— Volume 6 Letters 1821-1842 / — Volume 6 Letters 1821-1842 / | Author: | |
| Title: | — Volume 6 Letters 1821-1842 |
| Date: | 2004-01-28 |
| Contributor(s): | Widger, David, 1932- [Editor] |
| Size: | 1048127 |
| Identifier: | etext10851 |
| Language: | en |
| Publisher: | Project Gutenberg |
| Rights: | GNU General Public License |
| Tag(s): | lamb charles letter project gutenberg ebook mary vol cost restrictions whatsoever volume letters widger david editor |
| Versions: | original; local mirror; plain HTML (this file); concordance (most frequent 100 words, etc.) |
| Related: | Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts |
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6)
by Charles and Mary Lamb
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6)
Letters 1821-1842
Author: Charles and Mary Lamb
Release Date: January 28, 2004 [EBook #10851]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF C. & M. LAMB, V6 ***
Produced by Keren Vergon, Virginia Paque and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.
THE WORKS OF
CHARLES AND MARY LAMB
VI. LETTERS
1821-1842
THE LETTERS
OF
CHARLES AND MARY LAMB
1821-1842
EDITED BY
E.V. LUCAS
WITH A FRONTISPIECE
CONTENTS OF VOLUME VI
LETTER 1821
264 Charles Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth Jan. 8
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
265 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop No date
From _Harper's Magazine_.
266 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop No date
From _Harper's Magazine_.
267 Charles Lamb to Mrs. William Ayrton Jan. 23
From the original.
268 Charles Lamb to Miss Humphreys Jan. 27
From the original at Rowfant.
269 Charles Lamb to Mrs. William Ayrton. March 15
From the original.
270 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop March 30
From _Harper's Magazine_.
271 Charles Lamb to Leigh Hunt April 18
From Leigh Hunt's _Correspondence_.
272 Charles Lamb to S.T. Coleridge May 1
From the _Life of Charles Mathews_.
273 Charles Lamb to James Gillman May 2
From the _Life of Charles Mathews_.
274 Charles Lamb to John Payne Collier May 16
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
275 Charles Lamb to B.W. Procter ?Summer
From facsimile in Mrs. Field's _A Shelf of
Old Authors_.
276 Charles Lamb to John Taylor June 8
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
277 Charles Lamb to John Taylor July 21
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
278 Charles Lamb to C.A. Elton Aug. 17
From the original in the possession of
Sir Edmund Elton.
279 Charles Lamb to Charles Cowden Clarke Summer
From _Recollections of Writers_.
280 Mary Lamb to Mrs. William Ayrton No date
From the original in the possession of
Mr. A.M.S. Methuen.
281 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop Oct. 21
From the American owner.
282 Charles Lamb to William Ayrton Oct. 27
From the original.
1822.
283 Charles Lamb to S.T. Coleridge March 9
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
284 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth March 20
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
285 Charles Lamb to W. Harrison Ainsworth May 7
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
286 Charles Lamb to William Godwin May 16
Mr. Kegan Paul's text (_William Godwin:
His Friends_, etc.).
287 Charles Lamb to Mrs. John Lamb May 22
From the original in the Bodleian.
288 Charles Lamb to Mary Lamb (_fragment_) Aug.
From Crabb Robinson's _Diary_.
289 Charles Lamb to John Clare Aug. 31
From the original (British Museum).
290 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Sept. 11
From the original (British Museum).
291 Charles Lamb to Barren Field Sept. 22
From the original in the possession of
Mr. B.B. Macgeorge.
292 Charles Lamb to John Howard Payne Autumn
From the _Century Magazine_.
293 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Oct. 9
From the original (British Museum).
294 Charles Lamb to B.R. Haydon Oct. 9
From _Haydon's Correspondence and Table
Talk_.
295 Charles Lamb to John Howard Payne Oct. 22
From the _Century Magazine_.
296 Charles Lamb to B.R. Haydon Oct. 29
From _Haydon's Correspondence and Table
Talk_.
297 Charles Lamb to Sir Walter Scott Oct. 29
From Scott's _Familiar Letters_.
298 Charles Lamb to Thomas Robinson Nov. 11
From the original (Dr. Williams' Library).
299 Charles Lamb to John Howard Payne Nov. 13
From the _Century Magazine_.
300 Mary Lamb to Mrs. James Kenney ?Early Dec.
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
301 Charles Lamb to John Taylor Dec. 7
From _Elia_ (Bell's edition).
302 Charles Lamb to Walter Wilson Dec. 16
From the original (Bodleian).
303 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Dec. 23
From the original (British Museum).
1823.
304 Charles Lamb to John Howard Payne Jan.
From the _Century Magazine_.
305 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth Jan.
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
306 Charles Lamb to Mr. and Mrs. J.D. Collier Jan. 6
From the original in the possession of
Mr. R.B. Adam.
307 Charles Lamb to Charles Aders Jan. 8
From the original (Mr. J. Dunlop).
308 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Jan. 9
From the original (British Museum).
309 Charles Lamb to John Howard Payne Jan. 23
From the _Century Magazine_.
310 Charles Lamb to John Howard Payne Feb. 9
From the _Century Magazine_.
311 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Feb. 17
From the original (British Museum).
312 Charles Lamb to Walter Wilson Feb. 24
From Mr. Hazlitt's text.
313 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton March 11
From the original (British Museum).
314 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton April 5
From the original (British Museum).
315 Charles Lamb to B.W. Procter April 13
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
316 Charles Lamb to Sarah Hutchinson April 25
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
317 Charles Lamb to Miss Hutchinson (?)
(_fragment_) No date
From _Notes and Queries_.
318 Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin No date
From the original in the possession of
Mr. R.W. Dibdin.
319 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton May 3
From the original (British Museum).
320 Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin May 6
From the original in the possession of
Mr. R.W. Dibdin.
321 Mary Lamb to Mrs. Randal Norris June 18
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
322 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton July 10
From the original (British Museum).
323 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop July
From _Harper's Magazine_.
324 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Sept. 2
From the original (British Museum).
325 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop Sept. 6
From _Harper's Magazine_.
326 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop Sept. 9
From _Harper's Magazine_.
327 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop Sept. 10
From _Harper's Magazine_.
328 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop Sept.
From _Harper's Magazine_.
329 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Sept. 17
From the original (British Museum).
330 Charles Lamb to Charles Lloyd
(_fragment_) Autumn
From _Letters and Poems of Bernard Barton_.
331 Charles Lamb to H.F. Cary Oct. 14
From _Memoir of H.F. Cary_.
332 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop ?Oct.
From _Harper's Magazine_.
333 Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin Oct. 28
From the original in the possession of
Mr. R.W. Dibdin.
334 Charles Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt Early Nov.
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
335 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Nov. 21
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
336 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Nov. 22
From the original (British Museum).
337 Charles Lamb to W. Harrison Ainsworth Dec. 9
From the original.
338 Charles Lamb to W. Harrison Ainsworth Dec. 29
From the original.
1824.
339 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Jan. 9
From the original (British Museum).
340 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Jan. 23
From the original (British Museum).
341 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Feb. 25
From the original (British Museum).
342 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton March 24
From the original (British Museum).
343 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Early Spring
From the original (British Museum).
344 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Thomas Allsop April 13
From _Harper's Magazine_.
345 Charles Lamb to William Hone April
From the original in the possession of
Mr. R.A. Potts.
346 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton May 15
From the original in the possession of
Mr. B.B. Macgeorge.
347 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton July 7
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
348 Charles Lamb to W. Marter. July 19
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
349 Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin July 28
From the original in the possession of
Mr. R.W. Dibdin.
350 Charles Lamb to Thomas Hood (?_fragment_) Aug. 10
From the original.
351 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Aug. 17
From the original (British Museum).
352 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Sept. 30
From the original (British Museum).
353 Charles Lamb to Mrs. John Dyer Collier Nov. 2
From the original (South Kensington
Museum).
354 Charles Lamb to B.W. Procter Nov. 11
From Barry Cornwall's _Charles Lamb_
with alterations.
355 Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson Nov. 20
From the original (Dr. Williams' Library).
356 Charles Lamb to Sarah Hutchinson Nov. 25
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
357 Charles Lamb to Leigh Hunt ?Nov.
From Leigh Hunt's _Correspondence_ with
alterations.
358 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Dec. 1
Charles Lamb to Lucy Barton
From the original (British Museum).
1825.
359 Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin Jan. 11
From the original in the possession of
Mr. R.W. Dibdin.
360 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop Jan. 17
From _Harper's Magazine_.
361 Charles Lamb to Sarah Hutchinson Jan. 20
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
362 Charles Lamb to Vincent Novello Jan. 25
From the original (British Museum).
363 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Feb. 10
From the original (British Museum).
364 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning ?Feb.
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
365 Charles Lamb to Sarah Hutchinson. March 1
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
366 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton March 23
From the original (British Museum).
367 Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson March 29
From the original (Dr. Williams' Library).
368 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth April 6
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
369 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton April 6
From the original (British Museum).
370 Charles Lamb to Sarah Hutchinson April 18
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
(Last paragraph from original scrap at
Welbeck Abbey.)
371 Charles Lamb to William Hone May 2
From the original at Rowfant.
372 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth May
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
373 Charles Lamb to Charles Chambers ?May
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
374 Charles Lamb to S.T. Coleridge ?June
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
375 Charles Lamb to Henry Colburn (?) June 14
From the original (South Kensington).
376 Charles Lamb to S.T. Coleridge July 2
From the original (Morrison Collection).
377 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton July 2
From the original (British Museum).
378 Charles Lamb to John Aitken July 5
379 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Aug. 10
From the original (British Museum).
380 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Aug. 10
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
381 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop Sept. 9
From _Harper's Magazine_.
382 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop Sept. 24
From _Harper's Magazine_.
383 Charles Lamb to William Hone Oct. 24
From the original at Rowfant.
384 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop Dec. 5
From _Harper's Magazine_.
385 Charles Lamb to Charles Oilier ?Dec.
From the original (South Kensington).
1826.
386 Charles Lamb to Charles Oilier Early in year
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
387 Charles Lamb to Charles Oilier Jan.
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
388 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Feb. 7
From the original (British Museum).
389 Charles Lamb to Charles Oilier March 16
From the original in the possession of
Mr. R.A. Potts.
390 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton March 20
From the original (British Museum).
391 Charles Lamb to S.T. Coleridge March 22
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
392 Charles Lamb to H.F. Gary April 3
Mr. Hazlitt's text.
393 Charles Lamb to Vincent Novello May 9
From the original (British Museum).
394 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton May 16
From the original (British Museum).
395 Charles Lamb to S.T. Coleridge June 1
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
396 Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin June 30
From the original in the possession of
Mr. R.W. Dibdin.
397 Charles Lamb to Thomas Hill No year
From the original (British Museum).
398 Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin July 14
From the original in the possession of
Mr. R.W. Dibdin.
399 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth Sept. 6
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
400 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon (fragment). No date
401 Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin Sept. 9
From the original in the possession of
Mr. R.W. Dibdin.
402 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Sept. 26
From the original (British Museum).
403 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon ?Sept.
From the original in the possession of
Mr. Henry Poulton.
404 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton No date
From the original (British Museum).
1827.
405 Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson Jan. 20
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
406 Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson Jan. 20
From the original (Dr. Williams' Library).
407 Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson Jan. 29
From the original (Dr. Williams' Library).
408 Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson Jan.
From the original (Dr. Williams' Library).
409 Charles Lamb to B.R. Haydon March
From Taylor's _Life of Haydon_.
410 Charles Lamb to William Hone April
From the original at Rowfant.
411 Charles Lamb to Thomas Hood May
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
412 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton No date
From the original (British Museum).
413 Charles Lamb to William Hone May
From the original at Rowfant.
414 Charles Lamb to William Hone June
From the original at Rowfant.
415 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton June 11
From the original (British Museum).
416 Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson June 26
From the original (British Museum).
417 Charles Lamb to William Hone July
From the original at Rowfant.
418 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon July 17
From the original at Rowfant.
419 Charles Lamb to P.G. Patmore July 19
From Patmore's _My Friends and Acquaintances_.
420 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Shelley July 26
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
421 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Basil Montagu Summer
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
422 Mary Lamb to Lady Stoddart Aug. 9
423 Charles Lamb to Sir John Stoddart
From the original (Messrs. Maggs).
424 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Aug. 10
From the original (British Museum).
425 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Aug. 28
From the original (British Museum).
426 Charles Lamb to P.G. Patmore Sept.
From _My Friends and Acquaintances_.
427 Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin Sept. 5
From the original in the possession of
Mr. R.W. Dibdin.
428 Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin Sept. 13
From the original in the possession of
Mr. R.W. Dibdin.
429 Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin Sept. 18
From the original in the possession of
Mr. R.W. Dibdin.
430 Charles Lamb to Thomas Hood Sept. 18
From the facsimile in Mrs. Balmanno's
_Pen and Pencil_.
431 Charles Lamb to Henry Colburn Sept. 25
From the original (South Kensington).
432 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon ?Sept. 26
From the original in the possession of
Mr. Henry Poulton.
433 Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson Oct. 1
From the original (Dr. Williams' Library).
434 Charles Lamb to John Bates Dibdin Oct. 2
From the original in the possession of
Mr. R.W. Dibdin.
435 Charles Lamb to Barron Field Oct. 4
From the _Memoirs of Charles Matthews_.
436 Charles Lamb to William Hone ?Oct.
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
437 Charles Lamb to Thomas Hood No date
From the _National Review_.
438 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton No date
From the original (British Museum).
439 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Dec. 4
From the original (British Museum).
440 Charles Lamb to Leigh Hunt Dec.
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
441 Charles Lamb to William Hone Dec. 15
442 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop ?Dec.
From _Harper's Magazine_.
443 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop Dec. 20
From _Harper's Magazine_.
444 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Dec. 22
From the original at Rowfant.
445 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton End of year
From the original (British Museum).
1828.
446 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop Jan. 9
From _Harper's Magazine_ with alterations.
447 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon ?Jan.
From the original at Rowfant.
448 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Feb. 18
From the original at Rowfant.
449 Charles Lamb to Charles Cowden Clarke Feb. 25
From _Reminiscences of Writers_.
450 Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson Feb. 26
From the original (Dr. Williams' Library).
451 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon March 19
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
452 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton April 21
From the original (British Museum).
453 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop May 1
From _Harper's Magazine_.
454 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon May 3
From the original.
455 Charles Lamb to Walter Wilson May 17
From the original (British Museum).
456 Charles Lamb to T.N. Talfourd May 20
From the original (Dr. Williams' Library).
457 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth May
From the original (Dr. Williams' Library).
458 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Morgan June 17
459 Mary Lamb to the Thomas Hoods ?Summer
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
460 Charles Lamb to B.R. Haydon Aug.
From Taylor's _Life of Haydon_.
461 Charles Lamb to John Rickman
(_translation_) Oct. 3
462 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Oct. 11
From the original (British Museum).
463 Charles Lamb to Charles Cowden Clarke Oct.
From _Recollections of Writers_.
464 Charles Lamb to Vincent Novello Nov. 6
From _Recollections of Writers_.
465 Charles Lamb to Thomas Hood Late autumn
From _Hood's Own_.
466 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Dec.
Text from Mr. Samuel Davey.
467 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Dec. 5
From the original (British Museum).
468 Charles Lamb to Charles Cowden Clarke Dec.
From _Recollections of Writers_.
469 Charles Lamb to T.N. Talfourd End of year
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
1829.
470 Charles Lamb to George Dyer ?Jan.
From the original (British Museum).
471 Charles Lamb to B.W. Procter Jan.19
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
472 Charles Lamb to B.W. Procter Jan. 22
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
473 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop Jan. 28
From _Harper's Magazine_.
474 Charles Lamb to B.W. Procter Jan. 29
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
475 Charles Lamb to B.W. Procter Early in year
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
476 Charles Lamb to B.W. Procter Feb. 2
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
477 Charles Lamb to Charles Cowden Clarke Feb. 2
From _Recollections of Writers_.
478 Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson Feb. 27
From the original (Dr. Williams' Library).
479 Charles Lamb to Samuel Rogers March 22
From _Rogers and His Contemporaries_.
480 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton March 25
From the original (British Museum).
481 Charles Lamb to Miss Sarah James ?April
Text from Mr. Samuel Davey.
482 Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson ?April
From the original (Dr. Williams' Library).
483 Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson April 17
From the original (Dr. Williams' Library).
484 Charles Lamb to George Dyer April 29
From _The Mirror_, 1841.
485 Charles Lamb to Thomas Hood ?May
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
486 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon No date
From _The Autographic Mirror_.
487 Charles Lamb to Walter Wilson May 28
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
488 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton June 3
From the original (British Museum).
489 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton July 25
From the original (British Museum).
490 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop Late July
From _Harper's Magazine_.
491 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Sept. 22
From the original at Rowfant.
492 Charles Lamb to James Gillman Oct. 26
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
493 Charles Lamb to Vincent Novello Nov. 10
From the original (British Museum).
494 Charles Lamb to Walter Wilson Nov. 15
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
495 Charles Lamb to James Gillman ?Nov. 29
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
496 Charles Lamb to James Gillman Nov. 30
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
497 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Dec. 8
From the original (British Museum).
498 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth
499 Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth Jan. 22
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
500 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Feb. 25
From the original (British Museum).
501 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Williams Feb. 26
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
502 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Williams March 1
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
503 Charles Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt March 4
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
504 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Williams March 5
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
505 Charles Lamb to James Gillman March 8
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
506 Charles Lamb to William Ayrton March 14
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
507 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Williams March 22
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
508 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Williams April 2
From the original in the possession of
Mr. Yates Thompson.
509 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Williams April 9
From the original.
510 Charles Lamb to James Gillman ?Spring
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
511 Charles Lamb to Jacob Vale Asbury ?April
From _The Athenaewn_.
512 Charles Lamb to Jacob Vale Asbury No date
By permission of Mr. Edward Hartley.
513 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Williams April 21
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
514 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey May 10
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
515 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon May 12
From the original at Rowfant.
516 Charles Lamb to Vincent Novello May 14
From the original (British Museum).
517 Charles Lamb to Vincent Novello May 20
From the original (British Museum).
518 Charles Lamb to William Hone May 21
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
519 Charles Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt May 24
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
520 Charles Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt June 3
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
521 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton June 28
From the original (British Museum).
522 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton Aug. 30
From the original (British Museum).
523 Charles Lamb to Samuel Rogers Oct. 5
From _Rogers and His Contemporaries_.
524 Charles Lamb to Vincent Novello Nov. 8
From _Recollections of Writers_.
525 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Nov. 12
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
9526 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon ?Dec.
From the original at Rowfant.
527 Charles Lamb to George Dyer Dec. 20
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
528 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon ?Christmas
From the original (South Kensington).
1831.
529 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Feb. 3
From the original at Rowfant.
530 Charles Lamb to George Dyer Feb. 22
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
531 Charles Lamb to Bernard Barton April 30
From the original (British Museum).
532 Charles Lamb to H.F. Cary May 6
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
533 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon July 14
From the original at Rowfant.
534 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Early Aug.
From the original at Rowfant.
535 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Aug. 5
From the original at Rowfant.
536 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Sept. 5
From the original at Rowfant.
537 Charles Lamb to William Hazlitt, junior Sept. 13
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_Lamb and Hazlitt_).
538 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Oct. 24
From the original at Rowfant.
539 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Dec. 15
From the original at Rowfant.
1832.
540 Charles Lamb to Joseph Hume's daughters No date
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
541 Charles Lamb to C.W. Dilke March 5
From Sir Charles Dilke's original.
542 Charles Lamb to S.T. Coleridge April 14
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
543 Charles Lamb to James Sheridan Knowles ?April
From the original (South Kensington).
544 Charles Lamb to John Forster ?Late April
From the original (South Kensington).
545 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon? June 1
From the original (South Kensington).
546 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop July 2
From _Harper's Magazine_.
547 Charles Lamb to Walter Wilson Aug.
From the original in the Bodleian.
548 Charles Lamb to Crabb Robinson ?Early Oct.
From the original (South Kensington).
549 Charles Lamb to Walter Savage Landor Oct.
From the original (South Kensington).
550 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Late in year
From the original at Rowfant.
551 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Winter
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bonn).
552 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Dec.
From the original (South Kensington).
553 Charles Lamb to John Forster. Dec. 23
From the original (South Kensington).
1833.
554 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Jan.
From Sir Charles Dilke's original.
555 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Jan. 3
From the original at Rowfant.
556 Charles Lamb to John Forster No date
From the original (South Kensington).
557 Charles Lamb to John Forster No date
From the original (South Kensington).
558 Charles Lamb to John Forster No date
From the original (South Kensington).
559 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Jan. 24
From the original at Rowfant.
560 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Feb. 11
From the original (South Kensington).
561 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Feb.
From the original (South Kensington).
562 Charles Lamb to T.N. Talfourd Feb.
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
563 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon No date
From the original in the possession of
Mr. Henry Poulton.
564 Charles Lamb to C.W. Dilke Feb.
From Sir Charles Dilke's original.
565 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Early in year
From the original at Rowfant.
566 Charles Lamb to B.W. Procter. No date
From Procter's Autobiographical Fragment.
567 Charles Lamb to William Hone March 6
From the original (National Portrait Gallery).
568 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon March 19
From the original (South Kensington).
569 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon ?Spring
From the original (South Kensington).
570 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon March 30
From the original at Rowfant.
571 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Spring
From the original at Rowfant.
572 Charles Lamb to John Forster ?March
From the original (South Kensington).
573 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon ?April 10
From the original at Rowfant.
574 Charles Lamb to C.W. Dilke April
From Sir Charles Dilke's original.
575 Charles Lamb to Mrs. William Ayrton April 16
From the original, lately in the possession
of Mr. Edward Ayrton.
576 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon April 25
From the original at Rowfant.
577 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon April 27
From the original at Rowfant.
578 Charles Lamb to the Rev. James Gillman May 7
579 Charles Lamb to John Forster May
From the original (South Kensington).
580 Charles Lamb to John Forster May 12
From the original (South Kensington).
581 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth End of May
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
582 Charles Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt May 31
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
583 Charles Lamb to Mary Betham June 5
From _A House of Letters_.
584 Charles Lamb to Matilda Betham June 5
From _Fraser's Magazine_.
585 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon July 14
From the original at Rowfant.
586 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon July 24
From the original at Rowfant.
587 Charles and Mary Lamb to Edward
and Emma Moxon ?July 31
From the original at Rowfant.
588 Charles Lamb to H.F. Cary Sept. 9
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
589 Charles and Mary Lamb to Edward Moxon Sept. 26
From the original at Rowfant.
590 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Oct. 17
From the original at Rowfant.
591 Charles Lamb to Edward and Emma Moxon Nov. 29
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
592 Charles Lamb to C.W. Dilke Mid. Dec.
From Sir Charles Dilke's original.
593 Charles Lamb to Samuel Rogers Dec. 21
From _Rogers and His Contemporaries_.
594 Charles Lamb to C.W. Dilke No date
From Sir Charles Dilke's original.
595 Charles Lamb to C.W. Dilke No date
From Sir Charles Dilke's original.
1834.
596 Charles Lamb to the printer of
_The Athenaeum_ No date
From Sir Charles Dilke's original.
597 Charles Lamb to Mary Betham Jan. 24
From the original in the possession of
Mr. B.B. Macgeorge.
598 Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon Jan. 28
From the original (South Kensington).
599 Charles Lamb to Miss Fryer Feb. 14
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
600 Charles Lamb to Miss Fryer No date
From the original in the possession of
Mr. A.M.S. Methuen.
601 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth Feb. 22
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
602 Charles Lamb to T.N. Talfourd No date
603 Charles Lamb to Charles Cowden Clarke
(_fragment_) End of June
From the _Life and Labours of Vincent Novello._
604 Charles Lamb to John Forster June 25
From the original (South Kensington).
605 Charles Lamb to J. Fuller Russell Summer
From _Notes and Queries_.
606 Charles Lamb to J. Fuller Russell Summer
From _Notes and Queries_.
607 Charles Lamb to C.W. Dilke End of July
From Sir Charles Dilke's original.
608 Charles Lamb to the Rev. James Gillman Aug. 5
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
609 Charles and Mary Lamb to H.F. Cary Sept. 12
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
610 Charles Lamb to H.F. Cary Oct.
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
611 Charles Lamb to H.F. Cary Oct. 18
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
612 Charles Lamb to Mr. Childs ?Dec.
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
613 Charles Lamb to Mr. Childs No date
614 Charles Lamb to Mrs. George Dyer Dec. 22
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
615 Mary Lamb to Jane Norris Dec. 25
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
616 Mary Lamb to Jane Norris Oct. 3 1842.
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
Last letter. Miss James to Jane Norris July 25 1843.
APPENDIX
Barton's "Spiritual Law"
Barton's "Translation of Enoch"
Talfourd's "Verses in Memory of a Child named after Charles Lamb"
FitzGerald's "Meadows in Spring"
Montgomery's "The Common Lot"
Barry Cornwall's "Epistle to Charles Lamb"
ALPHABETICAL LIST OF LETTERS
INDEX
FRONTISPIECE
CHARLES LAMB (aged 51).
From the painting by Henry Meyer at the India Office.
THE LETTERS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB
1821-1834
LETTER 264
CHARLES LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
[P.M. January 8, 1821.]
Mary perfectly approves of the appropriat'n of the _feathers_, and
wishes them Peacocks for your fair niece's sake!
Dear Miss Wordsworth, I had just written the above endearing words when
Monkhouse tapped me on the shoulder with an invitation to cold goose
pye, which I was not Bird of that sort enough to decline. Mrs. M. I am
most happy to say is better. Mary has been tormented with a Rheumatism,
which is leaving her. I am suffering from the festivities of the season.
I wonder how my misused carcase holds it out. I have play'd the
experimental philosopher on it, that's certain. Willy shall be welcome
to a mince pye, and a bout at Commerce, whenever he comes. He was in our
eye. I am glad you liked my new year's speculations. Everybody likes
them, except the Author of the Pleasures of Hope. Disappointment attend
him! How I like to be liked, and _what I do_ to be liked! They flatter
me in magazines, newspapers, and all the minor reviews. The Quarterlies
hold aloof. But they must come into it in time, or their leaves be waste
paper. Salute Trinity Library in my name. Two special things are worth
seeing at Cambridge, a portrait of Cromwell at Sidney, and a better of
Dr. Harvey (who found out that blood was red) at Dr. Davy's. You should
see them.
Coleridge is pretty well, I have not seen him, but hear often of him
from Alsop, who sends me hares and pheasants twice a week. I can hardly
take so fast as he gives. I have almost forgotten Butcher's meat, as
Plebeian. Are you not glad the Cold is gone? I find winters not so
agreeable as they used to be, when "winter bleak had charms for me." I
cannot conjure up a kind similitude for those snowy flakes--Let them
keep to Twelfth Cakes.
Mrs. Paris, our Cambridge friend, has been in Town. You do not know the
Watfords? in Trumpington Street--they are capital people.
Ask any body you meet, who is the biggest woman in Cambridge--and I'll
hold you a wager they'll say Mrs. Smith.
She broke down two benches in Trinity Gardens, one on the confines of
St. John's, which occasioned a litigation between the societies as to
repairing it. In warm weather she retires into an ice-cellar
(literally!) and dates the returns of the years from a hot Thursday some
20 years back. She sits in a room with opposite doors and windows, to
let in a thorough draught, which gives her slenderer friends
tooth-aches. She is to be seen in the market every morning at 10,
cheapening fowls, which I observe the Cambridge Poulterers are not
sufficiently careful to stump.
Having now answered most of the points containd in your Letter, let me
end with assuring you of our very best kindness, and excuse Mary from
not handling the Pen on this occasion, especially as it has fallen into
so much better hands! Will Dr. W. accept of my respects at the end of a
foolish Letter.
C.L.
[Miss Wordsworth was visiting her brother, Christopher Wordsworth, the
Master of Trinity.
Willy was William Wordsworth, junr.
Lamb's New Year speculations were contained in his _Elia_ essay "New
Year's Eve," in the _London Magazine_ for January, 1821. There is no
evidence that Campbell disapproved of the essay. Canon Ainger suggests
that Lamb may have thus alluded playfully to the pessimism of his
remarks, so opposed to the pleasures of hope. When the _Quarterly_ did
"come in," in 1823, it was with cold words, as we shall see.
"Trinity Library." It is here that are preserved those MSS. of Milton,
which Lamb in his essay "Oxford in the Vacation," in the _London
Magazine_ for October, 1820, says he regrets to have seen.
"Cromwell at Sidney." See Mary Lamb's letter to Miss Hutchinson, August
20, 1815.
"Harvey ... at Dr. Davy's"--Dr. Martin Davy, Master of Caius.
"Alsop." This is the first mention of Thomas Allsop (1795-1880),
Coleridge's friend and disciple, who, meeting Coleridge in 1818, had
just come into Lamb's circle. We shall meet him frequently. Allsop's
_Letters, Conversations and Recollections of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_
contain much matter concerning Lamb.
"Winter bleak had charms for me." I could not find this for the large
edition. It is from Burns' "Epistle to William Simpson," stanza 13.
Mrs. Paris was a sister of William Ayrton and the mother of John Ayrton
Paris, the physician. It was at her house at Cambridge that the Lambs
met Emma Isola, whom we are soon to meet.
"Mrs. Smith." Lamb worked up this portion of his letter into the little
humorous sketch "The Gentle Giantess," printed in the _London Magazine_
for December, 1822 (see Vol. I. of the present edition), wherein Mrs.
Smith of Cambridge becomes the Widow Blacket of Oxford.
"Dr. W."--Dr. Christopher Wordsworth.]
LETTER 265
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[No date. 1821.]
Dear Sir--The _hairs_ of our head are numbered, but those which emanate
from your heart defy arithmetic. I would send longer thanks but your
young man is blowing his fingers in the Passage.
Yours gratefully C.L.
[The date of this scrap is unimportant; but it comes well here in
connection with the reference in the preceding letter.
In _Harper's Magazine_ for December, 1859, were printed fifty of Lamb's
notes to Allsop, all of which are reproduced in at least two editions of
Lamb's letters. I have selected only those which say anything, as for
the most part Lamb was content with the merest message; moreover, the
date is often so uncertain as to be only misleading.
Crabb Robinson says of Allsop, "I believe his acquaintance with Lamb
originated in his sending Coleridge a present of L100 in admiration of
his genius."]
LETTER 266
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[No date. 1821.]
D'r Sir--Thanks for the Birds and your kindness. It was but yesterd'y. I
was contriving with Talf'd to meet you 1/2 way at his chamber. But night
don't do so well at present. I shall want to be home at Dalston by
Eight.
I will pay an afternoon visit to you when you please. I dine at a
chop-house at ONE always, but I can spend an hour with you after that.
Yours truly
C.L.
Would Saturdy serve?
LETTER 267
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAM AYRTON
[Dated at end: Jan. 23, 1821.]
Dear Mrs. Ayrton, my sister desires me, as being a more expert penman
than herself, to say that she saw Mrs. Paris yesterday, and that she is
very much out of spirits, and has expressed a great wish to see your son
William, and Fanny--
I like to write that word _Fanny_. I do not know but it was one reason
of taking upon me this pleasing task--
Moreover that if the said William and Frances will go and sit an hour
with her at any time, she will engage that no one else shall see them
but herself, and the servant who opens the door, she being confined to
her private room. I trust you and the Juveniles will comply with this
reasonable request.
& am
Dear Mrs. Ayrton
your's and yours'
Truly
C. LAMB.
Cov. Gar.
23 Jan. 1821.
[Mrs. Ayrton (_nee_ Arnold) was the wife of William Ayrton, the musical
critic.]
LETTER 268
CHARLES LAMB TO MISS HUMPHREYS
London 27 Jan'y. 1821.
Dear Madam, Carriages to Cambridge are in such request, owing to the
Installation, that we have found it impossible to procure a conveyance
for Emma before Wednesday, on which day between the hours of 3 and 4 in
the afternoon you will see your little friend, with her bloom somewhat
impaired by late hours and dissipation, but her gait, gesture, and
general manners (I flatter myself) considerably improved by--_somebody
that shall be nameless_. My sister joins me in love to all true
Trumpingtonians, not specifying any, to avoid envy; and begs me to
assure you that Emma has been a very good girl, which, with certain
limitations, I must myself subscribe to. I wish I could cure her of
making dog's ears in books, and pinching them on poor Pompey, who, for
one, I dare say, will heartily rejoyce at her departure.
Dear Madam,
Yours truly
foolish C.L.
[Addressed to "Miss Humphreys, with Mrs. Paris, Trumpington Street,
Cambridge." Franked by J. Rickman.
This letter contains the first reference in the correspondence to Emma
Isola, daughter of Charles Isola, Esquire Bedell of Cambridge
University, and granddaughter of Agostino Isola, the Italian critic and
teacher, of Cambridge, among whose pupils had been Wordsworth. Miss
Humphreys was Emma Isola's aunt. Emma seems to have been brought to
London by Mrs. Paris and left with the Lambs.
Pompey seems to have been the Lamb's first dog. Later, as we shall see,
they adopted Dash.]
LETTER 269
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAM AYRTON
[Dated at end: March 15, 1821.]
Dear Madam, We are out of town of necessity till Wednesday next, when we
hope to see one of you at least to a rubber. On some future Saturday we
shall most gladly accept your kind offer. When I read your delicate
little note, I am ashamed of my great staring letters.
Yours most truly
CHARLES LAMB.
Dalston near Hackney
15 Mar. 1821.
[In my large edition I give a facsimile of this letter.]
LETTER 270
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
30 March, 1821.
My dear Sir--If you can come next Sunday we shall be equally glad to see
you, but do not trust to any of Martin's appointments, except on
business, in future. He is notoriously faithless in that point, and we
did wrong not to have warned you. Leg of Lamb, as before; hot at 4. And
the heart of Lamb ever.
Yours truly, C.L.
LETTER 271
CHARLES LAMB TO LEIGH HUNT
_Indifferent Wednesday_ [April 18], 1821.
Dear Hunt,--There was a sort of side talk at Mr. Novello's about our
spending _Good Friday_ at Hampstead, but my sister has got so bad a
cold, and we both want rest so much, that you shall excuse our putting
off the visit some little time longer. Perhaps, after all, you know
nothing of it.--
Believe me, yours truly, C. LAMB.
LETTER 272
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
May 1st [1821],
Mr. Gilman's, Highgate.
Mr. C.--I will not fail you on Friday by six, and Mary, perhaps,
earlier. I very much wish to meet "Master Mathew," and am much obliged
to the G----s for the opportunity. Our kind respects to them
always.--ELIA.
Extract from a MS. note of S.T.C. in my Beaumont and Fletcher, dated
April 17th 1807.
_Midnight_.
"God bless you, dear Charles Lamb, I am dying; I feel I have not many
weeks left."
[Master Mathew is in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in His Humour."
Lamb's "Beaumont and Fletcher" is in the British Museum. The note quoted
by Lamb is not there, or perhaps it is one that has been crossed out.
This still remains: "N.B. I shall not be long here, Charles! I gone, you
will not mind my having spoiled a book in order to leave a Relic.
S.T.C., Oct. 1811."]
LETTER 273
CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN
[Dated at end: 2 May, 1821.]
Dear Sir--You dine so late on Friday, it will be impossible for us to go
home by the eight o'clock stage. Will you oblige us by securing us beds
at some house from which a stage goes to the Bank in the morning? I
would write to Coleridge, but cannot think of troubling a dying man with
such a request.
Yours truly, C. LAMB.
If the beds in the town are all engaged, in consequence of Mr. Mathews's
appearance, a hackney-coach will serve. Wednes'y. 2 May '21.
We shall neither of us come much before the time.
[Mrs. Mathews (who was half-sister of Fanny Kelly) described this
evening in her _Memoirs_ of her husband, 1839. Her account of Lamb is
interesting:--
Mr. Lamb's first approach was not prepossessing. His figure was
small and mean; and no man certainly was ever less beholden to his
tailor. His "bran" new _suit_ of black cloth (in which he affected
several times during the day to take great pride, and to cherish as
a novelty that he had long looked for and wanted) was drolly
contrasted with his very rusty silk stockings, shown from his knees,
and his much too large _thick_ shoes, without polish. His shirt
rejoiced in a wide ill-plaited frill, and his very small, tight,
white neckcloth was hemmed to a fine point at the ends that formed
part of the little bow. His hair was black and sleek, but not
formal, and his face the gravest I ever saw, but indicating great
intellect, and resembling very much the portraits of King Charles I.
Mr. Coleridge was very anxious about his _pet_ Lamb's first
impression upon my husband, which I believe his friend saw; and
guessing that he had been extolled, he mischievously resolved to
thwart his panegyrist, disappoint the strangers, and altogether to
upset the suspected plan of showing him off.
The Mathews' were then living at Ivy Cottage, only a short distance from
the Grove, Highgate, where the famous Mathews collection of pictures was
to be seen of which Lamb subsequently wrote in the _London Magazine_.
Here should come a note to Ayrton saying that Madame Noblet is the least
graceful dancer that Lamb ever "did not see."]
LETTER 274
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN PAYNE COLLIER
May 16, 1821.
Dear J.P.C.,--Many thanks for the "Decameron:" I have not such a
gentleman's book in my collection: it was a great treat to me, and I got
it just as I was wanting something of the sort. I take less pleasure in
books than heretofore, but I like books about books. In the second
volume, in particular, are treasures--your discoveries about "Twelfth
Night," etc. What a Shakespearian essence that speech of Osrades for
food!--Shakespeare is coarse to it--beginning "Forbear and eat no more."
Osrades warms up to that, but does not set out ruffian-swaggerer. The
character of the Ass with those three lines, worthy to be set in gilt
vellum, and worn in frontlets by the noble beasts for ever--
"Thou would, perhaps, he should become thy foe,
And to that end dost beat him many times:
He cares not for himself, much less thy blow."
Cervantes, Sterne, and Coleridge, have said positively nothing for asses
compared with this.
I write in haste; but p. 24, vol. i., the line you cannot appropriate is
Gray's sonnet, specimenifyed by Wordsworth in first preface to L.B., as
mixed of bad and good style: p. 143, 2nd vol., you will find last poem
but one of the collection on Sidney's death in Spenser, the line,
"Scipio, Caesar, Petrarch of our time."
This fixes it to be Raleigh's: I had guess'd it to be Daniel's. The last
after it, "Silence augmenteth rage," I will be crucified if it be not
Lord Brooke's. Hang you, and all meddling researchers, hereafter, that
by raking into learned dust may find me out wrong in my conjecture!
Dear J.P.C., I shall take the first opportunity of personally thanking
you for my entertainment. We are at Dalston for the most part, but I
fully hope for an evening soon with you in Russell or Bouverie Street,
to talk over old times and books. Remember _us_ kindly to Mrs. J.P.C.
Yours very kindly, CHARLES LAMB. I write in misery.
N.B.--The best pen I could borrow at our butcher's: the ink, I verily
believe, came out of the kennel.
[Collier's _Poetical Decameron_, in two volumes, was published in 1820:
a series of imaginary conversations on curious and little-known books.
His "Twelfth Night" discoveries will be found in the Eighth
Conversation; Collier deduces the play from Barnaby Rich's _Farewell to
Military Profession_, 1606. He also describes Thomas Lodge's
"Rosalynde," the forerunner of "As You Like It," in which is the
character Rosader, whom Lamb calls Osrades. His speech for food runs
thus:--
It hapned that day that _Gerismond_, the lawfull king of _France_
banished by _Torismond_, who with a lustie crew of outlawes liued in
that Forrest, that day in honour of his birth, made a feast to all
his bolde yeomen, and frolickt it with store of wine and venison,
sitting all at a long table vnder the shadow of Limon trees: to that
place by chance fortune conducted Rosader, who seeing such a crew of
braue men, hauing store of that for want of which hee and Adam
perished, hee slept boldly to the boords end, and saluted the
Company thus.--Whatsoeuer thou be that art maister of these lustie
squires, I salute thee as graciously as a man in extreame distresse
may: knowe that I and a fellow friend of mine, are here famished in
the forrest for want of foode: perish we must, vnlesse relieued by
thy fauours. Therefore if thou be a Gentleman, giue meate to men,
and such as are euery way worthie of life: let the proudest Squire
that sits at thy table rise and encounter with me in any honourable
point of activitie whatsoeuer, and if he and thou proue me not a
man, send mee away comfortlesse: if thou refuse this, as a niggard
of thy cates, I will haue amongst you with my sword, for rather wil
I die valiantly, then perish with so cowardly an extreame (Collier's
_Poetical Decameron_, 174, Eighth Conversation).
Lamb compares with that the passage in "As You Like It," II., 7, 88,
beginning with Orlando's "Forbear, and eat no more." The character of
the ass is quoted by Collier from an old book, _The Noblenesse of the
Asse_, 1595, in the Third Conversation:--
Thou wouldst (perhaps) he should become thy foe,
And to that end doost beat him many times;
He cares not for himselfe, much lesse thy blowe.
Lamb wrote more fully of this passage in an article on the ass
contributed to Hone's _Every-Day Book_ in 1825 (see Vol. I. of the
present edition).
The line from Gray's sonnet on the death of Mr. Richard West was this:--
And weep the more because I weep in vain.
"Scipio, Caesar," etc. This line runs, in the epitaph on Sidney,
beginning "To praise thy life"--
Scipio, Cicero, and Petrarch of our time!
It is generally supposed to be by Raleigh. The next poem, "Silence
Augmenteth Grief," is attributed by Malone to Sir Edward Dyer, and by
Hannah to Raleigh.]
LETTER 275
CHARLES LAMB TO B.W. PROCTER
[No date. ?Summer, 1821.]
Dear Sir, The _Wits_ (as Clare calls us) assemble at my Cell (20 Russell
St. Cov.-Gar.) this evening at 1/4 before 7. Cold meat at 9. Puns at--a
little after. Mr. Cary wants to see you, to scold you. I hope you will
not fail. Yours &c. &c. &c.
C. LAMB.
Thursday.
I am sorry the London Magazine is going to be given up.
[I assume the date of this note to be summer, 1821, because it was then
that Baldwin, Cradock & Joy, the _London Magazine's_ first publishers,
gave it up. The reason was the death of John Scott, the editor, and
probably to a large extent the originator, of the magazine. It was sold
to Taylor & Hessey, their first number being dated July, 1821.
Scott had become involved in a quarrel with _Blackwood_, which reached
such a pitch that a duel was fought, between Scott and Christie, a
friend of Lockhart's. The whole story, which is involved, and indeed not
wholly clear, need not be told here: it will be found in Mr. Lang's
memoir of Lockhart. The meeting was held at Chalk Farm on February 16,
1821. Peter George Patmore, sub-editor of the _London_, was Scott's
second. Scott fell, wounded by a shot which Christie fired purely in
self-defence. He died on February 27.
Mr. Cary. Henry Francis Cary the translator of Dante and a contributor
to the _London Magazine_.
The _London Magazine_ had four periods. From 1820 to the middle of 1821,
when it was Baldwin, Cradock & Joy's. From 1821 to the end of 1824, when
it was Taylor & Hessey's at a shilling. From January, 1825, to August of
that year, when it was Taylor & Hessey's at half-a-crown; and from
September, l825, to the end, when it was Henry Southern's, and was
published by Hunt & Clarke.]
LETTER 276
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN TAYLOR
Margate, June 8, 1821.
Dear Sir,--I am extremely sorry to be obliged to decline the article
proposed, as I should have been flattered with a Plate accompanying it.
In the first place, Midsummer day is not a topic I could make anything
of--I am so pure a Cockney, and little read, besides, in May games and
antiquities; and, in the second, I am here at Margate, spoiling my
holydays with a Review I have undertaken for a friend, which I shall
barely get through before my return; for that sort of work is a hard
task to me. If you will excuse the shortness of my first
contribution-and I _know_ I can promise nothing more for July--I will
endeavour a longer article for _our next_. Will you permit me to say
that I think Leigh Hunt would do the article you propose in a masterly
manner, if he has not outwrit himself already upon the subject. I do not
return the proof--to save postage--because it is correct, with ONE
EXCEPTION. In the stanza from Wordsworth, you have changed DAY into AIR
for rhyme-sake: DAY is the right reading, and I IMPLORE you to restore
it.
The other passage, which you have queried, is to my ear correct. Pray
let it stand.
D'r S'r, yours truly, C. LAMB.
On second consideration, I do enclose the proof.
[John Taylor (1781-1864), the publisher, with Hessey, of the _London
Magazine_ was, in 1813, the first publicly to identify Sir Philip
Francis with Junius. Taylor acted as editor of the _London Magazine_
from 1821 to 1824, assisted by Thomas Hood. Later his interests were
centred in currency questions.
"I am here at Margate." I do not know what review Lamb was writing. If
written and published it has not been reprinted. It was on this visit to
Margate that Lamb met Charles Cowden Clarke.
"My first contribution." The first number to bear Taylor & Hessey's name
was dated July, but they had presumably acquired the rights in the
magazine before then. Lamb's first contribution to the _London Magazine_
had been in August, 1820, "The South-Sea House."
The proof which Lamb returned was that of the _Elia_, essay on "Mackery
End in Hertfordshire," printed in the July number of the _London
Magazine_, in which he quoted a stanza from Wordsworth's "Yarrow
Visited":--
But thou, that didst appear so fair
To fond imagination,
Dost rival in the light of day
Her delicate creation.
Here should come a scrap from Lamb to Ayrton, dated July 17, 1821,
referring to the Coronation. Lamb says that in consequence of this event
he is postponing his Wednesday evening to Friday.]
LETTER 277
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN TAYLOR
July 21, 1821.
D'r Sir,--The _Lond. Mag._ is chiefly pleasant to me, because some of my
friends write in it. I hope Hazlitt intends to go on with it, we cannot
spare Table Talk. For myself I feel almost exhausted, but I will try my
hand a little longer, and shall not at all events be written out of it
by newspaper paragraphs. Your proofs do not seem to want my helping
hand, they are quite correct always. For God's sake change _Sisera_ to
_Jael_. This last paper will be a choke-pear I fear to some people, but
as you do not object to it, I can be under little apprehension of your
exerting your Censorship too rigidly.
Thanking you for your extract from M'r. E.'s letter,
I remain, D'r Sir,
Your obliged,
C. LAMB.
[Hazlitt continued his Table Talk in the _London Magazine_ until
December, 1821.
Lamb seems to have been treated foolishly by some newspaper critic; but
I have not traced the paragraphs in question.
The proof was that of the _Elia_ essay "Imperfect Sympathies," which was
printed (with a fuller title) in the number for August, 1821. The
reference to Jael is in the passage on Braham and the Jewish character.
I do not identify Mr. E. Possibly Elton. See next letter.
Here should come a further letter to Taylor, dated July 30, 1821, in
which Lamb refers to some verses addressed to him by "Olen" (Charles
Abraham Elton: see note to next letter) in the _London Magazine_ for
August, remonstrating with him for the pessimism of the _Elia_ essay
"New Year's Eve" (see Vol. II. of this edition).
Lamb also remarks that he borrowed the name Elia (pronounced Ellia) from
an old South-Sea House clerk who is now dead.
Elia has recently been identified by Mr. R.W. Goulding, the librarian at
Welbeck Abbey, as F. Augustus Elia, author of a French tract entitled
_Consideration sur l'etat actuel de la France au mois de Juin 1815. Par
une anglais_. It is privately reprinted in _Letters from the originals
at Welbeck Abbey_, 1909.]
