N.B. I have writ in the old Hamlet, offer it to Mitford in my name, if he have not seen it. Tis woefully below our editions of it. But keep it, if you like. (What is M. to me?)

With both our loves to Lucy and A. K. Yours Ever

WE have just got your letter. I think Mother Reynolds will go on quietly, Mrs. Scrimpshaw having kittened. The name of the late Laureat was Henry James Pye, and when his 1st Birthday Ode came out, which was very poor, somebody being asked his opinion of it, said:—

And when the Pye was open’d The birds began to sing, And was not this a dainty dish To set before the King!

Pye was brother to old Major Pye, and father to Mrs. Arnold, and uncle to a General Pye, all friends of Miss Kelly. Pye succeeded Thos. Warton, Warton succeeded Wm. Whitehead, Whitehead succeeded Colley Cibber, Cibber succeeded Eusden, Eusden succeeded Thos. Shadwell, Shadwell succeeded Dryden, Dryden succeeded Davenant, Davenant God knows whom. There never was a Rogers a Poet Laureat; there is an old living Poet of that name, a Banker as you know, Author of the “Pleasures of Memory,” where Moxon goes to breakfast in a fine house in the green Park, but he was never Laureat. Southey is the present one, and for anything I know or care, Moxon may succeed him. We have a copy of “Xmas” for you, so you may give your own to Mary as soon as you please. We think you need not have exhibited your mountain shyness before M. B. He is neither shy himself, nor patronizes it in others.—So with many thanks, good-bye. Emma comes on Thursday.

The Poet Laureat, whom Davenant succeeded was Rare ‘Ben Jonson,’ who I believe was the first regular Laureat with the appointment of £100 a year and a Butt of Sack or Canary—so add that to my little list.—C. L.

DEAR Robinson, we are afraid you will slip from us from England without again seeing us. It would be charity to come and see me. I have these three days been laid up with strong rheumatic pains, in loins, back, shoulders. I shriek sometimes from the violence of them. I get scarce any sleep, and the consequence is, I am restless, and want to change sides as I lie, and I cannot turn without resting on my hands, and so turning all my body all at once like a log with a lever. While this rainy weather lasts, I have no hope of alleviation. I have tried flannels and embrocation in vain. Just at the hip joint the pangs sometimes are so excruciating, that I cry out. It is as violent as the cramp, and far more continuous. I am ashamed to whine about these complaints to you, who can ill enter into them. But indeed they are sharp. You go about, in rain or fine at all hours without discommodity. I envy you your immunity at a time of life not much removed from my own. But you owe your exemption to temperance, which it is too late for me to pursue. I in my life time have had my good things. Hence my frame is brittle—yours strong as brass. I never knew any ailment you had. You can go out at night in all weathers, sit up all hours. Well, I don’t want to moralise. I only wish to say that if you are enclined to a game at Doubly Dumby, I would try and bolster up myself in a chair for a rubber or so. My days are tedious, but less so and less painful than my nights. May you never know the pain and difficulty I have in writing so much. Mary, who is most kind, joins in the wish.

I DO confess to mischief. It was the subtlest diabolical piece of malice, heart of man has contrived. I have no more rheumatism than that poker. Never was freer from all pains and aches. Every joint sound, to the tip of the ear from the extremity of the lesser toe. The report of thy torments was blown circuitously here from Bury. I could not resist the jeer. I conceived you writhing, when you should just receive my congratulations. How mad you’d be. Well, it is not in my method to inflict pangs. I leave that to heaven. But in the existing pangs of a friend, I have a share. His disquietude crowns my exemption. I imagine you howling, and pace across the room, shooting out my free arms legs &c. [figure] this way and that way, with an assurance of not kindling a spark of pain from them. I deny that Nature meant us to sympathise with agonies. Those face-contortions, retortions, distortions, have the merriness of antics. Nature meant them for farce—not so pleasant to the actor indeed, but Grimaldi cries when we laugh, and ’tis but one that suffers to make thousands rejoyce.

1829

BETTER SPIRITS AGAIN

809

Mary thought a Letter from me might amuse you in your torment—

DEAR Hood,—We will look out for you on Wednesday, be sure, tho’ we have not eyes like Emma, who, when I made her sit with her back to the window to keep her to her Latin, literally saw round backwards every one that past, and, O, [that] she were here to jump up and shriek out “There are the Hoods!” We have had two pretty letters from her, which I long to show you—together with Enfield in her May beauty. Loves to Jane.

