594. and Gifford, 452. a landed proprietor, 454. on
Wordsworth’s 1815 poems, 456, 460, 463. on Vincent Bourne, 457. his office work,
1815, 458. on presents, 469, 471. his diffidence as a critic, 477. on his
sister’s illnesses, 479. his lies to Manning, 481. on Coleridge and Wordsworth,
487. Lamb, Charles, on Christabel, 488. his borrowed good things, 492. on Australia, 500.
on distant correspondents, 501, 502. as matter-of-lie man, 502. his Hogarths, 506. on
the plague of friends, 510. his after-dinner speeches, 512, 514. on Peter Bell, 521. on
Mackery End, 522, 523. on The Waggoner, 524. on two inks, 524. his proposal to Miss
Kelly, 527. on William Wordsworth, jr., 534. on other C. L.s, 537, 538. on Lord Byron,
540. on book-borrowing, 544, 545. and Leigh Hunt, 558. and his aunt’s cake, 561.
in praise of pig, 561, 581, 592, 625. on death, 562. his efforts for Godwin, 567. his
directions for seeing Paris, 569. and his child-wife, 571. on India House, 572. on
Shelley, 576. on Godwin’s case, 578, 580. and Scott, 580. on Moore, 584. on
Defoe, 586. his epigram on Wadd, 587. on George Fox, 589. as Elia, 591. on the
advantages of routine, 594. on publishers, 594. his propensity to lie, 598. on Fox,
598, 602. on Quakers, 598, 602, 605. on India House, 602. in Parnassus, 605, 606. his
after-dinner speeches, 610. on Fox, 612. and Pope’s portrait, 617. on Colebrooke
Cottage, 618. makes his will, 620. at the Mansion House, 626. on Physiology, 629. on
Marlowe and Goethe, 631. his cold, 633. not a good man, 637. on monetary gifts, 638.
and Thackeray, 665. Hazlitt on, 669, 670. resignation, 672, 673. Lamb, Charles, his release, 673, 674, 676, 677, 679. his pension, 674, 676. on fish,
680. ill, 684. on magazine payment, 684. on puns, 685. on Hood’s Odes, 685, 687.
on Signor Velluti, 686. on the death of children, 688, 689. lines to Hone, 689. his
last London article, 690. on Hood, 696, 698. on booksellers’ breaking, 697, 825.
on Quarles and Herbert, 699. on stationery, 700. on Manning, 702, 703. on a cold, 704.
on Brook Pulham’s etching, 706. on Hastings, 707, 712. on Fletcher’s plays,
708. on publishers, 713. his autobiography, 714. on Sunday, 715. his savings, 718. on
Randal Norris, 721. at Goddard House School, 722. and Mrs. Norris’s pension, 723,
724. his criticism of Patmore’s Chatsworth, 737. his difficulties with the drama,
739. on memorials, 740. on Albums, 747-748, 762, 766, 780, 794. on mad dogs, 749. his
house at Enfield, 752, 756. and Mathew’s picture, 757. his epigram on the Edward
crosses, 761, 762. portraits of him, 763. on the Pilgrim’s Progress, 779. his
serenata for Cowden Clarke’s marriage, 783. his favourite walk, 791. his
namesake, 792. will write for antiquity, 796. his “Gipsy’s Malison,”
796, 799. his sonnet on Daniel Rogers, 804. on Thomas Aquinas, 805, 816. on the
Laureates, 806. his joke upon Robinson, 807, 808. in London in 1829, 813. and Mary
Lamb’s absence, 814. and the burden of leisure, 814. moves to the Westwoods, 817.