LETTER 278
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES ABRAHAM ELTON
India House
to which place all letters addressed to C.L. commonly come.
[August 17, 1821 (?).]
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
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.
I will say nothing of the tenderest parts in your own little volume, at
the end of such a slatternly scribble as this, but indeed they cost us
some tears. I scrawl away because of interruptions every moment. You
guess how it is in a busy office--papers thrust into your hand when your
hand is busiest--and every anti-classical disavocation.
[_Conclusion cut away_.]
[Sir Charles Abraham Elton (1778-1853) seems to have sent Lamb a number
of his books, principally his _Specimens of the Classical_ _Poets ...
from Homer to Tryphiodorus translated into English Verse_, Baldwin,
1814, in three volumes. Lamb refers first to the passage from Hesiod's
_Theogony_, and then to his _Works and Days_ (which Chapman
translated)--"Dispensation of Providence to the Just and Unjust."
Apollonius Rhodius was the author of _The Argonautics_. Lamb then passes
on to Virgil. For the death of Mezentius see the _Aeneid_, Book X., at
the end. The makers of broadsides had probably credited Dick Turpin with
a dying speech.
"Those notes of Bryant." Lamb possibly refers to Jacob Bryant's _Essay
on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer_, 1775, or his pamphlet on
the Trojan War, 1795, 1799.
"Your own little volume." Probably _The Brothers and Other Poems_, by
Elton, 1820.]
LETTER 279
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE
[Summer, 1821.]
My dear Sir--Your letter has lain in a drawer of my desk, upbraiding me
every time I open the said drawer, but it is almost impossible to answer
such a letter in such a place, and I am out of the habit of replying to
epistles otherwhere than at office. You express yourself concerning H.
like a true friend, and have made me feel that I have somehow neglected
him, but without knowing very well how to rectify it. I live so remote
from him--by Hackney--that he is almost out of the pale of visitation at
Hampstead. And I come but seldom to Cov't Gard'n this summer time--and
when I do, am sure to pay for the late hours and pleasant Novello
suppers which I incur. I also am an invalid. But I will hit upon some
way, that you shall not have cause for your reproof in future. But do
not think I take the hint unkindly. When I shall be brought low by any
sickness or untoward circumstance, write just such a letter to some
tardy friend of mine--or come up yourself with your friendly Henshaw
face--and that will be better. I shall not forget in haste our casual
day at Margate. May we have many such there or elsewhere! God bless you
for your kindness to H., which I will remember. But do not show N. this,
for the flouting infidel doth mock when Christians cry God bless us.
Yours and _his, too_, and all our little circle's most affect'e.
C. LAMB.
Mary's love included.
[Charles Cowden Clarke (1787-1877) was the son of a schoolmaster who had
served as usher with George Dyer at Northampton. Afterwards he
established a school at Enfield, where Keats was one of the scholars.
Charles Cowden Clarke, at this time a bookseller, remained one of Keats'
friends and was a friend also of Leigh Hunt's, on whose behalf he seems
to have written to Lamb. Later he became a partner of Alfred Novello,
the musical publisher, son of Vincent Novello. In 1828 he married Mary
Victoria Novello.
"Friendly Henshaw face." I cannot explain this.
Leigh Hunt left England for Italy in November, 1821, to join Shelley and
Byron.
Here should come a brief note to Allan Cunningham asking him to an
evening party of _London Magazine_ contributors at 20 Russell St., given
in the Boston Bibliophile edition.]
LETTER 280
MARY LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAM AYRTON
[No date. ?1821.]
Thursday Morning.
MY dear friend,
The kind interest you took in my perplexities of yesterday makes me feel
that you will be well pleased to hear I got through my complicated
business far better than I had ventured to hope I should do. In the
first place let me thank you, my good friend, for your good advice; for,
had I not gone to Martin first he would have sent a senseless letter to
Mr. Rickman, and _now_ he is coming here to-day in order to frame one in
conjunction with my brother.
What will be Mr. Rickman's final determination I know not, but he and
Mrs. Rickman both gave me a most kind reception, and a most patient
hearing, and then Mr. R. walked with me as far as Bishopsgate Street,
conversing the whole way on the same unhappy subject. I will see you
again the very first opportunity till when farewel with grateful thanks.
How senseless I was not to make you go back in that empty coach. I never
have but one idea in my poor head at a time.
Yours affectionately
M. LAMB.
at Mr. Coston's
No. 14 Kingsland Row Dalston.
[The explanation of this letter is found in an entry in Crabb Robinson's
_Diary_, the unpublished portion, which tells us that owing to certain
irregularities Rickman, who was Clerk Assistant at the table of the
House of Commons, had been obliged to discharge Martin Burney, who was
one of his clerks.
Here should come another scrap from Lamb to Ayrton, dated August 14,
stating that at to-morrow's rubber the windows will be closed on account
of Her Majesty's death. Her Majesty was Queen Caroline, whom Lamb had
championed. She died on August 7.]
LETTER 281
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
Oct. 21, 1819.
My dear Sir, I have to thank you for a fine hare, and unless I am
mistaken for _two_, the first I received a week since, the account given
with it was that it came from Mr. Alfourd--I have no friend of that
name, but two who come near it
Mr. Talfourd
Mr. Alsop
so my gratitude must be divided between you, till I know the true
sender. We are and shall be some time, I fear, at Dalston, a distance
which does not improve hares by the circuitous route of Cov't Garden,
though for the sweetness of _this last_ I will answer. We dress it
to-day. I suppose you know my sister has been & is ill. I do not see
much hopes, though there is a glimmer, of her speedy recovery. When we
are all well, I hope to come among our town friends, and shall have
great pleasure in welcoming you from Beresford Hall.
Yours, & old Mr. Walton's, & honest Mr. Cotton's Piscatorum Amicus, C.L.
India House 19 Oct. 21
LETTER 282
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM AYRTON
[Oct. 27, 1821.]
I Come, Grimalkin! Dalston, near Hackney, 27th Oct'r. One thousand 8
hundred and twenty one years and a wee-bit since you and I were
redeemed. I doubt if _you_ are done properly yet.
[A further letter to Ayrton, dated from Dalston, October 30, is printed
by Mr. Macdonald, in which Lamb speaks of his sister's illness and the
death of his brother John, who died on October 26, aged fifty-eight. It
is reasonable to suppose that Lamb, when the above note was written, was
unaware of his brother's death (see note to Letter 284 on page 610). On
October 26, however, he had written to the editor of the _London
Magazine_ saying that he was most uncomfortably situated at home and
expecting some trouble which might prevent further writing for some
time--which may have been an allusion to his brother's illness or to
signs of Mary Lamb's approaching malady.
Here should come a note to William Hone, evidently in reply to a comment
on Lamb's essay on "Saying Grace."
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Rickman, dated November 20, 1821,
referring to Admiral Burney's death. "I have been used to death lately.
Poor Jim White's departure last year first broke the spell. I had been
so fortunate as to have lost no friends in that way for many long years,
and began to think people did not die." He says that Mary Lamb has
recovered from a long illness and is pretty well resigned to John Lamb's
death.]
LETTER 283
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
March 9th, 1822.
Dear C.,--It gives me great satisfaction to hear that the pig turned out
so well--they are interesting creatures at a certain age--what a pity
such buds should blow out into the maturity of rank bacon! You had all
some of the crackling --and brain sauce--did you remember to rub it with
butter, and gently dredge it a little, just before the crisis? Did the
eyes come away kindly with no Oedipean avulsion? Was the crackling the
colour of the ripe pomegranate? Had you no complement of boiled neck of
mutton before it, to blunt the edge of delicate desire? Did you flesh
maiden teeth in it? Not that I sent the pig, or can form the remotest
guess what part Owen could play in the business. I never knew him give
anything away in my life. He would not begin with strangers. I suspect
the pig, after all, was meant for me; but at the unlucky juncture of
time being absent, the present somehow went round to Highgate. To
confess an honest truth, a pig is one of those things I could never
think of sending away. Teals, wigeons, snipes, barn-door fowl, ducks,
geese--your tame villatic things--Welsh mutton, collars of brawn,
sturgeon, fresh or pickled, your potted char, Swiss cheeses, French
pies, early grapes, muscadines, I impart as freely unto my friends as to
myself. They are but self-extended; but pardon me if I stop
somewhere--where the fine feeling of benevolence giveth a higher smack
than the sensual rarity--there my friends (or any good man) may command
me; but pigs are pigs, and I myself therein am nearest to myself. Nay, I
should think it an affront, an undervaluing done to Nature who bestowed
such a boon upon me, if in a churlish mood I parted with the precious
gift. One of the bitterest pangs of remorse I ever felt was when a
child--when my kind old aunt had strained her pocketstrings to bestow a
sixpenny whole plum-cake upon me. In my way home through the Borough, I
met a venerable old man, not a mendicant, but thereabouts--a
look-beggar, not a verbal petitionist; and in the coxcombry of
taught-charity I gave away the cake to him. I walked on a little in all
the pride of an Evangelical peacock, when of a sudden my old aunt's
kindness crossed me--the sum it was to her--the pleasure she had a right
to expect that I--not the old impostor --should take in eating her
cake--the cursed ingratitude by which, under the colour of a Christian
virtue, I had frustrated her cherished purpose. I sobbed, wept, and took
it to heart so grievously, that I think I never suffered the like--and I
was right. It was a piece of unfeeling hypocrisy, and proved a lesson to
me ever after. The cake has long been masticated, consigned to dunghill
with the ashes of that unseasonable pauper.
But when Providence, who is better to us all than our aunts, gives me a
pig, remembering my temptation and my fall, I shall endeavour to act
towards it more in the spirit of the donor's purpose.
Yours (short of pig) to command in everything. C.L.
[This letter probably led to the immediate composition of the _Elia_
essay "A Dissertation on Roast Pig" (see Vol. II. of the present
edition), which was printed in the _London Magazine_ for September,
1822. See also "Thoughts on Presents of Game," Vol. I. of this edition.
"Owen." Lamb's landlord in Russell Street.
"My kind old aunt... the Borough." This is rather perplexing. Lamb, to
the best of our knowledge, never as a child lived anywhere but in the
Temple. His only aunt of whom we know anything lived with the family
also in the Temple. But John Lamb's will proves Lamb to have had two
aunts. The reference to the Borough suggests therefore that the aunt in
question was not Sarah Lamb (Aunt Hetty) but her sister.]
LETTER 284
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
20th March, 1822.
My dear Wordsworth--A letter from you is very grateful, I have not seen
a Kendal postmark so long! We are pretty well save colds and rheumatics,
and a certain deadness to every thing, which I think I may date from
poor John's Loss, and another accident or two at the same time, that has
made me almost bury myself at Dalston, where yet I see more faces than I
could wish. Deaths over-set one and put one out long after the recent
grief. Two or three have died within this last two twelvem'ths, and so
many parts of me have been numbed. One sees a picture, reads an
anecdote, starts a casual fancy, and thinks to tell of it to this person
in preference to every other--the person is gone whom it would have
peculiarly suited. It won't do for _another_. Every departure destroys a
class of sympathies. There's Capt. Burney gone!--what fun has whist now?
what matters it what you lead, if you can no longer fancy him looking
over you? One never hears any thing, but the image of the particular
person occurs with whom alone almost you would care to share the
intelligence. Thus one distributes oneself about--and now for so many
parts of me I have lost the market. Common natures do not suffice me.
Good people, as they are called, won't serve. I want individuals. I am
made up of queer points and I want so many answering needles. The going
away of friends does not make the remainder more precious. It takes so
much from them as there was a common link. A. B. and C. make a party. A.
dies. B. not only loses A. but all A.'s part in C. C. loses A.'s part in
B., and so the alphabet sickens by subtraction of interchangeables. I
express myself muddily, capite dolente. I have a dulling cold. My theory
is to enjoy life, but the practice is against it. I grow ominously tired
of official confinement. Thirty years have I served the Philistines, and
my neck is not subdued to the yoke. You don't know how wearisome it is
to breathe the air of four pent walls without relief day after day, all
the golden hours of the day between 10 and 4 without ease or
interposition. Taedet me harum quotidianarum formarum, these
pestilential clerk faces always in one's dish. O for a few years between
the grave and the desk! they are the same, save that at the latter you
are outside the machine. The foul enchanter--letters four do form his
name--Busirane is his name in hell--that has curtailed you of some
domestic comforts, hath laid a heavier hand on me, not in present
infliction, but in taking away the hope of enfranchisement. I dare not
whisper to myself a Pension on this side of absolute incapacitation and
infirmity, till years have sucked me dry. Otium cum indignitate. I had
thought in a green old age (O green thought!) to have retired to
Ponder's End--emblematic name how beautiful! in the Ware road, there to
have made up my accounts with Heaven and the Company, toddling about
between it and Cheshunt, anon stretching on some fine Izaac Walton
morning to Hoddesdon or Amwell, careless as a Beggar, but walking,
walking ever, till I fairly walkd myself off my legs, dying walking!
The hope is gone. I sit like Philomel all day (but not singing) with my
breast against this thorn of a Desk, with the only hope that some
Pulmonary affliction may relieve me. Vide Lord Palmerston's report of
the Clerks in the war office (Debates, this morning's Times) by which it
appears in 20 years, as many Clerks have been coughd and catarrhd out of
it into their freer graves.
Thank you for asking about the Pictures. Milton hangs over my fire side
in Covt. Card, (when I am there), the rest have been sold for an old
song, wanting the eloquent tongue that should have set them off!
You have gratifyd me with liking my meeting with Dodd. For the Malvolio
story--the thing is become in verity a sad task and I eke it out with
any thing. If I could slip out of it I sh'd be happy, but our chief
reputed assistants have forsaken us. The opium eater crossed us once
with a dazzling path, and hath as suddenly left us darkling; and in
short I shall go on from dull to worse, because I cannot resist the
Bookseller's importunity--the old plea you know of authors, but I
believe on my part sincere.
Hartley I do not so often see, but I never see him in unwelcome hour. I
thoroughly love and honor him.
I send you a frozen Epistle, but it is winter and dead time of the year
with me. May heaven keep something like spring and summer up with you,
strengthen your eyes and make mine a little lighter to encounter with
them, as I hope they shall yet and again, before all are closed.
Yours, with every kind rem'be.
C.L.
I had almost forgot to say, I think you thoroughly right about
presentation copies. I should like to see you print a book I should
grudge to purchase for its size. D----n me, but I would have it though!
[John Lamb's will left everything to his brother. We must suppose that
his widow was independently provided for. I doubt if the brothers had
seen each other except casually for some time. The _Elia_ essay "My
Relations" contains John Lamb's full-length portrait under the name of
James Elia.
Captain Burney died on November 17, 1821,
"The foul enchanter--letters four do form his name." From Coleridge's
war eclogue, "Fire, Famine and Slaughter," where the letters form the
name of Pitt. Here they stand for Joseph Hume, not Lamb's friend, but
Joseph Hume, M.P. (1777-1855), who had attacked with success abuses in
the East India Company; had revised economically the system of
collecting the revenue, thus touching Wordsworth as Distributor of
Stamps; and had opposed Vansittart's scheme for the reduction of pension
charges.
"_Vide_ Lord Palmerston's report." In the _Times_ of March 21 is the
report of a debate on the estimates. Palmerston proved a certain amount
of reduction of salary in the War Office. Incidentally he remarked that
"since 1810 not fewer than twenty-six clerks had died of pulmonary
complaints, and disorders arising from sedentary habits."
Milton was the portrait, already described, which had been left to Lamb.
Lamb gave it as a dowry to Emma Isola when she became Mrs. Moxon.
"My meeting with Dodd ... Malvolio story." In the essay "The Old
Actors," in the London Magazine for February, 1822 (see Vol. II. of this
edition).
"Our chief reputed assistants." Hazlitt had left the _London Magazine_;
Scott, the original editor, was dead.
De Quincey, whose _Confessions of an Opium-Eater_ were appearing in its
pages, has left a record of a visit to the Lambs about this time. See
his "London Reminiscences."
"Hartley." Hartley Coleridge, then a young man of twenty-five, was
living in London after the unhappy sudden termination of his Oxford
career.
Here should come a brief note to Mrs. Norris, dated March 26, 1822,
given in the Boston Bibliophile edition.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to William Godwin, dated April 13,
in which Lamb remarks that he cannot think how Godwin, who in his
writings never expresses himself disrespectfully of any one but his
Maker, can have given offence to Rickman. This reminds one of Godwin's
remark about Coleridge, "God bless him--to use a vulgar expression," as
recorded by Coleridge in one of his letters. Lamb also said of Godwin
(and to him) that he had read more books that were not worth reading
than any man in England.]
LETTER 285
CHARLES LAMB TO W. HARRISON AINSWORTH
[Dated at end: May 7, 1822.]
Dear Sir,--I have read your poetry with pleasure. The tales are pretty
and prettily told, the language often finely poetical. It is only
sometimes a little careless, I mean as to redundancy. I have marked
certain passages (in pencil only, which will easily obliterate) for your
consideration. Excuse this liberty. For the distinction you offer me of
a dedication, I feel the honor of it, but I do not think it would
advantage the publication. I am hardly on an eminence enough to warrant
it. The Reviewers, who are no friends of mine--the two big ones
especially who make a point of taking no notice of anything I bring
out--may take occasion by it to decry us both. But I leave you to your
own judgment. Perhaps, if you wish to give me a kind word, it will be
more appropriate _before your republication of Tourneur_.
The "Specimens" would give a handle to it, which the poems might seem to
want. But I submit it to yourself with the old recollection that
"beggars should not be chusers" and remain with great respect and
wishing success to both your publications
Your obe't. Ser't.
C. LAMB.
No hurry at all for Tourneur.
Tuesday 7 May '22.
[William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882), afterwards known as a novelist,
was then articled to a Manchester solicitor, but had begun his literary
career. The book to which Lamb refers was called _The Works of Cheviot
Tichburn_, 1822, and was dedicated to him in the following terms:--"To
my friend Charles Lamb, as a slight mark of gratitude for his kindness
and admiration of his character, these poems are inscribed."
Ainsworth was meditating an edition of the works of Cyril Tourneur,
author of "The Atheist's Tragedy," to whom Lamb had drawn attention in
the _Dramatic Specimens_, 1808. The book was never published.]
LETTER 286
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
May 16, 1822.
Dear Godwin--I sincerely feel for all your trouble. Pray use the
enclosed L50, and pay me when you can. I shall make it my business to
see you very shortly.
Yours truly
C. LAMB.
[Owing largely to a flaw in the title-deed of his house at 41 Skinner
Street, which he had to forfeit, Godwin had come upon poverty greater
than any he had previously suffered, although he had been always more or
less necessitous. Lamb now lent him L50. In the following year, after
being mainly instrumental in putting on foot a fund for Godwin's
benefit, he transformed this loan into a gift. An appeal was issued in
1823 asking for; L600, the following postscript to which, in Lamb's
hand, is preserved at the South Kensington Museum:--
"There are few circumstances belonging to the case which are not
sufficiently adverted to in the above letter.
"Mr. Godwin's opponent declares himself determined to act against him
with the last degree of hostility: the law gives him the power the first
week in November to seize upon Mr. Godwin's property, furniture, books,
&c. together with all his present sources of income for the support of
himself and his family. Mr. Godwin has at this time made considerable
progress in a work of great research, and requiring all the powers of
his mind, to the completion of which he had lookd for future pecuniary
advantage. His mind is at this moment so entirely occupied in this work,
that he feels within himself the firmness and resolution that no
_prospect_ of evil or calamity shall draw him off from it or suspend his
labours. But the _calamity itself_, if permitted to arrive, will produce
the physical impossibility for him to proceed. His books and the
materials of his work, as well as his present sources of income, will be
taken from him. Those materials have been the collection of several
years, and it would require a long time to replace them, if they could
ever be replaced.
"The favour of an early answer is particularly requested, that the
extent of the funds supplied may as soon as possible be ascertained,
particularly as any aid, however kindly intended, will, after the lapse
of a very few weeks, become useless to the purpose in view."
The signatories to the appeal were: Crabb Robinson (L30), William Ayrton
(L10), John Murray (L10 10s.), Charles Lamb (L50), Lord Francis
Leveson-Gower (L10), Lord Dudley (L50), the Hon. W. Lamb (L20) and Sir
James Macintosh (L10). Other contributions were: Lord Byron, L26 5s.;
T.M. Alsager, L10; and "A B C, by Charles Lamb," L10. A B C was Sir
Walter Scott.
The work on which Godwin was then labouring was his _History of the
Commonwealth_, 1824-1828. His new home was in the Strand. In 1833 he
received the post of Yeoman Usher of the Exchequer, which he held till
his death in 1836, although its duties had vanished ere then.]
LETTER 287
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. JOHN LAMB
22 May 1822.
Dear Mrs. Lamb, A letter has come to Arnold for Mrs. Phillips, and, as I
have not her address, I take this method of sending it to you. That old
rogue's name is Sherwood, as you guessed, but as I named the shirts to
him, I think he must have them. Your character of him made me almost
repent of the bounty.
You must consider this letter as Mary's--for writing letters is such a
trouble and puts her to such twitters (family modesty, you know; it is
the way with me, but I try to get over it) that in pity I offer to do it
for her.--
We hold our intention of seeing France, but expect to see you here
first, as we do not go till the 20th of next month. A steam boat goes to
Dieppe, I see.--
Christie has not sent to me, and I suppose is in no hurry to settle the
account. I think in a day or two (if I do not hear from you to the
contrary) I shall refresh his memory.
I am sorry I made you pay for two Letters. I Peated it, and re-peated
it.
Miss Wright is married, and I am a hamper in her debt, which I hope will
now not be remembered. She is in great good humour, I hear, and yet out
of spirits.
Where shall I get such full flavor'd Geneva again?
Old Mr. Henshaw died last night precisely at 1/2 past 11.--He has been
open'd by desire of Mrs. McKenna; and, where his heart should have been,
was found a stone. Poor Arnold is inconsolable; and, not having shaved
since, looks deplorable.
With our kind remembrances to Caroline and your friends
We remain yours affectionaly C.L. AND M. LAMB.
[_Occupying the entire margin up the left-hand side of the letter is, in
Mary Lamb's hand_:--]
I thank you for your kind letter, and owe you one in return, but Charles
is in such a hurry to send this to be franked.
Your affectionate sister
M. LAMB.
[_On the right-hand margin, beside the paragraph about Mr. Henshaw, is
written in the same hand, underlined_:--]
He is not dead.
[John Lamb's widow had been a Mrs. Dowden, with an unmarried daughter,
probably the Caroline referred to. The letter treats of family matters
which could not now be explained even if it were worth while. The Lambs
were arranging a visit to Versailles, to the Kenneys. Mr. Henshaw was
Lamb's godfather, a gunsmith.]
LETTER 288
(_Fragment_)
CHARLES LAMB TO MARY LAMB (in Paris).
[August, 1822.]
Then you must walk all along the Borough side of the Seine facing the
Tuileries. There is a mile and a half of print shops and book stalls. If
the latter were but English. Then there is a place where the Paris
people put all their dead people and bring em flowers and dolls and
ginger bread nuts and sonnets and such trifles. And that is all I think
worth seeing as sights, except that the streets and shops of Paris are
themselves the best sight.
[The Lambs had left England for France in June. While they were there
Mary Lamb was taken ill again--in a diligence, according to Moore--and
Lamb had to return home alone, leaving a letter, of which this is the
only portion that has been preserved, for her guidance on her recovery.
It is also the only writing from Lamb to his sister that exists. Mary
Lamb, who had taken her nurse with her in case of trouble, was soon well
again, and in August had the company of Crabb Robinson in Paris. Mrs.
Aders was also there, and Foss, the bookseller in Pall Mall, and his
brother. And it was on this visit that the Lambs met John Howard Payne,
whom we shall shortly see.]
LETTER 289
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN CLARE
India House, 31 Aug., 1822.
Dear Clare--I thank you heartily for your present. I am an inveterate
old Londoner, but while I am among your choice collections, I seem to be
native to them, and free of the country. The quantity of your
observation has astonished me. What have most pleased me have been
Recollections after a Ramble, and those Grongar Hill kind of pieces in
eight syllable lines, my favourite measure, such as Cowper Hill and
Solitude. In some of your story-telling Ballads the provincial phrases
sometimes startle me. I think you are too profuse with them. In poetry
_slang_ of every kind is to be avoided. There is a rustick Cockneyism,
as little pleasing as ours of London. Transplant Arcadia to Helpstone.
The true rustic style, the Arcadian English, I think is to be found in
Shenstone. Would his Schoolmistress, the prettiest of poems, have been
better, if he had used quite the Goody's own language? Now and then a
home rusticism is fresh and startling, but where nothing is gained in
expression, it is out of tenor. It may make folks smile and stare, but
the ungenial coalition of barbarous with refined phrases will prevent
you in the end from being so generally tasted, as you deserve to be.
Excuse my freedom, and take the same liberty with my _puns_.
I send you two little volumes of my spare hours. They are of all sorts,
there is a methodist hymn for Sundays, and a farce for Saturday night.
Pray give them a place on your shelf. Pray accept a little volume, of
which I have [a] duplicate, that I may return in equal number to your
welcome presents.
I think I am indebted to you for a sonnet in the London for August.
Since I saw you I have been in France, and have eaten frogs. The nicest
little rabbity things you ever tasted. Do look about for them. Make Mrs.
Clare pick off the hind quarters, boil them plain, with parsley and
butter. The fore quarters are not so good. She may let them hop off by
themselves.
Yours sincerely,
CHAS. LAMB.
[John Clare (1793-1864) was the Northamptonshire poet whom the _London
Magazine_ had introduced to fame. Octavius Gilchrist had played to him
the same part that Capell Lofft had to Bloomfield. His first volume,
_Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery_, was published in January,
1820; his next, _The Village Minstrel_, in September of the next year.
These he had probably sent to Lamb. Helpstone was Clare's birthplace.
Lamb's two little return volumes were his _Works_. The sonnet in the
August _London Magazine_ was not signed by Clare. It runs thus:--
TO ELlA
ELIA, thy reveries and vision'd themes
To Care's lorn heart a luscious pleasure prove;
Wild as the mystery of delightful dreams,
Soft as the anguish of remember'd love:
Like records of past days their memory dances
Mid the cool feelings Manhood's reason brings,
As the unearthly visions of romances
Peopled with sweet and uncreated things;--
And yet thy themes thy gentle worth enhances!
Then wake again thy wild harp's tenderest strings,
Sing on, sweet Bard, let fairy loves again
Smile in thy dreams, with angel ecstacies;
Bright o'er our souls will break the heavenly strain
Through the dull gloom of earth's realities.
Clare addressed to Lamb a sonnet on his _Dramatic Specimens_ which was
printed in Hone's _Year Book_ in 1831.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Ayrton dated Sept. 5, 1822,
referring to the writer's "drunken caput" and loss of memory.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Mrs. James Kenney, dated Sept.
11, 1822, in which Lamb says that Mary Lamb had reached home safely from
France, and that she failed to smuggle Crabb Robinson's waistcoat. He
adds that the Custom House people could not comprehend how a waistcoat,
marked Henry Robinson, could be a part of Miss Lamb's wearing apparel.
At the end of the letter is a charming note to Mrs. Kenney's little
girl, Sophy, whom Lamb calls his dear wife. He assures her that the few
short days of connubial felicity which he passed with her among the
pears and apricots of Versailles were some of the happiest of his life.]
LETTER 290
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
India House, 11 Sept. 1822.
Dear Sir--You have misapprehended me sadly, if you suppose that I meant
to impute any inconsistency (in your writing poetry) with your religious
profession. I do not remember what I said, but it was spoken sportively,
I am sure. One of my levities, which you are not so used to as my older
friends. I probably was thinking of the light in which your so indulging
yourself would appear to _Quakers_, and put their objection in my own
foolish mouth. I would eat my words (provided they should be written on
not very coarse paper) rather than I would throw cold water upon your,
and my once, harmless occupation. I have read Napoleon and the rest with
delight. I like them for what they are, and for what they are not. I
have sickened on the modern rhodomontade & Byronism, and your plain
Quakerish Beauty has captivated me. It is all wholesome cates, aye, and
toothsome too, and withal Quakerish. If I were George Fox, and George
Fox Licenser of the Press, they should have my absolute IMPRIMATUR. I
hope I have removed the impression.
I am, like you, a prisoner to the desk. I have been chained to that
gally thirty years, a long shot. I have almost grown to the wood. If no
imaginative poet, I am sure I am a figurative one. Do "Friends" allow
puns? _verbal_ equivocations?--they are unjustly accused of it, and I
did my little best in the "imperfect Sympathies" to vindicate them.
I am very tired of clerking it, but have no remedy. Did you see a sonnet
to this purpose in the Examiner?--
"Who first invented Work--and tied the free
And holy-day rejoycing spirit down
To the ever-haunting importunity
Of business, in the green fields, and the town--
To plough--loom--anvil--spade--&, 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 and turmoiling ever and aye
He, and his Thoughts, keep pensive worky-day."
C.L.
I fancy the sentiment exprest above will be nearly your own, the
expression of it probably would not so well suit with a follower of John
Woolman. But I do not know whether diabolism is a part of your creed, or
where indeed to find an exposition of your creed at all. In feelings and
matters not dogmatical, I hope I am half a Quaker. Believe me, with
great respect, yours
C. LAMB.
I shall always be happy to see, or hear from you.--
[This is the first of the letters to Bernard Barton (1784-1849), a clerk
in a bank at Woodbridge, in Suffolk, who was known as the Quaker poet.
Lamb had met him at a _London Magazine_ dinner at 13 Waterloo Place, and
had apparently said something about Quakers and poetry which Barton, on
thinking it over, had taken too seriously. Bernard Barton was already
the author of four volumes of poetry, of which _Napoleon and other
Poems_ was the latest, published in 1822. Lamb's essay on "Imperfect
Sympathies" had been printed in the _London Magazine_ for August, 1821.
For John Woolman, see note on page 93. The sonnet "Work" had been
printed in the _Examiner_, August 29, 1819.]
LETTER 291
CHARLES LAMB TO BARRON FIELD
Sept. 22, 1822.
My dear F.,--I scribble hastily at office. Frank wants my letter
presently. I & sister are just returned from Paris!! We have eaten
frogs. It has been such a treat! You know our monotonous general Tenor.
Frogs are the nicest little delicate things--rabbity-flavoured. Imagine
a Lilliputian rabbit! They fricassee them; but in my mind, drest
seethed, plain, with parsley and butter, would have been the decision of
Apicius. Shelley the great Atheist has gone down by water to eternal
fire! Hunt and his young fry are left stranded at Pisa, to be adopted by
the remaining duumvir, Lord Byron--his wife and 6 children & their maid.
What a cargo of Jonases, if they had foundered too! The only use I can
find of friends, is that they do to borrow money of you. Henceforth I
will consort with none but rich rogues. Paris is a glorious picturesque
old City. London looks mean and New to it, as the town of Washington
would, seen after _it_. But they have no St. Paul's or Westminster
Abbey. The Seine, so much despised by Cockneys, is exactly the size to
run thro' a magnificent street; palaces a mile long on one side, lofty
Edinbro' stone (O the glorious antiques!): houses on the other. The
Thames disunites London & Southwark. I had Talma to supper with me. He
has picked up, as I believe, an authentic portrait of Shakspere. He paid
a broker about L40 English for it. It is painted on the one half of a
pair of bellows--a lovely picture, corresponding with the Folio head.
The bellows has old carved wings round it, and round the visnomy is
inscribed, near as I remember, not divided into rhyme--I found out the
rhyme--
"Whom have we here,
Stuck on this bellows,
But the Prince of good fellows,
Willy Shakspere?"
At top--
"O base and coward luck!
To be here stuck.--POINS."
At bottom--
"Nay! rather a glorious lot is to him assign'd,
Who, like the Almighty, rides upon the wind.--PISTOL."
This is all in old carved wooden letters. The countenance smiling,
sweet, and intellectual beyond measure, even as He was immeasurable. It
may be a forgery. They laugh at me and tell me Ireland is in Paris, and
has been putting off a portrait of the Black Prince. How far old wood
may be imitated I cannot say. Ireland was not found out by his
parchments, but by his poetry. I am confident no painter on either side
the Channel could have painted any thing near like the face I saw.
Again, would such a painter and forger have expected L40 for a thing, if
authentic, worth L4000? Talma is not in the secret, for he had not even
found out the rhymes in the first inscription. He is coming over with
it, and, my life to Southey's Thalaba, it will gain universal faith.
The letter is wanted, and I am wanted. Imagine the blank filled up with
all kind things.
Our joint hearty remembrances to both of you. Yours as ever,
C. LAMB.
[Frank was Francis John Field, Barron Field's brother, in the India
House.
Shelley was drowned on July 8, 1822.
Talma was Francois Joseph Talma (1763-1826), the great French tragedian.
Lamb, introduced by John Howard Payne, saw him in "Regulus," but not
understanding French was but mildly interested. "Ah," said Talma in the
account by James Kenney printed in Henry Angelo's _Pic Nic_, "I was not
very happy to-night; you must see me in 'Scylla.'" "Incidit in Scyllam,"
said Lamb, "qui vult vitare Charybdiro." "Ah, you are a rogue; you are a
great rogue," was Talma's reply. Talma had bought a pair of bellows with
Shakespeare's head on it. Lamb's belief in the authenticity of this
portrait was misplaced, as the following account from _Chambers'
Journal_ for September 27, 1856, will show:--
About the latter part of the last century, one Zincke, an artist of
little note, but grandson of the celebrated enameller of that name,
manufactured fictitious Shakespeares by the score.... The most famous of
Zincke's productions is the well-known Talma Shakespeare, which gentle
Charles Lamb made a pilgrimage to Paris to see; and when he did see,
knelt down and kissed with idolatrous veneration. Zincke painted it on a
larger panel than was necessary for the size of the picture, and then
cut away the superfluous wood, so as to leave the remainder in the shape
of a pair of bellows.... Zincke probably was thinking of "a muse of
fire" when he adopted this strange method of raising the wind; but he
made little by it, for the dealer into whose hands the picture passed,
sold it as a curiosity, not an original portrait, for L5. The buyer,
being a person of ingenuity, and fonder of money than curiosities,
fabricated a series of letters to and from Sir Kenelm Digby, and,
passing over to France, _planted_--the slang term used among the less
honest of the curiosity-dealing fraternity--the picture and the letters
in an old chateau near Paris. Of course a confederate managed to
discover the _plant_, in the presence of witnesses, and great was the
excitement that ensued. Sir Kenelm Digby had been in France in the reign
of Charles I., and the fictitious correspondence _proved_ that the
picture was an original, and had been painted by Queen Elizabeth's
command, on the lid of her favourite pair of bellows!
It really would seem that the more absurd a deception is, the better it
succeeds. All Paris was in delight at possessing an original
Shakespeare, while the London amateurs were in despair at such a
treasure being lost to England. The ingenious person soon found a
purchaser, and a high price recompensed him for his trouble. But more
remains to be told. The happy purchaser took his treasure to Ribet, the
first Parisian picture-cleaner of the day, to be cleaned. Ribet set to
work; but we may fancy his surprise as the superficial _impasto_ of
Zincke washed off beneath the sponge, and Shakespeare became a female in
a lofty headgear adorned with blue ribbons.
In a furious passion the purchaser ran to the seller. "Let us talk over
the affair quietly," said the latter; "I have been cheated as well as
you: let us keep the matter secret; if we let the public know it, all
Paris and even London too, will be laughing at us. I will return you
your money, and take back the picture, if you will employ Ribet to
restore it to the same condition as it was in when you received it."
This fair proposition was acceded to, and Ribet restored the picture;
but as he was a superior artist to Zincke, he greatly improved it, and
this improvement was attributed to his skill as a cleaner. The secret
being kept, and the picture, improved by cleaning, being again in the
market, Talma, the great Tragedian, purchased it at even a higher price
than that given by the first buyer. Talma valued it highly, enclosed it
in a case of morocco and gold, and subsequently refused 1000 Napoleons
for it; and even when at last its whole history was disclosed, he still
cherished it as a genuine memorial of the great bard.
By kind permission of Mr. B.B. MacGeorge, the owner both of the letter
and bellows, I was enabled to give a reproduction of the portrait in my
large edition.
Ireland was the author of "Vortigern," the forged play attributed to
Shakespeare.]
LETTER 292
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
[Autumn, 1822.]
Dear Payne--A friend and fellow-clerk of mine, Mr. White (a good fellow)
coming to your parts, I would fain have accompanied him, but am forced
instead to send a part of me, verse and prose, most of it from 20 to 30
years old, such as I then was, and I am not much altered.
Paris, which I hardly knew whether I liked when I was in it, is an
object of no small magnitude with me now. I want to be going, to the
Jardin des Plantes (is that right, Louisa?) with you to Pere de la
Chaise, La Morgue, and all the sentimentalities. How is Talma, and his
(my) dear Shakspeare?
N.B.--My friend White knows Paris thoroughly, and does not want a guide.
We did, and had one. We both join in thanks. Do you remember a Blue-Silk
Girl (English) at the Luxembourg, that did not much seem to attend to
the Pictures, who fell in love with you, and whom I fell in love
with--an inquisitive, prying, curious Beauty--where is she?
_Votre Tres Humble Serviteur_,
CHARLOIS AGNEAU,
_alias_ C. LAMB.
Guichy is well, and much as usual. He seems blind to all the
distinctions of life, except to those of sex. Remembrance to Kenny and
Poole.
[John Howard Payne (1792-1852) was born in New York. He began life as an
actor in 1809 as Young Norval in "Douglas," and made his English _debut_
in 1813 in the same part. For several years he lived either in London or
Paris, where among his friends were Washington Irving and Talma. He
wrote a number of plays, and in one of them, "Clari, or the Maid of
Milan," is the song "Home, Sweet Home," with Bishop's music, on which
his immortality rests. Payne died in Tunis, where he was American
Consul, in 1852, and when in 1883 he was reinterred at Washington, it
was as the author of "Home, Sweet Home." He seems to have been a
charming but ill-starred man, whom to know was to love.
Mr. White was Edward White of the India House, by whom Lamb probably
sent a copy of the 1818 edition of his _Works_. Louisa was Louisa
Holcroft. Guichy was possibly the Frenchman, mentioned by Crabb
Robinson, with whom the Lambs had travelled to France. Poole was, I
imagine, John Poole, the dramatist, author of burlesque plays in the
_London Magazine_ and later of "Paul Pry," which, it is quite likely, he
based on Lamb's sketch "Tom Pry."]
LETTER 293
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[Dated at end: 9 October 1822.]
Dear Sir--I am asham'd not sooner to have acknowledged your letter and
poem. I think the latter very temperate, very serious and very
seasonable. I do not think it will convert the club at Pisa, neither do
I think it will satisfy the bigots on our side the water. Something like
a parody on the song of Ariel would please them better.
Full fathom five the Atheist lies,
Of his bones are hell-dice made.--
I want time, or fancy, to fill up the rest. I sincerely sympathise with
you on your doleful confinement. Of Time, Health, and Riches, the first
in order is not last in excellence. Riches are chiefly good, because
they give us Time. What a weight of wearisome prison hours have [I] to
look back and forward to, as quite cut out [of] life--and the sting of
the thing is, that for six hours every day I have no business which I
could not contract into two, if they would let me work Task-work. I
shall be glad to hear that your grievance is mitigated.
Shelly I saw once. His voice was the most obnoxious squeak I ever was
tormented with, ten thousand times worse than the Laureat's, whose voice
is the worst part about him, except his Laureatcy. Lord Byron opens upon
him on Monday in a Parody (I suppose) of the "Vision of Judgment," in
which latter the Poet I think did not much show _his_. To award his
Heaven and his Hell in the presumptuous manner he has done, was a piece
of immodesty as bad as Shelleyism.
I am returning a poor letter. I was formerly a great Scribbler in that
way, but my hand is out of order. If I said my head too, I should not be
very much out, but I will tell no tales of myself. I will therefore end
(after my best thanks, with a hope to see you again some time in
London), begging you to accept this Letteret for a Letter--a Leveret
makes a better present than a grown hare, and short troubles (as the old
excuse goes) are best.
I hear that C. Lloyd is well, and has returned to his family. I think
this will give you pleasure to hear.
I remain, dear Sir, yours truly
C. LAMB.
E.I.H.
9 Oct. 22.
[Barton had just published his _Verses on the Death of P.B. Shelley_, a
lament for misapplied genius. The club at Pisa referred particularly to
Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Trelawney. Trelawney placed three lines from
Ariel's song in "The Tempest" on Shelley's monument; but whether Lamb
knew this, or his choice of rival lines is a coincidence, I do not know.
Trelawney chose the lines:--
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
There is no other record of Lamb's meeting with Shelley, who, by the
way, admired Lamb's writings warmly, particularly _Mrs. Leicester's
School_ (see the letter to Barton, August 17, 1824).
Byron's _Vision of Judgment_, a burlesque of Southey's poem of the same
name, was printed in _The Liberal_ for 1822.]
LETTER 294
CHARLES LAMB TO B.R. HAYDON
India House, 9th October, 1822.
Dear Haydon, Poor Godwin has been turned out of his house and business
in Skinner Street, and if he does not pay two years' arrears of rent, he
will have the whole stock, furniture, &c., of his new house (in the
Strand) seized when term begins. We are trying to raise a subscription
for him. My object in writing this is simply to ask you, if this is a
kind of case which would be likely to interest Mrs. Coutts in his
behalf; and who in your opinion is the best person to speak with her on
his behalf. Without the aid of from L300 to L400 by that time, early in
November, he must be ruined. You are the only person I can think of, of
her acquaintance, and can, perhaps, if not yourself, recommend the
person most likely to influence her. Shelley had engaged to clear him of
all demands, and he has gone down to the deep insolvent.
Yours truly,
C. LAMB.
Is Sir Walter to be applied to, and by what channel?
[Mrs. Coutts was probably Harriot Mellon, the actress, widow of the
banker, Thomas Coutts, and afterwards Duchess of St. Albans. She had
played the part of the heroine Melesinda in "Mr. H."]
LETTER 295
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
Thursday [Oct. 22], 1822.
"Ali Pacha" will do. I sent my sister the first night, not having been
able to go myself, and her report of its effect was most favourable. I
saw it last night--the third night--and it was most satisfactorily
received. I have been sadly disappointed in Talfourd, who does the
critiques in the "Times," and who promised his strenuous services; but
by some damn'd arrangement he was sent to the wrong house, and a most
iniquitous account of Ali substituted for his, which I am sure would
have been a kind one. The "Morning Herald" did it ample justice, without
appearing to puff it. It is an abominable misrepresentation of the
"Times," that Farren played Ali like Lord Ogilby. He acted infirmity of
body, but not of voice or purpose. His manner was even grand. A grand
old gentleman. His falling to the earth when his son's death was
announced was fine as anything I ever saw. It was as if he had been
blasted. Miss Foote looked helpless and beautiful, and greatly helped
the piece. It is going on steadily, I am sure, for _many nights_. Marry,
I was a little disappointed with Hassan, who tells us he subsists by
cracking court jests before Hali, but he made none. In all the rest,
scenery and machinery, it was faultless. I hope it will bring you here.
I should be most glad of that. I have a room for you, and you shall
order your own dinner three days in the week. I must retain my own
authority for the rest. As far as magazines go, I can answer for
Talfourd in the "New Monthly." He cannot be put out there. But it is
established as a favourite, and can do without these expletives. I long
to talk over with you the Shakspeare Picture. My doubts of its being a
forgery mainly rest upon the goodness of the picture. The bellows might
be trumped up, but where did the painter spring from? Is Ireland a
consummate artist--or any of Ireland's accomplices?--but we shall confer
upon it, I hope. The "New Times," I understand was favorable to "Ali,"
but I have not seen it. I am sensible of the want of method in this
letter, but I have been deprived of the connecting organ, by a practice
I have fallen into since I left Paris, of taking too much strong spirits
of a night. I must return to the Hotel de l'Europe and Macon.
How is Kenney? Have you seen my friend White? What is Poole about, &c.?
Do not write, but come and answer me.
The weather is charming, and there is a mermaid to be seen in London.
You may not have the opportunity of inspecting such a _Poisarde_ once
again in ten centuries.
My sister joins me in the hope of seeing you.
Yours truly,
C. LAMB.
[Lamb had met John Howard Payne, the American dramatist, at Kenney's, in
France. "Ali Pacha," a melodrama in two acts, was produced at Covent
Garden on October 19, 1822. It ran altogether sixteen nights. William
Farren played the hero. Lord Ogleby, an antiquated fop, is a character
in "The Clandestine Marriage" by Colman and Garrick. Miss Foote played
Helena. See notes to the letter above for other references.]
LETTER 296
CHARLES LAMB TO B.R. HAYDON
Tuesday, 29th [October, 1822].
Dear H., I have written a very respectful letter to Sir W.S. Godwin did
not write, because he leaves all to his committee, as I will explain to
you. If this rascally weather holds, you will see but one of us on that
day.
Yours, with many thanks,
C. LAMB.
LETTER 297
CHARLES LAMB TO SIR WALTER SCOTT
East India House, London,
29th October 1822.
Dear Sir,--I have to acknowledge your kind attention to my application
to Mr. Haydon. I have transmitted your draft to Mr. G[odwin]'s committee
as an anonymous contribution through me. Mr. Haydon desires his thanks
and best respects to you, but was desirous that I should write to you on
this occasion. I cannot pass over your kind expressions as to myself. It
is not likely that I shall ever find myself in Scotland, but should the
event ever happen, I should be proud to pay my respects to you in your
own land. My disparagement of heaths and highlands--if I said any such
thing in half earnest,--you must put down as a piece of the old Vulpine
policy. I must make the most of the spot I am chained to, and console
myself for my flat destiny as well as I am able. I know very well our
mole-hills are not mountains, but I must cocker them up and make them
look as big and as handsome as I can, that we may both be satisfied.
Allow me to express the pleasure I feel on an occasion given me of
writing to you, and to subscribe myself, dear sir, your obliged and
respectful servant,
CHARLES LAMB.
[See note to the letter to Godwin above. Lamb and Scott never met.
Talfourd, however, tells us that "he used to speak with gratitude and
pleasure of the circumstances under which he saw him once in
Fleet-street. A man, in the dress of a mechanic, stopped him just at
Inner Temple-gate, and said, touching his hat, 'I beg your pardon, sir,
but perhaps you would like to see Sir Walter Scott; that is he just
crossing the road;' and Lamb stammered out his hearty thanks to his
truly humane informer."
Mr. Lang has recently discovered that also in 1818 or thereabouts Sir
Walter invited Lamb to Abbotsford.]
LETTER 298
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ROBINSON
[Dated at end: Nov. 11, 1822.]
Dear Sir, We have to thank you, or Mrs. Robinson-- for I think her name
was on the direction--for the best pig, which myself, the warmest of
pig-lovers, ever tasted. The dressing and the sauce were pronounced
incomparable by two friends, who had the good fortune to drop in to
dinner yesterday, but I must not mix up my cook's praises with my
acknowledgments; let me but have leave to say that she and we did your
pig justice. I should dilate on the crackling--done to a turn--but I am
afraid Mrs. Clarkson, who, I hear, is with you, will set me down as an
Epicure. Let it suffice, that you have spoil'd my appetite for boiled
mutton for some time to come. Your brother Henry partook of the cold
relics--by which he might give a good guess at what it had been _hot_.
