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

634

LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

Jan.

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.

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.—

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

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“AS QUAKERS, THEY DID RIGHT”

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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.

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’s book 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!

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LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

Jan.

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.—

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

638

LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

March

little feeler.—Oh! pah! how sick I am of that; and a lie, a mean one, I once told!—

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

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GOOD COUNSEL TO B. B.

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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’s Cases of Conscience, and Jeremy Taylor’s Ductor 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 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

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LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

1824

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’s Book, 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 TREMULI OR 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.

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. 2dly Manning 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,

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

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

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WILLIAM BLAKE

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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’s book 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.

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.

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

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“SONNET TO ELIA”

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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.

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.

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.

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?

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

648

LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

August

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.

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

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ELTON’S “SPECIMENS”

651

Alcinous, his previous behaviour at the song of the stern strife arising between Achilles and himself (how it raises him above the Iliad Ulysses!) 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.

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

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LAMB AND SHELLEY

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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.”

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

1824

ANOTHER PIG

655

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.

From my den, as Bunyan has it, 30 Sep. 24.

DEAR Mrs. Collier—We receive so much pig from your kindness, that I really have not phrase enough to vary successive acknowledgmts.

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

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LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

Nov.

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.

On further enquiry Alsager is not dead, but Mrs. A. is brot. to bed.

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.

1824

LAMB’S SEVERE STEP-WIFE

657

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.

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.

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

1824

SCANDAL ABOUT COLERIDGE

659

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.

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

660

LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

Nov.

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.,

1824

VARIOUS FRIENDS

661

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.

“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.]

[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-

1824

“SAINT CHARLES!”

665

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.]