Lamb, Charles, on Defoe, 818. on Thomas Westwood, 822, 828. on bankrupts, 825. on
town and country, 827, 832. asked to collect his Specimens, 838. the journey from
Fornham, 840. his turnip joke, 840, 854. his skill at acrostics, 842. on an escapade,
844. and Merchant Taylors’ boys, 848. and the Hone subscription, 850. on music,
852, 854. on Martin Burney, 855. visits London in 1830, 858. on his critics, 858. and
his will, 862. on incendiarism, 863. on Dyer’s blindness, 868. on Christ’s
Hospital days, 869. on Coleridge’s pension, 875. on Montgomery’s
“Common Lot,” 878. on FitzGerald’s “Meadows in Spring,”
878. and the Englishman’s Magazine, 878. on Unitarians, 881. on his
unsaleability, 883. on Coleridge’s imagined affront, 885. on “Rose
Aylmer,” 889. his pensioners, 89i. his advice on speculation, 893. spurious
letter of, 893. mistaken for a murderer, 894. his sonnet on women’s names, 900.
and the Elia lawsuit, 901. injury to his leg, 904. on John Taylor, 904. leaves Enfield
for Edmonton, 909, 911. on the Last Essays of Elia, 912. his gift of Milton to
Wordsworth, 912. at Widford, 914. his coffin nails, 914. on Emma Isola’s
marriage, 916, 918. reads the Inferno, 917. his London holiday, 921. his request for
books, 926. on Mr. Fuller Russell’s poetry, 933, 934. on Coleridge’s death,
936, 937. on his excesses at Cary’s, 938. his jokes on widows, 940. at
Haydon’s, 954. his name child, 957. Procter’s “Epistle” to,
962. Lamb, Charles, his epitaph on Ensign Peacock, 965. his adventure at sea, 969. on
painter-authors, 971. on Cary, 975. on milestones, 976. his account of the Lord
Mayor’s bed, 980. his fable for Twelfth Day, 980. his earliest poem, 988. and
Coleridge’s “Remorse,” 993. an epigram, 995. Elizabeth, her death, 41. and John Lamb, jr., 48. and her daughter, 48. and her
sister-in-law, 279. John, his querulousness, 61. his death, 148. the younger, his accident, 15. and the
tragedy, 46, 61. on Coleridge, 73. his pamphlet, 411, 412. his portrait of Milton, 457,
462, 701. knocks down Hazlitt, 493. death of, 560. Mrs. John. See Letters. 569, 794. Mary. See Letters. her frenzy, 41. and her mother, 48. her recovery, 48, 61.
dedication to, 57. Lamb’s second sonnet to, 78. removed from confinement, 100.
her 1798 relapse, 114. invited to Stowey, 115.her first poem, 183. her appetite, 196.
taken ill, 269. on her brother, 275. on secrecy, 278. on her mother and her aunt, 279.
two poems, 290. on John Wordsworth’s death, 308. two other poems by, 312. her
calligraphy, 316, 608. projecting literary work, 338. on marriage, 352, 426. plans for
new books, 356. on Coleridge in 1806, 359. her silk dress, 384, 389, 390, 481, 483. on
presents, 389. on Coleridge, 394. her water cure, 420, 422. on marriage, 426. appeals
for Miss Fricker, 432. her letter to a child, 446. discovers a room, 447. her article
on Needlework, 452. Lamb, Mary, her first joke, 462. on the Cambridge excursion, 473. on roadside
churches. 475. at the window, 506, 507. on the death of a child, 538. ill in France,
569. as a smuggler, 571. her illness, 694. drawn by Hood, 733, 734. her sonnet to Emma
Isola, 740, 758. her 1827 illness, 756, 761, 762, 763, 764. 765. her 1829 illness,
811-816. her verses on her brother, 856. moved to Edmonton, 886. and Emma Isola’s
