Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 27 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, ![]()
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&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,” |
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for “Beneath this roof if thy cheer’d moments pass.”
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“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.
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.
Elizabeth Fox, Lady Holland [née Vassall] (1771 c.-1845)
In 1797 married Henry Richard Fox, Lord Holland, following her divorce from Sir Godfrey
Webster; as mistress of Holland House she became a pillar of Whig society.
John Kyrle [The Man of Ross] (1637-1724)
Philanthropist and landscape designer celebrated by Alexander Pope in the third of his
Moral Epistles.
Thomas Norton Longman (1771-1842)
A leading London publisher whose authors included Southey, Wordsworth, Scott, and
Moore.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
English poet and satirist; author of
The Rape of the Lock (1714)
and
The Dunciad (1728).
James Webbe Tobin [blind Tobin] (1767-1814)
The son of a plantation-owner, he was an abolitionist, follower of Godwin, friend of
Coleridge, and contributor to Southey's
Annual Anthology. He was the
brother of the dramatist John Tobin.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of
Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.