With our thanks, pray convey our kind respects to Mrs. Robinson, and the
Lady before mentioned.
Your obliged Ser't
CHARLES LAMB.
India House
11 Nov. 22.
[This letter is addressed to R. Robinson, Esq., Bury, Suffolk, but I
think there is no doubt that Thomas Robinson was the recipient.
Thomas Robinson of Bury St. Edmunds was Henry Crabb Robinson's brother.
Lamb's "Dissertation on Roast Pig" had been printed in the _London
Magazine_ in September, 1822, and this pig was one of the first of many
such gifts that came to him.]
LETTER 299
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
Wednesday, 13 November, '22.
Dear P.--Owing to the inconvenience of having two lodgings, I did not
get your letter quite so soon as I should. The India House is my proper
address, where I am sure for the fore part of every day. The instant I
got it, I addressed a letter, for Kemble to see, to my friend Henry
Robertson, the Treasurer of Covent Garden Theatre. He had a conference
with Kemble, and the result is, that Robertson, in the name of the
management, recognized to me the full ratifying of your bargain: L250
for Ali, the Slaves, and another piece which they had not received. He
assures me the whole will be paid you, or the proportion for the two
former, as soon as ever the Treasury will permit it. He offered to write
the same to you, if I pleased. He thinks in a month or so they will be
able to liquidate it. He is positive no trick could be meant you, as Mr.
Planche's alterations, which were trifling, were not at all considered
as affecting your bargain. With respect to the copyright of Ali, he was
of opinion no money would be given for it, as Ali is quite laid aside.
This explanation being given, you would not think of printing the two
copies together by way of recrimination. He told me the secret of the
two Galley Slaves at Drury Lane. Elliston, if he is informed right,
engaged Poole to translate it, but before Poole's translation arrived,
finding it coming out at Cov. Gar., he procured copies of two several
translations of it in London. So you see here are four translations,
reckoning yours. I fear no copyright would be got for it, for anybody
may print it and anybody has. Your's has run seven nights, and R. is of
opinion it will not exceed in number of nights the nights of Ali,--about
thirteen. But your full right to your bargain with the management is in
the fullest manner recognized by him officially. He gave me every hope
the money will be spared as soon as they can spare it. He said _a month
or two_, but seemed to me to mean about _a month_. A new lady is coming
out in Juliet, to whom they look very confidently for replenishing their
treasury. Robertson is a very good fellow and I can rely upon his
statement. Should you have any more pieces, and want to get a copyright
for them, I am the worst person to negotiate with any bookseller, having
been cheated by all I have had to do with (except Taylor and
Hessey,--but they do not publish theatrical pieces), and I know not how
to go about it, or who to apply to. But if you had no better negotiator,
I should know the minimum you expect, for I should not like to make a
bargain out of my own head, being (after the Duke of Wellington) the
worst of all negotiators. I find from Robertson you have written to
Bishop on the subject. Have you named anything of the copyright of the
Slaves. R. thinks no publisher would pay for it, and you would not
risque it on your own account. This is a mere business letter, so I will
just send my love to my little wife at Versailles, to her dear mother,
etc.
Believe me, yours truly, C.L.
[Payne's translation of the French play was produced at Covent Garden on
November 6, 1822, under the title "The Soldier's Daughter." On the same
night appeared a rival version at Drury Lane entitled "Two Galley
Slaves." Payne's was played eleven times. The new lady as Juliet was the
other Fanny Kelly not Lamb's: Fanny H. Kelly, from Dublin. The revival
began on November 14. Planche was James Robinson Planche (1796-1880),
the most prolific of librettists. Robert William Elliston, of whom Lamb
later wrote so finely, was then managing Drury Lane.
"Having been cheated." Lamb's particular reference was to Baldwin (see
the letter to Barton, Jan. 9, 1823).
"The Duke of Wellington." A reference to the Duke's failure in
representing England at the Congress of Powers in Vienna and Verona.
Lamb's "dear little wife" was Sophy Kenney.]
LETTER 300
MARY LAMB TO MRS. JAMES KENNEY
[No date. ?Early December, 1822.]
My dear Friend,--How do you like Harwood? Is he not a noble boy? I
congratulate you most heartily on this happy meeting, and only wish I
were present to witness it. Come back with Harwood, I am dying to see
you--we will talk, that is, you shall talk and I will listen from ten in
the morning till twelve at night. My thoughts are often with you, and
your children's dear faces are perpetually before me. Give them all one
additional kiss every morning for me. Remember there's one for Louisa,
one to Ellen, one to Betsy, one to Sophia, one to James, one to Teresa,
one to Virginia, and one to Charles. Bless them all! When shall I ever
see them again? Thank you a thousand times for all your kindness to me.
I know you will make light of the trouble my illness gave you; but the
recollection of it often sits heavy on my heart. If I could ensure my
health, how happy should I be to spend a month with you every summer!
When I met Mr. Kenney there, I sadly repented that I had not dragged you
on to Dieppe with me. What a pleasant time we should have spent there!
You shall not be jealous of Mr. Payne. Remember he did Charles and I
good service without grudge or grumbling. Say to him how much I regret
that we owe him unreturnable obligations; for I still have my old fear
that we shall never see him again. I received great pleasure from seeing
his two successful pieces. My love to your boy Kenney, my boy James, and
all my dear girls, and also to Rose; I hope she still drinks wine with
you. Thank Lou-Lou for her little bit of letter. I am in a fearful
hurry, or I would write to her. Tell my friend the Poetess that I expect
some French verses from her shortly. I have shewn Betsy's and Sophy's
letters to all who came near me, and they have been very much admired.
Dear Fanny brought me the bag. Good soul you are to think of me! Manning
has promised to make Fanny a visit this morning, happy girl! Miss James
I often see, I think never without talking of you. Oh the dear long
dreary Boulevards! how I do wish to be just now stepping out of a Cuckoo
into them!
Farewel, old tried friend, may we meet again! Would you could bring your
house with all its noisy inmates, and plant it, garden, gables and all,
in the midst of Covent Garden.
Yours ever most affectionately,
M. LAMB.
My best respects to your good neighbours.
[Harwood was Harwood Holcroft.
"Louisa," etc. Mrs. Kenney's children by her first marriage were Louisa,
Ellen, Betsy and Sophia. By her second, with Kenney, the others. Charles
was named Charles Lamb Kenney.
"Payne's two successful pieces"--"Ali Pacha" and "The Soldier's
Daughter."
Fanny was Fanny Holcroft, Mrs. Kenney's stepdaughter.
Miss Kelly has added to this letter a few words of affection to Mrs.
Kenney from "the real old original Fanny Kelly."
Charles Lamb also contributed to this letter a few lines to James
Kenney, expressing his readiness to meet Moore the poet. He adds that he
made a hit at him as Little in the _London Magazine_, which though no
reason for not meeting him was a reason for not volunteering a visit to
him. The reference is to the sonnet to Barry Cornwall in the _London
Magazine_ for September, 1820, beginning--
Let hate, or grosser heats, their foulness mask
Neath riddling Junius, or in L----e's name.
The second line was altered in Lamb's _Album Verses_, 1830, to--
Under the vizor of a borrowed name.]
LETTER 301
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN TAYLOR
[Dated: Dec. 7, 1822.]
Dear Sir,--I should like the enclosed Dedication to be printed, unless
you dislike it. I like it. It is in the olden style. But if you object
to it, put forth the book as it is. Only pray don't let the Printer
mistake the word _curt_ for _curst_.
C.L.
Dec. 7, 1822.
DEDICATION
TO THE FRIENDLY AND JUDICIOUS READER,
Who will take these Papers, as they were meant; not understanding every
thing perversely in the absolute and literal sense, but giving fair
construction as to an after-dinner conversation; allowing for the
rashness and necessary incompleteness of first thoughts; and not
remembering, for the purpose of an after taunt, words spoken
peradventure after the fourth glass. The Author wishes (what he would
will for himself) plenty of good friends to stand by him, good books to
solace him, prosperous events to all his honest undertakings, and a
candid interpretation to his most hasty words and actions. The other
sort (and he hopes many of them will purchase his book too) he greets
with the curt invitation of Timon, "Uncover, dogs, and lap:" or he
dismisses them with the confident security of the philosopher, "you beat
but on the case of ELIA."
C.L.
Dec. 7, 1822.
[_Elia. Essays which have appeared under that signature in the London
Magazine_ was just about to be published. The book came out with no
preface.
"You beat but on the case." When Anaxarchus, the philosopher, was being
pounded to death in a mortar, by command of Alexander the Great, he made
use of this phrase. After these words, in Canon Ainger's transcript,
Lamb remarks:--"On better consideration, pray omit that Dedication. The
Essays want no Preface: they are _all Preface_. A Preface is nothing but
a talk with the reader; and they do nothing else. Pray omit it.
"There will be a sort of Preface in the next Magazine, which may act as
an advertisement, but not proper for the volume.
"Let ELIA come forth bare as he was born."
The sort of Preface in the next magazine (January, 1823) was the
"Character of the Late Elia," used as a preface to the _Last Essays_ in
1833.]
LETTER 302
CHARLES LAMB TO WALTER WILSON
E.I.H. 16 dec. 22.
Dear Wilson
_Lightening_ I was going to call you--
You must have thought me negligent in not answering your letter sooner.
But I have a habit of never writing letters, but at the office--'tis so
much time cribbed out of the Company--and I am but just got out of the
thick of a Tea Sale, in which most of the Entry of Notes, deposits &c.
usually falls to my share. Dodwell is willing, but alas! slow. To
compare a pile of my notes with his little hillock (which has been as
long a building), what is it but to compare Olympus with a mole-hill.
Then Wadd is a sad shuffler.--
I have nothing of Defoe's but two or three Novels, and the Plague
History. I can give you no information about him. As a slight general
character of what I remember of them (for I have not look'd into them
latterly) I would say that "in the appearance of _truth_ in all the
incidents and conversations that occur in them they exceed any works of
fiction I am acquainted with. It is perfect illusion. The _Author_ never
appears in these self-narratives (for so they ought to be called or
rather Autobiographies) but the _narrator_ chains us down to an implicet
belief in every thing he says. There is all the minute detail of a
log-book in it. Dates are painfully pressed upon the memory. Facts are
repeated over and over in varying phrases, till you cannot chuse but
believe them. It is like reading Evidence given in a Court of Justice.
So anxious the story-teller seems, that the truth should be clearly
comprehended, that when he has told us a matter of fact, or a motive, in
a line or two farther down he _repeats_ it with his favorite figure of
speech, 'I say' so and so,--though he had made it abundantly plain
before. This is in imitation of the common people's way of speaking, or
rather of the way in which they are addressed by a master or mistress,
who wishes to impress something upon their memories; and has a wonderful
effect upon matter-of-fact readers. Indeed it is to such principally
that he writes. His style is elsewhere beautiful, but plain _& homely_.
Robinson Crusoe is delightful to all ranks and classes, but it is easy
to see that it is written in phraseology peculiarly adapted to the lower
conditions of readers: hence it is an especial favorite with seafaring
men, poor boys, servant maids &c. His novels are capital
kitchen-reading, while they are worthy from their deep interest to find
a shelf in the Libraries of the wealthiest, and the most learned. His
passion for _matter of fact narrative_ sometimes betrayed him into a
long relation of common incidents which might happen to any man, and
have no interest but the intense appearance of truth in them, to
recommend them. The whole latter half, or two thirds, of Colonel Jack is
of this description. The beginning of Colonel Jack is the most affecting
natural picture of a young thief that was ever drawn. His losing the
stolen money in the hollow of a tree, and finding it again when he was
in despair, and then being in equal distress at not knowing how to
dispose of it, and several similar touches in the early history of the
Colonel, evince a deep knowledge of human nature; and, putting out of
question the superior _romantic_ interest of the latter, in my mind very
much exceed Crusoe. Roxana (1st Edition) is the next in Interest, though
he left out the best part of it**in** subsequent Editions from a foolish
hypercriticism of his friend, Southerne. But Moll Flanders, the account
of the Plague &c. &c. are all of one family, and have the same stamp of
character."--
[_At the top of the first page is added:--_]
_Omitted at the end_ ... believe me with friendly recollections,
_Brother_ (as I used to call you) Yours C. LAMB.
[_Below the "Dear Wilson" is added in smaller writing:--_]
The review was not mine, nor have I seen it.
[Lamb's friend Walter Wilson was beginning his _Memoirs of the Life and
Times of Daniel Defoe_, 1830. The passage sent to him in this letter by
Lamb he printed in Vol. III., page 428. Some years later Lamb sent
Wilson a further criticism. See also letter below for the reference to
_Roxana_.
Dodwell we have met. Of Wadd we have no information, except, according
to Crabb Robinson's _Diary_, that he once accidentally discharged a pen
full of ink into Lamb's eye and that Lamb wrote this epigram upon him:--
What Wadd knows, God knows,
But God knows _what_ Wadd knows.]
LETTER 303
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[Dated at end: 23 December 1822.]
Dear Sir--I have been so distracted with business and one thing or
other, I have not had a quiet quarter of an hour for epistolary
purposes. Christmas too is come, which always puts a rattle into my
morning scull. It is a visiting unquiet un-Quakerish season. I get more
and more in love with solitude, and proportionately hampered with
company. I hope you have some holydays at this period. I have one day,
Christmas day, alas! too few to commemorate the season. All work and no
play dulls me. Company is not play, but many times hard work. To play,
is for a man to do what he pleases, or to do nothing--to go about
soothing his particular fancies. I have lived to a time of life, to have
outlived the good hours, the nine o'Clock suppers, with a bright hour or
two to clear up in afterwards. Now you cannot get tea before that hour,
and then sit gaping, music-bothered perhaps, till half-past 12 brings up
the tray, and what you steal of convivial enjoyment after, is heavily
paid for in the disquiet of to-morrow's head.
I am pleased with your liking John Woodvil, and amused with your
knowledge of our drama being confined to Shakspeare and Miss Bailly.
What a world of fine territory between Land's End and Johnny Grots have
you missed traversing. I almost envy you to have so much to read. I feel
as if I had read all the Books I want to read. O to forget Fielding,
Steele, &c., and read 'em new.
Can you tell me a likely place where I could pick up, cheap, Fox's
Journal? There are no Quaker Circulating Libraries? Ellwood, too, I must
have. I rather grudge that S[outhe]y has taken up the history of your
People. I am afraid he will put in some Levity. I am afraid I am not
quite exempt from that fault in certain magazine Articles, where I have
introduced mention of them. Were they to do again, I would reform them.
Why should not you write a poetical Account of your old Worthies,
deducing them from Fox to Woolman?--but I remember you did talk of
something in that kind, as a counterpart to the Ecclesiastical Sketches.
But would not a Poem be more consecutive than a string of Sonnets? You
have no Martyrs _quite to the Fire_, I think, among you. But plenty of
Heroic Confessors, Spirit-Martyrs--Lamb-Lions.--Think of it.
It would be better than a series of Sonnets on "Eminent Bankers."--I
like a hit at our way of life, tho' it does well for me, better than
anything short of _all one's time to one's self_, for which alone I
rankle with envy at the rich. Books are good, and Pictures are good, and
Money to buy them therefore good, but to buy _TIME!_ in other words,
LIFE--
The "compliments of the time to you" should end my letter; to a Friend I
suppose I must say the "sincerity of the season;" I hope they both mean
the same. With excuses for this hastily penn'd note, believe me with
great respect--
C. LAMB.
23 dec. 22.
[Miss Bailly would be Joanna Baillie (1762-1851), author of _Plays on
the Passions_.
The copy of Fox's _Journal_, 1694, which was lent to Lamb is now in the
possession of the Society of Friends. In it is written:
"This copy of George Fox's Journal, being the earliest edition of that
work, the property of John T. Shewell of Ipswich, is lent for six months
to Charles Lamb, at the request of Sam'l Alexander of Needham, Ipswich,
1st mo. 4 1823." Lamb has added: "Returned by Charles Lamb, within the
period, with many thanks to the Lender for the very great satisfaction
which he has derived from the perusal of it."
Southey was meditating a Life of George Fox and corresponded with Barton
on the subject. He did not write the book.
Barton had a plan to provide Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Sonnets with a
Quaker pendant. He did not carry it out.
Here might come an undated and unpublished letter from Lamb to Basil
Montagu, which is of little interest except as referring to Miss James,
Mary Lamb's nurse. Lamb says that she was one of four sisters, daughters
of a Welsh clergyman, who all became nurses at Mrs. Warburton's, Hoxton,
whither, I imagine, Mary Lamb had often retired. Mrs. Parsons, one of
the sisters, became Mary Lamb's nurse when, some time after Lamb's
death, she moved to 41 Alpha Road, Mrs. Parsons' house. The late John
Hollingshead, great-nephew of these ladies, says in his interesting
book, _My Lifetime_, that their father was rector of Beguildy, in
Shropshire.]
LETTER 304
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
[January, 1823.]
Dear Payne--Your little books are most acceptable. 'Tis a delicate
edition. They are gone to the binder's. When they come home I shall have
two--the "Camp" and "Patrick's Day"--to read for the first time. I may
say three, for I never read the "School for Scandal." "_Seen_ it I have,
and in its happier days." With the books Harwood left a truncheon or
mathematical instrument, of which we have not yet ascertained the use.
It is like a telescope, but unglazed. Or a ruler, but not smooth enough.
It opens like a fan, and discovers a frame such as they weave lace upon
at Lyons and Chambery. Possibly it is from those parts. I do not value
the present the less, for not being quite able to detect its purport.
When I can find any one coming your way I have a volume for you, my
Elias collected. Tell Poole, his Cockney in the Lon. Mag. tickled me
exceedingly. Harwood is to be with us this evening with Fanny, who comes
to introduce a literary lady, who wants to see me,--and whose portentous
name is _Plura_, in English "many things." Now, of all God's creatures,
I detest letters-affecting, authors-hunting ladies. But Fanny "will have
it so." So Miss Many Things and I are to have a conference, of which you
shall have the result. I dare say she does not play at whist. Treasurer
Robertson, whose coffers are absolutely swelling with pantomimic
receipts, called on me yesterday to say he is going to write to you, but
if I were also, I might as well say that your last bill is at the
Banker's, and will be honored on the instant receipt of the third Piece,
which you have stipulated for. If you have any such in readiness, strike
while the iron is hot, before the Clown cools. Tell Mrs. Kenney, that
the Miss F.H. (or H.F.) Kelly, who has begun so splendidly in Juliet, is
the identical little Fanny Kelly who used to play on their green before
their great Lying-Inn Lodgings at Bayswater. Her career has stopt short
by the injudicious bringing her out in a vile new Tragedy, and for a
third character in a stupid old one,--the Earl of Essex. This is
Macready's doing, who taught her. Her recitation, &c. (_not her voice or
person_), is masculine. It is so clever, it seemed a male _Debut_. But
cleverness is the bane of Female Tragedy especially. Passions uttered
logically, &c. It is bad enough in men-actors. Could you do nothing for
little Clara Fisher? Are there no French Pieces with a Child in them? By
Pieces I mean here dramas, to prevent male-constructions. Did not the
Blue Girl remind you of some of Congreve's women? Angelica or Millamant?
To me she was a vision of Genteel Comedy realized. Those kind of people
never come to see one. _N'import_--havn't I Miss Many Things coming?
Will you ask Horace Smith to----[_The remainder of this letter has been
lost_.]
[Payne seems to have sent Lamb an edition of Sheridan. "The Camp" and
"St. Patrick's Day" are among Sheridan's less known plays.
Poole was writing articles on France in the _London Magazine_. Lamb
refers to "A Cockney's Rural Sports," in the number for December, 1822.
Fanny was Fanny Holcroft. Plura I do not identify.
The new tragedy in which Miss Kelly had to play was probably "The
Huguenot," produced December 11, 1822. "The Earl of Essex" was revived
December 30, 1822. Macready played in both.
"Cleverness is the bane." See Lamb's little article on "The New Acting"
in Vol. I.
The Blue Girl seems to refer to the lady mentioned at the end of the
first letter to Payne.
Angelica is in Congreve's "Love for Love"; Millamant in his "Way of the
World."]
LETTER 305
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[No date. January, 1823.]
Dear Wordsworth, I beg your acceptance of ELIA, detached from any of its
old companions which might have been less agreeable to you. I hope your
eyes are better, but if you must spare them, there is nothing in my
pages which a Lady may not read aloud without indecorum, _which is more
than can be said of Shakspeare_.
What a nut this last sentence would be for Blackwood!
You will find I availed myself of your suggestion, in curtailing the
dissertation on Malvolio.
I have been on the Continent since I saw you.
I have eaten frogs.
I saw Monkhouse tother day, and Mrs. M. being too poorly to admit of
company, the annual goosepye was sent to Russell Street, and with its
capacity has fed "A hundred head" (not of Aristotle's) but "of Elia's
friends."
Mrs. Monkhouse is sadly confined, but chearful.--
This packet is going off, and I have neither time, place nor solitude
for a longer Letter.
Will you do me the favor to forward the other volume to Southey?
Mary is perfectly well, and joins me in kindest rememb'ces to you all.
[_Signature cut away_.]
["What a nut... for Blackwood." To help on Maga's great cause against
Cockney arrogance.
"The dissertation on Malvolio." In Elia the essays on the Old Actors
were much changed and rearranged (see Appendix to Vol. II. in this
edition).]
LETTER 306
CHARLES LAMB TO MR. AND MRS. J.D. COLLIER
Twelfth Day [January 6], 1823.
THE pig was above my feeble praise. It was a dear pigmy. There was some
contention as to who should have the ears, but in spite of his obstinacy
(deaf as these little creatures are to advice) I contrived to get at one
of them.
It came in boots too, which I took as a favor. Generally those petty
toes, pretty toes! are missing. But I suppose he wore them, to look
taller.
He must have been the least of his race. His little foots would have
gone into the silver slipper. I take him to have been Chinese, and a
female.--
If Evelyn could have seen him, he would never have farrowed two such
prodigious volumes, seeing how much good can be contained in--how small
a compass!
He crackled delicately.
John Collier Jun has sent me a Poem which (without the smallest bias
from the aforesaid present, believe me) I pronounce _sterling_.
I set about Evelyn, and finished the first volume in the course of a
natural day. To-day I attack the second--Parts are very interesting.--
I left a blank at top of my letter, not being determined _which_ to
address it to, so Farmer and Farmer's wife will please to divide our
thanks. May your granaries be full, and your rats empty, and your
chickens plump, and your envious neighbors lean, and your labourers
busy, and you as idle and as happy as the day is long!
VIVE L'AGRICULTURE!
Frank Field's marriage of course you have seen in the papers, and that
his brother Barron is expected home.
How do you make your pigs so little?
They are vastly engaging at that age.
I was so myself.
Now I am a disagreeable old hog--
A middle-aged-gentleman-and-a-half.
My faculties, thank God, are not much impaired. I have my sight,
hearing, taste, pretty perfect; and can read the Lord's Prayer in the
common type, by the help of a candle, without making many mistakes.
Believe me, while my faculties last, a proper appreciator of your many
kindnesses in this way; and that the last lingering relish of past
flavors upon my dying memory will be the smack of that little Ear. It
was the left ear, which is lucky. Many happy returns (not of the Pig)
but of the New Year to both.--
Mary for her share of the Pig and the memoirs desires to send the same--
D'r. M'r. C. and M'rs. C.--
Yours truly
C. LAMB.
[This letter is usually supposed to have been addressed by Lamb to Mr.
and Mrs. Bruton of Mackery End. The address is, however, Mrs. Collier,
Smallfield Place, East Grinstead, Sussex.
"If Evelyn could have seen him." John Evelyn's _Diary_ had recently been
published, in 1818 and 1819, in two large quarto volumes.]
LETTER 307
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES ADERS
[Jan. 8, 1823.]
Dear Sir--We shall have great pleasure in surprising Mrs. Aders on her
Birthday--You will perceive how cunningly I have contrived the direction
of this note, _to evade postage_.
Yours truly
C. LAMB.
8 Jan. '23.
[This note is sent to me by Mr. G. Dunlop of Kilmarnock. It is the only
note to Aders, a friend of Crabb Robinson, to whose house Lamb often
went for talk and whist. Aders had a fine collection of German pictures.
See the verses to him in Vol. IV. The cunning in the address consisted
apparently in obtaining the signature of an India House colleague to
certify that it was "official."]
LETTER 308
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
9 Jan., 1823.
"Throw yourself on the world without any rational plan of support,
beyond what the chance employ of Booksellers would afford you"!!!
Throw yourself rather, my dear Sir, from the steep Tarpeian rock,
slap-dash headlong upon iron spikes. If you had but five consolatory
minutes between the desk and the bed, make much of them, and live a
century in them, rather than turn slave to the Booksellers. They are
Turks and Tartars, when they have poor Authors at their beck. Hitherto
you have been at arm's length from them. Come not within their grasp. I
have known many authors for bread, some repining, others envying the
blessed security of a Counting House, all agreeing they had rather have
been Taylors, Weavers, what not? rather than the things they were. I
have known some starved, some to go mad, one clear friend literally
dying in a workhouse. You know not what a rapacious, dishonest set those
booksellers are. Ask even Southey, who (a single case almost) has made a
fortune by book drudgery, what he has found them. O you know not, may
you never know! the miseries of subsisting by authorship. 'Tis a pretty
appendage to a situation like yours or mine, but a slavery worse than
all slavery to be a book-seller's dependent, to drudge your brains for
pots of ale and breasts of mutton, to change your free thoughts and
voluntary numbers for ungracious TASK-WORK. Those fellows hate _us_. The
reason I take to be, that, contrary to other trades, in which the Master
gets all the credit (a Jeweller or Silversmith for instance), and the
Journeyman, who really does the fine work, is in the background, in
_our_ work the world gives all the credit to Us, whom _they_ consider
as
_their_ Journeymen, and therefore do they hate us, and cheat us, and
oppress us, and would wring the blood of us out, to put another sixpence
in their mechanic pouches. I contend, that a Bookseller has a _relative
honesty_ towards Authors, not like his honesty to the rest of the world.
B[aldwin], who first engag'd me as Elia, has not paid me up yet (nor any
of us without repeated mortifying applials), yet how the Knave fawned
while I was of service to him! Yet I dare say the fellow is punctual in
settling his milk-score, &c. Keep to your Bank, and the Bank will keep
you. Trust not to the Public, you may hang, starve, drown yourself, for
anything that worthy _Personage_ cares. I bless every star that
Providence, not seeing good to make me independent, has seen it next
good to settle me upon the stable foundation of Leadenhall. Sit down,
good B.B., in the Banking Office; what, is there not from six to Eleven
P.M. 6 days in the week, and is there not all Sunday? Fie, what a
superfluity of man's time,--if you could think so! Enough for
relaxation, mirth, converse, poetry, good thoughts, quiet thoughts. O
the corroding torturing tormenting thoughts, that disturb the Brain of
the unlucky wight, who must draw upon it for daily sustenance.
Henceforth I retract all my fond complaints of mercantile employment,
look upon them as Lovers' quarrels. I was but half in earnest. Welcome,
dead timber of a desk, that makes me live. A little grumbling is a
wholesome medicine for the spleen; but in my inner heart do I approve
and embrace this our close but unharassing way of life. I am quite
serious. If you can send me Fox, I will not keep it six _weeks_, and
will return it, with warm thanks to yourself and friend, without blot or
dog's ear. You much oblige me by this kindness.
Yours truly,
C. LAMB.
Please to direct to me at India Ho. in future. [? I am] not always at
Russell St.
[Barton had long been meditating the advisability of giving up his place
in the bank at Woodbridge and depending upon his pen. Lamb's letter of
dissuasion is not the only one which he received. Byron had written to
him in 1812: "You deserve success; but we knew, before Addison wrote his
Cato, that desert does not always command it. But suppose it attained--
'You know what ills the author's life assail--
Toil, envy, want, the _patron_, and the jail.'
Do not renounce writing, but never trust entirely to authorship. If you
have a profession, retain it; it will be like Prior's fellowship, a last
and sure resource." Barton had now broken again into dissatisfaction
with his life. He did not, however, leave the bank.
Southey made no "fortune" by his pen. He almost always had to forestall
his new works.]
LETTER 309
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
23 January, '23.
Dear Payne--I have no mornings (my day begins at 5 P.M.) to transact
business in, or talents for it, so I employ Mary, who has seen
Robertson, who says that the Piece which is to be Operafied was sent to
you six weeks since by a Mr. Hunter, whose journey has been delayed, but
he supposes you have it by this time. On receiving it back properly
done, the rest of your dues will be forthcoming. You have received L30
from Harwood, I hope? Bishop was at the theatre when Mary called, and he
has put your other piece into C. Kemble's hands (the piece you talk of
offering Elliston) and C.K. sent down word that he had not yet had time
to read it. So stand your affairs at present. Glossop has got the
Murderer. Will you address him on the subject, or shall I--that is,
Mary? She says you must write more _showable_ letters about these
matters, for, with all our trouble of crossing out this word, and giving
a cleaner turn to th' other, and folding down at this part, and
squeezing an obnoxious epithet into a corner, she can hardly communicate
their contents without offence. What, man, put less gall in your ink, or
write me a biting tragedy!
C. LAMB.
[Here should come a letter from Lamb to Ayrton asking him to meet the
Burneys and Paynes on Wednesday at half-past four.]
LETTER 310
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN HOWARD PAYNE
February [9], 1823.
My dear Miss Lamb--I have enclosed for you Mr. Payne's piece called
Grandpapa, which I regret to say is not thought to be of the nature that
will suit this theatre; but as there appears to be much merit in it, Mr.
Kemble strongly recommends that you should send it to the English Opera
House, for which it seems to be excellently adapted. As you have already
been kind enough to be our medium of communication with Mr. Payne, I
have imposed this trouble upon you; but if you do not like to act for
Mr. Payne in the business, and have no means of disposing of the piece,
I will forward it to Paris or elsewhere as you think he may prefer.
Very truly yours,
HENRY ROBERTSON.
T.R.C.G., 8 Feb. 1823.
Dear P---- We have just received the above, and want your instructions.
It strikes me as a very merry little piece, that should be played by
_very young actors_. It strikes me that Miss Clara Fisher would play the
_boy_ exactly. She is just such a forward chit. No young _man_ would do
it without its appearing absurd, but in a girl's hands it would have
just all the reality that a short dream of an act requires. Then for the
sister, if Miss Stevenson that was, were Miss Stevenson and younger,
they two would carry it off. I do not know who they have got in that
young line, besides Miss C.F., at Drury, nor how you would like Elliston
to have it--has he not had it? I am thick with Arnold, but I have always
heard that the very slender profits of the English Opera House do not
admit of his giving above a trifle, or next to none, for a piece of this
kind. Write me what I should do, what you would ask, &c. The music
(printed) is returned with the piece, and the French original. Tell Mr.
Grattan I thank him for his book, which as far as I have read it is a
very _companionable one_. I have but just received it. It came the same
hour with your packet from Cov. Gar., i.e. yester-night late, to my
summer residence, where, tell Kenney, the cow is quiet. Love to all at
Versailles. Write quickly.
C.L.
I have no acquaintance with Kemble at all, having only met him once or
twice; but any information, &c., I can get from R., who is a good
fellow, you may command. I am sorry the rogues are so dilitory, but I
distinctly believe they mean to fulfill their engagement. I am sorry you
are not here to see to these things. I am a poor man of business, but
command me to the short extent of my tether. My sister's kind
remembrance ever.
C.L.
[The "Grandpapa" was eventually produced at Drury Lane, May 25, 1825,
and played thrice. Miss Stevenson was an actress praised by Lamb in _The
Examiner_ (see Vol. I. of this edition). C.F. was Clara Fisher,
mentioned above.
Samuel James Arnold was manager of the Lyceum, then known as the English
Opera House; he was the brother of Mrs. William Ayrton, Lamb's friend.
Mr. Grattan was Thomas Colley Grattan (1792-1864), who was then living
in Paris. His book would be _Highways and Byways_, first series, 1823.
There is one other note to Payne in the _Century Magazine_, unimportant
and undated, suggesting a walk one Sunday.]
LETTER 311
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. February 17, 1823.]
My dear Sir--I have read quite through the ponderous folio of G.F. I
think Sewell has been judicious in omitting certain parts, as for
instance where G.F. _has_ revealed to him the natures of all the
creatures in their names, as Adam had. He luckily turns aside from that
compendious study of natural history, which might have superseded
Buffon, to his proper spiritual pursuits, only just hinting what a
philosopher he might have been. The ominous passage is near the
beginning of the Book. It is clear he means a physical knowledge,
without trope or figure. Also, pretences to miraculous healing and the
like are more frequent than I should have suspected from the epitome in
Sewell. He is nevertheless a great spiritual man, and I feel very much
obliged by your procuring me the Loan of it. How I like the Quaker
phrases--though I think they were hardly completed till Woolman. A
pretty little manual of Quaker language (with an endeavour to explain
them) might be gathered out of his Book. Could not you do it? I have
read through G.F. without finding any explanation of the term _first
volume_ in the title page. It takes in all, both his life and his death.
Are there more Last words of him? Pray, how may I venture to return it
to Mr. Shewell at Ipswich? I fear to send such a Treasure by a Stage
Coach. Not that I am afraid of the Coachman or the Guard _reading_ it.
But it might be lost. Can you put me in a way of sending it in safety?
The kind hearted owner trusted it to me for six months. I think I was
about as many days in getting through it, and I do not think that I
skipt a word of it. I have quoted G.F. in my Quaker's meeting, as having
said he was "lifted up in spirit" (which I felt at the time to be not a
Quaker phrase), "and the Judge and Jury were as dead men under his
feet." I find no such words in his Journal, and I did not get them from
Sewell, and the latter sentence I am sure I did not mean to invent. I
must have put some other Quaker's words into his mouth. Is it a fatality
in me, that every thing I touch turns into a Lye? I once quoted two
Lines from a translation of Dante, which Hazlitt very greatly admired,
and quoted in a Book as proof of the stupendous power of that poet, but
no such lines are to be found in the translation, which has been
searched for the purpose. I must have dreamed them, for I am quite
certain I did not forge them knowingly. What a misfortune to have a
Lying memory.--Yes, I have seen Miss Coleridge, and wish I had just such
a--daughter. God love her--to think that she should have had to toil
thro' five octavos of that cursed (I forget I write to a Quaker)
Abbeypony History, and then to abridge them to 3, and all for L113. At
her years, to be doing stupid Jesuits' Latin into English, when she
should be reading or writing Romances. Heaven send her Uncle do not
breed her up a Quarterly Reviewer!--which reminds me, that he has spoken
very respectfully of you in the last number, which is the next thing to
having a Review all to one's self. Your description of Mr. Mitford's
place makes me long for a pippin and some carraways and a cup of sack in
his orchard, when the sweets of the night come in.
Farewell.
C. LAMB.
[In the 1694 folio of George Fox's _Journal_ the revelation of the names
of creatures occurs twice, once under Notts in 1647 and again under
Mansfield in 1648.
"Sewell." _The History of the Rise, Increase and Progress of the
Christian People called Quakers_, 1722. By William Sewell (1654-1720).
"In my Quaker's meeting"--the _Elia_ essay (see Vol. II.).
"I once quoted two Lines." Possibly, Mr. A.R. Waller suggests to me, the
lines:--
Because on earth their names
In Fame's eternal volume shine for aye,
quoted by Hazlitt in his _Round Table_ essay "On Posthumous Fame," and
again in one of his _Edinburgh Review_ articles. They are presumably
based upon the _Inferno_, Canto IV. (see Haselfoot's translation, second
edition, 1899, page 21, lines 74-78). But the "manufacturer" of them
must have had Spenser's line in his mind, "On Fame's eternall bead-roll
worthie to be fyled" (_Faerie Queene_, Bk. IV., Canto II., Stanza 32).
They have not yet been found in any translation of Dante. This
explanation would satisfy Lamb's words "quoted in a book," i.e., _The
Round Table_, published in 1817.
"Miss Coleridge"--Coleridge's daughter Sara, born in 1802, who had been
brought up by her uncle, Southey. She had translated Martin
Dobrizhoffer's Latin history of the Abipones in order to gain funds for
her brother Derwent's college expenses. Her father considered the
translation "unsurpassed for pure mother English by anything I have read
for a long time." Sara Coleridge married her cousin, Henry Nelson
Coleridge, in 1829. She edited her father's works and died in 1852. At
the present time she and her mother were visiting the Gillmans.
Mr. Mitford was John Mitford (1781-1859), rector of Benhall, in Suffolk,
and editor of old poets. Later he became editor of the _Gentleman's
Magazine_. He was a cousin of Mary Russell Mitford. In the _Gentleman's
Magazine_ for May, 1838, is a review of Talfourd's edition of Lamb's
_Letters_, probably from his pen, in which he records a visit to the
Lambs in 1827.]
LETTER 312
CHARLES LAMB TO WALTER WILSON
[Dated at end: February 24, 1823.]
Dear W.--I write that you may not think me neglectful, not that I have
any thing to say. In answer to your questions, it was at _your_ house I
saw an edition of Roxana, the preface to which stated that the author
had left out that part of it which related to Roxana's daughter
persisting in imagining herself to be so, in spite of the mother's
denial, from certain hints she had picked up, and throwing herself
continually in her mother's way (as Savage is said to have done in
_his_, prying in at windows to get a glimpse of her), and that it was by
advice of Southern, who objected to the circumstances as being untrue,
when the rest of the story was founded on fact; which shows S. to have
been a stupid-ish fellow. The incidents so resemble Savage's story, that
I taxed Godwin with taking Falconer from his life by Dr. Johnson. You
should have the edition (if you have not parted with it), for I saw it
never but at your place at the Mews' Gate, nor did I then read it to
compare it with my own; only I know the daughter's curiosity is the best
part of _my_ Roxana. The prologue you speak of was mine, so named, but
not worth much. You ask me for 2 or 3 pages of verse. I have not written
so much since you knew me. I am altogether prosaic. May be I may touch
off a sonnet in time. I do not prefer Col. Jack to either Rob. Cr. or
Roxana. I only spoke of the beginning of it, his childish history. The
rest is poor. I do not know anywhere any good character of De Foe
besides what you mention. I do not know that Swift mentions him. Pope
does. I forget if D'Israeli has. Dunlop I think has nothing of him. He
is quite new ground, and scarce known beyond Crusoe. I do not know who
wrote Quarll. I never thought of Quarll as having an author. It is a
poor imitation; the monkey is the best in it, and his pretty dishes made
of shells. Do you know the Paper in the Englishman by Sir Rd. Steele,
giving an account of Selkirk? It is admirable, and has all the germs of
Crusoe. You must quote it entire. Captain G. Carleton wrote his own
Memoirs; they are about Lord Peterborough's campaign in Spain, & a good
Book. Puzzelli puzzles me, and I am in a cloud about Donald M'Leod. I
never heard of them; so you see, my dear Wilson, what poor assistances I
can give in the way of information. I wish your Book out, for I shall
like to see any thing about De Foe or from you.
Your old friend,
C. LAMB.
From my and your old compound. 24 Feb. '23.
[With this letter compare the letter on September 9, 1801, to Godwin,
and the letter on December 16, 1822, to Wilson.
Defoe's _Roxana_, first edition, does not, as a matter of fact, contain
the episode of the daughter which Lamb so much admired. Later editions
have it. Godwin says in his Preface to "Faulkener," 1807, the play to
which Lamb wrote a prologue in praise of Defoe (see Vol. IV.), that the
only accessible edition of _Roxana_ in which the story of Susannah is
fully told is that of 1745.
Richard Savage was considered to be the natural son of the Countess of
Macclesfield and Earl Rivers. His mother at first disowned him, but
afterwards, when this became impossible, repulsed him. Johnson says in
his "Life of Savage," that it was his hero's "practice to walk in the
dark evenings for several hours before her door in hopes of seeing her
as she might come by accident to the window or cross her apartment with
a candle in her hand."
Swift and Defoe were steady enemies, although I do not find that either
mentions the other by name. But Swift in _The Examiner_ often had Defoe
in mind, and Defoe in one of his political writings refers to Swift,
_apropos_ Wood's halfpence, as "the copper farthing author."
Pope referred to Defoe twice in the _Dunciad_: once as standing high,
fearless and unabashed in the pillory, and once, libellously, as the
father of Norton, of the _Flying Post_.
_Philip Quarll_ was the first imitation of _Robinson Crusoe_. It was
published in 1727, purporting to be the narrative of one Dorrington, a
merchant, and Quarll's discoverer. The title begins, _The Hermit; or,
The Unparalleled Sufferings and Surprising Adventures of Mr. Philip
Quarll, an Englishman_ ... Lamb says in his essay on Christ's Hospital
that the Blue-Coat boys used to read the book. The authorship of the
book is still unknown.
Steele's account of Selkirk is in _The Englishman_, No. 26, Dec. 1,
1713. Wilson quoted it.
Defoe's fictitious _Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton_ was
published in 1728.
I cannot explain Puzzelli or Donald M'Leod. Later Lamb sent Wilson, who
seems to have asked for some verse about Defoe, the "Ode to the
Treadmill," but Wilson did not use it.
"My old compound." Robinson's _Diary_ (Vol. I., page 333) has this: "The
large room in the accountant's office at the East India House is divided
into boxes or compartments, in each of which sit six clerks, Charles
Lamb himself in one. They are called Compounds. The meaning of the word
was asked one day, and Lamb said it was 'a collection of simples.'"]
LETTER 313
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[Dated at end: March 11, 1823.]
Dear Sir--The approbation of my little book by your sister is very
pleasing to me. The Quaker incident did not happen to me, but to
Carlisle the surgeon, from whose mouth I have twice heard it, at an
interval of ten or twelve years, with little or no variation, and have
given it as exactly as I could remember it. The gloss which your sister,
or you, have put upon it does not strike me as correct. Carlisle drew no
inference from it against the honesty of the Quakers, but only in favour
of their surprising coolness--that they should be capable of committing
a good joke, with an utter insensibility to its being any jest at all. I
have reason to believe in the truth of it, because, as I have said, I
heard him repeat it without variation at such an interval. The story
loses sadly in print, for Carlisle is the best story teller I ever
heard. The idea of the discovery of roasting pigs, I also borrowed, from
my friend Manning, and am willing to confess both my plagiarisms.
Should fate ever so order it that you shall be in town with your sister,
mine bids me say that she shall have great pleasure in being introduced
to her. I think I must give up the cause of the Bank--from nine to nine
is galley-slavery, but I hope it is but temporary. Your endeavour at
explaining Fox's insight into the natures of animals must fail, as I
shall transcribe the passage. It appears to me that he stopt short in
time, and was on the brink of falling with his friend Naylor, my
favourite.--The book shall be forthcoming whenever your friend can make
convenient to call for it.
They have dragged me again into the Magazine, but I feel the spirit of
the thing in my own mind quite gone. "Some brains" (I think Ben Jonson
says it) "will endure but one skimming." We are about to have an
inundation of poetry from the Lakes, Wordsworth and Southey are coming
up strong from the North. The she Coleridges have taken flight, to my
regret. With Sara's own-made acquisitions, her unaffectedness and
no-pretensions are beautiful. You might pass an age with her without
suspecting that she knew any thing but her mother's tongue. I don't mean
any reflection on Mrs. Coleridge here. I had better have said her
vernacular idiom. Poor C. I wish he had a home to receive his daughter
in. But he is but as a stranger or a visitor in this world. How did you
like Hartley's sonnets? The first, at least, is vastly fine. Lloyd has
been in town a day or two on business, and is perfectly well. I am
ashamed of the shabby letters I send, but I am by nature anything but
neat. Therein my mother bore me no Quaker. I never could seal a letter
without dropping the wax on one side, besides scalding my fingers. I
never had a seal too of my own. Writing to a great man lately, who is
moreover very Heraldic, I borrowed a seal of a friend, who by the female
side quarters the Protectorial Arms of Cromwell. How they must have
puzzled my correspondent!--My letters are generally charged as double at
the Post office, from their inveterate clumsiness of foldure. So you
must not take it disrespectful to your self if I send you such ungainly
scraps. I think I lose L100 a year at the India House, owing solely to
my want of neatness in making up Accounts. How I puzzle 'em out at last
is the wonder. I have to do with millions. _I?_
It is time to have done my incoherences.
Believe me Yours Truly
C. LAMB.
Tuesd 11 Ma 23.
[Lamb had sent _Elia_ to Woodbridge. Bernard Barton's sister was Maria
Hack, author of many books for children. The Quaker incident is in the
essay "Imperfect Sympathies." Carlisle was Sir Anthony Carlisle.
"Your endeavour at explaining Fox's insight." See letter above. James
Nayler (1617?-1660), an early Quaker who permitted his admirers to look
upon him as a new Christ. He went to extremes totally foreign to the
spirit of the Society. Barton made a paraphrase of Nayler's "Last
Testimony."
"They have dragged me again." Lamb had been quite ready to give up
_Elia_ with the first essays. "Old China," one of his most charming
papers, was in the March _London Magazine_.
"Some brains ..." I had to give this up in my large edition. I now find
that Swift says it, not Ben Jonson. "There is a brain that will endure
but one scumming." Preface to _Battle of the Books_.
"Hartley's sonnets." Four sonnets by Hartley Coleridge were printed in
the _London Magazine_ for February, 1823, addressed to R.S. Jameson.
"Writing to a great man lately." This was Sir Walter Scott (see page
626). Barron Field would be the friend with the seal.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Ayrton saying that there will be
cards and cold mutton in Russell St. from 8 to 9 and gin and jokes from
9.30 to 12.]
LETTER 314
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. 5 April 1823.]
Dear Sir--You must think me ill mannered not to have replied to your
first letter sooner, but I have an ugly habit of aversion from letter
writing, which makes me an unworthy correspondent. I have had no spring,
or cordial call to the occupation of late. I have been not well lately,
which must be my lame excuse. Your poem, which I consider very
affecting, found me engaged about a humorous Paper for the London, which
I had called a "Letter to an _Old Gentleman_ whose Education had been
neglected"--and when it was done Taylor and Hessey would not print it,
and it discouraged me from doing any thing else, so I took up Scott,
where I had scribbled some petulant remarks, and for a make shift
father'd them on Ritson. It is obvious I could not make your Poem a part
of them, and as I did not know whether I should ever be able to do to my
mind what you suggested, I thought it not fair to keep back the verses
for the chance. Mr. Mitford's sonnet I like very well; but as I also
have my reasons against interfering at all with the Editorial
arrangement of the London, I transmitted it (not in my own hand-writing)
to them, who I doubt not will be glad to insert it. What eventual
benefit it can be to you (otherwise than that a kind man's wish is a
benefit) I cannot conjecture. Your Society are eminently men of
Business, and will probably regard you as an idle fellow, possibly
disown you, that is to say, if you had put your own name to a sonnet of
that sort, but they cannot excommunicate Mr. Mitford, therefore I
thoroughly approve of printing the said verses. When I see any Quaker
names to the Concert of Antient Music, or as Directors of the British
Institution, or bequeathing medals to Oxford for the best classical
themes, etc.--then I shall begin to hope they will emancipate you. But
what as a Society can they do for you? you would not accept a Commission
in the Army, nor they be likely to procure it; Posts in Church or State
have they none in their giving; and then if they disown you--think--you
must live "a man forbid."
