DEAR Allsop—I acknowledge with thanks the receipt of a draft on Messrs. Wms. for £81: 11: 3 which I haste to cash in the present alarming state of the money market. Hurst and Robinson gone. I have imagined a chorus of ill-used authors singing on the occasion:

What should we when Booksellers break? We should rejoice da Capo.

We regret exceedly. Mrs. Allsop’s being unwell. Mary or both will come and see her soon. The frost is cruel, and we have both colds. I take Pills again, which battle with your wine & victory hovers doubtful. By the bye, tho’ not disinclined to presents I remember our bargain to take a dozen at sale price and must demur. With once again thanks and best loves to Mrs. A.

DEAR Ollier,—I send you two more proverbs, which will be the last of this batch, unless I send you one more by the post on Thursday; none will come after that day; so do not leave any open room in that case. Hood sups with me to-night. Can you come and eat grouse? ’Tis not often I offer at delicacies.

DEAR O.,—We lamented your absence last night. The grouse were piquant, the backs incomparable. You must come in to cold mutton and oysters some evening. Name your evening; though I have qualms at the distance. Do you never leave early? My head is very queerish, and indisposed for much company; but we will get Hood, that half Hogarth, to meet you. The scrap I send should come in After the “Rising with the Lark.”

Colburn, I take it, pays postages.

My kind remembrances to your daughter and A. K. always.

DEAR B. B.—I got your book not more than five days ago, so am not so negligent as I must have appeared to you with a fortnight’s sin upon my shoulders. I tell you with sincerity that I think you have completely succeeded in what you intended to do. What is poetry may be disputed. These are poetry to me at least. They are concise, pithy, and moving. Uniform as they are, and unhistorify’d, I read them thro’ at two sittings without one sensation approaching to tedium. I do not know that among your many kind presents of this nature this is not my favourite volume. The language is never lax, and there is a unity of design and feeling, you wrote them with love—to avoid the cox-combical phrase, con amore. I am particularly pleased with the “Spiritual Law,” page 34-5. It reminded me of Quarles, and Holy Mr. Herbert, as Izaak Walton calls him: the two best, if not only, of our devotional poets, tho’ some prefer Watts, and some Tom Moore.

1826

BARTON’S “DEVOTIONAL VERSES”

699

I am far from well or in my right spirits, and shudder at pen and ink work. I poke out a monthly crudity for Colburn in his magazine, which I call “Popular Fallacies,” and periodically crush a proverb or two, setting up my folly against the wisdom of nations. Do you see the “New Monthly”?

One word I must object to in your little book, and it recurs more than once—FADELESS is no genuine compound; loveless is, because love is a noun as well as verb, but what is a fade?—and I do not quite like whipping the Greek drama upon the back of “Genesis,” page 8. I do not like praise handed in by disparagement: as I objected to a side censure on Byron, etc., in the lines on Bloomfield: with these poor cavils excepted, your verses are without a flaw.

DR Ollier if not too late, pray omit the last paragraph in “Actor’s Religion,” which is clumsy. It will then end with the word Mugletonian. I shall not often trouble you in this manner, but I am suspicious of this article as lame.

DEAR B. B.—You may know my letters by the paper and the folding. For the former, I live on scraps obtained in charity from an old friend whose stationary is a permanent perquisite; for folding, I shall do it neatly when I learn to tye my neckcloths. I surprise most of my friends by writing to them on ruled paper, as if I had not got past pothooks and hangers. Sealing wax, I have none on my establishment. Wafers of the coarsest bran supply its place. When my Epistles come to be weighed with Pliny’s, however superior to the Roman in delicate irony, judicious reflexions, etc., his gilt post will bribe over the judges to him. All the time I was at the E. I. H. I never mended a pen; I now cut ’em to the stumps, marring rather than mending the primitive goose quill. I cannot bear to pay for articles I used to get for nothing. When Adam laid out his first penny upon nonpareils at some stall in Mesopotamos, I think it went hard with him, reflecting upon his old goodly orchard, where he had so many for nothing. When I write to a Great man, at the Court end, he opens with surprise upon a naked note, such as Whitechapel people interchange, with no sweet degrees of envelope: I never inclosed one bit of paper in another, nor understand the rationale of it. Once only I seald with borrow’d wax, to set Walter Scott a wondering, sign’d with the imperial quarterd arms of England, which my friend Field gives in compliment to his descent in the female line from O. Cromwell. It must have set his antiquarian curiosity upon watering. To your questions upon the currency, I refer you to Mr. Robinson’s last speech, where, if you can find a solution, I cannot. I think this tho’ the best ministry we ever stumbled upon. Gin reduced four shillings in the gallon, wine 2 shillings in the quart. This comes home to men’s minds and bosoms. My tirade against visitors was not meant particularly at you or A. K. I scarce know what I meant, for I do not just now feel the grievance. I wanted to