CALAMY is good reading. Mary is always thankful for Books in her way. I won’t trouble you for any in my way yet, having enough to read. Young Hazlitt lives, at least his father does, at 3 or 36 [36 I have it down, with the 6 scratch’d out] Bouverie Street, Fleet Street. If not to be found, his mother’s address is, Mrs. Hazlitt, Mrs. Tomlinson’s, Potters Bar. At one or other he must be heard of. We shall expect you with the full moon. Meantime, our thanks.

DEAR W.,—Introduce this, or omit it, as you like. I think I wrote better about it in a letter to you from India H. If you have that, perhaps out of the two I could patch up a better thing, if you’d return both. But I am very poorly, and have been harassed with an illness of my sister’s.

The Ode was printed in the “New Times” nearly the end of 1825, and I have only omitted some silly lines. Call it a corrected copy.

DEAR B. B.—I am very much grieved indeed for the indisposition of poor Lucy. Your letter found me in domestic troubles. My sister is again taken ill, and I am obliged to remove her out of the house for many weeks, I fear, before I can hope to have her again. I have been very desolate indeed. My loneliness is a little abated by our young friend Emma having just come here for her holydays, and a schoolfellow of hers that was, with her. Still the house is not the same, tho’ she is the same. Mary had been pleasing herself with the prospect of seeing her at this time; and with all their company, the house feels at times a frightful solitude. May you and I in no very long time have a more cheerful theme to write about, and congratulate upon a daughter’s and a Sister’s perfect recovery. Do not be long without telling me how Lucy goes on. I have a right to call her by her quaker-name, you know.

Emma knows that I am writing to you, and begs to be remembered to you with thankfulness for your ready contribution. Her album is filling apace. But of her contributors one, almost the flower of it, a most amiable young man and late acquaintance of mine, has been carried off by consumption, on return from one of the Azores islands, to which he went with hopes of mastering the disease, came back improved, went back to a most close and confined counting house, and relapsed. His name was Dibdin, Grandson of the Songster. You will be glad to hear that Emma, tho’ unknown to you, has given the highest satisfaction in her little place of Governante in a Clergyman’s family, which you may believe by the Parson and his Lady drinking poor Mary’s health on her birthday, tho’ they never saw her, merely because she was a friend of Emma’s, and the Vicar also sent me a brace of partridges. To get out of home themes, have you seen Southey’s Dialogues? His lake descriptions, and the account of his Library at Keswick, are very fine. But he needed not have called up the Ghost of More to hold the conversations with, which might as well have pass’d between A and B, or Caius and Lucius. It is making too free with a defunct Chancellor and Martyr.

I feel as if I had nothing farther to write about—O! I forget the prettiest letter I ever read, that I have received from “Pleasures of Memory” Rogers, in acknowledgment of a Sonnet I sent him on the Loss of his Brother. It is too long to transcribe, but I hope to shew it you some day, as I hope sometime again to see you, when all of us are well. Only it ends thus “We were nearly of an

812

LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

June

age (he was the elder). He was the only person in the world in whose eyes I always appeared young.”—

With kindest regards to A. K. and you

AT midsummer or soon after (I will let you know the previous day), I will take a day with you in the purlieus of my old haunts. No offence has been taken, any more than meant. My

1829

LONDON’S LOST FRIENDLINESS

813

house is full at present, but empty of its chief pride. She is dead to me for many months. But when I see you, then I will say, Come and see me. With undiminished friendship to you both,

How you frighted me! Never write again, “Coleridge is dead,” at the end of a line, and tamely come in with “to his friends” at the beginning of another. Love is quicker, and fear from love, than the transition ocular from Line to Line.

THERE—a fuller plumper juiceier date never dropt from Idumean palm. Am I in the dateive case now? if not, a fig for dates, which is more than a date is worth. I never stood much affected to these limitary specialities. Least of all since the date of my superannuation.

What have I with Time to do? Slaves of desks, twas meant for you.