marriage, 916. Lamb’s praise of, 928. her death, 943. on Mrs. Norris’s
death, 944. Sarah (Aunt Hetty), 3, 45. and the rich relative, 67. her death, 91. her funeral,
97. and her sister-in-law, 279. Landon, Letitia E., 748. Landor, Walter Savage. See Letters. his Julian, 466. his Imaginary Conversations,
692, 693. and Elia, 924. his visit to Lamb, 889. his verses for Emma Isola, 890. his
“Rose Aylmer,” 890. his verses on Lamb, 890. Last Essays of Elia, 896, 897, 898, 900, 901. Latin letters by Lamb, 246, 801, 871, 873, 975. Laureates, Lamb on the, 806. Lay of Marie, The, 477. Legal joke, a, 794. Le Grice, C. V., 1, 4, 8, 914. Samuel, 45, 47, 147, 148, 252. Leishman, Mrs., 733. Leonardo da Vinci, 290, 324, 326. “Leonora,” by Burger, 38. Letters in verse, 497, 7I0. “Letter to an Old Gentleman,” 604, 982. “Lewti,” by Coleridge, 172,178. Lies, 481, 502, 598, 736. “Lime-tree Bower,” Coleridge’s poem, 177, 180. Lincolnshire and the Lambs, 410. Liston, John, 428, 667. Literary Gazette, The, 859, 992. “Living without God in the World,” 134. Livingston, Mr, Luther S., 412. Lloyd, Charles, the elder, described by Robert Lloyd, 271. Lloyd, Charles, the elder, Lamb’s letters to, 402, 413, 431. the younger. See Letters. his career to 1796, 51. his sonnets on “Priscilla
Farmer,” 68, 70. Lamb’s lines to, 87. on Lamb, 88. his illness, 99, 103.
and Coleridge, 100. at Southey’s, 110. and Sophia Pemberton, 110, 111.
Lamb’s lines on, 112. a quarrel averted, 115. the quarrel with Coleridge, 119.
letter to Cottle, 121. and The Anti-Jacobin, 137. and Mary Hayes, 155, 966. his
first-born, 175. an “American,” 248. described by Robert Lloyd, 271. a lost
letter to, 432. his illness in 1815, 480. his Desultory Thoughts in London, 536. his
Poems, 1823, 613, 623, 624. in London in i8ig, 973. — Olivia, 155, 159, 966. — Priscilla, 142, 161, 294, 480. — Robert, Lamb’s first letter to, 121. with Lamb, 139. advice from his sister,
142. advice from Lamb, 148, 149. in London, 1800, 161. Lamb’s letters to, 168,
175, 212, 218, 219, 225, 294, 395, 403, 407. on his father, 271. his marriage, 284. in
London, 395. his death, 407. — Sophia, 175. Lockhart, J. G., 555. Lofft Capel, 470, 471. Logan quoted, 29. London, Lamb’s praise of, 194, 210, 216, 235. 244. 507. “London Fogs,” 979. London Magazine, The, 555, 556,558, 604, 613, 618, 663, 669, 684, 690. London Tavern dinner, 512, 514. “Londoner, The,” by Lamb, 235, 239. Lonsdale, Lord, 968. Lord Chief Justice, Lamb on, 635. Lord Mayor of London and Leviathan, 142. Lord Mayor, his bed, 980. Lottery puffs, 406. tickets, 325, 326. “Love will Come,” by Lamb, 930. Love sonnets, Lamb’s, 6. Lovell, Robert, 9. Luther in the Warteburg, 403. Lyrical Ballads, 130, 131, 208-211, 212-214. M Mackery End, Lamb on, 522, 523. Mackintosh, Sir James, Lamb’s epigram, 221, 223. Macready and Lamb, 320. Magazines, Lamb on, 646. Man, Henry, his epigram, 667. “Man of Ross,” 274. Manning, Thomas. See Letters. his career to 1799, 151. his grimaces, 152. his
letters to Lamb, 153, 160, 194, 206, 217, 260, 349. unpublished letters from Lamb, 168.
his grimaces, 175. first news of China, 223. in Paris, 233. and Napoleon, 238, 368. his
Chinese project, 258. he leaves for China, 348, 349. Thibet and China, 482. his return
to England, 504, 505. on Wordsworth, 525. and Fanny Holcroft, 584. at the Lambs, 641.