I wishd for you yesterday. I dined in Parnassus, with Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Rogers, and Tom Moore--half the Poetry of England
constellated and clustered in Gloster Place! It was a delightful Even!
Coleridge was in his finest vein of talk, had all the talk, and let 'em
talk as evilly as they do of the envy of Poets, I am sure not one there
but was content to be nothing but a listener. The Muses were dumb, while
Apollo lectured on his and their fine Art. It is a lie that Poets are
envious, I have known the best of them, and can speak to it, that they
give each other their merits, and are the kindest critics as well as
best authors. I am scribbling a muddy epistle with an aking head, for we
did not quaff Hippocrene last night. Many, it was Hippocras rather. Pray
accept this as a letter in the mean time, and do me the favor to mention
my respects to Mr. Mitford, who is so good as to entertain good thoughts
of Elia, but don't show this almost impertinent scrawl. I will write
more respectfully next time, for believe me, if not in words, in
feelings, yours most so.
["Your poem." Barton's poem was entitled "A Poet's Thanks," and was
printed in the _London Magazine_ for April, 1823, the same number that
contained Lamb's article on Ritson and Scott. It is one of his best
poems, an expression of contentment in simplicity. The "Letter to an Old
Gentleman," a parody of De Quincey's series of "Letters to a Young
Gentleman" in the _London Magazine_, was not published until January,
1825. Scott was John Scott of Amwell (Barton's predecessor as the Quaker
poet), who had written a rather foolish book of prose, _Critical Essays
on the English Poets_. Ritson was Joseph Ritson, the critic and
antiquarian. See Vol. I. of the present edition for the essay. Barton
seems to have suggested to Lamb that he should write an essay around the
poem "A Poet's Thanks." Mitford's sonnet, which was printed in the
_London Magazine_ for June, 1823, was addressed commiseratingly to
Bernard Barton. It began:--
What to thy broken Spirit can atone,
Unhappy victim of the Tyrant's fears;
and continued in the same strain, the point being that Barton was the
victim of his Quaker employers, who made him "prisoner at once and
slave." Lamb's previous letter shows us that Barton was being worked
from nine till nine, and we must suppose also that an objection to his
poetical exercises had been lodged or suggested. The matter righted
itself in time.
"I dined in Parnassus." This dinner, at Thomas Monkhouse's, No. 34
Gloucester Place, is described both by Moore and by Crabb Robinson, who
was present. Moore wrote in his _Journal_:--
"Dined at Mr. Monkhouse's (a gentleman I had never seen before) on
Wordsworth's invitation, who lives there whenever he comes to town. A
singular party. Coleridge, Rogers, Wordsworth and wife, Charles Lamb
(the hero at present of the _London Magazine_), and his sister (the poor
woman who went mad in a diligence on the way to Paris), and a Mr.
Robinson, one of the _minora sidera_ of this constellation of the Lakes;
the host himself, a Maecenas of the school, contributing nothing but
good dinners and silence. Charles Lamb, a clever fellow, certainly, but
full of villainous and abortive puns, which he miscarries of every
minute. Some excellent things, however, have come from him."
Lamb told Moore that he had hitherto always felt an antipathy to him,
but henceforward should like him.
Crabb Robinson writes:--
"_April 4th_.--Dined at Monkhouse's. Our party consisted of Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Lamb, Moore, and Rogers. Five poets of very unequal worth and
most disproportionate popularity, whom the public probably would arrange
in the very inverse order, except that it would place Moore above
Rogers. During this afternoon, Coleridge alone displayed any of his
peculiar talent. He talked much and well. I have not for years seen him
in such excellent health and spirits. His subjects metaphysical
criticism--Wordsworth he chiefly talked to. Rogers occasionally let fall
a remark. Moore seemed conscious of his inferiority. He was very
attentive to Coleridge, but seemed to relish Lamb, whom he sat next. L.
was in a good frame--kept himself within bounds and was only cheerful at
last.... I was at the bottom of the table, where I very ill performed my
part.... I walked home late with Lamb."
Many years later Robinson sent to The Athenaeum (June 25, 1853) a
further and fuller account of the evening.]
LETTER 315
CHARLES LAMB TO B.W. PROCTER
April 13th, 1823.
Dear Lad,--You must think me a brute beast, a rhinoceros, never to have
acknowledged the receipt of your precious present. But indeed I am none
of those shocking things, but have arrived at that indisposition to
letter-writing, which would make it a hard exertion to write three lines
to a king to spare a friend's life. Whether it is that the Magazine
paying me so much a page, I am loath to throw away composition--how much
a sheet do you give your correspondents? I have hung up Pope, and a gem
it is, in my town room; I hope for your approval. Though it accompanies
the "Essay on Man," I think that was not the poem he is here meditating.
He would have looked up, somehow affectedly, if he were just conceiving
"Awake, my St. John." Neither is he in the "Rape of the Lock" mood
exactly. I think he has just made out the last lines of the "Epistle to
Jervis," between gay and tender,
"And other beauties envy Worsley's eyes."
I'll be damn'd if that isn't the line. He is brooding over it, with a
dreamy phantom of Lady Mary floating before him. He is thinking which is
the earliest possible day and hour that she will first see it. What a
miniature piece of gentility it is! Why did you give it me? I do not
like you enough to give you anything so good.
I have dined with T. Moore and breakfasted with Rogers, since I saw you;
have much to say about them when we meet, which I trust will be in a
week or two. I have been over-watched and over-poeted since Wordsworth
has been in town. I was obliged for health sake to wish him gone: but
now he is gone I feel a great loss. I am going to Dalston to recruit,
and have serious thoughts--of altering my condition, that is, of taking
to sobriety. What do you advise me?
T. Moore asked me your address in a manner which made me believe he
meant to call upon you.
Rogers spake very kindly of you, as every body does, and none with so
much reason as your
C.L.
[This is the first important letter to Bryan Waller Procter, better
known as Barry Cornwall, who was afterwards to write, in his old age, so
pleasant a memoir of Lamb. He was then thirty-five, was practising law,
and had already published _Marcian Colonna_ and _A Sicilian Story_.
The Epistle to Mr. Jervas (with Mr. Dryden's translation of Fresnoy's
_Art of Painting_) did not end upon this line, but some eighteen lines
later. I give the portrait in my large edition.
"Lady Mary." By Lady Mary Lamb means, as Pope did in the first edition,
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. But after his quarrel with that lady Pope
altered it to Worsley, signifying Lady Frances Worsley, daughter of the
Duke of Marlborough and wife of Sir Robert Worsley.]
LETTER 316
CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
[P.M. April 25, 1823.]
Dear Miss H----, Mary has such an invincible reluctance to any
epistolary exertion, that I am sparing her a mortification by taking the
pen from her. The plain truth is, she writes such a pimping, mean,
detestable hand, that she is ashamed of the formation of her letters.
There is an essential poverty and abjectness in the frame of them. They
look like begging letters. And then she is sure to omit a most
substantial word in the second draught (for she never ventures an
epistle, without a foul copy first) which is obliged to be interlined,
which spoils the neatest epistle, you know [_the word "epistle" is
underlined_). Her figures, 1, 2, 3, 4, &c., where she has occasion to
express numerals, as in the date (25 Apr 1823), are not figures, but
Figurantes. And the combined posse go staggering up and down shameless
as drunkards in the day time. It is no better when she rules her paper,
her lines are "not less erring" than her words--a sort of unnatural
parallel lines, that are perpetually threatening to meet, which you know
is quite contrary to Euclid [_here Lamb has ruled lines grossly
unparallel_]. Her very blots are not bold like this [_here a bold
blot_], but poor smears [_here a poor smear_] half left in and half
scratched out with another smear left in their place. I like a clean
letter. A bold free hand, and a fearless flourish. Then she has always
to go thro' them (a second operation) to dot her i s, and cross her t s.
I don't think she can make a cork screw, if she tried--which has such a
fine effect at the end or middle of an epistle--and fills up--
[_Here Lamb has made a corkscrew two inches long_.]
There is a corkscrew, one of the best I ever drew. By the way what
incomparable whiskey that was of Monkhouse's. But if I am to write a
letter, let me begin, and not stand flourishing like a fencer at a fair.
It gives me great pleasure (the letter now begins) to hear that you got
down smoothly, and that Mrs. Monkhouse's spirits are so good and
enterprising. It shews, whatever her posture may be, that her mind at
least is not supine. I hope the excursion will enable the former to keep
pace with its out-stripping neighbor. Pray present our kindest wishes to
her, and all. (That sentence should properly have come in the Post
Script, but we airy Mercurial Spirits, there is no keeping us in).
Time--as was said of one of us--toils after us in vain. I am afraid our
co-visit with Coleridge was a dream. I shall not get away before the end
(or middle) of June, and then you will be frog-hopping at Boulogne. And
besides I think the Gilmans would scarce trust him with us, I have a
malicious knack at cutting of apron strings. The Saints' days you speak
of have long since fled to heaven, with Astraea, and the cold piety of
the age lacks fervor to recall them--only Peter left his key--the iron
one of the two, that shuts amain--and that's the reason I am lockd up.
Meanwhile of afternoons we pick up primroses at Dalston, and Mary
corrects me when I call 'em cowslips. God bless you all, and pray
remember me euphoneously to Mr. Gnwellegan. That Lee Priory must be a
dainty bower, is it built of flints, and does it stand at Kingsgate? Did
you remem
[_This is apparently the proper end of the letter. At least there is no
indication of another sheet_.]
[Addressed to "Miss Hutchinson, 17 Sion Hill, Ramsgate, Kent," where she
was staying with Mrs. Monkhouse. I give a facsimile of it in my large
edition.
"'Time'--as was said of one of us." Johnson wrote of Shakespeare, in the
Prologue at the opening of Drury Lane Theatre in 1747:--
And panting Time toil'd after him in vain.
"The Saints' days." See note to the letter to Mrs. Wordsworth, Feb. 18,
1818.
"Mr. Gnwellegan." Probably Lamb's effort to write the name of Edward
Quillinan, afterwards Wordsworth's son-in-law, whose first wife had been
a Miss Brydges of Lee Priory.
"Lee Priory"--the home of Sir Egerton Brydges, at Ickham, near
Canterbury, for some years. He had, however, now left, and the private
press was closed.
In _Notes and Queries_, November 11, 1876, was printed the following
scrap, a postscript by Charles Lamb to a letter from Mary Lamb to Miss
H. I place it here, having no clue as to date, nor does it matter:--]
LETTER 317
(_Fragment_)
CHARLES LAMB TO MISS HUTCHINSON (?)
A propos of birds--the other day at a large dinner, being call'd upon
for a toast, I gave, as the best toast I knew, "Wood-cock toast," which
was drunk with 3 cheers.
Yours affect'y
C. LAMB.
LETTER 318
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[No date. Probably 1823.]
It is hard when a Gentleman cannot remain concealed, who affecteth
obscurity with greater avidity than most do seek to have their good
deeds brought to light--to haye a prying inquisitive finger, (to the
danger of its own scorching), busied in removing the little peck measure
(scripturally a bushel) under which one had hoped to bury his small
candle. The receipt of fern-seed, I think, in this curious age, would
scarce help a man to walk invisible.
Well, I am discovered--and thou thyself, who thoughtest to shelter under
the pease-cod of initiality (a stale and shallow device), art no less
dragged to light--Thy slender anatomy--thy skeletonian D---- fleshed and
sinewed out to the plump expansion of six characters--thy tuneful
genealogy deduced--
By the way, what a name is Timothy!
Lay it down, I beseech thee, and in its place take up the properer sound
of Timotheus--
Then mayst thou with unblushing fingers handle the Lyre "familiar to the
D----n name."
With much difficulty have I traced thee to thy lurking-place. Many a
goodly name did I run over, bewildered between Dorrien, and Doxat, and
Dover, and Dakin, and Daintry--a wilderness of D's--till at last I
thought I had hit it--my conjectures wandering upon a melancholy
Jew--you wot the Israelite upon Change--Master Daniels--a contemplative
Hebrew-- to the which guess I was the rather led, by the consideration
that most of his nation are great readers--
Nothing is so common as to see them in the Jews' Walk, with a bundle of
script in one hand, and the Man of Feeling, or a volume of Sterne, in
the other--
I am a rogue if I can collect what manner of face thou carriest, though
thou seemest so familiar with mine--If I remember, thou didst not dimly
resemble the man Daniels, whom at first I took thee for--a care-worn,
mortified, economical, commercio-political countenance, with an
agreeable limp in thy gait, if Elia mistake thee not. I think I sh'd
shake hands with thee, if I met thee.
[John Bates Dibdin, the son of Charles Dibdin the younger and grandson
of the great Charles Dibdin, was at this time a young man of about
twenty-four, engaged as a clerk in a shipping office in the city. I
borrow from Canon Ainger an interesting letter from a sister of Dibdin
on the beginning of the correspondence:--
My brother ... had constant occasion to conduct the giving or taking of
cheques, as it might be, at the India House. There he always selected
"the little clever man" in preference to the other clerks. At that time
the _Elia Essays_ were appearing in print. No one had the slightest
conception who "Elia" was. He was talked of everywhere, and everybody
was trying to find him out, but without success. At last, from the style
and manner of conveying his ideas and opinions on different subjects, my
brother began to suspect that Lamb was the individual so widely sought
for, and wrote some lines to him, anonymously, sending them by post to
his residence, with the hope of sifting him on the subject. Although
Lamb could not _know_ who sent him the lines, yet he looked very hard at
the writer of them the next time they met, when he walked up, as usual,
to Lamb's desk in the most unconcerned manner, to transact the necessary
business. Shortly after, when they were again in conversation, something
dropped from Lamb's lips which convinced his hearer, beyond a doubt,
that his suspicions were correct. He therefore wrote some more lines
(anonymously, as before), beginning--
"I've found thee out, O Elia!"
and sent them to Colebrook Row. The consequence was that at their next
meeting Lamb produced the lines, and after much laughing, confessed
himself to be _Elia_. This led to a warm friendship between them.
Dibdin's letter of discovery was signed D. Hence Lamb's fumbling after
his Christian name, which he probably knew all the time.]
LETTER 319
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. 3 May, 1823.]
Dear Sir--I am vexed to be two letters in your debt, but I have been
quite out of the vein lately. A philosophical treatise is wanting, of
the causes of the backwardness with which persons after a certain time
of life set about writing a letter. I always feel as if I had nothing to
say, and the performance generally justifies the presentiment. Taylor
and Hessey did foolishly in not admitting the sonnet. Surely it might
have followed the B.B. I agree with you in thinking Bowring's paper
better than the former. I will inquire about my Letter to the Old
Gentleman, but I expect it to _go in_, after those to the Young Gent'n
are completed. I do not exactly see why the Goose and little Goslings
should emblematize _a Quaker poet that has no children_. But after
all--perhaps it is a Pelican. The Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin around it I
cannot decypher. The songster of the night pouring out her effusions
amid a Silent Meeting of Madge Owlets, would be at least intelligible. A
full pause here comes upon me, as if I had not a word more left. I will
shake my brain. Once-- twice--nothing comes up. George Fox recommends
waiting on these occasions. I wait. Nothing comes. G. Fox--that sets me
off again. I have finished the Journal, and 400 more pages of the
_Doctrinals_, which I picked up for 7s. 6d. If I get on at this rate,
the Society will be in danger of having two Quaker poets--to patronise.
I am at Dalston now, but if, when I go back to Cov. Gar., I find thy
friend has not call'd for the Journal, thee must put me in a way of
sending it; and if it should happen that the Lender of it, having that
volume, has not the other, I shall be most happy in his accepting the
Doctrinals, which I shall read but once certainly. It is not a splendid
copy, but perfect, save a leaf of Index.
I cannot but think _the London_ drags heavily. I miss Janus. And O how
it misses Hazlitt! Procter too is affronted (as Janus has been) with
their abominable curtailment of his things--some meddling Editor or
other--or phantom of one --for neither he nor Janus know their busy
friend. But they always find the best part cut out; and they have done
well to cut also. I am not so fortunate as to be served in this manner,
for I would give a clean sum of money in sincerity to leave them
handsomely. But the dogs--T. and H. I mean-- will not affront me, and
what can I do? must I go on to drivelling? Poor Relations is
tolerable--but where shall I get another subject--or who shall deliver
me from the body of this death? I assure you it teases me more than it
used to please me. Ch. Lloyd has published a sort of Quaker poem, he
tells me, and that he has order'd me a copy, but I have not got it. Have
you seen it? I must leave a little wafer space, which brings me to an
apology for a conclusion. I am afraid of looking back, for I feel all
this while I have been writing nothing, but it may show I am alive.
Believe me, cordially yours C. LAMB.
[The sonnet probably was Mitford's, which was printed in the June number
(see above). Bowring, afterwards Sir John, was writing in the _London
Magazine_ on "Spanish Romances."
"The Goose and little Goslings." Possibly the design upon the seal of
Barton's last letter.
"Janus." The first mention of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (see note
below), who sometimes wrote in the _London_ over the pseudonym Janus
Weathercock. John Taylor, Hood and perhaps John Hamilton Reynolds, made
up the magazine for press. In the May number, in addition to Lamb's
"Poor Relations," were contributions from De Quincey, Hartley Coleridge,
Cary, and Barton. But it was not what it had been.
Lloyd's Quaker poem would probably be one of those in his _Poems_, 1823,
which contains some of his most interesting work.]
LETTER 320
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[P.M. May 6, 1823.]
Dear Sir--Your verses were very pleasant, and I shall like to see more
of them--I do not mean _addressed to me_.
I do not know whether you live in town or country, but if it suits your
convenience I shall be glad to see you some evening-- say Thursday--at
20 Great Russell Street, Cov't Garden. If you can come, do not trouble
yourself to write. We are old fashiond people who _drink tea_ at six, or
not much later, and give cold mutton and pickle at nine, the good old
hour. I assure you (if it suit you) we shall be glad to see you.--
Yours, etc. C. LAMB.
E.I.H., Tuesday, My love to Mr. Railton.
Some day of May 1823. The same to Mr. Rankin,
Not official. to the whole Firm indeed.
[The verses are not, I fear, now recoverable. Dibdin's firm was Railton,
Rankin & Co., in Old Jury.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Hone, dated May 19, 1823. William
Hone (1780-1842), who then, his stormy political days over, was
publishing antiquarian works on Ludgate Hill, had sent Lamb his _Ancient
Mysteries Described_, 1823. Lamb thanks him for it, and invites him to
14 Kingsland Row, Dalston, the next Sunday: "We dine exactly at 4."]
LETTER 321
MARY LAMB TO MRS. RANDAL NORRIS
Hastings, at Mrs. Gibbs, York Cottage, Priory, No. 4. [June 18, 1823.]
My dear Friend,--Day after day has passed away, and my brother has said,
"I will write to Mrs. [? Mr.] Norris to-morrow," and therefore I am
resolved to write to _Mrs. Norris_ to-day, and trust him no longer. We
took our places for Sevenoaks, intending to remain there all night in
order to see Knole, but when we got there we chang'd our minds, and went
on to Tunbridge Wells. About a mile short of the Wells the coach stopped
at a little inn, and I saw, "Lodgings to let" on a little, very little
house opposite. I ran over the way, and secured them before the coach
drove away, and we took immediate possession: it proved a very
comfortable place, and we remained there nine days. The first evening,
as we were wandering about, we met a lady, the wife of one of the India
House clerks, with whom we had been slightly acquainted some years ago,
which slight acquaintance has been ripened into a great intimacy during
the nine pleasant days that we passed at the Wells. She and her two
daughters went with us in an open chaise to Knole, and as the chaise
held only five, we mounted Miss James upon a little horse, which she
rode famously. I was very much pleased with Knole, and still more with
Penshurst, which we also visited. We saw Frant and the Rocks, and made
much use of your Guide Book, only Charles lost his way once going by the
map. We were in constant exercise the whole time, and spent our time so
pleasantly that when we came here on Monday we missed our new friends
and found ourselves very dull. We are by the seaside in a _still less
house_, and we have exchanged a very pretty landlady for a very ugly
one, but she is equally attractive to us. We eat turbot, and we drink
smuggled Hollands, and we walk up hill and down hill all day long. In
the little intervals of rest that we allow ourselves I teach Miss James
French; she picked up a few words during her foreign Tour with us, and
she has had a hankering after it ever since.
We came from Tunbridge Wells in a Postchaise, and would have seen Battle
Abbey on the way, but it is only shewn on a Monday. We are trying to
coax Charles into a Monday's excursion. And Bexhill we are also thinking
about. Yesterday evening we found out by chance the most beautiful view
I ever saw. It is called "The Lovers' Seat."... You have been here,
therefore you must have seen [it, or] is it only Mr. and Mrs. Faint who
have visited Hastings? [Tell Mrs.] Faint that though in my haste to get
housed I d[ecided on] ... ice's lodgings, yet it comforted all th ... to
know that I had a place in view.
I suppose you are so busy that it is not fair to ask you to write me a
line to say how you are going on. Yet if any one of you have half an
hour to spare for that purpose, it will be most thankfully received.
Charles joins with me in love to you all together, and to each one in
particular upstairs and downstairs.
Yours most affectionately, M. LAMB. June 18
[Mr. Hazlitt dates this letter 1825 or 1826, and considers it to refer
to a second visit to Hastings; but I think most probably it refers to
the 1823 visit, especially as the Lovers' Seat would assuredly have been
discovered then. Miss James was Mary Lamb's nurse. Mrs. Randal Norris
had been a Miss Faint.
There is a curious similarity between a passage in this letter and in
one of Byron's, written in 1814: "I have been swimming, and eating
turbot, and smuggling neat brandies, and silk handkerchiefs ... and
walking on cliffs and tumbling down hills."
A Hastings guide book for 1825 gives Mrs. Gibbs' address as 4 York
Cottages, near Priory Bridge. Near by, in Pelham Place, a Mr. Hogsflesh
had a lodging-house.]
LETTER 322
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. 10 July, 1823.]
Dear Sir--I shall be happy to read the MS. and to forward it; but T. and
H. must judge for themselves of publication. If it prove interesting (as
I doubt not) I shall not spare to say so, you may depend upon it.
Suppose you direct it to Acco'ts. Office, India House.
I am glad you have met with some sweetening circumstances to your
unpalatable draught. I have just returned from Hastings, where are
exquisite views and walks, and where I have given up my soul to walking,
and I am now suffering sedentary contrasts. I am a long time reconciling
to Town after one of these excursions. Home is become strange, and will
remain so yet a while. Home is the most unforgiving of friends and
always resents Absence; I know its old cordial looks will return, but
they are slow in clearing up. That is one of the features of this _our_
galley slavery, that peregrination ended makes things worse. I felt out
of water (with all the sea about me) at Hastings, and just as I had
learned to domiciliate there, I must come back to find a home which is
no home. I abused Hastings, but learned its value. There are spots,
inland bays, etc., which realise the notions of Juan Fernandez.
The best thing I lit upon by accident was a small country church (by
whom or when built unknown) standing bare and single in the midst of a
grove, with no house or appearance of habitation within a quarter of a
mile, only passages diverging from it thro' beautiful woods to so many
farm houses. There it stands, like the first idea of a church, before
parishioners were thought of, nothing but birds for its congregation, or
like a Hermit's oratory (the Hermit dead), or a mausoleum, its effect
singularly impressive, like a church found in a desert isle to startle
Crusoe with a home image; you must make out a vicar and a congregation
from fancy, for surely none come there. Yet it wants not its pulpit, and
its font, and all the seemly additaments of _our_ worship.
Southey has attacked Elia on the score of infidelity, in the Quarterly,
Article, "Progress of Infidels [Infidelity]." I had not, nor have, seen
the Monthly. He might have spared an old friend such a construction of a
few careless flights, that meant no harm to religion. If all his
UNGUARDED expressions on the subject were to be collected--
But I love and respect Southey--and will not retort. I HATE HIS REVIEW,
and his being a Reviewer.
The hint he has dropped will knock the sale of the book on the head,
which was almost at a stop before.
Let it stop. There is corn in Egypt, while there is cash at Leadenhall.
You and I are something besides being Writers. Thank God.
Yours truly C.L.
[What the MS. was I do not know. Lamb recurs more fully to the
description of the little church--probably Hollingdon Rural, about three
miles north-west from the town--in later letters.
The thoughts in the second paragraph of this letter were amplified in
the _Elia_ essay "The Old Margate Hoy," in the _London Magazine_ for
July, 1823.
"Southey has attacked Elia." In an article in the _Quarterly_ for
January, 1823, in a review of a work by Gregoire on Deism in France,
under the title "The Progress of Infidelity," Southey had a reference to
_Elia_ in the following terms:--
"Unbelievers have not always been honest enough thus to express their
real feelings; but this we know concerning them, that when they have
renounced their birthright of hope, they have not been able to divest
themselves of fear. From the nature of the human mind this might be
presumed, and in fact it is so. They may deaden the heart and stupify
the conscience, but they cannot destroy the imaginative faculty. There
is a remarkable proof of this in _Elia's Essays_, a book which wants
only a sounder religious feeling, to be as delightful as it is
original."
And then Southey went on to draw attention to the case of Thornton Hunt,
the little child of Leigh Hunt, the (to Southey) notorious free-thinker,
who, as Lamb had stated in the essay "Witches and Other Night Fears,"
would wake at night in terror of images of fear.
"I will not retort." Lamb, as we shall see, changed his mind.
"Almost at a stop before." _Elia_ was never popular until long after
Lamb's death. It did not reach a second edition until 1836. There are
now several new editions every year.]
LETTER 323
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[July, 1823.]
D'r A.--I expect Proctor and Wainwright (Janus W.) this
evening; will you come? I suppose it is but a comp't
to ask Mrs. Alsop; but it is none to say that we should be
most glad to see her. Yours ever. How vexed I am at your
Dalston expedit'n. C.L.
Tuesday.
[Mrs. Allsop was a daughter of Mrs. Jordan, and had herself been an
actress.]
LETTER 324
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[Dated at end: 2 September (1823).]
Dear B.B.--What will you say to my not writing? You cannot say I do not
write now. Hessey has not used your kind sonnet, nor have I seen it.
Pray send me a Copy. Neither have I heard any more of your Friend's MS.,
which I will reclaim, whenever you please. When you come London-ward you
will find me no longer in Cov't Gard. I have a Cottage, in Colebrook
row, Islington. A cottage, for it is detach'd; a white house, with 6
good rooms; the New River (rather elderly by this time) runs (if a
moderate walking pace can be so termed) close to the foot of the house;
and behind is a spacious garden, with vines (I assure you), pears,
strawberries, parsnips, leeks, carrots, cabbages, to delight the heart
of old Alcinous. You enter without passage into a cheerful dining room,
all studded over and rough with old Books, and above is a lightsome
Drawing room, 3 windows, full of choice prints. I feel like a great
Lord, never having had a house before.
The London I fear falls off.--I linger among its creaking rafters, like
the last rat. It will topple down, if they don't get some Buttresses.
They have pull'd down three, W. Hazlitt, Proctor, and their best stay,
kind light hearted Wainwright --their Janus. The best is, neither of our
fortunes is concern'd in it.
I heard of you from Mr. Pulham this morning, and that gave a fillip to
my Laziness, which has been intolerable. But I am so taken up with
pruning and gardening, quite a new sort of occupation to me. I have
gather'd my Jargonels, but my Windsor Pears are backward. The former
were of exquisite raciness. I do now sit under my own vine, and
contemplate the growth of vegetable nature. I can now understand in what
sense they speak of FATHER ADAM. I recognise the paternity, while I
watch my tulips. I almost FELL with him, for the first day I turned a
drunken gard'ner (as he let in the serpent) into my Eden, and he laid
about him, lopping off some choice boughs, &c., which hung over from a
neighbor's garden, and in his blind zeal laid waste a shade, which had
sheltered their window from the gaze of passers by. The old gentlewoman
(fury made her not handsome) could scarcely be reconciled by all my fine
words. There was no buttering her parsnips. She talk'd of the Law. What
a lapse to commit on the first day of my happy "garden-state."
I hope you transmitted the Fox-Journal to its Owner with suitable
thanks.
Mr. Cary, the Dante-man, dines with me to-day. He is a model of a
country Parson, lean (as a Curate ought to be), modest, sensible, no
obtruder of church dogmas, quite a different man from Southey,--you
would like him.
Pray accept this for a Letter, and believe me with sincere regards
Yours C.L.
2 Sept.
["Your kind sonnet." Barton's well-known sonnet to Elia (quoted below)
had been printed in the _London Magazine_ long before--in the previous
February. I do not identify this one among his writings.
"I have a Cottage." This cottage still stands (1912). Within it is much
as in Lamb's day, but outwardly changed, for a new house has been built
on one side and it is thus no longer detached. The New River still runs
before it, but subterraneously.
Barton was so attracted by one at least of Lamb's similes that, I fancy,
he borrowed it for an account of his grandfather's house at Tottenham
which he wrote some time later; for I find that gentleman's garden
described as "equal to that of old Alcinous."
"Kind light hearted Wainwright." Lamb has caused much surprise by using
such words of one who was destined to become almost the most
cold-blooded criminal in English history; but, as Hartley Coleridge
wrote in another connection, it was Lamb's way to take things by the
better handle, and Wainewright's worst faults in those days seem to have
been extravagance and affectation. Lamb at any rate liked him and
Wainewright was proud to be on a footing with Elia and his sister, as we
know from his writings. Wainewright at this time was not quite
twenty-nine; he had painted several pictures, some of which were
accepted by the academy, and he had written a number of essays over
several different pseudonyms, chief of which was Janus Weathercock. He
lived in Great Marlborough Street in some style and there entertained
many literary men, among them Lamb. It was not until 1826 that his
criminal career began.
"Mr. Pulham"--Brook Pulham of the India House, who made the caricature
etching of Elia.
"While I watch my tulips." Lamb is, of course, embroidering here, but we
have it on the authority of George Daniel, the antiquary, that with his
removal to Colebrooke Cottage began an interest in horticulture,
particularly in roses.
"Mr. Cary." The Rev. Henry Francis Cary (1772-1844), the translator of
Dante and afterwards, 1826, Assistant-Keeper of the Printed Books in the
British Museum. A regular contributor to the _London Magazine_.]
LETTER 325
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[Dated at end: Sept. 6 (1823).]
Dear Alsop--I am snugly seated at the cottage; Mary is well but weak,
and comes home on _Monday_; she will soon be strong enough to see her
friends here. In the mean time will you dine with me at 1/2 past four
to-morrow? Ayrton and Mr. Burney are coming.
Colebrook Cottage, left hand side, end of Colebrook Row on
the western brink of the New River, a detach'd whitish house.
No answer is required but come if you can. C. LAMB.
Saturday 6th Sep.
I call'd on you on Sunday. Resp'cts to Mrs. A. & boy.
LETTER 326
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[P.M. Sept. 9, 1823.]
My dear A.--I am going to ask you to do me the greatest favour which a
man can do to another. I want to make my will, and to leave my property
in trust for my sister. _N.B._ I am not _therefore_ going to die.--Would
it be unpleasant for you to be named for one? The other two I shall beg
the same favor of are Talfourd and Proctor. If you feel reluctant, tell
me, and it sha'n't abate one jot of my friendly feeling toward you.
Yours ever, C. LAMB.
E.I. House, Aug. [_i.e_., Sept.] 9, 1823.
LETTER 327
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[P.M. September 10, 1823.]
My dear A.--Your kindness in accepting my request no words of mine can
repay. It has made you overflow into some romance which I should have
check'd at another time. I hope it may be in the scheme of Providence
that my sister may go first (if ever so little a precedence), myself
next, and my good Ex'rs survive to remembr us with kindness many years.
God bless you.
I will set Proctor about the will forthwith. C. LAMB.
[Here should come another note to Allsop dated Sept. 16, 1823, saying
that Mary Lamb is still ill at Fulham. Given in the Boston Bibliophile
edition.]
LETTER 328
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[September, 1823.]
Dear A.--Your Cheese is the best I ever tasted; Mary will tell you so
hereafter. She is at home, but has disappointed me. She has gone back
rather than improved. However, she has sense enough to value the
present, for she is greatly fond of Stilton. Yours is the delicatest
rain-bow-hued melting piece I ever flavoured. Believe me. I took it the
more kindly, following so great a kindness.
Depend upon't, yours shall be one of the first houses we shall present
ourselves at, when we have got our Bill of Health.
Being both yours and Mrs. Allsop's truly. C.L. & M.L.
[Allsop and Procter may have been named as executors of Lamb's will at
one time, but when it came to be proved the executors were Talfourd and
Ryle, a fellow-clerk in the India House.]
LETTER 329
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. September 17, 1823.]
Dear Sir--I have again been reading your stanzas on Bloomfield, which
are the most appropriate that can be imagined, sweet with Doric
delicacy. I like that
Our more chaste Theocritus--
just hinting at the fault of the Grecian. I love that stanza ending with
Words phrases fashions pass away;
But Truth and nature live through all.
But I shall omit in my own copy the one stanza which alludes to Lord
B.--I suppose. It spoils the sweetness and oneness of the feeling.
Cannot we think of Burns, or Thompson, without sullying the thought with
a reflection out of place upon Lord Rochester? These verses might have
been inscribed upon a tomb; are in fact an epitaph; satire does not look
pretty upon a tombstone. Besides, there is a quotation in it, always bad
in verse; seldom advisable in prose.
I doubt if their having been in a Paper will not prevent T. and H. from
insertion, but I shall have a thing to send in a day or two, and shall
try them. Omitting that stanza, a _very little_ alteration is want'g in
the beginn'g of the next. You see, I use freedom. How happily (I flatter
not!) you have bro't in his subjects; and, (_I suppose_) his favorite
measure, though I am not acquainted with any of his writings but the
Farmer's Boy. He dined with me once, and his manners took me
exceedingly.
I rejoyce that you forgive my long silence. I continue to estimate my
own-roof comforts highly. How could I remain all my life a lodger! My
garden thrives (I am told) tho' I have yet reaped nothing but some tiny
sallad, and withered carrots. But a garden's a garden anywhere, and
twice a garden in London.
Somehow I cannot relish that word Horkey. Cannot you supply it by
circumlocution, and direct the reader by a note to explain that it means
the Horkey. But Horkey choaks me in the Text. It raises crowds of mean
associations, Hawking and sp-----g, Gauky, Stalky, Maukin. The sound is
every thing, in such dulcet modulations 'specially. I like
Gilbert Meldrum's sterner tones,
without knowing who Gilbert Meldrum is. You have slipt in your rhymes as
if they grew there, so natural-artificially, or artificial-naturally.
There's a vile phrase.
Do you go on with your Quaker Sonnets--[to] have 'em ready with
Southey's Book of the Church? I meditate a letter to S. in the London,
which perhaps will meet the fate of the Sonnet.
Excuse my brevity, for I write painfully at office, liable to 100
callings off. And I can never sit down to an epistle elsewhere. I read
or walk. If you return this letter to the Post Office, I think they will
return 4d, seeing it is but half a one. Believe me tho' entirely yours
C.L.
[Barton's "Verses to the Memory of Bloomfield, the Suffolk Poet" (who
died in August, 1823), were printed in book form in his Poetic Vigils,
1824. This is the stanza that Lamb most liked:--
It is not quaint and local terms
Besprinkled o'er thy rustic lay,
Though well such dialect confirms
Its power unletter'd minds to sway,
It is not _these_ that most display
Thy sweetest charms, thy gentlest thrall,--
Words, phrases, fashions, pass away,
But TRUTH and NATURE live through all.
The stanza referring to Byron was not reprinted, nor was the word
Horkey, which means Harvest Home in Suffolk. Gilbert Meldrum is a
character in one of Bloomfield's _Rural Tales_.
"Quaker Sonnets." Barton did not carry out this project. Southey's _Book
of the Church_ was published in 1824.
"I meditate a letter to S." The "Letter of Elia to Mr. Southey" was
published in the _London Magazine_ for October, 1823.]
LETTER 330
(_Fragment_)
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES LLOYD
[No date. Autumn, 1823.]
Your lines are not to be understood reading on one leg. They are
_sinuous_, and to be won with wrestling. I assure you in sincerity that
nothing you have done has given me greater satisfaction. Your obscurity,
where you are dark, which is seldom, is that of too much meaning, not
the painful obscurity which no toil of the reader can dissipate; not the
dead vacuum and floundering place in which imagination finds no footing;
it is not the dimness of positive darkness, but of distance; and he that
reads and not discerns must get a better pair of spectacles. I admire
every piece in the collection; I cannot say the first is best; when I do
so, the last read rises up in judgment. To your Mother--to your
Sister--to Mary dead--they are all weighty with thought and tender with
sentiment. Your poetry is like no other:--those cursed Dryads and Pagan
trumperies of modern verse have put me out of conceit of the very name
of poetry. Your verses are as good and as wholesome as prose; and I have
made a sad blunder if I do not leave you with an impression that your
present is rarely valued.
CHARLES LAMB.
[This scrap is in _Selections from the Poems and Letters of Bernard
Barton_, 1849, edited by Edward FitzGerald and Lucy Barton. Lloyd says:
"I had a very ample testimony from C. Lamb to the character of my last
little volume. I will transcribe to you what he says, as it is but a
note, and his manner is always so original, that I am sure the
introduction of the merest trifle from his pen will well compensate for
the absence of anything of mine." The volume was _Poems_, 1823, one of
the chief of which was "Stanzas on the Difficulty with which, in Youth,
we Bring Home to our Habitual Consciousness, the Idea of Death," to
which Lloyd appended the following sentence from Elia's essay on "New
Year's Eve," as motto: "Not childhood alone, but the young man till
thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it indeed,
and, if need were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life;
but he brings it not home to himself, any more than in a hot June, we
can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of December."]
LETTER 331
CHARLES LAMB TO REV. H.F. CARY
India Office, 14th Oct., 1823.
Dear Sir,--If convenient, will you give us house room on Saturday next?
I can sleep anywhere. If another Sunday suit you better, pray let me
know. We were talking of Roast _Shoulder_ of Mutton with onion sauce;
but I scorn to prescribe to the hospitalities of mine host.
With respects to Mrs. C., yours truly, C. LAMB.
LETTER 332
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[No date. ?Oct., 1823.]
Dear Sir--Mary has got a cold, and the nights are dreadful; but at the
first indication of Spring (_alias_ the first dry weather in Nov'r
early) it is our intention to surprise you early some even'g.
Believe me, most truly yours,
C.L.
The Cottage, Saturday night.
Mary regrets very much Mrs. Allsop's fruitless visit. It made her swear!
She was gone to visit Miss Hutchins'n, whom she found OUT.
LETTER 333
CHARLES LAMB TO J.B. DIBDIN
[P.M. October 28, 1823.]
My dear Sir--Your Pig was a _picture_ of a pig, and your Picture a _pig_
of a picture. The former was delicious but evanescent, like a hearty fit
of mirth, or the crackling of thorns under a pot; but the latter is an
_idea_, and abideth. I never before saw swine upon sattin. And then that
pretty strawy canopy about him! he seems to purr (rather than grunt) his
satisfaction. Such a gentlemanlike porker too! Morland's are absolutely
clowns to it. Who the deuce painted it?
I have ordered a little gilt shrine for it, and mean to wear it for a
locket; a shirt-pig.
I admire the petty-toes shrouded in a veil of something, not _mud_, but
that warm soft consistency with [? which] the dust takes in Elysium
after a spring shower--it perfectly engloves them.
I cannot enough thank you and your country friend for the delicate
double present--the Utile et Decorum--three times have I attempted to
write this sentence and failed; which shows that I am not cut out for a
pedant.
_Sir_
(as I say to Southey) will you come and see us at our poor cottage of
Colebrook to tea tomorrow evening, as early as six? I have some friends
coming at that hour--
The panoply which covered your material pig shall be forthcoming-- The
pig pictorial, with its trappings, domesticate with me.
Your greatly obliged
ELIA.
Tuesday.
["_Sir_ (as I say to Southey)." Elia's Letter to Southey in the London
Magazine began thus.]
LETTER 334
CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
[No date. Early November, 1823.]
Dear Mrs. H.,--Sitting down to write a letter is such a painful
operation to Mary, that you must accept me as her proxy. You have seen
our house. What I now tell you is literally true. Yesterday week George
Dyer called upon us, at one o'clock (_bright noon day_) on his way to
dine with Mrs. Barbauld at Newington. He sat with Mary about half an
hour, and took leave. The maid saw him go out from her kitchen window;
but suddenly losing sight of him, ran up in a fright to Mary. G.D.,
instead of keeping the slip that leads to the gate, had deliberately,
staff in hand, in broad open day, marched into the New River. He had not
his spectacles on, and you know his absence. Who helped him out, they
can hardly tell; but between 'em they got him out, drenched thro' and
thro'. A mob collected by that time and accompanied him in. "Send for
the Doctor!" they said: and a one-eyed fellow, dirty and drunk, was
fetched from the Public House at the end, where it seems he lurks, for
the sake of picking up water practice, having formerly had a medal from
the Humane Society for some rescue. By his advice, the patient was put
between blankets; and when I came home at four to dinner, I found G.D.
a-bed, and raving, light-headed with the brandy-and-water which the
doctor had administered. He sung, laughed, whimpered, screamed, babbled
of guardian angels, would get up and go home; but we kept him there by
force; and by next morning he departed sobered, and seems to have
received no injury. All my friends are open-mouthed about having paling
before the river, but I cannot see that, because a.. lunatic chooses to
walk into a river with his eyes open at midday, I am any the more likely
to be drowned in it, coming home at midnight.
I had the honour of dining at the Mansion House on Thursday last, by
special card from the Lord Mayor, who never saw my face, nor I his; and
all from being a writer in a magazine! The dinner costly, served on
massy plate, champagne, pines, &c.; forty-seven present, among whom the
Chairman and two other directors of the India Company. There's for you!
and got away pretty sober! Quite saved my credit!
We continue to like our house prodigiously. Does Mary Hazlitt go on with
her novel, or has she begun another? I would not discourage her, tho' we
continue to think it (so far) in its present state not saleable.
Our kind remembrances to her and hers and you and yours.--
Yours truly, C. LAMB.
I am pleased that H. liked my letter to the Laureate.
[Addressed to "Mrs. Hazlitt, Alphington, near Exeter." This letter is
the first draft of the _Elia_ essay "Amicus Redivivus," which was
printed in the _London Magazine_ in December, 1823. George Dyer, who was
then sixty-eight, had been getting blind steadily for some years. A
visit to Lamb's cottage to-day, bearing in mind that the ribbon of green
between iron railings that extends along Colebrooke Row was at that time
an open stream, will make the nature of G.D.'s misadventure quite
plain.
"Mary Hazlitt"-the daughter of John Hazlitt, the essayist's brother.
"I am pleased that H. liked my letter to the Laureate." Hazlitt wrote,
in the essay "On the Pleasures of Hating," "I think I must be friends
with Lamb again, since he has written that magnanimous Letter to
Southey, and told him a piece of his mind!" Coleridge also approved of
it, and Crabb Robinson's praise was excessive.
Here should come a note from Lamb to Mrs. Shelley dated Nov. 12, 1823,
saying that Dyer walked into the New River on Sunday week at one o'clock
with his eyes open.]
LETTER 335
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
E.I.H., 21st November, 1823.
DEAR Southey,-The kindness of your note has melted away the mist which
was upon me. I have been fighting against a shadow. That accursed
"Quarterly Review" had vexed me by a gratuitous speaking, of its own
knowledge, that the "Confessions of a Drunkard" was a genuine
description of the state of the writer. Little things, that are not ill
meant, may produce much ill. _That_ might have injured me alive and
dead. I am in a public office, and my life is insured. I was prepared
for anger, and I thought I saw, in a few obnoxious words, a hard case of
repetition directed against me. I wished both magazine and review at the
bottom of the sea. I shall be ashamed to see you, and my sister (though
innocent) will be still more so; for the folly was done without her
knowledge, and has made her uneasy ever since. My guardian angel was
absent at that time.
I will muster up courage to see you, however, any day next week
(Wednesday excepted). We shall hope that you will bring Edith with you.
That will be a second mortification. She will hate to see us; but come
and heap embers. We deserve it, I for what I've done, and she for being
my sister.
Do come early in the day, by sun-light, that you may see my _Milton_.
I am at Colebrook Cottage, Colebrook Row, Islington. A detached whitish
house, close to the New River, end of Colebrook Terrace, left hand from
Sadler's Wells.
Will you let me know the day before?
Your penitent C. LAMB.
P.S.--I do not think your handwriting at all like Hunt's. I do not think
many things I did think.
[For the right appreciation of this letter Elia's Letter to Southey must
be read (see Vol. I. of the present edition). It was hard hitting, and
though Lamb would perhaps have been wiser had he held his hand, yet
Southey had taken an offensive line of moral superiority and rebuke, and
much that was said by Lamb was justified.
Southey's reply ran thus:--
My Dear Lamb--On Monday I saw your letter in the _London Magazine_,
which I had not before had an opportunity of seeing, and I now take
the first interval of leisure for replying to it.
Nothing could be further from my mind than any intention or
apprehension of any way offending or injuring a man concerning whom
I have never spoken, thought, or felt otherwise than with affection,
esteem, and admiration.
If you had let me know in any private or friendly manner that you
felt wounded by a sentence in which nothing but kindness was
intended--or that you found it might injure the sale of your book--I
would most readily and gladly have inserted a note in the next
Review to qualify and explain what had hurt you.
You have made this impossible, and I am sorry for it. But I will not
engage in controversy with you to make sport for the Philistines.
The provocation must be strong indeed that can rouse me to do this,
even with an enemy. And if you can forgive an unintended offence as
heartily as I do the way in which you have resented it, there will
be nothing to prevent our meeting as we have heretofore done, and
feeling towards each other as we have always been wont to do.
Only signify a correspondent willingness on your part, and send me
your address, and my first business next week shall be to reach your
door, and shake hands with you and your sister. Remember me to her
most kindly and believe me--. Yours, with unabated esteem and
regards, Robert Southey.
The matter closed with this exchange of letters, and no hostility
remained on either side.
Lamb's quarrel with the _Quarterly_ began in 1811, when in a review of
Weber's edition of Ford Lamb was described as a "poor maniac." It was
renewed in 1814, when his article on Wordsworth's _Excursion_ was
mutilated. It broke out again in 1822, as Lamb says here, when a
reviewer of Reid's treatise on _Hypochondriasis and other Nervous
Affections_ (supposed to be Dr. Gooch, a friend of Dr. Henry Southey's)
referred to Lamb's "Confessions of a Drunkard" (see Vol. I.) as being,
from his own knowledge, true. Thus Lamb's patience was naturally at
breaking point when his own friend Southey attacked _Elia_ a few numbers
later.
"I do not think your handwriting at all like Hunt's." Lamb had said, in
the Letter, of Leigh Hunt: "His hand-writing is so much the same with
your own, that I have opened more than one letter of his, hoping, nay,
not doubting, but it was from you, and have been disappointed (he will
bear with my saying so) at the discovery of my error."]
LETTER 336
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. November 22, 1823.]