Dear B. B.—Your hand writing has conveyed much pleasure to me in report of Lucy’s restoration. Would I could send you as good news of my poor Lucy. But some wearisome weeks I must remain lonely yet. I have had the loneliest time near 10 weeks, broken by a short apparition of Emma for her holydays, whose departure only deepend the returning solitude, and by 10 days I have past in Town. But Town, with all my native hankering after it, is not what it was. The streets, the shops are left, but all old friends are gone. And in London I was frightfully convinced of this as I past houses and places—empty caskets now. I have ceased to care almost about any body. The bodies I cared for are in graves, or dispersed. My old Clubs, that lived so long and flourish’d so steadily, are crumbled away. When I took leave of our adopted young friend at Charing Cross, ’twas heavy unfeeling rain, and I had no where to go. Home have I none—and not a sympathising house to turn to in the great city. Never did the waters of the heaven pour down on a forlorner head. Yet I tried 10 days at a sort of a friend’s house, but it was large and straggling—one of the individuals of my old long knot of friends, card players, pleasant companions—that have tumbled to pieces into dust and other things—and I got home on Thursday, convinced that I was better to get home to my

814

LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

July

hole at Enfield, and hide like a sick cat in my corner. Less than a month I hope will bring home Mary. She is at Fulham, looking better in her health than ever, but sadly rambling, and scarce showing any pleasure in seeing me, or curiosity when I should come again. But the old feelings will come back again, and we shall drown old sorrows over a game at Picquet again. But ’tis a tedious cut out of a life of sixty four, to lose twelve or thirteen weeks every year or two. And to make me more alone, our ill-temperd maid is gone, who with all her airs, was yet a home piece of furniture, a record of better days; the young thing that has succeeded her is good and attentive, but she is nothing—and I have no one here to talk over old matters with. Scolding and quarreling have something of familiarity and a community of interest—they imply acquaintance—they are of resentment, which is of the family of dearness. I can neither scold nor quarrel at this insignificant implement of household services; she is less than a cat, and just better than a deal Dresser. What I can do, and do overdo, is to walk, but deadly long are the days—these summer all-day days, with but a half hour’s candlelight and no firelight. I do not write, tell your kind inquisitive Eliza, and can hardly read. In the ensuing Blackwood will be an old rejected farce of mine, which may be new to you, if you see that same dull Medley. What things are all the Magazines now! I contrive studiously not to see them. The popular New Monthly is perfect trash. Poor Hessey, I suppose you see, has failed. Hunt and Clarke too. Your “Vulgar truths” will be a good name—and I think your prose must please—me at least—but ’tis useless to write poetry with no purchasers. ’Tis cold work Authorship without something to puff one into fashion. Could you not write something on Quakerism—for Quakers to read—but nominally addrest to Non Quakers? explaining your dogmas—waiting on the Spirit—by the analogy of human calmness and patient waiting on the judgment? I scarcely know what I mean, but to make Non Quakers reconciled to your doctrines, by shewing something like them in mere human operations—but I hardly understand myself, so let it pass for nothing. I pity you for over-work, but I assure you no-work is worse. The mind preys on itself, the most unwholesome food. I brag’d formerly that I could not have too much time. I have a surfeit. With few years to come, the days are wearisome. But weariness is not eternal. Something will shine out to take the load off, that flags me, which is at present intolerable. I have killed an hour or two in this poor scrawl. I am a sanguinary murderer of time, and would kill him inchmeal just now. But the snake is vital. Well, I shall write merrier anon.—“Tis the present copy of my countenance I send—and to complain is a little to alleviate.— May you enjoy yourself as far as the wicked wood will let you

1829

VERY NEAR DESPAIR

815

—and think that you are not quite alone, as I am. Health to Lucia and to Anna and kind remembces.

MY dear Allsop—I thank you for thinking of my recreation. But I am best here, I feel I am. I have tried town lately, but came back worse. Here I must wait till my loneliness has its natural cure. Besides that, though I am not very sanguine, yet I live in hopes of better news from Fulham, and can not be out of the way. ’Tis ten weeks to-morrow.—I saw Mary a week since, she was in excellent bodily health, but otherwise far from well. But a week or so may give a turn. Love to Mrs. A. and children, and fair weather accompy you.