Lamb on, 702. his last days, 931. Mansion House, Lamb at, 626. Marlowe, Christopher, 126, 631. Marriage, Lamb on, 401. Mary Lamb on, 352, 426. Marshall, Godwin’s friend, 202, 245. Marter, William. See Letters. 646. Martin, John, 731, 732, 788, 789. — Louisa, 323, 793, 931. Marvell quoted, 260. Mary of Buttermere, 275, 276. Maseres, Baron, 218. Massinger, Philip, 28, 31, 58. Mathematics and Lamb, 152. Mathews, Charles, his picture, 757. — Mrs. Charles, and the Lambs, 552. Mathias’ Pursuits of Literature, 52. “Matter-of-lie man,” Lamb as, 481, 502. May, John, 137, 139, 693. — William, 1, 3. “Meadows in Spring,” by FitzGerald, 878, 906. Mellish, Mr., 497, 500. Mellon, Harriet, 578. Merchant Taylors’ epigrams, 282, 848,851. Meyer, Henry, “The Young Catechist,” 727, 729. his portrait of Lamb,
763. Milestones, Lamb on, 976. “Mille viae Mortis,” 988. Milton, John, and Cowper, 66. his Defence, 255, 256. John Lamb’s portrait,
457, 462, 701. Lamb’s gift to Wordsworth, 912. Mitchell, Thomas, 502. Mitford, Rev. John, 599, 600, 604, 606, 662, 717, 719. — Mary Russell, 673, 786. Monkhouse, Thomas, 546, 605, 671, 678. “Monody on Chatterton,” 12, 17, 27. Montagu, Basil. See Letters. 343, 355, 416, 421, 726. — Mrs. Basil. See Letters. Montgomery, James, and chimney-sweepers, 643, 644. his “Common Lot,”
878, 961. Moore, Thomas, and Lamb, 584, 606. Morgan, John, 439, 441, 487, 490, 504, 533. 891. — Mrs. John, 473, 506. Morning Chronicle, 432. Morning Post, 154, I59, 160, 239, 250, 251, 285, 288, 967, 968, 980, 989, 992. Moving, Lamb on, 396, 753. Moxon, Edward. See Letters. first mention, 712. his career to 1826, 714.
Lamb’s first letter to, 714. his early poems, 714. his Christmas, 718, 805. his
Nightingale sonnet, 852. and Rogers, 852. his Reflector, 893, 894. small commissions
for Lamb, 895, 896. and Murray, 897. his proposal to Miss Isola, 904. his Oak sonnet,
906. his marriage, 9i6, 9i8. his sonnets, 920, 922. “Mr. H.,” 337, 340, 353, 355, 356, 369, 370, 381, 382, 994. Mrs. Leicester’s School, 402, 635. — Leslie and Her Grandchildren, 761. Murray, John, 492, 838, 897. Music. Lamb on, 852, 854. N Napoleon, 468, 471, 484. — and Manning, 238, 240, 368. Napoleon and Cromwell, 253, 254. his height, 241. Nayler, James, 603. Necessarianism, 83. Nelson, his death, 324. New Monthly Magazine, 684, 696, 697, 713. New River, Lamb on, 647, 753. “New Year’s Eve,” 546, 624. New Year’s Eve, A, by Barton, 787, 789. Newington, 540. “Newspapers,” Lamb’s essay on, 221. Norris, Miss Jane. See Letters. — Randal, 421, 720. — Mrs. Randal. See Letters. 615, 723, 944. — Richard, 834. “Northern Castigation, The,” 212. Nott, Dr. John, 414. Novello, Clara (Countess Gigliucci), 932. — Vincent. See Letters. 66o, 661, 770, 782, 793. — Mrs. Vincent. See Letters. 525. 527. 538. Novellos, the, 668, 712. O Ode on the Departing Year, 75, 80, 84, 947. “Ode to the Treadmill,” 810. Odes and Addresses, by Hood and Reynolds, 685, 686. Office work, Lamb on, 656, 657. “Old Actors, The,” 564, 565. “Old Familiar Faces, The,” 116. Oilier, C. and J. See Letters. 514,515. “On an Infant Dying as soon as Born,” 726. “On Seeing Mrs. K B ,” etc., 996. “Osorio,” Coleridge’s drama, 104, 105. Oxford, Lamb at, 170. “Oxford in the Vacation,” 974. P Paice, Joseph, 831. Palmerston, Lord, 565. Pantisocracy, 11. Pardo, Father, 467. Paris, Lamb on, 569, 573, 575. — Mrs., 546, 547, 777. Park, Judge, 633, 634. Parr, Dr., and Lamb, 320. Parsons, Mrs., 589. Pasta, Madame, 770. Patmore, Coventry, 750. — P. G. See Letters. John Scott’s second, 555. a nonsense letter to, 735. his