1826

DELIBERATE INVENTIONS

701

make an article. So in another thing I talkd of somebody’s insipid wife, without a correspondent object in my head: and a good lady, a friend’s wife, whom I really love (don’t startle, I mean in a licit way) has looked shyly on me ever since. The blunders of personal application are ludicrous. I send out a character every now and then, on purpose to exercise the ingenuity of my friends. “Popular Fallacies” will go on; that word concluded is an erratum, I suppose, for continued. I do not know how it got stuff’d in there. A little thing without name will also be printed on the Religion of the Actors, but it is out of your way, so I recommend you, with true Author’s hypocrisy, to skip it. We are about to sit down to Roast beef, at which we could wish A. K., B. B., and B. B.’s pleasant daughter to be humble partakers. So much for my hint at visitors, which was scarcely calculated for droppers in from Woodbridge. The sky does not drop such larks every day.

DEAR C,—We will with great pleasure be with you on Thursday in the next week early. Your finding out my style in your nephew’s pleasant book is surprising to me. I want eyes to descry it. You are a little too hard upon his morality, though I confess he has more of Sterne about him than of Sternhold. But he saddens into excellent sense before the conclusion. Your query shall be submitted to Miss Kelly, though it is obvious that the pantomime, when done, will be more easy to decide upon than in proposal. I say, do it by all means. I have Decker’s play by me, if you can filch anything out of it. Miss Gray, with her kitten eyes, is an actress, though she shows it not at all, and pupil to the former, whose gestures she mimics in comedy to the disparagement of her own natural manner, which is agreeable. It is funny to see her bridling up her neck, which is native to F. K.; but there is no setting another’s manners upon one’s shoulders any more than their head. I am glad you esteem Manning, though you see but his husk or shrine. He discloses not, save to select worshippers, and will leave the world without any one hardly but me knowing how stupendous a creature he is. I am perfecting myself in the “Ode to Eton College” against Thursday, that I may not appear unclassic. I have just discovered that it is much better than the “Elegy.”

P.S.—I do not know what to say to your latest theory about Nero being the Messiah, though by all accounts he was a ’nointed one.

DEAR Sir,—It is whispered me that you will not be unwilling to look into our doleful hermitage. Without more preface, you will gladden our cell by accompanying our old chums of the London, Darley and Allan Cunningham, to Enfield on Wednesday. You shall have hermit’s fare, with talk as seraphical as the novelty of the divine life will permit, with an innocent retrospect to the world which we have left, when I will thank you for your hospitable offer at Chiswick, and with plain hermit reasons evince the necessity of abiding here.

Yours, with best love to Mrs. Cary,

Darley knows all about the coaches. Oh, for a Museum in the wilderness!

DEAR N. You will not expect us to-morrow, I am sure, while these damn’d North Easters continue. We must wait the Zephyrs’ pleasures. By the bye, I was at Highgate on Wensday, the only one of the Party.

Summer, as my friend Coleridge waggishly writes, has set in with its usual severity.

Kind remembces to Mrs. Novello &c.

DEAR B. B.—I have had no spirits lately to begin a letter to you, though I am under obligations to you (how many!) for your neat little poem. ’Tis just what it professes to be, a simple tribute in chaste verse, serious and sincere. I do not know how Friends will relish it, but we out-lyers, Honorary Friends, like it very well. I have had my head and ears stuff’d up with the East winds. A continual ringing in my brain of bells jangled, or The Spheres touchd by some raw Angel. It is not George 3 trying

