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.

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.

966

LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

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An unpublished letter from Lamb to Manning tells the story of the Charles Lloyd and Mary Hayes imbroglio.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.”

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.”

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.”

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

967

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.”

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,

968

LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

970

LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

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.”

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.

After this letter should come the following (Letter 170a), which I copy from The Mirror, 1841:—

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.

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

972

LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

criminal’s life by giving it as her opinion that —— ——. The Judge listened to her with the greatest deference.

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,

973

three watchmen are engaged to carry the body upstairs—Pray for me —They keep bothering me.

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.

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?”

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.

It was during this visit to Cambridge that Lamb wrote his Elia essay on “Oxford in the Vacation.”

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.

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.”

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.

975

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.

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.”

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:—

This is a complete list of the contents of Emma Isola’s Album, all autographs (from Quaritch’s catalogue, September, 1886):—

After this should come the following (Letter 461a), from The Mirror, 1841:—

978

LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

Charles Lamb to George Dyer

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.

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.

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.”

Lamb sent Mr. Childs a copy of John Woodvil in which he wrote:—