Dear B.B.--I am ashamed at not acknowledging your kind little poem,
which I must needs like much, but I protest I thought I had done it at
the moment. Is it possible a letter has miscarried? Did you get one in
which I sent you an extract from the poems of Lord Sterling? I should
wonder if you did, for I sent you none such.--There was an incipient lye
strangled in the birth. Some people's conscience is so tender! But in
plain truth I thank you very much for the verses. I have a very kind
letter from the Laureat, with a self-invitation to come and shake hands
with me. This is truly handsome and noble. 'Tis worthy of my old idea of
Southey. Shall not I, think you, be covered with a red suffusion?
You are too much apprehensive of your complaint. I know many that are
always ailing of it, and live on to a good old age. I know a merry
fellow (you partly know him) who when his Medical Adviser told him he
had drunk away all _that part_, congratulated himself (now his liver was
gone) that he should be the longest liver of the two. The best way in
these cases is to keep yourself as ignorant as you can--as ignorant as
the world was before Galen--of the entire inner construction of the
Animal Man--not to be conscious of a midriff--to hold kidneys (save of
sheep and swine) to be an agreeable fiction--not to know whereabout the
gall grows--to account the circulation of the blood an idle whimsey of
Harvey's--to acknowledge no mechanism not visible. For, once fix the
seat of your disorder, and your fancies flux into it like bad humours.
Those medical gentries chuse each his favourite part--one takes the
lungs--another the aforesaid liver--and refer to _that_ whatever in the
animal economy is amiss. Above all, use exercise, take a little more
spirituous liquors, learn to smoke, continue to keep a good conscience,
and avoid tampering with hard terms of art--viscosity, schirossity, and
those bugbears, by which simple patients are scared into their grave.
Believe the general sense of the mercantile world, which holds that
desks are not deadly. It is the mind, good B.B., and not the limbs,
that taints by long sitting. Think of the patience of taylors--think how
long the Chancellor sits-- think of the Brooding Hen.
I protest I cannot answer thy Sister's kind enquiry, but I judge I shall
put forth no second volume. More praise than buy, and T. and H. are not
particularly disposed for Martyrs.
Thou wilt see a funny passage, and yet a true History, of George Dyer's
Aquatic Incursion, in the next "London." Beware his fate, when thou
comest to see me at my Colebrook Cottage. I have filled my little space
with my little thoughts. I wish thee ease on thy sofa, but not too much
indulgence on it. From my poor desk, thy fellow-sufferer this bright
November, C.L.
[Again I do not identify the kind little poem. It may have been a trifle
enclosed in a letter, which Barton did not print and Lamb destroyed.]
LETTER 337
CHARLES LAMB TO W. HARRISON AINSWORTH India-House, 9th Dec., 1823.
(If I had time I would go over this letter again, and dot all my i's.)
Dear Sir,--I should have thanked you for your Books and Compliments
sooner, but have been waiting for a revise to be sent, which does not
come, tho' I returned the proof on the receit of your letter. I have
read Warner with great pleasure. What an elaborate piece of alliteration
and antithesis! why it must have been a labour far above the most
difficult versification. There is a fine simile of or picture of
Semiramis arming to repel a siege. I do not mean to keep the Book, for I
suspect you are forming a curious collection, and I do not pretend to
any thing of the kind. I have not a Blackletter Book among mine, old
Chaucer excepted, and am not Bibliomanist enough to like Blackletter. It
is painful to read. Therefore I must insist on returning it at
opportunity, not from contumacity and reluctance to be oblig'd, but
because it must suit you better than me. The loss of a present _from_
should never exceed the gain of a present _to_. I hold this maxim
infallible in the accepting Line. I read your Magazines with
satisfaction. I throughly agree with you as to the German Faust, as far
[as] I can do justice to it from an English translation. 'Tis a
disagreeable canting tale of Seduction, which has nothing to do with the
Spirit of Faustus-- Curiosity. Was the dark secret to be explored to end
in the seducing of a weak girl, which might have been accomplished by
earthly agency? When Marlow gives _his_ Faustus a mistress, he flies him
at Helen, flower of Greece, to be sure, and not at Miss Betsy, or Miss
Sally Thoughtless.
"Cut is the branch that bore the goodly fruit,
And wither'd is Apollo's laurel tree:
Faustus is dead."
What a noble natural transition from metaphor to plain speaking! as if
the figurative had flagged in description of such a Loss, and was
reduced to tell the fact simply.--
I must now thank you for your very kind invitation. It is not out of
prospect that I may see Manchester some day, and then I will avail
myself of your kindness. But Holydays are scarce things with me, and the
Laws of attendance are getting stronger and stronger at Leadenhall. But
I shall bear it in mind. Meantime something may (more probably) bring
you to town, where I shall be happy to see you. I am always to be found
(alas!) at my desk in the forepart of the day.
I wonder why they do not send the revise. I leave late at office, and my
abode lies out of the way, or I should have seen about it. If you are
impatient, Perhaps a Line to the Printer, directing him to send it me,
at Accountant's Office, may answer. You will see by the scrawl that I
only snatch a few minutes from intermitting Business.
Your oblig. Ser., C. LAMB.
[William Harrison Ainsworth, afterwards to be known as a novelist, was
then a solicitor's pupil at Manchester, aged 18. He had sent Lamb
William Warner's _Syrinx; or, A Sevenfold History_, 1597. The book was a
gift, and is now in the Dyce and Foster library at South Kensington.
Goethe's _Faust_. Lamb, as we have seen, had read the account of the
play in Madame de Stael's _Germany_. He might also have read the
translation by Lord Francis Leveson-Gower, 1823. Hayward's translation
was not published till 1834. Goethe admired Lamb's sonnet on his family
name.]
LETTER 338
CHARLES LAMB TO W. HARRISON AINSWORTH
[Dated at end: December 29 (1823).]
My dear Sir--You talk of months at a time and I know not what
inducements to visit Manchester, Heaven knows how gratifying! but I have
had my little month of 1823 already. It is all over, and without
incurring a disagreeable favor I cannot so much as get a single holyday
till the season returns with the next year. Even our half-hour's
absences from office are set down in a Book! Next year, if I can spare a
day or two of it, I will come to Manchester, but I have reasons at home
against longer absences.--
I am so ill just at present--(an illness of my own procuring last night;
who is Perfect?)--that nothing but your very great kindness could make
me write. I will bear in mind the letter to W.W., you shall have it
quite in time, before the 12.
My aking and confused Head warns me to leave off.--With a muddled sense
of gratefulness, which I shall apprehend more clearly to-morrow, I
remain, your friend unseen,
C.L.
I.H. 29th.
Will your occasions or inclination bring _you_ to London? It will give
me great pleasure to show you every thing that Islington can boast, if
you know the meaning of that very Cockney sound. We have the New River!
I am asham'd of this scrawl: but I beg you to accept it for the present.
I am full of qualms.
A fool at 50 is a fool indeed.
[W.W. was Wordsworth.
"A fool at 50 is a fool indeed." "A fool at forty is a fool indeed" was
Young's line in Satire II. of the series on "Love of Fame." Lamb was
nearing forty-nine.]
LETTER 339
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[January 9, 1824.]
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 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.
Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
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.--
C.L.
["Judge Park's wig." Sir James Alan Park, of the Bench of Common Pleas,
who tried Thurtell, the murderer of Mr. William Weare of Lyon's Inn, in
Gill's Hill Lane, Radlett, on October 24, 1823.]
LETTER 340
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. January 23, 1824.]
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
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.
Your account of my Black Balling amused me. _I think, as Quakers, they
did right_. There are some things hard to be understood.
The more I think the more I am vexed at having puzzled you with that
Letter, but I have been so out of Letter writing of late years, that it
is a sore effort to sit down to it, & I felt in your debt, and sat down
waywardly to pay you in bad money. Never mind my dulness, I am used to
long intervals of it. The heavens seem brass to me--then again comes the
refreshing shower. "I have been merry once or twice ere now."
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!
Keep your good spirits up, dear BB--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.--
Yours truly C.L.
["The London must do without me." Lamb contributed nothing between
December, 1823 ("Amicus Redivivus"), and September, 1824 ("Blakesmoor in
H----shire").
Barton's tribute to Woolman was the poem "A Memorial to John Woolman,"
printed in Poetic Vigils.
Taylor was Charles Benjamin Tayler (1797-1875), the curate of Hadleigh,
in Suffolk, and the author of many religious books. Lamb refers to _May
You Like It_, 1823.
"What Horace says":--
Nec deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus
Inciderit.
_Ars Poetica_, 191, 192.
Neither let a god interfere, unless a difficulty worth a god's
unravelling should happen (Smart's translation).
"My Black Balling." _Elia_ had been rejected by a Book Club in
Woodbridge.
"Coleridge's book"--the _Aids to Reflection_, 1825. The first intention
had been a selection of "Beauties" from Bishop Leighton (1611-1684),
Archbishop of Glasgow, and author, among other works, of _Rules and
Instructions for a Holy Life_.
"The Decision against Hunt." John Hunt, the publisher of _The Liberal_,
in which Byron's "Vision of Judgment" had been printed in 1822, had just
been fined L100 for the libel therein contained on George III.
Here should come a note from Lamb to Charles Ollier, thanking him for a
copy of his _Inesilla; or, The Tempter: A Romance, with Other Tales_.]
LETTER 341
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[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--
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 Virgils 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
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.
C. LAMB.
[The motto eventually adopted for Barton's _Poetic Vigils_ was from
Vaughan's _Silex Scintillans:_--
Dear night! this world's defeat;
The stop to busie fools; care's check and curb;
The day of spirits; my soul's calm retreat
Which none disturb!]
LETTER 342
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. 24 March, 1824.]
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
1 2 1 2
Make my _dark heavy_ poem, _light_ and _light_--
where the two senses of _light_ are opposed to different opposites. A
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 therefore most sincerely congratulate with you, excepting so far as
excepted above. If you have fair Prospects of adding to the Principal,
cut the Bank; but in either case do not refuse an honest Service. Your
heart tells you it is not offered to bribe you _from_ any duty, but
_to_
a duty which you feel to be your vocation. Farewell heartily C.L.
[In the memoir of Barton by Edward FitzGerald, prefixed to the _Poems
and Letters_, it is stated that in this year Barton received a handsome
addition to his income. "A few members of his Society, including some of
the wealthier of his own family, raised L1200 among them for his benefit
[not 2000 guineas, as Lamb says]. It seems that he felt some delicacy at
first in accepting this munificent testimony which his own people
offered to his talents." Birton had written to Lamb on the subject.]
LETTER 343
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[(Early spring), 1824.]
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 a day to church, why has Sunday
slipped into the notion of a _Holli_day? 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 Caesars 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.
A hasty farewell C. LAMB.
["Southey's Book"--_The Book of the Church_.
"Would Wilberforce give us our Tuesdays?"--William Wilberforce, the
abolitionist and the principal "Puritan" of that day.]
LETTER 344
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. THOMAS ALLSOP
[P.M. April 13, 1824.]
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, C. LAMB.
India Ho. 13 Apr. Remember Sundays.
LETTER 345
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE [No date. April, 1824.]
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
Yours C. LAMB.
Sunday.
["Pygmalion." A reference to Hazlitt's _Liber Amoris; or, The New
Pygmalion_, 1823.
Hone's pamphlet would be his _Aspersions Answered: an Explanatory
Statement to the Public at Large and Every Reader of the "Quarterly
Review_," 1824.
Here should come a note from Lamb to Thomas Hardy, dated April 24, 1824,
in which Lamb says that Miss Hazlitt's novel, which Mr. Hardy promised
to introduce to Mr. Ridgway, the publisher, is lying at Mr. Hone's.
Hardy was a bootmaker in Fleet Street.]
LETTER 346
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
May 15, 1824.
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 have 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 III Genius of Oil Painting. His Pictures--one in particular, the
Canterbury 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.
With the exception of an Epilogue for a Private Theatrical, I have
written nothing now for near 6 months. It is in vain to spur me on. I
must wait. I cannot write without a genial impulse, and I have none.
'Tis barren all and dearth. No matter; life is something without
scribbling. I have got rid of my bad spirits, and hold up pretty well
this rain-damn'd May.
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.
Farewell, and accept this apology for a letter from one who owes you so
much in that kind.
Yours ever truly, C.L.
[Lamb's portrait of his father is reproduced in Vol. II. of my large
edition. The first love verses are no more.
William Blake was at this time sixty-six years of age. He was living in
poverty and neglect at 3 Fountain Court, Strand. Blake made 537
illustrations to Young's _Night Thoughts_, of which only forty-seven
were published. Lamb is, however, thinking of his edition of Blair's
_Grave_. The exhibition of his works was held in 1809, and it was for
this that Blake wrote the descriptive catalogue. Lamb had sent Blake's
"Sweep Song," which, like "Tiger, Tiger," is in the _Songs of
Innocence_, to James Montgomery for his _Chimney-Sweepers' Friend and
Climbing Boys' Album_, 1824, a little book designed to ameliorate the
lot of those children, in whose interest a society existed. Barton also
contributed something. It was Blake's poem which had excited Barton's
curiosity. Probably he thought that Lamb wrote it. Lamb's mistake
concerning Blake's name is curious in so far as that it was Blake's
brother Robert, who died in 1787, who in a vision revealed to the poet
the method by which the _Songs of Innocence_ were to be reproduced.
"The Dream awkwardly paraphras'd from B." The book ended with three
"Climbing-Boys' Soliloquies" by Montgomery. The second was a dream in
which the dream in Blake's song was extended and prosified.
"An Epilogue for a Private Theatrical." Probably the epilogue for the
amateur performance of "Richard II.," given by the family of Henry
Field, Barren Field's father (see Vol. IV. of the present edition).
"Another great Poet." Byron died on April 19, 1824.
"Alderman Curtis." See note above.]
LETTER 347
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
July 7th, 1824.
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 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.
My eye runs waters. But I will give you a fuller account some day. The
book is a very pretty one in more than one sense. The decorative harp,
perhaps, too ostentatious; a simple pipe preferable.
Farewell, and many thanks. C. LAMB.
[Barton's new book was _Poetic Vigils_, 1824. It contained among other
poems "An Ode to Time," "Verses to the Memory of Bloomfield," "A
Memorial of John Woolman," beginning--
There is glory to me in thy Name,
Meek follower of Bethlehem's Child,
More touching by far than the splendour of Fame
With which the vain world is beguil'd,
and "A Memorial of James Nayler." The following "Sonnet to Elia," from
the _London Magazine_, is also in the volume: it is odd that Lamb did
not mention it:--
SONNET TO ELIA
Delightful Author! unto whom I owe
Moments and moods of fancy and of feeling,
Afresh to grateful memory now appealing,
Fain would I "bless thee--ere I let thee go!"
From month to month has the exhaustless flow
Of thy original mind, its wealth revealing,
With quaintest humour, and deep pathos healing
The World's rude wounds, revived Life's early glow:
And, mixt with this, at times, to earnest thought,
Glimpses of truth, most simple and sublime,
By thy imagination have been brought
Over my spirit. From the olden time
Of authorship thy patent should be dated,
And thou with Marvell, Brown, and Burton mated.]
LETTER 348
CHARLES LAMB TO W. MARTER [Dated at end: July 19 (1824).]
Dear Marter,--I have just rec'd 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.
SONNET
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.
With many recollections of pleasanter times, my old compeer,
happily released before me, Adieu. C. LAMB.
E.I.H.
19 July [1824].
[Marter was an old India House clerk; we do not meet with him again. The
sonnet had been printed in _The Examiner_ in 1819. Lamb, who was fond of
it, reprinted it in _Album Verses_, 1830.]
LETTER 349
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[P.M. July 28, 1824.]
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 Barren Field,
just ret'd, from Botany Bay--I shall hardly have an open Evening before
TUESDAY next. Will you come to us then?
Yours truly, C. LAMB.
Wensday
28 July 24.
[_Arthur_ and the Novel were two books by Charles Dibdin the Younger,
the father of Lamb's correspondent. Arthur was _Young Arthur; or, The
Child of Mystery: A Metrical Romance_, 1819, and the novel was _Isn't It
Odd?_ three volumes of high-spirited ramblings something in the manner
of _Tristram Shandy_, nominally written by Marmaduke Merrywhistle, and
published in 1822.
Barron Field had returned from his Judgeship in New South Wales on June
18.]
LETTER 350
(_Possibly incomplete_)
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOOD [P.M. August 10, 1824.]
And what dost thou at the Priory? _Cucullus non facit Monachum_. English
me that, and challenge old Lignum Janua to make a better.
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 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. C.L.
[This is the first letter to Hood, then a young man of twenty-five, and
assistant editor of the _London Magazine_. He was now staying at
Hastings, on his honeymoon, presumably, and, like the Lambs, near the
Priory.
"_Cucullus non facit Monachum_"--A "Lamb-pun." The Hood does not make
the monk.
"Old Lignum Janua"--the Tom Woodgate mentioned at the end of the letter,
a boatman at Hastings. Hood wrote some verses to him.
"My old New River." This passage was placed by Hood as the motto of his
verses "Walton Redivivus," in _Whims and Oddities_, 1826.
"Little churchling." This is Lamb's second description of Hollingdon
Rural. The third and best is in a later letter.
"There is nothing like inland murmurs." Lamb is here remembering
Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey lines:--
With a sweet inland murmur.
In the _Elia_ essay "The Old Margate Hoy" Lamb, in speaking of Hastings,
had made the same objection.
In a letter to his sister, written from Hastings at this time, Hood
says:--
This is the last of our excursions. We have tried, but in vain, to
find out the baker and his wife recommended to us by Lamb as the
very lions of green Hastings. There is no such street as he has
named throughout the town, and the ovens are singularly numerous. We
have given up the search, therefore, but we have discovered the
little church in the wood, and it is such a church! It ought to have
been our St. Botolph's. ... Such a verdant covert wood Stothard
might paint for the haunting of Dioneus, Pamphillus, and Fiammetta
as they walk in the novel of Boccacce. The ground shadowed with
bluebells, even to the formation of a plumb-like bloom upon its
little knolls and ridges; and ever through the dell windeth a little
path chequered with the shades of aspens and ashes and the most
verdant and lively of all the family of trees. Here a broad, rude
stone steppeth over a lazy spring, oozing its way into grass and
weeds; anon a fresh pathway divergeth, you know not whither.
Meanwhile the wild blackbird startles across the way and singeth
anew in some other shade. To have seen Fiammetta there, stepping in
silk attire, like a flower, and the sunlight looking upon her
betwixt the branches! I had not walked (in the body) with Romance
before. Then suppose so much of a space cleared as maketh a small
church _lawn_ to be sprinkled with old gravestones, and in the midst
the church itself, a small Christian dovecot, such as Lamb has truly
described it, like a little temple of Juan Fernandes. I could have
been sentimental and wished to lie some day in that place, its calm
tenants seeming to come through such quiet ways, through those
verdant alleys, to their graves.
In coming home I killed a viper in our serpentine path, and Mrs.
Fernor says I am by that token to overcome an enemy. Is Taylor or
Hessey dead? The reptile was dark and dull, his blood being yet
sluggish from the cold; howbeit, he tried to bite, till I cut him in
two with a stone. I thought of Hessey's long back-bone when I did
it.
They are called _adders_, tell your father, because two and two of
them together make four.]
LETTER 351
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. August 17, 1824.]
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 indisposit'n 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."
The fact is, my head is seldom cool enough. I am dreadfully indolent. To
have to do anything-to order me a new coat, for instance, tho' my old
buttons are shelled like beans-- is an effort.
My pen stammers like my tongue. What cool craniums
those old enditers of Folios must have had. What a mortify'd
pulse. Well, once more I throw myself on your mercy--
Wishing peace in thy new dwelling-- C. LAMB.
[The Lambs gave up their "country lodgings" at Dalston on moving to
Colebrooke Row.
"The album." See next letter to Barton.
"The Prometheus Unbound." A bookseller, asked for _Prometheus Unbound_,
Shelley's poem, had replied that _Prometheus_ was not to be had "in
sheets." _Elfrida_ was a dramatic poem by William Mason, Gray's friend.
This is Shelley's poem (not a sonnet) which Lamb liked:--
LINES TO A REVIEWER
Alas! good friend, what profit can you see
In hating such an hateless thing as me?
There is no sport in hate, where all the rage
Is on one side. In vain would you assuage
Your frowns upon an unresisting smile,
In which not even contempt lurks, to beguile
Your heart by some faint sympathy of hate.
Oh conquer what you cannot satiate!
For to your passion I am far more coy
Then ever yet was coldest maid or boy
In winter-noon. Of your antipathy
If I am the Narcissus, you are free
To pine into a sound with hating me.
Hazlitt writes of Shelley in his essay "On Paradox and Commonplace" in
_Table Talk_; but he does not make this remark there. Perhaps he said it
in conversation.
"The next Number." The "futile Effort" was "Blakesmoor in H----shire" in
the _London Magazine_ for September, 1824.
Here should come a note from Lamb to Cary, August 19, 1824, in which
Lamb thanks him for his translation of _The Birds_ of Aristophanes and
accepts an invitation to dine.]
LETTER 352
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[Dated at end: September 30, 1824.]
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 thy 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 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.
Well, I hope and trust thy Tick doleru, or however you spell it, is
vanished, for I have frightful impressions of that Tick, and do
altogether hate it, as an unpaid score, or the Tick of a Death Watch. I
take it to be a species of Vitus's dance (I omit the Sanctity, writing
to "one of the men called Friends"). I knew a young Lady who could dance
no other, she danced thro' life, and very queer and fantastic were her
steps. Heaven bless thee from such measures, and keep thee from the Foul
Fiend, who delights to lead after False Fires in the night,
Flibbertigibit, that gives the web and the pin &c. I forget what else.--
From my den, as Bunyan has it, 30 Sep. 24. C.L.
[The verses were for the album of Barton's daughter, Lucy (afterwards
Mrs. Edward FitzGerald). Lucy was her only name. Lamb afterwards printed
them in his _Album Verses_, 1830.]
LETTER 353
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. JOHN DYER COLLIER
[Dated at end: November 2, 1824.]
Dear Mrs. Collier--We receive so much pig from your kindness, that I
really have not phrase enough to vary successive acknowledg'mts.
I think I shall get a printed form: to serve on all occasions.
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 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
proe-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 Candle-light, 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 rememb'ces to Mr. Collier & yourself, I conclude in
haste.
Yours & his sincerely, C. LAMB.
from my den in Leadenhall,
2 Nov. 24.
On further enquiry Alsager is not dead, but Mrs. A. is bro't. to bed.
[Mrs. Collier was the mother of John Payne Collier. Alsager we have
already met. Henry Fauntleroy was the banker, who had just been found
guilty of forgery and on the day that Lamb wrote was sentenced to death.
He was executed on the 30th (see a later letter).]
LETTER 354
CHARLES LAMB TO B.W. PROCTER
[Dated at end: November 11, '24.]
My dear Procter,--
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.
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.
I am married myself--to a severe step-wife, who keeps me, not at bed and
board, but at desk and board, and is jealous of my morning aberrations.
I can not slip out to congratulate kinder unions. It is well she leaves
me alone o' nights--the damn'd Day-hag _BUSINESS_. She is even now
peeping over me to see I am writing no Love Letters. I come, my dear--
Where is the Indigo Sale Book?
Twenty adieus, my dear friends, till we meet.
Yours most truly, C. LAMB.
Leadenhall, 11 Nov. '24.
[Procter married Anne Skepper, step-daughter of Basil Montagu, in
October, 1824. One of their daughters was Adelaide Ann Procter.
"Agnise"--acknowledge. It has been suggested that Lamb favoured this old
word also on account of its superficial association with _agnus_, a
lamb.]
LETTER 355
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[P.M. Nov. 20, 1824.]
Dr. R. Barren 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 Tuesd'y.
Yours ever
C. LAMB.
Sat'y.
[Barron Field, as I have said, had returned from New South Wales in June
of this year. Later he became Chief Justice at Gibraltar.]
LETTER 356
CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
Desk II, Nov. 25 [1824].
My dear Miss Hutchinson, Mary bids me thank you for your kind letter. We
are a little puzzled about your where-abouts: 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 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. C.L.
[Thomas Monkhouse, who was in a decline, had been ordered to Torquay.
Crabb Robinson had been in Normandy for some weeks. The too credulous
clergyman at Hertford was Frederick William Franklin, Master of the Blue
Coat school there (from 1801 to 1827), who was at Christ's Hospital with
Lamb.
"Mrs. * * * * * *." Mrs. Gillman.]
LETTER 357
CHARLES LAMB TO LEIGH HUNT
[No date. ? November, 1824.]
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 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 have 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., 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.
Yours ever, C. LAMB.
[Leigh Hunt was still living at Genoa. Shelley and Byron, whom he had
left England to join, were both dead. Lamb, I assume, sent him a second
copy of _Elia_, with this letter.
Cardinal Gonsalvi was Ercole Gonsalvi (1757-1824), secretary to Pius
VII. and a patron of the arts. Lawrence painted him.
For the present state of the _London Magazine_ see next letter. Leigh
Hunt contributed to Colburn's _New Monthly Magazine_, among other
things, a series of papers on "The Months." Hunt also contributed an
account of the Honeycomb family, by Harry Honeycomb.
By Mary Isabella Lamb meant Mary Sabilla Novello, Vincent Novello's
wife. The eldest girl was Mary Victoria, afterwards the wife of Charles
Cowden Clarke, the Mr. Clark mentioned here. Novello (now living at
Shackleford Green) remained a good Roman Catholic to the end. Holmes was
Edward Holmes (1797-1859), a pupil of Cowden Clarke's father at Enfield
and schoolfellow of Keats. He had lived with the Novellos, studying
music, and later became a musical writer and teacher and the biographer
of Mozart.
Mrs. Barron Field was a Miss Jane Carncroft, to whom Lamb addressed some
album verses (see Vol. IV. of this edition). Leigh Hunt knew of Field's
return, for he had contributed to the _New Monthly_ earlier in the year
a rhymed letter to him in which he welcomed him home again.
Irving was Edward Irving (1792-1834), afterwards the founder of the
Catholic Apostolic sect, then drawing people to the chapel in Hatton
Garden, attached to the Caledonian Asylum. The dedication, to which Lamb
alludes more than once in his correspondence, was that of his work, _For
Missionaries after the Apostolical School, a series of orations in four
parts_, ... 1825. It runs:--
DEDICATION
TO
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, ESQ.
MY DEAR AND HONOURED FRIEND,
Unknown as you are, in the true character either of your mind or of your
heart, to the greater part of your countrymen, and misrepresented as
your works have been, by those who have the ear of the vulgar, it will
seem wonderful to many that I should make choice of you, from the circle
of my friends, to dedicate to you these beginnings of my thoughts upon
the most important subject of these or any times. And when I state the
reason to be, that you have been more profitable to my faith in orthodox
doctrine, to my spiritual understanding of the Word of God, and to my
right conception of the Christian Church, than any or all of the men
with whom I have entertained friendship and conversation, it will
perhaps still more astonish the mind, and stagger the belief, of those
who have adopted, as once I did myself, the misrepresentations which are
purchased for a hire and vended for a price, concerning your character
and works. You have only to shut your ear to what they ignorantly say of
you, and earnestly to meditate the deep thoughts with which you are
instinct, and give them a suitable body and form that they may live,
then silently commit them to the good sense of ages yet to come, in
order to be ranked hereafter amongst the most gifted sages and greatest
benefactors of your country. Enjoy and occupy the quiet which, after
many trials, the providence of God hath bestowed upon you, in the bosom
of your friends; and may you be spared until you have made known the
multitude of your thoughts, unto those who at present value, or shall
hereafter arise to value, their worth.
I have partaken so much high intellectual enjoyment from being admitted
into the close and familiar intercourse with which you have honoured me,
and your many conversations concerning the revelations of the Christian
faith have been so profitable to me in every sense, as a student and a
preacher of the Gospel, as a spiritual man and a Christian pastor, and
your high intelligence and great learning have at all times so kindly
stooped to my ignorance and inexperience, that not merely with the
affection of friend to friend, and the honour due from youth to
experienced age, but with the gratitude of a disciple to a wise and
generous teacher, of an anxious inquirer to the good man who hath helped
him in the way of truth, I do now presume to offer you the first-fruits
of my mind since it received a new impulse towards truth, and a new
insight into its depths, from listening to your discourse. Accept them
in good part, and be assured that however insignificant in themselves,
they are the offering of a heart which loves your heart, and of a mind
which looks up with reverence to your mind.
EDWARD IRVING.
"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.]
LETTER 358
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON AND LUCY BARTON
[P.M. December 1, 1824.]
Dear B.B.--If Mr. Mitford will send me a full and circumstantial
description of his desired vases, I will transmit the same to a
Gentleman resident at Canton, whom I think I have interest enough in to
take the proper care for their execution. But Mr. M. must have patience.
China is a great way off, further perhaps than he thinks; and his next
year's roses must be content to wither in a Wedgewood pot. He will
please to say whether he should like his Arms upon them, &c. I send
herewith some patterns which suggest themselves to me at the first blush
of the subject, but he will probably consult his own taste after all.
[Illustration: Handdrawn sketch]
The last pattern is obviously fitted for ranunculuses only. The two
former may indifferently hold daisies, marjoram, sweet williams, and
that sort. My friend in Canton is Inspector of Teas, his name Ball; and
I can think of no better tunnel. I shall expect Mr. M.'s decision.
Taylor and Hessey finding their magazine goes off very heavily at 2s.
6d. are prudently going to raise their price another shilling; and
having already more authors than they want, intend to increase the
number of them. If they set up against the New Monthly, they must change
their present hands. It is not tying the dead carcase of a Review to a
half-dead Magazine will do their business. It is like G.D. multiplying
his volumes to make 'em sell better. When he finds one will not go off,
he publishes two; two stick, he tries three; three hang fire, he is
confident that four will have a better chance.
And now, my dear Sir, trifling apart, the gloomy catastrophe of
yesterday morning prompts a sadder vein. The fate of the unfortunate
Fauntleroy makes me, whether I will or no, to cast reflecting eyes
around on such of my friends as by a parity of situation are exposed to
a similarity of temptation. My very style, seems to myself to become
more impressive than usual, with the change of theme. Who that standeth,
knoweth but he may yet fall? Your hands as yet, I am most willing to
believe, have never deviated into others' property. You think it
impossible that you could ever commit so heinous an offence. But so
thought Fauntleroy once; so have thought many besides him, who at last
have expiated, as he hath done. You are as yet upright. But you are a
Banker, at least the next thing to it. I feel the delicacy of the
subject; but cash must pass thro' your hands, sometimes to a great
amount. If in an unguarded hour--but I will hope better. Consider the
scandal it will bring upon those of your persuasion. Thousands would go
to see a Quaker hanged, that would be indifferent to the fate of a
Presbyterian, or an Anabaptist. Think of the effect it would have on the
sale of your poems alone; not to mention higher considerations. I
tremble, I am sure, at myself, when I think that so many poor victims of
the Law at one time of their life made as sure of never being hanged as
I in my presumption am too ready to do myself. What are we better than
they? Do we come into the world with different necks? Is there any
distinctive mark under our left ears? Are we unstrangulable? I ask you.
Think of these things. I am shocked sometimes at the shape of my own
fingers, not for their resemblance to the ape tribe (which is something)
but for the exquisite adaptation of them to the purposes of picking,
fingering, &c. No one that is so framed, I maintain it, but should
tremble.
Postscript for your Daughter's eyes only.
Dear Miss ---- Your pretty little letterets make me ashamed of my great
straggling coarse handwriting. I wonder where you get pens to write so
small. Sure they must be the pinions of a small wren, or a robin. If you
write so in your Album, you must give us glasses to read by. I have seen
a Lady's similar book all writ in following fashion. I think it pretty
and fanciful.
"O how I love in early dawn
To bend my steps o'er flowery dawn [lawn],"
which I think has an agreeable variety to the eye. Which I recommend to
your notice, with friend Elia's best wishes.
[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 above. Fauntleroy's fate seems to have had great
fascination for Lamb. He returned to the subject, 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); 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 [l839].--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, 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.
Here should come a letter to Alaric A. Watts dated Dec. 28, 1824, in
reply to a request for a contribution to one of this inveterate
album-maker's albums. Lamb acquiesces. Later he came to curse the
things. Given in the Boston Bibliophile edition.]
LETTER 359
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[P.M. January II, 1825.]
My Dear Sir--Pray return my best thanks to your father for his little
volume. It is like all of his I have seen, spirited, good humoured, and
redolent of the wit and humour of a century ago. He should have lived
with Gay and his set. The Chessiad is so clever that I relish'd it in
spite of my total ignorance of the game. I have it not before me, but I
remember a capital simile of the Charwoman letting in her Watchman
husband, which is better than Butler's Lobster turned to Red. Hazard is
a grand Character, Jove in his Chair. When you are disposed to leave
your one room for my six, Colebrooke is where it was, and my sister begs
me to add that as she is disappointed of meeting your sister _your way_,
we shall be most happy to see her _our way_, when you have an even'g to
spare. Do not stand on ceremonies and introductions, but come at once. I
need not say that if you can induce your father to join the party, it
will be so much the pleasanter. Can you name an evening _next week_? I
give you long credit.
Meantime am as usual yours truly C.L.
E.I.H.
11 Jan. 25.
When I saw the Chessiad advertised by C.D. the Younger, I hoped it
might be yours. What title is left for you--
Charles Dibdin _the Younger, Junior_.
O No, you are Timothy.
[Charles Dibdin the Younger wrote a mock-heroic poem, "The Chessiad,"
which was published with _Comic Tales_ in 1825. The simile of the
charwoman runs thus:--
Now Morning, yawning, rais'd her from her bed,
Slipp'd on her wrapper blue and 'kerchief red,
And took from Night the key of Sleep's abode;
For Night within that mansion had bestow'd
The Hours of day; now, turn and turn about,
Morn takes the key and lets the Day-hours out;
Laughing, they issue from the ebon gate,
And Night walks in. As when, in drowsy state,
Some watchman, wed to one who chars all day,
Takes to his lodging's door his creeping way;
His rib, arising, lets him in to sleep,
While she emerges to scrub, dust, and sweep.
This is the lobster simile in _Hudibras_, Part II., Canto 2, lines
29-32:--
The sun had long since, in the lap
Of Thetis, taken out his nap,
And, like a lobster boiled, the morn
From black to red began to turn.
Hazard is the chief of the gods in the Chessiad's little drama.
"You are Timothy." See letter to Dibdin above.
I have included in Vol. I. of the present edition a review of Dibdin's
book, in the _New Times_, January 27, 1825, which both from internal
evidence and from the quotation of the charwoman passage I take to be by
Lamb, who was writing for that paper at that time.]
LETTER 360
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
Jan. 17, 1825.
Dear Allsop--I acknowledge with thanks the receipt of a draft on Messrs.
Wms. for L81:11:3 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 exceed'ly 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.
Turn over--Yours, C. LAMB.
[Hurst and Robinson were publishers. Lamb took the idea for his chorus
from Davenant's version of "Macbeth" which he described in _The
Spectator_ in 1828 (see Vol. I. of the present edition). It is there a
chorus of witches--
We should rejoice when good kings bleed. ]
LETTER 361
CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
[P.M. January 20, 1825.]
The brevity of this is owing to scratching it off at my desk amid
expected interruptions. By habit, I can write Letters only at office.
Dear Miss H. Thank you for a noble Goose, which wanted only the massive
Encrustation that we used to pick-axe open about this season in old
Gloster Place. When shall we eat another Goosepye together? The pheasant
too must not be forgotten, twice as big and half as good as a partridge.
You ask about the editor of the Lond. I know of none. This first
specimen is flat and pert enough to justify subscribers who grudge at
t'other shilling. De Quincey's Parody was submitted to him before
printed, and had his Probatum. The "Horns" is in a poor taste,
resembling the most laboured papers in the Spectator. I had sign'd it
"Jack Horner:" but Taylor and Hessey said, it would be thought an
offensive article, unless I put my known signature to it; and wrung from
me my slow consent. But did you read the "Memoir of Liston"? and did you
guess whose it was? Of all the Lies I ever put off, I value this most.
It is from top to toe, every paragraph, Pure Invention; and has passed
for Gospel, has been republished in newspapers, and in the penny
play-bills of the Night, as an authentic Account. I shall certainly go
to the Naughty Man some day for my Fibbings. In the next No. I figure as
a Theologian! and have attacked my late brethren, the Unitarians. What
Jack Pudding tricks I shall play next, I know not. I am almost at the
end of my Tether.
Coleridge is quite blooming; but his Book has not budded yet. I hope I
have spelt Torquay right now, and that this will find you all mending,
and looking forward to a London flight with the Spring. Winter _we_ have
had none, but plenty of foul weather. I have lately pick'd up an Epigram
which pleased me.
Two noble Earls, whom if I quote,
Some folks might call me Sinner;
The one invented half a coat;
The other half a dinner.
The plan was good, as some will say
And fitted to console one:
Because, in this poor starving day,
Few can afford a whole one.
I have made the Lame one still lamer by imperfect memory, but spite of
bald diction, a little done to it might improve it into a good one. You
have nothing else to do at [_"Talk kay" here written and scratched out_]
Torquay. Suppose you try it. Well God bless you all, as wishes Mary,
[most] sincerely, with many thanks for Letter &c. ELIA.
[The Monkhouses' house in London was at 34 Gloucester Place.
Lamb's De Quincey parody was the "Letter to an Old Gentleman, whose
Education has been Neglected."
"Coleridge's book"--the _Aids to Reflection_, published in May or June,
1825.
"I have lately pick'd up an Epigram." This is by Henry Man, an old
South-Sea House clerk, whom in his South-Sea House essay Lamb mentions
as a wit. The epigram, which refers to Lord Spencer and Lord Sandwich,
will be found in Man's _Miscellaneous Works_, 1802.]
LETTER 362
CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
[P.M. Jan. 25, 1825.]
Dear Corelli, My sister's cold is as obstinate as an old Handelian, whom
a modern amateur is trying to convert to Mozart-ism. As company must &
always does injure it, Emma and I propose to come to you in the evening
of to-morrow, _instead of meeting here_. An early bread-and-cheese
supper at 1/2 past eight will oblige us.
Loves to the Bearer of many Children. C. LAMB.
Tuesday Colebrooke.
I sign with a black seal, that you may begin to think, her cold has
killed Mary, which will be an agreeable UNSURPRISE when you read the
Note.
[This is the first letter to Novello, who was the peculiar champion of
Mozart and Haydn. Lamb calls him Corelli after Archangelo Corelli
(1653-1713), the violinist and composer. It was part of a joke between
Lamb and Novello that Lamb should affect to know a great deal about
music. See the _Elia_ essay "A Chapter on Ears" for a description of
Novello's playing. Mrs. Novello was the mother of eleven children.]
LETTER 363
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[Dated at end: 10 February, 1825.]
Dear B.B.--I am vexed that ugly paper should have offended. I kept it
as clear from objectionable phrases as possible, and it was Hessey's
fault, and my weakness, that it did not appear anonymous. No more of it
for God's sake.
The Spirit of the Age is by Hazlitt. The characters of Coleridge, &c. he
had done better in former publications, the praise and the abuse much
stronger, &c. but the new ones are capitally done. Horne Tooke is a
matchless portrait. My advice is, to borrow it rather than read [? buy]
it. I have it. He has laid on too many colours on my likeness, but I
have had so much injustice done me in my own name, that I make a rule of
accepting as much over-measure to Elia as Gentlemen think proper to
bestow. Lay it on and spare not.
Your Gentleman Brother sets my mouth a watering after Liberty. O that I
were kicked out of Leadenhall with every mark of indignity, and a
competence in my fob. The birds of the air would not be so free as I
should. How I would prance and curvet it, and pick up cowslips, and
ramble about purposeless as an ideot! The Author-mometer is a good
fancy. I have caused great speculation in the dramatic (not _thy_) world
by a Lying Life of Liston, all pure invention. The Town has swallowed
it, and it is copied into News Papers, Play Bills, etc., as authentic.
You do not know the Droll, and possibly missed reading the article (in
our 1st No., New Series). A life more improbable for him to have lived
would not be easily invented. But your rebuke, coupled with "Dream on J.
Bunyan," checks me. I'd rather do more in my favorite way, but feel dry.
I must laugh sometimes. I am poor Hypochondriacus, and _not_ Liston.
Our 2'nd N'o is all trash. What are T. and H. about? It is whip
syllabub, "thin sown with aught of profit or delight." Thin sown! not a
germ of fruit or corn. Why did poor Scott die! There was comfort in
writing with such associates as were his little band of Scribblers, some
gone away, some affronted away, and I am left as the solitary widow
looking for water cresses.
The only clever hand they have is Darley, who has written on the
Dramatists, under name of John Lacy. But his function seems suspended.
I have been harassed more than usually at office, which has stopt my
correspondence lately. I write with a confused aching head, and you must
accept this apology for a Letter.
I will do something soon if I can as a peace offering to the Queen of
the East Angles. Something she shan't scold about.
For the Present, farewell.
Thine C.L.
10 Feb. 1825.
I am fifty years old this day. Drink my health.
["That ugly paper" was "A Vision of Horns."
Hazlitt's _Spirit of the Age_ had just been published, containing
criticisms, among others, of Coleridge, Horne Tooke, and Lamb. Lamb was
very highly praised. Here is a passage from the article:--
How admirably he has sketched the former inmates of the South-Sea
House; what "fine fretwork he makes of their double and single
entries!" With what a firm yet subtle pencil he has embodied "Mrs.
Battle's Opinions on Whist!" How notably he embalms a battered
_beau_; how delightfully an amour, that was cold forty years ago,
revives in his pages! With what well-disguised humour he introduces
us to his relations, and how freely he serves up his friends!
Certainly, some of his portraits are _fixtures_, and will do to hang
up as lasting and lively emblems of human infirmity. Then there is
no one who has so sure an ear for "the chimes at midnight," not even
excepting Mr. Justice Shallow; nor could Master Silence himself take
his "cheese and pippins" with a more significant and satisfactory
air. With what a gusto Mr. Lamb describes the Inns and Courts of
law, the Temple and Gray's Inn, as if he had been a student there
for the last two hundred years, and had been as well acquainted with
the person of Sir Francis Bacon as he is with his portrait or
writings! It is hard to say whether St. John's Gate is connected
with more intense and authentic associations in his mind, as a part
of old London Wall, or as the frontispiece (time out of mind) of the
_Gentleman's Magazine_. He hunts Watling Street like a gentle
spirit; the avenues to the play-houses are thick with panting
recollections; and Christ's Hospital still breathes the balmy breath
of infancy in his description of it!
"Your Gentleman Brother"--John Barton, Bernard's younger half-brother.
"The Author-mometer." I have not discovered to what Lamb refers.
"Dream on J. Bunyan." Probably a poem by Barton, but I have not traced
it.
"T. and H."--Taylor & Hessey.
"Poor Scott"--John Scott, who founded the _London Magazine_.
"Darley"--George Darley (1795-1846), author of _Sylvia; or, The May
Queen_, 1827.
"The Queen of the East Angles." Possibly Lucy Barton, possibly Anne
Knight, a friend of Barton's.]
LETTER 364
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[Not dated. ? February, 1825.]
My dear M.,--You might have come inopportunely a week since, when we had
an inmate. At present and for as long as _ever_ you like, our castle is
at your service. I saw Tuthill yesternight, who has done for me what may
"To all my nights and days to come,
Give solely sovran sway and masterdom."
But I dare not hope, for fear of disappointment. I cannot be more
explicit at present. But I have it under his own hand, that I am
_non_-capacitated (I cannot write it _in_-) for business. O joyous
imbecility! Not a susurration of this to _anybody!_
Mary's love.
C. LAMB.
[Lamb had just taken a most momentous step in his career and had
consulted Tuthill as to his health, in the hope of perhaps obtaining
release and a pension from the East India House. We learn more of this
soon.
Here might come two brief notes to Dibdin, of no importance.]
LETTER 365
CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
[Dated at end: March 1, 1825.]
Dear Miss Hutchinson Your news has made us all very sad. I had my hopes
to the last. I seem as if I were disturbing you at such an awful time
even by a reply. But I must acknowledge your kindness in presuming upon
the interest we shall all feel on the subject. No one will more feel it
than Robinson, to whom I have written. No one more than he and we
acknowleged the nobleness and worth of what we have lost. Words are
perfectly idle. We can only pray for resignation to the Survivors. Our
dearest expressions of condolence to Mrs. M------ at this time in
particular. God bless you both. I have nothing of ourselves to tell you,
and if I had, I could not be so unreverent as to trouble you with it. We
are all well, that is all. Farewell, the departed--and the left. Your's
and his, while memory survives, cordially
C. LAMB.
1 Mar. 1825.
[The letter refers to the death of Thomas Monkhouse.
Here should come an undated note from Lamb to Procter, in which Lamb
refers to the same loss: "We shall be most glad to see you, though more
glad to have seen double _you_."]
LETTER 366
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. March 23, 1825.]
Wednesday.
Dear B.B.--I have had no impulse to write, or attend to any single
object but myself, for weeks past. My single self. I by myself I. I am
sick of hope deferred. The grand wheel is in agitation that is to turn
up my Fortune, but round it rolls and will turn up nothing. I have a
glimpse of Freedom, of becoming a Gentleman at large, but I am put off
from day to day. I have offered my resignation, and it is neither
accepted nor rejected. Eight weeks am I kept in this fearful suspence.
Guess what an absorbing stake I feel it. I am not conscious of the
existence of friends present or absent. The E.I. Directors alone can be
that thing to me--or not.--
I have just learn'd that nothing will be decided this week. Why the
next? Why any week? It has fretted me into an itch of the fingers, I rub
'em against Paper and write to you, rather than not allay this Scorbuta.
While I can write, let me adjure you to have no doubts of Irving. Let
Mr. Mitford drop his disrespect. Irving has prefixed a dedication (of a
Missionary Subject 1st part) to Coleridge, the most beautiful cordial
and sincere. He there acknowledges his obligation to S.T.C. for his
knowledge of Gospel truths, the nature of a Xtian Church, etc., to the
talk of S.T.C. (at whose Gamaliel feet he sits weekly) [more] than to
that of all the men living. This from him--The great dandled and petted
Sectarian--to a religious character so equivocal in the world's Eye as
that of S.T.C., so foreign to the Kirk's estimate!--Can this man be a
Quack? The language is as affecting as the Spirit of the Dedication.
Some friend told him, "This dedication will do you no Good," _i.e._ not
in the world's repute, or with your own People. "That is a reason for
doing it," quoth Irving.
I am thoroughly pleased with him. He is firm, outspeaking, intrepid--and
docile as a pupil of Pythagoras.
You must like him.
Yours, in tremors of painful hope,
C. LAMB.
[In the first paragraphs Lamb refers to the great question of his
release from the India House.
In a letter dated February 19, 1825, of Mary Russell Mitford, who looked
upon Irving as quack absolute, we find her discussing the preacher with
Charles Lamb.]
LETTER 367
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[March 29], 1825.
I have left the d------d India House for Ever!
Give me great joy.
C. LAMB.
[Robinson states in his Reminiscences of Coleridge, Wordsworth and Lamb,
preserved in MS. at Dr. Williams' Library: "A most important incident in
Lamb's life, tho' in the end not so happy for him as he anticipated, was
his obtaining his discharge, with a pension of almost L400 a year, from
the India House. This he announced to me by a note put into my letter
box: 'I have left the India House. D------ Time. I'm all for eternity.'