1826

A MAY COLD

705

the 100th psalm? I get my music for nothing. But the weather seems to be softening, and will thaw my stunnings. Coleridge writing to me a week or two since begins his note—“Summer has set in with its usual Severity.” A cold Summer is all I know of disagreeable in cold. I do not mind the utmost rigour of real Winter, but these smiling hypocrites of Mays wither me to death. My head has been a ringing Chaos, like the day the winds were made, before they submitted to the discipline of a weathercock, before the Quarters were made. In the street, with the blended noises of life about me, I hear, and my head is lightened, but in a room the hubbub comes back, and I am deaf as a Sinner. Did I tell you of a pleasant sketch Hood has done, which he calls Very Deaf Indeed? It is of a good naturd stupid looking old gentleman, whom a footpad has stopt, but for his extreme deafness cannot make him understand what he wants; the unconscious old gentleman is extending his ear-trumpet very complacently, and the fellow is firing a pistol into it to make him hear, but the ball will pierce his skull sooner than the report reach his sensorium. I chuse a very little bit of paper, for my ear hisses when I bend down to write. I can hardly read a book, for I miss that small soft voice which the idea of articulated words raises (almost imperceptibly to you) in a silent reader. I seem too deaf to see what I read. But with a touch or two of returning Zephyr my head will melt. What Lyes you Poets tell about the May! It is the most ungenial part of the Year, cold crocuses, cold primroses, you take your blossoms in Ice—a painted Sun—

Unmeaning joy around appears, And Nature smiles as if she sneers.

It is ill with me when I begin to look which way the wind sits. Ten years ago I literally did not know the point from the broad end of the Vane, which it was the [? that] indicated the Quarter. I hope these ill winds have blowd over you, as they do thro’ me. Kindest remembces to you and yours.

DEAR Coleridge,—If I know myself, nobody more detests the display of personal vanity which is implied in the act of sitting for one’s picture than myself. But the fact is, that the likeness which accompanies this letter was stolen from my person at one of my unguarded moments by some too partial artist, and my friends are pleased to think that he has not much flattered me. Whatever its merits may be, you, who have so great an interest in the original, will have a satisfaction in tracing the features of one that has so long esteemed you. There are times when in a friend’s absence these graphic representations of him almost seem to bring back the man himself. The painter, whoever he was, seems to have taken me in one of those disengaged moments, if I may so term them, when the native character is so much more honestly displayed than can be possible in the restraints of an enforced sitting attitude. Perhaps it rather describes me as a thinking man than a man in the act of thought. Whatever its pretensions, I know it will be dear to you, towards whom I should wish my thoughts to flow in a sort of an undress rather than in the more studied graces of diction.

DEAR D.—My first impulse upon opening your letter was pleasure at seeing your old neat hand, nine parts gentlemanly, with a modest dash of the clerical: my second a Thought, natural enough this hot weather, Am I to answer all this? why ’tis as long as those to the Ephesians and Galatians put together—I have counted the words for curiosity. But then Paul has nothing like the fun which is ebullient all over yours. I don’t remember a good thing (good like yours) from the 1st Romans to the last of the Hebrews. I remember but one Pun in all the Evangely, and that was made by his and our master: Thou art Peter (that is Doctor Rock) and upon this rock will I build &c.; which sanctifies Punning with me against all gainsayers. I never knew an enemy to puns, who was not an ill-natured man. Your fair critic in the coach reminds me of a Scotchman who assured me that he did not see much in Shakspeare. I replied, I dare say not. He felt the equivoke, lookd awkward, and reddish, but soon returnd to the attack, by saying that he thought Burns was as good as Shakspeare: I said that I had no doubt he was—to a Scotchman. We exchangd no more words that day.—Your account of the fierce faces in the Hanging, with the presumed interlocution of the Eagle and the Tyger, amused us greatly. You cannot be so very bad, while you can pick mirth off from rotten walls. But let me hear you have escaped out of your oven. May the Form of the Fourth Person who clapt invisible wet blankets about the shoulders of Shadrach Meshach and Abednego, be with you in the fiery Trial. But get out of the frying pan. Your business, I take it, is bathing, not baking.