DEAR Moxon, If you can oblige me with the Garrick Papers or Ann of Gierstien, I shall be thankful. I am almost fearful whether my Sister will be able to enjoy any reading at present for since her coming home, after 12 weeks, she has had an unusual relapse into the saddest low spirits that ever poor creature had, and has been some weeks under medical care. She is unable to see any yet. When she is better I shall be very glad to talk

816

LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

Oct.

over your ramble with you. Have you done any sonnets, can you send me any to overlook? I am almost in despair, Mary’s case seems so hopeless.

I do not want Mr. Jameson or Lady Morgan.

DEAR Gillman,—Allsop brought me your kind message yesterday. How can I account for having not visited Highgate this long time? Change of place seemed to have changed me. How grieved I was to hear in what indifferent health Coleridge has been, and I not to know of it! A little school divinity, well applied, may be healing. I send him honest Tom of Aquin; that was always an obscure great idea to me: I never thought or dreamed to see him in the flesh, but t’other day I rescued him from a stall in Barbican, and brought him off in triumph. He comes to greet Coleridge’s acceptance, for his shoe-latchets I am unworthy to unloose. Yet there are pretty pro’s and con’s, and such unsatisfactory learning in him. Commend me to the question of etiquette—“utrum annunciatio debuerit fieri per angelum”—Quæst. 30, Articulus 2. I protest, till now I had thought Gabriel a fellow of some mark and livelihood, not a simple esquire, as I find him. Well, do not break your lay brains, nor I neither, with these curious nothings. They are nuts to our dear friend, whom hoping to see at your first friendly hint that it will be convenient, I end with begging our very kindest loves

1829

WESTWOOD COTTAGE

817

to Mrs. Gillman. We have had a sorry house of it here. Our spirits have been reduced till we were at hope’s end what to do—obliged to quit this house, and afraid to engage another, till in extremity I took the desperate resolve of kicking house and all down, like Bunyan’s pack; and here we are in a new life at board and lodging, with an honest couple our neighbours. We have ridded ourselves of the cares of dirty acres; and the change, though of less than a week, has had the most beneficial effects on Mary already. She looks two years and a half younger for it. But we have had sore trials.

MY dear Wilson,—I have not opened a packet of unknown contents for many years, that gave me so much pleasure as when I disclosed your three volumes. I have given them a careful perusal, and they have taken their degree of classical books upon my shelves. De Foe was always my darling; but what darkness was I in as to far the larger part of his writings! I have now an epitome of them all. I think the way in which you have done the “Life “the most judicious you could have pitched upon. You have made him tell his own story, and your comments are in keeping with the tale. Why, I never heard of such a work as “the Review.” Strange that in my stall-hunting days I never so much as lit upon an odd volume of it. This circumstance looks as if they were never of any great circulation. But I may have met with ’em,

1829

DANIEL DEFOE AGAIN

819

and not knowing the prize, overpast ’em. I was almost a stranger to the whole history of Dissenters in those reigns, and picked my way through that strange book the “Consolidator” at random. How affecting are some of his personal appeals! what a machine of projects he set on foot! and following writers have picked his pocket of the patents. I do not understand whereabouts in Roxana he himself left off. I always thought the complete-tourist-sort of description of the town she passes through on her last embarkation miserably unseasonable and out of place. I knew not they were spurious. Enlighten me as to where the apocryphal matter commences. I, by accident, can correct one A. D. “Family Instructor,” vol. ii. 1718; you say his first volume had then reached the fourth edition; now I have a fifth, printed for Eman. Matthews, 1717. So have I plucked one rotten date, or rather picked it up where it had inadvertently fallen, from your flourishing date tree, the Palm of Engaddi. I may take it for my pains. I think yours a book which every public library must have, and every English scholar should have. I am sure it has enriched my meagre stock of the author’s works. I seem to be twice as opulent. Mary is by my side just finishing the second volume. It must have interest to divert her away so long from her modern novels. Colburn will be quite jealous. I was a little disappointed at my “Ode to the Treadmill” not finding a place; but it came out of time. The two papers of mine will puzzle the reader, being so akin. Odd that, never keeping a scrap of my own letters, with some fifteen years’ interval I should nearly have said the same things. But I shall always feel happy in having my name go down any how with De Foe’s, and that of his historiographer. I promise myself, if not immortality, yet diuternity of being read in consequence. We have both had much illness this year; and feeling infirmities and fretfulness grow upon us, we have cast off the cares of housekeeping, sold off our goods, and commenced boarding and lodging with a very comfortable old couple next door to where you found us. We use a sort of common table. Nevertheless, we have reserved a private one for an old friend; and when Mrs. Wilson and you revisit Babylon, we shall pray you to make it yours for a season. Our very kindest remembrances to you both.