He was rather more than 50 years of age. I found him and his Sister in
high spirits when I called to wish them joy on the 22 of April. 'I never
saw him so calmly cheerful,' says my journal, 'as he seemed then.'" See
the next letters for Lamb's own account of the event.]
LETTER 368
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Colebrook Cottage,
6 April, 1825.
Dear Wordsworth, I have been several times meditating a letter to you
concerning the good thing which has befallen me, but the thought of poor
Monkhouse came across me. He was one that I had exulted in the prospect
of congratulating me. He and you were to have been the first
participators, for indeed it has been ten weeks since the first motion
of it.
Here I am then after 33 years slavery, sitting in my own room at 11
o'Clock this finest of all April mornings a freed man, with L441 a year
for the remainder of my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who
outlived his annuity and starved at 90. L441, i.e. L450, with a
deduction of L9 for a provision secured to my sister, she being
survivor, the Pension guaranteed by Act Georgii Tertii, &c.
I came home for ever on Tuesday in last week. The incomprehensibleness
of my condition overwhelm'd me. It was like passing from life into
Eternity. Every year to be as long as three, i.e. to have three times as
much real time, time that is my own, in it! I wandered about thinking I
was happy, but feeling I was not. But that tumultuousness is passing
off, and I begin to understand the nature of the gift. Holydays, even
the annual month, were always uneasy joys: their conscious
fugitiveness--the craving after making the most of them. Now, when all
is holyday, there are no holydays. I can sit at home in rain or shine
without a restless impulse for walkings. I am daily steadying, and shall
soon find it as natural to me to be my own master, as it has been
irksome to have had a master. Mary wakes every morning with an obscure
feeling that some good has happened to us.
Leigh Hunt and Montgomery after their releasements describe the shock of
their emancipation much as I feel mine. But it hurt their frames. I eat,
drink, and sleep sound as ever. I lay no anxious schemes for going
hither and thither, but take things as they occur. Yesterday I
excursioned 20 miles, to day I write a few letters. Pleasuring was for
fugitive play days, mine are fugitive only in the sense that life is
fugitive. Freedom and life co-existent.
At the foot of such a call upon you for gratulation, I am ashamd to
advert to that melancholy event. Monkhouse was a character I learnd to
love slowly, but it grew upon me, yearly, monthly, daily. What a chasm
has it made in our pleasant parties! His noble friendly face was always
coming before me, till this hurrying event in my life came, and for the
time has absorpt all interests. In fact it has shaken me a little. My
old desk companions with whom I have had such merry hours seem to
reproach me for removing my lot from among them. They were pleasant
creatures, but to the anxieties of business, and a weight of possible
worse ever impending, I was not equal. Tuthill and Gilman gave me my
certificates. I laughed at the friendly lie implied in them, but my
sister shook her head and said it was all true. Indeed this last winter
I was jaded out, winters were always worse than other parts of the year,
because the spirits are worse, and I had no daylight. In summer I had
daylight evenings. The relief was hinted to me from a superior power,
when I poor slave had not a hope but that I must wait another 7 years
with Jacob--and lo! the Rachel which I coveted is bro't to me--
Have you read the noble dedication of Irving's "Missionary Orations" to
S.T.C. Who shall call this man a Quack hereafter? What the Kirk will
think of it neither I nor Irving care. When somebody suggested to him
that it would not be likely to do him good, videlicet among his own
people, "That is a reason for doing it" was his noble answer.
That Irving thinks he has profited mainly by S.T.C., I have no doubt.
The very style of the Ded. shows it.
Communicate my news to Southey, and beg his pardon for my being so long
acknowledging his kind present of the "Church," which circumstances I do
not wish to explain, but having no reference to himself, prevented at
the time. Assure him of my deep respect and friendliest feelings.
Divide the same, or rather each take the whole to you, I mean you and
all yours. To Miss Hutchinson I must write separate. What's her address?
I want to know about Mrs. M.
Farewell! and end at last, long selfish Letter!
C. LAMB.
[Lamb expanded the first portion of this letter into the _Elia_ essay
"The Superannuated Man," which ought to be read in connection with it
(see Vol. II. of the present edition).
Leigh Hunt and James Montgomery, the poet, had both undergone
imprisonment for libel.
At a Court of Directors of the India House held on March 29, 1825, it
was resolved "that the resignation of Mr. Charles Lamb of the Accountant
General's Office, on account of certified ill-health, be accepted, and,
it appearing that he has served the Company faithfully for 33 years, and
is now in the receipt of an income of L730 per annum, he be allowed a
pension of L450 (four hundred and fifty pounds) per annum, under the
provisions of the act of the 53 Geo. III., cap. 155, to commence from
this day."]
LETTER 369
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. April 6, 1825.]
Dear B.B.--My spirits are so tumultuary with the novelty of my recent
emancipation, that I have scarce steadiness of hand, much more mind, to
compose a letter.
I am free, B.B.--free as air.
The little bird that wings the sky
Knows no such Liberty!
I was set free on Tuesday in last week at 4 o'Clock.
I came home for ever!
I have been describing my feelings as well as I can to Wordsw'th. in a
long letter, and don't care to repeat. Take it briefly that for a few
days I was painfully oppressed by so mighty a change, but it is becoming
daily more natural to me.
I went and sat among 'em all at my old 33 years desk yester morning; and
deuce take me if I had not yearnings at leaving all my old pen and ink
fellows, merry sociable lads, at leaving them in the Lurch, fag, fag,
fag.
The comparison of my own superior felicity gave me any thing but
pleasure.
B.B., I would not serve another 7 years for seven hundred thousand
pounds!
I have got L441 net for life, sanctioned by Act of Parliament, with a
provision for Mary if she survives me.
I will live another 50 years; or, if I live but 10, they will be thirty,
reckoning the quantity of real time in them, _i.e._ the time that is a
man's own.
Tell me how you like "Barbara S."--will it be received in atonement for
the foolish Vision, I mean by the Lady?
_Apropos_, I never saw Mrs. Crawford in my life, nevertheless 'tis all
true of Somebody.
Address me in future Colebrook Cottage, Islington.
I am really nervous (but that will wear off) so take this brief
announcement.
Yours truly C.L.
["Barbara S----," the _Elia_ essay, was printed in the _London
Magazine_, April, 1825 (see Vol II. of this edition). It purports to be
an incident in the life of Mrs. Crawford, the actress, but had really
happened to Fanny Kelly.]
LETTER 370
CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
[P.M. April 18, 1825.]
Dear Miss Hutchinson--You want to know all about my gaol delivery. Take
it then. About 12 weeks since I had a sort of intimation that a
resignation might be well accepted from me. This was a kind bird's
whisper. On that hint I spake. Gilman and Tuthill furnishd me with
certificates of wasted health and sore spirits--not much more than the
truth, I promise you--and for 9 weeks I was kept in a fright-- I had
gone too far to recede, and they might take advantage and dismiss me
with a much less sum than I had reckoned on. However Liberty came at
last with a liberal provision. I have given up what I could have lived
on in the country, but have enough to live here by managem't and
scribbling occasionally. I would not go back to my prison for seven
years longer for L10000 a year. 7 years after one is 50 is no trifle to
give up. Still I am a young _Pensioner_, and have served but 33 years,
very few I assure you retire before 40, 45, or 50 years' service.
You will ask how I bear my freedom. Faith, for some days I was
staggered. Could not comprehend the magnitude of my deliverance, was
confused, giddy, knew not whether I was on my head or my heel as they
say. But those giddy feelings have gone away, and my weather glass
stands at a degree or two above
CONTENT
I go about quiet, and have none of that restless hunting after
recreation which made holydays formerly uneasy joys. All being holydays,
I feel as if I had none, as they do in heaven, where 'tis all red letter
days.
I have a kind letter from the Words'wths _congratulatory_ not a little.
It is a damp, I do assure you, amid all my prospects that I can receive
_none_ from a quarter upon which I had calculated, almost more than from
any, upon receiving congratulations. I had grown to like poor M. more
and more. I do not esteem a soul living or not living more warmly than I
had grown to esteem and value him. But words are vain. We have none of
us to count upon many years. That is the only cure for sad thoughts. If
only some died, and the rest were permanent on earth, what a thing a
friend's death would be then!
I must take leave, having put off answering [a load] of letters to this
morning, and this, alas! is the 1st. Our kindest remembrances to Mrs.
Monkhouse and believe us
Yours most Truly, C. LAMB.
LETTER 371
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HORNE
[P.M. May 2, 1825.]
Dear Hone,--I send you a trifle; you have seen my lines, I suppose, in
the "London." I cannot tell you how much I like the "St. Chad Wells."
Yours truly
C. LAMB.
P.S. Why did you not stay, or come again, yesterday?
[These words accompany Lamb's contribution, "Remarkable Correspondent,"
to Hone's _Every-Day Book_ (see Vol. I. of this edition). Lamb was
helping Hone in his new venture as much as he was able; and Hone in
return dedicated the first volume to him. "St. Chad's Wells" was an
article by Hone in the number for March 2.]
LETTER 372
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[No date. May, 1825.]
Dear W. I write post-hoste to ensure a frank. Thanks for your hearty
congratulations. I may now date from the 6th week of my Hegira or Flight
from Leadenhall. I have lived so much in it, that a Summer seems already
past, and 'tis but early May yet with you and other people. How I look
down on the Slaves and drudges of the world! its inhabitants are a vast
cotton-web of spin spin spinners. O the carking cares! O the
money-grubbers-sempiternal muckworms!
Your Virgil I have lost sight of, but suspect it is in the hands of Sir
G. Beaumont. I think that circumstances made me shy of procuring it
before. Will you write to him about it? and your commands shall be
obeyed to a tittle.
Coleridge has just finishd his prize Essay, which if it get the Prize
he'll touch an additional L100 I fancy. His Book too (commentary on
Bishop Leighton) is quite finished and _penes_ Taylor and Hessey.
In the London which is just out (1st May) are 2 papers entitled the
_Superannuated Man_, which I wish you to see, and also 1st Apr. a little
thing called Barbara S------ a story gleaned from Miss Kelly. The L.M.
if you can get it will save my enlargement upon the topic of my
manumission.
I must scribble to make up my hiatus crumenae, for there are so many
ways, pious and profligate, of getting rid of money in this vast city
and suburbs that I shall miss my third: but couragio. I despair not.
Your kind hint of the Cottage was well thrown out. An anchorage for
_age_ and school of economy when necessity comes. But without this
latter I have an unconquerable terror of changing Place. It does not
agree with us. I say it from conviction. Else--I do sometimes ruralize
in fancy.
Some d------d people are come in and I must finish abruptly. By
d------d, I only mean _deuced_. 'Tis these suitors of Penelope that make
it necessary to authorise a little for gin and mutton and such trifles.
Excuse my abortive scribble.
Yours not in more haste than heart C.L.
Love and recollects to all the Wms. Doras, Maries round your Wrekin.
Mary is capitally well.
Do write to Sir G.B. for I am shyish of applying to him.
[Coleridge had been appointed to one of the ten Royal Associateships of
the newly chartered Royal Society of Literature, thus becoming entitled
to an annuity of 100 guineas. An essay was expected from each associate.
Coleridge wrote on the _Prometheus_ of Aeschylus, and read it on May 18.
His book was _Aids to Reflection_. See note on page 734.
"I shall miss my thirds." Lamb's pension was two-thirds of his stipend.
"Some d-----d people." A hint for Lamb's Popular Fallacy on Home, soon
to be written.
"Round your Wrekin." Lamb repeats this phrase twice in the next few
months. He got it from the Dedication to Farquhar's play "The Recruiting
Officer"--"To all friends round the Wrekin."
Here perhaps should come a letter to Mrs. Norris printed in the Boston
Bibliophile edition containing some very interesting comic verses on
England somewhat in the manner of _Don Juan_--
I like the weather when it's not too rainy,
That is, I like two months of every year,
and so on.]
LETTER 373
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES CHAMBERS
[Undated. ? May, 1825.]
With regard to a John-dory, which you desire to be particularly informed
about, I honour the fish, but it is rather on account of Quin who
patronised it, and whose taste (of a _dead_ man) I had as lieve go by as
anybody's (Apicius and Heliogabalus excepted--this latter started
nightingales' tongues and peacocks' brains as a garnish).
Else in _itself_, and trusting to my own poor single judgment, it hath
not that moist mellow oleaginous gliding smooth descent from the tongue
to the palate, thence to the stomach, &c., that your Brighton Turbot
hath, which I take to be the most friendly and familiar flavor of any
that swims--most genial and at home to the palate.
Nor has it on the other hand that fine falling off flakiness, that
oleaginous peeling off (as it were, like a sea onion), which endears
your cod's head & shoulders to some appetites; that manly firmness,
combined with a sort of womanish coming-in-pieces, which the same cod's
head & shoulders hath, where the whole is easily separable, pliant to a
knife or a spoon, but each individual flake presents a pleasing
resistance to the opposed tooth. You understand me--these delicate
subjects are necessarily obscure.
But it has a third flavor of its own, perfectly distinct from Cod or
Turbot, which it must be owned may to some not injudicious palates
render it acceptable--but to my unpractised tooth it presented rather a
crude river-fish-flavor, like your Pike or Carp, and perhaps like them
should have been tamed & corrected by some laborious & well chosen
sauce. Still I always suspect a fish which requires so much of
artificial settings-off. Your choicest relishes (like nature's
loveliness) need not the foreign aid of ornament, but are when unadorned
(that is, with nothing but a little plain anchovy & a squeeze of lemon)
then adorned the most. However, I shall go to Brighton again next
Summer, and shall have an opportunity of correcting my judgment, if it
is not sufficiently informed. I can only say that when Nature was
pleased to make the John Dory so notoriously deficient in outward graces
(as to be sure he is the very Rhinoceros of fishes, the ugliest dog that
swims, except perhaps the Sea Satyr, which I never saw, but which they
say is terrible), when she formed him with so few external advantages,
she might have bestowed a more elaborate finish in his parts internal, &
have given him a relish, a sapor, to recommend him, as she made Pope a
Poet to make up for making him crooked.
I am sorry to find that you have got a knack of saying things which are
not true to shew your wit. If I had no wit but what I must shew at the
expence of my virtue or my modesty, I had as lieve be as stupid as * * *
at the Tea Warehouse. Depend upon it, my dear Chambers, that an ounce of
integrity at our death-bed will stand us in more avail than all the wit
of Congreve or... For instance, you tell me a fine story about Truss,
and his playing at Leamington, which I know to be false, because I have
advice from Derby that he was whipt through the Town on that very day
you say he appeared in some character or other, for robbing an old woman
at church of a seal ring. And Dr. Parr has been two months dead. So it
won't do to scatter these untrue stories about among people that know
any thing. Besides, your forte is not invention. It is _judgment_,
particularly shown in your choice of dishes. We seem in that instance
born under one star. I like you for liking hare. I esteem you for
disrelishing minced veal. Liking is too cold a word.--I love you for
your noble attachment to the fat unctuous juices of deer's flesh & the
green unspeakable of turtle. I honour you for your endeavours to esteem
and approve of my favorite, which I ventured to recommend to you as a
substitute for hare, bullock's heart, and I am not offended that you
cannot taste it with _my_ palate. A true son of Epicurus should reserve
one taste peculiar to himself. For a long time I kept the secret about
the exceeding deliciousness of the marrow of boiled knuckle of veal,
till my tongue weakly ran riot in its praises, and now it is prostitute
& common.--But I have made one discovery which I will not impart till my
dying scene is over, perhaps it will be my last mouthful in this world:
delicious thought, enough to sweeten (or rather make savoury) the hour
of death. It is a little square bit about this size in or near the
knuckle bone of a fried joint of... fat I can't call it nor lean
[Illustration: Handrawn sketch]
neither altogether, it is that beautiful compound, which Nature must
have made in Paradise Park venison, before she separated the two
substances, the dry & the oleaginous, to punish sinful mankind; Adam ate
them entire & inseparate, and this little taste of Eden in the knuckle
bone of a fried... seems the only relique of a Paradisaical state. When
I die, an exact description of its topography shall be left in a
cupboard with a key, inscribed on which these words, "C. Lamb dying
imparts this to C. Chambers as the only worthy depository of such a
secret." You'll drop a tear....
[Charles Chambers was the brother of John Chambers (see above). He had
been at Christ's Hospital with Lamb and subsequently became a surgeon in
the Navy. He retired to Leamington and practised there until his death,
somewhen about 1857, says Mr. Hazlitt. He seems to have inherited some
of the epicure's tastes of his father, the "sensible clergyman in
Warwickshire" who, Lamb tells us in "Thoughts on Presents of Game,"
"used to allow a pound of Epping to every hare."
This letter adds one more to the list of Lamb's gustatory raptures, and
it is remarkable as being his only eulogy of fish. Mr. Hazlitt says that
the date September 1, 1817, has been added by another hand; but if the
remark about Dr. Parr is true (he died March 6, 1825) the time is as I
have stated. Fortunately the date in this particular case is
unimportant. Mr. Hazlitt suggests that the stupid person in the Tea
Warehouse was Bye, whom we met recently.
Of Truss we know nothing. The name may be a misreading of Twiss (Horace
Twiss, 1787-1849, politician, buffoon, and Mrs. Siddons' nephew), who
was quite a likely person to be lied about in joke at that time.
Here should come a note to Allsop dated May 29, 1825, changing an
appointment: "I am as mad as the devil." Given in the Boston Bibliophile
edition.]
LETTER 374
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
[? June, 1825.]
My dear Coleridge,--With pain and grief, I must entreat you to excuse us
on Thursday. My head, though externally correct, has had a severe
concussion in my long illness, and the very idea of an engagement
hanging over for a day or two, forbids my rest; and I get up miserable.
I am not well enough for company. I do assure you, no other thing
prevents my coming. I expect Field and his brothers this or to-morrow
evening, and it worries me to death that I am not ostensibly ill enough
to put 'em off. I will get better, when I shall hope to see your nephew.
He will come again. Mary joins in best love to the Gillmans. Do, I
earnestly entreat you, excuse me. I assure you, again, that I am not fit
to go out yet.
Yours (though shattered), C. LAMB.
Tuesday.
[This letter has previously been dated 1829, but I think wrongly. Lamb
had no long illness then, and Field was then in Gibraltar, where he was
Chief-Justice. Lamb's long illness was in 1825, when Coleridge's
Thursday evenings at Highgate were regular. Coleridge's nephew may have
been one of several. I fancy it was the Rev. Edward Coleridge. Henry
Nelson Coleridge had already left, I think, for the West Indies.]
LETTER 375
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY COLBURN (?)
[Dated at end: June 14 (? 1825).]
Dear Sir,
I am quite ashamed, after your kind letter, of having expressed any
disappointment about my remuneration. It is quite equivalent to the
value of any thing I have yet sent you. I had Twenty Guineas a sheet
from the London; and what I did for them was more worth that sum, than
any thing, I am afraid, I can now produce, would be worth the lesser
sum. I used up all my best thoughts in that publication, and I do not
like to go on writing worse & worse, & feeling that I do so. I want to
try something else. However, if any subject turns up, which I think will
do your Magazine no discredit, you shall have it at _your_ price, or
something between _that_ and my old price. I prefer writing to seeing
you just now, for after such a letter as I have received from you, in
truth I am ashamed to see you. We will never mention the thing again.
Your obliged friend & Serv't
C. LAMB.
June 14.
[In the absence of any wrapper I have assumed this note to be addressed
to Colburn, the publisher of the _New Monthly Magazine_. Lamb's first
contribution to that periodical was "The Illustrious Defunct" (see Vol.
I. of this edition) in January, 1825. A year later he began the "Popular
Fallacies," and continued regularly for some months.]
LETTER 376
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
[P.M. July 2, 1825.]
Dear C.--We are going off to Enfield, to Allsop's, for a day or 2, with
some intention of succeeding them in their lodging for a time, for this
damn'd nervous Fever (vide Lond. Mag. for July) indisposes me for seeing
any friends, and never any poor devil was so befriended as I am. Do you
know any poor solitary human that wants that cordial to life a--true
friend? I can spare him twenty, he shall have 'em good cheap. I have
gallipots of 'em--genuine balm of cares--a going--a going--a going.
Little plagues plague me a 1000 times more than ever. I am like a
disembodied soul--in this my eternity. I feel every thing entirely, all
in all and all in etc. This price I pay for liberty, but am richly
content to pay it. The Odes are 4-5ths done by Hood, a silentish young
man you met at Islinton one day, an invalid. The rest are Reynolds's,
whose sister H. has recently married. I have not had a broken finger in
them.
They are hearty good-natured things, and I would put my name to 'em
chearfully, if I could as honestly. I complimented them in a Newspaper,
with an abatement for those puns you laud so. They are generally an
excess. A Pun is a thing of too much consequence to be thrown in as a
make-weight. You shall read one of the addresses over, and miss the
puns, and it shall be quite as good and better than when you discover
'em. A Pun is a Noble Thing per se: O never lug it in as an accessory. A
Pun is a sole object for reflection (vide _my_ aids to that recessment
from a savage state)--it is entire, it fills the mind: it is perfect as
a Sonnet, better. It limps asham'd in the train and retinue of Humour:
it knows it should have an establishment of its own. The one, for
instance, I made the other day, I forget what it was.
Hood will be gratify'd, as much as I am, by your mistake. I liked
'Grimaldi' the best; it is true painting, of abstract Clownery, and that
precious concrete of a Clown: and the rich succession of images, and
words almost such, in the first half of the Mag. Ignotum. Your picture
of the Camel, that would not or could not thread your nice needle-eye of
Subtilisms, was confirm'd by Elton, who perfectly appreciated his abrupt
departure. Elton borrowed the "Aids" from Hessey (by the way what is
your Enigma about Cupid? I am Cytherea's son, if I understand a tittle
of it), and returnd it next day saying that 20 years ago, when he was
pure, he _thought_ as you do now, but that he now thinks as you did 20
years ago. But E. seems a very honest fellow. Hood has just come in; his
sick eyes sparkled into health when he read your approbation. They had
meditated a copy for you, but postponed it till a neater 2d Edition,
which is at hand.
Have you heard _the Creature_ at the Opera House--Signor Non-vir sed
VELUTI Vir?
Like Orpheus, he is said to draw storks &c, _after_ him. A picked raisin
for a sweet banquet of sounds; but I affect not these exotics. Nos DURUM
genus, as mellifluous Ovid hath it.
Fanny Holcroft is just come in, with her paternal severity of aspect.
She has frozen a bright thought which should have follow'd. She makes us
marble, with too little conceiving. Twas respecting the Signor, whom I
honour on this side idolatry. Well, more of this anon.
We are setting out to walk to Enfield after our Beans and Bacon, which
are just smoking.
Kindest remembrances to the G.'s ever.
From Islinton,
2d day, 3d month of my Hegira or Flight from Leadenhall.
C.L. Olim Clericus.
["To Allsop's." Allsop says in his _Letters... of Coleridge_ that he and
the Lambs were housemates for a long time.
"Vide Lond. Mag. for July"--where the _Elia_ essay "The Convalescent"
was printed.
"The Odes"--_Odes and Addresses to Great People, 1825._ Coleridge after
reading the book had written to Lamb as follows (the letter is printed
by Hood):--
MY DEAR CHARLES,--This afternoon, a little, thin, mean-looking sort of a
foolscap, sub-octavo of poems, printed on very dingy outsides, lay on
the table, which the cover informed me was circulating in our book-club,
so very Grub-Streetish in all its appearance, internal as well as
external, that I cannot explain by what accident of impulse (assuredly
there was no _motive_ in play) I came to look into it. Least of all, the
title, Odes and Addresses to Great Men, which connected itself in my
head with Rejected Addresses, and all the Smith and Theodore Hook squad.
But, my dear Charles, it was certainly written by you, or under you, or
_una eum_ you. I know none of your frequent visitors capacious and
assimilative enough of your converse to have reproduced you so honestly,
supposing you had left yourself in pledge in his lock-up house. Gillman,
to whom I read the spirited parody on the introduction to Peter Bell,
the Ode to the Great Unknown, and to Mrs. Fry; he speaks doubtfully of
Reynolds and Hood. But here come Irving and Basil Montagu.
_Thursday night 10 o'clock_.--No! Charles, it is _you_. I have read them
over again, and I understand why you have _anon'd_ the book. The puns
are nine in ten good--many excellent --the Newgatory transcendent. And
then the _exemplum sine exemplo_ of a volume of personalities, and
contemporaneities, without a single line that could inflict the
infinitesimal of an unpleasance on any man in his senses: saving and
except perhaps in the envy-addled brain of the despiser of your _Lays_.
If not a triumph over him, it is at least an _ovation_. Then, moreover,
and besides, to speak with becoming modesty, excepting my own self, who
is there but you who can write the musical lines and stanzas that are
intermixed?
Here, Gillman, come up to my Garret, and driven back by the guardian
spirits of four huge flower-holders of omnigenous roses and
honeysuckles--(Lord have mercy on his hysterical olfactories! What will
he do in Paradise? I must have a pair or two of nostril-plugs, or
nose-goggles laid in his coffin)--stands at the door, reading that to
M'Adam, and the washer-woman's letter, and he admits _the facts_. You
are found _in the manner_, as the lawyers say! so, Mr. Charles! hang
yourself up, and send me a line, by way of token and acknowledgment. My
dear love to Mary. God bless you and your Unshamabramizer.
S.T. COLERIDGE.
Reynolds was John Hamilton Reynolds. According to a marked copy in the
possession of Mr. Buxton Forman, Reynolds wrote only the odes to Mr.
M'Adam, Mr. Dymoke, Sylvanus Urban, Elliston and the Dean and Chapter of
Westminster.
The newspaper in which Lamb complimented the book was the _New Times_,
for April 12, 1825. See Vol. I. of the present edition for the review,
where the remarks on puns are repeated. The "Mag. Ignotum" was the ode
to the Great Unknown, the author of the Scotch novels. In the same paper
on January 8, 1825, Lamb had written an essay called "Many Friends" (see
Vol. I.) a little in the manner of this first paragraph.
"Your picture of the Camel." Probably the story of a caller told by
Coleridge to Lamb in a letter.
"Your Enigma about Cupid." Possibly referring to the following passage
in the _Aids to Reflection_, 1825, pages 277-278:--
From the remote East turn to the mythology of Minor Asia, to the
Descendants of Javan _who dwelt in the tents of Shem, and possessed
the Isles_. Here again, and in the usual form of an historic
Solution, we find the same _Fact_, and as characteristic of the
Human _Race_, stated in that earliest and most venerable Mythus (or
symbolic Parable) of Prometheus--that truly wonderful Fable, in
which the characters of the rebellious Spirit and of the Divine
Friend of Mankind ([Greek: Theos philanthropos]) are united in the
same Person: and thus in the most striking manner noting the forced
amalgamation of the Patriarchal Tradition with the incongruous
Scheme of Pantheism. This and the connected tale of Io, which is but
the sequel of the Prometheus, stand alone in the Greek Mythology, in
which elsewhere both Gods and Men are mere Powers and Products of
Nature. And most noticeable it is, that soon after the promulgation
and spread of the Gospel had awakened the moral sense, and had
opened the eyes even of its wiser Enemies to the necessity of
providing some solution of this great problem of the Moral World,
the beautiful Parable of Cupid and Psyche was brought forward as a
_rival_ FALL OF MAN: and the fact of a moral corruption connatural
with the human race was again recognized. In the assertion of
ORIGINAL SIN the Greek Mythology rose and set.
"Have you heard _the Creature?_"--Giovanni Battista Velluti (1781-1861),
an Italian soprano singer who first appeared in England on June 30,
1825, in Meyerbeer's "Il Crociato in Egitto." He received L2,500 for
five months' salary.]
LETTER 377
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. July 2, 1825.]
My dear B.B.--My nervous attack has so unfitted me, that I have not
courage to sit down to a Letter. My poor pittance in the London you will
see is drawn from my sickness. Your Book is very acceptable to me,
because most of it [is] new to me, but your Book itself we cannot thank
you for more sincerely than for the introduction you favoured us with to
Anne Knight. Now cannot I write _Mrs._ Anne Knight for the life of me.
She is a very pleas--, but I won't write all we have said of her so
often to ourselves, because I suspect you would read it to her. Only
give my sister's and my kindest rememb'ces to her, and how glad we are
we can say that word. If ever she come to Southwark again I count upon
another pleasant BRIDGE walk with her. Tell her, I got home, time for a
rubber; but poor Tryphena will not understand that phrase of the
worldlings.
I am hardly able to appreciate your volume now. But I liked the
dedicat'n much, and the apology for your bald burying grounds. To
Shelly, but _that_ is not new. To the young Vesper-singer, Great
Bealing's, Playford, and what not?
If there be a cavil it is that the topics of religious consolation,
however beautiful, are repeated till a sort of triteness attends them.
It seems as if you were for ever losing friends' children by death, and
reminding their parents of the Resurrection. Do children die so often,
and so good, in your parts? The topic, taken from the considerat'n that
they are snatch'd away from _possible vanities_, seems hardly sound; for
to an omniscient eye their conditional failings must be one with their
actual; but I am too unwell for Theology. Such as I am, I am yours and
A.K.'s truly
C. LAMB.
["My poor pittance"-"The Convalescent."
"Your Book"-Barton's _Poems_, 4th edition, 1825. The dedication was to
Barton's sister, Maria Hack.
"Anne Knight." A Quaker lady, who kept a school at Woodbridge.]
LETTER 378
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN AITKEN
Colebrooke Cottage, Islington, July 5, 1825.
DEAR Sir,--With thanks for your last No. of the Cabinet-- as I cannot
arrange with a London publisher to reprint "Rosamund Gray" as a book, it
will be at your service to admit into the Cabinet as soon as you please.
Your h'ble serv't, CH's LAMB.
EMMA, eldest of your name,
Meekly trusting in her God
Midst the red-hot plough-shares trod,
And unscorch'd preserved her fame.
By that test if _you_ were tried,
Ugly names might be defied;
Though devouring fire's a glutton,
Through the trial you might go
'On the light fantastic toe,'
Nor for plough-shares care a BUTTON.
[Aitken was an Edinburgh bookseller who edited _The Cabinet; or, The
Selected Beauties of Literature_, 1824, 1825 and 1831. The particular
interest of the letter is that it shows Lamb to have wanted to publish
_Rosamund Gray_ a third time in his life. Hitherto we had only his
statement that Hessey said that the world would not bear it. Aitken
printed the story in _The Cabinet_ for 1831. Previously he had printed
"Dream Children" and "The Inconveniences of being Hanged."
I have been told (but have had no opportunity of verifying the
statement) that the Buttons, for one of whom the appended acrostic was
written, were cousins of the Lambs.
Here should come an unpublished letter to Miss Kelly thanking her for
tickets and saying that Liston is to produce Lamb's farce "The
Pawnbroker's Daughter," which "will take."
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Hone, dated Enfield, July 25,
1825. Lamb had written some quatrains to the editor of the _Every-Day
Book_, which were printed in the _London Magazine_ for May, 1825. Hone
copied them into his periodical, accompanied by a reply. Lamb began:--
I like you, and your book, ingenuous Hone!
Hone's reply contained the sentiment:--
I am "ingenuous": it is all I can
Pretend to; it is all I wish to be.
See the _Every-Day Book_, Vol. I., July 9. Hone at this time was
occupying Lamb's house at Colebrooke Row, while the Lambs were staying
at the Allsops' lodgings at Enfield.
Lamb again refers to "The Pawnbroker's Daughter." He says it is at the
theatre now and Harley is there too. This would be John Pritt Harley,
the actor. The play, as it happened, was never acted.
Here should come three notes to Thomas Allsop in July and August, 1825,
one of which damns the afternoon sun. Given in the Boston Bibliophile
edition.]
LETTER 379
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. August 10, 1825.]
We shall be soon again at Colebrook.
Dear B.B.--You must excuse my not writing before, when I tell you we are
on a visit at Enfield, where I do not feel it natural to sit down to a
Letter. It is at all times an exertion. I had rather talk with you, and
Ann Knight, quietly at Colebrook Lodge, over the matter of your last.
You mistake me when you express misgivings about my relishing a series
of scriptural poems. I wrote confusedly. What I meant to say was, that
one or two consolatory poems on deaths would have had a more condensed
effect than many. Scriptural-- devotional topics--admit of infinite
variety. So far from poetry tiring me because religious, I can read, and
I say it seriously, the homely old version of the Psalms in our
Prayer-books for an hour or two together sometimes without sense of
weariness.
I did not express myself clearly about what I think a false topic
insisted on so frequently in consolatory addresses on the death of
Infants. I know something like it is in Scripture, but I think humanly
spoken. It is a natural thought, a sweet fallacy to the Survivors--but
still a fallacy. If it stands on the doctrine of this being a
probationary state, it is liable to this dilemma. Omniscience, to whom
possibility must be clear as act, must know of the child, what it would
hereafter turn out: if good, then the topic is false to say it is
secured from falling into future wilfulness, vice, &c. If bad, I do not
see how its exemption from certain future overt acts by being snatched
away at all tells in its favor. You stop the arm of a murderer, or
arrest the finger of a pickpurse, but is not the guilt incurred as much
by the intent as if never so much acted? Why children are hurried off,
and old reprobates of a hundred left, whose trial humanly we may think
was complete at fifty, is among the obscurities of providence. The very
notion of a state of probation has darkness in it. The all-knower has no
need of satisfying his eyes by seeing what we will do, when he knows
before what we will do. Methinks we might be condemn'd before
commission. In these things we grope and flounder, and if we can pick up
a little human comfort that the child taken is snatch'd from vice (no
great compliment to it, by the bye), let us take it. And as to where an
untried child goes, whether to join the assembly of its elders who have
borne the heat of the day--fire-purified martyrs, and torment-sifted
confessors--what know we? We promise heaven methinks too cheaply, and
assign large revenues to minors, incompetent to manage them. Epitaphs
run upon this topic of consolation, till the very frequency induces a
cheapness. Tickets for admission into Paradise are sculptured out at a
penny a letter, twopence a syllable, &c. It is all a mystery; and the
more I try to express my meaning (having none that is clear) the more I
flounder. Finally, write what your own conscience, which to you is the
unerring judge, seems best, and be careless about the whimsies of such a
half-baked notionist as I am. We are here in a most pleasant country,
full of walks, and idle to our hearts desire. Taylor has dropt the
London. It was indeed a dead weight. It has got in the Slough of
Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, and stand like Xtian with
light and merry shoulders. It had got silly, indecorous, pert, and every
thing that is bad. Both our kind _remembrances_ to Mrs. K. and yourself,
and stranger's-greeting to Lucy--is it Lucy or Ruth?--that gathers wise
sayings in a Book. C. LAMB.
[The London Magazine passed into the hands of Henry Southern in
September, 1825. Lamb's last article for it was in the August
number--"Imperfect Dramatic Illusion," reprinted in the _Last Essays of
Elia_ as "Stage Illusion."]
LETTER 380
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
August 10, 1825.
Dear Southey,--You'll know who this letter comes from by opening
slap-dash upon the text, as in the good old times. I never could come
into the custom of envelopes; 'tis a modern foppery; the Plinian
correspondence gives no hint of such. In singleness of sheet and meaning
then I thank you for your little book. I am ashamed to add a codicil of
thanks for your "Book of the Church." I scarce feel competent to give an
opinion of the latter; I have not reading enough of that kind to venture
at it. I can only say the fact, that I have read it with attention and
interest. Being, as you know, not quite a Churchman, I felt a jealousy
at the Church taking to herself the whole deserts of Christianity,
Catholic and Protestant, from Druid extirpation downwards. I call all
good Christians the Church, Capillarians and all. But I am in too light
a humour to touch these matters. May all our churches flourish! Two
things staggered me in the poem (and one of them staggered both of us).
I cannot away with a beautiful series of verses, as I protest they are,
commencing "Jenner." 'Tis like a choice banquet opened with a pill or an
electuary-- physic stuff. T'other is, we cannot make out how Edith
should be no more than ten years old. By'r Lady, we had taken her to be
some sixteen or upwards. We suppose you have only chosen the round
number for the metre. Or poem and dedication may be both older than they
pretend to; but then some hint might have been given; for, as it stands,
it may only serve some day to puzzle the parish reckoning. But without
inquiring further (for 'tis ungracious to look into a lady's years), the
dedication is eminently pleasing and tender, and we wish Edith May
Southey joy of it. Something, too, struck us as if we had heard of the
death of John May. A John May's death was a few years since in the
papers. We think the tale one of the quietest, prettiest things we have
seen. You have been temperate in the use of localities, which generally
spoil poems laid in exotic regions. You mostly cannot stir out (in such
things) for humming-birds and fire-flies. A tree is a Magnolia, &c.--Can
I but like the truly Catholic spirit? "Blame as thou mayest the Papist's
erring creed"--which and other passages brought me back to the old
Anthology days and the admonitory lesson to "Dear George" on the "The
Vesper Bell," a little poem which retains its first hold upon me
strangely.
The compliment to the translatress is daintily conceived. Nothing is
choicer in that sort of writing than to bring in some remote, impossible
parallel,--as between a great empress and the inobtrusive quiet soul who
digged her noiseless way so perseveringly through that rugged Paraguay
mine. How she Dobrizhoffered it all out, it puzzles my slender Latinity
to conjecture. Why do you seem to sanction Lander's unfeeling
allegorising away of honest Quixote! He may as well say Strap is meant
to symbolise the Scottish nation before the Union, and Random since that
act of dubious issue; or that Partridge means the Mystical Man, and Lady
Bellaston typifies the Woman upon Many Waters. Gebir, indeed, may mean
the state of the hop markets last month, for anything I know to the
contrary. That all Spain overflowed with romancical books (as Madge
Newcastle calls them) was no reason that Cervantes should not smile at
the matter of them; nor even a reason that, in another mood, he might
not multiply them, deeply as he was tinctured with the essence of them.
Quixote is the father of gentle ridicule, and at the same time the very
depository and treasury of chivalry and highest notions. Marry, when
somebody persuaded Cervantes that he meant only fun, and put him upon
writing that unfortunate Second Part with the confederacies of that
unworthy duke and most contemptible duchess, Cervantes sacrificed his
instinct to his understanding.
We got your little book but last night, being at Enfield, to which place
we came about a month since, and are having quiet holydays. Mary walks
her twelve miles a day some days, and I my twenty on others. 'Tis all
holiday with me now, you know. The change works admirably.
For literary news, in my poor way, I have a one-act farce going to be
acted at the Haymarket; but when? is the question. 'Tis an extravaganza,
and like enough to follow "Mr. H." "The London Magazine" has shifted its
publishers once more, and I shall shift myself out of it. It is fallen.
My ambition is not at present higher than to write nonsense for the
playhouses, to eke out a somewhat contracted income. _Tempus erat_.
There was a time, my dear Cornwallis, when the Muse, &c. But I am now in
MacFleckno's predicament,--
"Promised a play, and dwindled to a farce."
Coleridge is better (was, at least, a few weeks since) than he has been
for years. His accomplishing his book at last has been a source of
vigour to him. We are on a half visit to his friend Allsop, at a Mrs.
Leishman's, Enfield, but expect to be at Colebrooke Cottage in a week or
so, where, or anywhere, I shall be always most happy to receive tidings
from you. G. Dyer is in the height of an uxorious paradise. His
honeymoon will not wane till he wax cold. Never was a more happy pair,
since Acme and Septimius, and longer. Farewell, with many thanks, dear
S. Our loves to all round your Wrekin.
Your old friend, C. LAMB.
[In the letter to Barton of March 20, 1826, Lamb continues or amplifies
his remarks on his own letter-writing habits.
"Capillarians." The _New English Dictionary_ gives Lamb's word in this
connection as its sole example, meaning without stem.
"The poem"--Southey's _Tale of Paraguay_, 1825, which begins with an
address to Jenner, the physiologist:--
Jenner! for ever shall thy honour'd name,
and is dedicated to Edith May Southey--
Edith! ten years are number'd, since the day.
Edith Southey was born in 1804. The dedication was dated 1814.
John May was Southey's friend and correspondent. It was not he that had
died.
"The Vesper Bell"--"The Chapel Bell," which was not in the _Annual
Anthology_, but in Southey's _Poems_, 1797. Dear George would perhaps be
Burnett, who was at Oxford with Southey when the verses were written.
"The compliment to the translatress." Southey took his _Tale of
Paraguay_ from Dobrizhoffer's _History of the Abipones_, which his
niece, Sara Coleridge, had translated. Southey remarks in the poem that
could Dobrizhoffer have foreseen by whom his words were to be turned
into English, he would have been as pleased as when he won the ear of
the Empress Queen.
"Landor's ... allegorising." Landor, in the conversation between "Peter
Leopold and the President du Paty," makes President du Paty say that
Cervantes had deeper purpose than the satirising of knight-errants, Don
Quixote standing for the Emperor Charles V. and Sancho Panza symbolising
the people. Southey quoted the passage in the Notes to the Proem. Lamb's
_Elia_ essay on the "Defect of Imagination" (see Vol. II.) amplifies
this criticism of Don Quixote.
"A one-act farce." This was, I imagine, "The Pawnbroker's Daughter,"
although that is in two acts. It was not, however, acted.
George Dyer had just been married to the widow of a solicitor who lived
opposite him in Clifford's Inn.
Here should come three unimportant notes to Hone with reference to the
_Every-Day Book_--adding an invitation to Enfield to be shown "dainty
spots."]
LETTER 381
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[P.M. Sept. 9, 1825.]
My dear Allsop--We are exceedingly grieved for your loss. When your note
came, my sister went to Pall Mall, to find you, and saw Mrs. L. and was
a little comforted to find Mrs. A. had returned to Enfield before the
distresful event. I am very feeble, can scarce move a pen; got home from
Enfield on the Friday, and on Monday follow'g was laid up with a most
violent nervous fever second this summer, have had Leeches to my
Temples, have not had, nor can not get, a night's sleep. So you will
excuse more from Yours truly, C. LAMB.
Islington, 9 Sept.
Our most kind rememb'ces to poor Mrs. Allsop. A line to say how you both
are will be most acceptable.
[Allsop's loss was, I imagine, the death of one of his children.]
LETTER 382
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[P.M. Sept. 24, 1825.]
My dear Allsop--Come not near this unfortunate roof yet a while. My
disease is clearly but slowly going. Field is an excellent attendant.
But Mary's anxieties have overturned her. She has her old Miss James
with her, without whom I should not feel a support in the world. We keep
in separate apartments, and must weather it. Let me know all of your
healths. Kindest love to Mrs. Allsop. C. LAMB.
Saturday.
Can you call at Mrs. Burney 26 James Street, and _tell her_, & that I
can see no one here in this state. If Martin return-- if well enough, I
will meet him some where, _don't let him come_.
[Field was Henry Field, Barren Field's brother.
Here should come a note from Lamb to Hone, dated September 30, 1825, in
which Lamb describes the unhappy state of the house at Colebrooke Row,
with himself and his sister both ill.
Here also should come a similar note to William Ayrton. "All this summer
almost I have been ill. I have been laid up (the second nervous attack)
now six weeks."
On October 18 Lamb sends Hone the first "bit of writing" he has done
"these many weeks."]
LETTER 383
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[P.M. Oct. 24, 1825.]
I send a scrap. Is it worth postage? My friends are fairly surprised
that you should set me down so unequivocally for an ass, as you have
done, Page 1358.
HERE HE IS
what follows?
THE ASS
Call you this friendship?
Mercy! What a dose you have sent me of Burney!--a perfect _opening_*
draught.
*A Pun here is intended.
[This is written on the back of the MS. "In _re_ Squirrels" for Hone's
_Every-Day Book_ (see Vol. I. of this edition). Lamb's previous
contribution had been "The Ass" which Hone had introduced with a few
words.]
LETTER 384
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[Dec. 5, 1825.]
Dear A.--You will be glad to hear that _we_ are at home to visitors; not
too many or noisy. Some fine day shortly Mary will surprise Mrs. Allsop.
The weather is not seasonable for formal engagements.
Yours _most ever_,
C. LAMB.
Satr'd.
[Here should come a note to Manning at Totteridge, signed Charles and
Mary Lamb, and dated December 10, 1825. It indicates that both are well
again, and hoping to see Manning at Colebrooke.]
LETTER 385
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER
[No date. ? Dec., 1825.]
Dear O.--I leave it _entirely to Mr. Colburn_; but if not too late, I
think the Proverbs had better have L. signd to them and reserve _Elia_
for Essays _more Eliacal_. May I trouble you to send my Magazine, not to
Norris, but H.C. Robinson Esq. King's bench walks, instead.
Yours truly
C. LAMB.
My friend Hood, a prime genius and hearty fellow, brings this.
[Lamb's "Popular Fallacies" began in the _New Monthly Magazine_ in
January, 1826. Henry Colburn was the publisher of that magazine, which
had now obtained Lamb's regular services. The nominal editor was
Campbell, the poet, who was assisted by Cyrus Redding. Ollier seems to
have been a sub-editor.]
LETTER 386
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER
Colebrook Cottage, Colebrook Row, Tuesday [early 1826].
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.
Yours most kindly, C. LAMB.
LETTER 387
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER
January, 1826.
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."
Yours truly.
Colburn, I take it, pays postages.
[The scrap was the Fallacy "That we Should Lie Down with the Lamb,"
which has perhaps the rarest quality of the series.
Here perhaps should come two further notes to Ollier, referring to some
articles on Chinese jests by Manning.
Here should come a letter to Mr. Hudson dated February 1, 1826,
recommending a nurse for a mental case. Given in the Boston Bibliophile
edition.]
LETTER 388
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. February 7, 1826.]
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_.
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. C. LAMB.
[Barton's new book was _Devotional Verses: founded on, and illustrative
of Select Texts of Scripture_, 1826. See the Appendix for "The Spiritual
Law."
"Holy Mr. Herbert." Writing to Lady Beaumont in 1826 Coleridge says: "My
dear old friend Charles Lamb and I differ widely (and in point of taste
and moral feeling this is a rare occurrence) in our estimate and liking
of George Herbert's sacred poems. He greatly prefers Quarles--nay, he
dislikes Herbert."
Barton whipped the Greek drama on the back of Genesis in the following
stanza, referring to Abraham's words before preparing to sacrifice
Isaac:--
Brief colloquy, yet more sublime,
To every feeling heart,
Than all the boast of classic time,
Or Drama's proudest art:
Far, far beyond the Grecian stage,
Or Poesy's most glowing page.
For Lamb's reference to Byron, see above.]
LETTER 389
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER
[P.M. March 16, 1826.]
D'r 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.
C. LAMB.
["The Religion of Actors" was printed in the _New Monthly Magazine_ for
April, 1826. The essay ends at "Muggletonian." See Vol. I. of this
edition.]
LETTER 390
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. March 20, 1826.]
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 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.
My very kindest wishes to you all three, with my sister's best love.
C. LAMB.
["Mr. Robinson's last speech." Frederick John Robinson, afterwards Earl
of Ripon, then Chancellor of the Exchequer under the Earl of Liverpool.
The Government had decided to check the use of paper-money by stopping
the issue of notes for less than L5; and Robinson had made a speech on
the subject on February 10. The motion was carried, but to some extent
was compromised. It was Robinson who, as Chancellor of the Exchequer,
found the money for building the new British Museum and purchasing
Angerstein's pictures as the beginning of the National Gallery.
"My tirade against visitors"--the Popular Fallacy "That Home is Home,"
in the _New Monthly Magazine_ for March.