Chatsworth, 737. his imitation of Lamb, 758. seeking a publisher, 774. Paul, C. Kegan, and the “Theses,” 119. “Pawnbroker’s Daughter, The,” 371, 689, 692, 701. Payne, John Howard. See Letters. 576, 578, 581. Peacock, Ensign, 965. Pemberton, Sophia, III. Penn, William, his No Cross, No Crown, 97. Persian ambassador, 409. Peter Bell, by Wordsworth, 462, 521. Peter Bell the Third, 518, 520. “Peter’s Net,” 878. Philip Quarll, 600, 601. Phillips, Colonel, 399. — Ned, 399, 420, 425, 440, 837, 972. — Sir Richard, 123, 231. Phillips’s Theatrum Poetarum, 942. Physiology, Lamb on, 629. Pictures, Lamb on, 324, 336, 346. Pig, Lamb’s praise of, 561, 581, 592, 625, 655, 941. Pilgrim’s Progress, 779, 780. Pindar, Peter, 462, 464. “Pipos.” See Derwent Coleridge, 250. “Pizarro,” Sheridan’s play, 161. Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, 754. Plumer family, 31. Plura, a mysterious woman, 590. Poems, possibly by Lamb, 987, 989, 992, 995, 996. “Poetic Sympathies,” by George Dyer, 951. Poetry for Children, 400, 401, 408, 761, 862, 914. Poets’ dinner party, 605, 606. “Poet’s Epitaph,” by Wordsworth, 209, 211, 304. Political Decameron, The, 553. Pompey, Lamb’s dog, 550. Poole, John, 576, 590, 591. — Thomas. See Letters. 108. “Poor Susan, Reverie of,” 461, 463. Pope, Alexander, 487, 600, 601, 607. “Popular Fallacies,” 696, 697. Postage rates in 1797, 94. Presentation copies, Lamb on, 520. Presents, Lamb on, 469, 471. “Pride’s Cure.” See John Woodvil. Priestley, Joseph, 10, 13, 78, 83, 86. Procter, B. W. See Letters. See also Barry Cornwall. Procter, B. W., in 1823, 608. and Lamb’s will, 620. his marriage, 656. and
Pulham’s etching, 707. — Mrs., and Lamb, 940. “Progress of Cant,” 983. Prometheus Unbound story, 652, 653. Pry, Tom, 710. Publishers, Lamb on, 387, 594, 713. Pulham, Brook, his etching of Lamb, 706, 707, 748. Pun at Salisbury, 409. Puns, Lamb on, 685. Purchas, His Pilgrimage, 290. Pye, Henry James, 806. Q Quakers, 97, 571, 588, 598, 602, 605. Quarles, Lamb on, 124, 129, 699. Quarterly Review, Lamb’s review for, 443. 445, 450, 452. and Lamb, 616, 617,
627, 628. Quillinan, Edward, 610. R Recreations in Agriculture, etc., 187. Reflector, The, Moxon’s paper, 893, 894. Reform Bill, 873. Rejected Addresses, 793. Rejected Articles, 958. “Religion of Actors,” 699, 701. “Religious Musings,” 1, 8, 9, 22, 90, 93, 97. Rembrandt, 731. “Remorse,” by Coleridge, 439, 440. Reynolds, John Hamilton, 520, 686. — Mrs., Lamb’s schoolmistress, 39, 40, 834, 891. Rheumatism, Lamb on, 807, 808. “Richard II.,” Lamb’s epilogue to, 644. Richmond, the Lambs at, 296. Rickman, John. See Letters. 191, 193, 224, 229, 323, 559, 966-969, 973-975. Rigg children, Lamb’s verses on, 861. Rimini, Leigh Hunt’s poem, 497. “Road to Ruin, The,” 365, 369. Robinson Crusoe, 587. Robinson, Anthony, 757. — Mrs. Anthony, 772. — Henry Crabb. See Letters. he meets Lamb, 388. Lamb on, 438. and “Peter
Bell,” 521. his admiration of Wordsworth, 526. Robinson, Henry Crabb, his presents to Lamb, 526. at Monkhouse’s dinner, 606.