Let me hear that you have clamber’d up to Lover’s Seat; it is as fine in that neighbourhood as Juan Fernandez, as lonely too, when the Fishing boats are not out; I have sat for hours, staring upon a shipless sea. The salt sea is never so grand as when it is left to

708

LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

June

itself. One cock-boat spoils it. A sea-mew or two improves it. And go to the little church, which is a very protestant Loretto, and seems dropt by some angel for the use of a hermit, who was at once parishioner and a whole parish. It is not too big. Go in the night, bring it away in your portmanteau, and I will plant it in my garden. It must have been erected in the very infancy of British Christianity, for the two or three first converts; yet hath it all the appertenances of a church of the first magnitude, its pulpit, its pews, its baptismal font; a cathedral in a nutshell. Seven people would crowd it like a Caledonian Chapel. The minister that divides the word there, must give lumping pennyworths. It is built to the text of two or three assembled in my name. It reminds me of the grain of mustard seed. If the glebe land is proportionate, it may yield two potatoes. Tythes out of it could be no more split than a hair. Its First fruits must be its Last, for ’twould never produce a couple. It is truly the strait and narrow way, and few there be (of London visitants) that find it. The still small voice is surely to be found there, if any where. A sounding board is merely there for ceremony. It is secure from earthquakes, not more from sanctity than size, for ’twould feel a mountain thrown upon it no more than a taper-worm would. Go and see, but not without your spectacles. By the way, there’s a capital farm house two thirds of the way to the Lover’s Seat, with incomparable plum cake, ginger beer, etc. Mary bids me warn you not to read the Anatomy of Melancholy in your present low way. You’ll fancy yourself a pipkin, or a headless bear, as Burton speaks of. You’ll be lost in a maze of remedies for a labyrinth of diseasements, a plethora of cures. Read Fletcher; above all the Spanish Curate, the Thief or Little Nightwalker, the Wit Without Money, and the Lover’s Pilgrimage. Laugh and come home fat. Neither do we think Sir T. Browne quite the thing for you just at present. Fletcher is as light as Soda water. Browne and Burton are too strong potions for an Invalid. And don’t thumb or dirt the books. Take care of the bindings. Lay a leaf of silver paper under ’em, as you read them. And don’t smoke tobacco over ’em, the leaves will fall in and burn or dirty their namesakes. If you find any dusty atoms of the Indian Weed crumbled up in the Beaumt and Fletcher, they are mine. But then, you know, so is the Folio also. A pipe and a comedy of Fletcher’s the last thing of a night is the best recipe for light dreams and to scatter away Nightmares. Probatum est. But do as you like about the former. Only cut the Baker’s. You will come home else all crust; Rankings must chip you before you can appear in his counting house. And my dear Peter Fin Junr., do contrive to see the sea at least once before you return. You’ll be ask’d about it in the Old Jewry. It will appear singular not to

1826

HOLLINGDON RURAL CHURCH

709

have seen it. And rub up your Muse, the family Muse, and send us a rhyme or so. Don’t waste your wit upon that damn’d Dry Salter. I never knew but one Dry Salter, who could relish those mellow effusions, and he broke. You knew Tommy Hill, the wettest of dry salters. Dry Salters, what a word for this thirsty weather! I must drink after it. Here’s to thee, my dear Dibdin, and to our having you again snug and well at Colebrooke. But our nearest hopes are to hear again from you shortly. An epistle only a quarter as agreeable as your last, would be a treat.

BECAUSE you boast poetic Grandsire, And rhyming kin, both Uncle and Sire, Dost think that none but their Descendings Can tickle folks with double endings? I had a Dad, that would for half a bet Have put down thine thro’ half the Alphabet. Thou, who would be Dan Prior the second, For Dan Posterior must be reckon’d. In faith, dear Tim, your rhymes are slovenly, As a man may say, dough-baked and ovenly; Tedious and long as two Long Acres, And smell most vilely of the Baker’s. (I have been cursing every limb o’ thee, Because I could not hitch in Timothy. Jack, Will, Tom, Dick’s, a serious evil, But Tim, plain Tim’s—the very devil.)

