Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to William Godwin, [10? March 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 ![]()
| 1808 | “ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES” | 387 |
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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.
William Godwin (1756-1836)
English novelist and political philosopher; author of
An Inquiry
concerning the Principles of Political Justice (1793) and
Caleb
Williams (1794); in 1797 he married Mary Wollstonecraft.