his present to Mary Lamb, 803. his rheumatism, 807, 808. — Thomas. See Letters. 581. Roderick, by Southey, 465, 466. Rogers, Daniel, Lamb’s sonnet on, 804, 811, 812. — Samuel. See Letters. and Wordsworth’s “Force of Prayer,” 519,
521. and Coleridge, 92, 94. at Monkhouse’s dinner, 606. his letter to Lamb, 811,
812. and Moxon, 852, 857. his Italy, 860. and John Bull, 865. and G. Dyer, 866, 867.
Lamb’s sonnet to, 923, 924. Romilly, Sir Samuel, 462, 464, 726. Rosamund Gray, 124, 125, 796. “Rose Aylmer,” by Landor, 890. Roxana, 587, 600, 601, 819. Rumford, Count, 992. Russell, J. Fuller. See Letters. and Satan in Search of a Wife, 903. his poem
criticised, 933, 935. Ryle, Charles 862. S Sadler’s Wells, 275. “Saint Charles,” 665. “St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford,” 516. St. Luke’s Hospital, 836. St. Paul’s admission fee, 987. Salisbury, Lamb’s pun at, 409. Salt-water soap, 345. Salutation and Cat, 3, 16, 29, 61. Sapphics, 995. Sargus, Mr. See Letters. Lamb’s tenant, 454. Satan in Search of a Wife, 862, 874, 876, 881, 897, 903. Savage, Richard, 225, 227, 600, 601. Savory, Hester, 195, 261. Scott, John. See Letters. 434. 555. — Sir Walter. See Letters. 580, 603, 604. Sentiment, Lamb on, 413. Settle, Elkanah, 467, 468. Shakespeare, George Dyer on, 185. the Bellows portrait, 573, 574. and Elia, 591. his
illustrations, 923. Shakespeare’s Characters, 979. “She dwelt among the untrodden ways,” 214. Sheep-stealing, Lamb’s sonnet, 798. Shelley, P. B., 573. death of, 576. Lamb on, 652, 653. Hazlitt on, 652. “Lines
to a Reviewer,” 653. — Mrs. P. B. See Letters. 739. Sheridan and Lamb, 391, 393. Simmons, Ann, 2, 5, 6, 55. Simonds, the ghoul, 239, 967. Six Months in the West Indies, 702. Skiddaw, Lamb on, 244. Smith, Charlotte, 355. — Mrs., 546. “Smoker’s Song, The,” 99i. Smoking, Lamb on, 269, 317, 320. Snakes, Lamb visits, i9o. “Soldier’s Daughter, The,” by J. Howard Payne, 582. Sonnet to Elia, 571. — on “Work,” 646. “Sonnet to a Nameless Friend,” 789. Southampton Buildings, 396. Southey, Edith, 691. sonnet to, 900. — Dr., 438, 629. — Robert, his Joan of Arc, 1, 13, 21, 26. in 1796, 3. and Cowper, 15, 21. his
dactyls, 32, 34. and Coleridge, 52. his Madoc, 53. entertains Lamb and Lloyd, 110. his
Joan of Arc, 121. and the “Sonnet to Simplicity,” 119, 120. his
“Eclogues,” 125, 128, 129,143. on “The Ancient Mariner,” 130,
131. his Poems, 2nd edition, 1799, 143, 145. his description of Manning, 175. in
Dublin, 233. on the perfect household, 276. his Curse of Kehama, 465. his Roderick,
465, 466. death of his son, 490. the lapidary style, 498, 500. his fortune, 595. his
criticism of Elia, 616, 617. Lamb’s Letter to, 616, 617, 627. his reply to Lamb,
627, 628. his Tale of Paraguay, 691. his “Vesper Bell,” 691, 956. his Book