1826

DOUBLE ENDINGS

711

Thou most incorrigible scribbler, Right Watering place and cockney dribbler, What child, that barely understands A B, C, would ever dream that Stanza Would tinkle into rhyme with “Plan, Sir”? Go, go, you are not worth an answer. I had a Sire, that at plain Crambo Had hit you o’er the pate a damn’d blow. How now? may I die game, and you die brass, But I have stol’n a quip from Hudibras. ’Twas thinking on that fine old Suttler, That was in faith a second Butler; Had as queer rhymes as he, and subtler. He would have put you to’t this weather For rattling syllables together; Rhym’d you to death, like “rats in Ireland,” Except that he was born in High’r Land. His chimes, not crampt like thine, and rung ill, Had made Job split his sides on dunghill. There was no limit to his merryings At christ’nings, weddings, nay at buryings. No undertaker would live near him, Those grave practitioners did fear him; Mutes, at his merry mops, turned “vocal,” And fellows, hired for silence, “spoke all.” No body could be laid in cavity, Long as he lived, with proper gravity. His mirth-fraught eye had but to glitter, And every mourner round must titter. The Parson, prating of Mount Hermon, Stood still to laugh, in midst of sermon. The final Sexton (smile he must for him) Could hardly get to “dust to dust” for him. He lost three pall-bearers their livelyhood, Only with simp’ring at his lively mood: Provided that they fresh and neat came, All jests were fish that to his net came. He’d banter Apostolic castings, As you jeer fishermen at Hastings. When the fly bit, like me, he leapt-o’er-all, And stood not much on what was scriptural.

P. S.

I had forgot, at Small Bohemia (Enquire the way of your maid Euphemia)

712

LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

Sept.

Are sojourning, of all good fellows The prince and princess,—the Novellos— Pray seek ’em out, and give my love to ’em; You’ll find you’ll soon be hand and glove to ’em.

In prose, Little Bohemia, about a mile from Hastings in the Hollington road, when you can get so far. Dear Dib, I find relief in a word or two of prose. In truth my rhymes come slow. You have “routh of ’em.” It gives us pleasure to find you keep your good spirits. Your Letter did us good. Pray heaven you are got out at last. Write quickly.

This letter will introduce you, if ’tis agreeable. Take a donkey. ’Tis Novello the Composer and his Wife, our very good friends.

MY dear Wordsworth, The Bearer of this is my young friend Moxon, a young lad with a Yorkshire head, and a heart that would do honour to a more Southern county: no offence to West-

1826

ENTER MOXON

713

moreland. He is one of Longman’s best hands, and can give you the best account of The Trade as ’tis now going; or stopping. For my part, the failure of a Bookseller is not the most unpalatable accident of mortality:

sad but not saddest The desolation of a hostile city.

When Constable fell from heaven, and we all hoped Baldwin was next, I tuned a slight stave to the words in Macbeth (D’avenant’s) to be sung by a Chorus of Authors,

What should we do when Booksellers break? We should rejoyce.

Moxon is but a tradesman in the bud yet, and retains his virgin Honesty; Esto perpetua, for he is a friendly serviceable fellow, and thinks nothing of lugging up a Cargo of the Newest Novels once or twice a week from the Row to Colebrooke to gratify my Sister’s passion for the newest things. He is her Bodley. He is author besides of a poem which for a first attempt is promising. It is made up of common images, and yet contrives to read originally. You see the writer felt all he pours forth, and has not palmed upon you expressions which he did not believe at the time to be more his own than adoptive. Rogers has paid him some proper compliments, with sound advice intermixed, upon a slight introduction of him by me; for which I feel obliged. Moxon has petition’d me by letter (for he had not the confidence to ask it in London) to introduce him to you during his holydays; pray pat him on the head, ask him a civil question or two about his verses, and favor him with your genuine autograph. He shall not be further troublesome. I think I have not sent any one upon a gaping mission to you a good while. We are all well, and I have at last broke the bonds of business a second time, never to put ’em on again. I pitch Colburn and his magazine to the divil. I find I can live without the necessity of writing, tho’ last year I fretted myself to a fever with the hauntings of being starved. Those vapours are flown. All the difference I find is that I have no pocket money: that is, I must not pry upon an old book stall, and cull its contents as heretofore, but shoulders of mutton, Whitbread’s entire, and Booth’s best, abound as formerly.

I don’t know whom or how many to send our love to, your household is so frequently divided, but a general health to all that may be fixed or wandering; stars, wherever. We read with pleasure some success (I forget quite what) of one of you at Oxford. Mrs. Monkhouse (. . . was one of you) sent us a kind letter some [months back], and we had the pleasure to [see] her in tolerable spirits, looking well and kind as in bygone days.

714

LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

Sept.

