Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton, 25 February 1824
[p.m. February 25, 1824.]
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— |
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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— |
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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 |
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little feeler.—Oh! pah! how sick I am of that; and a lie, a
mean one, I once told!—
I stink in the midst of respect.
I am much hypt; the fact is, my head is heavy, but there is
hope, or if not, I am better than a poor shell fish—not morally when I set the
whelp upon it, but have more blood and spirits; things may turn up, and I may
creep again into a decent opinion of myself. Vanity will return with sunshine.
Till when, pardon my neglects and impute it to the wintry solstice.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
English poet and satirist; author of
The Rape of the Lock (1714)
and
The Dunciad (1728).
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Poet laureate and man of letters whose contemporary reputation depended upon his prose
works, among them the
Life of Nelson, 2 vols (1813),
History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (1823-32) and
The Doctor, 7 vols (1834-47).
