Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, [29 June 1796]
[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. |
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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 ![]()
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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 .
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
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| 34 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | July |
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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.
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.
Francis Beaumont (1585-1616)
English playwright, often in collaboration with John Fletcher; author of
The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607).
Charles Cartwright (1753-1825)
After joining the East India Company in 1773 he became accountant general in 1798 and
retired in 1822.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of
Biographia Literaria (1817),
On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.
George Dyer (1755-1841)
English poet, antiquary, and friend of Charles Lamb; author of
Poems
and Critical Essays (1802),
Poetics: or a Series of Poems and
Disquisitions on Poetry, 2 vols (1812),
History of the
University and Colleges of Cambridge, 2 vols (1814) and other works.
John Fletcher (1579-1625)
English playwright, author of
The Faithful Shepherdess (1610) and
of some fifteen plays in collaboration with Francis Beaumont.
Vicesimus Knox (1752-1821)
Essayist, clergyman, and headmaster of Tonbridge School; he published
Liberal Education, or, a Practical Treatise on the Method of acquiring Useful and
Polite Learning (1781) and other works.
Mary Anne Lamb (1764-1847)
Sister of Charles Lamb with whom she wrote Tales from Shakespeare (1807). She lived with
her brother, having killed their mother in a temporary fit of insanity.
Philip Massinger (1583-1649)
Jacobean playwright; author of
A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1625);
his works were edited by William Gifford (1805, 1813).
Thomas Otway (1652-1685)
English tragic poet; author of
The Orphan (1680) and
Venice Preserved (1682).
James Perry (1756-1821)
Whig journalist; founder and editor of the
European Magazine
(1782), editor of the
Morning Chronicle (1790-1821).
Plutarch (46 c.-120 c.)
Greek biographer and moral philosopher; author of
Parallel Lives
and
Moralia.
Porphyry (234 c.-305 c.)
Neoplatonic philosopher and disciple of Plotinus.
Francis Quarles (1592-1644)
English poet and royalist whose
Emblems (1635) were long
reprinted.
William Richardson (d. 1798)
He joined the East India House in 1760 and was made accountant general in 1785.
John Horne Tooke (1736-1812)
Philologist and political radical; member of the Society for Constitutional Information
(1780); tried for high treason and acquitted (1794).
George Wither (1588-1667)
Prolific Puritan poet and satirist who became a byword for bad poetry; during the
eighteenth century his more attractive youthful verse began to be reprinted and
admired.
Morning Chronicle. (1769-1862). James Perry was proprietor of this London daily newspaper from 1789-1821; among its many
notable poetical contributors were Coleridge, Southey, Lamb, Rogers, and Campbell.