"Somebody's insipid wife." In the Popular Fallacy "That You Must Love Me
and Love My Dog," in the February number, Lamb had spoken of Honorius'
"vapid wife."
Barton and his daughter visited Lamb at Colebrooke Cottage somewhen
about this time. Mrs. FitzGerald, in 1893, wrote out for me her
recollections of the day. Lamb, who was alone, opened the door himself.
He sent out for a luncheon of oysters. The books on his shelves, Mrs.
FitzGerald remembered, retained the price-labels of the stalls where he
had bought them. She also remembered a portrait over the fireplace. This
would be the Milton. In the _Gem_ for 1831 was a poem by Barton, "To
Milton's Portrait in a Friend's Parlour."]
LETTER 391
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
March 22nd, 1826.
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."
In haste, C.L.
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.
["Next week early." Canon Ainger's text here has: "May we venture to
bring Emma with us?"
"Your nephew's pleasant book"--Henry Nelson Coleridge's _Six Months in
the West Indies in 1825_. In the last chapter but one of the book is an
account of the slave question, under the title "Planters and Slaves."
"Sternhold"--Thomas Sternhold, the coadjutor of Hopkins in paraphrasing
the Psalms.
"The pantomime." Coleridge seems to have had some project for
modernising Dekker for Fanny Kelly. Mr. Dykes Campbell suggested that
the play to be treated was "Old Fortunatus."
"Miss Gray." I have found nothing of this lady.
"Manning." Writing to Robert Lloyd twenty-five years earlier Lamb had
said of Manning: "A man of great Power--an enchanter almost.--Far beyond
Coleridge or any man in power of impressing --when he gets you alone he
can act the wonders of Egypt. Only he is lazy, and does not always put
forth all his strength; if he did, I know no man of genius at all
comparable to him."
"Against Thursday." Coleridge was "at home" on Thursday evenings.
Possibly on this occasion some one interested in Gray was to be there,
or the allusion may be a punning one to Miss Gray.
"Your _latest_ theory." I cannot explain this.]
LETTER 392
CHARLES LAMB TO H.F. CARY
April 3, 1826.
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.
Without hearing from you, then, you shall give us leave to expect you. I
have long had it on my conscience to invite you, but spirits have been
low; and I am indebted to chance for this awkward but most sincere
invitation.
Yours, with best love to Mrs. Cary, C. LAMB.
Darley knows all about the coaches. Oh, for a Museum in the wilderness!
[Cary, who had been afternoon lecturer at Chiswick and curate of the
Savoy, this year took up his post as Assistant Keeper of the Printed
Books at the British Museum. George Darley, who wrote some notes to
Gary's _Dante_, we have met. Allan Cunningham was the Scotch poet and
the author of the Lives of the Painters, the "Giant" of the _London
Magazine_. The Lambs seem to have been spending some days at Enfield.
Here should come a note from Lamb to Ollier asking for a copy of the
April _New Monthly Magazine_ for himself, and one for his Chinese friend
(Manning) if his jests are in.]
LETTER 393
CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
[P.M. May 9, 1826.]
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.
Yours truly C. LAMB.
_Summer_, as my friend Coleridge waggishly writes, has set in with its
usual severity.
Kind rememb'ces to Mrs. Novello &c.
LETTER 394
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. May 16, 1826.]
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 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 weather-cock, 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 rememb'ces to
you and yours. C.L.
["Your neat little poem." It is not possible to trace this poem.
Probably, I think, the "Stanzas written for a blank leaf in Sewell's
History of the Quakers," printed in _A Widow's Tale_, 1827.
"George 3." Byron's "Vision of Judgment" thus closes:--
King George slipp'd into Heaven for one;
And when the tumult dwindled to a calm,
I left him practising the hundredth psalm.
This is Hood's sketch, in his _Whims and Oddities_:--
[Illustration: "Very deaf indeed."]
"Unmeaning joy around appears..." I have not found this.]
LETTER 395
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
June 1st, 1826.
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.
I am, dear Coleridge, yours sincerely, C. LAMB.
[The portrait to which Lamb refers will be found opposite page 706 in my
large edition. It was etched by Brook Pulham of the India House. It was
this picture which so enraged Procter when he saw it in a printshop
(probably that referred to by Lamb in a later letter) that he
reprimanded the dealer.
Here should come a charming letter to Louisa Holcroft dated June,
offering her a room at Enfield "pretty cheap, only two smiles a week."]
LETTER 396
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
Friday, someday in June, 1826. [P.M. June 30, 1826.]
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 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 penny-worths. 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 Beaum't 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 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.
Yours most truly C. LAMB
Timothy B. Dibdin, Esq., No. 9, Blucher Row, Priory, Hastings.
[Dibdin, who was in delicate health, had gone to Hastings to recruit,
with a parcel of Lamb's books for company. He seems to have been lodged
above the oven at a baker's. This letter contains Lamb's crowning
description of Hollingdon Rural church.
"A Caledonian Chapel." Referring to the crowds that listened to Irving.
"Peter Fin." A character in Jones' "Peter Finn's Trip to Brighton,"
1822, as played by Liston.
"Tommy Hill." In the British Museum is preserved the following brief
note addressed to Mr. Thomas Hill--probably the same. The date is
between 1809 and 1817:--]
LETTER 397
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HILL
D'r Sir It is necessary _I see you sign_, can you step up to me 4 Inner
Temple Lane this evening. I shall wait at home.
Yours,
C. LAMB.
[I have no notion to what the note refers. It is quite likely, Mr. J.A.
Rutter suggests, that Hill the drysalter, a famous busy-body, and a
friend of Theodore Hook, stood for the portrait of Tom Pry in Lamb's
"Lepus Papers" (see Vol. I.). S.C. Hall, in his _Book of Memories_, says
of Hill that "his peculiar faculty was to find out what everybody did,
from a minister of state to a stableboy."]
LETTER 398
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[P.M. July 14, 1826.]
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.)
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; }
Mad 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)
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.
C.L.
[Dibdin must have sent the verses which Lamb asked for in the previous
letter, and this is Lamb's reply. Pride of ancestry seems to have been
the note of Dibdin's effort. Probably there is a certain amount of truth
in Lamb's account of the resolute merriment of his father. It is not
inconsistent with his description of Lovel in the _Elia_ essay "The Old
Benchers of the Inner Temple."
"I have stol'n a quip." The manner rather than the precise matter, I
think.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to the Rev. Edward Coleridge,
Coleridge's nephew, dated July 19, 1826. It thanks the recipient for his
kindness to the child of a friend of Lamb's, Samuel Anthony Bloxam,
Coleridge having assisted in getting Frederick Bloxam into Eton (where
he was a master) on the foundation. Samuel Bloxam and Lamb were at
Christ's Hospital together.]
LETTER 399
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. September 6, 1826.]
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 Westmoreland. 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 by-gone
days.
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 praecordia nostra I swear by the honesty
of pedantry, that wil I nil I pushes me upon scraps of Latin.
We are yours cordially: CHAS. & MARY LAMB.
September. 1826.
[In this letter, the first to Wordsworth for many months, we have the
first mention of Edward Moxon, who was to be so closely associated with
Lamb in the years to come. Moxon, a young Yorkshireman, educated at the
Green Coat School, was then nearly twenty-five, and was already author
of _The Prospect and other Poems_, dedicated to Rogers, who was destined
to be a valuable patron. Moxon subsequently became Wordsworth's
publisher.
"Constable ... Baldwin." Archibald Constable & Co., Scott's publishers,
failed in 1826. Baldwin was the first publisher of the _London
Magazine_.
"I pitch Colburn and his magazine." Lamb wrote nothing in the _New
Monthly Magazine_ after September, 1826.
I append portions of what seems to be Lamb's first letter to Edward
Moxon, obviously written before this date, but not out of place here.
The letter seems to have accompanied the proof of an article on Lamb
which he had corrected and was returning to Moxon.]
LETTER 400
CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
(_Fragment_)
Were my own feelings consulted I should print it verbatim, but I won't
hoax you, else I love a Lye. My biography, parentage, place of birth, is
a strange mistake, part founded on some nonsense I wrote about Elia, and
was true of him, the real Elia, whose name I took.... C.L. was born in
Crown Office Row, Inner Temple in 1775. Admitted into Christs Hospital,
1782, where he was contemporary with T.F.M. [Thomas Fanshawe Middleton],
afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, and with S.T.C. with the last of these
two eminent scholars he has enjoyed an intimacy through life. On
quitting this foundation he became a junior clerk in the South Sea House
under his Elder Brother who died accountant there some years since.... I
am not the author of the Opium Eater, &c.
[I have not succeeded in finding the article in question.]
LETTER 401
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[P.M. September 9, 1826.]
An answer is requested.
Saturday.
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 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: to-morrow (that is,
to_day_), Liston, and Wyat of the Wells, dine with us. May this find you
as jolly and freakish as we mean to be.
C. LAMB.
[Addressed to "T. Dibdin Esq're. No. 4 Meadow Cottages, Hastings,
Sussex."
"You have counted your spiders." Referring, I suppose, to Paul
Pellisson-Fontanier, the academician, and a famous prisoner in the
Bastille, who trained a spider to eat flies from his hand.
"Grimaldi"--Joseph Grimaldi, the clown. Ranking was one of Dibdin's
employers.
"A pleasant party." Reynolds, the dramatist, would be Frederic Reynolds
(1764-1841); Bloxam we have just met; and Wyat of the Wells was a comic
singer and utility actor at Sadler's Wells.
Canon Ainger remarks that as a matter of fact Dibdin was a religious
youth.]
LETTER 402
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. September 26, 1826.]
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; 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 L28, 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 L30 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
C.L.
["I saved nothing." Lamb, however, according to Procter, left L2000 at
his death eight years later. He must have saved L200 a year from his
pension of L441, living at the rate of L241 per annum, plus small
earnings, for the rest of his life, and investing the L200 at 5 per
cent, compound interest.
"Colburn had something of mine." The Popular Fallacy "That a Deformed
Person is a Lord," not included by Lamb with the others when he
reprinted them. Printed in Vol. I. of this edition.
"Reading at the Museum." Lamb had begun to visit the Museum every day to
collect extracts from the Garrick plays for Hone's _Table Book_, 1827.
"A.K."--Anne Knight again.
The pleasant Yorkshire lad whom Mitford's secular air surprised was
probably Moxon.
Here might come a business letter, from Lamb to Barton, preserved in the
British Museum, relating to Mitford's jars.]
LETTER 403
CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. ? Sept., 1826.]
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 proof-sheets. Seal it.--
Yours C. L----.
Mrs. Hood will drink tea with us on Thursday at 1/2 past 5 _at Latest_.
N.B. I have lost my Museum reading today: a day with Titus: owing to
your dam'd bisness.--I am the last to reproach anybody. I scorn it.
If you shall have the whole book ready soon, it will be best for Murry
to see.
[I am not clear as to what proof-sheets of Moxon's Lamb refers. His
second book, _Christmas_, 1829, was issued through Hurst, Chance & Co.
Barton Field and John Murray were friends.
"A day with Titus." Can this (a friend suggests) have any connection
with the phrase _Amici! diem perdidi?_ There is no Titus play among the
Garrick Extracts.]
LETTER 404
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[No postmark or date. Soon after preceding letter to Barton. 1826.]
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 Curia, 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 acquaint'ce 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 quickly. The next leaf is for Rev'd J.M. In this ADIEU thine
briefly in a tall friendship C. LAMB.
[Barton's letter, to which this is an answer, not being preserved, we do
not know what his scruples were. B.B. was a great contributor to
annuals.
"With a white stone." In trials at law a white stone was cast as a vote
for acquittal, a black stone for condemnation (see Ovid,
_Metamorphoses_, 15, 41).
"Master Mathew"--in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in His Humour."
"Croly"--the Rev. George Croly (1780-1860), of the _Literary Gazette_,
author of _The Angel of the World_ and other pretentious poems.
"Mitford's Sacred Specimens"--_Sacred Specimens Selected from the Early
English Poets_, 1827. The last poem, by Mitford himself, was "Lines
Written under the Portrait of Edward VI."
"Hood's book"--_Whims and Oddities_, second series, 1827.
Here should come a note to Allsop stating that Lamb is "near killed with
Christmassing."]
LETTER 405
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
Colebrooke Row, Islington,
Saturday, 20th Jan., 1827.
Dear Robinson,--I called upon you this morning, and found that you were
gone to visit a dying friend. I had been upon a like errand. Poor Norris
has been lying dying for now almost a week, such is the penalty we pay
for having enjoyed a strong constitution! Whether he knew me or not, I
know not, or whether he saw me through his poor glazed eyes; but the
group I saw about him I shall not forget. Upon the bed, or about it,
were assembled his wife and two daughters, and poor deaf Richard, his
son, looking doubly stupified. There they were, and seemed to have been
sitting all the week. I could only reach out a hand to Mrs. Norris.
Speaking was impossible in that mute chamber. By this time I hope it is
all over with him. In him I have a loss the world cannot make up. He was
my friend and my father's friend all the life I can remember. I seem to
have made foolish friendships ever since. Those are friendships which
outlive a second generation. Old as I am waxing, in his eyes I was still
the child he first knew me. To the last he called me Charley. I have
none to call me Charley now. He was the last link that bound me to the
Temple. You are but of yesterday. In him seem to have died the old
plainness of manners and singleness of heart. Letters he knew nothing
of, nor did his reading extend beyond the pages of the "Gentleman's
Magazine." Yet there was a pride of literature about him from being
amongst books (he was librarian), and from some scraps of doubtful Latin
which he had picked up in his office of entering students, that gave him
very diverting airs of pedantry. Can I forget the erudite look with
which, when he had been in vain trying to make out a black-letter text
of Chaucer in the Temple Library, he laid it down and told me that--"in
those old books, Charley, there is sometimes a deal of very indifferent
spelling;" and seemed to console himself in the reflection! His jokes,
for he had his jokes, are now ended, but they were old trusty
perennials, staples that pleased after _decies repetita_, and were
always as good as new. One song he had, which was reserved for the night
of Christmas-day, which we always spent in the Temple. It was an old
thing, and spoke of the flat bottoms of our foes and the possibility of
their coming over in darkness, and alluded to threats of an invasion
many years blown over; and when he came to the part
"We'll still make 'em run, and we'll still make 'em sweat,
In spite of the devil and Brussels Gazette!"
his eyes would sparkle as with the freshness of an impending event. And
what is the "Brussels Gazette" now? I cry while I enumerate these
trifles. "How shall we tell them in a stranger's ear?" His poor good
girls will now have to receive their afflicted mother in an inaccessible
hovel in an obscure village in Herts, where they have been long
struggling to make a school without effect; and poor deaf Richard--and
the more helpless for being so--is thrown on the wide world.
My first motive in writing, and, indeed, in calling on you, was to ask
if you were enough acquainted with any of the Benchers, to lay a plain
statement before them of the circumstances of the family. I almost fear
not, for you are of another hall. But if you can oblige me and my poor
friend, who is now insensible to any favours, pray exert yourself. You
cannot say too much good of poor Norris and his poor wife.
Yours ever, CHARLES LAMB.
[This letter, describing the death of Randal Norris, Sub-Treasurer and
Librarian of the Inner Temple, was printed with only very slight
alterations in Hone's _Table Book_, 1827, and again in the _Last Essays
of Elia_, 1833, under the title "A Death-Bed." It was, however, taken
out of the second edition, and "Confessions of a Drunkard" substituted,
in deference to the wishes of Norris's family. Mrs. Norris, as I have
said, was a native of Widford, where she had known Mrs. Field, Lamb's
grandmother. With her son Richard, who was deaf and peculiar, Mrs.
Norris moved to Widford again, where the daughters, Miss Betsy and Miss
Jane, had opened a school--Goddard House; which they retained until a
legacy restored the family prosperity. Soon after that they both
married, each a farmer named Tween. They survived until quite recently.
Mrs. Coe, an old scholar at the Misses Morris's school in the twenties,
gave me, in 1902, some reminiscences of those days, from which I quote a
passage or so:--
When he joined the Norrises' dinner-table he kept every one
laughing. Mr. Richard sat at one end, and some of the school
children would be there too. One day Mr. Lamb gave every one a fancy
name all round the table, and made a verse on each. "You are
so-and-so," he said, "and you are so-and-so," adding the rhyme.
"What's he saying? What are you laughing at?" Mr. Richard asked
testily, for he was short-tempered. Miss Betsy explained the joke to
him, and Mr. Lamb, coming to his turn, said--only he said it in
verse--"Now, Dick, it's your turn. I shall call you Gruborum;
because all you think of is your food and your stomach." Mr. Richard
pushed back his chair in a rage and stamped out of the room. "Now
I've done it," said Mr. Lamb: "I must go and make friends with my
old chum. Give me a large plate of pudding to take to him." When he
came back he said, "It's all right. I thought the pudding would do
it." Mr. Lamb and Mr. Richard never got on very well, and Mr.
Richard didn't like his teasing ways at all; but Mr. Lamb often went
for long walks with him, because no one else would. He did many kind
things like that.
There used to be a half-holiday when Mr. Lamb came, partly because
he would force his way into the schoolroom and make seriousness
impossible. His head would suddenly appear at the door in the midst
of lessons, with "Well, Betsy! How do, Jane?" "O, Mr. Lamb!" they
would say, and that was the end of work for that day. He was really
rather naughty with the children. One of his tricks was to teach
them a new kind of catechism (Mrs. Coe does not remember it, but we
may rest assured, I fear, that it was secular), and he made a great
fuss with Lizzie Hunt for her skill in saying the Lord's Prayer
backwards, which he had taught her.
"We'll still make 'em run..." Garrick's "Hearts of Oak," sung in
"Harlequin's Invasion."
"How shall we tell them in a stranger's ear?" A quotation from Lamb
himself, in the lines "Written soon after the Preceding Poem," in 1798
(see Vol. IV.).]
LETTER 406
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[No date. Jan. 20, 1827.]
Dear R.N. is dead. I have writ as nearly as I could to look like a
letter meant for _your eye only_. Will it do?
Could you distantly hint (do as your own judgment suggests) that if his
son could be got in as Clerk to the new Subtreasurer, it would be all
his father wish'd? But I leave that to you. I don't want to put you upon
anything disagreeable.
Yours thankfully
C.L.
[The reference at the beginning is to the preceding letter, which was
probably enclosed with this note.
Here should come a note to Allsop dated Jan. 25, 1827, complaining of
the cold.]
LETTER 407
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[Dated by H.C.R. Jan. 29, 1827.]
Dear Robinson, If you have not seen Mr. Gurney, leave him quite alone
for the present, I have seen Mr. Jekyll, who is as friendly as heart can
desire, he entirely approves of my formula of petition, and gave your
very reasons for the propriety of the "little village of Hertf'shire."
Now, Mr. G. might not approve of it, and then we should clash. Also, Mr.
J. wishes it to be presented next week, and Mr. G. might fix earlier,
which would be aukward. Mr. J. was so civil to me, that I _think it
would be better NOT for you to show him that letter you intended_.
Nothing can increase his zeal in the cause of poor Mr. Norris. Mr.
Gardiner will see you with this, and learn from you all about it, &
consult, if you have seen Mr. G. & he has fixed a time, how to put it
off. Mr. J. is most friendly to the boy: I think you had better not
teaze the Treasurer any more about _him_, as it may make him less
friendly to the Petition
Yours Ever
C.L.
[Writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on February 13, 1827, Robinson says: "The
Lambs are well. I have been so busy that I have not lately seen them.
Charles has been occupied about the affair of the widow of his old
friend Norris whose death he has felt. But the health of both is good."
Gurney would probably be John Gurney (afterwards Baron Gurney), the
counsel and judge. Jekyll was Joseph Jekyll, the wit, mentioned by Lamb
in his essay on "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple." He was a friend
of George Dyer.]
LETTER 408
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[Dated by H.C. R. Jan., 1827.]
Dear R. do not say any thing to Mr. G. about the day _or_ Petition, for
Mr. Jekyll wishes it to be next week, and thoroughly approves of my
formula, and Mr. G. might not, and then they will clash. Only speak to
him of Gardner's wish to have the Lad. Mr. Jekyll was excessive
friendly. C.L.
[The matter referred to is still the Norrises' welfare. Mr. Hazlitt says
that an annuity of L80 was settled by the Inn on Mrs. Norris.
Here perhaps should come a letter from Lamb to Allsop, printed by Mr.
Fitzgerald, urging Allsop to go to Highgate to see Coleridge and tell
him of the unhappy state of his, Allsop's, affairs. In Crabb Robinson's
_Diary_ for February 1, 1827, I read: "I went to Lamb. Found him in
trouble about his friend Allsop, who is a ruined man. Allsop is a very
good creature who has been a generous friend to Coleridge." Writing of
his troubles in _Letters, Conversations and Recollections of S.T.
Coleridge_, Allsop says: "Charles Lamb, Charles and Mary Lamb, 'union is
partition,' were never wanting in the hour of need."]
LETTER 409
CHARLES LAMB TO B.R. HAYDON
[March, 1827.]
Dear Raffaele Haydon,--Did the maid tell you I came to see your picture,
not on Sunday but the day before? I think the face and bearing of the
Bucephalus-tamer very noble, his flesh too effeminate or painty. The
skin of the female's back kneeling is much more carnous. I had small
time to pick out praise or blame, for two lord-like Bucks came in, upon
whose strictures my presence seemed to impose restraint: I plebeian'd
off therefore.
I think I have hit on a subject for you, but can't swear it was never
executed,--I never heard of its being,--"Chaucer beating a Franciscan
Friar in Fleet Street." Think of the old dresses, houses, &c. "It
seemeth that both these learned men (Gower and Chaucer) were of the
Inner Temple; for not many years since Master Buckley did see a record
in the same house where Geoffry Chaucer was fined two shillings for
beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleet Street." _Chaucer's Life by T.
Speght, prefixed to the black letter folio of Chaucer_, 1598.
Yours in haste (salt fish waiting), C. LAMB.
[Haydon's picture was his "Alexander and Bucephalus." The two Bucks, he
tells us in his _Diary_, were the Duke of Devonshire and Mr. Agar Ellis.
Haydon did not take up the Chaucer subject.]
LETTER 410
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE [No date. April, 1827.]
Dear H. Never come to our house and not come in. I was quite vex'd.
Yours truly. C.L.
There is in Blackwood this month an article MOST AFFECTING indeed called
Le Revenant, and would do more towards abolishing Capital Punishments
than 400000 Romillies or Montagues. I beg you read it and see if you can
extract any of it. _The Trial scene in particular_.
[Written on the fourteenth instalment of the Garrick Play extracts. The
article was in _Blackwood_ for April, 1827. Hone took Lamb's advice, and
the extract from it will be found in the _Table Book_, Vol. I., col.
455.
Lamb was peculiarly interested in the subject of survival after hanging.
He wrote an early _Reflector_ essay, "On the Inconveniences of Being
Hanged," on the subject, and it is the pivot of his farce "The
Pawnbroker's Daughter."
"Romillies or Montagues." Two prominent advocates for the abolition of
capital punishment were Sir Samuel Romilly (who died in 1818) and Basil
Montagu.]
LETTER 411
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOOD
[No date. May, 1827.]
Dearest Hood,--Your news has spoil'd us a merry meeting. Miss Kelly and
we were coming, but your letter elicited a flood of tears from Mary, and
I saw she was not fit for a party. God bless you and the mother (or
should be mother) of your sweet girl that should have been. I have won
sexpence of Moxon by the _sex_ of the dear gone one.
Yours most truly and hers,
[C.L.]
[This note refers to one of the Hoods' children, which was still-born.
It was upon this occasion that Lamb wrote the beautiful lines "On an
Infant Dying as soon as Born" (see Vol. IV.).]
LETTER 412
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[No date. (1827.)]
My dear B.B.--A gentleman I never saw before brought me your welcome
present--imagine a scraping, fiddling, fidgetting, petit-maitre of a
dancing school advancing into my plain parlour with a coupee and a
sideling bow, and presenting the book as if he had been handing a glass
of lemonade to a young miss--imagine this, and contrast it with the
serious nature of the book presented! Then task your imagination,
reversing this picture, to conceive of quite an opposite messenger, a
lean, straitlocked, wheyfaced methodist, for such was he in reality who
brought it, the Genius (it seems) of the Wesleyan Magazine. Certes,
friend B., thy Widow's tale is too horrible, spite of the lenitives of
Religion, to embody in verse: I hold prose to be the appropriate
expositor of such atrocities! No offence, but it is a cordial that makes
the heart sick. Still thy skill in compounding it I not deny. I turn to
what gave me less mingled pleasure. I find markd with pencil these pages
in thy pretty book, and fear I have been penurious.
page 52, 53 capital.
page 59 6th stanza exquisite simile.
page 61 11th stanza equally good.
page 108 3d stanza, I long to see van Balen.
page 111 a downright good sonnet. _Dixi_.
page 153 Lines at the bottom.
So you see, I read, hear, and _mark_, if I don't learn--In short this
little volume is no discredit to any of your former, and betrays none of
the Senility you fear about. Apropos of Van Balen, an artist who painted
me lately had painted a Blackamoor praying, and not filling his canvas,
stuff'd in his little girl aside of Blacky, gaping at him unmeaningly;
and then didn't know what to call it. Now for a picture to be promoted
to the Exhibition (Suffolk Street) as HISTORICAL, a subject is
requisite. What does me? I but christen it the "Young Catechist" and
furbishd it with Dialogue following, which dubb'd it an Historical
Painting. Nothing to a friend at need.
While this tawny Ethiop prayeth,
Painter, who is She that stayeth
By, with skin of whitest lustre;
Sunny locks, a shining cluster;
Saintlike seeming to direct him
To the Power that must protect him?
Is she of the heav'nborn Three,
Meek Hope, strong Faith, sweet Charity?
Or some Cherub?
They you mention
Far transcend my weak invention.
'Tis a simple Christian child,
Missionary young and mild,
From her store of script'ral knowledge
(Bible-taught without a college)
Which by reading she could gather,
Teaches him to say OUR FATHER
To the common Parent, who
Colour not respects nor hue.
White and Black in him have part,
Who looks not to the skin, but heart.--
When I'd done it, the Artist (who had clapt in Miss merely as a
fill-space) swore I exprest his full meaning, and the damosel bridled up
into a Missionary's vanity. I like verses to explain Pictures: seldom
Pictures to illustrate Poems. Your wood cut is a rueful Lignum Mortis.
By the by, is the widow likely to marry again?
I am giving the fruit of my Old Play reading at the Museum to Hone, who
sets forth a Portion weekly in the Table Book. Do you see it? How is
Mitford?--
I'll just hint that the Pitcher, the Chord and the Bowl are a little too
often repeated (_passim_) in your Book, and that on page 17 last line
but 4 _him_ is put for _he_, but the poor widow I take it had small
leisure for grammatical niceties. Don't you see there's _He, myself_,
and _him_; why not both _him_? likewise _imperviously_ is cruelly spelt
_imperiously_. These are trifles, and I honestly like your [book,] and
you for giving it, tho' I really am ashamed of so many presents.
I can think of no news, therefore I will end with mine and Mary's
kindest remembrances to you and yours. C.L.
[It has been customary to date this letter December, 1827, but I think
that must be too late. Lamb would never have waited till then to tell
Barton that he was contributing the Garrick Plays to Hone's _Table
Book_, especially as the last instalment was printed in that month.
Barton's new volume was _A Widow's Tale and Other Poems_, 1827. The
title poem tells how a missionary and his wife were wrecked, and how
after three nights and days of horror she was saved. The woodcut on the
title-page of Barton's book represented the widow supporting her dead or
dying husband in the midst of the storm.
This is the "exquisite simile" on page 59, from "A Grandsire's Tale":--
Though some might deem her pensive, if not sad,
Yet those who knew her better, best could tell
How calmly happy, and how meekly glad
Her quiet heart in its own depths did dwell:
Like to the waters of some crystal well,
In which the stars of heaven at noon are seen.
Fancy might deem on her young spirit fell
Glimpses of light more glorious and serene
Than that of life's brief day, so heavenly was her mien.
This was the "downright good sonnet":--
TO A GRANDMOTHER
"Old age is dark and unlovely."--Ossian.
O say not so! A bright old age is thine;
Calm as the gentle light of summer eves,
Ere twilight dim her dusky mantle weaves;
Because to thee is given, in strength's decline,
A heart that does not thanklessly repine
At aught of which the hand of God bereaves,
Yet all He sends with gratitude receives;--
May such a quiet, thankful close be mine.
And hence thy fire-side chair appears to me
A peaceful throne--which thou wert form'd to fill;
Thy children--ministers, who do thy will;
And those grand-children, sporting round thy knee,
Thy little subjects, looking up to thee,
As one who claims their fond allegiance still.
And these are the lines at the foot of page 153 in a poem addressed to a
child seven years old:--
There is a holy, blest companionship
In the sweet intercourse thus held with those
Whose tear and smile are guileless; from whose lip
The simple dictate of the heart yet flows;--
Though even in the yet unfolded rose
The worm may lurk, and sin blight blooming youth,
The light born with us long so brightly glows,
That childhood's first deceits seem almost truth,
To life's cold after lie, selfish, and void of ruth.
Van Balen was the painter of the picture of the "Madonna and Child"
which Mrs. FitzGerald (Edward FitzGerald's mother) had given to Barton
and for which he expressed his thanks in a poem.
The artist who painted Lamb recently was Henry Meyer (1782?-1847), the
portrait being that which serves as frontispiece to this volume. I give
in my large edition a reproduction of "The Young Catechist," which Meyer
also engraved, with Lamb's verses attached. In 1910 I saw the original
in a picture shop in the Charing Cross Road, now removed.]
LETTER 413
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[No date. End of May, 1827.]
Dear H. in the forthcoming "New Monthly" are to be verses of mine on a
Picture about Angels. Translate em to the Table-book. I am off for
Enfield.
Yours. C.L.
[Written on the back of the XXI. Garrick Extracts. The poem "Angel Help"
was printed in the _New Monthly Magazine_ for June and copied by Hone in
the _Table-Book_, No. 24, 1827.]
LETTER 414
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[No date. June, 1827.]
Dear Hone, I should like this in your next book. We
are at Enfield, where (when we have solituded awhile)
we shall be glad to see you. Yours,
C. LAMB.
[This was written on the back of the MS. of "Going or Gone" (see Vol.
IV.), a poem of reminiscences of Lamb's early Widford days, printed in
Hone's _Table-Book_, June, 1827, signed Elia.]
LETTER 415
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
Enfield, and for some weeks to come, "_June 11, 1827_."
Dear B.B.--One word more of the picture verses, and that for good and
all; pray, with a neat pen alter one line
His learning seems to lay small stress on
to
His learning lays no mighty stress on
to avoid the unseemly recurrence (ungrammatical also) of "seems" in the
next line, besides the nonsence of "but" there, as it now stands. And I
request you, as a personal favor to me, to erase the last line of all,
which I should never have written from myself. The fact is, it was a
silly joke of Hood's, who gave me the frame, (you judg'd rightly it was
not its own) with the remark that you would like it, because it was b--d
b--d,--and I lugg'd it in: but I shall be quite hurt if it stands,
because tho' you and yours have too good sense to object to it, I would
not have a sentence of mine seen, that to any foolish ear might sound
unrespectful to thee. Let it end at appalling; the joke is coarse and
useless, and hurts the tone of the rest. Take your best "ivory-handled"
and scrape it forth.
Your specimen of what you might have written is hardly fair. Had it been
a present to me, I should have taken a more sentimental tone; but of a
trifle from me it was my cue to speak in an underish tone of
commendation. Prudent _givers_ (what a word for such a nothing)
disparage their gifts; 'tis an art we have. So you see you wouldn't have
been so wrong, taking a higher tone. But enough of nothing.
By the bye, I suspected M. of being the disparager of the frame; hence a
_certain line_.
For the frame,'tis as the room is, where it hangs. It hung up fronting
my old cobwebby folios and batter'd furniture (the fruit piece has
resum'd its place) and was much better than a spick and span one. But if
your room be very neat and your _other pictures_ bright with gilt, it
should be so too. I can't judge, not having seen: but my dingy study it
suited.
Martin's Belshazzar (the picture) I have seen. Its architectural effect
is stupendous; but the human figures, the squalling contorted little
antics that are playing at being frightend, like children at a sham
ghost who half know it to be a mask, are detestable. Then the _letters_
are nothing more than a transparency lighted up, such as a Lord might
order to be lit up, on a sudden at a Xmas Gambol, to scare the ladies.
The _type_ is as plain as Baskervil's--they should have been dim, full
of mystery, letters to the mind rather than the eye.--Rembrandt has
painted only Belshazzar and a courtier or two (taking a part of the
banquet for the whole) not fribbled out a mob of fine folks. Then every
thing is so distinct, to the very necklaces, and that foolish little
prophet. What _one_ point is there of interest? The ideal of such a
subject is, that you the spectator should see nothing but what at the
time you would have seen, the _hand_--and the _King_--not to be at
leisure to make taylor-remarks on the dresses, or Doctor Kitchener-like
to examine the good things at table.
Just such a confusd piece is his Joshua, fritterd into 1000 fragments,
little armies here, little armies there--you should see only the _Sun_
and _Joshua_; if I remember, he has not left out that luminary entirely,
but for Joshua, I was ten minutes a finding him out.
Still he is showy in all that is not the human figure or the
preternatural interest: but the first are below a drawing school girl's
attainment, and the last is a phantasmagoric trick, "Now you shall see
what you shall see, dare is Balshazar and dare is Daniel." You have my
thoughts of M. and so adieu C. LAMB.
[Lamb had sent Barton the picture that is reproduced in Vol. V. of my
large edition. Later Lamb had sent the following lines:--
When last you left your Woodbridge pretty,
To stare at sights, and see the City,
If I your meaning understood,
You wish'd a Picture, cheap, but good;
The colouring? decent; clear, not muddy;
To suit a Poet's quiet study,
Where Books and Prints for delectation
Hang, rather than vain ostentation.
The subject? what I pleased, if comely;
But something scriptural and homely:
A sober Piece, not gay or wanton,
For winter fire-sides to descant on;
The theme so scrupulously handled,
A Quaker might look on unscandal'd;
Such as might satisfy Ann Knight,
And classic Mitford just not fright.
Just such a one I've found, and send it;
If liked, I give--if not, but lend it.
The moral? nothing can be sounder.
The fable? 'tis its own expounder--
A Mother teaching to her Chit
Some good book, and explaining it.
He, silly urchin, tired of lesson,
His learning seems to lay small stress on,
But seems to hear not what he hears;
Thrusting his fingers in his ears,
Like Obstinate, that perverse funny one,
In honest parable of Bunyan.
His working Sister, more sedate,
Listens; but in a kind of state,
The painter meant for steadiness;
But has a tinge of sullenness;
And, at first sight, she seems to brook
As ill her needle, as he his book.
This is the Picture. For the Frame--
'Tis not ill-suited to the same;
Oak-carved, not gilt, for fear of falling;
Old-fashion'd; plain, yet not appalling;
And broad brimm'd, as the Owner's Calling.
It was not Obstinate, by the way, who thrust his fingers in his ears,
but Christian.
"Hence a _certain line_"--line 16, I suppose.
Martin's "Belshazzar." "Belshazzar's Feast," by John Martin (1789-1854),
had been exhibited for some years and had created an immense impression.
Lamb subjected Martin's work to a minute analysis a few years later (see
the _Elia_ essay on the "Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the
Productions of Modern Art," Vol. II.). Barton did not give up Martin in
consequence of this letter. The frontispiece to his _New Year's Eve_,
1828, is by that painter, and the volume contains eulogistic poems upon
him, one beginning--
Boldest painter of our day.
"Baskervil's"--John Baskerville (1706-1775), the printer, famous for his
folio edition of the Bible, 1763.
Doctor William Kitchiner--the author of _Apicius Redivious; or, The
Cook's Oracle_, 1817.]
LETTER 416
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[P.M. June 26, 1827.]
Dear H.C. We are at Mrs. Leishman's, Chase, Enfield. Why not come down
by the Green Lanes on Sunday? Picquet all day. Pass the Church, pass the
"Rising Sun," turn sharp round the corner, and we are the 6th or 7th
house on the Chase: tall Elms darken the door. If you set eyes on M.
Burney, bring him.
Yours truly C. LAMB.
[Mrs. Leishman's house, or its successor, is the seventh from the Rising
Sun. It is now on Gentleman's Row, not on Chase Side proper. The house
next it--still, as in Lamb's day, a girl's school--is called Elm House,
but most of the elms which darkened both doors have vanished. It has
been surmised that when later in the year Lamb took an Enfield house in
his own name, he took Mrs. Leishman's; but, as we shall see, his own
house was some little distance from hers.]
LETTER 417
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[No date. Early July, 1827.]
Dear H., This is Hood's, done from the life, of Mary getting over a
style here. Mary, out of a pleasant revenge, wants you to get it
_engrav'd_ in Table Book to surprise H., who I know will be amus'd with
you so doing.
Append some observations about the awkwardness of country styles about
Edmonton, and the difficulty of elderly Ladies getting over 'em.----
That is to say, if you think the sketch good enough.
I take on myself the warranty.
Can you slip down here some day and go a Green-dragoning? C.L.
Enfield (Mrs. Leishman's, Chase).
If you do, send Hood the number, No. 2 Robert St., Adelphi, and keep the
sketch for me.
["This" was the drawing by Hood. I take it from the _Table-Book_, where
it represents Mrs. Gilpin resting on a stile:--
[Illustration]
Lamb subsequently appended the observations himself. The text of his
little article, changing Mary Lamb into Mrs. Gilpin, was in the late Mr.
Locker-Lampson's collection. The postmark is July 17. 1827.]
LETTER 418
CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
Enfield. P.M. July 17, 182[7].
Dear M. Thanks for your attentions of every kind. Emma will not fail
Mrs. Hood's kind invitation, but her Aunt is so queer a one, that we
cannot let her go with a single gentleman singly to Vauxhall; she would
withdraw her from us altogether in a fright; but if any of the Hood's
family accompany you, then there can be small objection.
I have been writing letters till too dark to see the marks. I can just
say we shall be happy to see you any Sunday _after the next_: say, the
Sunday after, and perhaps the Hoods will come too and have a merry other
day, before they go hence. But next Sunday we expect as many as we can
well entertain.
With ours and Emma's
acknowlgm's
yours
C.L.
[The earliest of a long series of letters to Edward Moxon, preserved at
Rowfant by the late Mr. Locker-Lampson, but now in America. Emma Isola's
aunt was Miss Humphreys.]
LETTER 419
CHARLES LAMB TO P.G. PATMORE
[Dated at end: July 19, 1827.]
Dear P.--I am so poorly! I have been to a funeral, where I made a pun,
to the consternation of the rest of the mourners. And we had wine. I
can't describe to you the howl which the widow set up at proper
intervals. Dash could, for it was not unlike what he makes.
The letter I sent you was one directed to the care of E. White, India
House, for Mrs. Hazlitt. _Which_ Mrs. Hazlitt I don't yet know, but A.
has taken it to France on speculation. Really it is embarrassing. There
is Mrs. present H., Mrs. late H., and Mrs. John H., and to which of the
three Mrs. Wiggins's it appertains, I don't know. I wanted to open it,
but it's transportation.
I am sorry you are plagued about your book. I would strongly recommend
you to take for one story Massinger's "Old Law." It is exquisite. I can
think of no other.
Dash is frightful this morning. He whines and stands up on his hind
legs. He misses Beckey, who is gone to town. I took him to Barnet the
other day, and he couldn't eat his victuals after it. Pray God his
intellectuals be not slipping.
Mary is gone out for some soles. I suppose 'tis no use to ask you to
come and partake of 'em; else there's a steam-vessel.
I am doing a tragi-comedy in two acts, and have got on tolerably; but it
will be refused, or worse. I never had luck with anything my name was
put to.
Oh, I am so poorly! I _waked_ it at my cousin's the bookbinder's, who is
now with God; or, if he is not, it's no fault of mine.
We hope the Frank wines do not disagree with Mrs. Patmore. By the way, I
like her.
Did you ever taste frogs? Get them, if you can. They are like little
Lilliput rabbits, only a thought nicer.
Christ, how sick I am!--not of the world, but of the widow's shrub.
She's sworn under L6000, but I think she perjured herself. She howls in
E _la_, and I comfort her in B flat. You understand music?...
"No shrimps!" (That's in answer to Mary's question about how the soles
are to be done.)
I am uncertain where this _wandering_ letter may reach you. What you
mean by Poste Restante, God knows. Do you mean I must pay the postage?
So I do to Dover.
We had a merry passage with the widow at the Commons. She was
howling--part howling and part giving directions to the proctor--when
crash! down went my sister through a crazy chair, and made the clerks
grin, and I grinned, and the widow tittered--_and then I knew that she
was not inconsolable_. Mary was more frightened than hurt.
She'd make a good match for anybody (by she, I mean the widow).
"If he bring but a _relict_ away,
He is happy, nor heard to complain."
SHENSTONE.
Procter has got a wen growing out at the nape of his neck, which his
wife wants him to have cut off; but I think it rather an agreeable
excrescence--like his poetry--redundant. Hone has hanged himself for
debt. Godwin was taken up for picking pockets.... Beckey takes to bad
courses. Her father was blown up in a steam machine. The coroner found
it Insanity. I should not like him to sit on my letter.
Do you observe my direction? Is it Gallic?--Classical?
Do try and get some frogs. You must ask for "grenouilles" (green-eels).
They don't understand "frogs," though it's a common phrase with us.
If you go through Bulloign (Boulogne) enquire if old Godfrey is living,
and how he got home from the Crusades. He must be a very old man now.
If there is anything new in politics or literature in France, keep it
till I see you again, for I'm in no hurry. Chatty-Briant is well I hope.
I think I have no more news; only give both our loves ("all three," says
Dash) to Mrs. Patmore, and bid her get quite well, as I am at present,
bating qualms, and the grief incident to losing a valuable relation.
C.L.
Londres, July 19, 1827.
[This is from Patmore's _My Friends and Acquaintances_, 1854; but I have
no confidence in Patmore's transcription. After "picking pockets" should
come, for example, according to other editors, the sentence, "Moxon has
fallen in love with Emma, our nut-brown maid." This is the first we hear
of the circumstance and quite probably Lamb was then exaggerating. As it
happened, however, Moxon and Miss Isola, as we shall see, were married
in 1833.
We do not know the name of the widow; but her husband was Lamb's cousin,
the bookbinder.
The doubt about the Hazlitts refers chiefly to William Hazlitt's divorce
from his first wife in 1822, and his remarriage in 1824 with a Mrs.
Bridgewater.
"Your book." Patmore, in _My Friends and Acquaintances_, writes:--
This refers to a series of tales that I was writing, (since published
under the title of _Chatsworth, or the Romance of a Week_.) for the
subject of one of which he had recommended me to take "The Old Law." As
Lamb's critical faculties (as displayed in the celebrated "specimens"
which created an era in the dramatic taste of England) were not
surpassed by those of any writer of his day, the reader may like to see
a few "specimens" of some notes which Lamb took the pains to make on two
of the tales that were shown to him. I give these the rather that there
is occasionally blended with their critical nicety of tact, a drollery
that is very characteristic of the writer. I shall leave these notes and
verbal criticisms to speak for themselves, after merely explaining that
they are written on separate bits of paper, each note having a numerical
reference to that page of the MS. in which occurs the passage commented
on.
"Besides the words 'riant' and 'Euphrosyne,' the sentence is senseless.
'A sweet sadness' capable of inspiring 'a more _grave joy_'--than
what?--than demonstrations of _mirth_? Odd if it had not been. I had
once a _wry aunt_, which may make me dislike the phrase.
"'Pleasurable:'--no word is good that is awkward to spell. (Query.)
Welcome or Joyous.
"'_Steady self-possession_ rather than _undaunted courage_,' etc. The
two things are not opposed enough. You mean, rather than rash fire of
valour in action.
"'Looking like a heifer,' I fear wont do in prose. (Qy.) 'Like to some
spotless heifer,'--or,'that you might have compared her to some spotless
heifer,' etc.--or 'Like to some sacrificial heifer of old.' I should
prefer, 'garlanded with flowers as for a sacrifice '--and cut the cow
altogether.
"(Say) 'Like the muttering of some strange spell,'--omitting the
demon,--they are _subject_ to spells, they don't use them.
"'Feud' here (and before and after) is wrong. (Say) old malice, or,
difference. _Feud_ is of clans. It might be applied to family quarrels,
but is quite improper to individuals falling out.
"'Apathetic.' Vile word.
"'Mechanically,' faugh!--insensibly--involuntarily--in-any-thing-ly but
mechanically.
"Calianax's character should be somewhere briefly _drawn_, not left to
be dramatically inferred.
"'Surprised and almost vexed while it troubled her.' (Awkward.) Better,
'in a way that while it deeply troubled her, could not but surprise and
vex her to think it should be a source of trouble at all.'
"'Reaction' is vile slang. 'Physical'--vile word.
"Decidedly, Dorigen should simply propose to him to remove the rocks as
_ugly_ or _dangerous_, not as affecting her with fears for her husband.
The idea of her husband should be excluded from a promise which is meant
to be _frank_ upon impossible conditions. She cannot promise in one
breath infidelity to him, and make the conditions a good to him. Her
reason for hating the rocks is good, but not to be expressed here.
"Insert after 'to whatever consequences it might lead,'--'Neither had
Arviragus been disposed to interpose a husband's authority to prevent
the execution of this rash vow, was he unmindful of that older and more
solemn vow which, in the days of their marriage, he had imposed upon
himself, in no instance to control the settled purpose or determination
of his wedded wife;--so that by the chains of a double contract he
seemed bound to abide by her decision in this instance, whatever it
might be.'"
"A tragi-comedy"--Lamb's dramatic version of Crabbe's "Confidante,"
which he called "The Wife's Trial" (see Vol. IV. of this edition).
"Procter has got a wen." This paragraph must be taken with salt. Poor
Hone, however, had the rules of the King's Bench at the time. Beckey was
the Lambs' servant and tyrant; she had been Hazlitt's. Patmore described
her at some length in his reminiscences of Lamb.
"Chatty-Briant"--Chateaubriand.]
LETTER 420
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Enfield, July 26th, 1827.
Dear Mrs. Shelley,--At the risk of throwing away some fine thoughts, I
must write to say how pleased we were with your very kind remembering of
us (who have unkindly run away from all our friends) before you go.
Perhaps you are gone, and then my tropes are wasted. If any piece of
better fortune has lighted upon you than you expected, but less than we
wish you, we are rejoiced. We are here trying to like solitude, but have
scarce enough to justify the experiment. We get some, however. The six
days are our Sabbath; the seventh--why, Cockneys will come for a little
fresh air, and so--
But by _your month_, or October at furthest, we hope to see Islington: I
like a giant refreshed with the leaving off of wine, and Mary, pining
for Mr. Moxon's books and Mr. Moxon's society. Then we shall meet.
I am busy with a farce in two acts, the incidents tragi-comic. I can do
the dialogue _commey fo_: but the damned plot--I believe I must omit it
altogether. The scenes come after one another like geese, not
marshalling like cranes or a Hyde Park review. The story is as simple as
G[eorge] D[yer], and the language plain as his spouse. The characters
are three women to one man; which is one more than laid hold on him in
the "Evangely." I think that prophecy squinted towards my drama.