Do take pen, or put it into goodnatured hands Dorothean or Wordsworthian-female, or Hutchinsonian, to inform us of your present state, or possible proceedings. I am ashamed that this breaking of the long ice should be a letter of business. There is none circum præcordia nostra I swear by the honesty of pedantry, that wil I nil I pushes me upon scraps of Latin. We are yours cordially:

DEAR D.—I have observed that a Letter is never more acceptable than when received upon a rainy day, especially a rainy Sunday; which moves me to send you somewhat, however short. This will find you sitting after Breakfast, which you will have prolonged as far as you can with consistency to the poor handmaid that has the reversion of the Tea Leaves; making two nibbles of your last morsel of stale roll (you cannot have hot new ones on the Sabbath), and reluctantly coming to an end, because when that is done, what can you do till dinner? You cannot go to the Beach, for the rain is drowning the sea, turning rank Thetis fresh, taking the brine out of Neptune’s pickles, while mermaids sit upon rocks with umbrellas, their ivory combs sheathed for spoiling in the wet of waters foreign to them. You cannot go to the library, for it’s shut. You are not religious enough to go to church. O it is worth while to cultivate piety to the gods, to have something to fill the heart up on a wet Sunday! You cannot cast accounts, for your ledger is being eaten up with moths in the Ancient Jewry. You cannot play at draughts, for there is none to play with you, and besides there is not a draught board in the house. You cannot go to market, for it closed last night. You cannot look in to the shops, their backs are shut upon you. You cannot read the Bible, for it is not good reading for the sick and the hypochondriacal. You cannot while away an hour with a friend, for you have no friend round that Wrekin. You cannot divert yourself with a stray acquaintance, for you have picked none up. You cannot bear the chiming of Bells, for they invite you to a banquet, where you are no visitant. You cannot cheer yourself with the prospect of a tomorrow’s letter, for none come on Mondays. You cannot count those endless vials on the mantlepiece with any hope of making a variation in their numbers. You have counted your spiders: your Bastile is exhausted. You sit and deliberately curse your hard exile from all familiar sights and sounds. Old Ranking poking in his head unexpectedly would just now be as good to you as Grimaldi. Any thing to deliver you from this intolerable weight of Ennui. You are too ill to shake it off: not ill enough to submit to it, and to lie down as a lamb under it. The Tyranny of Sickness is nothing to the Cruelty of Convalescence: ’tis to have Thirty

716

LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

Sept.

Tyrants for one. That pattering rain drops on your brain. You’ll be worse after dinner, for you must dine at one to-day, that Betty may go to afternoon service. She insists upon having her chopped hay. And then when she goes out, who was something to you, something to speak to—what an interminable afternoon you’ll have to go thro’. You can’t break yourself from your locality: you cannot say “Tomorrow morning I set off for Banstead, by God”: for you are book’d for Wednesday. Foreseeing this, I thought a cheerful letter would come in opportunely. If any of the little topics for mirth I have thought upon should serve you in this utter extinguishment of sunshine, to make you a little merry, I shall have had my ends. I love to make things comfortable. [Here is an erasure.] This, which is scratch’d out was the most material thing I had to say, but on maturer thoughts I defer it.

P.S.—We are just sitting down to dinner with a pleasant party, Coleridge, Reynolds the dramatist, and Sam Bloxam: tomorrow (that is, today), Liston, and Wyat of the Wells, dine with us. May this find you as jolly and freakish as we mean to be.

DEAR B. B.—I don’t know why I have delay’d so long writing. ’Twas a fault. The under current of excuse to my mind was that I had heard of the Vessel in which Mitford’s jars were to come;

1826

THE GARRICK PLAYS

717

that it had been obliged to put into Batavia to refit (which accounts for its delay) but was daily expectated. Days are past, and it comes not, and the mermaids may be drinking their Tea out of his China for ought I know; but let’s hope not. In the meantime I have paid £28, etc., for the freight and prime cost, (which I a little expected he would have settled in London.) But do not mention it. I was enabled to do it by a receipt of £30 from Colburn, with whom however I have done. I should else have run short. For I just make ends meet. We will wait the arrival of the Trinkets, and to ascertain their full expence, and then bring in the bill. (Don’t mention it, for I daresay ’twas mere thoughtlessness.)

I am sorry you and yours have any plagues about dross matters. I have been sadly puzzled at the defalcation of more than one third of my income, out of which when entire I saved nothing. But cropping off wine, old books, &c. and in short all that can be call’d pocket money, I hope to be able to go on at the Cottage. Remember, I beg you not to say anything to Mitford, for if he be honest it will vex him: if not, which I as little expect as that you should [not] be, I have a hank still upon the jars.