Hazlitt is going to make your book a basis for a review of De Foe’s Novels in the “Edinbro’.” I wish I had health and spirits to do it. Hone I have not seen, but I doubt not he will be much pleased with your performance. I very much hope you will give us an account of Dunton, &c. But what I should more like to

820

LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

Nov.

see would be a Life and Times of Bunyan. Wishing health to you and long life to your healthy book, again I subscribe me,

PRAY trust me with the “Church History,” as well as the “Worthies.” A moon shall restore both. Also give me back Him of Aquinum. In return you have the light of my countenance. Adieu.

DEAR G.,—The excursionists reached home, and the good town of Enfield a little after four, without slip or dislocation. Little has transpired concerning the events of the back-journey, save that on passing the house of ’Squire Mellish, situate a stone-bow’s cast from the hamlet, Father Westwood, with a good-natured wonderment, exclaimed, “I cannot think what is gone of Mr. Mellish’s rooks. I fancy they have taken flight somewhere; but I have missed them two or three years past.” All this while, according to his fellow-traveller’s report, the rookery was darkening the air above with undiminished population, and deafening all ears

822

LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB

Nov.

but his with their cawings. But nature has been gently withdrawing such phenomena from the notice of Thomas Westwood’s senses, from the time he began to miss the rooks. T. Westwood has passed a retired life in this hamlet of thirty or forty years, living upon the minimum which is consistent with gentility, yet a star among the minor gentry, receiving the bows of the tradespeople and courtesies of the alms’ women daily. Children venerate him not less for his external show of gentry, than they wonder at him for a gentle rising endorsation of the person, not amounting to a hump, or if a hump, innocuous as the hump of the buffalo, and coronative of as mild qualities. ’Tis a throne on which patience seems to sit—the proud perch of a self-respecting humility, stooping with condescension. Thereupon the cares of life have sate, and rid him easily. For he has thrid the angustiæ domûs with dexterity. Life opened upon him with comparative brilliancy. He set out as a rider or traveller for a wholesale house, in which capacity he tells of many hair-breadth escapes that befell him; one especially, how he rode a mad horse into the town of Devizes; how horse and rider arrived in a foam, to the utter consternation of the expostulating hostlers, inn-keepers, &c. It seems it was sultry weather, piping hot; the steed tormented into frenzy with gad-flies, long past being roadworthy; but safety and the interest of the house he rode for were incompatible things; a fall in serge cloth was expected; and a mad entrance they made of it. Whether the exploit was purely voluntary, or partially; or whether a certain personal defiguration in the man part of this extraordinary centaur (non-assistive to partition of natures) might not enforce the conjunction, I stand not to inquire. I look not with ’skew eyes into the deeds of heroes. The hosier that was burnt with his shop, in Field-lane, on Tuesday night, shall have past to heaven for me like a Marian Martyr, provided always, that he consecrated the fortuitous incremation with a short ejaculation in the exit, as much as if he had taken his state degrees of martyrdom in formâ in the market vicinage. There is adoptive as well as acquisitive sacrifice. Be the animus what it might, the fact is indisputable, that this composition was seen flying all abroad, and mine host of Daintry may yet remember its passing through his town, if his scores are not more faithful than his memory. After this exploit (enough for one man), Thomas Westwood seems to have subsided into a less hazardous occupation; and in the twenty-fifth year of his age we find him a haberdasher in Bow Lane: yet still retentive of his early riding (though leaving it to rawer stomachs), and Christmasly at night sithence to this last, and shall to his latest Christmas, hath he, doth he, and shall he, tell after supper the story of the insane steed and the desperate rider. Save for Bedlam or Luke’s no eye could have guessed that

