Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to Anne Dorothea Bridget Benson Montagu, [Summer 1827]
DEAR Madam,—I return your List with my name. I
should be sorry that any respect should be going on towards [Clarkson,] and I be left out of the
conspiracy. Otherwise I frankly own that
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| 1827 | THE CLARKSON MEMORIAL | 741 |
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to pillarize a man’s
good feelings in his lifetime is not to my taste. Monuments to goodness, even
after death, are equivocal. I turn away from Howard’s, I scarce know why. Goodness blows no trumpet,
nor desires to have it blown. We should be modest for a modest man—as he is for
himself. The vanities of Life—Art, Poetry, Skill military, are subjects for
trophies; not the silent thoughts arising in a good man’s mind in lonely
places. Was I C[larkson,] I should never be able to walk
or ride near —— again. Instead of bread, we are giving him a stone. Instead of
the locality recalling the noblest moment of his existence, it is a place at
which his friends (that is, himself) blow to the world, “What a good
man is he!” I sat down upon a hillock at Forty Hill yesternight—a
fine contemplative evening,—with a thousand good speculations about mankind.
How I yearned with cheap benevolence! I shall go and inquire of the
stone-cutter, that cuts the tombstones here, what a stone with a short
inscription will cost; just to say—“Here C. Lamb
loved his brethren of mankind.” Everybody will come there to love. As I
can’t well put my own name, I shall put about a subscription:
| |
s. d.
|
|
| Mrs. —— |
5 0 |
|
| Procter |
2 6 |
|
| G. Dyer |
1 0 |
|
| Mr. Godwin |
0 0 |
|
| Mrs. Godwin |
0 0 |
|
| Mr. Irving |
|
a watch-chain |
| Mr. —— |
|
the proceeds of the first edition.* |
| |
——— |
|
| |
8 6 |
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I scribble in haste from here, where we shall be some time.
Pray request Mr. M[ontagu] to advance
the guinea for me, which shall faithfully be forthcoming; and pardon me that I
don’t see the proposal in quite the light that he may. The kindness of
his motives, and his power of appreciating the noble passage, I thoroughly
agree in. With most kind regards to him, I conclude,
Dear Madam,
Yours truly,
C. Lamb.
From Mrs. Leishman’s,
Chase, Enfield.
* A capital book, by the bye, but not
over saleable.
Thomas Clarkson (1797-1837)
The son of the abolitionist of the same name; educated at Bury St. Edmunds, Trinity
College, Cambridge, and the Middle Temple, he was a pleader on the northern circuit and a
London Police magistrate.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of
Biographia Literaria (1817),
On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.
John Howard (1726 c.-1790)
Philanthropist and associate of John Aikin; he published
The State of
the Prisons in England and Wales (1777).
Basil Montagu (1770-1851)
An illegitimate son of the fourth earl of Sandwich, he was educated at Charterhouse and
Christ's College, Cambridge, and afterwards was a lawyer, editor, and friend of Samuel
Romilly, William Godwin, and William Wordsworth.