of the Church, 691. his Life of Bunyan, 847. Southey, Robert, and Hone, 847, 849. his defence of Lamb, 858, 859. his
“Chapel Bell,” 956. Spenser, Edmund, and Mr. Spencer, 334, 335. his sonnet to Harvey, 335, 336. “Spider, To a,” by Southey, 147. Spirit of the Age, The, 669, 670. “Spiritual Law,” by Barton, 957. Stamps, Comptroller of, 954. Stationery, Lamb on, 700. Stoddart, John. See Letters. 19, 165, 217, 275, 277, 315, 355, 379. 520. — Lady. See Letters. 768. — Sarah (afterwards Sarah Hazlitt). See Letters. her love affairs, 278, 280, 291,
339, 343. 352, 362, 374. 376. her mother’s illness, 312, 322. plans for her
wedding, 379. her wedding, 390. Stothard, Thomas, Lamb’s lines to, 923, 925. Stowey, Lamb at, 108. Stuart, Daniel, on Lamb, 288. Sunday, Lamb on, 715. “Superannuated Man,” 675, 679. “Supersedeas,” by Wither, 124, 950. “Suum Cuique,” by Lamb, 848, 851. Swift, Dean, 600, 601. Swinburne, A. C., and Lamb and Hugo, 197. on Lamb s dramatic suggestions, 227. on
“A True Story,” 979. Sydney, Sir Philip, and Lamb, 942. Sylvia, by George Darley, 805. T Table Book, Lamb’s fable, 760. Tailors, Lamb on, 449, 451, 797. Tales from Shakespear, 348, 351, 352, 354, 358, 372. Talfourd, Thomas Noon. See Letters. 469, 471, 526, 620, 792. made a Serjeant, 898.
his “Verses in Memory of a Child,” 957. Talma and Lamb, 573, 574. “Tartar Drum,” Lamb’s version, 929. Tartary, Lamb on, 258. Toiler, The, and Jerdan, 860. Tayler, C. B., 635, 773. Taylor, Jeremy, 218, 225. — John. See Letters. editor of the London Magazine, 556. Taylor, John, and the Elia lawsuit, 900, 904. Temple finally left, 506. Thackeray and Lamb, 665. Thanksgiving Ode, by Wordsworth, 484, 485. Thekla’s song in “Wallenstem, 966. Thelwall, John, 93, 109. “Theses Quaedam Theologicae,” 117, 122. Thievery in Australia, 500. Thurlow, Lord, 457, 788, 790. Thurtell the murderer, 634. Titian, Mary Lamb’s verses, 312. — the Music Piece, 346. Titles of honour, Lamb on, 408. “To a Bird that Haunted the Waters of Lacken,” 790. “To Emma Learning Latin and Desponding,” 740, 992. “To a Friend on his Marriage,” 918. “To the Poet Cowper,” 37. “To Sara and her Samuel,” 35, 37, 39. “To my Sister,” sonnet, 2. “To a Young Lady going out to India,” 64. Tobin, James Webbe, 284, 353. — John, 201. “Tomb of Douglas, The,” 65. “Tombs in the Abbey, The,” 987. “Tooth-ache and Gum-boil,” 321. Towers, Mrs., Lamb’s sonnet to, 771. Town and country, Lamb on, 827, 832. “Translation of Enoch,” by Barton, g59. Travels, Lamb on, 465, 467. Trelawney, E. J., 577. Trimmer, Mrs., 252, 254. “True Story, A,” 979. Tunbridge Wells, the Lambs at, 614. Turbot, Lamb on, 681. Turnips and legs of mutton, 840, 854. Tuthill, Sir George, 365, 368, 455, 836. Twelfth Day, 980. Twiss, Horace, 683. rend=’label’ U Unitarianism, 881. V Velluti, Signor, 685, 687. “Vindictive Man, The,” 365, 369. Virgin and Child, Mary Lamb’s verses, 312. “Vision of Horns, 667. “Vision of Judgment,” by Byron, 577, 635. 