Colburn had something of mine in last month, which he has had in hand these 7 months, and had lost, or cou’dnt find room for: I was used to different treatment in the London, and have forsworn Periodicals.

I am going thro’ a course of reading at the Museum: the Garrick plays, out of part of which I formed my Specimens: I have Two Thousand to go thro’; and in a few weeks have despatch’d the tythe of ’em. It is a sort of Office to me; hours, 10 to 4, the same. It does me good. Man must have regular occupation, that has been used to it. So A. K. keeps a School! She teaches nothing wrong, I’ll answer for’t. I have a Dutch print of a Schoolmistress; little old-fashioned Fleminglings, with only one face among them. She a Princess of Schoolmistress, wielding a rod for form more than use; the scene an old monastic chapel, with a Madonna over her head, looking just as serious, as thoughtful, as pure, as gentle, as herself. Tis a type of thy friend.

Will you pardon my neglect? Mind, again I say, don’t shew this to M.; let me wait a little longer to Know the event of his Luxuries. (I am sure he is a good fellow, tho’ I made a serious Yorkshire Lad, who met him, stare when I said he was a Clergyman. He is a pleasant Layman spoiled.) Heaven send him his jars uncrack’d, and me my—— Yours with kindest wishes to your daughter and friend, in which Mary joins

I HAVE had much trouble to find Field to-day. No matter. He was packing up for out of town. He has writ a handsomest letter, which you will transmit to Murry with your proofsheets. Seal it.—

Mrs. Hood will drink tea with us on Thursday at ½ past 5 at Latest.

If you shall have the whole book ready soon, it will be best for Murry to see.

DEAR B. B.—the Busy Bee, as Hood after Dr. Watts apostrophises thee, and well dost thou deserve it for thy labors in the Muses’ gardens, wandering over parterres of Think-on-me’s and Forget-me-nots, to a total impossibility of forgetting thee,—thy letter was acceptable, thy scruples may be dismissed, thou art Rectus in Curiâ, not a word more to be said, Verbum Sapienti and so forth, the matter is decided with a white stone, Classically, mark me, and the apparitions vanishd which haunted me, only the Cramp, Caliban’s distemper, clawing me in the calvish part of my nature, makes me ever and anon roar Bullishly, squeak cowardishly, and limp cripple-ishly. Do I write quakerly and simply, ’tis my most Master Mathew-like intention to do it. See Ben Jonson.—I think you told me your acquaintce with the Drama was confin’d to Shakspeare and Miss Bailly: some read only Milton and Croly. The gap is as from an ananas to a Turnip. I have fighting in my head the plots characters situations and sentiments of 400 old Plays (bran new to me) which I have been digesting at the Museum, and my appetite sharpens to twice as many more, which I mean to course over this winter. I can scarce avoid Dialogue fashion in this letter. I soliloquise my meditations, and habitually speak dramatic blank verse without meaning it. Do you see Mitford? he will tell you something of my labors. Tell him I am sorry to have mist seeing him, to have talk’d over those Old Treasures. I am still more sorry for his missing Pots. But I shall be sure of the earliest intelligence of the Lost Tribes. His Sacred Specimens are a thankful addition to my shelves. Marry, I could wish he had been more careful of corrigenda. I have discover’d certain which have slipt his Errata. I put ’em in the next page, as perhaps thou canst transmit them to him. For what purpose, but to grieve him (which yet I should be sorry to do), but then it shews my learning, and the excuse is complimentary, as it implies their correction in a future Edition. His own things in the book are magnificent, and as an old Christ’s Hospitaller I was particularly refreshd with his eulogy on our Edward. Many of the choice excerpta were new to me. Old Christmas is a coming, to the confusion of Puritans, Muggletonians, Anabaptists, Quakers, and that Unwassailing Crew. He cometh not with his wonted gait, he is shrunk 9 inches in the girth, but is yet a Lusty fellow. Hood’s book is mighty clever, and went off 600 copies the 1st day. Sion’s Songs do not disperse so

720

LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

Jan.

quickly. The next leaf is for Revd J. M. In this Adieu thine briefly in a tall friendship