1829

WESTWOOD AND NORRIS

823

melting day what house he rid for. But he reposes on his bridles, and after the ups and downs (metaphoric only) of a life behind the counter—hard riding sometimes, I fear, for poor T. W.—with the scrapings together of the shop, and one anecdote, he hath finally settled at Enfield; by hard economising, gardening, building for himself, hath reared a mansion, married a daughter, qualified a son for a counting-house, gotten the respect of high and low, served for self or substitute the greater parish offices: hath a special voice at vestries; and, domiciliating us, hath reflected a portion of his house-keeping respectability upon your humble servants. We are greater, being his lodgers, than when we were substantial renters. His name is a passport to take off the sneers of the native Enfielders against obnoxious foreigners. We are endenizened. Thus much of T. Westwood have I thought fit to acquaint you, that you may see the exemplary reliance upon Providence with which I entrusted so dear a charge as my own sister to the guidance of a man that rode the mad horse into Devizes. To come from his heroic character, all the amiable qualities of domestic life concentre in this tamed Bellerophon. He is excellent over a glass of grog; just as pleasant without it; laughs when he hears a joke, and when (which is much oftener) he hears it not; sings glorious old sea songs on festival nights; and but upon a slight acquaintance of two years, Coleridge, is as dear a deaf old man to us, as old Norris, rest his soul! was after fifty. To him and his scanty literature (what there is of it, sound) have we flown from the metropolis and its cursed annualists, reviewers, authors, and the whole muddy ink press of that stagnant pool.

Now, Gillman again, you do not know the treasure of the Fullers. I calculate on having massy reading till Christmas. All I want here, is books of the true sort, not those things in boards that moderns mistake for books—what they club for at book clubs.

MY dear B. B.—You are very good to have been uneasy about us, and I have the satisfaction to tell you, that we are both in better health and spirits than we have been for a year or two past; I may say, than we have been since we have been at Enfield. The cause may not appear quite adequate, when I tell you, that a course of ill health and spirits brought us to the determination of giving up our house here, and we are boarding and lodging with a worthy old couple, long inhabitants of Enfield, where everything is done for us without our trouble, further than a reasonable weekly

1829

BANKRUPTS

825

payment. We should have done so before, but it is not easy to flesh and blood to give up an ancient establishment, to discard old Penates, and from house keepers to turn house-sharers. (N.B. We are not in the Workhouse.) Dioclesian in his garden found more repose than on the imperial seat of Rome, and the nob of Charles the Fifth aked seldomer under a monk’s cowl than under the diadem. With such shadows of assimilation we countenance our degradation. With such a load of dignifyd cares just removed from our shoulders, we can the more understand and pity the accession to yours, by the advancement to an Assigneeship. I will tell you honestly B. B. that it has been long my deliberate judgment, that all Bankrupts, of what denomination civil or religious whatever, ought to be hang’d. The pity of mankind has for ages ran in a wrong channel, and has been diverted from poor Creditors (how many I have known sufferers! Hazlitt has just been defrauded of £100 by his Bookseller-friend’s breaking) to scoundrel Debtors. I know all the topics, that distress may come upon an honest man without his fault, that the failure of one that he trusted was his calamity &c. &c. Then let both be hang’d. O how careful it would make traders! These are my deliberate thoughts after many years’ experience in matters of trade. What a world of trouble it would save you, if Friend * * * * * had been immediately hangd, without benefit of clergy, which (being a Quaker I presume) he could not reasonably insist upon. Why, after slaving twelve months in your assign-business, you will be enabled to declare seven pence in the Pound in all human probability. B. B., he should be hanged. Trade will never re-flourish in this land till such a Law is establish’d. I write big not to save ink but eyes, mine having been troubled with reading thro’ three folios of old Fuller in almost as few days, and I went to bed last night in agony, and am writing with a vial of eye water before me, alternately dipping in vial and inkstand. This may enflame my zeal against Bankrupts—but it was my speculation when I could see better. Half the world’s misery (Eden else) is owing to want of money, and all that want is owing to Bankrupts. I declare I would, if the State wanted Practitioners, turn Hangman myself, and should have great pleasure in hanging the first after my salutary law should be establish’d. I have seen no annuals and wish to see none. I like your fun upon them, and was quite pleased with Bowles’s sonnet. Hood is or was at Brighton, but a note, prose or rhime, to him, Robert Street, Adelphi, I am sure would extract a copy of his, which also I have not seen. Wishing you and yours all Health, I conclude while these frail glasses are to me—eyes.