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.]
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.
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.]
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.]
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."]
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.]
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 Grégoire 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.]
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.]
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.]
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.
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.
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.]
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.]
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."]
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.
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.
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.]
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.]
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."]
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 Staël'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.]
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.]
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.]
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 £100 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.]
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!]
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 £1200 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.]
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.]
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.
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.]
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.]
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.]
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.]
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.]
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.]
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).]
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.]
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.]
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.]
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.]
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.
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 soirées 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.]
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.]
360. CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
Jan. 17, 1825.
Dear Allsop--I acknowledge with thanks the receipt of a draft on Messrs. Wms. for £81:11:3 which I haste to cash in the present alarming state of the money market. Hurst and Robinson gone. I have imagined a chorus of ill-used authors singing on the occasion:
What should we when Booksellers break? We should rejoice da Capo.
We regret 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. ]
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.]
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.]
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.]
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.]
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."]
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.]
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 £400 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.]
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 £441 a year for the remainder of my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who outlived his annuity and starved at 90. £441, i.e. £450, with a deduction of £9 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 £730 per annum, he be allowed a pension of £450 (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."]
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 £441 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.]
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 £10000 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.
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.]
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 £100 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.]
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 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.]
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.]
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.]
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 £2,500 for five months' salary.]
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.]
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.]
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."]
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."]
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.]
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."]
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.]
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.]
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.]
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.
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.]
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.]
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.]