467. CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. December 5, 1828.]
Dear B.B.--I am ashamed to receive so many nice Books from you, and to have none to send you in return; You are always sending me some fruits or wholesome pot-herbs, and mine is the garden of the Sluggard, nothing but weeds or scarce they. Nevertheless if I knew how to transmit it, I would send you Blackwood's of this month, which contains a little Drama, to have your opinion of it, and how far I have improved, or otherwise, upon its prototype. Thank you for your kind Sonnet. It does me good to see the Dedication to a Christian Bishop. I am for a Comprehension, as Divines call it, but so as that the Church shall go a good deal more than halfway over to the Silent Meeting house. I have ever said that the Quakers are the only Professors of Christianity as I read it in the Evangiles; I say Professors--marry, as to practice, with their gaudy hot types and poetical vanities, they are much at one with the sinful. Martin's frontispiece is a very fine thing, let C.L. say what he please to the contrary. Of the Poems, I like them as a volume better than any one of the preceding; particularly, Power and Gentleness; The Present; Lady Russell--with the exception that I do not like the noble act of Curtius, true or false, one of the grand foundations of old Roman patriotism, to be sacrificed to Lady R.'s taking notes on her husband's trial. If a thing is good, why invidiously bring it into light with something better? There are too few heroic things in this world to admit of our marshalling them in anxious etiquettes of precedence. Would you make a poetn on the Story of Ruth (pretty Story!) and then say, Aye, but how much better is the story of Joseph and his Brethren! To go on, the Stanzas to "Chalon" want the name of Clarkson in the body of them; it is left to inference. The Battle of Gibeon is spirited again--but you sacrifice it in last stanza to the Song at Bethlehem. Is it quite orthodox to do so. The first was good, you suppose, for that dispensation. Why set the word against the word? It puzzles a weak Christian. So Watts's Psalms are an implied censure on David's. But as long as the Bible is supposed to be an equally divine Emanation with the Testament, so long it will stagger weaklings to have them set in opposition. Godiva is delicately touch'd. I have always thought it a beautiful story characteristic of old English times. But I could not help amusing myself with the thought--if Martin had chosen this subject for a frontispiece, there would have been in some dark corner a white Lady, white as the Walker on the waves--riding upon some mystical quadruped --and high above would have risen "tower above tower a massy structure high" the Tenterden steeples of Coventry, till the poor Cross would scarce have known itself among the clouds, and far above them all, the distant Clint hills peering over chimney pots, piled up, Ossa-on-Olympus fashion, till the admiring Spectator (admirer of a noble deed) might have gone look for the Lady, as you must hunt for the other in the Lobster. But M. should be made Royal Architect. What palaces he would pile--but then what parliamentary grants to make them good! ne'ertheless I like the frontispiece. The Elephant is pleasant; and I am glad you are getting into a wider scope of subjects. There may be too much, not religion, but too many good words into a book, till it becomes, as Sh. says of religion, a rhapsody of words. I will just name that you have brought in the Song to the Shepherds in four or five if not six places. Now this is not good economy. The Enoch is fine; and here I can sacrifice Elijah to it, because 'tis illustrative only, and not disparaging of the latter prophet's departure. I like this best in the Book. Lastly, I much like the Heron, 'tis exquisite: know you Lord Thurlow's Sonnet to a Bird of that sort on Lacken water? If not, 'tis indispensable I send it you, with my Blackwood, if you tell me how best to send them. Fludyer is pleasant. You are getting gay and Hood-ish. What is the Enigma? money--if not, I fairly confess I am foiled--and sphynx must [here are words crossed through] 4 times I've tried to write eat--eat me--and the blotting pen turns it into cat me. And now I will take my leave with saying I esteem thy verses, like thy present, honour thy frontispicer, and right-reverence thy Patron and Dedicatee, and am, dear B.B.
Yours heartily, C.L.
Our joint kindest Loves to A.K. and your Daughter.
[Barton's new book was A New Year's Eve and other Poems, 1828, dedicated to Charles Richard Sumner, Bishop of Winchester. This volume contains Barton's "Fireside Quatrains to Charles Lamb" (quoted in Vol. IV.) and also the following "Sonnet to a Nameless Friend," whom I take to be Lamb:--
SONNET TO A NAMELESS FRIEND
In each successive tome that bears my name Hast thou, though veiled thy own from public eyes, Won from my muse that willing sacrifice Which worth and talents such as thine should claim: And I should close my minstrel task with shame, Could I forget the indissoluble ties Which every grateful thought of thee supplies To one who deems thy friendship more than fame. Accept then, thus imperfectly, once more, The homage of thy poet and thy friend; And should thy partial praise my lays commend, Versed as thou art in all the gentle lore Of English poesy's exhaustless store, Whom I most love they never can offend.
Martin's frontispiece represented Christ walking on the water. Lamb recalls his remarks in a previous letter about this painter, who though he never became Royal Architect was the originator of the present Thames Embankment. Macaulay, in his essay on Southey's edition of the Pilgrim's Progress, in the Edinburgh for December, 1831, makes some very similar remarks about Martin and the way in which he would probably paint Lear.
In the poem "Lady Rachel Russell; or, A Roman Hero and an English Heroine Compared," Barton compared the act of Curtius, who leaped into the gulf in the Forum, with Lady Russell standing beside her lord.
Chalon was the painter of a portrait of Thomas Clarkson.
The "Battle of Gibeon" is a poem inspired by Martin's picture of Joshua; the last stanza runs thus:--
Made known by marvels awfully sublime! Yet far more glorious in the Christian's sight Than these stern terrors of the olden time, The gentler splendours of that peaceful night, When opening clouds displayed, in vision bright, The heavenly host to Bethlehem's shepherd train, Shedding around them more than cloudless light! "Glory to God on high!" their opening strain, Its chorus, "Peace on Earth!" its theme Messiah's reign!
"In the Lobster." Referring to that part of a lobster which is called Eve.
"The Elephant." Some mildly humorous verses "To an Elephant."
"As Sh. says of religion"--Shakespeare, I assume, in "Hamlet," III., 4, 47, 48:--
And sweet Religion makes A rhapsody of words.
I quote in the Appendix the poem which Lamb liked best. Barton had written a poem called "Syr Heron." This is Lord Thurlow's sonnet, of which Lamb was very fond. He quoted it in a note to his Elia essay on the sonnets of Sidney in the London Magazine, and copied it into his album:--
TO A BIRD, THAT HAUNTED THE WATERS OF LACKEN, IN THE WINTER
O melancholy Bird, a winter's day, Thou standest by the margin of the pool, And, taught by God, dost thy whole being school To Patience, which all evil can allay. God has appointed thee the fish thy prey; And giv'n thyself a lesson to the fool Unthrifty, to submit to moral rule, And his unthinking course by thee to weigh. There need not schools, nor the professor's chair, Though these be good, true wisdom to impart: He, who has not enough, for these, to spare, Of time, or gold, may yet amend his heart, And teach his soul, by brooks, and rivers fair: Nature is always wise in every part.
"Fludyer" was a poem to Sir Charles Fludyer on the devastation effected on his marine villa at Felixstowe by the encroachments of the sea. The answer to the enigma, Mrs. FitzGerald (Lucy Barton) told Canon Ainger, was not money but an auctioneer's hammer.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Louisa Holcroft, dated December 5, 1828. Louisa Holcroft was a daughter of Thomas Holcroft, Lamb's friend, whose widow married Kenney. A good letter with some excellent nonsense about measles in it.]
468. CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE
[December, 1828.]
My dear three C.'s--The way from Southgate to Colney Hatch thro' the unfrequentedest Blackberry paths that ever concealed their coy bunches from a truant Citizen, we have accidentally fallen upon--the giant Tree by Cheshunt we have missed, but keep your chart to go by, unless you will be our conduct--at present I am disabled from further flights than just to skirt round Clay Hill, with a peep at the fine back woods, by strained tendons, got by skipping a skipping-rope at 53--heu mihi non sum qualis. But do you know, now you come to talk of walks, a ramble of four hours or so--there and back--to the willow and lavender plantations at the south corner of Northaw Church by a well dedicated to Saint Claridge, with the clumps of finest moss rising hillock fashion, which I counted to the number of two hundred and sixty, and are called "Claridge's covers"--the tradition being that that saint entertained so many angels or hermits there, upon occasion of blessing the waters? The legends have set down the fruits spread upon that occasion, and in the Black Book of St. Albans some are named which are not supposed to have been introduced into this island till a century later. But waiving the miracle, a sweeter spot is not in ten counties round; you are knee deep in clover, that is to say, if you are not above a middling man's height; from this paradise, making a day of it, you go to see the ruins of an old convent at March Hall, where some of the painted glass is yet whole and fresh.
If you do not know this, you do not know the capabilities of this country, you may be said to be a stranger to Enfield. I found it out one morning in October, and so delighted was I that I did not get home before dark, well a-paid.
I shall long to show you the clump meadows, as they are called; we might do that, without reaching March Hall. When the days are longer, we might take both, and come home by Forest Cross, so skirt over Pennington and the cheerful little village of Churchley to Forty Hill.
But these are dreams till summer; meanwhile we should be most glad to see you for a lesser excursion--say, Sunday next, you and another, or if more, best on a weekday with a notice, but o' Sundays, as far as a leg of mutton goes, most welcome. We can squeeze out a bed. Edmonton coaches run every hour, and my pen has run out its quarter. Heartily farewell.
[Much of the "Lamb country" touched upon in this letter is now built on. In my large edition I give a map of Lamb's favourite walking region.
"The giant Tree by Cheshunt" is Goff's Oak.
"The Black Book of St. Albans." The Black Books exposed abuses in the church.]
469. CHARLES LAMB TO T.N. TALFOURD
[No date. End of 1828.]
Dear Talfourd,--You could not have told me of a more friendly thing than you have been doing. I am proud of my namesake. I shall take care never to do any dirty action, pick pockets, or anyhow get myself hanged, for fear of reflecting ignominy upon your young Chrisom. I have now a motive to be good. I shall not omnis moriar;--my name borne down the black gulf of oblivion.
I shall survive in eleven letters, five more than Caesar. Possibly I shall come to be knighted, or more: Sir C.L. Talfourd, Bart.!
Yet hath it an authorish twang with it, which will wear out my name for poetry. Give him a smile from me till I see him. If you do not drop down before, some day in the week after next I will come and take one night's lodging with you, if convenient, before you go hence. You shall name it. We are in town to-morrow speciali gratia, but by no arrangement can get up near you.
Believe us both, with greatest regards, yours and Mrs. Talfourd's.
CHARLES LAMB-PHILO-TALFOURD
I come as near it as I can.
[This may be incorrectly dated, but I place it here because in that to Hood of December 17, summarised above, Lamb speaks of his godson at Brighton.
Talfourd (who himself dates this letter 1829) had named his latest child Charles Lamb Talfourd. The boy lived only until 1835. I quote in the Appendix the verses which Talfourd wrote on his death. Another of Lamb's name children, Charles Lamb Kenney, grew to man's estate and became a ready writer.]
470. CHARLES LAMB TO GEORGE DYER
[No date. ? January, 1829.]
Dear Dyer, My very good friend, and Charles Clarke's father in law, Vincent Novello, wishes to shake hands with you. Make him play you a tune. He is a damn'd fine musician, and what is better, a good man and true. He will tell you how glad we should be to have Mrs. Dyer and you here for a few days. Our young friend, Miss Isola, has been here holydaymaking, but leaves us tomorrow.
Yours Ever CH. LAMB.
Enfield.
[Added in a feminine hand:] Emma's love to Mr. and Mrs. Dyer.
[The date of this note is pure conjecture on my part, but is unimportant. Novello had become Charles Clarke's father-in-law in 1828, and Emma Isola, who was now teaching the children of a clergyman named Williams, at Fornham, in Suffolk, spent her Christmas holidays with the Lambs that year.
Here, perhaps, should come an undated letter from Lamb to Louisa Martin. Lamb begins "Dear Monkey," and refers to his "niece," Mrs. Dowden, and some business which she requires him to transact, Mrs. Dowden being Mrs. John Lamb's daughter-in-law. Lamb describes himself as "a sick cat that loves to be alone on housetops or at cellar bottoms."]
471. CHARLES LAMB TO B.W. PROCTER
[19th Jan., 1829.]
My dear Procter,--I am ashamed to have not taken the drift of your pleasant letter, which I find to have been pure invention. But jokes are not suspected in Boeotian Enfield. We are plain people; and our talk is of corn, and cattle, and Waltham markets. Besides, I was a little out of sorts when I received it. The fact is, I am involved in a case which has fretted me to death; and I have no reliance, except on you, to extricate me. I am sure you will give me your best legal advice, having no professional friend besides but Robinson and Talfourd, with neither of whom at present I am on the best terms. My brother's widow left a will, made during the lifetime of my brother, in which I am named sole executor, by which she bequeaths forty acres of arable property, which it seems she held under Covert Baron, unknown to my brother, to the heirs of the body of Elizabeth Dowden, her married daughter by a first husband, in fee-simple, recoverable by fine--invested property, mind; for there is the difficulty--subject to leet and quit-rent; in short, worded in the most guarded terms, to shut out the property from Isaac Dowden, the husband. Intelligence has just come of the death of this person in India, where he made a will, entailing this property (which seem'd entangled enough already) to the heirs of his body, that should not be born of his wife; for it seems by the law in India, natural children can recover. They have put the cause into Exchequer process, here removed by Certiorari from the native Courts; and the question is, whether I should, as executor, try the cause here, or again re-remove it to the Supreme Sessions at Bangalore? (which I understand I can, or plead a hearing before the Privy Council here). As it involves all the little property of Elizabeth Dowden, I am anxious to take the fittest steps, and what may be least expensive. Pray assist me, for the case is so embarrassed, that it deprives me of sleep and appetite. M. Burney thinks there is a case like it in Chapt. 170, sect. 5, in Fearne's Contingent Remainders. Pray read it over with him dispassionately, and let me have the result. The complexity lies in the questionable power of the husband to alienate....
I had another favour to beg, which is the beggarliest of beggings.
A few lines of verse for a young friend's Album (six will be enough). M. Burney will tell you who she is I want 'em for. A girl of gold. Six lines--make 'em eight--signed Barry C----. They need not be very good, as I chiefly want 'em as a foil to mine. But I shall be seriously obliged by any refuse scrap. We are in the last ages of the world, when St. Paul prophesied that women should be "headstrong, lovers of their own wills, having Albums." I fled hither to escape the Albumean persecution, and had not been in my new house twenty-four hours, when the daughter of the next house came in with a friend's Album to beg a contribution, and the following day intimated she had one of her own. Two more have sprung up since. If I take the wings of the morning and fly unto the uttermost parts of the earth, there will Albums be. New Holland has Albums. But the age is to be complied with. M.B. will tell you the sort of girl I request the ten lines for. Somewhat of a pensive cast, what you admire. The lines may come before the Law question, as that can not be determined before Hilary Term, and I wish your deliberate judgment on that. The other may be flimsy and superficial. And if you have not burnt your returned letter, pray re-send it me, as a monumental token of my stupidity. 'Twas a little unthinking of you to touch upon a sore subject. Why, by dabbling in those accursed Albums, I have become a byword of infamy all over the kingdom. I have sicken'd decent women for asking me to write in Albums. There be "dark jests" abroad, Master Cornwall; and some riddles may live to be clear'd up. And 'tis not every saddle is put on the right steed; and forgeries and false Gospels are not peculiar to the Age following the Apostles. And some tubs don't stand on their right bottoms. Which is all I wish to say in these ticklish Times--and so your Servant,
CHS. LAMB.
[We do not know the nature of the "bite" that Procter had put upon Lamb; but Lamb quickly retaliated with the first paragraph of this letter, which is mainly invention. In his Old Acquaintance Mr. Fields wrote: "He [Procter] told me that the law question raised in this epistle was a sheer fabrication of Lamb's, gotten up by him to puzzle his young correspondent, the conveyancer. The coolness referred to between himself and Robinson and Talfourd, Procter said, was also a fiction invented by Lamb to carry out his legal mystification."
At the end of the first paragraph came some words in another hand: "in usum enfeoffments whereof he was only collaterally seized, &c.," beneath which Lamb wrote: "The above is some of M. Burney's memoranda which he has left me, and you may cut out and give him."
Procter's verses for Emma Isola's album I have not seen, but Canon Ainger says that they refer to "Isola Bella, whom all poets love," the island in Lago di Maggiore.
This is a list of the contents of Emma Isola's Album, all autographs (from Quaritch's catalogue, September, 1886):--
CHARLES LAMB. "What is an Album?" a poem addressed to Miss Emma Isola.
"To Emma on her Twenty-first Birthday," May 25, 1830.
"Harmony in Unlikeness." Without date.
JOHN KEATS. "To my Brother," a sonnet on the birthday of his brother Tom, dated Nov. 18 (? 1814 or 1815).
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. "She dwelt among the untrodden ways," three verses of his poem on Lucy, copied in his own hand on March 18, 1837.
"Blessings be with them, and enduring praise," five lines of a sonnet dated Rydal, 1838.
ALFRED TENNYSON. "When Lazarus left his charnel-cave," four stanzas, undated.
THOMAS MOORE. "Woman gleans but sorrow," and note to Moxon, June, 1844.
LEIGH HUNT. "Apollo's Autograph," from an unpublished poem called "The Feast of the Violets." Undated, circa 1838.
THOMAS HOOD. "Dreams," a prose fragment, without date, circa 1840.
JAMES HOGG. "I'm a' gaen wrang," a song by the Ettrick Shepherd, circa 1830.
JOANNA BAILLIE. "Up! quit thy bower," a song, undated, circa 1830.
ROBERT SOUTHEY. Epitaph on himself, in verse, Feb. 18, 1837.
THOMAS CAMPBELL. "Victoria's sceptre o'er the waves," circa 1837.
ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. "The Pirate's Song," circa 1838.
CHARLES DIBDIN. "An Album's like the Dream of Hope," circa 1827.
BERNARD BARTON. "To Emma," with a note by Charles Lamb at foot, 1827.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. "To Emma Isola," circa 1827.
BARRY CORNWALL. "To the Spirit of Italy," circa 1827.
SAMUEL ROGERS. Two letters, and a poem, "My Last," 1829-36.
FREDERICK LOCKER (afterwards Locker-Lampson). A quatrain, dated July, 1873.
George Dyer, J.B. Dibdin, George Darley, Matilda Betham, H.F. Cary, Mrs. Piozzi, Edward Moxon, T.N. Talfourd, are the other writers.]
472. CHARLES LAMB TO B.W. PROCTER
Jan. 22nd, 1829.
Don't trouble yourself about the verses. Take 'em coolly as they come. Any day between this and Midsummer will do. Ten lines the extreme. There is no mystery in my incognita. She has often seen you, though you may not have observed a silent brown girl, who for the last twelve years has run wild about our house in her Christmas holidays. She is Italian by name and extraction. Ten lines about the blue sky of her country will do, as it's her foible to be proud of it. But they must not be over courtly or Lady-fied as she is with a Lady who says to her "go and she goeth; come and she cometh." Item, I have made her a tolerable Latinist. The verses should be moral too, as for a Clergyman's family. She is called Emma Isola. I approve heartily of your turning your four vols. into a lesser compass. 'Twill Sybillise the gold left. I shall, I think, be in town in a few weeks, when I will assuredly see you. I will put in here loves to Mrs. Procter and the Anti-Capulets, because Mary tells me I omitted them in my last. I like to see my friends here. I have put my lawsuit into the hands of an Enfield practitioner--a plain man, who seems perfectly to understand it, and gives me hopes of a favourable result.
Rumour tells us that Miss Holcroft is married; though the varlet has not had the grace to make any communication to us on the subject. Who is Badman, or Bed'em? Have I seen him at Montacute's? I hear he is a great chymist. I am sometimes chymical myself. A thought strikes me with horror. Pray heaven he may not have done it for the sake of trying chymical experiments upon her,--young female subjects are so scarce! Louisa would make a capital shot. An't you glad about Burke's case? We may set off the Scotch murders against the Scotch novels--Hare, the Great Un-hanged.
Martin Burney is richly worth your knowing. He is on the top scale of my friendship ladder, on which an angel or two is still climbing, and some, alas! descending. I am out of the literary world at present. Pray, is there anything new from the admired pen of the author of the Pleasures of Hope? Has Mrs. He-mans (double masculine) done anything pretty lately? Why sleeps the lyre of Hervey, and of Alaric Watts? Is the muse of L.E.L. silent? Did you see a sonnet of mine in Blackwood's last? Curious construction! Elaborata facilitas! And now I'll tell. 'Twas written for the "Gem;" but the editors declined it, on the plea that it would shock all mothers; so they published "The Widow" instead. I am born out of time. I have no conjecture about what the present world calls delicacy. I thought "Rosamund Gray" was a pretty modest thing. Hessey assures me that the world would not bear it. I have lived to grow into an indecent character. When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, "Damn the age; I will write for Antiquity!"
Erratum in sonnet:--Last line but something, for tender, read tend. The Scotch do not know our law terms; but I find some remains of honest, plain, old writing lurking there still. They were not so mealy-mouthed as to refuse my verses. Maybe, 'tis their oatmeal.
Blackwood sent me £20 for the drama. Somebody cheated me out of it next day; and my new pair of breeches, just sent home, cracking at first putting on, I exclaimed, in my wrath, "All tailors are cheats, and all men are tailors." Then I was better. [Rest lost.]
["Your four vols." Procter's poetical works, in three volumes, were published in 1822. Since then he had issued The Flood of Thessaly, 1823. He was perhaps meditating a new one-volume selection.
"Anti-Capulets"--the Basil Montagus (Montacutes).
"Badman." Louisa Holcroft married Carlyle's friend Badams, a manufacturer and scientific experimentalist of Birmingham, with whom the philosopher spent some weeks in 1827 in attempting a cure for dyspepsia (see the Early Recollections).
"Burke's case." William Burke and William Hare, the body-snatchers and murderers of Edinburgh, who killed persons to sell their corpses to Knox's school of anatomy. Burke was hanged a week later than this letter, on January 28. Hare turned King's evidence and disappeared. A "shot" was a subject in these men's vocabulary. The author of the Waverley novels--the Great Unknown-- had, of course, become known long before this.
"M.B."--Martin Burney. In 1818 Lamb had dedicated the prose volume of his Works to Burney, in a sonnet ending with the lines:--
Free from self-seeking, envy, low design, I have not found a whiter soul than thine.
Hervey was Thomas Kibble Hervey (1799-1859), a great album poet.
"A sonnet of mine in Blackwood"--in the number for January, 1829 (see below).
"Hessey"--of the firm of Taylor & Hessey, the late publishers of the London Magazine.
Another letter from Lamb to Procter, repeating the request for verses, was referred to by Canon Ainger in the preface to his edition of the correspondence. Canon Ainger printed a delightful passage. It is disappointing not to find it among the letters proper in his latest edition.
Here (had I permission from its American owner to print it, which I have not) I should place Lamb's instructions as to playing whist drawn up for Mrs. Badams' use and as an introduction to Captain Burney's treatise on the game. It is a very interesting document and England has never seen it yet.
The Boston Bibliophile edition also gives a letter from Lamb to Badams apologising for his heatedness yesterday and explaining it by saying that he had been for some hours dissuading a friend from settling at Enfield "which friend would have attracted down crowds of literary men, which men would have driven me wild."]
473. CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
Jan. 28, 1829.
Dear Allsop--Old Star is setting. Take him and cut him into Little Stars. Nevertheless the extinction of the greater light is not by the lesser light (Stella, or Mrs. Star) apprehended so nigh, but that she will be thankful if you can let young Scintillation (Master Star) twinkle down by the coach on Sunday, to catch the last glimmer of the decaying parental light. No news is good news; so we conclude Mrs. A. and little a are doing well. Our kindest loves, C.L.
[I cannot explain the mystery of these Stars.]
474. CHARLES LAMB TO B.W. PROCTER
[? Jan. 29th, 1829.]
When Miss Ouldcroft (who is now Mrs. Beddome, and Bed--dom'd to her!) was at Enfield, which she was in summertime, and owed her health to its sun and genial influences, she wisited (with young lady-like impertinence) a poor man's cottage that had a pretty baby (O the yearnling!), and gave it fine caps and sweetmeats. On a day, broke into the parlour our two maids uproarious. "O ma'am, who do you think Miss Ouldcroft (they pronounce it Holcroft) has been working a cap for?" "A child," answered Mary, in true Shandean female simplicity. "It's the man's child as was taken up for sheep-stealing." Miss Ouldcroft was staggered, and would have cut the connection; but by main force I made her go and take her leave of her protégée (which I only spell with a g because I can't make a pretty j). I thought, if she went no more, the Abactor or Abactor's wife (vide Ainsworth) would suppose she had heard something; and I have delicacy for a sheep-stealer. The overseers actually overhauled a mutton-pie at the baker's (his first, last, and only hope of mutton-pie), which he never came to eat, and thence inferred his guilt. Per occasionem cujus I framed the sonnet; observe its elaborate construction. I was four days about it.
THE GYPSY'S MALISON
Suck, baby, suck, Mother's love grows by giving, Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting; Black Manhood comes, when riotous guilty living Hands thee the cup that shall be death in tasting. Kiss, baby, kiss, Mother's lips shine by kisses, Choke the warm breath that else would fall in blessings; Black Manhood comes, when turbulent guilty blisses Tend thee the kiss that poisons 'mid caressings. Hang, baby, hang, mother's love loves such forces, Choke the fond neck that bends still to thy clinging; Black Manhood comes, when violent lawless courses Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging. So sang a wither'd Sibyl energetical, And bann'd the ungiving door with lips prophetical.
Barry, study that sonnet. It is curiously and perversely elaborate. 'Tis a choking subject, and therefore the reader is directed to the structure of it. See you? and was this a fourteener to be rejected by a trumpery annual? forsooth, 'twould shock all mothers; and may all mothers, who would so be shocked, bed dom'd! as if mothers were such sort of logicians as to infer the future hanging of their child from the theoretical hangibility (or capacity of being hanged, if the judge pleases) of every infant born with a neck on. Oh B.C., my whole heart is faint, and my whole head is sick (how is it?) at this damned, canting, unmasculine unbawdy (I had almost said) age! Don't show this to your child's mother or I shall be Orpheusized, scattered into Hebras. Damn the King, lords, commons, and specially (as I said on Muswell Hill on a Sunday when I could get no beer a quarter before one) all Bishops, Priests and Curates. Vale.
["Ainsworth." Referring to Robert Ainsworth's Thesaurus, 1736. Abactor (see Forcellini), a stealer or driver away of cattle. Ainsworth gives only abactus--to drive away by force.
"The Gypsy's Malison." This is the sonnet in Blackwood for January, 1829.]
Letter 475
(Fragment)
CHARLES LAMB TO B.W. PROCTER
[No date. Early 1829.]
The comings in of an incipient conveyancer are not adequate to the receipt of three twopenny post non-paids in a week. Therefore, after this, I condemn my stub to long and deep silence, or shall awaken it to write to lords. Lest those raptures in this honeymoon of my correspondence, which you avow for the gentle person of my Nuncio, after passing through certain natural grades, as Love, Love and Water, Love with the chill off, then subsiding to that point which the heroic suitor of his wedded dame, the noble-spirited Lord Randolph in the play, declares to be the ambition of his passion, a reciprocation of "complacent kindness,"--should suddenly plump down (scarce staying to bait at the mid point of indifference, so hungry it is for distaste) to a loathing and blank aversion, to the rendering probable such counter expressions as this,--"Damn that infernal twopenny postman" (words which make the not yet glutted inamorato "lift up his hands and wonder who can use them.") While, then, you are not ruined, let me assure thee, O thou above the painter, and next only under Giraldus Cambrensis, the most immortal and worthy to be immortal Barry, thy most ingenious and golden cadences do take my fancy mightily. They are at this identical moment under the snip and the paste of the fairest hands (bating chilblains) in Cambridge, soon to be transplanted to Suffolk, to the envy of half of the young ladies in Bury. But tell me, and tell me truly, gentle Swain, is that Isola Bella a true spot in geographical denomination, or a floating Delos in thy brain? Lurks that fair island in verity in the bosom of Lake Maggiore, or some other with less poetic name, which thou hast Cornwallized for the occasion? And what if Maggiore itself be but a coinage of adaptation? Of this pray resolve me immediately, for my albumess will be catechised on this subject; and how can I prompt her? Lake Leman, I know, and Lemon Lake (in a punch bowl) I have swum in, though those lymphs be long since dry. But Maggiore may be in the moon. Unsphinx this riddle for me, for my shelves have no gazetteer. And mayest thou never murder thy father-in-law in the Trivia of Lincoln's Inn New Square Passage, where Searl Street and the Street of Portugal embrace, nor afterwards make absurd proposals to the Widow M. But I know you abhor any such notions. Nevertheless so did O-Edipus (as Admiral Burney used to call him, splitting the diphthong in spite or ignorance) for that matter. C.L.
["Above the painter"--James Barry, R.A., but I do not understand the allusion here.
"Giraldus Cambrensis"--the historian, Giraldus de Barri.
Procter's poem for Emma Isola's album, as we have seen, mentions Isola Bella, the island in Lago de Maggiore. Delos was the floating island which Neptune fixed in order that Latona might rest there and Apollo and Diana be born.
Oedipus, who solved the riddle of the Sphinx, was the murderer of his father. Basil Montagu was Procter's father-in-law. Procter's address was 10 Lincolns Inn, New Square.
At the end of the letter came a passage which for family reasons cannot be printed.]
476. CHARLES LAMB TO B.W. PROCTER
February 2, 1829.
Facundissime Poeta! quanquam istiusmodi epitheta oratoribus potiùs quam poetis attinere facilè scio--tamen, facundissime!
Commoratur nobiscum jamdiu, in agro Enfeldiense, scilicet, leguleius futurus, illustrissimus Martinus Burneius, otium agens, negotia nominalia, et officinam clientum vacuam, paululum fugiens. Orat, implorat te--nempe, Martinus--ut si (quòd Dii faciant) fortè fortunâ, absente ipso, advenerit tardus cliens, eum certiorem feceris per literas hûc missas. Intelligisne? an me Anglicè et barbarice ad te hominem perdoctum scribere oportet?
Si status de franco tenemento datur avo, et in codem facto si mediate vel immediate datur haeredibus vel haeredibus corporis dicti avi, postrema, haec verba sunt Limitations, non Perquisitionis.
Dixi.
CARLAGNULUS.
[Mr. Stephen Gwynn has made the following translation for me:--
"Most eloquent Poet: though I know well such epithet befits orators rather than poets--and yet, Most eloquent!
"There has been staying with us this while past at our country seat of Enfield to wit, the future attorney, the illustrious Martin Burney, taking his leisure, flying for a space from his nominal occupations, and his office empty of clients. He--that is, Martin--begs and entreats of you that if (heaven send it so!) by some stroke of fortune, in his absence there should arrive a belated client, you would inform him by letter here. Do you understand? or must I write in barbarous English to a scholar like you?
"If an estate in freehold is given to an ancestor, and if in the same deed directly or indirectly the gift is made to the heir or heirs of the body of the said ancestor, these last words have the force of Limitation not of Purchase.
"I have spoken.
CHARLES LAMB."
The last passage was copied probably direct from some law book of Burney's, and is unintelligible except to students of law-Latin.]
477. CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE
Edmonton, Feb. 2, 1829.
Dear Cowden,--Your books are as the gushing of streams in a desert. By the way, you have sent no autobiographies. Your letter seems to imply you had. Nor do I want any. Cowden, they are of the books which I give away. What damn'd Unitarian skewer-soul'd things the general biographies turn out. Rank and Talent you shall have when Mrs. May has done with 'em. Mary likes Mrs. Bedinfield much. For me I read nothing but Astrea--it has turn'd my brain--I go about with a switch turn'd up at the end for a crook; and Lambs being too old, the butcher tells me, my cat follows me in a green ribband. Becky and her cousin are getting pastoral dresses, and then we shall all four go about Arcadizing. O cruel Shepherdess! Inconstant yet fair, and more inconstant for being fair! Her gold ringlets fell in a disorder superior to order!
Come and join us.
I am called the Black Shepherd--you shall be Cowden with the Tuft.
Prosaically, we shall be glad to have you both,--or any two of you--drop in by surprise some Saturday night. This must go off.
Loves to Vittoria. C.L.
["Rank and Talent"-a novel by W.P. Scargill, 1829.
Mrs. Bedinfield wrote Longhollow: a Country Tale, 1829.
"Astrea." Probably the romance by Honoré D'Urfé.
"Cowden with the Tuft." So called from his hair, and from Riquet with the Tuft, the fairy tale. We read in the Cowden Clarkes' Recollections of Writers: "The latter name ('Cowden with the Tuft') slyly implies the smooth baldness with scant curly hair distinguishing the head of the friend addressed, and which seemed to strike Charles Lamb so forcibly, that one evening, after gazing at it for some time, he suddenly broke forth with the exclamation, ''Gad, Clarke! what whiskers you have behind your head!'"]
478. CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[P.M. February 27, 1829.]
Dear R.--Expectation was alert on the receit of your strange-shaped present, while yet undisclosed from its fuse envelope. Some said,'tis a viol da Gamba, others pronounced it a fiddle. I myself hoped it a Liquer case pregnant with Eau de Vie and such odd Nectar. When midwifed into daylight, the gossips were at loss to pronounce upon its species. Most took it for a marrow spoon, an apple scoop, a banker's guinea shovel. At length its true scope appeared, its drift-- to save the backbone of my sister stooping to scuttles. A philanthropic intent, borrowed no doubt from some of the Colliers. You save people's backs one way, and break 'em again by loads of obligation. The spectacles are delicate and Vulcanian. No lighter texture than their steel did the cuckoldy blacksmith frame to catch Mrs. Vulcan and the Captain in. For ungalled forehead, as for back unbursten, you have Mary's thanks. Marry, for my own peculium of obligation, 'twas supererogatory. A second part of Pamela was enough in conscience. Two Pamelas in a house is too much without two Mr. B.'s to reward 'em.
Mary, who is handselling her new aerial perspectives upon a pair of old worsted stockings trod out in Cheshunt lanes, sends love. I, great good liking. Bid us a personal farewell before you see the Vatican.
Chas. Lamb, Enfield.
[Crabb Robinson, just starting for Rome, had sent Lamb a copy of Pamela under the impression that he had borrowed one.
"Two Mr. B.'s." In Richardson's novel Pamela marries the young Squire B. and reforms him.]
479. CHARLES LAMB TO SAMUEL ROGERS
Chase, Enfield: 22nd Mar., 1829.
My dear Sir,--I have but lately learned, by letter from Mr. Moxon, the death of your brother. For the little I had seen of him, I greatly respected him. I do not even know how recent your loss may have been, and hope that I do not unseasonably present you with a few lines suggested to me this morning by the thought of him. I beg to be most kindly remembered to your remaining brother, and to Miss Rogers.
Your's truly, CHARLES LAMB.
Rogers, of all the men that I have known But slightly, who have died, your brother's loss Touched me most sensibly. There came across My mind an image of the cordial tone Of your fraternal meetings, where a guest I more than once have sate; and grieve to think, That of that threefold cord one precious link By Death's rude hand is sever'd from the rest. Of our old gentry he appear'd a stem; A magistrate who, while the evil-doer He kept in terror, could respect the poor, And not for every trifle harass them-- As some, divine and laic, too oft do. This man's a private loss and public too.
[Daniel Rogers, the banker's elder brother, had just died.]
480. CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. March 25, 1829.]
Dear B.B.--I send you by desire Barley's very poetical poem. You will like, I think, the novel headings of each scene. Scenical directions in verse are novelties. With it I send a few duplicates, which are therefore no value to me, and may amuse an idle hour. Read "Christmas," 'tis the production of a young author, who reads all your writings. A good word from you about his little book would be as balm to him. It has no pretensions, and makes none. But parts are pretty. In "Field's Appendix" turn to a Poem called the Kangaroo. It is in the best way of our old poets, if I mistake not. I have just come from Town, where I have been to get my bit of quarterly pension. And have brought home, from stalls in Barbican, the old Pilgrim's Progress with the prints--Vanity Fair, &c.--now scarce. Four shillings. Cheap. And also one of whom I have oft heard and had dreams, but never saw in the flesh--that is, in sheepskin--The whole theologic works of--
THOMAS AQUINAS!
My arms aked with lugging it a mile to the stage, but the burden was a pleasure, such as old Anchises was to the shoulders of Aeneas--or the Lady to the Lover in old romance, who having to carry her to the top of a high mountain--the price of obtaining her--clamber'd with her to the top, and fell dead with fatigue.
O the glorious old Schoolmen!
There must be something in him. Such great names imply greatness. Who hath seen Michael Angelo's things--of us that never pilgrimaged to Rome--and yet which of us disbelieves his greatness. How I will revel in his cobwebs and subtleties, till my brain spins!
N.B. I have writ in the old Hamlet, offer it to Mitford in my name, if he have not seen it. Tis woefully below our editions of it. But keep it, if you like. (What is M. to me?)
I do not mean this to go for a letter, only to apprize you, that the parcel is booked for you this 25 March 1829 from the Four Swans Bishopsgate.
With both our loves to Lucy and A.K. Yours Ever
C.L.
["Darley's... poem"--Sylvia; or, The May Queen, by George Darley.
"Christmas"--a poem by Edward Moxon, dedicated to Lamb.
"Field's Appendix"--Geographical Memoirs on New South Wales, edited by Barron Field, with his First-Fruits of Australian Poetry as Appendix.
The old romance, Dr. Paget Toynbee points out, is Les Dous Amanz of Marie of France, which Lamb had read in Miss Betham's metrical translation, The Lay of Marie.]
481. CHARLES LAMB TO MISS SARAH JAMES
[No date. ? April, 1829.]
We have just got your letter. I think Mother Reynolds will go on quietly, Mrs. Scrimpshaw having kittened. The name of the late Laureat was Henry James Pye, and when his 1st Birthday Ode came out, which was very poor, somebody being asked his opinion of it, said:--
And when the Pye was open'd The birds began to sing, And was not this a dainty dish To set before the King!
Pye was brother to old Major Pye, and father to Mrs. Arnold, and uncle to a General Pye, all friends of Miss Kelly. Pye succeeded Thos. Warton, Warton succeeded Wm. Whitehead, Whitehead succeeded Colley Cibber, Cibber succeeded Eusden, Eusden succeeded Thos. Shadwell, Shadwell succeeded Dryden, Dryden succeeded Davenant, Davenant God knows whom. There never was a Rogers a Poet Laureat; there is an old living Poet of that name, a Banker as you know, Author of the "Pleasures of Memory," where Moxon goes to breakfast in a fine house in the green Park, but he was never Laureat. Southey is the present one, and for anything I know or care, Moxon may succeed him. We have a copy of "Xmas" for you, so you may give your own to Mary as soon as you please. We think you need not have exhibited your mountain shyness before M.B. He is neither shy himself, nor patronizes it in others.--So with many thanks, good-bye. Emma comes on Thursday. C.L.
The Poet Laureat, whom Davenant succeeded was Rare 'Ben Jonson,' who I believe was the first regular Laureat with the appointment of £100 a year and a Butt of Sack or Canary--so add that to my little list.--C.L.
[Mr. Macdonald dates this letter December 31, 1828, perhaps rightly. I have dated it at a venture April, 1829, because Moxon's Christmas was published in March of that year. It is the only letter to Mary Lamb's nurse, Miss James, that exists. Mrs. Reynolds was Lamb's aged pensioner, whom we have met. Pye died in 1813 and was succeeded by Southey. The author of the witticism on his first ode was George Steevens, the critic. The comment gained point from the circumstance that Pye had drawn largely on images from bird life in his verses.]
482. CHARLES LAMB TO H. CRABB ROBINSON
[P.M. April ? 1829.]
Dear Robinson, we are afraid you will slip from us from England without again seeing us. It would be charity to come and see me. I have these three days been laid up with strong rheumatic pains, in loins, back, shoulders. I shriek sometimes from the violence of them. I get scarce any sleep, and the consequence is, I am restless, and want to change sides as I lie, and I cannot turn without resting on my hands, and so turning all my body all at once like a log with a lever. While this rainy weather lasts, I have no hope of alleviation. I have tried flannels and embrocation in vain. Just at the hip joint the pangs sometimes are so excruciating, that I cry out. It is as violent as the cramp, and far more continuous. I am ashamed to whine about these complaints to you, who can ill enter into them. But indeed they are sharp. You go about, in rain or fine at all hours without discommodity. I envy you your immunity at a time of life not much removed from my own. But you owe your exemption to temperance, which it is too late for me to pursue. I in my life time have had my good things. Hence my frame is brittle--yours strong as brass. I never knew any ailment you had. You can go out at night in all weathers, sit up all hours. Well, I don't want to moralise. I only wish to say that if you are enclined to a game at Doubly Dumby, I would try and bolster up myself in a chair for a rubber or so. My days are tedious, but less so and less painful than my nights. May you never know the pain and difficulty I have in writing so much. Mary, who is most kind, joins in the wish.
C. LAMB.
483. CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[P.M. April 17, 1829.]
I do confess to mischief. It was the subtlest diabolical piece of malice, heart of man has contrived. I have no more rheumatism than that poker. Never was freer from all pains and aches. Every joint sound, to the tip of the ear from the extremity of the lesser toe. The report of thy torments was blown circuitously here from Bury. I could not resist the jeer. I conceived you writhing, when you should just receive my congratulations. How mad you'd be. Well, it is not in my method to inflict pangs. I leave that to heaven. But in the existing pangs of a friend, I have a share. His disquietude crowns my exemption. I imagine you howling, and pace across the room, shooting out my free arms legs &c.
this way and that way, with an assurance of not kindling a spark of pain from them. I deny that Nature meant us to sympathise with agonies. Those face-contortions, retortions, distortions, have the merriness of antics. Nature meant them for farce--not so pleasant to the actor indeed, but Grimaldi cries when we laugh, and 'tis but one that suffers to make thousands rejoyce.
You say that Shampooing is ineffectual. But per se it is good, to show the introv[ol]utions, extravolutions, of which the animal frame is capable. To show what the creature is receptible of, short of dissolution.
You are worst of nights, a'nt you?
Twill be as good as a Sermon to you to lie abed all this night, and meditate the subject of the day. 'Tis Good Friday. How appropriate!
Think when but your little finger pains you, what endured to white-wash you and the rest of us.
Nobody will be the more justified for your endurance. You won't save the soul of a mouse. 'Tis a pure selfish pleasure.
You never was rack'd, was you? I should like an authentic map of those feelings.
You seem to have the flying gout.
You can scarcely scrue a smile out of your face--can you? I sit at immunity, and sneer ad libitum.
'Tis now the time for you to make good resolutions. I may go on breaking 'em, for any thing the worse I find myself.
Your Doctor seems to keep you on the long cure. Precipitate healings are never good.
Don't come while you are so bad. I shan't be able to attend to your throes and the dumbee at once.
I should like to know how slowly the pain goes off. But don't write, unless the motion will be likely to make your sensibility more exquisite.
Your affectionate and truly healthy friend C. LAMB.
Mary thought a Letter from me might amuse you in your torment--
[Robinson was the victim of a sudden attack of acute rheumatism. He had a course of Turkish baths at Brighton to cure him.]
484. CHARLES LAMB TO GEORGE DYER
Enfield, April 29, 1829.
Dear Dyer--As well as a bad pen can do it, I must thank you for your friendly attention to the wishes of our young friend Emma, who was packing up for Bury when your sonnet arrived, and was too hurried to express her sense of its merits. I know she will treasure up that and your second communication among her choicest rarities, as from her grandfather's friend, whom not having seen, she loves to hear talked of. The second letter shall be sent after her, with our first parcel to Suffolk, where she is, to us, alas dead and Bury'd; we solely miss her. Should you at any hour think of four or six lines, to send her, addressed to herself simply, naming her grandsire, and to wish she may pass through life as much respected, with your own G. Dyer at the end, she would feel rich indeed, for the nature of an Album asks for verses that have not been in print before; but this quite at your convenience: and to be less trouble to yourself, four lines would be sufficient. Enfield has come out in summer beauty. Come when you will and we will give you a bed. Emma has left hers, you know. I remain, my dear Dyer, your affectionate friend,
CHARLES LAMB.
[From The Mirror, 1841. Lamb made the same pun--Bury'd--to George Dyer in his letter of December 5, 1808. His Album verses for Miss Isola I have not seen.]
485. CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOOD
[No date. ? May, 1829.]
Dear Hood,--We will look out for you on Wednesday, be sure, tho' we have not eyes like Emma, who, when I made her sit with her back to the window to keep her to her Latin, literally saw round backwards every one that past, and, O, [that] she were here to jump up and shriek out "There are the Hoods!" We have had two pretty letters from her, which I long to show you--together with Enfield in her May beauty.
Loves to Jane.
[Here follow rough caricatures of Charles and his sister, and] "I can't draw no better."
[I have dated this letter May, 1829, because Miss Isola had just gone to Fornham, in Suffolk, whence presumably the two letters had come.]
486. CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date.]
Calamy is good reading. Mary is always thankful for Books in her way. I won't trouble you for any in my way yet, having enough to read. Young Hazlitt lives, at least his father does, at 3 or 36 [36 I have it down, with the 6 scratch'd out] Bouverie Street, Fleet Street. If not to be found, his mother's address is, Mrs. Hazlitt, Mrs. Tomlinson's, Potters Bar. At one or other he must be heard of. We shall expect you with the full moon. Meantime, our thanks.
C.L.
We go on very quietly &c.
["Calamy" would be Edmund Calamy (1671-1732), the historian of Nonconformity.
Mr. W.C. Hazlitt in his Memoir of Hazlitt says that his grandfather moved in 1829 to 3 Bouverie Street, and in the beginning of 1830 to 6 Frith Street, Soho. Young Hazlitt was William junior, afterwards Mr. Registrar Hazlitt and then seventeen years of age.]
487. CHARLES LAMB TO WALTER WILSON
May 28, 1829.
Dear W.,--Introduce this, or omit it, as you like. I think I wrote better about it in a letter to you from India H. If you have that, perhaps out of the two I could patch up a better thing, if you'd return both. But I am very poorly, and have been harassed with an illness of my sister's.
The Ode was printed in the "New Times" nearly the end of 1825, and I have only omitted some silly lines. Call it a corrected copy.
Yours ever, C. LAMB.
Put my name to either or both, as you like.
[This letter contains Lamb's remarks on the Secondary Novels of Defoe, printed in Wilson's Life and Times of De Foe, Chapter XVII. of Vol. III., and also his "Ode to the Treadmill," which Wilson omitted from that work. See Vols. I. and IV. of the present edition for both pieces.]
488. CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. June 3, 1829.]
Dear B.B.--I am very much grieved indeed for the indisposition of poor Lucy. Your letter found me in domestic troubles. My sister is again taken ill, and I am obliged to remove her out of the house for many weeks, I fear, before I can hope to have her again. I have been very desolate indeed. My loneliness is a little abated by our young friend Emma having just come here for her holydays, and a schoolfellow of hers that was, with her. Still the house is not the same, tho' she is the same. Mary had been pleasing herself with the prospect of seeing her at this time; and with all their company, the house feels at times a frightful solitude. May you and I in no very long time have a more cheerful theme to write about, and congratulate upon a daughter's and a Sister's perfect recovery. Do not be long without telling me how Lucy goes on. I have a right to call her by her quaker-name, you know.
Emma knows that I am writing to you, and begs to be remembered to you with thankfulness for your ready contribution. Her album is filling apace. But of her contributors one, almost the flower of it, a most amiable young man and late acquaintance of mine, has been carried off by consumption, on return from one of the Azores islands, to which he went with hopes of mastering the disease, came back improved, went back to a most close and confined counting house, and relapsed. His name was Dibdin, Grandson of the Songster. You will be glad to hear that Emma, tho' unknown to you, has given the highest satisfaction in her little place of Governante in a Clergyman's family, which you may believe by the Parson and his Lady drinking poor Mary's health on her birthday, tho' they never saw her, merely because she was a friend of Emma's, and the Vicar also sent me a brace of partridges. To get out of home themes, have you seen Southey's Dialogues? His lake descriptions, and the account of his Library at Keswick, are very fine. But he needed not have called up the Ghost of More to hold the conversations with, which might as well have pass'd between A and B, or Caius and Lucius. It is making too free with a defunct Chancellor and Martyr.
I feel as if I had nothing farther to write about--O! I forget the prettiest letter I ever read, that I have received from "Pleasures of Memory" Rogers, in acknowledgment of a Sonnet I sent him on the Loss of his Brother. It is too long to transcribe, but I hope to shew it you some day, as I hope sometime again to see you, when all of us are well. Only it ends thus "We were nearly of an age (he was the elder). He was the only person in the world in whose eyes I always appeared young."--
I will now take my leave with assuring you that I am most interested in hoping to hear favorable accounts from you.--
With kindest regards to A.K. and you
Yours truly, C.L.
["Lucy"--Lucy Barton.
"Your ready contribution." I do not find that Barton ever printed his lines for Emma Isola's album.
"Dibdin"-John Bates Dibdin died in May, 1828.
Southey's Sir Thomas More; or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, had just been published.
This was Rogers' letter:--
Many, many thanks. The verses are beautiful. I need not say with what feelings they were read. Pray accept the grateful acknowledgments of us all, and believe me when I say that nothing could have been a greater cordial to us in our affliction than such a testimony from such a quarter. He was --for none knew him so well--we were born within a year or two of each other--a man of a very high mind, and with less disguise than perhaps any that ever lived. Whatever he was, that we saw. He stood before his fellow beings (if I may be forgiven for saying so) almost as before his Maker: and God grant that we may all bear as severe an examination. He was an admirable scholar. His Dante and his Homer were as familiar to him as his Alphabets: and he had the tenderest heart. When a flock of turkies was stolen from his farm, the indignation of the poor far and wide was great and loud. To me he is the greatest loss, for we were nearly of an age; and there is now no human being alive in whose eyes I have always been young.
Under the date June 10, 1829, Mr. Macdonald prints a note from Lamb to Ayrton, which states that he has two young friends in the house. Here, therefore, I think, should come a letter from Lamb to William Hazlitt, Junior, in which Lamb says that he cannot see Mrs. Hazlitt this time. He adds that the ladies are very pleasant. Emma Isola adds a letter which tells us that the ladies are herself and her friend Maria. This would be the Maria of Lamb's sonnet "Harmony in Unlikeness," evidently written at this time (see Vol. IV.).]
489. CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
Enfield Chase Side
Saturday 25 July A.D. 1829.--11 A.M.
There--a fuller plumper juiceier date never dropt from Idumean palm. Am I in the dateive case now? if not, a fig for dates, which is more than a date is worth. I never stood much affected to these limitary specialities. Least of all since the date of my superannuation.
What have I with Time to do? } Dear B.B.--Your hand writing has Slaves of desks, twas meant for you.} conveyed much pleasure to me
in report of Lucy's restoration. Would I could send you as good news of my poor Lucy. But some wearisome weeks I must remain lonely yet. I have had the loneliest time near 10 weeks, broken by a short apparition of Emma for her holydays, whose departure only deepend the returning solitude, and by 10 days I have past in Town. But Town, with all my native hankering after it, is not what it was. The streets, the shops are left, but all old friends are gone. And in London I was frightfully convinced of this as I past houses and places--empty caskets now. I have ceased to care almost about any body. The bodies I cared for are in graves, or dispersed. My old Clubs, that lived so long and flourish'd so steadily, are crumbled away. When I took leave of our adopted young friend at Charing Cross, 'twas heavy unfeeling rain, and I had no where to go. Home have I none--and not a sympathising house to turn to in the great city. Never did the waters of the heaven pour down on a forlorner head. Yet I tried 10 days at a sort of a friend's house, but it was large and straggling--one of the individuals of my old long knot of friends, card players, pleasant companions--that have tumbled to pieces into dust and other things--and I got home on Thursday, convinced that I was better to get home to my hole at Enfield, and hide like a sick cat in my corner. Less than a month I hope will bring home Mary. She is at Fulham, looking better in her health than ever, but sadly rambling, and scarce showing any pleasure in seeing me, or curiosity when I should come again. But the old feelings will come back again, and we shall drown old sorrows over a game at Picquet again. But 'tis a tedious cut out of a life of sixty four, to lose twelve or thirteen weeks every year or two. And to make me more alone, our illtemperd maid is gone, who with all her airs, was yet a home piece of furniture, a record of better days; the young thing that has succeeded her is good and attentive, but she is nothing--and I have no one here to talk over old matters with. Scolding and quarreling have something of familiarity and a community of interest--they imply acquaintance--they are of resentment, which is of the family of dearness. I can neither scold nor quarrel at this insignificant implement of household services; she is less than a cat, and just better than a deal Dresser. What I can do, and do overdo, is to walk, but deadly long are the days--these summer all-day days, with but a half hour's candlelight and no firelight. I do not write, tell your kind inquisitive Eliza, and can hardly read. In the ensuing Blackwood will be an old rejected farce of mine, which may be new to you, if you see that same dull Medley. What things are all the Magazines now! I contrive studiously not to see them. The popular New Monthly is perfect trash. Poor Hessey, I suppose you see, has failed. Hunt and Clarke too. Your "Vulgar truths" will be a good name--and I think your prose must please--me at least--but 'tis useless to write poetry with no purchasers. 'Tis cold work Authorship without something to puff one into fashion. Could you not write something on Quakerism--for Quakers to read--but nominally addrest to Non Quakers? explaining your dogmas--waiting on the Spirit--by the analogy of human calmness and patient waiting on the judgment? I scarcely know what I mean, but to make Non Quakers reconciled to your doctrines, by shewing something like them in mere human operations--but I hardly understand myself, so let it pass for nothing. I pity you for over-work, but I assure you no-work is worse. The mind preys on itself, the most unwholesome food. I brag'd formerly that I could not have too much time. I have a surfeit. With few years to come, the days are wearisome. But weariness is not eternal. Something will shine out to take the load off, that flags me, which is at present intolerable. I have killed an hour or two in this poor scrawl. I am a sanguinary murderer of time, and would kill him inchmeal just now. But the snake is vital. Well, I shall write merrier anon.--'Tis the present copy of my countenance I send--and to complain is a little to alleviate.--May you enjoy yourself as far as the wicked wood will let you--and think that you are not quite alone, as I am. Health to Lucia and to Anna and kind rememb'ces.
Yours forlorn.
C.L.
["Out of a life of sixty-four." Mary Lamb was born December 3, 1764.
"Your kind ... Eliza"--Eliza Barton, Bernard's sister.
"Rejected farce." "The Pawnbroker's Daughter" was printed in Blackwood, January, 1830.
"I brag'd formerly." Referring I think to his sonnet "Leisure."]
490. CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[No date. Late July, 1829.]
My dear Allsop--I thank you for thinking of my recreation. But I am best here, I feel I am. I have tried town lately, but came back worse. Here I must wait till my loneliness has its natural cure. Besides that, though I am not very sanguine, yet I live in hopes of better news from Fulham, and can not be out of the way. 'Tis ten weeks to-morrow.--I saw Mary a week since, she was in excellent bodily health, but otherwise far from well. But a week or so may give a turn. Love to Mrs. A. and children, and fair weather accomp'y you.
C.L.
Tuesday.
491. CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[P.M. Sept. 22, 1829.]
Dear Moxon, If you can oblige me with the Garrick Papers or Ann of Gierstien, I shall be thankful. I am almost fearful whether my Sister will be able to enjoy any reading at present for since her coming home, after 12 weeks, she has had an unusual relapse into the saddest low spirits that ever poor creature had, and has been some weeks under medical care. She is unable to see any yet. When she is better I shall be very glad to talk over your ramble with you. Have you done any sonnets, can you send me any to overlook? I am almost in despair, Mary's case seems so hopeless.
Believe me
Yours
C.L.
I do not want Mr. Jameson or Lady Morgan.
Enfield
Wedn'y
["The Garrick Papers." Lamb refers, I suppose, to the Private Correspondence of David Garrick, in some form previous to its publication in 1832.
"Anne of Geierstein." Scott's novel was published this year.
"Mr. Jameson." I cannot find any book by a Mr. Jameson likely to have been offered to Lamb; but Mrs. Jameson's Loves of the Poets was published this year. Probably he meant to write Mrs. Jameson. Lady Morgan was the author of The Wild Irish Girl and other novels. Her 1829 book was The Book of the Boudoir.]
492. CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN
Chase-Side, Enfield, 26th Oct., 1829.
Dear Gillman,--Allsop brought me your kind message yesterday. How can I account for having not visited Highgate this long time? Change of place seemed to have changed me. How grieved I was to hear in what indifferent health Coleridge has been, and I not to know of it! A little school divinity, well applied, may be healing. I send him honest Tom of Aquin; that was always an obscure great idea to me: I never thought or dreamed to see him in the flesh, but t'other day I rescued him from a stall in Barbican, and brought him off in triumph. He comes to greet Coleridge's acceptance, for his shoe-latchets I am unworthy to unloose. Yet there are pretty pro's and con's, and such unsatisfactory learning in him. Commend me to the question of etiquette-- "utrum annunciatio debuerit fieri per angelum"--Quaest. 30, Articilus 2. I protest, till now I had thought Gabriel a fellow of some mark and livelihood, not a simple esquire, as I find him. Well, do not break your lay brains, nor I neither, with these curious nothings. They are nuts to our dear friend, whom hoping to see at your first friendly hint that it will be convenient, I end with begging our very kindest loves to Mrs. Gillman. We have had a sorry house of it here. Our spirits have been reduced till we were at hope's end what to do-- obliged to quit this house, and afraid to engage another, till in extremity I took the desperate resolve of kicking house and all down, like Bunyan's pack; and here we are in a new life at board and lodging, with an honest couple our neighbours. We have ridded ourselves of the cares of dirty acres; and the change, though of less than a week, has had the most beneficial effects on Mary already. She looks two years and a half younger for it. But we have had sore trials.
God send us one happy meeting!--Yours faithfully,
C. LAMB.
["The question of etiquette." See the Summa Theologies, Pars Tertia, Quest. XXX., Articulus II. It would be interesting to know whether Lamb remembered an earlier letter in which he had set Coleridge some similar "nuts."
"In a new life." The Lambs moved next door, to the Westwoods. The house, altered externally, still stands (1912) and is known as "Westwood Cottage."]
493. CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
[P.M. Probably Nov. 10, 1829.]
Dear FUGUE-IST,
or hear'st thou rather
CONTRAPUNTIST--?
We expect you four (as many as the Table will hold without squeeging) at Mrs. Westwood's Table D'Hote on Thursday. You will find the White House shut up, and us moved under the wing of the Phoenix, which gives us friendly refuge. Beds for guests, marry, we have none, but cleanly accomodings at the Crown & Horseshoe.
Yours harmonically,
C.L.
[Addressed: Vincentio (what Ho!) Novello, a Squire, 66, Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields.]
["The Phoenix." Mr. Westwood was agent for the Phoenix Insurance Company, and the badge of that office was probably on the house.]
494. CHARLES LAMB TO WALTER WILSON
Enfield, 15th November, 1829.
My dear Wilson,--I have not opened a packet of unknown contents for many years, that gave me so much pleasure as when I disclosed your three volumes. I have given them a careful perusal, and they have taken their degree of classical books upon my shelves. De Foe was always my darling; but what darkness was I in as to far the larger part of his writings! I have now an epitome of them all. I think the way in which you have done the "Life" the most judicious you could have pitched upon. You have made him tell his own story, and your comments are in keeping with the tale. Why, I never heard of such a work as "the Review." Strange that in my stall-hunting days I never so much as lit upon an odd volume of it. This circumstance looks as if they were never of any great circulation. But I may have met with 'em, and not knowing the prize, overpast 'em. I was almost a stranger to the whole history of Dissenters in those reigns, and picked my way through that strange book the "Consolidator" at random. How affecting are some of his personal appeals! what a machine of projects he set on foot! and following writers have picked his pocket of the patents. I do not understand where-abouts in Roxana he himself left off. I always thought the complete-tourist-sort of description of the town she passes through on her last embarkation miserably unseasonable and out of place. I knew not they were spurious. Enlighten me as to where the apocryphal matter commences. I, by accident, can correct one A.D. "Family Instructor," vol. ii. 1718; you say his first volume had then reached the fourth edition; now I have a fifth, printed for Eman. Matthews, 1717. So have I plucked one rotten date, or rather picked it up where it had inadvertently fallen, from your flourishing date tree, the Palm of Engaddi. I may take it for my pains. I think yours a book which every public library must have, and every English scholar should have. I am sure it has enriched my meagre stock of the author's works. I seem to be twice as opulent. Mary is by my side just finishing the second volume. It must have interest to divert her away so long from her modern novels. Colburn will be quite jealous. I was a little disappointed at my "Ode to the Treadmill" not finding a place; but it came out of time. The two papers of mine will puzzle the reader, being so akin. Odd that, never keeping a scrap of my own letters, with some fifteen years' interval I should nearly have said the same things. But I shall always feel happy in having my name go down any how with De Foe's, and that of his historiographer. I promise myself, if not immortality, yet diuternity of being read in consequence. We have both had much illness this year; and feeling infirmities and fretfulness grow upon us, we have cast off the cares of housekeeping, sold off our goods, and commenced boarding and lodging with a very comfortable old couple next door to where you found us. We use a sort of common table. Nevertheless, we have reserved a private one for an old friend; and when Mrs. Wilson and you revisit Babylon, we shall pray you to make it yours for a season. Our very kindest remembrances to you both. From your old friend and fellow-journalist, now in two instances,
C. LAMB.
Hazlitt is going to make your book a basis for a review of De Foe's Novels in the "Edinbro'." I wish I had health and spirits to do it. Hone I have not seen, but I doubt not he will be much pleased with your performance. I very much hope you will give us an account of Dunton, &c. But what I should more like to see would be a Life and Times of Bunyan. Wishing health to you and long life to your healthy book, again I subscribe me,
Yours in verity,
C.L.
[Wilson's Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel De Foe had just been published in three volumes, with the date 1830.
Defoe's Review was started in February, 1704, under the title, A Review of the Affairs of France.... purged from the Errors and Partiality of News-writers, and Petty-Statesmen, of all sides. It continued until May, 1713. The Consolidator; or, Memoirs of sundry Transactions from the world in the moon. Translated from the Lunar Language, was published in 1765, a political satire, which, it has been thought, gave hints to Swift for Gulliver.
Lamb had sent Wilson his "Ode to the Treadmill." The substance of his letter of December 16, 1822, was printed by Wilson in Chapter XXII. of Vol. III.; the new material which he wrote especially for the book, was printed in Chapter XVII. of the same volume. The space dividing them was not fifteen years but seven.
"Diuternity." Spelt "diuturnity." A rare word signifying long duration.
"Fellow-journalist." The other instance would be in connection with the journals of the India House, where Wilson had once been a clerk with Lamb.
Hazlitt's review of Wilson's book is in the Edinburgh for January, 1830, with this reference to Lamb's criticisms: "Captain Singleton is a hardened, brutal desperado, without one redeeming trait, or almost human feeling; and, in spite of what Mr. Lamb says of his lonely musings and agonies of a conscience-stricken repentance, we find nothing of this in the text."
"Dunton." This would be John Dunton (1659-1733), the bookseller, and author of The Athenian Gazette, Dunton's Whipping-Post, and scores of pamphlets and satires.]
Letter 495
(? Fragment)
CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN
[No date. ? November 29, 1829.]
Pray trust me with the "Church History," as well as the "Worthies." A moon shall restore both. Also give me back Him of Aquinum. In return you have the light of my countenance. Adieu.
P.S.--A sister also of mine comes with it. A son of Nimshi drives her. Their driving will have been furious, impassioned. Pray God they have not toppled over the tunnel! I promise you I fear their steed, bred out of the wind without father, semi-Melchisedecish, hot, phaetontic. From my country lodgings at Enfield.
C.L.
[The Church History and the Worthies are by Fuller.
"Light of my countenance." Mr. Hazlitt says that this was a copy of Brook Pulham's etching.
"The tunnel"--the Highgate Archway.]
496. CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN
30 Nov., 1829.
Dear G.,--The excursionists reached home, and the good town of Enfield a little after four, without slip or dislocation. Little has transpired concerning the events of the back-journey, save that on passing the house of 'Squire Mellish, situate a stone-bow's cast from the hamlet, Father Westwood, with a good-natured wonderment, exclaimed, "I cannot think what is gone of Mr. Mellish's rooks. I fancy they have taken flight somewhere; but I have missed them two or three years past." All this while, according to his fellow-traveller's report, the rookery was darkening the air above with undiminished population, and deafening all ears but his with their cawings. But nature has been gently withdrawing such phenomena from the notice of Thomas Westwood's senses, from the time he began to miss the rooks. T. Westwood has passed a retired life in this hamlet of thirty or forty years, living upon the minimum which is consistent with gentility, yet a star among the minor gentry, receiving the bows of the tradespeople and courtesies of the alms' women daily. Children venerate him not less for his external show of gentry, than they wonder at him for a gentle rising endorsation of the person, not amounting to a hump, or if a hump, innocuous as the hump of the buffalo, and coronative of as mild qualities. 'Tis a throne on which patience seems to sit--the proud perch of a self-respecting humility, stooping with condescension. Thereupon the cares of life have sate, and rid him easily. For he has thrid the angustiae domûs with dexterity. Life opened upon him with comparative brilliancy. He set out as a rider or traveller for a wholesale house, in which capacity he tells of many hair-breadth escapes that befell him; one especially, how he rode a mad horse into the town of Devizes; how horse and rider arrived in a foam, to the utter consternation of the expostulating hostlers, inn-keepers, &c. It seems it was sultry weather, piping hot; the steed tormented into frenzy with gad-flies, long past being roadworthy; but safety and the interest of the house he rode for were incompatible things; a fall in serge cloth was expected; and a mad entrance they made of it. Whether the exploit was purely voluntary, or partially; or whether a certain personal defiguration in the man part of this extraordinary centaur (non-assistive to partition of natures) might not enforce the conjunction, I stand not to inquire. I look not with 'skew eyes into the deeds of heroes. The hosier that was burnt with his shop, in Field-lane, on Tuesday night, shall have past to heaven for me like a Marian Martyr, provided always, that he consecrated the fortuitous incremation with a short ejaculation in the exit, as much as if he had taken his state degrees of martyrdom in formâ in the market vicinage. There is adoptive as well as acquisitive sacrifice. Be the animus what it might, the fact is indisputable, that this composition was seen flying all abroad, and mine host of Daintry may yet remember its passing through his town, if his scores are not more faithful than his memory. After this exploit (enough for one man), Thomas Westwood seems to have subsided into a less hazardous occupation; and in the twenty-fifth year of his age we find him a haberdasher in Bow Lane: yet still retentive of his early riding (though leaving it to rawer stomachs), and Christmasly at night sithence to this last, and shall to his latest Christmas, hath he, doth he, and shall he, tell after supper the story of the insane steed and the desperate rider. Save for Bedlam or Luke's no eye could have guessed that melting day what house he rid for. But he reposes on his bridles, and after the ups and downs (metaphoric only) of a life behind the counter--hard riding sometimes, I fear, for poor T.W.--with the scrapings together of the shop, and one anecdote, he hath finally settled at Enfield; by hard economising, gardening, building for himself, hath reared a mansion, married a daughter, qualified a son for a counting-house, gotten the respect of high and low, served for self or substitute the greater parish offices: hath a special voice at vestries; and, domiciliating us, hath reflected a portion of his house-keeping respectability upon your humble servants. We are greater, being his lodgers, than when we were substantial renters. His name is a passport to take off the sneers of the native Enfielders against obnoxious foreigners. We are endenizened. Thus much of T. Westwood have I thought fit to acquaint you, that you may see the exemplary reliance upon Providence with which I entrusted so dear a charge as my own sister to the guidance of a man that rode the mad horse into Devizes. To come from his heroic character, all the amiable qualities of domestic life concentre in this tamed Bellerophon. He is excellent over a glass of grog; just as pleasant without it; laughs when he hears a joke, and when (which is much oftener) he hears it not; sings glorious old sea songs on festival nights; and but upon a slight acquaintance of two years, Coleridge, is as dear a deaf old man to us, as old Norris, rest his soul! was after fifty. To him and his scanty literature (what there is of it, sound) have we flown from the metropolis and its cursed annualists, reviewers, authors, and the whole muddy ink press of that stagnant pool.
Now, Gillman again, you do not know the treasure of the Fullers. I calculate on having massy reading till Christmas. All I want here, is books of the true sort, not those things in boards that moderns mistake for books--what they club for at book clubs.
I did not mean to cheat you with a blank side; but my eye smarts, for which I am taking medicine, and abstain, this day at least, from any aliments but milk-porridge, the innocent taste of which I am anxious to renew after a half-century's dis-acquaintance. If a blot fall here like a tear, it is not pathos, but an angry eye.
Farewell, while my specilla are sound.
Yours and yours,
C. LAMB.
[This letter records the safe return of Mary Lamb with the Fullers.
"Squire Mellish." William Mellish, M.P. for Middlesex for some years.
Thomas Westwood's son, for whom Lamb found an appointment, wrote some excellent articles in Notes and Queries many years later describing the Lambs' life at his father's.
"Old Norris." See letter to Crabb Robinson, Jan. 20, 1827.
Specilla is probably a slip for Conspicilla.]
497. CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. December 8, 1829.]
My dear B.B.--You are very good to have been uneasy about us, and I have the satisfaction to tell you, that we are both in better health and spirits than we have been for a year or two past; I may say, than we have been since we have been at Enfield. The cause may not appear quite adequate, when I tell you, that a course of ill health and spirits brought us to the determination of giving up our house here, and we are boarding and lodging with a worthy old couple, long inhabitants of Enfield, where everything is done for us without our trouble, further than a reasonable weekly payment. We should have done so before, but it is not easy to flesh and blood to give up an ancient establishment, to discard old Penates, and from house keepers to turn house-sharers. (N.B. We are not in the Work-house.) Dioclesian in his garden found more repose than on the imperial seat of Rome, and the nob of Charles the Fifth aked seldomer under a monk's cowl than under the diadem. With such shadows of assimilation we countenance our degradation. With such a load of dignifyd cares just removed from our shoulders, we can the more understand and pity the accession to yours, by the advancement to an Assigneeship. I will tell you honestly B.B. that it has been long my deliberate judgment, that all Bankrupts, of what denomination civil or religious whatever, ought to be hang'd. The pity of mankind has for ages run in a wrong channel, and has been diverted from poor Creditors (how many I have known sufferers! Hazlitt has just been defrauded of £100 by his Bookseller-friend's breaking) to scoundrel Debtors. I know all the topics, that distress may come upon an honest man without his fault, that the failure of one that he trusted was his calamity &c. &c. Then let both be hang'd. O how careful it would make traders! These are my deliberate thoughts after many years' experience in matters of trade. What a world of trouble it would save you, if Friend * * * * * had been immediately hangd, without benefit of clergy, which (being a Quaker I presume) he could not reasonably insist upon. Why, after slaving twelve months in your assign-business, you will be enabled to declare seven pence in the Pound in all human probabilty. B.B., he should be hanged. Trade will never re-flourish in this land till such a Law is establish'd. I write big not to save ink but eyes, mine having been troubled with reading thro' three folios of old Fuller in almost as few days, and I went to bed last night in agony, and am writing with a vial of eye water before me, alternately dipping in vial and inkstand. This may enflame my zeal against Bankrupts--but it was my speculation when I could see better. Half the world's misery (Eden else) is owing to want of money, and all that want is owing to Bankrupts. I declare I would, if the State wanted Practitioners, turn Hangman myself, and should have great pleasure in hanging the first after my salutary law should be establish'd. I have seen no annuals and wish to see none. I like your fun upon them, and was quite pleased with Bowles's sonnet. Hood is or was at Brighton, but a note, prose or rhime, to him, Robert Street, Adelphi, I am sure would extract a copy of his, which also I have not seen. Wishing you and yours all Health, I conclude while these frail glasses are to me--eyes.
C.L.
["Dioclesian." The Emperor Diocletian abdicated the throne after twenty-one years' reign, and retired to his garden. Charles V. of Germany imitated the Roman Emperor, and after thirty-six years took the cowl.
"Hazlitt has just been defrauded." The failure of Hunt & Clarke, the publishers of the Life of Napoleon, cost Hazlitt £500. He had received only £140 towards this, in a bill which on their insolvency became worthless.
"Friend * * * * *." Not identifiable.]
498. CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. January 22, 1830.]
And is it a year since we parted from you at the steps of Edmonton Stage? There are not now the years that there used to be. The tale of the dwindled age of men, reported of successional mankind, is true of the same man only. We do not live a year in a year now. 'Tis a punctum stans. The seasons pass us with indifference. Spring cheers not, nor winter heightens our gloom, Autumn hath foregone its moralities, they are hey-pass re-pass [as] in a show-box. Yet as far as last year occurs back, for they scarce shew a reflex now, they make no memory as heretofore--'twas sufficiently gloomy. Let the sullen nothing pass.
Suffice it that after sad spirits prolonged thro' many of its months, as it called them, we have cast our skins, have taken a farewell of the pompous troublesome trifle calld housekeeping, and are settled down into poor boarders and lodgers at next door with an old couple, the Baucis and Baucida of dull Enfield. Here we have nothing to do with our victuals but to eat them, with the garden but to see it grow, with the tax gatherer but to hear him knock, with the maid but to hear her scolded. Scot and lot, butcher, baker, are things unknown to us save as spectators of the pageant. We are fed we know not how, quietists, confiding ravens. We have the otium pro dignitate, a respectable insignificance. Yet in the self condemned obliviousness, in the stagnation, some molesting yearnings of life, not quite kill'd, rise, prompting me that there was a London, and that I was of that old Jerusalem. In dreams I am in Fleetmarket, but I wake and cry to sleep again. I die hard, a stubborn Eloisa in this detestable Paraclete. What have I gained by health? intolerable dulness. What by early hours and moderate meals?--a total blank. O never let the lying poets be believed, who 'tice men from the chearful haunts of streets--or think they mean it not of a country village. In the ruins of Palmyra I could gird myself up to solitude, or muse to the snorings of the Seven Sleepers, but to have a little teazing image of a town about one, country folks that do not look like country folks, shops two yards square, half a dozen apples and two penn'orth of overlookd gingerbread for the lofty fruiterers of Oxford Street--and, for the immortal book and print stalls, a circulating library that stands still, where the shew-picture is a last year's Valentine, and whither the fame of the last ten Scotch novels has not yet travel'd (marry, they just begin to be conscious of the Red Gauntlet), to have a new plasterd flat church, and to be wishing that it was but a Cathedral. The very blackguards here are degenerate. The topping gentry, stock brokers. The passengers too many to ensure your quiet, or let you go about whistling, or gaping--too few to be the fine indifferent pageants of Fleet Street. Confining, room-keeping thickest winter is yet more bearable here than the gaudy months. Among one's books at one's fire by candle one is soothed into an oblivion that one is not in the country, but with the light the green fields return, till I gaze, and in a calenture can plunge myself into Saint Giles's. O let no native Londoner imagine that health, and rest, and innocent occupation, interchange of converse sweet and recreative study, can make the country any thing better than altogether odious and detestable. A garden was the primitive prison till man with promethean felicity and boldness luckily sinn'd himself out of it. Thence followd Babylon, Nineveh, Venice, London, haberdashers, goldsmiths, taverns, playhouses, satires, epigrams, puns--these all came in on the town part, and the thither side of innocence. Man found out inventions.
From my den I return you condolence for your decaying sight, not for any thing there is to see in the country, but for the miss of the pleasure of reading a London newspaper. The poets are as well to listen to, any thing high may, nay must, be read out--you read it to yourself with an imaginary auditor--but the light paragraphs must be glid over by the proper eye, mouthing mumbles their gossamery substance. 'Tis these trifles I should mourn in fading sight. A newspaper is the single gleam of comfort I receive here, it comes from rich Cathay with tidings of mankind. Yet I could not attend to it read out by the most beloved voice. But your eyes do not get worse, I gather. O for the collyrium of Tobias inclosed in a whiting's liver to send you with no apocryphal good wishes! The last long time I heard from you, you had knock'd your head against something. Do not do so. For your head (I do not flatter) is not a nob, or the top of a brass nail, or the end of a nine pin--unless a Vulcanian hammer could fairly batter a Recluse out of it, then would I bid the smirch'd god knock and knock lustily, the two-handed skinker. What a nice long letter Dorothy has written! Mary must squeeze out a line propriâ manu, but indeed her fingers have been incorrigibly nervous to letter writing for a long interval. 'Twill please you all to hear that, tho' I fret like a lion in a net, her present health and spirits are better than they have been for some time past: she is absolutely three years and a half younger, as I tell her, since we have adopted this boarding plan. Our providers are an honest pair, dame Westwood and her husband--he, when the light of prosperity shined on them, a moderately thriving haberdasher within Bow Bells, retired since with something under a competence, writes himself parcel gentleman, hath borne parish offices, sings fine old sea songs at threescore and ten, sighs only now and then when he thinks that he has a son on his hands about 15, whom he finds a difficulty in getting out into the world, and then checks a sigh with muttering, as I once heard him prettily, not meaning to be heard, "I have married my daughter however,"--takes the weather as it comes, outsides it to town in severest season, and a' winter nights tells old stories not tending to literature, how comfortable to author-rid folks! and has one anecdote, upon which and about forty pounds a year he seems to have retired in green old age. It was how he was a rider in his youth, travelling for shops, and once (not to baulk his employer's bargain) on a sweltering day in August, rode foaming into Dunstable upon a mad horse to the dismay and expostulary wonderment of innkeepers, ostlers &c. who declared they would not have bestrid the beast to win the Darby. Understand the creature gall'd to death and desperation by gad flies, cormorants winged, worse than beset Inachus' daughter. This he tells, this he brindles and burnishes on a' winter's eves, 'tis his star of set glory, his rejuvenescence to descant upon. Far from me be it (dii avertant) to look a gift story in the mouth, or cruelly to surmise (as those who doubt the plunge of Curtius) that the inseparate conjuncture of man and beast, the centaur-phenomenon that staggerd all Dunstable, might have been the effect of unromantic necessity, that the horse-part carried the reasoning, willy nilly, that needs must when such a devil drove, that certain spiral configurations in the frame of Thomas Westwood unfriendly to alighting, made the alliance more forcible than voluntary. Let him enjoy his fame for me, nor let me hint a whisper that shall dismount Bellerophon. Put case he was an involuntary martyr, yet if in the fiery conflict he buckled the soul of a constant haberdasher to him, and adopted his flames, let Accident and He share the glory! You would all like Thomas Westwood.
How weak is painting to describe a man! Say that he stands four feet and a nail high by his own yard measure, which like the Sceptre of Agamemnon shall never sprout again, still you have no adequate idea, nor when I tell you that his dear hump, which I have favord in the picture, seems to me of the buffalo--indicative and repository of mild qualities, a budget of kindnesses, still you have not the man. Knew you old Norris of the Temple, 60 years ours and our father's friend, he was not more natural to us than this old W. the acquaintance of scarce more weeks. Under his roof now ought I to take my rest, but that back-looking ambition tells me I might yet be a Londoner. Well, if we ever do move, we have encumbrances the less to impede us: all our furniture has faded under the auctioneer's hammer, going for nothing like the tarnishd frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a spoon or two left to bless us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked we must go out of it. I would live in London shirtless, bookless. Henry Crabb is at Rome, advices to that effect have reach'd Bury. But by solemn legacy he bequeath'd at parting (whether he should live or die) a Turkey of Suffolk to be sent every succeeding Xmas to us and divers other friends. What a genuine old Bachelor's action! I fear he will find the air of Italy too classic. His station is in the Hartz forest, his soul is Bego'ethed. Miss Kelly we never see; Talfourd not this half-year; the latter flourishes, but the exact number of his children, God forgive me, I have utterly forgotten, we single people are often out in our count there. Shall I say two? One darling I know they have lost within a twelvemonth, but scarce known to me by sight, and that was a second child lost. We see scarce anybody. We have just now Emma with us for her holydays; you remember her playing at brag with Mr. Quillinan at poor Monkhouse's! She is grown an agreeable young woman; she sees what I write, so you may understand me with limitations. She was our inmate for a twelvemonth, grew natural to us, and then they told us it was best for her to go out as a Governess, and so she went out, and we were only two of us, and our pleasant house-mate is changed to an occasional visitor. If they want my sister to go out (as they call it) there will be only one of us. Heaven keep us all from this acceding to Unity!
Can I cram loves enough to you all in this little O? Excuse particularizing.
C.L.
499. MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
(Same letter)
My dear Miss Wordsworth, Charles has left me space to fill up with my own poor scribble; which I must do as well as I can, being quite out of practise, and after he has been reading his queer letter out to us I can hardly put down in a plain style all I had to tell you, how pleasant your handwriting was to me. He has lumped you all together in one rude remembrance at the end, but I beg to send my love individually and by name to Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth, to Miss Hutchinson, whom we often talk of, and think of as being with you always, to the dutiful good daughter and patient amanuensis Dora, and even to Johanna, whom we have not seen, if she will accept it. Charles has told you of my long illness and our present settlement, which I assure you is very quiet and comfortable to me, and to him too, if he would own it. I am very sorry we shall not see John, but I never go to town, nor my brother but at his quarterly visits at the India House, and when he does, he finds it melancholy, so many of our old friends being dead or dispersed, and the very streets, he says altering every day. Many thanks for your Letter and the nice news in it, which I should have replied to more at large than I see he has done. I am sure it deserved it. He has not said a word about your intentions for Rome, which I sincerely wish you health one day to accomplish. In that case we may meet by the way. We are so glad to hear dear little William is doing well. If you knew how happy your letters made us you would write I know more frequently. Pray think of this. How chearfully should we pay the postage every week.
Your affectionate
MARY LAMB.
["Baucis and Baucida." A slip, I suppose, for Philemon and Baucis (Ovid, Metamorphoses).
Redgauntlet dated from 1824.
"In a calenture." A calenture is a form of fever at sea in which the sufferer believes himself to be surrounded by green fields, and often leaps overboard. Wordsworth describes one in "The Brothers."
"A Recluse"--Wordsworth's promised poem, that was never completed. First printed in 1888.
Inachus' daughter was Io, persecuted by a malignant insect sent by Juno.
"Henry Crabb." Crabb Robinson was a personal friend of Goethe's. He had spent some days with him at Weimar in the summer of 1829. Goethe told Robinson that he admired Lamb's sonnet "The Family Name."
"Mr. Quillinan"--Edward Quillinan, afterwards Wordsworth's son-in-law.
"Johanna." Joanna Hutchinson, Mrs. Wordsworth's sister. Joanna of the laugh.
"John." John Wordsworth, Wordsworth's eldest son, was now twenty-six; William, Wordsworth's second son, no longer little, was nineteen.]
500. CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. 25 February, 1830.]
Dear B.B.--To reply to you by return of post, I must gobble up my dinner, and dispatch this in propriâ Personâ to the office, to be in time. So take it from me hastily, that you are perfectly welcome to furnish A.C. with the scrap, which I had almost forgotten writing. The more my character comes to be known, the less my veracity will come to be suspected. Time every day clears up some suspected narrative of Herodotus, Bruce, and others of us great Travellers. Why, that Joseph Paice was as real a person as Joseph Hume, and a great deal pleasanter. A careful observer of life, Bernard, has no need to invent. Nature romances it for him. Dinner plates rattle, and I positively shall incur indigestion by carrying it half concocted to the Post House. Let me congratulate you on the Spring coming in, and do you in return condole with me for the Winter going out. When the old one goes, seldome comes a better. I dread the prospect of Summer, with his all day long days. No need of his assistance to make country places dull. With fire and candle light, I can dream myself in Holborn. With lightsome skies shining in to bed time, I can not. This Meseck, and these tents of Kedar--I would dwell in the skirts of Jericho rather, and think every blast of the coming in Mail a Ram's Horn. Give me old London at Fire and Plague times, rather than these tepid gales, healthy country air, and purposeless exercise. Leg of mutton absolutely on the table.
Take our hasty loves and short farewell.
C.L.
[A.C. was Allan Cunningham, who wanted Lamb's letter on Blake (see above) for his Lives of the Painters. It was not, however, used there until included in Mrs. Charles Heaton's edition in Bohn's Library.
"Bruce"--the Abyssinian explorer, whom the Christ's Hospital boys used to emulate, as Lamb tells us in the Elia essay on Newspapers.
"Joseph Paice"--a Director of the South-Sea Company and Lamb's first employer, of whom he writes in the Elia essay on "Modern Gallantry" (see notes to Vol. II.).
Here should come a letter to Moxon, February 21, 1830, saying that a letter has just arrived from Mrs. Williams indicating that Miss Isola was not well and must have a long holiday. The illness increased very rapidly, becoming a serious attack of brain fever.]
501. CHARLCHARLES TO MRS. WILLIAMS
[February 26, 1830.]
Dear Madam,--May God bless you for your attention to our poor Emma! I am so shaken with your sad news I can scarce write. She is too ill to be removed at present; but we can only say that if she is spared, when that can be practicable, we have always a home for her. Speak to her of it, when she is capable of understanding, and let me conjure you to let us know from day to day, the state she is in. But one line is all we crave. Nothing we can do for her, that shall not be done. We shall be in the terriblest suspense. We had no notion she was going to be ill. A line from anybody in your house will much oblige us. I feel for the situation this trouble places you in.
Can I go to her aunt, or do anything? I do not know what to offer. We are in great distress. Pray relieve us, if you can, by somehow letting us know. I will fetch her here, or anything. Your kindness can never be forgot. Pray excuse my abruptness. I hardly know what I write. And take our warmest thanks. Hoping to hear something, I remain, dear Madam,
Yours most faithfully,
C. LAMB.
Our grateful respects to Mr. Williams.
502. CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
Enfield, 1 March, 1830.
Dear Madam,--We cannot thank you enough. Your two words "much better" were so considerate and good. The good news affected my sister to an agony of tears; but they have relieved us from such a weight. We were ready to expect the worst, and were hardly able to bear the good hearing. You speak so kindly of her, too, and think she may be able to resume her duties. We were prepared, as far as our humble means would have enabled us, to have taken her from all duties. But, far better for the dear girl it is that she should have a prospect of being useful.
I am sure you will pardon my writing again; for my heart is so full, that it was impossible to refrain. Many thanks for your offer to write again, should any change take place. I dare not yet be quite out of fear, the alteration has been so sudden. But I will hope you will have a respite from the trouble of writing again. I know no expression to convey a sense of your kindness. We were in such a state expecting the post. I had almost resolved to come as near you as Bury; but my sister's health does not permit my absence on melancholy occasions. But, O, how happy will she be to part with me, when I shall hear the agreeable news that I may come and fetch her. She shall be as quiet as possible. No restorative means shall be wanting to restore her back to you well and comfortable.
She will make up for this sad interruption of her young friend's studies. I am sure she will--she must--after you have spared her for a little time. Change of scene may do very much for her. I think this last proof of your kindness to her in her desolate state can hardly make her love and respect you more than she has ever done. O, how glad shall we be to return her fit for her occupation. Madam, I trouble you with my nonsense; but you would forgive me, if you knew how light-hearted you have made two poor souls at Enfield, that were gasping for news of their poor friend. I will pray for you and Mr. Williams. Give our very best respects to him, and accept our thanks. We are happier than we hardly know how to bear. God bless you! My very kindest congratulations to Miss Humphreys.
Believe me, dear Madam,
Your ever obliged servant,
C. LAMB.
503. CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
March 4th, 1830.
Dear Sarah,--I was meditating to come and see you, but I am unable for the walk. We are both very unwell, and under affliction for poor Emma, who has had a very dangerous brain fever, and is lying very ill at Bury, from whence I expect a summons to fetch her. We are very sorry for your confinement. Any books I have are at your service. I am almost, I may say quite, sure that letters to India pay no postage, and may go by the regular Post Office, now in St. Martin's le Grand. I think any receiving house would take them--
I wish I could confirm your hopes about Dick Norris. But it is quite a dream. Some old Bencher of his surname is made Treasurer for the year, I suppose, which is an annual office. Norris was Sub-Treasurer, quite a different thing. They were pretty well in the Summer, since when we have heard nothing of them. Mrs. Reynolds is better than she has been for years; she is with a disagreeable woman that she has taken a mighty fancy to out of spite to a rival woman she used to live and quarrel with; she grows quite fat, they tell me, and may live as long as I do, to be a tormenting rent-charge to my diminish'd income. We go on pretty comfortably in our new plan. I will come and have a talk with you when poor Emma's affair is settled, and will bring books. At present I am weak, and could hardly bring my legs home yesterday after a much shorter stroll than to Northaw. Mary has got her bonnet on for a short expedition. May you get better, as the Spring comes on. She sends her best love with mine.
C.L.
[Addressed to "Mrs. Hazlitt, Mrs. Tomlinson's, Northaw, near Potter's Bar, Herts."
Mrs. Hazlitt was in later years a sufferer from rheumatism. Dick Norris was the son of Randal Norris. He had retired to Widford. Mrs. Reynolds, Lamb's old schoolmistress and dependant, we have met.]
504. CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
Enfield, 5 Mar., 1830.
Dear Madam,--I feel greatly obliged by your letter of Tuesday, and should not have troubled you again so soon, but that you express a wish to hear that our anxiety was relieved by the assurances in it. You have indeed given us much comfort respecting our young friend, but considerable uneasiness respecting your own health and spirits, which must have suffered under such attention. Pray believe me that we shall wait in quiet hope for the time when I shall receive the welcome summons to come and relieve you from a charge, which you have executed with such tenderness. We desire nothing so much as to exchange it with you. Nothing shall be wanting on my part to remove her with the best judgment I can, without (I hope) any necessity for depriving you of the services of your valuable housekeeper. Until the day comes, we entreat that you will spare yourself the trouble of writing, which we should be ashamed to impose upon you in your present weak state. Not hearing from you, we shall be satisfied in believing that there has been no relapse. Therefore we beg that you will not add to your troubles by unnecessary, though most kind, correspondence. Till I have the pleasure of thanking you personally, I beg you to accept these written acknowledgments of all your kindness. With respects to Mr. Williams and sincere prayers for both your healths, I remain,
Your ever obliged servant,
C. LAMB.
My sister joins me in respects and thanks.
505. CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN
March 8th, 1830.
My dear G.,--Your friend Battin (for I knew him immediately by the smooth satinity of his style) must excuse me for advocating the cause of his friends in Spitalfields. The fact is, I am retained by the Norwich people, and have already appeared in their paper under the signatures of "Lucius Sergius," "Bluff," "Broad-Cloth," "No-Trade-to-the-Woollen-Trade," "Anti-plush," &c., in defence of druggets and long camblets. And without this pre-engagement, I feel I should naturally have chosen a side opposite to ----, for in the silken seemingness of his nature there is that which offends me. My flesh tingles at such caterpillars. He shall not crawl me over. Let him and his workmen sing the old burthen,
"Heigh ho, ye weavers!"
for any aid I shall offer them in this emergency. I was over Saint Luke's the other day with my friend Tuthill, and mightily pleased with one of his contrivances for the comfort and amelioration of the students. They have double cells, in which a pair may lie feet to feet horizontally, and chat the time away as rationally as they can. It must certainly be more sociable for them these warm raving nights. The right-hand truckle in one of these friendly recesses, at present vacant, was preparing, I understood, for Mr. Irving. Poor fellow! it is time he removed from Pentonville. I followed him as far as to Highbury the other day, with a mob at his heels, calling out upon Ermigiddon, who I suppose is some Scotch moderator. He squinted out his favourite eye last Friday, in the fury of possession, upon a poor woman's shoulders that was crying matches, and has not missed it. The companion truck, as far as I could measure it with my eye, would conveniently fit a person about the length of Coleridge, allowing for a reasonable drawing up of the feet, not at all painful. Does he talk of moving this quarter? You and I have too much sense to trouble ourselves with revelations; marry, to the same in Greek you may have something professionally to say. Tell C. that he was to come and see us some fine day. Let it be before he moves, for in his new quarters he will necessarily be confined in his conversation to his brother prophet. Conceive the two Rabbis foot to foot, for there are no Gamaliels there to affect a humbler posture! All are masters in that Patmos, where the law is perfect equality--Latmos, I should rather say, for they will be Luna's twin darlings; her affection will be ever at the full. Well; keep your brains moist with gooseberry this mad March, for the devil of exposition seeketh dry places.
C.L.
[The letter is assigned to the Rev. James Gillman by some editors; but I think that a mistake. See the reference below to a medical matter. Battin was interested in the Spitalfields weavers to the detriment of the Norwich.
Major Butterworth in a letter to Notes and Queries, March 24, 1906, thus explains the reference to Battin:--
"In lately going over the pages of The New Monthly Magazine for 1826 I came across a paragraph in the June number, extracted from a daily newspaper, in which the following occurs: 'Great merit is due to Mr. Lamb junior for his exertions to relieve the weavers of Norwich.'...
"As his 'Reminiscences of Juke Judkins, Esq.,' was printed in the same number of the Magazine, Lamb's attention would no doubt be arrested by the remarks about his namesake, which would probably be retained in his memory, to be used subsequently, as occasion served, in mystifying his friend."
Tuthill, whom we have met, was one of the physicians at St. Luke's Hospital for the insane.
"He squinted out...." Irving had sight only in one eye, an obliquity caused, it is suggested, by lying when a baby in a wooden cradle, the sides of which prevented the other from gathering light.
"To the same in Greek." An atrocious pun, which I leave to the reader to discover. Gillman was a doctor.]
506. CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM AYRTON
Mr. Westwood's, Chase Side, Enfield,
14th March, 1830.
My dear Ayrton,--Your letter, which was only not so pleasant as your appearance would have been, has revived some old images; Phillips (not the Colonel), with his few hairs bristling up at the charge of a revoke, which he declares impossible; the old Captain's significant nod over the right shoulder (was it not?); Mrs. Burney's determined questioning of the score, after the game was absolutely gone to the devil, the plain but hospitable cold boiled-beef suppers at sideboard; all which fancies, redolent of middle age and strengthful spirits, come across us ever and anon in this vale of deliberate senectitude, ycleped Enfield.
You imagine a deep gulf between you and us; and there is a pitiable hiatus in kind between St. James's Park and this extremity of Middlesex. But the mere distance in turnpike roads is a trifle. The roof of a coach swings you down in an hour or two. We have a sure hot joint on a Sunday, and when had we better? I suppose you know that ill health has obliged us to give up housekeeping; but we have an asylum at the very next door--only twenty-four inches further from town, which is not material in a country expedition--where a table d'hôte is kept for us, without trouble on our parts, and we adjourn after dinner, when one of the old world (old friends) drops casually down among us. Come and find us out, and seal our judicious change with your approbation, whenever the whim bites, or the sun prompts. No need of announcement, for we are sure to be at home.
I keep putting off the subject of my answer. In truth I am not in spirits at present to see Mr. Murray on such a business; but pray offer him my acknowledgments and an assurance that I should like at least one of his propositions, as I have so much additional matter for the SPECIMENS, as might make two volumes in all, or ONE (new edition) omitting such better known authors as Beaumont and Fletcher, Jonson, &c.
But we are both in trouble at present. A very dear young friend of ours, who passed her Christmas holidays here, has been taken dangerously ill with a fever, from which she is very precariously recovering, and I expect a summons to fetch her when she is well enough to bear the journey from Bury. It is Emma Isola, with whom we got acquainted at our first visit to your sister at Cambridge, and she has been an occasional inmate with us--and of late years much more frequently--ever since. While she is in this danger, and till she is out of it and here in a probable way to recovery, I feel that I have no spirits for an engagement of any kind. It has been a terrible shock to us; therefore I beg that you will make my handsomest excuses to Mr. Murray.
Our very kindest loves to Mrs. A. and the younger A.'s.
Your unforgotten,
C. LAMB.
["Phillips." This would be Edward Phillips, who, I think, succeeded Rickman as secretary to Abbot (afterwards Lord Colchester), the Speaker. Colonel Erasmus Phillips we have also met. The Captain was Captain Burney.
Mr. Murray's propositions. I presume that Murray had, through Ayrton, suggested either the republication of the Dramatic Specimens, 1808, in one volume, or in two volumes, with the Garrick Extracts added. The plan came to nothing. Moxon published them in the two volume style in 1835. Murray had refused Lamb's "Works" some twelve years before. For the Dramatic Specimens see Vol. IV. of my large edition.]
507. CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
[Dated at end: March 22 (1830).]
Dear Madam,--Once more I have to return you thanks for a very kind letter. It has gladdened us very much to hear that we may have hope to see our young friend so soon, and through your kind nursing so well recovered. I sincerely hope that your own health and spirits will not have been shaken: you have had a sore trial indeed, and greatly do we feel indebted to you for all which you have undergone. If I hear nothing from you in the mean time, I shall secure myself a place in the Cornwallis Coach for Monday. It will not be at all necessary that I shall be met at Bury, as I can well find my way to the Rectory, and I beg that you will not inconvenience yourselves by such attention. Accordingly as I find Miss Isola able to bear the journey, I intend to take the care of her by the same stage or by chaises perhaps, dividing the journey; but exactly as you shall judge fit. It is our misfortune that long journeys do not agree with my sister, who would else have taken this care upon herself, perhaps more properly. It is quite out of the question to rob you of the services of any of your domestics. I cannot think of it. But if in your opinion a female attendant would be requisite on the journey, and if you or Mr. Williams would feel more comfortable by her being in charge of two, I will most gladly engage one of her nurses or any young person near you, that you can recommend; for my object is to remove her in the way that shall be most satisfactory to yourselves.
On the subject of the young people that you are interesting yourselves about, I will have the pleasure to talk to you, when I shall see you. I live almost out of the world and out of the sphere of being useful; but no pains of mine shall be spared, if but a prospect opens of doing a service. Could I do all I wish, and I indeed have grown helpless to myself and others, it must not satisfy the arrears of obligation I owe to Mr. Williams and yourself for all your kindness.
I beg you will turn in your mind and consider in what most comfortable way Miss Isola can leave your house, and I will implicitly follow your suggestions. What you have done for her can never be effaced from our memories, and I would have you part with her in the way that would best satisfy yourselves.
I am afraid of impertinently extending my letter, else I feel I have not said half what I would say. So, dear madam, till I have the pleasure of seeing you both, of whose kindness I have heard so much before, I respectfully take my leave with our kindest love to your poor patient and most sincere regards for the health and happiness of Mr. Williams and yourself.
May God bless you. CH. LAMB.
Enfield, Monday, 22 March.
508. CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
Enfield, 2 Apr., 1830.
Dear Madam
I have great pleasure in letting you know that Miss Isola has suffered very little from fatigue on her long journey. I am ashamed to say that I came home rather the more tired of the two. But I am a very unpractised traveller. She has had two tolerable nights' sleeps since, and is decidedly not worse than when we left you. I remembered the Magnesia according to your directions, and promise that she shall be kept very quiet, never forgetting that she is still an invalid. We found my Sister very well in health, only a little impatient to see her; and, after a few hysterical tears for gladness, all was comfortable again. We arrived here from Epping between five and six. The incidents of our journey were trifling, but you bade me tell them. We had then in the coach a rather talkative Gentleman, but very civil, all the way, and took up a servant maid at Stamford, going to a sick mistress. To the latter, a participation in the hospitalities of your nice rusks and sandwiches proved agreeable, as it did to my companion, who took merely a sip of the weakest wine and water with them. The former engaged me in a discourse for full twenty miles on the probable advantages of Steam Carriages, which being merely problematical, I bore my part in with some credit, in spite of my totally un-engineer-like faculties. But when somewhere about Stanstead he put an unfortunate question to me as to the "probability of its turning out a good turnip season;" and when I, who am still less of an agriculturist than a steam-philosopher, not knowing a turnip from a potato ground, innocently made answer that I believed it depended very much upon boiled legs of mutton, my unlucky reply set Miss Isola a laughing to a degree that disturbed her tranquility for the only moment in our journey. I am afraid my credit sank very low with my other fellow-traveller, who had thought he had met with a well-informed passenger, which is an accident so desirable in a Stage Coach. We were rather less communicative, but still friendly, the rest of the way. How I employed myself between Epping and Enfield the poor verses in the front of my paper may inform you which you may please to Christen an Acrostic in a Cross Road, and which I wish were worthier of the Lady they refer to. But I trust you will plead my pardon to her on a subject so delicate as a Lady's good name. Your candour must acknowledge that they are written strait. And now dear Madam, I have left myself hardly space to express my sense of the friendly reception I found at Fornham. Mr. Williams will tell you that we had the pleasure of a slight meeting with him on the road, where I could almost have told him, but that it seemed ungracious, that such had been your hospitality, that I scarcely missed the good Master of the Family at Fornham, though heartily I should [have] rejoiced to have made a little longer acquaintance with him. I will say nothing of our deeper obligations to both of you, because I think we agreed at Fornham, that gratitude may be over-exacted on the part of the obliging, and over-expressed on the part of the obliged, person. My Sister and Miss Isola join in respects to Mr. Williams and yourself, and I beg to be remembered kindly to the Miss Hammonds and the two gentlemen whom I had the good fortune to meet at your house. I have not forgotten the Election in which you are interesting yourself, and the little that I can, I will do immediately. Miss Isola will have the pleasure of writing to you next week, and we shall hope, at your leisure, to hear of your own health, etc. I am, Dear Madam, with great respect,
your obliged
CHARLES LAMB.
[Added in Miss Isola's hand:] I must just add a line to beg you will let us hear from you, my dear Mrs. Williams. I have just received the forwarded letter. Fornham we have talked about constantly, and I felt quite strange at this home the first day. I will attend to all you said, my dear Madam.
[I do not know which of Lamb's acrostics was the one in question. Possibly this, on Mrs. Williams' youngest daughter, Louisa Clare Williams:--
Least Daughter, but not least beloved, of Grace! O frown not on a stranger, who from place Unknown and distant these few lines hath penn'd. I but report what thy Instructress Friend So oft hath told us of thy gentle heart. A pupil most affectionate thou art,
Careful to learn what elder years impart. Louisa--Clare--by which name shall I call thee? A prettier pair of names sure ne'er was found, Resembling thy own sweetness in sweet sound. Ever calm peace and innocence befal thee!
See Vol. IV. of this edition.]
509. CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
Enfield, Good Friday [April 9, 1830].
P.S.--I am the worst folder-up of a letter in the world, except certain Hottentots, in the land of Caffre, who never fold up their letters at all, writing very badly upon skins, &c.
Dear Madam,--I do assure you that your verses gratified me very much, and my sister is quite proud of them. For the first time in my life I congratulated myself upon the shortness and meanness of my name. Had it been Schwartzenberg or Esterhazy, it would have put you to some puzzle. I am afraid I shall sicken you of acrostics; but this last was written to order. I beg you to have inserted in your county paper something like this advertisement. "To the nobility, gentry, and others, about Bury.--C. Lamb respectfully informs his friends and the public in general, that he is leaving off business in the acrostic line, as he is going into an entirely new line. Rebuses and charades done as usual, and upon the old terms. Also, Epitaphs to suit the memory of any person deceased." I thought I had adroitly escaped the rather unpliable name of "Williams," curtailing your poor daughters to their proper surnames; but it seems you would not let me off so easily. If these trifles amuse you, I am paid. Tho really 'tis an operation too much like--"A, apple-pye; B, bit it." To make amends, I request leave to lend you the "Excursion," and to recommend, in particular, the "Churchyard Stories," in the seventh book, I think. They will strengthen the tone of your mind after its weak diet on acrostics. Miss Isola is writing, and will tell you that we are going on very comfortably. Her sister is just come. She blames my last verses, as being more written on Mr. Williams than on yourself; but how should I have parted whom a Superior Power has brought together? I beg you will jointly accept of our best respects, and pardon your obsequious if not troublesome Correspondent, C.L.
[Mr. Cecil Turner, a grandson of Mrs. Williams, tells me that her acrostic on Lamb ran thus:--
TO CHARLES LAMB
Answer to Acrostics on the Names of Two Friends
Charmed with the lines thy hand has sent, Honour I feel the compliment, Amongst thy products that have won the ear, Ranged in thy verse two friends most dear. Lay not thy winning pen away, Each line thou writest we bid thee stay, Still ask to charm us with another lay.
Long liked, long lived by public Fame A friend to misery, whate'er its claim. Marvel I must if e'er we find Bestowed by heaven a kindlier mind.
The two friends were probably Edward Hogg and Cecilia Catherine Lawton, on whose names Lamb wrote acrostics (see Vol. IV.).
This was Lamb's effort:--
Go little Poem, and present Respectful terms of compliment; A gentle lady bids thee speak! Courteous is she, tho' thou be weak-- Evoke from Heaven as thick as manna
Joy after joy on Grace Joanna: On Fornham's Glebe and Pasture land A blessing pray. Long, long may stand, Not touched by Time, the Rectory blithe; No grudging churl dispute his Tithe; At Easter be the offerings due
With cheerful spirit paid; each pew In decent order filled; no noise Loud intervene to drown the voice, Learning, or wisdom of the Teacher; Impressive be the Sacred Preacher, And strict his notes on holy page; May young and old from age to age Salute, and still point out, "The good man's Parsonage!"]
510. CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN
[? Early Spring, 1830.]
Dear Gillman,--Pray do you, or S.T.C., immediately write to say you have received back the golden works of the dear, fine, silly old angel, which I part from, bleeding, and to say how the Winter has used you all.
It is our intention soon, weather permitting, to come over for a day at Highgate; for beds we will trust to the Gate-House, should you be full: tell me if we may come casually, for in this change of climate there is no naming a day for walking. With best loves to Mrs. Gillman, &c.
Yours, mopish, but in health,
C. LAMB.
I shall be uneasy till I hear of Fuller's safe arrival.
[See letter to Gillman above. The "dear, fine, silly old angel" was Thomas Fuller.]
511. CHARLES LAMB TO JACOB VALE ASBURY
[? April, 1830.]
Dear Sir--Some draughts and boluses have been brought here which we conjecture were meant for the young lady whom you saw this morning, though they are labelled for
MISS ISOLA LAMB.
No such person is known on the Chase Side, and she is fearful of taking medicines which may have been made up for another patient. She begs me to say that she was born an Isola and christened Emma. Moreover that she is Italian by birth, and that her ancestors were from Isola Bella (Fair Island) in the kingdom of Naples. She has never changed her name and rather mournfully adds that she has no prospect at present of doing so. She is literally I. SOLA, or single, at present. Therefore she begs that the obnoxious monosyllable may be omitted on future Phials,--an innocent syllable enough, you'll say, but she has no claim to it. It is the bitterest pill of the seven you have sent her. When a lady loses her good name, what is to become of her? Well she must swallow it as well as she can, but begs the dose may not be repeated.
Yours faithfully,
CHARLES LAMB (not Isola).
[Asbury was a doctor at Enfield. I append another letter to him, without date:--]
512. CHARLES LAMB TO JACOB VALE ASBURY
Dear Sir, It is an observation of a wise man that "moderation is best in all things." I cannot agree with him "in liquor." There is a smoothness and oiliness in wine that makes it go down by a natural channel, which I am positive was made for that descending. Else, why does not wine choke us? could Nature have made that sloping lane, not to facilitate the down-going? She does nothing in vain. You know that better than I. You know how often she has helped you at a dead lift, and how much better entitled she is to a fee than yourself sometimes, when you carry off the credit. Still there is something due to manners and customs, and I should apologise to you and Mrs. Asbury for being absolutely carried home upon a man's shoulders thro' Silver Street, up Parson's Lane, by the Chapels (which might have taught me better), and then to be deposited like a dead log at Gaffar Westwood's, who it seems does not "insure" against intoxication. Not that the mode of conveyance is objectionable. On the contrary, it is more easy than a one-horse chaise. Ariel in the "Tempest" says
"On a Bat's back do I fly, After sunset merrily."
Now I take it that Ariel must sometimes have stayed out late of nights. Indeed, he pretends that "where the bee sucks, there lurks he," as much as to say that his suction is as innocent as that little innocent (but damnably stinging when he is provok'd) winged creature. But I take it, that Ariel was fond of metheglin, of which the Bees are notorious Brewers. But then you will say: What a shocking sight to see a middle-aged gentleman-and-a-half riding upon a Gentleman's back up Parson's Lane at midnight. Exactly the time for that sort of conveyance, when nobody can see him, nobody but Heaven and his own conscience; now Heaven makes fools, and don't expect much from her own creation; and as for conscience, She and I have long since come to a compromise. I have given up false modesty, and she allows me to abate a little of the true. I like to be liked, but I don't care about being respected. I don't respect myself. But, as I was saying, I thought he would have let me down just as we got to Lieutenant Barker's Coal-shed (or emporium) but by a cunning jerk I eased myself, and righted my posture. I protest, I thought myself in a palanquin, and never felt myself so grandly carried. It was a slave under me. There was I, all but my reason. And what is reason? and what is the loss of it? and how often in a day do we do without it, just as well? Reason is only counting, two and two makes four. And if on my passage home, I thought it made five, what matter? Two and two will just make four, as it always did, before I took the finishing glass that did my business. My sister has begged me to write an apology to Mrs. A. and you for disgracing your party; now it does seem to me, that I rather honoured your party, for every one that was not drunk (and one or two of the ladies, I am sure, were not) must have been set off greatly in the contrast to me. I was the scapegoat. The soberer they seemed. By the way is magnesia good on these occasions? iii pol: med: sum: ante noct: in rub: can:. I am no licentiate, but know enough of simples to beg you to send me a draught after this model. But still you'll say (or the men and maids at your house will say) that it is not a seemly sight for an old gentleman to go home pick-a-back. Well, may be it is not. But I have never studied grace. I take it to be a mere superficial accomplishment. I regard more the internal acquisitions. The great object after supper is to get home, and whether that is obtained in a horizontal posture or perpendicular (as foolish men and apes affect for dignity) I think is little to the purpose. The end is always greater than the means. Here I am, able to compose a sensible rational apology, and what signifies how I got here? I have just sense enough to remember I was very happy last night, and to thank our kind host and hostess, and that's sense enough, I hope.
CHARLES LAMB.
N.B.--What is good for a desperate head-ache? Why, Patience, and a determination not to mind being miserable all day long. And that I have made my mind up to.
So, here goes. It is better than not being alive at all, which I might have been, had your man toppled me down at Lieut. Barker's Coal-shed. My sister sends her sober compliments to Mrs. A. She is not much the worse.
Yours truly,
C. LAMB.
["Ariel." In two other of his letters, Lamb confesses similarly to a similar escapade. And in his Elia essay "Rejoicings on the New Year's Coming of Age," he sends Ash Wednesday home in the same manner.
Lieut. John Barker, R.N., was a local character, a coal merchant and a man with a grievance. He had thirteen children, some of whose names probably greatly amused Lamb--John Thomas, William Charles, Frederick Alexander, Marius Collins, Caius Marcius, Marcus Aurelius Antonius, Coriolanus Aurelius, Horatius Tertius Decimus, Elizabeth Mary, Concordia, Lousia Clarissa, Caroline Maria Quiroja and Volumnia Hortensia.]
513. CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
Enfield, Tuesday [April 21, 1830].
Dear Madam,--I have ventured upon some lines, which combine my old acrostic talent (which you first found out) with my new profession of epitaph-monger. As you did not please to say, when you would die, I have left a blank space for the date. May kind heaven be a long time in filling it up. At least you cannot say that these lines are not about you, though not much to the purpose. We were very sorry to hear that you have not been very well, and hope that a little excursion may revive you. Miss Isola is thankful for her added day; but I verily think she longs to see her young friends once more, and will regret less than ever the end of her holydays. She cannot be going on more quietly than she is doing here, and you will perceive amendment.
I hope all her little commissions will all be brought home to your satisfaction. When she returns, we purpose seeing her to Epping on her journey. We have had our proportion of fine weather and some pleasant walks, and she is stronger, her appetite good, but less wolfish than at first, which we hold a good sign. I hope Mr. Wing will approve of its abatement. She desires her very kindest respects to Mr. Williams and yourself, and wishes to rejoin you. My sister and myself join in respect, and pray tell Mr. Donne, with our compliments, that we shall be disappointed, if we do not see him. This letter being very neatly written, I am very unwilling that Emma should club any of her disproportionate scrawl to deface it.
Your obliged servant,
C. LAMB.
[Addressed to "Mrs. Williams, W.B. Donne, Esq., Matteshall, East Dereham, Norfolk."
Mr. Wing was probably Miss Isola's doctor. Mr. Donne was William Bodham Donne (1807-1882), the friend of Edward FitzGerald, and Examiner of Plays.
This was Lamb's acrostic-epitaph on Mrs. Williams:--
Grace Joanna here doth lie: Reader, wonder not that I Ante-date her hour of rest. Can I thwart her wish exprest, Ev'n unseemly though the laugh
Jesting with an Epitaph? On her bones the turf lie lightly, And her rise again be brightly! No dark stain be found upon her-- No, there will not, on mine honour-- Answer that at least I can.
Would that I, thrice happy man, In as spotless garb might rise, Light as she will climb the skies, Leaving the dull earth behind, In a car more swift than wind. All her errors, all her failings, (Many they were not) and ailings, Sleep secure from Envy's railings.
Here should come an undated note from Lamb to Basil Montagu, in which Lamb asks for help for Hone in his Coffee-House. "If you can help a worthy man you will have two worthy men obliged to you." Hone, having fallen upon bad times, Lamb helped in the scheme to establish him in the Grasshopper Coffee-House, at 13 Gracechurch Street (see next letter).]
514. CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
May 10, 1830.
Dear Southey,--My friend Hone, whom you would like for a friend, I found deeply impressed with your generous notice of him in your beautiful "Life of Bunyan," which I am just now full of. He has written to you for leave to publish a certain good-natured letter. I write not this to enforce his request, for we are fully aware that the refusal of such publication would be quite consistent with all that is good in your character. Neither he nor I expect it from you, nor exact it; but if you would consent to it, you would have me obliged by it, as well as him. He is just now in a critical situation: kind friends have opened a coffee-house for him in the City, but their means have not extended to the purchase of coffee-pots, credit for Reviews, newspapers, and other paraphernalia. So I am sitting in the skeleton of a possible divan. What right I have to interfere, you best know. Look on me as a dog who went once temporarily insane, and bit you, and now begs for a crust. Will you set your wits to a dog?
Our object is to open a subscription, which my friends of the "Times" are most willing to forward for him, but think that a leave from you to publish would aid it.
But not an atom of respect or kindness will or shall it abate in either of us if you decline it. Have this strongly in your mind.
Those "Every-Day" and "Table" Books will be a treasure a hundred years hence; but they have failed to make Hone's fortune.
Here his wife and all his children are about me, gaping for coffee customers; but how should they come in, seeing no pot boiling!
Enough of Hone. I saw Coleridge a day or two since. He has had some severe attack, not paralytic; but, if I had not heard of it, I should not have found it out. He looks, and especially speaks, strong. How are all the Wordsworths and all the Southeys? whom I am obliged to you if you have not brought up haters of the name of
C. LAMB.
P.S.--I have gone lately into the acrostic line. I find genius (such as I had) declines with me, but I get clever. Do you know anybody that wants charades, or such things, for Albums? I do 'em at so much a sheet. Perhaps an epigram (not a very happy-gram) I did for a school-boy yesterday may amuse. I pray Jove he may not get a flogging for any false quantity; but 'tis, with one exception, the only Latin verses I have made for forty years, and I did it "to order."
SUUM CUIQUE
Adsciscit sibi divitias et opes alienas Fur, rapiens, spolians, quod mihi, quod-que tibi, Proprium erat, temnens haec verba, Meum-que, Suum-que; Omne suum est: tandem Cui-que Suum tribuit. Dat laqueo collum; vestes, vah! carnifici dat; Sese Diabolo: sic bene: Cuique Suum.
I write from Hone's, therefore Mary cannot send her love to Mrs. Southey, but I do.
Yours ever, C.L.
[Major's edition of The Pilgrim's Progress, mentioned in a letter to Barton above, was issued in 1830 with a memoir of Bunyan by Southey. It was reviewed in The Times for May 7, 1830, I think probably by Lamb, in the following terms:--
The public is aware that the unexhausted diligence and unwearied pen of Mr. Southey have produced a new and excellent edition of the celebrated Pilgrim's Progress, with the Life of the Author prefixed. This Life is, no doubt, an interesting work, though we wish the author, both in that and in the account, which is attributed to him, of the founder of the Jesuits, contained in a recent periodical work, had taken more time. The narrative in both is hasty and tumultuary, if we may use the latter expression: there is no time or room for reflection; and when a reflection comes, it is so mixed and jambed in with the story, or with quotations from the works or words of the respective heroes of the history, that it escapes unobserved. Could we, without grievous offence, recommend, both to Mr. Southey and Sir Walter Scott, to recollect the man spoken of by Horace?--
quem fama est esse librisque Ambustum propriis."--Sat, i., 61.
Yet still, as we said above, the Life of Bunyan is an interesting work. How different the origin of all the sects and their founders, from that of our sober, staid, and, we trust, permanent establishment, and the learned and pious reformers from whom it sprang!
But that for which we chiefly notice this work of Mr. Southey, is the very last sentence in it, wherein is contained his frank and honourable recommendation (though not more than they deserve) of the works of one whom the iron hand of oppression would have levelled with the dust:--
"In one of the volumes collected from various quarters, which were sent to me for this purpose, I observe the name of W. Hone, and notice it that I may take the opportunity of recommending his Every-Day Book and Table Book to those who are interested in the preservation of our national and local customs. By these very curious publications their compiler has rendered good service in an important department of literature; and he may render yet more, if he obtain the encouragement which he well deserves."
Not only we, and the person mentioned in this paragraph, but all the friends of pure English literature,--all the curious in old English customs,--in short, all intelligent men, with the hearts of Englishmen in them,--owe Mr. Southey their gratitude for this recommendation: it springs from a just taste and right feeling united.
Hone wrote to The Times at once to thank both the paper and Southey for the compliment. A few days later, on May 21, appeared an article in The Times containing correspondence between Hone and Southey. I quote the introduction, again probably the work of Lamb, and Southey's letter (see Lamb's letter to Hone below):--
We alluded some days ago to the handsome notice of Mr. Hone in Mr. Southey's Life of Bunyan. The following correspondence has since been sent to us: it displays in an advantageous light the modesty of Mr. Hone and the amiable and candid disposition of Mr. Southey. The business, wholly foreign to Mr. Hone's former pursuits, which is alluded to in the letter, is explained in an advertisement in this day's paper.
* * * * *
"To Mr. Hone, 13, Gracechurch-Street,
"Keswick, April 26.
"Sir,--Your letter has given me both pain and pleasure. I am sorry to learn that you are still, in the worldly sense of the word, an unfortunate man,--that you are withdrawn from pursuits which were consonant to your habits and inclinations, and that a public expression of respect and good-will, made in the hope that it might have been serviceable to you, can have no such effect.
"When I observed your autograph in the little book, I wrote to inquire of Mr. Major whether it had come to his hands from you, directly or indirectly, for my use, that, in that case, I might thank you for it. It proved otherwise, but I would not lose an opportunity which I had wished for.
"Judging of you (as I would myself be judged) by your works, I saw in the editor of the Every-Day and Table Books a man who had applied himself with great diligence to useful and meritorious pursuits. I thought that time, and reflection, and affliction, (of which it was there seen that he had had his share,) had contributed to lead him into this direction, which was also that of his better mind. What alteration had been produced in his opinions it concerned not me to inquire; here there were none but what were unexceptionable,--no feelings but what were to be approved. From all that appeared, I supposed he had become 'a sadder and a wiser man:' I therefore wished him success in his literary undertakings.
"The little parcel which you mention I shall receive with pleasure.
"I wish you success in your present undertaking, whatever it be, and that you may one day, under happier circumstances, resume a pen which has, of late years, been so meritoriously employed. If your new attempt prosper, you will yet find leisure for intellectual gratification, and for that self-improvement which may be carried on even in the busiest concerns of life.
"I remain, Sir, yours with sincere good will,
"ROBERT SOUTHEY."
In the advertisement columns of the same issue of The Times (May 21) was the following notice, drawn up, I assume, by Lamb:--
THE FAMILY OF WILLIAM HONE, in the course of last winter, were kindly assisted by private friends to take and alter the premises they now reside in, No. 13, Gracechurch-street, for the purpose of a coffeehouse, to be managed by Mrs. Hone and her elder daughters; but they are in a painful exigency which increases hourly, and renders a public appeal indispensable. The wellwishers to Mr. Hone throughout the kingdom, especially the gratified readers of his literary productions (in all of which he has long ceased to have an interest, and from none of which can he derive advantage), are earnestly solicited to afford the means of completing the fittings and opening the house in a manner suited to its proposed respectability. If this aid be yielded without loss of time, it will be of indescribable benefit, inasmuch as it will put an end to many grievous anxieties and expenses, inseparable from the lengthened delay which has hitherto been inevitable, and will enable the family to immediately commence the business, which alone they look forward to for support. Subscriptions will be received by the following bankers:--Messrs. Ransom and Co., Pall-mall east; Messrs. Dixon, Sons, and Brookes, Chancery-lane; Messrs. Ladbroke and Co., Bank-buildings, Cornhill; and by Mr. Clowes, printer, 14, Charing-cross; Mr. Thomas Rodd, bookseller, 2, Great Newport-street; Mr. Griffiths, bookseller, 13, Wellington-street, Strand; Mr. Effingham Wilson, bookseller, Royal Exchange; and Messrs. Fisher and Moxhay, biscuit-bakers, 55, Threadneedle-street.
The first list of subscriptions, headed by "Charles Lamb, Esq., Enfield, £10," came to £103. This was Monday, May 31. The next list was published on June 10, accompanied by the following note in the body of the paper:--
The subscriptions for Mr. Hone, it will be perceived, are going on favourably. In the list now published is the name of the Duke of Bedford, who has sent 20_l_. His cause has been warmly espoused by the provincial journals, more than 20 of which have inserted his appeal gratuitously, with offers to receive and remit subscriptions. The aphorism, "he gives twice who gives quickly," could not receive a more cogent application than in the present instance, for the funds are required to enable Mr. Hone to commence business in his new undertaking, where he is already placed with his family, liable to rent and taxes, and other claims, but gaining nothing until his outfit is completed.
Hone, however, did not prosper, in spite of his friends, who were not sufficiently numerous to find the requisite capital.
"Suum Cuique." The boy for whom this epigram was composed was a son of Hessey, the publisher, afterwards Archdeacon Hessey. He was at the Merchant Taylors' School, where it was a custom to compose Latin and English epigrams for speech day, the boys being permitted to get help. Archdeacon Hessey wrote as follows in the Taylorian a few years ago:--
The subjects for 1830 were Suum Cuique and Brevis esse laboro. After some three or four exercise nights I confess that I was literally "at my wits' end." But a brilliant idea struck me. I had frequently, boy as I was, seen Charles Lamb at my father's house, and once, in 1825 or 1826, I had been taken to have tea with him and his sister, Mary Lamb, at their little house, Colebrook Cottage, a whitish-brown tenement, standing by itself, close to the New River, at Islington. He was very kind, as he always was to young people, and very quaint. I told him that I had devoured his "Roast Pig"; he congratulated me on possessing a thorough schoolboy's appetite. And he was pleased when I mentioned my having seen the boys at Christ's Hospital at their public suppers, which then took place on the Sunday evenings in Lent. "Could this good-natured and humorous old gentleman be prevailed upon to give me an Epigram?" "I don't know," said my father, to whom I put the question, "but I will ask him at any rate, and send him the mottoes." In a day or two there arrived from Enfield, to which Lamb had removed some time in 1827, not one, but two epigrams, one on each subject. That on Suum Cuique was in Latin, and was suggested by the grim satisfaction which had recently been expressed by the public at the capture and execution of some notorious highwayman.
See also Vol. IV. of this edition for a slightly differing version. Lamb had many years before, he says in a letter to Godwin, written similar epigrams.
"With one exception." Perhaps the Latin verses on Haydon's picture. See Vol. IV.]
515. CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
Enfield, Tuesday. [P.M. May 12, 1830.]
Dear M. I dined with your and my Rogers at Mr. Gary's yesterday. Gary consulted me on the proper bookseller to offer a Lady's MS novel to. I said I would write to you. But I wish you would call on the Translator of Dante at the British Museum, and talk with him. He is the pleasantest of clergymen. I told him of all Rogers's handsome behaviour to you, and you are already no stranger. Go. I made Rogers laugh about your Nightingale sonnet, not having heard one. 'Tis a good sonnet notwithstanding. You shall have the books shortly.
C.L.
[Samuel Rogers had just lent Moxon £500 on which to commence publisher.
Moxon had dedicated his first book to Rogers. This is Moxon's "Sonnet to the Nightingale," but I cannot explain why Rogers laughed:--
Lone midnight-soothing melancholy bird, That send'st such music to my sleepless soul, Chaining her faculties in fast controul, Few listen to thy song; yet I have heard, When Man and Nature slept, nor aspen stirred, Thy mournful voice, sweet vigil of the sleeping And liken'd thee to some angelic mind, That sits and mourns for erring mortals weeping. The genius, not of groves, but of mankind, Watch at this solemn hour o'er millions keeping. In Eden's bowers, as mighty poets tell, Did'st thou repeat, as now that wailing call-- Those sorrowing notes might seem, sad Philomel, Prophetic to have mourned of man the fall.]
516. CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
Friday. [P.M. May 14, 1830.]
Dear Novello, Mary hopes you have not forgot you are to spend a day with us on Wednesday. That it may be a long one, cannot you secure places now for Mrs. Novello yourself and the Clarkes? We have just table room for four. Five make my good Landlady fidgetty; six, to begin to fret; seven, to approximate to fever point. But seriously we shall prefer four to two or three; we shall have from 1/2 past 10 to six, when the coach goes off, to scent the country. And pray write now, to say you do so come, for dear Mrs. Westwood else will be on the tenters of incertitude.
C. LAMB.
517. CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
[May 20, 1830.]
Dear N.--pray write immediately to say "The book has come safe." I am anxious, not so much for the autographs, as for that bit of the hair brush. I enclose a cinder, which belonged to Shield, when he was poor, and lit his own fires. Any memorial of a great Musical Genius, I know, is acceptable; and Shield has his merits, though Clementi, in my opinion, is far above him in the Sostenuto. Mr. Westwood desires his compliments, and begs to present you with a nail that came out of Jomelli's coffin, who is buried at Naples.
[Vincent Novello writes on this: "A very characteristic note from Dear Charles Lamb, who always pretended to Rate all kinds of memorials and Relics, and assumed a look of fright and horror whenever he reproached me with being a Papist, instead of a Quaker, which sect he pretended to doat upon." The book would be Novello's album, with Lamb's "Free Thoughts on Eminent Composers" in it (see next letter but one).
Shield was William Shield (1748-1829), the composer. He was buried in Westminster Abbey in the same grave as Clementi. Nicolo Jomelli (1714-1774) was a Neapolitan composer.]
518. CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
May 21, 1830.
Dear Hone--I thought you would be pleased to see this letter. Pray if you have time to, call on Novello, No. 66, Great Queen St. I am anxious to learn whether he received his album I sent on Friday by our nine o'clock morning stage. If not, beg inquire at the Old Bell, Holborn.
CHARLES LAMB.
Southey will see in the Times all we proposed omitting is omitted.
[See notes to the letter to Southey above.]
519. CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
[Enfield, Saturday, May 24th, 1830.]
Mary's love? Yes. Mary Lamb quite well.
Dear Sarah,--I found my way to Northaw on Thursday and a very good woman behind a counter, who says also that you are a very good lady but that the woman who was with you was naught. These things may be so or not. I did not accept her offered glass of wine (home-made, I take it) but craved a cup of ale, with which I seasoned a slice of cold Lamb from a sandwich box, which I ate in her back parlour, and proceeded for Berkhampstead, &c.; lost myself over a heath, and had a day's pleasure. I wish you could walk as I do, and as you used to do. I am sorry to find you are so poorly; and, now I have found my way, I wish you back at Goody Tomlinson's. What a pretty village 'tis! I should have come sooner, but was waiting a summons to Bury. Well, it came, and I found the good parson's lady (he was from home) exceedingly hospitable.
Poor Emma, the first moment we were alone, took me into a corner, and said, "Now, pray, don't drink; do check yourself after dinner, for my sake, and when we get home to Enfield, you shall drink as much as ever you please, and I won't say a word about it." How I behaved, you may guess, when I tell you that Mrs. Williams and I have written acrostics on each other, and she hoped that she should have "no reason to regret Miss Isola's recovery, by its depriving her of our begun correspondence." Emma stayed a month with us, and has gone back (in tolerable health) to her long home, for she comes not again for a twelvemonth. I amused Mrs. Williams with an occurrence on our road to Enfield. We travelled with one of those troublesome fellow-passengers in a stage-coach, that is called a well-informed man. For twenty miles we discoursed about the properties of steam, probabilities of carriages by ditto, till all my science, and more than all, was exhausted, and I was thinking of escaping my torment by getting up on the outside, when, getting into Bishops Stortford, my gentleman, spying some farming land, put an unlucky question to me: "What sort of a crop of turnips I thought we should have this year?" Emma's eyes turned to me, to know what in the world I could have to say; and she burst into a violent fit of laughter, maugre her pale, serious cheeks, when, with the greatest gravity, I replied, that "it depended, I believed, upon boiled legs of mutton." This clench'd our conversation; and my Gentleman, with a face half wise, half in scorn, troubled us with no more conversation, scientific or philosophical, for the remainder of the journey. Ayrton was here yesterday, and as learned to the full as my fellow-traveller. What a pity that he will spoil a wit and a devilish pleasant fellow (as he is) by wisdom! He talk'd on Music; and by having read Hawkins and Burney recently I was enabled to talk of Names, and show more knowledge than he had suspected I possessed; and in the end he begg'd me to shape my thoughts upon paper, which I did after he was gone, and sent him.
FREE THOUGHTS ON SOME EMINENT COMPOSERS
Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart, Just as the whim bites. For my part, I do not care a farthing candle For either of them, or for Handel. Cannot a man live free and easy, Without admiring Pergolesi! Or thro' the world with comfort go That never heard of Doctor Blow! So help me God, I hardly have; And yet I eat, and drink, and shave, Like other people, (if you watch it,) And know no more of stave and crotchet Than did the un-Spaniardised Peruvians; Or those old ante-queer-Diluvians That lived in the unwash'd world with Jubal, Before that dirty Blacksmith Tubal, By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at, Found out, to his great surprise, the gamut. I care no more for Cimerosa Than he did for Salvator Rosa, Being no Painter; and bad luck Be mine, if I can bear that Gluck! Old Tycho Brahe and modern Herschel Had something in them; but who's Purcel? The devil, with his foot so cloven, For aught I care, may take Beethoven; And, if the bargain does not suit, I'll throw him Weber in to boot! There's not the splitting of a splinter To chuse 'twixt him last named, and Winter. Of Doctor Pepusch old queen Dido Knew just as much, God knows, as I do. I would not go four miles to visit Sebastian Bach-or Batch-which is it? No more I would for Bononcini. As for Novello and Rossini, I shall not say a word about [to grieve] 'em, Because they're living. So I leave 'em.
Martin Burney is as odd as ever. We had a dispute about the word "heir," which I contended was pronounced like "air;" he said that might be in common parlance; or that we might so use it, speaking of the "Heir-at-Law," a comedy; but that in the Law Courts it was necessary to give it a full aspiration, and to say Hayer; he thought it might even vitiate a cause, if a Counsel pronounced it otherwise. In conclusion, he "would consult Serjeant Wilde;" who gave it against him. Sometimes he falleth into the water, sometimes into the fire. He came down here, and insisted on reading Virgil's "Eneid" all through with me (which he did,) because a Counsel must know Latin. Another time he read out all the Gospel of St. John, because Biblical quotations are very emphatic in a Court of Justice. A third time, he would carve a fowl, which he did very ill-favoredly, because "we did not know how indispensable it was for a Barrister to do all those sort of things well. Those little things were of more consequence than we supposed." So he goes on, harassing about the way to prosperity, and losing it. With a long head, but somewhat a wrong one--harum-scarum. Why does not his guardian angel look to him? He deserves one--: may be, he has tired him out.
I am----with this long scrawl, but I thought in your exile, you might like a letter. Commend me to all the wonders in Derbyshire, and tell the devil I humbly kiss--my hand to him. Yours ever,
C. LAMB.
["Free Thoughts." The version in Ayrton's album differs a little from this, the principal difference being in line 13, "primitive" for "un-Spaniardised." Lamb's story of the origin of the verses is not necessarily correct. I fancy that he had written them for Novello before he produced them in reply to Ayrton's challenge. When sending the poem to Ayrton in a letter at this time, not available for this edition (written apparently just after Novello had paid the visit, referred to above), Lamb wrote that it was written to gratify Novello.
Mary Lamb (or Charles Lamb, personating her) appended the following postscript to the verses in Novello's album:--
The reason why my brother's so severe, Vincentio is--my brother has no ear: And Caradori her mellifluous throat Might stretch in vain to make him learn a note. Of common tunes he knows not anything, Nor "Rule, Britannia" from "God save the King." He rail at Handel! He the gamut quiz! I'd lay my life he knows not what it is. His spite at music is a pretty whim-- He loves not it, because it loves not him.
M. LAMB.
"Serjeant Wilde"-Thomas Wilde (1782-1855), afterwards Lord Truro, a friend of Lamb's, who is said to have helped him with squibs in the Newark election in 1829, when Martin Burney was among his supporters (see Vol. V. of my large edition, page 341).
Here had I permission, I would print Lamb's letter to Ayrton, given in the Boston Bibliophile edition, incorporating the same poem.]
520. CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
June 3, 1830.
Dear Sarah,--I named your thought about William to his father, who expressed such horror and aversion to the idea of his singing in public, that I cannot meddle in it directly or indirectly. Ayrton is a kind fellow, and if you chuse to consult him by Letter, or otherwise, he will give you the best advice, I am sure, very readily. I have no doubt that M. Burney's objection to interfering was the same--with mine. With thanks for your pleasant long letter, which is not that of an Invalid, and sympathy for your sad sufferings, I remain, in haste,
Yours Truly,
Mary's kindest Love.
[There was some talk of William Hazlitt Junr. becoming a pupil of Braham and taking up music seriously. He did not do so.
Here should come a note from Lamb to Hone, dated Enfield, June 17, 1830, in which Lamb offers Hone £1 per quarter for yesterday's Times, after the Coffee-House customers have done with it. He ends with the wish, "Vivant Coffee, Coffee-potque!"]
521. CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. June 28, 1830.]
DEAR B.B.--Could you dream of my publishing without sending a copy to you? You will find something new to you in the vol. particularly the Translations. Moxon will send to you the moment it is out. He is the young poet of Xmas, whom the Author of the Pleasures of Memory has set up in the bookvending business with a volunteer'd loan of £500--such munificence is rare to an almost stranger. But Rogers, I am told, has done many goodnatured things of this nature. I need not say how glad to see A.K. and Lucy we should have been,--and still shall be, if it be practicable. Our direction is Mr. Westwood's, Chase Side Enfield, but alas I know not theirs. We can give them a bed. Coaches come daily from the Bell, Holborn.
You will see that I am worn to the poetical dregs, condescending to Acrostics, which are nine fathom beneath Album verses--but they were written at the request of the Lady where our Emma is, to whom I paid a visit in April to bring home Emma for a change of air after a severe illness, in which she had been treated like a daughter by the good Parson and his whole family. She has since return'd to her occupation. I thought on you in Suffolk, but was 40 miles from Woodbridge. I heard of you the other day from Mr. Pulham of the India House.
Long live King William the 4th.
S.T.C. says, we have had wicked kings, foolish kings, wise kings, good kings (but few) but never till now have we had a Blackguard King--
Charles 2d was profligate, but a Gentleman.
I have nineteen Letters to dispatch this leisure Sabbath for Moxon to send about with Copies-so you will forgive me short measure--and believe me
Yours ever
C.L.
Pray do let us see your Quakeresses if possible.
[Lamb's Album Verses was almost ready. The translations were those from Vincent Bourne.
William IV. came to the throne on June 26, 1830.
"I have nineteen Letters." The fact that none of these is forthcoming helps to illustrate the imperfect state of Lamb's correspondence as (even among so many differing editions) we now have it. But of course the number may have been an exaggeration.
Here should come a note from Lamb to Hone, dated July 1, 1830, in which Lamb asks that the newspaper be kept as he is meditating a town residence (see next letter).
Here probably should come an undated letter to Mrs. John Rickman, accompanying a gift of Album Verses. Lamb says: "Will you re-give, or lend me, by the bearer, the one Volume of juvenile Poetry? I have tidings of a second at Brighton." He proposes that he and Mrs. Rickman shall some day play old whist for the two.]
522. CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. 30 August, 1830.]
Dear B.B.--my address is 34 Southampton Buildings, Holborn. For God's sake do not let me [be] pester'd with Annuals. They are all rogues who edit them, and something else who write in them. I am still alone, and very much out of sorts, and cannot spur up my mind to writing. The sight of one of those Year Books makes me sick. I get nothing by any of 'em, not even a Copy--
Thank you for your warm interest about my little volume, for the critics on which I care [? not] the 5 hundred thousandth part of the tythe of a half-farthing. I am too old a Militant for that. How noble, tho', in R.S. to come forward for an old friend, who had treated him so unworthily. Moxon has a shop without customers, I a Book without readers. But what a clamour against a poor collection of album verses, as if we had put forth an Epic. I cannot scribble a long Letter--I am, when not at foot, very desolate, and take no interest in any thing, scarce hate any thing, but annuals. I am in an interregnum of thought and feeling--
What a beautiful Autumn morning this is, if it was but with me as in times past when the candle of the Lord shined round me--
I cannot even muster enthusiasm to admire the French heroism.
In better times I hope we may some day meet, and discuss an old poem or two. But if you'd have me not sick no more of Annuals.
C.L. Ex-Elia.
Love to Lucy and A.K. always.
[The Literary Gazette, Jerdan's paper, had written offensively of Album Verses and its author's vanity in the number for July 10, 1830. Southey published in The Times of August 6 some lines in praise of Lamb and against Jerdan. It was Southey's first public utterance on Lamb since the famous letter by Elia to himself, and is the more noble in consequence. The lines ran thus:--
TO CHARLES LAMB
On the Reviewal of his Album Verses in the Literary Gazette
Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear For rarest genius, and for sterling worth, Unchanging friendship, warmth of heart sincere, And wit that never gave an ill thought birth, Nor ever in its sport infix'd a sting; To us who have admired and loved thee long, It is a proud as well as pleasant thing To hear thy good report, now borne along Upon the honest breath of public praise: We know that with the elder sons of song In honouring whom thou hast delighted still, Thy name shall keep its course to after days. The empty pertness, and the vulgar wrong, The flippant folly, the malicious will, Which have assailed thee, now, or heretofore, Find, soon or late, their proper meed of shame; The more thy triumph, and our pride the more, When witling critics to the world proclaim, In lead, their own dolt incapacity. Matter it is of mirthful memory To think, when thou wert early in the field, How doughtily small Jeffrey ran at thee A-tilt, and broke a bulrush on thy shield. And now, a veteran in the lists of fame, I ween, old Friend! thou art not worse bested When with a maudlin eye and drunken aim, Dulness hath thrown a jerdan at thy head.
SOUTHEY.
Leigh Hunt attacked Jerdan in the Examiner in a number of "Rejected Epigrams" signed T.A. See later. He also took up the matter in the Tatler, in the first number of which the following "Inquest Extraordinary" was printed:--
Last week a porter died beneath his burden; Verdict: Found carrying a Gazette from Jerdan.
Moxon's shop without customers was at 64 New Bond Street. "The candle of the Lord." In my large edition I gave this reference very thoughtlessly to Proverbs xx. 27. It is really to Job. xxix. 3.
"The French heroism." The July Revolution, in which the Bourbons were routed and Louis Philippe placed on the throne.]
523. CHARLES LAMB TO SAMUEL ROGERS
[Dated at end: Oct. 5, 1830.]
Dear Sir,--I know not what hath bewitch'd me that I have delayed acknowledging your beautiful present. But I have been very unwell and nervous of late. The poem was not new to me, tho' I have renewed acquaintance with it. Its metre is none of the least of its excellencies. 'Tis so far from the stiffness of blank verse--it gallops like a traveller, as it should do--no crude Miltonisms in [it]. Dare I pick out what most pleases me? It is the middle paragraph in page thirty-four. It is most tasty. Though I look on every impression as a proof of your kindness, I am jealous of the ornaments, and should have prized the verses naked on whitybrown paper.
I am, Sir, yours truly,
C. LAMB.
Oct. 5th.
[Rogers had sent Lamb a copy of his Italy, with illustrations by Turner and Stothard, which was published by Moxon with other firms in 183O. This is the middle paragraph on page 34:--
Here I received from thee, Basilico, One of those courtesies so sweet, so rare! When, as I rambled thro' thy vineyard-ground On the hill-side, thou sent'st thy little son, Charged with a bunch almost as big as he, To press it on the stranger. May thy vats O'erflow, and he, thy willing gift-bearer, Live to become a giver; and, at length, When thou art full of honour and wouldst rest, The staff of thine old age!]
524. CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
[P.M. November 8, 1830.]
Tears are for lighter griefs. Man weeps the doom That seals a single victim to the tomb. But when Death riots, when with whelming sway Destruction sweeps a family away; When Infancy and Youth, a huddled mass, All in an instant to oblivion pass, And Parent's hopes are crush'd; what lamentation Can reach the depth of such a desolation? Look upward, Feeble Ones! look up, and trust That He, who lays this mortal frame in dust, Still hath the immortal Spirit in His keeping. In Jesus' sight they are not dead, but sleeping.
Dear N., will these lines do? I despair of better. Poor Mary is in a deplorable state here at Enfield.
Love to all,
C. LAMB.
[The four sons and two daughters of John and Ann Rigg, of York, had been drowned in the Ouse. A number of poets were asked for verses, the best to be inscribed on a monument in York Minster. Those of James Montgomery were chosen.
It was possibly the death of Hazlitt, on September 18, while the Lambs were in their London lodgings, that brought on Mary Lamb's attack.]
525. CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
November 12, 1830.
Dear Moxon,--I have brought my sister to Enfield, being sure that she had no hope of recovery in London. Her state of mind is deplorable beyond any example. I almost fear whether she has strength at her time of life ever to get out of it. Here she must be nursed, and neither see nor hear of anything in the world out of her sick chamber. The mere hearing that Southey had called at our lodgings totally upset her. Pray see him, or hear of him at Mr. Rickman's, and excuse my not writing to him. I dare not write or receive a letter in her presence; every little task so agitates her. Westwood will receive any letter for me, and give it me privately. Pray assure Southey of my kindliest feelings towards him; and, if you do not see him, send this to him.
Kindest remembrances to your sister, and believe me ever yours, C. LAMB.
Remember me kindly to the Allsops.
[Southey was visiting Rickman, then Clerk Assistant to the House of Commons, where he lived.]
526. CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. ? Dec., 1830.]
Dear M. Something like this was what I meant. But on reading it over, I see no great fun or use in it. It will only stuff up and encroach upon the sheet you propose. Do as, and what, you please. Send Proof, or not, as you like. If you send, send me a copy or 2 of the Album Verses, and the Juvenile Poetry if bound.
I am happy to say Mary is mending, but not enough to give me hopes of being able to leave her. I sadly regret that I shall possibly not see Southey or Wordsworth, but I dare not invite either of them here, for fear of exciting my sister, whose only chance is quiet. You don't know in what a sad state we have been.
I think the Devil may come out without prefaces, but use your discretion.
Make my kindest remembces to Southey, with my heart's thanks for his kind intent. I am a little easier about my Will, and as Ryle is Executor, and will do all a friend can do at the Office, and what little I leave will buy an annuity to piece out tolerably, I am much easier.
Yours ever
C.L.
To 64 New Bond St.
[I cannot say to what the opening sentences refer: probably an advertisement for Satan in Search of a Wife ("the Devil"), which Lamb had just written and Moxon was publishing.
The reference to the Juvenile Poetry suggests that Moxon had procured some of the sheets of the Poetry for Children which Godwin brought out in 1809, and was binding up a few. This theory is borne out by the statement in the letter to Mrs. Norris, later, that the book was not to be had for love or money, and the circumstance that in 1833 Lamb seems to send her a copy. Ryle was Charles Ryle. an India House clerk, and Lamb's executor with Talfourd.]
527. CHARLES LAMB TO GEORGE DYER
Dec. 20, 1830.
Dear Dyer,--I would have written before to thank you for your kind letter, written with your own hand. It glads us to see your writing. It will give you pleasure to hear that, after so much illness, we are in tolerable health and spirits once more. Miss Isola intended to call upon you after her night's lodging at Miss Buffam's, but found she was too late for the stage. If she comes to town before she goes home, she will not miss paying her respects to Mrs. Dyer and you, to whom she desires best love. Poor Enfield, that has been so peaceable hitherto, has caught the inflammatory fever, the tokens are upon her! and a great fire was blazing last night in the barns and haystacks of a farmer, about half a mile from us. Where will these things end? There is no doubt of its being the work of some ill-disposed rustic; but how is he to be discovered? They go to work in the dark with strange chemical preparations unknown to our forefathers. There is not even a dark lantern to have a chance of detecting these Guy Fauxes. We are past the iron age, and are got into the fiery age, undream'd of by Ovid. You are lucky in Clifford's Inn where, I think, you have few ricks or stacks worth the burning. Pray keep as little corn by you as you can, for fear of the worst.
It was never good times in England since the poor began to speculate upon their condition. Formerly, they jogged on with as little reflection as horses: the whistling ploughman went cheek by jowl with his brother that neighed. Now the biped carries a box of phosphorus in his leather-breeches; and in the dead of night the half-illuminated beast steals his magic potion into a cleft in a barn, and half a country is grinning with new fires. Farmer Graystock said something to the touchy rustic that he did not relish, and he writes his distaste in flames. What a power to intoxicate his crude brains, just muddlingly awake, to perceive that something is wrong in the social system!-what a hellish faculty above gunpowder!
Now the rich and poor are fairly pitted; we shall see who can hang or burn fastest. It is not always revenge that stimulates these kindlings. There is a love of exerting mischief. Think of a disrespected clod that was trod into earth, that was nothing, on a sudden by damned arts refined into an exterminating angel, devouring the fruits of the earth and their growers in a mass of fire! What a new existence!--what a temptation above Lucifer's! Would clod be any thing but a clod, if he could resist it? Why, here was a spectacle last night for a whole country!--a Bonfire visible to London, alarming her guilty towers, and shaking the Monument with an ague fit--all done by a little vial of phosphor in a Clown's fob! How he must grin, and shake his empty noddle in clouds, the Vulcanian Epicure! Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a march of Science; but who shall beat the drums for its retreat? Who shall persuade the boor that phosphor will not ignite?
Seven goodly stacks of hay, with corn-barns proportionable, lie smoking ashes and chaff, which man and beast would sputter out and reject like those apples of Asphaltes and bitumen. The food for the inhabitants of earth will quickly disappear. Hot rolls may say: "Fuimus panes, fuit quartern-loaf, et ingens gloria Apple-pasty-orum." That the good old munching system may last thy time and mine, good un-incendiary George, is the devout prayer of thine,
To the last crust,
CH. LAMB.
[Incendiarism, the result of agricultural distress and in opposition to the competition of the new machinery, was rife in the country at this time.]
528. CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. ? Christmas, 1830.]
Dear M. A thousand thanks for your punctualities. What a cheap Book is the last Hogarth you sent me! I am pleased now that Hunt diddled me out of the old one. Speaking of this, only think of the new farmer with his 30 acres. There is a portion of land in Lambeth parish called Knaves Acre. I wonder he overlook'd it. Don't show this to the firm of Dilk & C'o. I next want one copy of Leicester School, and wish you to pay Leishman, Taylor, 2 Blandford Place, Pall Mall, opposite the British Institution, £6. 10. for coat waistcoat &c. And I vehemently thirst for the 4th No. of Nichols's Hogarth, to bind 'em up (the 2 books) as "Hogarth, and Supplement." But as you know the price, don't stay for its appearance; but come as soon as ever you can with your bill of all demands in full, and, as I have none but £5 notes, bring with you sufficient change. Weather is beautiful. I grieve sadly for Miss Wordsworth. We are all well again. Emma is with us, and we all shall be glad of a sight of you. COME ON Sunday, if you can; better, if you come before. Perhaps Rogers would smile at this.--A pert half chemist half apothecary, in our town, who smatters of literature and is immeasurable unletterd, said to me "Pray, Sir, may not Hood (he of the acres) be reckon'd the Prince of wits in the present day?" to which I assenting, he adds "I had always thought that Rogers had been reckon'd the Prince of Wits, but I suppose that now Mr. Hood has the better title to that appellation." To which I replied that Mr. R. had wit with much better qualities, but did not aspire to the principality. He had taken all the puns manufactured in John Bull for our friend, in sad and stupid earnest. One more Album verses, please.
Adieu.
C.L.
["Hunt." This would, I think, be not Leigh Hunt but his nephew, Hunt of Hunt & Clarke. The diddling I cannot explain. Leishman was the husband of Mrs. Leishman, the Lambs' old landlady at Enfield.
"Miss Wordsworth"--Dorothy Wordsworth, who was ill.
"Perhaps Rogers would smile at this." I take the following passage from the Maclise Portrait Gallery:--
In the early days of the John Bull it was the fashion to lay every foundling witticism at the door of Sam Rogers; and thus the refined poet and man of letters became known as a sorry jester.
John Bull was Theodore Hook's paper. Maginn wrote in Fraser's Magazine:--
Joe Miller vails his bonnet to Sam Rogers; in all the newspapers, not only of the kingdom but its dependencies,--Hindostan, Canada, the West Indies, the Cape, from the tropics,--nay, from the Antipodes to the Orkneys, Sam is godfather-- general to all the bad jokes in existence. The Yankees have caught the fancy, and from New Orleans to New York it is the same,--Rogers is synonymous with a pun. All British-born or descended people,--yea the very negro and the Hindoo--father their calembourgs on Rogers. Quashee, or Ramee-Samee, who knows nothing of Sir Isaac Newton, John Milton, or Fraser's Magazine, grins from ear to ear at the name of the illustrious banker, and with gratified voice exclaims, "Him dam funny, dat Sam!"]
529. CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[P.M. February 3, 1831.]
Dear Moxon, The snows are ancle deep slush and mire, that 'tis hard to get to the post office, and cruel to send the maid out. 'Tis a slough of despair, or I should sooner have thankd you for your offer of the Life, which we shall very much like to have, and will return duly. I do not know when I shall be in town, but in a week or two at farthest, when I will come as far as you if I can. We are moped to death with confinement within doors. I send you a curiosity of G. Dyer's tender-conscience. Between 30 and 40 years since, G. published the Poet's Fate, in which were two very harmless lines about Mr. Rogers, but Mr. R. not quite approving of them, they were left out in a subsequent edition 1801. But G. has been worryting about them ever since; if I have heard him once, I have heard him a hundred times express a remorse proportiond to a consciousness of having been guilty of an atrocious libel. As the devil would have it, a fool they call Barker, in his Parriana has quoted the identical two lines as they stood in some obscure edition anterior to 1801, and the withers of poor G. are again wrung. His letter is a gem--with his poor blind eyes it has been laboured out at six sittings. The history of the couplet is in page 3 of this irregular production, in which every variety of shape and size that Letters can be twisted into, is to be found. Do shew his part of it to Mr. R. some day. If he has bowels, they must melt at the contrition so queerly character'd of a contrite sinner. G. was born I verily think without original sin, but chuses to have a conscience, as every Christian Gentleman should have. His dear old face is insusceptible of the twist they call a sneer, yet he is apprehensive of being suspected of that ugly appearance. When he makes a compliment, he thinks he has given an affront. A name is personality. But shew (no hurry) this unique recantation to Mr. R. 'Tis like a dirty pocket handkerchief muck'd with tears of some indigent Magdalen. There is the impress of sincerity in every pot-hook and hanger. And then the gilt frame to such a pauper picture! It should go into the Museum. I am heartily sorry my Devil does not answer. We must try it a little longer, and after all I think I must insist on taking a portion of the loss upon myself. It is too much you should lose by two adventures. You do not say how your general business goes on, and I should very much like to talk over it with you here. Come when the weather will possibly let you. I want to see the Wordsworths, but I do not much like to be all night away. It is dull enough to be here together, but it is duller to leave Mary; in short it is painful, and in a flying visit I should hardly catch them. I have no beds for them, if they came down, and but a sort of a house to receive them in, yet I shall regret their departure unseen. I feel cramped and straiten'd every way. Where are they?
We have heard from Emma but once, and that a month ago, and are very anxious for another letter.
You say we have forgot your powers of being serviceable to us. That we never shall. I do not know what I should do without you when I want a little commission. Now then. There are left at Miss Buffam's, the Tales of the Castle, and certain vols. Retrospective Review. The first should be conveyd to Novello's, and the Reviews should be taken to Talfourd's office, ground floor, East side, Elm Court, Middle Temple, to whom I should have written, but my spirits are wretched. It is quite an effort to write this. So, with the Life, I have cut you out 3 Pieces of service. What can I do for you here, but hope to see you very soon, and think of you with most kindness. I fear tomorrow, between rains and snows, it would be impossible to expect you, but do not let a practicable Sunday pass. We are always at home!
Mary joins in remembrances to your sister, whom we hope to see in any fine-ish weather, when she'll venture.
Remember us to Allsop, and all the dead people--to whom, and to London, we seem dead.
["The Life." The Life which every one was then reading was Moore's Life of Byron.
"George Dyer's." The explanation is that years before, in his Poems, 1801, Dyer had written in a piece called "The Poet's Fate"--
And Rogers, if he shares the town's regard, Was first a banker ere he rose a bard.
In the second edition Dyer altered this to--
And Darwin, if he share the town's regard, Was first a doctor ere he rose a bard.
Lamb notes the alteration in his copy of the second edition, now in the British Museum. In 1828-1829 appeared Parriana, by Edmund Henry Barker, which quoted the couplet in its original form, to Dyer's distress.
Tales of the Castle. By the Countess de Genlis. Translated by Thomas Holcroft]
530. CHARLES LAMB TO GEORGE DYER
Feb. 22nd, 1831.
Dear Dyer,--Mr. Rogers, and Mr. Rogers's friends, are perfectly assured, that you never intended any harm by an innocent couplet, and that in the revivification of it by blundering Barker you had no hand whatever. To imagine that, at this time of day, Rogers broods over a fantastic expression of more than thirty years' standing, would be to suppose him indulging his "Pleasures of Memory" with a vengeance. You never penned a line which for its own sake you need (dying) wish to blot. You mistake your heart if you think you can write a lampoon. Your whips are rods of roses. Your spleen has ever had for its objects vices, not the vicious-abstract offences, not the concrete sinner. But you are sensitive, and wince as much at the consciousness of having committed a compliment, as another man would at the perpetration of an affront. But do not lug me into the same soreness of conscience with yourself. I maintain, and will to the last hour, that I never writ of you but con amore. That if any allusion was made to your near-sightedness, it was not for the purpose of mocking an infirmity, but of connecting it with scholar-like habits: for is it not erudite and scholarly to be somewhat near of sight, before age naturally brings on the malady? You could not then plead the obrepens senectus. Did I not moreover make it an apology for a certain absence, which some of your friends may have experienced, when you have not on a sudden made recognition of them in a casual street-meeting, and did I not strengthen your excuse for this slowness of recognition, by further accounting morally for the present engagement of your mind in worthy objects? Did I not, in your person, make the handsomest apology for absent-of-mind people that was ever made? If these things be not so, I never knew what I wrote or meant by my writing, and have been penning libels all my life without being aware of it. Does it follow that I should have exprest myself exactly in the same way of those dear old eyes of yours now--now that Father Time has conspired with a hard task-master to put a last extinguisher upon them? I should as soon have insulted the Answerer of Salmasius, when he awoke up from his ended task, and saw no more with mortal vision. But you are many films removed yet from Milton's calamity. You write perfectly intelligibly. Marry, the letters are not all of the same size or tallness; but that only shows your proficiency in the hands--text, german-hand, court-hand, sometimes law-hand, and affords variety. You pen better than you did a twelvemonth ago; and if you continue to improve, you bid fair to win the golden pen which is the prize at your young gentlemen's academy. But you must beware of Valpy, and his printing-house, that hazy cave of Trophonius, out of which it was a mercy that you escaped with a glimmer. Beware of MSS. and Variae Lectiones. Settle the text for once in your mind, and stick to it. You have some years' good sight in you yet, if you do not tamper with it. It is not for you (for us I should say) to go poring into Greek contractions, and star-gazing upon slim Hebrew points. We have yet the sight
Of sun, and moon, and star, throughout the year, And man and woman.
You have vision enough to discern Mrs. Dyer from the other comely gentlewoman who lives up at staircase No. 5; or, if you should make a blunder in the twilight, Mrs. Dyer has too much good sense to be jealous for a mere effect of imperfect optics. But don't try to write the Lord's Prayer, Creed, and Ten Commandments, in the compass of a halfpenny; nor run after a midge or a mote to catch it; and leave off hunting for needles in bushels of hay, for all these things strain the eyes. The snow is six feet deep in some parts here. I must put on jack-boots to get at the post-office with this. It is not good for weak eyes to pore upon snow too much. It lies in drifts. I wonder what its drift is; only that it makes good pancakes, remind Mrs. Dyer. It turns a pretty green world into a white one. It glares too much for an innocent colour, methinks. I wonder why you think I dislike gilt edges. They set off a letter marvellously. Yours, for instance, looks for all the world like a tablet of curious hieroglyphics in a gold frame. But don't go and lay this to your eyes. You always wrote hieroglyphically, yet not to come up to the mystical notations and conjuring characters of Dr. Parr. You never wrote what I call a schoolmaster's hand, like Clarke; nor a woman's hand, like Southey; nor a missal hand, like Porson; nor an all-of-the-wrong-side-sloping hand, like Miss Hayes; nor a dogmatic, Mede-and-Persian, peremptory hand, like Rickman; but you ever wrote what I call a Grecian's hand; what the Grecians write (or used) at Christ's Hospital; such as Whalley would have admired, and Boyer have applauded, but Smith or Atwood (writing-masters) would have horsed you for. Your boy-of-genius hand and your mercantile hand are various. By your flourishes, I should think you never learned to make eagles or corkscrews, or flourish the governors' names in the writing-school; and by the tenor and cut of your letters I suspect you were never in it at all. By the length of this scrawl you will think I have a design upon your optics; but I have writ as large as I could out of respect to them--too large, indeed, for beauty. Mine is a sort of deputy Grecian's hand; a little better, and more of a worldly hand, than a Grecian's, but still remote from the mercantile. I don't know how it is, but I keep my rank in fancy still since school-days. I can never forget I was a deputy Grecian! And writing to you, or to Coleridge, besides affection, I feel a reverential deference as to Grecians still. I keep my soaring way above the Great Erasmians, yet far beneath the other. Alas! what am I now? what is a Leadenhall clerk or India pensioner to a deputy Grecian? How art thou fallen, O Lucifer! Just room for our loves to Mrs. D., &c.
C. LAMB.
["I never writ of you but con amore." Lamb refers particularly to the Elia essay "Oxford in the Vacation" in the London Magazine, where G.D.'s absence of mind and simplicity of character were dwelt upon more intimately than Dyer liked (see Vol. II.).
Dyer was gradually going blind.
"The Answerer of Salmasius"--Milton.
"Comely" Mrs. Dyer. But in the letter to Mrs. Shelley, Mrs. D. had been "plain"!
Dyer had been a Grecian before Lamb was born. Clarke would be Charles Cowden Clarke, with whose father Dyer had been an usher. Miss Hayes we have met. The Rev. Peter Whalley was Upper Grammar Master in Dyer's day; Boyer, Lamb and Coleridge's master, succeeded him in 1776. Smith was Writing Master at the end of the seventeenth century.
Lamb had never become a Grecian, having an impediment in his speech which made it impossible that he should take orders, the natural fate of Grecians, with profit. Great Erasmus and Little Erasmus are still the names of classes in the Blue-Coat School. Grecians were the Little Erasmians.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to P.G. Patmore, dated April 10, 1831, in which Lamb says of the publisher of the New Monthly Magazine: "Nature never wrote Knave upon a face more legible than upon that fellow's--'Coal-burn him in Beelzebub's deepest pit.' I can promise little help if you mean literary, when I reflect that for 5 years I have been feeling the necessity of scribbling but have never found the power.... Moxon is my go between, call on him, 63 New Bond St., he is a very good fellow and the bookseller is not yet burn'd into him." Patmore was seeking a publisher for, I imagine, his Chatsworth.
Here should come a letter from Lamb, dated April 13, 1831, which Canon Ainger considers was written to Gary and Mr. Hazlitt to Coleridge. It states that Lamb is daily expecting Wordsworth.]