I want some Howard Paine to sketch a skeleton of artfully succeeding
scenes through a whole play, as the courses are arranged in a cookery
book: I to find wit, passion, sentiment, character, and the like
trifles: to lay in the dead colours,--I'd Titianesque 'em up: to mark
the channel in a cheek (smooth or furrowed, yours or mine), and where
tears should course I'd draw the waters down: to say where a joke should
come in or a pun be left out: to bring my _personae_ on and off like a
Beau Nash; and I'd Frankenstein them there: to bring three together on
the stage at once; they are so shy with me, that I can get no more than
two; and there they stand till it is the time, without being the season,
to withdraw them.
I am teaching Emma Latin to qualify her for a superior governess-ship;
which we see no prospect of her getting. 'Tis like feeding a child with
chopped hay from a spoon. Sisyphus--his labours were as nothing to it.
Actives and passives jostle in her nonsense, till a deponent enters,
like Chaos, more to embroil the fray. Her prepositions are suppositions;
her conjunctions copulative have no connection in them; her concords
disagree; her interjections are purely English "Ah!" and "Oh!" with a
yawn and a gape in the same tongue; and she herself is a lazy,
block-headly supine. As I say to her, ass _in praesenti_ rarely makes a
wise man _in futuro_.
But I daresay it was so with you when you began Latin, and a good while
after.
Good-by! Mary's love.
Yours truly, C. LAMB.
[This is the second letter to Mrs. Shelley, _nee_ Mary Wollstonecraft
Godwin, the widow of the poet and the author of _Frankenstein_. She had
been living in England since 1823; and in 1826 had issued anonymously
_The Last Man_. That she kept much in touch with the Lambs' affairs we
know by her letters to Leigh Hunt.
Major Butterworth has kindly supplied me with a copy of her letter to
Mary Lamb which called forth Lamb's reply. It runs thus:--
Kentish Town, 22 July, 1827.
My dear Miss Lamb,
You have been long at Enfield--I hardly know yet whether you are
returned--and I quit town so very soon that I have not time to--as I
exceedingly wish--call on you before I go. Nevertheless believe (if such
familiar expression be not unmeet from me) that I love you with all my
heart--gratefully and sincerely--and that when I return I shall seek you
with, I hope, not too much zeal--but it will be with great eagerness.
You will be glad to hear that I have every reason to believe that the
worst of my pecuniary troubles are over--as I am promised a regular tho'
small income from my father-in-law. I mean to be very industrious _on
other accounts_ this summer, so I hope nothing will go very ill with me
or mine.
I am afraid Miss Kelly will think me dreadfully rude for not having
availed myself of her kind invitation. Will you present my compliments
to her, and say that my embarassments, harassings and distance from town
are the guilty causes of my omission--for which with her leave I will
apologize in person on my return to London.
All kind and grateful remembrances to Mr. Lamb, he must not forget me
nor like me one atom less than I delight to flatter myself he does now,
when again I come to seize a dinner perforce at your cottage. Percy is
quite well--and is reading with great extacy (_sic_) the Arabian Nights.
I shall return I suppose some one day in September. God bless you.
Yours affectionately,
MARY W. SHELLEY.
_Commey fo_ is Lamb's _comme il faut_.
"In the 'Evangely.'" If by Evangely he meant Gospel, Lamb was a little
confused here, I think. Probably Isaiah iv. I was in his mind: "and in
that day seven women shall take hold of one man." But he may also have
half remembered Luke xvii. 35.
"I am teaching Emma Latin." Mary Lamb contributed to _Blackwood's
Magazine_ for June, 1829, the following little poem describing Emma
Isola's difficulties in these lessons:--
TO EMMA, LEARNING LATIN, AND DESPONDING
Droop not, dear Emma, dry those falling tears,
And call up smiles into thy pallid face,
Pallid and care-worn with thy arduous race:
In few brief months thou hast done the work of years.
To young beginnings natural are these fears.
A right good scholar shalt thou one day be,
And that no distant one; when even she,
Who now to thee a star far off appears,
That most rare Latinist, the Northern Maid--
The language-loving Sarah[1] of the Lake--
Shall hail thee Sister Linguist. This will make
Thy friends, who now afford thee careful aid,
A recompense most rich for all their pains,
Counting thy acquisitions their best gains.
[Footnote 1: Daughter of S.T. Coleridge, Esq.; an accomplished linguist
in the Greek and Latin tongues, and translatress of a History of the
Abipones.]
A letter to an anonymous correspondent, in the summer of 1827, has an
amusing passage concerning Emma Isola's Latin. Lamb says that they made
Cary laugh by translating "Blast you" into such elegant verbiage as
"Deus afflet tibi." He adds, "How some parsons would have goggled and
what would Hannah More say? I don't like clergymen, but here and there
one. Cary, the Dante Cary, is a model quite as plain as Parson Primrose,
without a shade of silliness."
On July 21, 1827, is a letter to Mr. Dillon, whom I do not identify,
saying that Lamb has been teaching Emma Isola Latin for the past seven
weeks.
"Ass _in praesenti_." This was Boyer's joke, at Christ's Hospital (see
Vol. I. of this edition).
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Edward White, of the India House,
dated August 1, 1827, in which Lamb has some pleasantry about paying
postages, and ends by heartily commending White to mind his ledger, and
keep his eye on Mr. Chambers' balances.]
LETTER 421
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. BASIL 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 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 ------ first edition.*
___ ___
8 6
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.
[The memorial to Thomas Clarkson stands on a hill above Wade Mill, on
the Buntingford Road, in Hertfordshire.
Forty Hill is close to Enfield.
Edward Irving's watch-chain. The explanation of Lamb's joke is to be
found in Carlyle's _Reminiscences_ (quoted also in Froude's _Life_, Vol.
I., page 326). Irving had put down as his contribution to some
subscription list, at a public meeting, "an actual gold watch, which he
said had just arrived to him from his beloved brother lately dead in
India." This rather theatrical action had evidently amused Lamb as it
had disgusted Carlyle.
The "first edition" of "Mr. -----" was, I suppose, Basil Montagu's work
on Bacon, which Macaulay reviewed.]
LETTER 422
MARY LAMB TO LADY STODDART
[August 9, 1827.]
My dear Lady-Friend,--My brother called at our empty cottage yesterday,
and found the cards of your son and his friend, Mr. Hine, under the
door; which has brought to my mind that I am in danger of losing this
post, as I did the last, being at that time in a confused state of
mind--for at that time we were talking of leaving, and persuading
ourselves that we were intending to leave town and all our friends, and
sit down for ever, solitary and forgotten, here. Here we are; and we
have locked up our house, and left it to take care of itself; but at
present we do not design to extend our rural life beyond Michaelmas.
Your kind letter was most welcome to me, though the good news contained
in it was already known to me. Accept my warmest congratulations, though
they come a little of the latest. In my next I may probably have to hail
you Grandmama; or to felicitate you on the nuptials of pretty Mary, who,
whatever the beaux of Malta may think of her, I can only remember her
round shining face, and her "O William!"--"dear William!" when we
visited her the other day at school. Present my love and best wishes--a
long and happy married life to dear Isabella--I love to call her
Isabella; but in truth, having left your other letter in town, I
recollect no other name she has.
The same love and the same wishes--in futuro--to my friend Mary. Tell
her that her "dear William" grows taller, and improves in manly looks
and manlike behaviour every time I see him. What is Henry about? and
what should one wish for him? If he be in search of a wife, I will send
him out Emma Isola.
You remember Emma, that you were so kind as to invite to your ball? She
is now with us; and I am moving heaven and earth, that is to say, I am
pressing the matter upon all the very few friends I have that are likely
to assist me in such a case, to get her into a family as a governess;
and Charles and I do little else here than teach her something or other
all day long.
We are striving to put enough Latin into her to enable her to begin to
teach it to young learners. So much for Emma --for you are so fearfully
far away, that I fear it is useless to implore your patronage for her.
I have not heard from Mrs. Hazlitt a long time. I believe she is still
with Hazlitt's mother in Devonshire.
I expect a pacquet of manuscript from you: you promised me the office of
negotiating with booksellers, and so forth, for your next work. Is it in
good forwardness? or do you grow rich and indolent now? It is not
surprising that your Maltese story should find its way into Malta; but I
was highly pleased with the idea of your pleasant surprise at the sight
of it. I took a large sheet of paper, in order to leave Charles room to
add something more worth reading than my poor mite.
May we all meet again once more!
M. LAMB.
LETTER 423
CHARLES LAMB TO SIR JOHN STODDART
(_Same letter: Lamb's share_)
Dear Knight--Old Acquaintance--'Tis with a violence to the _pure
imagination_ (_vide_ the "Excursion" _passim_) that I can bring myself
to believe I am writing to Dr. Stoddart once again, at Malta. But the
deductions of severe reason warrant the proceeding. I write from
Enfield, where we are seriously weighing the advantages of dulness over
the over-excitement of too much company, but have not yet come to a
conclusion. What is the news? for we see no paper here; perhaps you can
send us an old one from Malta. Only, I heard a butcher in the
market-place whisper something about a change of ministry. I don't know
who's in or out, or care, only as it might affect _you_. For domestic
doings, I have only to tell, with extreme regret, that poor Elisa
Fenwick (that was)--Mrs. Rutherford--is dead; and that we have received
a most heart-broken letter from her mother--left with four
grandchildren, orphans of a living scoundrel lurking about the pothouses
of Little Russell Street, London: they and she--God help 'em!--at New
York. I have just received Godwin's third volume of the _Republic_,
which only reaches to the commencement of the Protectorate. I think he
means to spin it out to his life's thread. Have you seen Fearn's
_Anti-Tooke_? I am no judge of such things--you are; but I think it very
clever indeed. If I knew your bookseller, I'd order it for you at a
venture: 'tis two octavos, Longman and Co. Or do you read now? Tell it
not in the Admiralty Court, but my head aches _hesterno vino_. I can
scarce pump up words, much less ideas, congruous to be sent so far. But
your son must have this by to-night's post.[_Here came a passage
relating to an escapade of young Stoddart, then at the Charterhouse,
which, probably through Lamb's intervention, was treated leniently. Lamb
helped him--with his imposition-- Gray's "Elegy" into Greek elegiacs_.]
Manning is gone to Rome, Naples, etc., probably to touch at Sicily,
Malta, Guernsey, etc.; but I don't know the map. Hazlitt is resident at
Paris, whence he pours his lampoons in safety at his friends in England.
He has his boy with him. I am teaching Emma Latin. By the time you can
answer this, she will be qualified to instruct young ladies: she is a
capital English reader: and S.T.C. acknowledges that a part of a passage
in Milton she read better than he, and part he read best, her part being
the shorter. But, seriously, if Lady St------ (oblivious pen, that was
about to write _Mrs._!) could hear of such a young person wanted (she
smatters of French, some Italian, music of course), we'd send our loves
by her. My congratulations and assurances of old esteem. C.L.
[Stoddart had been appointed in 1826 Chief-Justice and Justice of the
Vice-Admiralty Court in Malta and had been knighted in the same year.
His daughter Isabella had just married. Lady Stoddart's literary efforts
did not, I think, reach print.
"The deductions of severe reason." See the quotation from Cottle in the
letter to Manning of November, 1802.
"A change of ministry." On Liverpool's resignation early in 1827 Canning
had been called in to form a new Ministry, which he effected by an
alliance with the Whigs.
"Godwin's _Republic_"--_History of the Commonwealth of England_, in
four volumes, 1824-1828.
"Fearn's _Anti-Tooke_"--_Anti-Tooke; or, An Analysis of the Principles
and Structure of Language Exemplified in the English Tongue_, 1824.
Here should come a note from Lamb to Hone, dated August 10, 1827, in
which Lamb expresses regret for Matilda Hone's illness.]
LETTER 424
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. 10 August, 1827.]
Dear B.B.--I have not been able to: answer you, for we have had, and
are having (I just snatch a moment), our poor quiet retreat, to which we
fled from society, full of company, some staying with us, and this
moment as I write almost a heavy importation of two old Ladies has come
in. Whither can I take wing from the oppression of human faces? Would I
were in a wilderness of Apes, tossing cocoa nuts about, grinning and
grinned at!
Mitford was hoaxing you surely about my Engraving, 'tis a little
sixpenny thing, too like by half, in which the draughtsman has done his
best to avoid flattery. There have been 2 editions of it, which I think
are all gone, as they have vanish'd from the window where they hung, a
print shop, corner of Great and Little Queen Streets, Lincolns Inn
fields, where any London friend of yours may inquire for it; for I am
(tho' you _won't understand_ it) at Enfield (Mrs. Leishman's, Chase). We
have been here near 3 months, and shall stay 2 or more, if people will
let us alone, but they persecute us from village to village. So don't
direct to _Islington_ again, till further notice.
I am trying my hand at a Drama, in 2 acts, founded on Crabbe's
"Confidant," mutatis mutandis.
You like the Odyssey. Did you ever read my "Adventures of Ulysses,"
founded on Chapman's old translation of it? for children or _men_. Ch.
is divine, and my abridgment has not quite emptied him of his divinity.
When you come to town I'll show it you.
You have well described your old fashioned Grand-paternall Hall. Is it
not odd that every one's earliest recollections are of some such place.
I had my Blakesware (Blakesmoor in the "London"). Nothing fills a childs
mind like a large old Mansion [_one or two words wafered over_]; better
if un-or-partially-occupied; peopled with the spirits of deceased
members of [for] the County and Justices of the Quorum. Would I were
buried in the peopled solitude of one, with my feelings at 7 years old.
Those marble busts of the Emperors, they seem'd as if they were to stand
for ever, as they had stood from the living days of Rome, in that old
Marble Hall, and I to partake of their permanency; Eternity was, while I
thought not of Time. But he thought of me, and they are toppled down,
and corn covers the spot of the noble old Dwelling and its princely
gardens. I feel like a grasshopper that chirping about the grounds
escaped his scythe only by my littleness. Ev'n now he is whetting one of
his smallest razors to clean wipe me out, perhaps. Well!
["My Engraving"--Brook Pulham's caricature.
"You have well described your ... Grand-paternall Hall." Barton wrote
the following account of this house, the home of his step-grandfather at
Tottenham; but I do not know whether it is the same that Lamb saw:--
My most delightful recollections of boyhood are connected with the
fine old country-house in a green lane diverging from the high road
which runs through Tottenham. I would give seven years of life as it
now is, for a week of that which I then led. It was a large old
house, with an iron palisade and a pair of iron gates in front, and
a huge stone eagle on each pier. Leading up to the steps by which
you went up to the hall door, was a wide gravel walk, bordered in
summer time by huge tubs, in which were orange and lemon trees, and
in the centre of the grass-plot stood a tub yet huger, holding an
enormous aloe, The hall itself, to my fancy then lofty and wide as a
cathedral would seem now, was a famous place for battledore and
shuttlecock; and behind was a garden, equal to that of old Alcinous
himself. My favourite walk was one of turf by a long straight pond,
bordered with lime-trees. But the whole demesne was the fairy ground
of my childhood; and its presiding genius was grandpapa. He must
have been a very handsome man in his youth, for I remember him at
nearly eighty, a very fine-looking one, even in the decay of mind
and body. In the morning a velvet cap; by dinner, a flaxen wig; his
features always expressive of benignity and placid cheerfulness.
When he walked out into the garden, his cocked hat and amber-headed
cane completed his costume. To the recollection of this delightful
personage, I am, I think, indebted for many soothing and pleasing
associations, with old age.
"Those marble busts of the Emperors." See the _Elia_ essay "Blakesmoor
in H----shire," in Vol. II, of this edition.]
LETTER 425
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
28th of Aug., 1827.
I have left a place for a wafer, but can't find it again.
Dear B.B.--I am thankful to you for your ready compliance with my
wishes. Emma is delighted with your verses, to which I have appended
this notice "The 6th line refers to the child of a dear friend of the
author's, named Emma," without which it must be obscure; and have sent
it with four Album poems of my own (your daughter's with _your_ heading,
requesting it a place next mine) to a Mr. Fraser, who is to be editor of
a more superb Pocket book than has yet appeared by far! the property of
some wealthy booksellers, but whom, or what its name, I forgot to ask.
It is actually to have in it schoolboy exercises by his present Majesty
and the late Duke of York, so Lucy will come to Court; how she will be
stared at! Wordsworth is named as a Contributor. Frazer, whom I have
slightly seen, is Editor of a forth-come or coming Review of foreign
books, and is intimately connected with Lockhart, &c. so I take it that
this is a concern of Murray's. Walter Scott also contributes mainly. I
have stood off a long time from these Annuals, which are ostentatious
trumpery, but could not withstand the request of Jameson, a particular
friend of mine and Coleridge.
I shall hate myself in frippery, strutting along, and vying finery with
Beaux and Belles
with "Future Lord Byrons and sweet L.E.L.'s."--
Your taste I see is less simple than mine, which the difference of our
persuasions has doubtless effected. In fact, of late you have so
frenchify'd your style, larding it with hors de combats, and au
desopoirs, that o' my conscience the Foxian blood is quite dried out of
you, and the skipping Monsieur spirit has been infused. Doth Lucy go to
Balls? I must remodel my lines, which I write for her. I hope A.K. keeps
to her Primitives. If you have any thing you'd like to send further, I
don't know Frazer's address, but I sent mine thro' Mr. Jameson, 19 or 90
Cheyne Street, Totnam Court road. I dare say an honourable place wou'd
be given to them; but I have not heard from Frazer since I sent mine,
nor shall probably again, and therefore I do not solicit it as from him.
Yesterday I sent off my tragi comedy to Mr. Kemble. Wish it luck. I made
it all ('tis blank verse, and I think, of the true old dramatic cut) or
most of it, in the green lanes about Enfield, where I am and mean to
remain, in spite of your peremptory doubts on that head.
Your refusal to lend your poetical sanction to my Icon, and your reasons
to Evans, are most sensible. May be I may hit on a line or two of my own
jocular. May be not.
Do you never Londonize again? I should like to talk over old poetry with
you, of which I have much, and you I think little. Do your Drummonds
allow no holydays? I would willingly come and w[ork] for you a three
weeks or so, to let you loose. Would I could sell or give you some of my
Leisure! Positively, the best thing a man can have to do is nothing, and
next to that perhaps--good works.
I am but poorlyish, and feel myself writing a dull letter; poorlyish
from Company, not generally, for I never was better, nor took more
walks, 14 miles a day on an average, with a sporting dog--Dash--you
would not know the plain Poet, any more than he doth recognize James
Naylor trick'd out au deserpoy (how do you spell it.) En Passant, J'aime
entendre da mon bon homme sur surveillance de croix, ma pas l'homme
figuratif--do you understand me?
[The verses with which Emma was delighted were probably written for her
album. I have not seen them. That album was cut up for the value of its
autographs and exists now only in a mutilated state: where, I cannot
discover. The pocket-book was _The Bijou_, 1828, edited by William
Fraser for Pickering. Only one of Lamb's contributions was included: his
verses for his own album (see Vol. IV. of this edition).
Jameson was Robert Jameson, to whom Hartley Coleridge addressed the
sonnets in the _London Magazine_ to which Lamb alludes in a previous
letter. He was the husband of Mrs. Jameson, author of _Sacred and
Legendary Art_, but the marriage was not happy. He lived in Chenies
Street.
"Future Lord Byrons and sweet L.E.L.'s." A line from some verses written
by Lamb in more than one album. Probably originally intended for Emma
Isola's album. The passage runs, answering the question, "What is an
Album?"--
'Tis a Book kept by modern Young Ladies for show,
Of which their plain grandmothers nothing did know.
'Tis a medley of scraps, fine verse, and fine prose,
And some things not very like either, God knows.
The soft First Effusions of Beaux and of Belles,
Of future Lord Byrons and sweet L.E.L.'s.
L.E.L. was, of course, the unhappy Letitia Landon, a famous contributor
to the published albums.
"My tragi comedy." Still "The Wife's Trial." Kemble was Charles Kemble,
manager of Covent Garden Theatre. The play was never acted.
"Your refusal to lend your poetical sanction." This is not clear, but I
think the meaning to be deducible. The Icon was Pulham's etching of
Lamb. Evans was William Evans, who had grangerised Byron's _English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. I take it that he was now making another
collection of portraits of poets and was asking other poets, their
friends, to write verses upon them. In this way he had applied through
Lamb to Barton for verses on Pulham's Elia, and had been refused. This
is, of course, only conjecture.
"Your Drummonds"--your bankers. Barton's bankers were the Alexanders, a
Quaker firm.
"James Naylor." Barton had paraphrased Nayler's "Testimony."
Following this letter, under the date August 29, 1827, should come a
letter from Lamb to Robert Jameson (husband of Mrs. Jameson) asking him
to interest himself in Miss Isola's career. "Our friend Coleridge will
bear witness to the very excellent manner in which she read to him some
of the most difficult passages in the Paradise Lost."]
LETTER 426
CHARLES LAMB TO P.G. PATMORE
Mrs. Leishman's, Chace, Enfield,
September, 1827.
Dear Patmore--Excuse my anxiety--but how is Dash? (I should have asked
if Mrs. Patmore kept her rules, and was improving--but Dash came
uppermost. The order of our thoughts should be the order of our
writing.) Goes he muzzled, or _aperto ore_? Are his intellects sound, or
does he wander a little in _his_ conversation? You cannot be too careful
to watch the first symptoms of incoherence. The first illogical snarl he
makes, to St. Luke's with him! All the dogs here are going mad, if you
believe the overseers; but I protest they seem to me very rational and
collected. But nothing is so deceitful as mad people to those who are
not used to them. Try him with hot water. If he won't lick it up, it is
a sign he does not like it. Does his tail wag horizontally or
perpendicularly? That has decided the fate of many dogs in Enfield. Is
his general deportment cheerful? I mean when he is pleased--for
otherwise there is no judging. You can't be too careful. Has he bit any
of the children yet? If he has, have them shot, and keep _him_ for
curiosity, to see if it was the hydrophobia. They say all our army in
India had it at one time--but that was in _Hyder_-Ally's time. Do you
get paunch for him? Take care the sheep was sane. You might pull out his
teeth (if he would let you), and then you need not mind if he were as
mad as a Bedlamite. It would be rather fun to see his odd ways. It might
amuse Mrs. Patmore and the children. They'd have more sense than he!
He'd be like a Fool kept in the family, to keep the household in good
humour with their own understanding. You might teach him the mad dance
set to the mad howl. _Madge Owl-et_ would be nothing to him. "My, how he
capers!" [_In the margin is written_:] One of the children speaks this.
[_Three lines here are erased_.] What I scratch out is a German
quotation from Lessing on the bite of rabid animals; but, I remember,
you don't read German. But Mrs. Patmore may, so I wish I had let it
stand. The meaning in English is--"Avoid to approach an animal suspected
of madness, as you would avoid fire or a precipice:--" which I think is
a sensible observation. The Germans are certainly profounder than we.
If the slightest suspicion arises in your breast, that all is not right
with him (Dash), muzzle him, and lead him in a string (common
pack-thread will do; he don't care for twist) to Hood's, his quondam
master, and he'll take him in at any time. You may mention your
suspicion or not, as you like, or as you think it may wound or not Mr.
H.'s feelings. Hood, I know, will wink at a few follies in Dash, in
consideration of his former sense. Besides, Hood is deaf, and if you
hinted anything, ten to one he would not hear you. Besides, you will
have discharged your conscience, and laid the child at the right door,
as they say.
We are dawdling our time away very idly and pleasantly, at a Mrs.
Leishman's, Chace, Enfield, where, if you come a-hunting, we can give
you cold meat and a tankard. Her husband is a tailor; but that, you
know, does not make her one. I knew a jailor (which rhymes), but his
wife was a fine lady.
Let us hear from you respecting Mrs. Patmore's regimen. I send my love
in a ------ to Dash. C. LAMB.
[_On the outside of the letter was written_:--]
Seriously, I wish you would call upon Hood when you are that way. He's a
capital fellow. I sent him a couple of poems --one ordered by his wife,
and written to order; and 'tis a week since, and I've not heard from
him. I fear something is the matter.
_Omitted within_
Our kindest remembrance to Mrs. P.
[This is from Patmore's _My Friends and Acquaintances_, 1854; but again
I have no confidence in Patmore's transcription.
Dash had been Hood's dog, and afterwards was Lamb's; while at one time
Moxon seems to have had the care of it. Patmore possibly was taking Dash
while the Lambs were at Mrs. Leishman's. One of the children who might
be amused by the dog's mad ways was Coventry Patmore, afterwards the
poet, then nearly four years old.]
LETTER 427
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[P.M. September 5, 1827.]
Dear Dib,--Emma Isola, who is with us, has opened an ALBUM: bring some
verses with you for it on Sat'y evening. Any _fun_ will do. I am
teaching her Latin; you may make something of that. Don't be modest. For
in it you shall appear, if I rummage out some of your old pleasant
letters for rhymes. But an original is better.
Has your pa[1] any scrap? C.L.
We shall be MOST glad to see your sister or sisters with you. Can't you
contrive it? Write in that case.
[Footnote 1: the infantile word for father.]
[On the blank pages inside the letter Dibdin seems to have jotted down
ideas for his contribution to the album. Unfortunately, as I have said,
the album is not forthcoming.]
LETTER 428
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[P.M. September 13, 1827.]
Dear _John_--Your verses are very pleasant, and have been adopted into
the splendid Emmatic constellation, where they are not of the least
magnitude. She is delighted with their merit and readiness. They are
just the thing. The 14th line is found. We advertised it. Hell is
cooling for want of company. We shall make it up along with our kitchen
fire to roast you into our new House, where I hope you will find us in a
few Sundays. We have actually taken it, and a compact thing it will be.
Kemble does not return till the month's end. My heart sometimes is good,
sometimes bad, about it, as the day turns out wet or walky.
Emma has just died, choak'd with a Gerund in dum. On opening her we
found a Participle in rus in the pericordium. The king never dies, which
may be the reason that it always REIGNS here.
We join in loves. C.L. his orthograph.
what a pen!
the Umberella is cum bak.
LETTER 429
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[P.M. September 18, 1827.]
My dear, and now more so, JOHN--
How that name smacks! what an honest, full, English,
and yet withal holy and apostolic sound it bears, above the
methodistical priggish Bishoppy name of Timothy, under
which I had obscured your merits!
What I think of the paternal verses, you shall read within,
which I assure you is not pen praise but heart praise.
It is the gem of the Dibdin Muses.
I have got all my books into my new house, and their
readers in a fortnight will follow, to whose joint converse nobody
shall be more welcome than you, and _any of yours_.
The house is perfection to our use and comfort.
Milton is come. I wish Wordsworth were here to meet him.
The next importation is of pots and saucepans, window curtains,
crockery and such base ware.
The pleasure of moving, when Becky moves for you. O
the moving Becky!
I hope you will come and _warm_ the house with the first.
From my temporary domicile, Enfield.
ELIA, that "is to go."--
[The paternal verses were probably a contribution by Charles
Dibdin the Younger for Emma Isola's album. The Lambs were
just moving to Enfield for good, as they hoped (see next letter),
Milton was the portrait.]
LETTER 430
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOOD
Tuesday [September 18, 1827],
Dear Hood,
If I have any thing in my head, I will send it to Mr.
Watts. Strictly speaking he should have had my Album
verses, but a very intimate friend importund me for the trifles,
and I believe I forgot Mr. Watts, or lost sight at the time of his
similar Souvenir. Jamieson conveyed the farce from me to
Mrs. C. Kemble, _he_ will not be in town before the 27th. Give
our kind loves to all at Highgate, and tell them that we have
finally torn ourselves out right away from Colebrooke, where I
had no health, and are about to domiciliate for good at Enfield,
where I have experienced _good_.
Lord what good hours do we keep!
How quietly we sleep!
See the rest in the Complete Angler. We have got our books into our new
house. I am a drayhorse if I was not asham'd of the indigested dirty
lumber, as I toppled 'em out of the cart, and blest Becky that came with
'em for her having an unstuffd brain with such rubbish. We shall get in
by Michael's mass. Twas with some pain we were evuls'd from Colebrook.
You may find some of our flesh sticking to the door posts. To change
habitations is to die to them, and in my time I have died seven deaths.
But I don't know whether every such change does not bring with it a
rejuvenescence. Tis an enterprise, and shoves back the sense of death's
approximating, which tho' not terrible to me, is at all times
particularly distasteful. My house-deaths have generally been
periodical, recurring after seven years, but this last is premature by
half that time. Cut off in the flower of Colebrook. The Middletonian
stream and all its echoes mourn. Even minnows dwindle. A parvis fiunt
MINIMI. I fear to invite Mrs. Hood to our new mansion, lest she envy it,
& rote [? rout] us. But when we are fairly in, I hope she will come &
try it. I heard she & you were made uncomfortable by some unworthy to be
cared for attacks, and have tried to set up a feeble counteraction thro'
the Table Book of last Saturday. Has it not reach'd you, that you are
silent about it? Our new domicile is no manor house, but new, &
externally not inviting, but furnish'd within with every convenience.
Capital new locks to every door, capital grates in every room, with
nothing to pay for incoming & the rent L10 less than the Islington one.
It was built a few years since at L1100 expence, they tell me, & I
perfectly believe it. And I get it for L35 exclusive of moderate taxes.
We think ourselves most lucky. It is not our intention to abandon Regent
Street, & West End perambulations (monastic & terrible thought!), but
occasionally to breathe the FRESHER AIR of the metropolis. We shall put
up a bedroom or two (all we want) for occasional ex-rustication, where
we shall visit, not be visited. Plays too we'll see,--perhaps our own.
Urban! Sylvani, & Sylvan Urbanuses in turns. Courtiers for a spurt, then
philosophers. Old homely tell-truths and learn-truths in the virtuous
shades of Enfield, Liars again and mocking gibers in the coffee houses &
resorts of London. What can a mortal desire more for his bi-parted
nature?
O the curds & cream you shall eat with us here!
O the turtle soup and lobster sallads we shall devour with you there!
O the old books we shall peruse here!
O the new nonsense we shall trifle over there!
O Sir T. Browne!--here.
O Mr. Hood & Mr. Jerdan there,
thine,
C (urbanus) L (sylvanus) (ELIA ambo)--
Inclos'd are verses which Emma sat down to write, her first, on the eve
after your departure. Of course they are only for Mrs. H.'s perusal.
They will shew at least, that one of our party is not willing to cut old
friends. What to call 'em I don't know. Blank verse they are not,
because of the rhymes--Rhimes they are not, because of the blank verse.
Heroics they are not, because they are lyric, lyric they are not,
because of the Heroic measure. They must be call'd EMMAICS.------
[Mr. Watts was Alaric A. Watts.
"Thro' the _Table Book_." Lamb contributed to Hone's _Table Book_ a
prose paraphrase of Hood's _Plea, of the Midsummer Fairies_, just
published, which had been dedicated to him, under the title "The Defeat
of Time." In a previous number Moxon had addressed to Hood a eulogistic
sonnet on the same subject. The attacks on Hood I have not sought.
"We shall put up a bedroom." This project was very imperfectly carried
out. Indeed Lamb practically lost London from this date, his subsequent
visits there being as a rule not fortunate.
"Mr. Jerdan"--William Jerdan, editor of the _Literary Gazette_.
"Emmaics." These verses are no longer forthcoming.
Here should come a letter to Allsop dated September 25, 1827, saying
that Mary Lamb has her nurse Miss James and the house is melancholy.
Given in the Boston Bibliophile edition.]
LETTER 431
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY COLBURN
[Dated at end: September 25, 1827.]
Dear Sir--I beg leave in the warmest manner to recommend to your notice
Mr. Moxon, the Bearer of this, if by any chance yourself should want a
steady hand in your business, or know of any Publisher that may want
such a one. He is at present in the house of Messrs. Longman and Co.,
where he has been established for more than six years, and has the
conduct of one of the four departments of the Country line. A difference
respecting Salary, which he expected to be a little raised on his last
promotion, makes him wish to try to better himself. I believe him to be
a young man of the highest integrity, and a thorough man of business;
and should not have taken the liberty of recommending him, if I had not
thought him capable of being highly useful.
I am,
Sir,
with great respect,
your hble Serv't
CHARLES LAMB.
Enfield, Chace Side, 25th Sep. 1827.
[Moxon did not go to Colburn, but to Hurst & Co. in St. Paul's
Churchyard.]
LETTER 432
CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. ?Sept. 26, 1827.]
Pray, send me the Table Book.
Dear M. Our pleasant meeting[s] for some time are suspended. My sister
was taken very ill in a few hours after you left us (I had suspected
it),--and I must wait eight or nine weeks in slow hope of her recovery.
It is her old complaint. You will say as much to the Hoods, and to Mrs.
Lovekin, and Mrs. Hazlitt, with my kind love.
We are in the House, that is all. I hope one day we shall both enjoy it,
and see our friends again. But till then I must be a solitary nurse.
I am trying Becky's sister to be with her, so don't say anything to Miss
James.
Yours truly
CH. LAMB.
Monday. I will send your books soon.
[Miss James was, as we have seen, Mary Lamb's regular nurse. She had
subsequently to be sent for. I do not identify Mrs. Lovekin.]
LETTER 433
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[Dated at end: October 1 (1827).]
Dear R.--I am settled for life I hope, at Enfield. I have taken the
prettiest compactest house I ever saw, near to Antony Robinson's, but
alas! at the expence of poor Mary, who was taken ill of her old
complaint the night before we got into it. So I must suspend the
pleasure I expected in the surprise you would have had in coming down
and finding us householders.
Farewell, till we can all meet comfortable. Pray, apprise Martin Burney.
Him I longed to have seen with you, but our house is too small to meet
either of you without her knowledge.
God bless you.
C. LAMB.
Chase Side 1st Oct'r
[Antony Robinson, a prominent Unitarian, a friend but no relation of
Crabb Robinson's, had died in the previous January. His widow still
lived at Enfield.]
LETTER 434
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[P.M. October 2, 1827.]
My dear Dibdin, It gives me great pain to have to say that I cannot have
the pleasure of seeing you for some time. We are in our house, but Mary
has been seized with one of her periodical disorders--a temporary
derangement--which commonly lasts for two months. You shall have the
first notice of her convalescence. Can you not send your manuscript by
the Coach? directed to Chase Side, next to Mr. Westwood's Insurance
office. I will take great care of it.
Yours most Truly C. LAMB.
LETTER 435
CHARLES LAMB TO BARRON FIELD
Oct. 4th, 1827.
I am not in humour to return a fit reply to your pleasant letter. We are
fairly housed at Enfield, and an angel shall not persuade me to wicked
London again. We have now six sabbath days in a week for--_none_! The
change has worked on my sister's mind, to make her ill; and I must wait
a tedious time before we can hope to enjoy this place in unison. Enjoy
it, when she recovers, I know we shall. I see no shadow, but in her
illness, for repenting the step! For Mathews --I know my own utter
unfitness for such a task. I am no hand at describing costumes, a great
requisite in an account of mannered pictures. I have not the slightest
acquaintance with pictorial language even. An imitator of me, or rather
pretender to be _me_, in his Rejected Articles, has made me minutely
describe the dresses of the poissardes at Calais!--I could as soon
resolve Euclid. I have no eye for forms and fashions. I substitute
analysis, and get rid of the phenomenon by slurring in for it its
impression. I am sure you must have observed this defect, or
peculiarity, in my writings; else the delight would be incalculable in
doing such a thing for Mathews, whom I greatly like--and Mrs. Mathews,
whom I almost greatlier like. What a feast 'twould be to be sitting at
the pictures painting 'em into words; but I could almost as soon make
words into pictures. I speak this deliberately, and not out of modesty.
I pretty well know what I can't do.
My sister's verses are homely, but just what they should be; I send
them, not for the poetry, but the good sense and good-will of them. I
was beginning to transcribe; but Emma is sadly jealous of its getting
into more hands, and I won't spoil it in her eyes by divulging it. Come
to Enfield, and _read it_. As my poor cousin, the bookbinder, now with
God, told me, most sentimentally, that having purchased a picture of
fish at a dead man's sale, his heart ached to see how the widow grieved
to part with it, being her dear husband's favourite; and he almost
apologised for his generosity by saying he could not help telling the
widow she was "welcome to come and look at it"--e.g. at _his house_--"as
often as she pleased." There was the germ of generosity in an uneducated
mind. He had just _reading_ enough from the backs of books for the "_nec
sinit esse feros_"--had he read inside, the same impulse would have led
him to give back the two-guinea thing--with a request to see it, now and
then, at _her_ house. We are parroted into delicacy.--Thus you have a
tale for a Sonnet.
Adieu! with (imagine both) our loves. C. LAMB.
[The suggestion had been made to Lamb, through Barron Field, that he
should write a descriptive catalogue of Charles Mathews' collection of
theatrical portraits; Lamb having already touched upon them in his "Old
Actors" articles in the _London Magazine_ (see Vol. II. of this
edition). When they were exhibited, after Mathews' death, at the
Pantheon in Oxford Street, Lamb's remarks were appended to the catalogue
_raisonne_. They are now at the Garrick Club.
"An imitator of me." P.G. Patmore's _Rejected Articles_, 1826, leads off
with "An Unsentimental Journey" by Elia which is, except for a fitful
superficial imitation of some of Lamb's mannerisms, as unlike him as
could well be. The description of the butterwomen's dress, to which Lamb
refers, will illustrate the divergence between Elia and his parodist:--
Her attire is fashioned as follows: and it differs from all her
tribe only in the relative arrangement of its colours. On the body a
crimson jacket, of a thick, solid texture, and tight to the shape;
but without any pretence at ornament. This is met at the waist
(which is neither long, nor short, but exactly where nature placed
it) by a dark blue petticoat, of a still thicker texture, so that it
hangs in large plaits where it is gathered in behind. Over this, in
front, is tied tightly round the waist, so as to keep all trim and
compact, a dark apron, the string of which passes over the little
fulled skirt of the jacket behind, and makes it stick out smartly
and tastily, while it clips the waist in. The head-gear consists of
a sort of mob cap, nothing of which but the edge round the face can
be seen, on account of the kerchief (of flowered cotton) which is
passed over it, hood fashion, and half tied under the chin. This
head-kerchief is in place of the bonnet--a thing not to be seen
among the whole five hundred females who make up this pleasant show.
Indeed, varying the colours of the different articles, this
description applies to every dress of the whole assembly; except
that in some the fineness of the day has dispensed with the
kerchief, and left the snow-white cap exposed; and in others, the
whole figure (except the head) is coyishly covered and concealed by
a large hooded cloak of black cloth, daintily lined with silk, and
confined close up to the throat by an embossed silver clasp, but
hanging loosely down to the heels, in thick, full folds. The
petticoat is very short; the trim ancles are cased in close-fit hose
of dark, sober, slate colour; and the shoes, though thick and
serviceable like all the rest of the costume, fit the foot as neatly
as those which are not made to walk in.
Patmore tells us that his first meeting with the Lambs was immediately
after they had first seen his book; and they left the house intent upon
reading it.
"My sister's verses." I think these would probably be the lines on Emma
learning Latin which I have quoted above.
Here should come a very pleasant letter from Lamb to Dodwell, of the
India House, dated October 7, 1827. Lamb thanks Dodwell, to whom there
is an earlier letter extant, for a pig. He first describes his new house
at Enfield, and then breaks off about the cooking of the pig, bidding
Becky do it "nice and _crips_." The rest is chaff concerning the India
House and Dodwell's fellow-clerks.]
LETTER 436
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[No date. ? Oct., 1827.]
Dear Hone,--having occasion to write to Clarke I put in a bit to you. I
see no Extracts in this N'o. You should have three sets in hand, one
long one in particular from Atreus and Thyestes, terribly fine. Don't
spare 'em; with fragments, divided as you please, they'll hold out to
Xmas. What I have to say is enjoined me most seriously to say to you by
Moxon. Their country customers grieve at getting the Table Book so late.
It is indispensable it should appear on Friday. Do it but _once_, &
you'll never know the difference.
FABLE
A boy at my school, a cunning fox, for one penny ensured himself a hot
roll & butter every morning for ever. Some favor'd ones were allowed a
roll & butter to their breakfasts. He had none. But he bought one one
morning. What did he do? He did not eat it, but cutting it in two, sold
each one of the halves to a half-breakfasted Blue Boy for _his_ whole
roll to-morrow. The next day he had a whole roll to eat, and two halves
to swap with other two boys, who had eat their cake & were still not
satiated, for whole ones to-morrow. So on ad infinitum. By one morning's
abstinence he feasted seven years after.
APPLICATION
Bring out the next N'o. on Friday, for country correspondents' sake.
I[t] will be one piece of exertion, and you will go right ever after,
for you will have just the time you had before, to bring it out ever
after by the Friday.
You don't know the difference in getting a thing early. Your
correspondents are your authors. You don't know how an author frets to
know the world has got his contribution, when he finds it not on his
breakfast table.
ONCE in this case is EVER without a grain of trouble afterw'ds.
I won't like you or speak to you if you don't try it once.
Yours, on that condition,
C. LAMB.
[This letter is dated by Mr. Hazlitt conjecturally 1826, but I think it
more probably October, 1827, as the extracts (passages from Crowne's
"Thyestes") contributed by Lamb to Hone's _Table Book_ were printed late
in 1827.
In Lamb's next note to Hone he says how glad he was to receive the
_Table Book_ early on Friday: the result of the fable.]
LETTER 437
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOOD
[No date. ? 1827.]
Dear H.,--Emma has a favour, besides a bed, to ask of Mrs. Hood. Your
parcel was gratifying. We have all been pleased with Mrs. Leslie; I
speak it most sincerely. There is much manly sense with a feminine
expression, which is my definition of ladies' writing.
[_Mrs. Leslie and Her Grandchildren_, 1827, was the title of a book for
children by Mrs. Reynolds, mother of John Hamilton Reynolds and Mrs.
Hood, and wife of the Writing Master at Christ's Hospital.]
LETTER 438
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[No date. Late 1827.]
My dear B.B.--You will understand my silence when I tell you that my
sister, on the very eve of entering into a new house we have taken at
Enfield, was surprised with an attack of one of her sad long illnesses,
which deprive me of her society, tho' not of her domestication, for
eight or nine weeks together. I see her, but it does her no good. But
for this, we have the snuggest, most comfortable house, with every thing
most compact and desirable. Colebrook is a wilderness. The Books,
prints, etc., are come here, and the New River came down with us. The
familiar Prints, the Bust, the Milton, seem scarce to have changed their
rooms. One of her last observations was "how frightfully like this room
is to our room in Islington"--our up-stairs room, she meant. How I hope
you will come some better day, and judge of it! We have tried quiet here
for four months, and I will answer for the comfort of it enduring.
On emptying my bookshelves I found an Ulysses, which I will send to A.K.
when I go to town, for her acceptance-- unless the Book be out of print.
One likes to have one copy of every thing one does. I neglected to keep
one of "Poetry for Children," the joint production of Mary and me, and
it is not to be had for love or money. It had in the title-page "by the
author of Mrs. Lester's School." Know you any one that has it, and would
exchange it?
Strolling to Waltham Cross the other day, I hit off these lines. It is
one of the Crosses which Edw'd 1st caused to be built for his wife at
every town where her corpse rested between Northamptonsh'r and London.
A stately Cross each sad spot doth attest,
Whereat the corpse of Elinor did rest,
From Herdby fetch'd--her Spouse so honour'd her--
To sleep with royal dust at Westminster.
And, if less pompous obsequies were thine,
Duke Brunswick's daughter, princely Caroline,
Grudge not, great ghost, nor count thy funeral losses:
Thou in thy life-time had'st thy share of crosses.
My dear B.B.--My head akes with this little excursion. Pray accept 2
sides for 3 for once.
And believe me
Yours sadly C.L.
Chace side Enfield.
["An Ulysses"--Lamb's book for children, _The Adventures of Ulysses_,
1808.
_The Poetry for Children_. The known copies of the first edition of this
work can be counted on the fingers.
"A stately Cross..." These verses were printed in the _Englishman's
Magazine_ in September, 1831. Lamb's sympathies were wholly with
Caroline of Brunswick, as his epigrams in _The Champion_ show (see Vol.
IV. of this edition).]
LETTER 439
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. December 4, 1827.]
My dear B.B.--I have scarce spirits to write, yet am harass'd with not
writing. Nine weeks are completed, and Mary does not get any better. It
is perfectly exhausting. Enfield and every thing is very gloomy. But for
long experience, I should fear her ever getting well.
I feel most thankful for the spinsterly attentions of your sister. Thank
the kind "knitter in the sun."
What nonsense seems verse, when one is seriously out of hope and
spirits! I mean that at this time I have some nonsense to write, pain of
incivility. Would to the fifth heaven no coxcombess had invented Albums.
I have not had a Bijoux, nor the slightest notice from Pickering about
omitting 4 out of 5 of my things. The best thing is never to hear of
such a thing as a bookseller again, or to think there are publishers:
second hand Stationers and Old Book Stalls for me. Authorship should be
an idea of the Past.
Old Kings, old Bishops, are venerable. All present is hollow.
I cannot make a Letter. I have no straw, not a pennyworth of chaff, only
this may stop your kind importunity to know about us.
Here is a comfortable house, but no tenants. One does not make a
household.
Do not think I am quite in despair, but in addition to hope protracted,
I have a stupifying cold and obstructing headache, and the sun is dead.
I will not fail to apprise you of the revival of a Beam.
Meantime accept this, rather than think I have forgotten you all.
Best rememb
& Yours and theirs truly, C.L.
LETTER 440
CHARLES LAMB TO LEIGH HUNT
[No date. December, 1827.]
Dear H.,--I am here almost in the eleventh week of the longest illness
my sister ever had, and no symptoms of amendment. Some had begun, but
relapsed with a change of nurse. If she ever gets well, you will like my
house, and I shall be happy to show you Enfield country.
As to my head, it is perfectly at your or any one's service; either
M[e]yers' or Hazlitt's, which last (done fifteen or twenty years since)
White, of the Accountant's office, India House, has; he lives in Kentish
Town: I forget where, but is to be found in Leadenhall daily. Take your
choice. I should be proud to hang up as an alehouse sign even; or,
rather, I care not about my head or anything, but how we are to get well
again, for I am tired out.
God bless you and yours from the worst calamity.--Yours truly, C.L.
Kindest remembrances to Mrs. Hunt. H.'s is in a queer dress. M.'s would
be preferable _ad populum_.
[Leigh Hunt had asked Lamb for his portrait to accompany his _Lord Byron
and Some of His Contemporaries_. Lamb had been painted by Hazlitt in
1804, and by Henry Meyer, full size, in May, 1826, as well as by others.
Hunt chose Meyer's picture, which was beautifully engraved, for his
book, in the large paper edition. The original is now in the India
Office; a reproduction serves as the frontispiece to this volume. The
Hazlitt portrait, representing Lamb in the garb of a Venetian senator,
is now in the National Portrait Gallery; a reproduction serves as the
frontispiece to Vol. I. of this edition.]
LETTER 441
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[P.M. Dec. 15, 1827.]
My dear Hone, I read the sad accident with a careless eye, the newspaper
giving a wrong name to the poor Sufferer, but learn'd the truth from
Clarke. God send him ease, and you comfort in your thick misfortunes. I
am in a sorry state. Tis the eleventh week of the illness, and I cannot
get her well. To add to