636, 705. “Vision of Repentance, A,” 101, 104. Voltaire and Congreve, 383, 385. Voltaire and Wordsworth, 444. Lamb on, 954. W Wadd, Lamb’s colleague, 586, 587. Waggoner, The, 524. “Wagstaff, Mr. Ephraim,” 984. Wainewright, T. G., 613, 618, 619. See also “Janus Weathercock.” Waltham Cross, letter on, 986. Walton, Isaak, 20, 52, 212, 929. Warner’s Syrinx, 630, 631. Watch, Emma Isola’s, 915. Watchman, The, 8,12. Webster, his “Vittoria Corombona,” 325. Wednesdays, Lamb’s evening, 428. Wesley, Miss, 162, 164. Wesmacott, C. M., 989. Westwood, Thomas, 822, 828, 908. — Cottage, 817, 824. Whist, 837. “White Devil, The,” 325. White Doe of Rylstone, 525. White, Edward, 576, 740. — James, 5, 115. Widford, 722. “Widow, The,” 777, 785, 796. Widow’s Tale, The, by Barton, 726, 728. Widows, a list of, 940. “Wife, The,” by Sheridan Knowles, 886, 905, 910. “Wife’s Trial, The,” by Lamb, 735, 738, 739. 747, 748, 787. Wilde, Serjeant, 856. William IV., 858. Williams, Mrs. See Letters. and Emma Isola, 778. and the acrostics, 841, 842, 847. Wilson, John, his biography, 893. Wilson, Walter. See Letters. and Lamb’s apology, 219. Lamb’s fellow
clerk, 220. visits Lamb, 776. his Life of Defoe, 810, 820. Windham, William, 154, 155, 412. Winterslow, 342, 398. the Lambs at, 403, 404, 405, 415. “Witch, The,” by Lamb, 132, 134, 135. Wither, George, and Quarles, 124, 129. Lamb on, 413, 414. his
“Supersedeas,” 950. Woolman, John, 9i, 94, 645, 929. Wordsworth, Dorothy. See Letters. at Stowey, 108. a letter from, 310. her poems, 458. — William. See Letters. at Stowey, 108. and Coleridge in Germany, 135, 136. Wordsworth, William, his economy, 173- Lyrical Ballads, 2nd edition, 208, 212. and Lamb’s letters, 212. at
Bartholomew Fair, 242. his marriage, 248, 249. his £8 worth of books, 295. and
Shakespeare, 384. his difference with Coleridge, 421. The Excursion, 434. and Voltaire,
444, 445. his Poems, 1815 edition, 456, 458, 463, 560. his illegible hand, 485. on
Burns, 487, 488. and Peter Bell the Third, 519. The Waggoner, 524, 526. his Duddon
sonnets, 541. at Monkhouse’s dinner, 606. in London, 641. Wordsworth, William, his Milton, a gift from Lamb, 912. at Haydon’s, 954. — John, his death, 299, 310. — William, jr., 534. “Work,” Lamb’s sonnet, 572. Works, Lamb’s, 514, 515. Worsley, Lady Frances, 608. Wortley, Lady Mary, 607, 608. Wroughton, Richard, his letter about “Mr. H.,” 353. Y “Yarrow Visited,” 557. “Yew Trees,” Wordsworth’s poem, 459. “Young Catechist, The,” 727. Z “Zapolya,” 484, 486. THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED