The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5
by Edited by E. V. Lucas
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Title: The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5
Author: Edited by E. V. Lucas
Release Date: November, 2005 [EBook #9365]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on September 25, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS CHARLES AND MARY LAMB ***
Produced by Keren Vergon, David King and PG Distributed Proofreaders
THE LETTERS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB
1796-1820
EDITED BY E. V. LUCAS
WITH A FRONTISPIECE
PREFACE
This edition of the correspondence of Charles and Mary Lamb contains 618
letters, of which 45 are by Mary Lamb alone. It is the only edition to
contain all Mary Lamb's letters and also a reference to, or abstract of,
every letter of Charles Lamb's that cannot, for reasons of copyright, be
included. Canon Ainger's last edition contains 467 letters and the
_Every-man's Library Edition_ contains 572. In 1905 the Boston
Bibliophile Society, a wealthy association of American collectors,
issued privately--since privately one can do anything--an edition in six
volumes (limited to 453 sets) of the correspondence of Charles and Mary
Lamb, containing everything that was available, which means practically
everything that was known: the number reaching a total of 762 letters;
but it will be many years before such a collection can be issued in
England, since each of the editions here has copyright matter peculiar
to itself. My attempt to induce the American owner of the largest number
of new letters to allow me to copy them from the Boston Bibliophile
edition has proved fruitless.
And here a word as to copyright in such documents in England, the law as
most recently laid down being established upon a set of sixteen of
Lamb's letters which unhappily are not (except in very brief abstract)
in the present edition. These letters, chiefly to Robert Lloyd, were
first published in _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_, under my editorship,
in 1900, the right to make copies and publish them having been acquired
by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. from Mrs. Steeds, a descendant of Charles
Lloyd. The originals were then purchased by Mr. J. M. Dent, who included
copies in his edition of Lamb's letters, under Mr. Macdonald's
editorship, in 1903. Meanwhile Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. had sold their
rights in the letters to Messrs. Macmillan for Canon Ainger's edition,
and when Mr. Dent's edition was issued Messrs. Macmillan with Messrs.
Smith, Elder & Co. brought an action. Mr. Dent thereupon acquired from
Mr. A. H. Moxon, the son of Emma Isola, Lamb's residuary legatee, all
his rights as representing the original author. The case was heard
before Mr. Justice Kekewich early in 1906. The judge held that "the
proprietor of the author's manuscript in the case of letters, as in the
case of any other manuscript, meant the owner of the actual paper on
which the matter was written, and that in the case of letters the
recipient was the owner. No doubt the writer could restrain the
recipient from publishing, and so could the writer's representatives
after death; but although they had the right to restrain others from
publishing, it did not follow that they had the right to publish and
acquire copyright. This right was given to the proprietor of the
manuscript, who, although he could be restrained from publishing by the
writer's personal representatives, yet, if not so restrained, could
publish and acquire copyright."
Mr. Dent appealed against this verdict and his appeal was heard on
October 31 and November 7, 1906, when the decision of Mr. Justice
Kekewich was upheld with a clearer definition of the right of restraint.
The Court, in deciding (I quote again from Mr. MacGillivray's summary)
that "the proprietors of manuscript letters were, after the writer's
death, entitled to the copyright in them when published, were careful to
make it clear that they did not intend to overrule the authority of
those cases where a deceased man's representatives have been held
entitled to restrain the publication of his private letters by the
recipients or persons claiming through them. The Court expressly
affirmed the common law right of the writer and his representatives in
unpublished letters. It did not follow that because the copyright, if
there was publication, would be in the person who, being proprietor of
the author's manuscript, first published, that that person would be
entitled to publish. The common law right would be available to enable
the legal personal representatives, under proper circumstances, to
restrain publication." That is how the copyright law as regards letters
stands to-day (1912).
The present edition has been revised throughout and in it will be found
much new material. I have retained from the large edition only such
notes as bear upon the Lambs and the place of the letters in their life,
together with such explanatory references as seemed indispensable. For
the sources of quotations and so forth the reader must consult the old
edition.
For permission to include certain new letters I have to thank the Master
of Magdalene, Mr. Ernest Betham, Major Butterworth, Mr. Bertram Dobell,
Mr. G. Dunlop, and Mr. E. D. North of New York.
As an example of other difficulties of editing, at any given time, the
correspondence of Charles and Mary Lamb, I may say that while these
volumes were going through the press, Messrs. Sotheby offered for sale
new letters by both hands, the existence of which was unknown equally to
English editors and to Boston Bibliophiles. The most remarkable of them
is a joint letter from sister and brother to Louisa Martin, their
child-friend (to whom Lamb wrote the verses "The Ape"), dated March 28,
1809. Mary begins, and Charles then takes the pen and becomes
mischievous. Thus, "Hazlitt's child died of swallowing a bag of white
paint, which the poor little innocent thing mistook for sugar candy. It
told its mother just before it died, that it did not like soft sugar
candy, and so it came out, which was not before suspected. When it was
opened several other things were found in it, particularly a small
hearth brush, two golden pippins, and a letter which I had written to
Hazlitt from Bath. The letter had nothing remarkable in it." ... The
others are from brother and sister to Miss Kelly, the actress, whom
Lamb, in 1819, wished to marry. The first, March 27, 1820, is from Mary
Lamb saying that she has taken to French as a recreation and has been
reading Racine. The second is from Lamb, dated July 6, 1825, thanking
Miss Kelly for tickets at Arnold's theatre, the Lyceum, and predicting
the success of his farce "The Pawnbroker's Daughter." How many more new
letters are still to come to light, who shall say?
In Mr. Bedford's design for the cover of this edition certain Elian
symbolism will be found. The upper coat of arms is that of Christ's
Hospital, where Lamb was at school; the lower is that of the Inner
Temple, where he was born and spent many years. The figures at the bells
are those which once stood out from the façade of St. Dunstan's Church
in Fleet Street, and are now in Lord Londesborough's garden in Regent's
Park. Lamb shed tears when they were removed. The tricksy sprite and the
candles (brought by Betty) need no explanatory words of mine.
E. V. L.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME V
LETTERS BY NUMBER
1796.
1 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge May 27
From the original in the possession of Mrs.
Alfred Morrison.
2 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge End of May?
From the original (Morrison Collection).
3 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge June 10
From the original (Morrison Collection).
4 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge June 13
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn's edition).
5 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge July 1
From the original (Morrison Collection).
6 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge July 5
From the facsimile of the original (Mr. E.
H. Coleridge).
7 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge July 6
From the original (Morrison Collection).
8 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Sept. 27
From the original (Morrison Collection).
9 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Oct. 3
From the original (Morrison Collection).
10 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Oct. 17
From the original (Morrison Collection).
11 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Oct. 24
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
12 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Oct. 28
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
13 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Nov. 8
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
14 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Nov. 14
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
15 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Dec. 2
From the original (Morrison Collection).
16 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Dec. 5
From the original (Morrison Collection).
17 Charles Lamb to S. T, Coleridge Dec. 9
Mr. Hazlitt's text (The Lambs).
18 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Dec. 10
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
1797.
19 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Jan. 2
From the original (Morrison Collection).
20 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Jan. 10
From the original (Morrison Collection).
21 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Jan. 18
From the original (Morrison Collection).
22 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Feb. 5
From the original (Morrison Collection).
23 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Feb. 13
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
24 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge April 7
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
25 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge April 15
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
26 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge June 13
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
27 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge June 24
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
28 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge (?)June 29
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
29 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Late July
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
30 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Aug. 24
From the original (Morrison Collection).
31 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge About Sept. 20
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
1798.
32 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Jan. 28
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
33 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Early summer
From the original in the Gluck Collection at Buffalo, U.S.A.
34 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey July 28
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
35 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Oct. 18
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
36 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Oct. 29
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
37 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Nov. 3
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
38 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Nov. 8
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
39 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey ?Nov.
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
40 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Nov. 28
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
41 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Dec. 27
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
1799.
42 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Jan. 21
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
43 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Jan. or Feb.
From the original.
44 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey March 15
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
45 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey March 20
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
46 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Oct. 31
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
47 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Dec.
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
48 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Dec. 28
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
1800.
49 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge ?Jan. 23
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
50 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Feb. 13
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
51 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning March 1
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
52 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning March 17
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
53 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning April 5
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
54 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge ?April 16 or 17
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
55 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge ?Spring
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
56 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge May 12
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
57 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning May 20
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
58 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning ?May 25
59 Charles Lamb to J. M. Gutch No date
From Mr. G. A. Gutch's original.
60 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge ?Late July
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
61 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Aug. 6
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
62 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Aug. 9
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
63 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Aug. 11
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
64 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Aug. 14
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
65 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Aug. 24
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
66 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Aug. 26
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
67 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Aug. 28
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
68 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Sept. 22
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
69 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Oct. 16
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
70 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Nov. 3
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
71 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Nov. 28
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
72 Charles Lamb to William Godwin Dec. 4
Mr. Kegan Paul's text (_William Godwin: His Friends_, etc.).
73 Charles Lamb to William Godwin No date
Mr. Kegan Paul's text (_William Godwin: His Friends_, etc.).
74 Charles Lamb to William Godwin Dec. 10
Mr. Kegan Paul's text (_William Godwin: His Friends_, etc.).
75 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Dec. 13
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
76 Charles Lamb to William Godwin Dec. 14
Mr. Kegan Paul's text (_William Godwin: His Friends_, etc.).
77 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Dec. 16
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
78, 79 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning End of year
From _The Athenaeum_.
80 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Dec. 27
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
1801.
81 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth. Jan. 30
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
82 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Feb. 15
Canon Ainger's text.
83 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Late Feb.
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
84 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning April
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
85 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning ?April
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
86 Charles Lamb to William Godwin June 29
Mr. Kegan Paul's text (_William Godwin: His Friends_, etc.).
87 Charles Lamb to Walter Wilson Aug. 14
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
88 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning ?Aug.
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
89 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Aug. 31
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
90 Charles Lamb to William Godwin Sept. 9
Mr. Kegan Paul's text (_William Godwin: His Friends_, etc.).
91 Charles Lamb to William Godwin (_fragment_) Sept. 17
Mr. Kegan Paul's text (_William Godwin: His Friends_, etc.).
92 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Godwin No date
Mr. Kegan Paul's text (_William Godwin: His Friends_, etc.).
93 Charles Lamb to John Rickman ?Nov.
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
1802.
94 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning ?Feb. 15
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
95 Charles Lamb to John Rickman April 10
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
96 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning ?End of April
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
97 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge (_fragment_) Sept. 8
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
98 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Sept. 24
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
99 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Oct. 9
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
100 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Oct. 11
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
101 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge (_fragment_) Oct. 23
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
102 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Nov. 4
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
103 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Nov.
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) and Talfourd, with alterations.
1803.
104 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Feb. 19
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_) with alterations.
105 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning March
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
106 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth March 5
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
107 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge April 13
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
108 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge May
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
109 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge May 27
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
110 Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth. July 9
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
111 Charles Lamb to John Rickman July 16
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
112 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart Sept. 21
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_Mary And Charles Lamb_).
113 Charles Lamb to William Godwin Nov. 8
Mr. Kegan Paul's text (_William Godwin: His Friends_, etc.).
114 Charles Lamb to William Godwin Nov. 10
Mr. Kegan Paul's text (_William Godwin: His Friends_, etc.).
1804.
115 Charles Lamb to Thomas Poole. Feb. 14
From original in British Museum.
116 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge March 10
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
117 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart ?March
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_Mary and Charles Lamb_).
118 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge April 5
From the original (Morrison Collection).
119 Charles Lamb to Thomas Poole May 4
From original in British Museum.
120 Charles Lamb to Thomas Poole May 5
From original in British Museum.
121 Charles Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth June 2
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
122 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart }
123 Charles Lamb to Sarah Stoddart } Late July
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_Mary and Charles Lamb_).
124 Part I., Charles Lamb to William }
Wordsworth }
125 Part II., Mary Lamb to Dorothy }
Wordsworth } Oct. 13
126 Part III., Mary Lamb to Mrs. S.T. }
Coleridge }
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
127 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Nov. 7
1805.
128 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth Feb. 18
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
129 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth Feb. 19
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
130 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Feb. 23
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
131 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth March 5
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
132 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth March 21
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
133 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth April 5
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
134 Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth May 7
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
135 Charles Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth June 14
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
136 Charles Lamb to Thomas manning July 27
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
137 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart ?Sept. 18
From the original.
138 Charles Lamb to William and Dorothy
Wordsworth Sept. 28
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
139 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart Early Nov.
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_Mary and Charles Lamb_).
140 Charles Lamb to William Hazlitt Nov. 10
From the original.
141 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart Nov. 9 and 14
From the original.
142 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Nov. 15
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
1806.
143 Charles Lamb to William Hazlitt Jan. 15
From the original.
144 Charles Lamb to John Rickman. Jan. 25
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
145 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth Feb. 1
From the original, recently in the possession of Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth.
146 Charles Lamb to William Hazlitt Feb. 19
From the original.
147 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart Feb. 20, 21 and 22
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_Mary and Charles Lamb_).
148 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart March
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_Mary and Charles Lamb_).
149 Charles Lamb to John Rickman March
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
150 Charles Lamb to William Hazlitt March 15
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
151 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning May 10
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
152 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart June 2
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_Mary and Charles Lamb_).
153 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth June 26
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
154 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart ?July 4
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_Mary and Charles Lamb_).
155 Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth Aug. 29
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
156 Mary Lamb to S. T. Coleridge. No date
From the original (Morrison Collection).
157 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart Oct. 23
From the original.
158 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Dec. 5
From the original.
159 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth Dec. 11
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
160 Charles Lamb to Sarah Stoddart Dec. 11
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
161 Charles Lamb to William Godwin No date
Mr. Kegan Paul's text (_William Godwin: His Friends_, etc.).
1807.
162 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth Jan. 29
From the original in Dr. Williams' Library.
163 Charles Lamb to T. and C. Clarkson June
From the original in the possession of
Mr. A.M.S. Emthuen.
164 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart Oct.
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_Mary and Charles
Lamb_).
165 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart Dec. 21
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_Mary and Charles
Lamb_).
1808.
166 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddard Feb. 12
From the original.
167 Charles Lamb to the Rev. W. Hazlitt Feb. 18
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
168 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Feb. 26
From the original.
169 Charles lamb to Matilda Betham No date
From _A House of Letters_.
170 Charles Lamb to Matilda Betham No date
From _A House of Letters_.
171 Charles Lamb to William Godwin March 11
Mr. Kegan Paul's text (_William Godwin
His Friends_, etc.).
172 Charles Lamb to Henry Crabb Robinson March 12
From the original in Dr. Williams' Library
173 Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart March 16
From the original.
174 Charles Lamb to George Dyer Dec. 5
From _The Mirror_.
175 Mary Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt }
176 Charles Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt } Dec. 10
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_Mary and Charles
Lamb_).
177 Mary Lamb to Mrs. Clarkson } Dec. 10
178 Charles Lamb to Mrs. Clarkson }
from the original in the possession of Mr.
A.M.S. Methuen.
1809.
179 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning March 28
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations
180 Charles Lamb to Henry Crabb Robinson May
From the original in Dr. Williams' Library
181 Mary Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt June 2
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_Mary and Charles
Lamb_).
182 Charles Lamb to S.T. Coleridge June 7
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
183 Charles Lamb to S.T. Coleridge Oct. 30
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
184 Mary Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt Nov. 7
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_Mary and Charles
Lamb_).
1810.
185 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Jan. 2
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
186 Charles Lamb to Henry Crabb Robinson Feb. 7
From the original in Dr. Williams' Library.
187 Charles Lamb to the J.M. Gutch April 9
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
188 Charles Lamb to Basil Montagu July 12
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
189 Charles Lamb to William Hazlitt Aug. 9
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
190 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth Oct. 19
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
191 Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth }
192 Charles Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth } Nov. 13
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original. }
193 Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth }
194 Charles Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth } Nov. 23
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original. }
195 Charles Lamb to William Hazlitt Nov. 28
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
196 Charles Lamb to William Godwin No date
Mr. Kegan Paul's text (_William Godwin:
His Friends_, etc.).
197 Mary Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt ? End of year
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_Mary and Charles
Lamb_).
1811.
198 Mary Lamb to Matilda Betham No date
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
199 Charles Lamb to John Morgan (_fragment_) March 8
From the original (Duchess of Albany)
200 Mary Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt }
201 Charles Lamb to William Hazlitt } Oct. 2
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_Mary and Charles }
Lamb_) and Bohn.
1812.
202 Charles Lamb to John Dyer Collier No date
J. P. Collier's text (_An Old Man's Diary_).
203 Mary Lamb to Mrs. John Dyer Collier No date
J. P. Collier's text (_An Old Man's Diary_).
[1813--_no letters_.]
1814.
204 Charles Lamb to John Scott ?Feb.
From facsimile (Birkbeck Hill's _Talks
about Autographs_).
205 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth Aug. 9
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
206 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Aug. 13
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
207 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Aug. 26
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
208 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth Sept. 19
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
209 Mary Lamb to Barbara Betham Nov. 2
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
210 Charles Lamb to John Scott Dec. 12
From Mr. R. B. Adam's original.
211 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth Dec. 28
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
1815.
212 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth ?Early Jan.
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
213 Charles Lamb to Mr. Sargus Feb. 23
From the original in the possession of Mr.
Thomas Greg.
214 Charles Lamb to Joseph Hume No date
Mr. Kegan Paul's text (_William Godwin:
His Friends_, etc.).
215 Charles Lamb to [Mrs. Hume?] No date
From the American owner.
216 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth April 7
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
217 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth April 28
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
218 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey May 6
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
219 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Aug. 9
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
220 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth Aug. 9
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
221 Mary Lamb to Sarah Hutchinson Aug. 20
222 Charles Lamb to Sarah Hutchinson Aug. 20
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
223 Mary Lamb to Matilda Betham ?Late summer
From _Fraser's Magazine_.
224 Charles Lamb to Matilda Betham No date
From _A House of Letters_.
225 Charles Lamb to Matilda Betham No date
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
226 Charles Lamb to Sarah Hutchinson Oct. 19
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
227 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Dec. 25
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
228 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning Dec. 26
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
1816.
229 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth April 9
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
230 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth April 26
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
231 Charles Lamb to Matilda Betham June 1
From _Fraser's Magazine_.
232 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth Sept. 23
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
233 Mary Lamb to Sarah Hutchinson Middle of Nov.
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
234 Mary Lamb to Sarah Hutchinson Late in year
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
1817.
235 Charles Lamb to William Ayrton May 12
From Ayrton's transcript in Lamb's _Works_, Vol. III.
236 Charles Lamb to Barren Field Aug. 31
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
237 Charles Lamb to James and Louisa Kenney Oct.
Text from Mr. Samuel Davey.
238 Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth Nov. 21
239 Charles Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth Nov. 21
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
240 Charles Lamb to John Payne Collier. Dec. 10
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
241 Charles Lamb to Benjamin Robert Haydon Dec. 26
From Tom Taylor's _Life of Haydon_.
1818.
242 Charles Lamb to Mrs. William Wordsworth Feb. 18
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
243 Charles Lamb to Charles and James Ollier June 18
From the original (Morrison Collection).
244 Charles Lamb to Robert Southey Oct. 26
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
245 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Dec. 24
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
1819.
246 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth April 26
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
247 Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning May 28
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
248 Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth June 7
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
249 Charles Lamb to Fanny Kelly July 20
Mr. John Hollingshead's text (_Harper's Magazine_).
250 Charles Lamb to Fanny Kelly July 20
John Hollingshead's text (_Harper's Magazine_).
251 Charles Lamb to Thomas Noon Talfourd(?) August
(Original in the possession of the Master of Magdelene.)
252 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge ?Summer
From the original (Morrison Collection).
253 Charles Lamb to Thomas Holcroft, Jr. Autumn
From the original (Morrison Collection).
254 Charles Lamb to Joseph Cottle Nov. 5
Mr. Hazlitt's text.
255 Charles Lamb to Joseph Cottle (_incomplete_) Late in year
Mr. Hazlitt's text.
256 Charles Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth Nov. 25
From Mr. Gordon Wordsworth's original.
1820.
257 Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge Jan. 10
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn) with alterations.
258 Mary Lamb to Mrs. Vincent Novello Spring
From the Cowden Clarkes' _Recollections of Writers_.
259 Charles Lamb to Joseph Cottle May 26
Mr. Hazlitt's text.
260 Charles Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth May 25
From Professor Knight's _Life of Wordsworth_.
261 Charles Lamb to Thomas Allsop July 13
262 Charles and Mary Lamb to Samuel James Arnold No date
263 Charles Lamb to Barron Field Aug. 16
Mr. Hazlitt's text (_The Lambs_).
263A Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge ?Autumn
Mr. Hazlitt's text (Bohn).
APPENDIX
Coleridge's "Ode on the Departing Year"
Wither's "Supersedeas"
Dyer's "Poetic Sympathies" (_fragment_)
Haydon's Party (from Taylor's _Life of Haydon_)
FRONTISPIECE
CHARLES LAMB (AGED 44)
From a Water-colour Drawing by J. G. F. Joseph.
THE LETTERS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB
1796-1820
LETTER 1
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Postmark May 27, 1796.]
DEAR C---- make yourself perfectly easy about May. I paid his bill, when
I sent your clothes. I was flush of money, and am so still to all the
purposes of a single life, so give yourself no further concern about it.
The money would be superfluous to me, if I had it.
With regard to Allen,--the woman he has married has some money, I have
heard about £200 a year, enough for the maintenance of herself &
children, one of whom is a girl nine years old! so Allen has dipt
betimes into the cares of a family. I very seldom see him, & do not know
whether he has given up the Westminster hospital.
When Southey becomes as modest as his predecessor Milton, and publishes
his Epics in duodecimo, I will read 'em,--a Guinea a book is somewhat
exorbitant, nor have I the opportunity of borrowing the Work. The
extracts from it in the Monthly Review and the short passages in your
Watchman seem to me much superior to any thing in his partnership
account with Lovell.
Your poems I shall procure forthwith. There were noble lines in what you
inserted in one of your Numbers from Religious Musings, but I thought
them elaborate. I am somewhat glad you have given up that Paper--it must
have been dry, unprofitable, and of "dissonant mood" to your
disposition. I wish you success in all your undertakings, and am glad to
hear you are employed about the Evidences of Religion. There is need of
multiplying such books an hundred fold in this philosophical age to
_prevent_ converts to Atheism, for they seem too tough disputants to
meddle with afterwards. I am sincerely sorry for Allen, as a family man
particularly.
Le Grice is gone to make puns in Cornwall. He has got a tutorship to a
young boy, living with his Mother, a widow Lady. He will of course
initiate him quickly in "whatsoever things are lovely, honorable, and of
good report." He has cut Miss Hunt compleatly,--the poor Girl is very
ill on the Occasion, but he laughs at it, and justifies himself by
saying, "she does not see him laugh." Coleridge, I know not what
suffering scenes you have gone through at Bristol--my life has been
somewhat diversified of late. The 6 weeks that finished last year and
began this your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a mad house
at Hoxton--I am got somewhat rational now, and don't bite any one. But
mad I was--and many a vagary my imagination played with me, enough to
make a volume if all told.
My Sonnets I have extended to the number of nine since I saw you, and
will some day communicate to you.
I am beginning a poem in blank verse, which if I finish I publish.
White is on the eve of publishing (he took the hint from Vortigern)
Original letters of Falstaff, Shallow &c--, a copy you shall have when
it comes out. They are without exception the best imitations I ever saw.
Coleridge, it may convince you of my regards for you when I tell you my
head ran on you in my madness, as much almost as on another Person, who
I am inclined to think was the more immediate cause of my temporary
frenzy.
The sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry but you will be curious
to read it when I tell you it was written in my prison-house in one of
my lucid Intervals.
TO MY SISTER
If from my lips some angry accents fell,
Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind,
'Twas but the error of a sickly mind,
And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well,
And waters clear, of Reason; and for me,
Let this my verse the poor atonement be,
My verse, which thou to praise wast ever inclined
Too highly, and with a partial eye to see
No blemish: thou to me didst ever shew
Fondest affection, and woud'st oftimes lend
An ear to the desponding love sick lay,
Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay
But ill the mighty debt of love I owe,
Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend.
With these lines, and with that sister's kindest remembrances to C----,
I conclude--
Yours sincerely
LAMB.
Your Conciones ad populum are the most eloquent politics that ever came
in my way.
Write, when convenient--not as a task, for there is nothing in this
letter to answer.
You may inclose under cover to me at the India house what letters you
please, for they come post free.
We cannot send our remembrances to Mrs. C---- not having seen her, but
believe me our best good wishes attend you both.
My civic and poetic compts to Southey if at Bristol.--Why, he is a very
Leviathan of Bards--the small minnow I--
[This is the earliest letter of Lamb's that has come down to us. On
February 10, 1796, he was just twenty-one years old, and was now living
at 7 Little Queen Street (since demolished) with his father, mother,
Aunt Sarah Lamb (known as Aunt Hetty), Mary Lamb and, possibly, John
Lamb. John Lamb, senior, was doing nothing and had, I think, already
begun to break up: his old master, Samuel Salt, had died in February,
1792. John Lamb, the son (born June 5, 1763), had a clerkship at the
South-Sea House; Charles Lamb had begun his long period of service in
the India House; and Mary Lamb (born December 3, 1764) was occupied as a
mantua-maker.
At this time Coleridge was twenty-three; he would be twenty-four on
October 21. His military experiences over, he had married Sara Fricker
on October 4, 1795 (a month before Southey married her sister Edith),
and was living at Bristol, on Redcliffe Hill. The first number of _The
Watchman_ was dated on March 1, 1796; on May 13, 1796, it came to an
end. On April 16, 1796, Cottle had issued Coleridge's _Poems on Various
Subjects_, containing also four "effusions" by Charles Lamb (Nos. VII.,
XI., XII. and XIII.), and the "Religious Musings." Southey, on bad terms
with Coleridge, partly on account of Southey's abandonment of
Pantisocracy, was in Lisbon. His _Joan of Arc_ had just been published
by Cottle in quarto at a guinea. Previously he had collaborated in _The
Fall of Robespierre_, 1794, with Coleridge and Robert Lovell. Each, one
evening, had set forth to write an act by the next. Southey and Lovell
did so, but Coleridge brought only a part of his. Lovell's being
useless, Southey rewrote his act, Coleridge finished his at leisure, and
the result was published. Robert Lovell (1770?-1796) had also been
associated with Coleridge and Southey in Pantisocracy and was their
brother-in-law, having married Mary Fricker, another of the sisters.
When, in 1795, Southey and Lovell had published a joint volume of
_Poems_, Southey took the pseudonym of Bion and Lovell of Moschus.
May was probably the landlord of the Salutation and Cat. The London
Directory for 1808 has "William May, Salutation Coffee House, 17 Newgate
Street." We must suppose that when Coleridge quitted the Salutation and
Cat in January, 1795, he was unable to pay his bill, and therefore had
to leave his luggage behind. Cottle's story of Coleridge being offered
free lodging by a London inn-keeper, if he would only talk and talk,
must then either be a pretty invention or apply to another landlord,
possibly the host of the Angel in Butcher Hall Street.
Allen was Robert Allen, a schoolfellow of Lamb and Coleridge, and
Coleridge's first friend. He was born on October 18, 1772. Both Lamb and
Leigh Hunt tell good stories of him at Christ's Hospital, Lamb in _Elia_
and Hunt in his _Autobiography_. From Christ's Hospital he went to
University College, Oxford, and it was he who introduced Coleridge and
Hucks to Southey in 1794. Probably, says Mr. E. H. Coleridge, it was he
who brought Coleridge and John Stoddart (afterwards Sir John, and
Hazlitt's brother-in-law) together. On leaving Oxford he seems to have
gone to Westminster to learn surgery, and in 1797 he was appointed
Deputy-Surgeon to the 2nd Royals, then in Portugal. He married a widow
with children; at some time later took to journalism, as Lamb's
reference in the _Elia_ essay on "Newspapers" tells us; and he died of
apoplexy in 1805.
Coleridge's employment on the _Evidences of Religion_, whatever it may
have been, did not reach print.
Le Grice was Charles Valentine Le Grice (1773-1858), an old Christ's
Hospitaller and Grecian (see Lamb's _Elia_ essays on "Christ's Hospital"
and "Grace before Meat"). Le Grice passed to Trinity College, Cambridge.
He left in 1796 and became tutor to William John Godolphin Nicholls of
Trereife, near Penzance, the only son of a widowed mother. Le Grice was
ordained in 1798 and married Mrs. Nicholls in 1799. Young Nicholls died
in 1815 and Mrs. Le Grice in 1821, when Le Grice became sole owner of
the Trereife property. He was incumbent of St. Mary's, Penzance, for
some years. Le Grice was a witty, rebellious character, but he never
fulfilled the promise of his early days. It has been conjectured that
his skill in punning awakened Lamb's ambition in that direction. Le
Grice saw Lamb next in 1834, at the Bell at Edmonton. His recollections
of Lamb were included by Talfourd in the _Memorials_, and his
recollections of Coleridge were printed in the _Gentleman's Magazine_,
December, 1834. I know nothing of Miss Hunt.
Of Lamb's confinement in a madhouse we know no more than is here told.
It is conjectured that the "other person" to whom Lamb refers a few
lines later was Ann Simmons, a girl at Widford for whom he had an
attachment that had been discouraged, if not forbidden, by her friends.
This is the only attack of the kind that Lamb is known to have suffered.
He once told Coleridge that during his illness he had sometimes believed
himself to be Young Norval in Home's "Douglas."
The poem in blank verse was, we learn in a subsequent letter, "The
Grandame," or possibly an autobiographical work of which "The Grandame"
is the only portion that survived.
White was James White (1775-1820), an old Christ's Hospitaller and a
friend and almost exact contemporary of Lamb. Lamb, who first kindled
his enthusiasm for Shakespeare, was, I think, to some extent involved in
the _Original Letters, &c., of Sir John Falstaff and his Friends_, which
appeared in 1796. The dedication--to Master Samuel Irelaunde, meaning
William Henry Ireland (who sometimes took his father's name Samuel), the
forger of the pretended Shakespearian play "Vortigern," produced at
Drury Lane earlier in the year--is quite in Lamb's manner. White's
immortality, however, rests not upon this book, but upon his portrait in
the _Elia_ essay on "Chimney-Sweepers."
The sonnet "To my Sister" was printed, with slight alterations, by Lamb
in Coleridge's _Poems_, second edition, 1797, and again in Lamb's
_Works_, 1818.
Coleridge's _Condones ad Populum; or, Addresses to the People_, had been
published at Bristol in November, 1795.]
LETTER 2
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Probably begun either on Tuesday, May 24, or Tuesday, May 31, 1796.
Postmark? June 1.]
I am in such violent pain with the head ach that I am fit for nothing
but transcribing, scarce for that. When I get your poems, and the Joan
of Arc, I will exercise my presumption in giving you my opinion of 'em.
The mail does not come in before tomorrow (Wednesday) morning. The
following sonnet was composed during a walk down into Hertfordshire
early in last Summer.
The lord of light shakes off his drowsyhed.[*]
Fresh from his couch up springs the lusty Sun,
And girds himself his mighty race to run.
Meantime, by truant love of rambling led,
I turn my back on thy detested walls,
Proud City, and thy sons I leave behind,
A selfish, sordid, money-getting kind,
Who shut their ears when holy Freedom calls.
I pass not thee so lightly, humble spire,
That mindest me of many a pleasure gone,
Of merriest days, of love and Islington,
Kindling anew the flames of past desire;
And I shall muse on thee, slow journeying on,
To the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire.
[Footnote: Drowsyhed I have met with I think in Spencer. Tis an old
thing, but it rhymes with led & rhyming covers a multitude of licences.]
The last line is a copy of Bowles's, "to the green hamlet in the
peaceful plain." Your ears are not so very fastidious--many people would
not like words so prosaic and familiar in a sonnet as Islington and
Hertfordshire. The next was written within a day or two of the last, on
revisiting a spot where the scene was laid of my 1st sonnet that "mock'd
my step with many a lonely glade."
When last I roved these winding wood-walks green,
Green winding walks, and pathways shady-sweet,
Oftimes would Anna seek the silent scene,
Shrouding her beauties in the lone retreat.
No more I hear her footsteps in the shade;
Her image only in these pleasant ways
Meets me self-wandring where in better days
I held free converse with my fair-hair'd maid.
I pass'd the little cottage, which she loved,
The cottage which did once my all contain:
it spake of days that ne'er must come again,
Spake to my heart and much my heart was moved.
"Now fair befall thee, gentle maid," said I,
And from the cottage turn'd me, with a sigh.
The next retains a few lines from a sonnet of mine, which you once
remarked had no "body of thought" in it. I agree with you, but have
preserved a part of it, and it runs thus. I flatter myself you will like
it.
A timid grace sits trembling in her Eye,
As both to meet the rudeness of men's sight,
Yet shedding a delicious lunar light,
That steeps in kind oblivious extacy
The care-craz'd mind, like some still melody;
Speaking most plain the thoughts which do possess
Her gentle sprite, peace and meek quietness,
And innocent loves,[*] and maiden purity.
A look whereof might heal the cruel smart
Of changed friends, or fortune's wrongs unkind;
Might to sweet deeds of mercy move the heart
Of him, who hates his brethren of mankind.
Turned are those beams from me, who fondly yet
Past joys, vain loves, and buried hopes regret.
[Footnote: Cowley uses this phrase with a somewhat different meaning: I
meant loves of relatives friends &c.]
The next and last I value most of all. 'Twas composed close upon the
heels of the last in that very wood I had in mind when I wrote "Methinks
how dainty sweet."
We were two pretty babes, the youngest she,
The youngest and the loveliest far, I ween,
And INNOCENCE her name. The time has been,
We two did love each other's company;
Time was, we two had wept to have been apart.
But when, with shew of seeming good beguil'd,
I left the garb and manners of a child,
And my first love for man's society,
Defiling with the world my virgin heart,
My loved companion dropt a tear, and fled,
And hid in deepest shades her awful head.
Beloved, who can tell me where Thou art,
In what delicious Eden to be found,
That I may seek thee the wide world around.
Since writing it, I have found in a poem by Hamilton of Bangour, these 2
lines to happiness
Nun sober and devout, where art thou fled
To hide in shades thy meek contented head.
Lines eminently beautiful, but I do not remember having re'd 'em
previously, for the credit of my 10th and 11th lines. Parnell has 2
lines (which probably suggested the _above_) to Contentment
Whither ah! whither art thou fled,
To hide thy meek contented head.[*]
[Footnote: an odd epithet for contentment in a poet so poetical as
Parnell.]
Cowley's exquisite Elegy on the death of his friend Harvey suggested the
phrase of "we two"
"Was there a tree that did not know
The love betwixt us two?----"
So much for acknowledged plagiarisms, the confession of which I know not
whether it has more of vanity or modesty in it. As to my blank verse I
am so dismally slow and sterile of ideas (I speak from my heart) that I
much question if it will ever come to any issue. I have hitherto only
hammered out a few indepen[den]t unconnected snatches, not in a capacity
to be sent. I am very ill, and will rest till I have read your
poems--for which I am very thankful. I have one more favour to beg of
you, that you never mention Mr. May's affair in any sort, much less
_think_ of repaying. Are we not flocci-nauci-what-d'ye-call-em-ists?
We have just learnd, that my poor brother has had a sad accident: a
large stone blown down by yesterday's high wind has bruised his leg in a
most shocking manner--he is under the care of Cruikshanks. Coleridge,
there are 10,000 objections against my paying you a visit at Bristol--it
cannot be, else--but in this world 'tis better not to think too much of
pleasant possibles, that we may not be out of humour with present
insipids. Should any thing bring you to London, you will recollect No.
7, Little Queen St. Holborn.
I shall be too ill to call on Wordsworth myself but will take care to
transmit him his poem, when I have read it. I saw Le Grice the day
before his departure, and mentioned incidentally his "teaching the young
idea how to shoot"--knowing him and the probability there is of people
having a propensity to pun in his company you will not wonder that we
both stumbled on the same pun at once, he eagerly anticipating me,--"he
would teach him to shoot!"--Poor Le Grice! if wit alone could entitle a
man to respect, &c. He has written a very witty little pamphlet lately,
satirical upon college declamations; when I send White's book, I will
add that.
I am sorry there should be any difference between you and Southey.
"Between you two there should be peace," tho' I must say I have borne
him no good will since he spirited you away from among us. What is
become of Moschus? You sported some of his sublimities, I see, in your
Watchman. Very decent things. So much for to night from your afflicted
headachey sorethroatey, humble Servant C. Lamb------Tuesday
night---------.
Of your Watchmen, the Review of Burke was the best prose. I augurd great
things from the 1st number. There is some exquisite poetry interspersed.
I have re-read the extract from the Religious musings and retract
whatever invidious there was in my censure of it as elaborate. There are
times when one is not in a disposition thoroughly to relish good
writing. I have re-read it in a more favourable moment and hesitate not
to pronounce it sublime. If there be any thing in it approachs to
tumidity (which I meant not to infer in elaborate: I meant simply
labored) it is the Gigantic hyperbole by which you describe the Evils of
existing society. Snakes, Lions, hyenas and behemoths, is carrying your
resentment beyond bounds. The pictures of the Simoom, of frenzy and
ruin, of the whore of Babylon and the cry of the foul spirits disherited
of Earth and the strange beatitude which the good man shall recognise in
heaven--as well as the particularizing of the children of wretchedness--
(I have unconsciously included every part of it) form a variety of
uniform excellence. I hunger and thirst to read the poem complete. That
is a capital line in your 6th no.: "this dark freeze-coated, hoarse,
teeth-chattering Month"--they are exactly such epithets as Burns would
have stumbled on, whose poem on the ploughd up daisy you seem to have
had in mind. Your complaint that [of] your readers some thought there
was too much, some too little, original matter in your Nos., reminds me
of poor dead Parsons in the Critic--"too little incident! Give me leave
to tell you, Sir, there is too much incident." I had like to have forgot
thanking you for that exquisite little morsel the 1st Sclavonian Song.
The expression in the 2d "more happy to be unhappy in hell"--is it not
very quaint? Accept my thanks in common with those of all who love good
poetry for the Braes of Yarrow. I congratulate you on the enemies you
must have made by your splendid invective against the barterers in
"human flesh and sinews." Coleridge, you will rejoice to hear that
Cowper is recovered from his lunacy, and is employ'd on his translation
of the Italian &c. poems of Milton, for an edition where Fuseli presides
as designer. Coleridge, to an idler like myself to write and receive
letters are both very pleasant, but I wish not to break in upon your
valuable time by expecting to hear very frequently from you. Reserve
that obligation for your moments of lassitude, when you have nothing
else to do; for your loco-restive and all your idle propensities of
course have given way to the duties of providing for a family. The mail
is come in but no parcel, yet this is Tuesday. Farewell then till to
morrow, for a nich and a nook I must leave for criticisms. By the way I
hope you do not send your own only copy of Joan of Arc; I will in that
case return it immediately.
Your parcel _is_ come, you have been _lavish_ of your presents.
Wordsworth's poem I have hurried thro not without delight. Poor Lovell!
my heart almost accuses me for the light manner I spoke of him above,
not dreaming of his death. My heart bleeds for your accumulated
troubles, God send you thro' 'em with patience. I conjure you dream not
that I will ever think of being repaid! the very word is galling to the
ears. I have read all your Rel. Musings with uninterrupted feelings of
profound admiration. You may safely rest your fame on it. The best
remain'g things are what I have before read, and they lose nothing by my
recollection of your manner of reciting 'em, for I too bear in mind "the
voice, the look" of absent friends, and can occasionally mimic their
manner for the amusement of those who have seen 'em. Your impassioned
manner of recitation I can recall at any time to mine own heart, and to
the ears of the bystanders. I rather wish you had left the monody on C.
concluding as it did abruptly. It had more of unity.--The conclusion of
your R Musings I fear will entitle you to the reproof of your Beloved
woman, who wisely will not suffer your fancy to run riot, but bids you
walk humbly with your God. The very last words "I exercise my young
noviciate tho't in ministeries of heart-stirring song," tho' not now new
to me, cannot be enough admired. To speak politely, they are a well
turnd compliment to Poetry. I hasten to read Joan of Arc, &c. I have
read your lines at the begin'g of 2d book, they are worthy of Milton,
but in my mind yield to your Rel Mus'gs. I shall read the whole
carefully and in some future letter take the liberty to particularize my
opinions of it. Of what is new to me among your poems next to the
Musings, that beginning "My Pensive Sara" gave me most pleasure: the
lines in it I just alluded to are most exquisite--they made my sister
and self smile, as conveying a pleasing picture of Mrs. C. chequing your
wild wandrings, which we were so fond of hearing you indulge when among
us. It has endeared us more than any thing to your good Lady; and your
own self-reproof that follows delighted us. 'Tis a charming poem
throughout. (You have well remarked that "charming, admirable,
exquisite" are words expressive of feelings, more than conveying of
ideas, else I might plead very well want of room in my paper as excuse
for generalizing.) I want room to tell you how we are charmed with your
verses in the manner of Spencer, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. I am glad you
resume the Watchman--change the name, leave out all articles of News,
and whatever things are peculiar to News Papers, and confine yourself to
Ethics, verse, criticism, or, rather do not confine yourself. Let your
plan be as diffuse as the Spectator, and I'll answer for it the work
prospers. If I am vain enough to think I can be a contributor, rely on
my inclinations. Coleridge, in reading your R. Musings I felt a
transient superiority over you: I _have_ seen Priestly. I love to see
his name repeated in your writings. I love and honor him almost
profanely. You would be charmed with his _sermons_, if you never read
'em.--You have doubtless read his books, illustrative of the doctrine of
Necessity. Prefixed to a late work of his, in answer to Paine, there is
a preface, given [?giving] an account of the Man and his services to
Men, written by Lindsey, his dearest friend,--well worth your reading.
Tuesday Eve.--Forgive my prolixity, which is yet too brief for all I
could wish to say.--God give you comfort and all that are of your
household.--Our loves and best good wishes to Mrs. C.
C. LAMB.
[The postmark of this letter looks like June 1, but it might be June 7,
It was odd to date it "Tuesday night" half way through, and "Tuesday
eve" at the end. Possibly Lamb began it on Tuesday, May 24, and finished
it on Tuesday, May 31; possibly he began it on Tuesday, May 31, and
finished it and posted it on Tuesday, June 7.
The Hertfordshire sonnet was printed in the _Monthly Magazine_ for
December, 1797, and not reprinted by Lamb.
The sonnet that "mock'd my step with many a lonely glade" is that
beginning--
Was it some sweet device of Faëry,
which had been printed in Coleridge's _Poems_, 1796. The second, third
and fourth of the sonnets that are copied in this letter were printed in
the second edition of Coleridge's _Poems_, 1797. Anna is generally
supposed to be Ann Simmons, referred to in the previous note.
Concerning "Flocci-nauci-what-d'ye-call-'em-ists," Canon Ainger has the
following interesting note: "'Flocci, nauci' is the beginning of a rule
in the old Latin grammars, containing a list of words signifying 'of no
account,' _floccus_ being a lock of wool, and _naucus_ a trifle. Lamb
was recalling a sentence in one of Shenstone's Letters:--'I loved him
for nothing so much as his flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication of money.'"
But "Pantisocratists" was, of course, the word that Lamb was shadowing.
Pantisocracy, however--the new order of common living and high thinking,
to be established on the banks of the Susquehanna by Coleridge, Southey,
Favell, Burnett and others--was already dead.
William Cumberland Cruikshank, the anatomist, who attended Lamb's
brother, had attended Dr. Johnson in his last illness.
Le Grice's pamphlet was _A General Theorem for A******* Coll.
Declamation_, by Gronovius, 1796.
Southey and Coleridge had been on somewhat strained terms for some time;
possibly, as I have said in the previous note, owing to Southey's
abandonment of Pantisocratic fervour, which anticipated Coleridge's by
some months. Also, to marry sisters does not always lead to serenity.
The spiriting away of Coleridge had been effected by Southey in January,
1795, when he found Coleridge at the Angel in Butcher Hall Street
(_vice_ the Salutation in Newgate Street) and bore him back to Bristol
and the forlorn Sara Fricker, and away from Lamb, journalism and
egg-hot.
Moschus was, as we have seen, Robert Lovell. No. V. of _The Watchman_
contained sonnets by him.
The review of Burke's _Letter to a Noble Lord_ was in No. I. of _The
Watchman._--The passage from "Religious Musings," under the title "The
Present State of Society," was in No. II.--extending from line 260 to
357. [These lines were 279-378 1st ed.; 264-363 2nd ed.] The capital
line in No. VI. is in the poem, "Lines on Observing a Blossom on the
First of February, 1796."--Poor dead Parsons would be William Parsons
(1736-1795), the original Sir Fretful Plagiary in Sheridan's "Critic."
Lamb praises him in his essay on the Artificial Comedy.--In No. IX. of
_The Watchman_ were prose paraphrases of three Sclavonian songs, the
first being "Song of a Female Orphan," and the second, "Song of the
Haymakers."--John Logan's "Braes of Yarrow" had been quoted in No. III.
as "the most exquisite performance in our language."--The invective
against "the barterers" refers to the denunciation of the slave trade in
No. IV. of _The Watchman_.
Cowper's recovery was only partial; and he was never rightly himself
after 1793. The edition of Milton had been begun about 1790. It was
never finished as originally intended; but Fuseli completed forty
pictures, which were exhibited in 1799. An edition of Cowper's
translations, with designs by Flaxman, was published in 1808, and of
Cowper's complete Milton in 1810.
Wordsworth's poem would be "Guilt and Sorrow," of which a portion was
printed in _Lyrical Ballads,_ 1798, and the whole published in 1842.
Coleridge's "Monody on Chatterton," the first poem in his _Poems on
Various Subjects_, 1796, had been written originally at Christ's
Hospital, 1790: it continued to be much altered before the final
version.
The two lines from "Religious Musings" are not the last, but the
beginning of the last passage.
Coleridge contributed between three and four hundred lines to Book II.
of Southey's _Joan of Arc_, as we shall see later. The poem beginning
"My Pensive Sara" was Effusion 35, afterwards called "The Æolian Harp,"
and the lines to which Lamb refers are these, following upon Coleridge's
description of how flitting phantasies traverse his indolent and passive
brain:--
But thy more serious eye a mild reproof
Darts, O beloved Woman! nor such thoughts
Dim and unhallow'd dost thou not reject,
And biddest me walk humbly with my God.
The plan to resume _The Watchman_ did not come to anything.
Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), the theologian, at this time the object of
Lamb's adoration, was one of the fathers of Unitarianism, a creed in
which Lamb had been brought up under the influence of his Aunt Hetty.
Coleridge, as a supporter of one of Priestley's allies, William Frend of
Cambridge, and as a convinced Unitarian, was also an admirer of
Priestley, concerning whom and the Birmingham riots of 1791 is a fine
passage in "Religious Musings," while one of the sonnets of the 1796
volume was addressed to him: circumstances which Lamb had in mind when
mentioning him in this letter. Lamb had probably seen Priestley at the
Gravel Pit Chapel, Hackney, where he became morning preacher in
December, 1791, remaining there until March, 1794. Thenceforward he
lived in America. His _Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion_
appeared between 1772 and 1774. The other work referred to is _Letters
to the Philosophers and Politicians of France_, newly edited by
Theophilus Lindsey, the Unitarian, as _An Answer to Mr. Paine's "Age of
Reason_," 1795.]
LETTER 3
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
[Begun Wednesday, June 8. Dated on address: "Friday 10th June," 1796.]
With Joan of Arc I have been delighted, amazed. I had not presumed to
expect any thing of such excellence from Southey. Why the poem is alone
sufficient to redeem the character of the age we live in from the
imputation of degenerating in Poetry, were there no such beings extant
as Burns and Bowles, Cowper and----fill up the blank how you please, I
say nothing. The subject is well chosen. It opens well. To become more
particular, I will notice in their order a few passages that chiefly
struck me on perusal. Page 26 "Fierce and terrible Benevolence!" is a
phrase full of grandeur and originality. The whole context made me feel
_possess'd_, even like Joan herself. Page 28, "it is most horrible with
the keen sword to gore the finely fibred human frame" and what follows
pleased me mightily. In the 2d Book the first forty lines, in
particular, are majestic and high-sounding. Indeed the whole vision of
the palace of Ambition and what follows are supremely excellent. Your
simile of the Laplander "by Niemi's lake Or Balda Zhiok, or the mossy
stone Of Solfar Kapper"--will bear comparison with any in Milton for
fullness of circumstance and lofty-pacedness of Versification. Southey's
similes, tho' many of 'em are capital, are all inferior. In one of his
books the simile of the Oak in the Storm occurs I think four times! To
return, the light in which you view the heathen deities is accurate and
beautiful. Southey's personifications in this book are so many fine and
faultless pictures. I was much pleased with your manner of accounting
for the reason why Monarchs take delight in War. At the 447th line you
have placed Prophets and Enthusiasts cheek by jowl, on too intimate a
footing for the dignity of the former. Necessarian-like-speaking it is
correct. Page 98 "Dead is the Douglas, cold thy warrior frame,
illustrious Buchan" &c are of kindred excellence with Gray's "Cold is
Cadwallo's tongue" &c. How famously the Maid baffles the Doctors,
Seraphic and Irrefragable, "with all their trumpery!" 126 page, the
procession, the appearances of the Maid, of the Bastard son of Orleans
and of Tremouille, are full of fire and fancy, and exquisite melody of
versification. The personifications from line 303 to 309 in the heat of
the battle had better been omitted, they are not very striking and only
encumber. The converse which Joan and Conrade hold on the Banks of the
Loire is altogether beautiful. Page 313, the conjecture that in Dreams
"all things are that seem" is one of those conceits which the Poet
delights to admit into his creed--a creed, by the way, more marvellous
and mystic than ever Athanasius dream'd of. Page 315, I need only
_mention_ those lines ending with "She saw a serpent gnawing at her
heart"!!! They are good imitative lines "he toild and toild, of toil to
reap no end, but endless toil and never ending woe." 347 page, Cruelty
is such as Hogarth might have painted her. Page 361, all the passage
about Love (where he seems to confound conjugal love with Creating and
Preserving love) is very confused and sickens me with a load of useless
personifications. Else that 9th Book is the finest in the volume, an
exquisite combination of the ludicrous and the terrible,--I have never
read either, even in translation, but such as I conceive to be the
manner of Dante and Ariosto. The 10th book is the most languid. On the
whole, considering the celerity wherewith the poem was finish'd, I was
astonish'd at the infrequency of weak lines. I had expected to find it
verbose. Joan, I think, does too little in Battle--Dunois, perhaps, the
same--Conrade too much. The anecdotes interspersed among the battles
refresh the mind very agreeably, and I am delighted with the very many
passages of simple pathos abounding throughout the poem--passages which
the author of "Crazy Kate" might have written. Has not Master Southey
spoke very slightingly in his preface and disparagingly of Cowper's
Homer?--what makes him reluctant to give Cowper his fame? And does not
Southey use too often the expletives "did" and "does"? They have a good
effect at times, but are too inconsiderable, or rather become blemishes,
when they mark a style. On the whole, I expect Southey one day to rival
Milton. I already deem him equal to Cowper, and superior to all living
Poets besides. What says Coleridge? The "Monody on Henderson" is
_immensely good_; the rest of that little volume is _readable and above
mediocrity_. I proceed to a more pleasant task,--pleasant because the
poems are yours, pleasant because you impose the task on me, and
pleasant, let me add, because it will confer a whimsical importance on
me to sit in judgment upon your rhimes. First tho', let me thank you
again and again in my own and my sister's name for your invitations.
Nothing could give us more pleasure than to come, but (were there no
other reasons) while my Brother's leg is so bad it is out of the
question. Poor fellow, he is very feverish and light headed, but
Cruikshanks has pronounced the symptoms favorable, and gives us every
hope that there will be no need of amputation. God send, not. We are
necessarily confined with him the afternoon and evening till very late,
so that I am stealing a few minutes to write to you. Thank you for your
frequent letters, you are the only correspondent and I might add the
only friend I have in the world. I go no where and have no acquaintance.
Slow of speech, and reserved of manners, no one seeks or cares for my
society and I am left alone. Allen calls only occasionally, as tho' it
were a duty rather, and seldom stays ten minutes. Then judge how
thankful I am for your letters. Do not, however, burthen yourself with
the correspondence. I trouble you again so soon, only in obedience to
your injunctions. Complaints apart, proceed we to our task. I am called
away to tea, thence must wait upon my brother, so must delay till
to-morrow. Farewell--Wednesday.
Thursday. I will first notice what is new to me. 13th page. "The
thrilling tones that concentrate the soul" is a nervous line, and the 6
first lines of page 14 are very pretty. The 21st effusion a perfect
thing. That in the manner of Spencer is very sweet, particularly at the
close. The 35th effusion is most exquisite--that line in particular,
"And tranquil muse upon tranquillity." It is the very reflex pleasure
that distinguishes the tranquillity of a thinking being from that of a
shepherd--a modern one I would be understood to mean--a Dametas; one
that keeps other people's sheep. Certainly, Coleridge, your letter from
Shurton Bars has less merit than most things in your volume; personally,
it may chime in best with your own feelings, and therefore you love it
best. It has however great merit. In your 4th Epistle that is an
exquisite paragraph and fancy-full of "A stream there is which rolls in
lazy flow" &c. &c. "Murmurs sweet undersong 'mid jasmine bowers" is a
sweet line and so are the 3 next. The concluding simile is far-fetch'd.
"Tempest-honord" is a quaint-ish phrase. Of the Monody on H., I will
here only notice these lines, as superlatively excellent. That energetic
one, "Shall I not praise thee, Scholar, Christian, friend," like to that
beautiful climax of Shakspeare "King, Hamlet, Royal Dane, Father." "Yet
memory turns from little men to thee!" "and sported careless round their
fellow child." The whole, I repeat it, is immensely good. Yours is a
Poetical family. I was much surpriz'd and pleased to see the signature
of Sara to that elegant composition, the 5th Epistle. I dare not
_criticise_ the Relig Musings, I like not to _select_ any part where all
is excellent. I can only admire; and thank you for it in the name of a
Christian as well as a Lover of good Poetry. Only let me ask, is not
that thought and those words in Young, "Stands in the Sun"? or is it
only such as Young in one of his _better moments_ might have writ?
"Believe, thou, O my Soul, Life is a vision, shadowy of truth, And vice
and anguish and the wormy grave, Shapes of a dream!" I thank you for
these lines, in the name of a Necessarian, and for what follows in next
paragraph in the name of a child of fancy. After all you can[not] nor
ever will write any thing, with which I shall be so delighted as what I
have heard yourself repeat. You came to Town, and I saw you at a time
when your heart was yet bleeding with recent wounds. Like yourself, I
was sore galled with disappointed Hope. You had "many an holy lay, that
mourning, soothed the mourner on his way." I had ears of sympathy to
drink them in, and they yet vibrate pleasant on the sense. When I read
in your little volume, your 19th Effusion, or the 28th or 29th, or what
you call the "Sigh," I think I hear _you_ again. I image to myself the
little smoky room at the Salutation and Cat, where we have sat together
thro' the winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with Poesy. When
you left London, I felt a dismal void in my heart, I found myself cut
off at one and the same time from two most dear to me. "How blest with
Ye the Path could I have trod of Quiet life." In your conversation you
had blended so many pleasant fancies, that they cheated me of my grief.
But in your absence, the tide of melancholy rushd in again, and did its
worst Mischief by overwhelming my Reason. I have recoverd. But feel a
stupor that makes me indifferent to the hopes and fears of this life. I
sometimes wish to introduce a religious turn of mind, but habits are
strong things, and my religious fervors are confined alas to some
fleeting moments of occasional solitary devotion--A correspondence,
opening with you, has roused me a little from my lethargy, and made me
conscious of existence. Indulge me in it. I will not be very
troublesome. At some future time I will amuse you with an account as
full as my memory will permit of the strange turn my phrensy took. I
look back upon it at times with a gloomy kind of Envy. For while it
lasted I had many many hours of pure happiness. Dream not Coleridge, of
having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of Fancy, till you have gone
mad. All now seems to me vapid; comparatively so. Excuse this selfish
digression.
Your monody is so superlatively excellent, that I can only wish it
perfect, which I can't help feeling it is not quite. Indulge me in a few
conjectures. What I am going to propose would make it more compress'd
and I think more energic, tho' I am sensible at the expence of many
beautiful lines. Let it begin "Is this the land of song-ennobled line,"
and proceed to "Otway's famish'd form." Then "Thee Chatterton," to
"blaze of Seraphim." Then "clad in nature's rich array," to "orient
day;" then "but soon the scathing lightning," to "blighted land." Then
"Sublime of thought" to "his bosom glows." Then "but soon upon _his_
poor unsheltered head Did Penury her sickly Mildew shed, and soon are
fled the charms of vernal Grace, and Joy's wild gleams that lightend
o'er his face!" Then "Youth of tumultuous soul" to "sigh" as before. The
rest may all stand down to "gaze upon the waves below." What follows now
may come next, as detached verses, suggested by the Monody, rather than
a part of it. They are indeed in themselves very sweet "And we at sober
eve would round thee throng, Hanging enraptured on thy stately song"--in
particular perhaps. If I am obscure you may understand me by counting
lines. I have proposed omitting 24 lines. I feel that thus comprest it
would gain energy, but think it most likely you will not agree with me,
for who shall go about to bring opinions to the Bed of Procrustes and
introduce among the Sons of Men a monotony of identical feelings. I only
propose with diffidence. Reject, you, if you please, with as little
remorse as you would the color of a coat or the pattern of a buckle
where our fancies differ'd. The lines "Friend to the friendless" &c.
which you may think "rudely disbranched" from the Chatterton will patch
in with the Man of Ross, where they were once quite at Home, with 2 more
which I recollect "and o'er the dowried virgin's snowy cheek bad bridal
love suffuse his blushes meek!" very beautiful. The Pixies is a perfect
thing, and so are the lines on the spring, page 28. The Epitaph on an
Infant, like a Jack of lanthorn, has danced about (or like Dr. Forster's
scholars) out of the Morn Chron into the Watchman, and thence back into
your Collection. It is very pretty, and you seem to think so, but, may
be o'er looked its chief merit, that of filling up a whole page. I had
once deemd Sonnets of unrivalled use that way, but your epitaphs, I
find, are the more diffuse. Edmund still holds its place among your best
verses. "Ah! fair delights" to "roses round" in your Poem called Absence
recall (none more forcibly) to my mind the tones in which _you recited
it_. I will not notice in this tedious (to you) manner verses which have
been so long delightful to me, and which you already know my opinion of.
Of this kind are Bowles, Priestly, and that most exquisite and most
Bowles-like of all, the 19th Effusion. It would have better ended with
"agony of care." The last 2 lines are obvious and unnecessary and you
need not now make 14 lines of it, now it is rechristend from a Sonnet to
an Effusion. Schiller might have written the 20 Effusion. 'Tis worthy of
him in any sense. I was glad to meet with those lines you sent me, when
my Sister was so ill. I had lost the Copy, and I felt not a little proud
at seeing my name in your verse. The complaint of Ninathoma (1st stanza
in particular) is the best, or only good imitation, of Ossian I ever
saw--your restless gale excepted. "To an infant" is most sweet--is not
"foodful," tho', very harsh! would not "dulcet" fruit be less harsh, or
some other friendly bi-syllable? In Edmund, "Frenzy fierce-eyed child,"
is not so well as frantic--tho' that is an epithet adding nothing to the
meaning. Slander _couching_ was better than squatting. In the Man of
Ross it _was_ a better line thus "If 'neath this roof thy wine-chear'd
moments pass" than as it stands now. Time nor nothing can reconcile me
to the concluding 5 lines of Kosciusko: call it any thing you will but
sublime. In my 12th Effusion I had rather have seen what I wrote myself,
tho' they bear no comparison with your exquisite lines "On rose-leaf'd
beds amid your faery bowers," &c.--I love my sonnets because they are
the reflected images of my own feelings at different times. To instance,
in the 13th "How reason reel'd," &c.--are good lines but must spoil the
whole with ME who know it is only a fiction of yours and that the rude
dashings did in fact NOT ROCK me to REPOSE, I grant the same objection
applies not to the former sonnet, but still I love my own feelings. They
are dear to memory, tho' they now and then wake a sigh or a tear.
"Thinking on divers things foredone," I charge you, Col., spare my ewe
lambs, and tho' a Gentleman may borrow six lines in an epic poem (I
should have no objection to borrow 500 and without acknowledging) still
in a Sonnet--a personal poem--I do not "ask my friend the aiding verse."
I would not wrong your feelings by proposing any improvements (did I
think myself capable of suggesting 'em) in such personal poems as "Thou
bleedest my poor heart"--'od so, I am catchd, I have already done
it--but that simile I propose abridging would not change the feeling or
introduce any alien ones. Do you understand me? In the 28th however, and
in the "Sigh" and that composed at Clevedon, things that come from the
heart direct, not by the medium of the fancy, I would not suggest an
alteration. When my blank verse is finished, or any long fancy poems,
"_propino tibi alterandum, cut-up-andum, abridg-andum_," just what you
will with it--but spare my EWE LAMBS! That to Mrs. Siddons now you were
welcome to improve, if it had been worth it. But I say unto you again,
Col., spare my EWE LAMBS. I must confess were they mine I should omit,
in Editione secundâ, Effusions 2-3, because satiric, and below the
dignity of the poet of Religious Musings, 5-7, half of the 8th, that
written in early Youth, as far as "Thousand eyes,"--tho' I part not
unreluctantly with that lively line "Chaste Joyance dancing in her
bright-blue eyes" and one or 2 more just thereabouts. But I would
substitute for it that sweet poem called "Recollection" in the 5th No.
of the Watchman, better I think than the remainder of this poem, tho'
not differing materially. As the poem now stands it looks altogether
confused. And do not omit those lines upon the "early blossom," in your
6th No. of the Watchman, and I would omit the 10th Effusion--or what
would do better, alter and improve the last 4 lines. In fact, I suppose
if they were mine I should _not_ omit 'em. But your verse is for the
most part so exquisite, that I like not to see aught of meaner matter
mixed with it. Forgive my petulance and often, I fear, ill founded
criticisms, and forgive me that I have, by this time, made your eyes and
head ach with my long letter. But I cannot forego hastily the pleasure
and pride of thus conversing with you.
You did not tell me whether I was to include the Conciones ad Populum in
my remarks on your poems. They are not unfrequently sublime, and I think
you could not do better than to turn 'em into verse,--if you have
nothing else to do. Allen I am sorry to say is a _confirmed_ Atheist.
Stodart, or Stothard, a cold hearted well bred conceited disciple of
Godwin, does him no good. His wife has several daughters (one of 'em as
old as himself). Surely there is something unnatural in such a marriage.
How I sympathise with you on the dull duty of a reviewer, and heartily
damn with you Ned Evans and the Prosodist. I shall however wait
impatiently for the articles in the Crit. Rev., next month, because they
are _yours_. Young Evans (W. Evans, a branch of a family you were once
so intimate with) is come into our office, and sends his love to you.
Coleridge, I devoutly wish that Fortune, who has made sport with you so
long, may play one freak more, throw you into London, or some spot near
it, and there snug-ify you for life. 'Tis a selfish but natural wish for
me, cast as I am "on life's wide plain, friend-less." Are you acquainted
with Bowles? I see, by his last Elegy (written at Bath), you are near
neighbours. "And I can think I can see the groves again--was it the
voice of thee--Twas not the voice of thee, my buried friend--who dries
with her dark locks the tender tear"--are touches as true to nature as
any in his other Elegy, written at the hot wells, about poor Russell,
&c.--You are doubtless acquainted with it.--Thursday.
I do not know that I entirely agree with you in your stricture upon my
Sonnet to Innocence. To men whose hearts are not quite deadened by their
commerce with the world, Innocence (no longer familiar) becomes an awful
idea. So I felt when I wrote it. Your other censures (qualified and
sweeten'd, tho', with praises somewhat extravagant) I perfectly coincide
with. Yet I chuse to retain the word "lunar"--indulge a "lunatic" in his
loyalty to his mistress the moon. I have just been reading a most
pathetic copy of verses on Sophia Pringle, who was hanged and burn'd for
coining. One of the strokes of pathos (which are very many, all somewhat
obscure) is "She lifted up her guilty forger to heaven." A note explains
by forger her right hand with which she forged or coined the base metal!
For pathos read bathos. You have put me out of conceit with my blank
verse by your Religious Musings. I think it will come to nothing. I do
not like 'em enough to send 'em. I have just been reading a book, which
I may be too partial to, as it was the delight of my childhood; but I
will recommend it to you--it is "Izaak Walton's Complete Angler!" All
the scientific part you may omit in reading. The dialogue is very
simple, full of pastoral beauties, and will charm you. Many pretty old
verses are interspersed. This letter, which would be a week's work
reading only, I do not wish you to answer in less than a month. I shall
be richly content with a letter from you some day early in July--tho' if
you get any how _settled_ before then pray let me know it immediately--
'twould give me such satisfaction. Concerning the Unitarian chapel, the
salary is the only scruple that the most rigid moralist would admit as
valid. Concerning the tutorage--is not the salary low, and absence from
your family unavoidable? London is the only fostering soil for Genius.
Nothing more occurs just now, so I will leave you in mercy one small
white spot empty below, to repose your eyes upon, fatigued as they must
be with the wilderness of words they have by this time painfully
travell'd thro'. God love you, Coleridge, and prosper you thro' life,
tho' mine will be loss if your lot is to be cast at Bristol or at
Nottingham or any where but London. Our loves to Mrs. C--.
C. L.
[Southey's _Joan of Arc_, with contributions to Book II. by Coleridge,
had been published in quarto by Cottle. Coleridge contributed to Book
II. the first 450 lines, with the exception of 141-143, 148-222, 266-272
and 286-291. He subsequently took out his lines and gave them new shape
as the poem "The Destiny of Nations," printed in _Sibylline Leaves_,
1817. All subsequent editions of Southey's poem appeared without
Coleridge's portion. The passages on page 26 and page 28 were Southey's.
Those at the beginning of the second book were Coleridge's. The simile
of the Laplander may be read in "The Destiny of Nations" (lines 63-79).
These were the reasons given by Coleridge for monarchs making war:--
When Luxury and Lust's exhausted stores
No more can rouse the appetites of KINGS;
When the low Flattery of their reptile Lords
Falls flat and heavy on the accustomed ear;
When Eunuchs sing, and Fools buffoon'ry make.
And Dancers writhe their harlot limbs in vain:
Then War and all its dread vicissitudes
Pleasingly agitate their stagnant hearts....
The 447th line was Coleridge's. This is the passage:--
Whether thy LAW with unrefracted Ray
Beam on the PROPHET'S purged Eye, or if
Diseasing Realms the ENTHUSIAST, wild of thought,
Scatter new frenzies on the infected Throng,
THOU, Both inspiring and foredooming, Both
Fit INSTRUMENTS and best of perfect END.
With page 98 we come to Southey again, the remaining references being to
him. The maid baffles the doctors in Book III.; page 126 is in Book IV.;
the personifications are in Book VI.; the converse between Joan and
Conrade is in Book IV.; page 313 is at the beginning of Book IX.; and
pages 315, 347 and 361 are also in Book IX. Southey in the preface to
_Joan of Arc_, speaking of Homer, says: "Pope has disguised him in
fop-finery and Cowper has stripped him naked." "Crazy Kate" is an
episode in _The Task_ ("The Sofa").
The "Monody on John Henderson," by Joseph Cottle, was printed
anonymously in a volume of poems in 1795, and again in _The Malvern
Hill_. John Henderson (1757-1788) was an eccentric scholar of Bristol.
The lines praised by Lamb are the 4th, 12th and 14th. The poem must not
be confused with the Monody on Henderson, the actor, by G. D. Harley.
Lamb now turns again to Coleridge's _Poems_. The poem on the 13th and
14th pages of this little volume was "To the Rev. W. J. H." The 21st
Effusion was that entitled "Composed while Climbing the Left Ascent of
Brockley Coomb." The 35th Effusion is known as "The AEolian Harp." The
letter from Shurton Bars is the poem beginning--
Nor travels my meand'ring eye.
The 4th Epistle is that to Joseph Cottle, Coleridge's publisher and the
author of the "Monody on Henderson," referred to in Coleridge's verses.
The lines which Lamb quotes are Cottle's. The poem by Sara Coleridge is
"The Silver Thimble." The passage in the "Religious Musings," for which
Lamb is thankful as a "child of fancy," is the last paragraph:--
Contemplant Spirits! ye that hover o'er
With untired gaze the immeasurable fount
Ebullient with creative Deity!
And ye of plastic power, that interfused
Roll through the grosser and material mass
In organising surge! Holies of God!
(And what if Monads of the infinite mind?)
I haply journeying my immortal course
Shall sometime join your mystic choir!
Till then
I discipline my young noviciate thought
In ministeries of heart-stirring song,
And aye on Meditation's heaven-ward wing
Soaring aloft I breathe the empyreal air
Of Love, omnific, omnipresent Love,
Whose day-spring rises glorious in my soul
As the great Sun, when he his influence
Sheds on the frost-bound waters--The glad stream
Flows to the ray and warbles as it flows.
"You came to Town ..." Soon after his engagement with Sara Fricker, his
heart being still not wholly healed of its passion for Mary Evans,
Coleridge had gone to London from Bristol, nominally to arrange for the
publication of his _Fall of Robespierre_, and had resumed intercourse
with Lamb and other old Christ's Hospital friends. There he remained
until Southey forcibly took him back in January, 1795. From what Lamb
says of the loss of two friends we must suppose, in default of other
information, that he had to give up his Anna at the same time. The loss
of reason, however, to which he refers did not come until the end of the
year 1795.
The 19th Effusion, afterwards called "On a Discovery Made Too Late;" the
28th, "The Kiss;" the 29th, "Imitated from Ossian."
"Your monody." This, not to be confounded with Cottle's "Monody on
Henderson," was Coleridge's "Monody on Chatterton." Lamb's emendations
were not accepted. As regards "The Man of Ross," the couplet beginning
"Friend to the friendless" ultimately had a place both in that poem and
in the Monody, but the couplet "and o'er the dowried virgin" was never
replaced in either. The lines on spring, page 28, are "Lines to a
Beautiful Spring." Dr. Forster (Faustus) was the hero of the nursery
rhyme, whose scholars danced out of England into France and Spain and
back again. The epitaph on an infant was in _The Watchman_, No. IX. (see
note on page 62). The poem "Edmund" is called "Lines on a Friend who
died of a frenzy fever induced by calumnious reports." The lines in
"Absence" are those in the second stanza of the poem. They run thus:--
Ah fair Delights! that o'er my soul
On Memory's wing, like shadows fly!
Ah Flowers! which Joy from Eden stole
While Innocence stood smiling by!--
But cease, fond Heart! this bootless moan:
Those Hours on rapid Pinions flown
Shall yet return, by ABSENCE crowned,
And scatter livelier roses round.
The 19th Effusion, beginning "Thou bleedest, my poor heart," is known as
"On a Discovery Made Too Late." The 20th Effusion is the sonnet to
Schiller. The lines which were sent to Lamb, written in December, 1794,
are called "To a Friend, together with an unfinished poem" ("Religious
Musings"). Coleridge's "Restless Gale" is the imitation of Ossian,
beginning, "The stream with languid murmur creeps." "Foodful" occurs
thus in the lines "To an Infant":--
Alike the foodful fruit and scorching fire
Awake thy eager grasp and young desire.
Coleridge did not alter the phrase.
Lamb contributed four effusions to this volume of Coleridge's: the 7th,
to Mrs. Siddons (written in conjunction with Coleridge), the 11th, 12th
and 13th. All were signed C. L. Coleridge had permitted himself to make
various alterations. The following parallel will show the kind of
treatment to which Lamb objected:--
LAMB'S ORIGINAL EFFUSION (11)
Was it some sweet device of Faery
That mock'd my steps with many a lonely glade,
And fancied wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid?
Have these things been? or what rare witchery,
Impregning with delights the charmed air,
Enlighted up the semblance of a smile
In those fine eyes? methought they spake the while
Soft soothing things, which might enforce despair
To drop the murdering knife, and let go by
His foul resolve. And does the lonely glade
Still court the foot-steps of the fair-hair'd maid?
Still in her locks the gales of summer sigh?
While I forlorn do wander reckless where,
And 'mid my wanderings meet no Anna there.
AS ALTERED BY COLERIDGE
Was it some sweet device of faery land
That mock'd my steps with many a lonely glade,
And fancied wand'rings with a fair-hair'd maid?
Have these things been? Or did the wizard wand
Of Merlin wave, impregning vacant air,
And kindle up the vision of a smile
In those blue eyes, that seem'd to speak the while
Such tender things, as might enforce Despair
To drop the murth'ring knife, and let go by
His fell resolve? Ah me! the lonely glade
Still courts the footsteps of the fair-hair'd maid,
Among whose locks the west-winds love to sigh:
But I forlorn do wander, reckless where,
And mid my wand'rings find no ANNA there!
In Effusion 12 Lamb had written:--
Or we might sit and tell some tender tale
Of faithful vows repaid by cruel scorn,
A tale of true love, or of friend forgot;
And I would teach thee, lady, how to rail
In gentle sort, on those who practise not
Or Love or pity, though of woman born.
Coleridge made it:--
But ah! sweet scenes of fancied bliss, adieu!
On rose-leaf beds amid your faery bowers
I all too long have lost the dreamy hours!
Beseems it now the sterner Muse to woo,
If haply she her golden meed impart
To realize the vision of the heart.
Again in the 13th Effusion, "Written at Midnight, by the Sea-side, after
a Voyage," Lamb had dotted out the last two lines. Coleridge substituted
the couplet:--
How Reason reel'd! What gloomy transports rose!
Till the rude dashings rock'd them to repose.
Effusion 2, which Lamb would omit, was the sonnet "To Burke;" Effusion
3, "To Mercy" (on Pitt); Effusion 5, "To Erskine;" Effusion 7, Lamb and
Coleridge's joint sonnet, "To Mrs. Siddons;" and Effusion 8, "To
Koskiusko." The "Lines Written in Early Youth" were afterwards called
"Lines on an Autumnal Evening." The poem called "Recollection," in _The
Watchman_, was reborn as "Sonnet to the River Otter." The lines on the
early blossom were praised by Lamb in a previous letter. The 10th
Effusion was the sonnet to Earl Stanhope.
Godwin was William Godwin, the philosopher. We shall later see much of
him. It was Allen's wife, not Stoddart's, who had a grown-up daughter.
_Ned Evans_ was a novel in four volumes, published in 1796, an imitation
of _Tom Jones_, which presumably Coleridge was reviewing for the
_Critical Review_.
Young W. Evans is said by Mr. Dykes Campbell to have been the only son
of the Mrs. Evans who befriended Coleridge when he was at Christ's
Hospital, the mother of his first love, Mary Evans. Evans was at school
with Coleridge and Lamb. We shall meet with him again.
William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850), the sonneteer, who had exerted so
powerful a poetical influence on Coleridge's mind, was at this time
rector of Cricklade in Wiltshire (1792-1797), but had been ill at Bath.
The elegy in question was "Elegiac Stanzas written during sickness at
Bath, December, 1795." The lines quoted by Lamb are respectively in the
6th, 4th, 5th and 19th Stanzas.
Sophia Pringle. Probably the subject of a Catnach or other popular
broadside. I have not found it.
Izaak Walton. Lamb returns to praises of _The Compleat Angler_ in his
letter to Robert Lloyd referred to on page 215.
The reference to the Unitarian chapel bears probably upon an offer of a
pulpit to Coleridge. The tutorship was probably that offered to
Coleridge by Mrs. Evans of Darley Hall (no relation to Mary Evans) who
wished him to teach her sons. Neither project was carried through.]
LETTER 4
(_Apparently a continuation of a letter the first part of which is
missing_)
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Begun] Monday Night [June 13, 1796].
UNFURNISHED at present with any sheet-filling subject, I shall continue
my letter gradually and journal-wise. My second thoughts entirely
coincide with your comments on "Joan of Arc," and I can only wonder at
my childish judgment which overlooked the 1st book and could prefer the
9th: not that I was insensible to the soberer beauties of the former,
but the latter caught me with its glare of magic,--the former, however,
left a more pleasing general recollection in my mind. Let me add, the
1st book was the favourite of my sister--and _I_ now, with Joan, often
"think on Domremi and the fields of Arc." I must not pass over without
acknowledging my obligations to your full and satisfactory account of
personifications. I have read it again and again, and it will be a guide
to my future taste. Perhaps I had estimated Southey's merits too much by
number, weight, and measure. I now agree completely and entirely in your
opinion of the genius of Southey. Your own image of melancholy is
illustrative of what you teach, and in itself masterly. I conjecture it
is "disbranched" from one of your embryo "hymns." When they are mature
of birth (were I you) I should print 'em in one separate volume, with
"Religious Musings" and your part of the "Joan of Arc." Birds of the
same soaring wing should hold on their flight in company. Once for all
(and by renewing the subject you will only renew in me the condemnation
of Tantalus), I hope to be able to pay you a visit (if you are then at
Bristol) some time in the latter end of August or beginning of September
for a week or fortnight; before that time, office business puts an
absolute veto on my coming.
"And if a sigh that speaks regret of happier times appear,
A glimpse of joy that we have met shall shine and dry the tear."
Of the blank verses I spoke of, the following lines are the only
tolerably complete ones I have writ out of not more than one hundred and
fifty. That I get on so slowly you may fairly impute to want of practice
in composition, when I declare to you that (the few verses which you
have seen excepted) I have not writ fifty lines since I left school. It
may not be amiss to remark that my grandmother (on whom the verses are
written) lived housekeeper in a family the fifty or sixty last years of
her life--that she was a woman of exemplary piety and goodness--and for
many years before her death was terribly afflicted with a cancer in her
breast which she bore with true Christian patience. You may think that I
have not kept enough apart the ideas of her heavenly and her earthly
master but recollect I have designedly given in to her own way of
feeling--and if she had a failing, 'twas that she respected her master's
family too much, not reverenced her Maker too little. The lines begin
imperfectly, as I may probably connect 'em if I finish at all,--and if I
do, Biggs shall print 'em in a more economical way than you yours, for
(Sonnets and all) they won't make a thousand lines as I propose
completing 'em, and the substance must be wire-drawn.
Tuesday Evening, June 14, 1796.
I am not quite satisfied now with the Chatterton, and with your leave
will try my hand at it again. A master joiner, you know, may leave a
cabinet to be finished, when his own hands are full. To your list of
illustrative personifications, into which a fine imagination enters, I
will take leave to add the following from Beaumont and Fletcher's "Wife
for a Month;" 'tis the conclusion of a description of a sea-fight;--"The
game of _death_ was never played so nobly; the meagre thief grew wanton
in his mischiefs, and his shrunk hollow eyes smiled on his ruins." There
is fancy in these of a lower order from "Bonduca;"--"Then did I see
these valiant men of Britain, like boding owls creep into tods of ivy,
and hoot their fears to one another nightly." Not that it is a
personification; only it just caught my eye in a little extract book I
keep, which is full of quotations from B. and F. in particular, in which
authors I can't help thinking there is a greater richness of poetical
fancy than in any one, Shakspeare excepted. Are you acquainted with
Massinger? At a hazard I will trouble you with a passage from a play of
his called "A Very Woman." The lines are spoken by a lover (disguised)
to his faithless mistress. You will remark the fine effect of the double
endings. You will by your ear distinguish the lines, for I write 'em as
prose. "Not far from where my father lives, _a lady_, a neighbour by,
blest with as great a _beauty_ as nature durst bestow without _undoing_,
dwelt, and most happily, as I thought then, and blest the house a
thousand times she _dwelt in_. This beauty, in the blossom of my youth,
when my first fire knew no adulterate _incense_, nor I no way to flatter
but my _fondness_; in all the bravery my friends could _show me_, in all
the faith my innocence could _give me_, in the best language my true
tongue could _tell me_, and all the broken sighs my sick heart _lend
me_, I sued and served; long did I serve this _lady_, long was my
travail, long my trade to _win her_; with all the duty of my soul I
SERVED HER." "Then she must love." "She did, but never me: she could not
_love me_; she would not love, she hated,--more, she _scorn'd me_; and
in so poor and base a way _abused me_ for all my services, for all my
_bounties_, so bold neglects flung on me."--"What out of love, and
worthy love, I _gave her_ (shame to her most unworthy mind,) to fools,
to girls, to fiddlers and her boys she flung, all in disdain of me." One
more passage strikes my eye from B. and F.'s "Palamon and Arcite." One
of 'em complains in prison: "This is all our world; we shall know
nothing here but one another, hear nothing but the clock that tells our
woes; the vine shall grow, but we shall never see it," &c. Is not the
last circumstance exquisite? I mean not to lay myself open by saying
they exceed Milton, and perhaps Collins, in sublimity. But don't you
conceive all poets after Shakspeare yield to 'em in variety of genius?
Massinger treads close on their heels; but you are most probably as well
acquainted with his writings as your humble servant. My quotations, in
that case, will only serve to expose my barrenness of matter. Southey in
simplicity and tenderness, is excelled decidedly only, I think, by
Beaumont and F. in his [their] "Maid's Tragedy" and some parts of
"Philaster" in particular, and elsewhere occasionally; and perhaps by
Cowper in his "Crazy Kate," and in parts of his translation, such as the
speeches of Hecuba and Andromache. I long to know your opinion of that
translation. The Odyssey especially is surely very Homeric. What nobler
than the appearance of Phoebus at the beginning of the Iliad--the lines
ending with "Dread sounding, bounding on the silver bow!"
I beg you will give me your opinion of the translation; it afforded me
high pleasure. As curious a specimen of translation as ever fell into my
hands, is a young man's in our office, of a French novel. What in the
original was literally "amiable delusions of the fancy," he proposed to
render "the fair frauds of the imagination!" I had much trouble in
licking the book into any meaning at all. Yet did the knave clear fifty
or sixty pounds by subscription and selling the copyright. The book
itself not a week's work! To-day's portion of my journalising epistle
has been very dull and poverty-stricken. I will here end.
Tuesday Night.
I have been drinking egg-hot and smoking Oronooko (associated
circumstances, which ever forcibly recall to my mind our evenings and
nights at the Salutation); my eyes and brain are heavy and asleep, but
my heart is awake; and if words came as ready as ideas, and ideas as
feelings, I could say ten hundred kind things. Coleridge, you know not
my supreme happiness at having one on earth (though counties separate
us) whom I can call a friend. Remember you those tender lines of
Logan?--
"Our broken friendships we deplore,
And loves of youth that are no more;
No after friendships e'er can raise
Th' endearments of our early days,
And ne'er the heart such fondness prove,
As when we first began to love."
I am writing at random, and half-tipsy, what you may not _equally_
understand, as you will be sober when you read it; but _my_ sober and
_my_ half-tipsy hours you are alike a sharer in. Good night.
"Then up rose our bard, like a prophet in drink,
Craigdoroch, thou'lt soar when creation shall sink."
BURNS.
_Thursday_ [June 16, 1796].
I am now in high hopes to be able to visit you, if perfectly convenient
on your part, by the end of next month--perhaps the last week or
fortnight in July. A change of scene and a change of faces would do me
good, even if that scene were not to be Bristol, and those faces
Coleridge's and his friends. In the words of Terence, a little altered,
"Taedet me hujus quotidiani mundi." I am heartily sick of the every-day
scenes of life. I shall half wish you unmarried (don't show this to Mrs.
C.) for one evening only, to have the pleasure of smoking with you, and
drinking egg-hot in some little smoky room in a pot-house, for I know
not yet how I shall like you in a decent room, and looking quite happy.
My best love and respects to Sara notwithstanding.
Yours sincerely,
CHARLES LAMB.
[Coleridge's image of melancholy will be found in the lines
"Melancholy--a fragment." It was published in _Sibylline Leaves_, 1817,
and in a note Coleridge said that the verses were printed in the
_Morning Chronicle_ in 1794. They were really printed in the _Morning
Post_, December 12, 1797. Coleridge had probably sent them to Lamb in
MS. The "hymns" came to nothing.
"The following lines." Lamb's poem "The Grandame" was presumably
included in this letter. See Vol. IV. Mary Field, Lamb's grandmother,
died July 31, 1792, aged seventy-nine, and was buried in Widford
churchyard. She had been for many years housekeeper in the Plumer family
at Blakesware. On William Plumer's moving to Gilston, a neighbouring
seat, in 1767, she had sole charge of the Blakesware mansion, where her
grandchildren used to visit her. Compare Lamb's _Elia_ essays
"Blakesmoor in H----shire" and "Dream-Children,"
N. Biggs was the printer of Coleridge's _Poems_, 1797.
Lamb had begun his amendment of Coleridge's "Monody on the Death of
Chatterton" in his letter of June 10. Coleridge's illustrative
personifications, here referred to, are in that poem. The extract book
from which Lamb copied his quotations from Beaumont and Fletcher and
Massinger was, he afterwards tells us, destroyed; but similar volumes,
which he filled later, are preserved. Many of his extracts he included
in his _Dramatic Specimens_.
Writing to Charles Lloyd, sen., in 1809, Lamb says of Cowper as a
translator of Homer that he "delays you ... walking over a Bowling
Green."
Canon Ainger possessed a copy of the book translated by Lamb's
fellow-clerk. It was called _Sentimental Tablets of the Good Pamphile_.
"Translated from the French of M. Gorjy by P. S. Dupuy of the East India
House, 1795." Among the subscribers' names were Thomas Bye (5 copies),
Ball, Evans, Savory (2 copies), and Lamb himself.]
LETTER 5
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
[Probably begun on Wednesday, June 29. P.M. July 1, 1796.]
The first moment I can come I will, but my hopes of coming yet a while
yet hang on a ticklish thread. The coach I come by is immaterial as I
shall so easily by your direction find ye out. My mother is grown so
entirely helpless (not having any use of her limbs) that Mary is
necessarily confined from ever sleeping out, she being her bed fellow.
She thanks you tho' and will accompany me in spirit. Most exquisite are
the lines from Withers. Your own lines introductory to your poem on Self
run smoothly and pleasurably, and I exhort you to continue 'em. What
shall I say to your Dactyls? They are what you would call good per se,
but a parody on some of 'em is just now suggesting itself, and you shall
have it rough and unlicked. I mark with figures the lines parodied.
4.--Sórely your Dáctyls do drág along lim'p-footed.
5.--Sád is the méasure that han'gs a clod roúnd 'em so,
6.--Méagre, and lan'guid, procláiming its wrétchedness.
1.--Wéary, unsátisfied, nót little sic'k of 'em.
11.--Cóld is my tíred heart, Í have no chárity.
2.--Páinfully tráv'lling thus óver the rúgged road.
7.--Ó begone, Méasure, half Látin, half En'glish, then.
12.--Dismal your Dáctyls are, Gód help ye, rhyming Ones.
I _possibly_ may not come this fortnight--therefore all thou hast to do
is not to look for me any particular day, only to write word immediately
if at any time you quit Bristol, lest I come and Taffy be not at home. I
_hope_ I can come in a day or two. But young Savory of my office is
suddenly taken ill in this very nick of time and I must officiate for
him till he can come to work again. Had the knave gone sick and died and
putrefied at any other time, philosophy might have afforded one comfort,
but just now I have no patience with him. Quarles I am as great a
stranger to as I was to Withers. I wish you would try and do something
to bring our elder bards into more general fame. I writhe with
indignation when in books of Criticism, where common place quotation is
heaped upon quotation, I find no mention of such men as Massinger, or B.
and Fl, men with whom succeeding Dramatic Writers (Otway alone excepted)
can bear no manner of comparison. Stupid Knox hath noticed none of 'em
among his extracts.
Thursday.--Mrs. C. can scarce guess how she has gratified me by her very
kind letter and sweet little poem. I feel that I _should_ thank her in
rhyme, but she must take my acknowledgment at present in plain honest
prose. The uncertainty in which I yet stand whether I can come or no
damps my spirits, reduces me a degree below prosaical, and keeps me in a
suspense that fluctuates between hope and fear. Hope is a charming,
lively, blue-eyed wench, and I am always glad of her company, but could
dispense with the visitor she brings with her, her younger sister, Fear,
a white-liver'd, lilly-cheeked, bashful, palpitating, awkward hussey,
that hangs like a green girl at her sister's apronstrings, and will go
with her whithersoever _she_ goes. For the life and soul of me I could
not improve those lines in your poem on the Prince and Princess, so I
changed them to what you bid me and left 'em at Perry's. I think 'em
altogether good, and do not see why you were sollicitous about _any_
alteration. I have not yet seen, but will make it my business to see,
to-day's _Chronicle_, for your verses on Horne Took. Dyer stanza'd him
in one of the papers t'other day, but I think unsuccessfully. Tooke's
friends' meeting was I suppose a dinner of CONDOLENCE. I am not sorry to
find you (for all Sara) immersed in clouds of smoke and metaphysic. You
know I had a sneaking kindness for this last noble science, and you
taught me some smattering of it. I look to become no mean proficient
under your tuition. Coleridge, what do you mean by saying you wrote to
me about Plutarch and Porphyry--I received no such letter, nor remember
a syllable of the matter, yet am not apt to forget any part of your
epistles, least of all an injunction like that. I will cast about for
'em, tho' I am a sad hand to know what books are worth, and both those
worthy gentlemen are alike out of my line. To-morrow I shall be less
suspensive and in better cue to write, so good bye at present.
Friday Evening.--That execrable aristocrat and knave Richardson has
given me an absolute refusal of leave! The _poor man_ cannot guess at my
disappointment. Is it not hard, "this dread dependance on the low bred
mind?" Continue to write to me tho', and I must be content--Our loves
and best good wishes attend upon you both.
LAMB.
Savory did return, but there are 2 or 3 more ill and absent, which was
the plea for refusing me. I will never commit my peace of mind by
depending on such a wretch for a favor in future, so shall never have
heart to ask for holidays again. The man next him in office, Cartwright,
furnished him with the objections.
C. LAMB.
[The Dactyls were Coleridge's only in the third stanza; the remainder
were Southey's. The poem is known as "The Soldier's Wife," printed in
Southey's _Poems_, 1797. Later Southey revised the verses. _The
Anti-Jacobin_ had a parody of them.
Young Savory was probably a relative of Hester Savory, whom we shall
meet later. He entered the East India House on the same day that Lamb
did.
We do not know what were the lines from Wither which Coleridge had sent
to Lamb; but Lamb himself eventually did much to bring him and the elder
bards into more general fame--in the _Dramatic Specimens_, 1808, and in
the essay "On the Poetical Works of George Wither," in the _Works_,
1818.
Stupid Knox was Vicesimus Knox (1752-1821), the editor of _Elegant
Extracts_ in many forms.
"Her ... sweet little poem." Sara Coleridge's verses no longer exist.
See Lamb's next letter for his poetical reply.
Coleridge's poem on the Prince and Princess, "On a Late Connubial
Rupture in High Life," was not accepted by Perry, of the _Morning
Chronicle_. It appeared in the _Monthly Magazine_, September, 1796. The
"Verses addressed to J. Horne Tooke and the company who met on June 28,
1796, to celebrate his poll at the Westminster Election" were not
printed in the _Morning Chronicle_. Tooke had opposed Charles James Fox,
who polled 5,160 votes, and Sir Alan Gardner, who polled 4,814, against
his own 2,819.
Dyer was George Dyer (1755-1841), an old Christ's Hospitaller (but
before Lamb and Coleridge's time), of whom we shall see much--Lamb's
famous "G.D."
William Richardson was Accountant-General of the East India House at
that time; Charles Cartwright, his Deputy.]
LETTER 6
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
The 5th July, 1796. [P.M. Same date.]
TO SARA AND HER SAMUEL
Was it so hard a thing? I did but ask
A fleeting holy day. One little week,
Or haply two, had bounded my request.
What if the jaded Steer, who all day long
Had borne the heat and labour of the plough,
When Evening came and her sweet cooling hour,
Should seek to trespass on a neighbour copse,
Where greener herbage waved, or clearer streams
Invited him to slake his burning thirst?
That Man were crabbed, who should say him Nay:
That Man were churlish, who should drive him thence!
A blessing light upon your heads, ye good,
Ye hospitable pair. I may not come,
To catch on Clifden's heights the summer gale:
I may not come, a pilgrim, to the "Vales
Where Avon winds," to taste th' inspiring waves
Which Shakespere drank, our British Helicon:
Or, with mine eye intent on Redcliffe towers,
To drop a tear for that Mysterious youth,
Cruelly slighted, who to London Walls,
In evil hour, shap'd his disastrous course.
Complaints, begone; begone, ill-omen'd thoughts--
For yet again, and lo! from Avon banks
Another "Minstrel" cometh! Youth beloved,
God and good angels guide thee on thy way,
And gentler fortunes wait the friends I love.
C.L.
LETTER 7
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
the 6th July [P.M. July 7, 1796].
Substitute in room of that last confused & incorrect Paragraph,
following the words "disastrous course," these lines
[Sidenote: Vide 3d page of this epistle.]
{ With better hopes, I trust, from Avon's vales
{ This other "minstrel" cometh Youth endear'd
no { God & good Angels guide thee on thy road,
{ And gentler fortunes wait the friends I love.
[_Lamb has crossed through the above lines_.]
Let us prose.
What can I do till you send word what priced and placed house you should
like? Islington (possibly) you would not like, to me 'tis classical
ground. Knightsbridge is a desirable situation for the air of the parks.
St. George's Fields is convenient for its contiguity to the Bench.
Chuse! But are you really coming to town? The hope of it has entirely
disarmed my petty disappointment of its nettles. Yet I rejoice so much
on my own account, that I fear I do not feel enough pure satisfaction on
yours. Why, surely, the joint editorship of the Chron: must be a very
comfortable & secure living for a man. But should not you read French,
or do you? & can you write with sufficient moderation, as 'tis called,
when one suppresses the one half of what one feels, or could say, on a
subject, to chime in the better with popular luke-warmness?--White's
"Letters" are near publication. Could you review 'em, or get 'em
reviewed? Are you not connected with the Crit: Rev:? His frontispiece is
a good conceit: Sir John learning to dance, to please Madame Page, in
dress of doublet, etc., from [for] the upper half; & modern pantaloons,
with shoes, etc., of the 18th century, from [for] the lower half--& the
whole work is full of goodly quips & rare fancies, "all deftly masqued
like hoar antiquity"--much superior to Dr. Kenrick's Falstaff's Wedding,
which you may have seen. Allen sometimes laughs at Superstition, &
Religion, & the like. A living fell vacant lately in the gift of the
Hospital. White informed him that he stood a fair chance for it. He
scrupled & scrupled about it, and at last (to use his own words)
"tampered" with _Godwin_ to know whether the thing was honest or not.
_Godwin_ said nay to it, & Allen rejected the living! Could the blindest
Poor Papish have bowed more servilely to his Priest or Casuist? Why
sleep the Watchman's answers to that _Godwin_? I beg you will not delay
to alter, if you mean to keep, those last lines I sent you. Do that, &
read these for your pains:--
TO THE POET COWPER
Cowper, I thank my God that thou art heal'd!
Thine was the sorest malady of all;
And I am sad to think that it should light
Upon the worthy head! But thou art heal'd,
And thou art yet, we trust, the destin'd man,
Born to reanimate the Lyre, whose chords
Have slumber'd, and have idle lain so long,
To the immortal sounding of whose strings
Did Milton frame the stately-pacèd verse;
Among whose wires with lighter finger playing,
Our elder bard, Spenser, a gentle name,
The Lady Muses' dearest darling child,
Elicited the deftest tunes yet heard
In Hall or Bower, taking the delicate Ear
Of Sydney, & his peerless Maiden Queen.
Thou, then, take up the mighty Epic strain,
Cowper, of England's Bards, the wisest & the best.
1796.
I have read your climax of praises in those 3 reviews. These mighty
spouters-out of panegyric waters have, 2 of 'em, scattered their spray
even upon me! & the waters are cooling & refreshing. Prosaically, the
Monthly Reviewers have made indeed a large article of it, & done you
justice. The Critical have, in their wisdom, selected not the very best
specimens, & notice not, except as one name on the muster-roll, the
"Religious Musings." I suspect Master Dyer to have been the writer of
that article, as the substance of it was the very remarks & the very
language he used to me one day. I fear you will not accord entirely with
my sentiments of Cowper, as _exprest_ above, (perhaps scarcely just),
but the poor Gentleman has just recovered from his Lunacies, & that
begets pity, & pity love, and love admiration, & then it goes hard with
People but they lie! Have you read the Ballad called "Leonora," in the
second Number of the "Monthly Magazine"? If you have !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There is another fine song, from the same author (Berger), in the 3d
No., of scarce inferior merit; & (vastly below these) there are some
happy specimens of English hexameters, in an imitation of Ossian, in the
5th No. For your Dactyls I am sorry you are so sore about 'em--a very
Sir Fretful! In good troth, the Dactyls are good Dactyls, but their
measure is naught. Be not yourself "half anger, half agony" if I
pronounce your darling lines not to be the best you ever wrote--you have
written much.
For the alterations in those lines, let 'em run thus:
I may not come a pilgrim, to the Banks
of _Avon, lucid stream_, to taste the wave (inspiring wave) was too
which Shakspere drank, our British Helicon; common place.
or with mine eye, &c., &c.
_To muse, in tears_, on that mysterious Youth, &c. (better than "drop
a tear")
Then the last paragraph alter thus
better refer to my own
Complaint begone, begone unkind reproof, "complaint" solely than
Take up, my song, take up a merrier strain, half to that and half to
For yet again, & lo! from Avon's vales, Chatterton, as in your
Another mistrel cometh! youth _endeared_, copy, which creates a
God & good angels &c., as before confusion--"ominous
fears" &c.
Have a care, good Master poet, of the Statute de Contumelia. What do you
mean by calling Madame Mara harlot & naughty things? The goodness of the
verse would not save you in a court of Justice. But are you really
coming to town?
Coleridge, a gentleman called in London lately from Bristol, inquired
whether there were any of the family of a Mr. Chambers living--this Mr.
Chambers he said had been the making of a friend's fortune who wished to
make some return for it. He went away without seeing her. Now, a Mrs.
Reynolds, a very intimate friend of ours, whom you have seen at our
house, is the only daughter, & all that survives, of Mr. Chambers--& a
very little supply would be of service to her, for she married very
unfortunately, & has parted with her husband. Pray find out this Mr.
Pember (for that was the gentleman's friend's name), he is an attorney,
& lives at Bristol. Find him out, & acquaint him with the circumstances
of the case, & offer to be the medium of supply to Mrs. Reynolds, if he
chuses to make her a present. She is in very distrest circumstances. Mr.
Pember, attorney, Bristol--Mr. Chambers lived in the Temple. Mrs.
Reynolds, his daughter, was my schoolmistress, & is in the room at this
present writing. This last circumstance induced me to write so soon
again--I have not further to add--Our loves to Sara.
Thursday.
C. LAMB.
[The passage at the beginning, before "Let us prose," together with the
later passages in the same manner, refers to the poem in the preceding
letter, which in slightly different form is printed in editions of Lamb
as "Lines to Sara and Her Samuel." To complete the sense of the letter
one should compare the text of the poem in Vol. IV.
Coleridge had just received a suggestion, through Dr. Beddoes of
Bristol, that he should replace Grey, the late co-editor (with James
Perry) of the _Morning Chronicle_. It came to nothing; but Coleridge had
told Lamb and had asked him to look out a house in town for him.
Dr. Kenrick's "Falstaff's Wedding," 1760, was a continuation of
Shakespeare's "Henry IV."
We do not know what were the last lines that Lamb had sent to Coleridge.
The lines to Cowper were printed in the _Monthly Magazine_ for December,
1796.
Coleridge's _Poems_ were reviewed in the Monthly Review, June, 1796,
with no mention of Lamb. The _Critical Review_ for the same month said
of Lamb's effusions: "These are very beautiful."
Burger's "Leonora," which was to have such an influence upon English
literature (it was the foundation of much of Sir Walter Scott's poetry),
was translated from the German by William Taylor of Norwich in 1790 and
printed in the _Monthly Magazine_ in March, 1796. Scott at once made a
rival version. The other fine song, in the April _Monthly Magazine_, was
"The Lass of Fair Wone."
The mention of the Statute de Contumeliâ seems to refer to the "Lines
Composed in a Concert-Room," which were first printed in the _Morning
Post_, September 24, 1799, but must have been written earlier. Madame
Mara (1749-1833) is not mentioned by name in the poem, but being one of
the principal singers of the day Lamb probably fastened the epithet upon
her by way of pleasantry; or she may have been referred to in the
version of the lines which Lamb had seen.
The passage about Mr. Chambers is not now explicable; but we know that
Mrs. Reynolds was Lamb's schoolmistress, probably when he was very
small, and before he went to William Bird's Academy, and that in later
life he allowed her a pension of £30 a year until her death.
Between this and the next letter came, in all probability, a number of
letters to Coleridge which have been lost. It is incredible that Lamb
kept silence, at this period, for eleven weeks.]
LETTER 8
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
[P.M. September 27, 1796.]
My dearest friend--White or some of my friends or the public papers by
this time may have informed you of the terrible calamities that have
fallen on our family. I will only give you the outlines. My poor dear
dearest sister in a fit of insanity has been the death of her own
mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her
grasp. She is at present in a mad house, from whence I fear she must be
moved to an hospital. God has preserved to me my senses,--I eat and
drink and sleep, and have my judgment I believe very sound. My poor
father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my
aunt. Mr. Norris of the Bluecoat school has been very very kind to us,
and we have no other friend, but thank God I am very calm and composed,
and able to do the best that remains to do. Write,--as religious a
letter as possible--but no mention of what is gone and done with.--With
me "the former things are passed away," and I have something more to do
that [than] to feel--
God almighty have us all in his keeping.--
C. LAMB.
Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every vestige of past
vanities of that kind. Do as you please, but if you publish, publish
mine (I give free leave) without name or initial, and never send me a
book, I charge you.
You [your] own judgment will convince you not to take any notice of this
yet to your dear wife.--You look after your family,--I have my reason
and strength left to take care of mine. I charge you, don't think of
coming to see me. Write. I will not see you if you come. God almighty
love you and all of us--
[The following is the report of the inquest upon Mrs. Lamb which
appeared in the _Morning Chronicle_ for September 26, 1796. The tragedy
had occurred on Thursday, September 22:--
On Friday afternoon the Coroner and a respectable Jury sat on the body
of a Lady in the neighbourhood of Holborn, who died in consequence of a
wound from her daughter the preceding day. It appeared by the evidence
adduced, that while the family were preparing for dinner, the young lady
seized a case knife laying on the table, and in a menacing manner
pursued a little girl, her apprentice, round the room; on the eager
calls of her helpless infirm mother to forbear, she renounced her first
object, and with loud shrieks approached her parent.
The child by her cries quickly brought up the landlord of the house, but
too late--the dreadful scene presented to him the mother lifeless,
pierced to the heart, on a chair, her daughter yet wildly standing over
her with the fatal knife, and the venerable old man, her father, weeping
by her side, himself bleeding at the forehead from the effects of a
severe blow he received from one of the forks she had been madly hurling
about the room.
For a few days prior to this the family had observed some symptoms of
insanity in her, which had so much increased on the Wednesday evening,
that her brother early the next morning went in quest of Dr.
Pitcairn--had that gentleman been met with, the fatal catastrophe had,
in all probability, been prevented.
It seems the young Lady had been once before, in her earlier years,
deranged, from the harassing fatigues of too much business.--As her
carriage towards her mother was ever affectionate in the extreme, it is
believed that to the increased attentiveness, which her parents'
infirmities called for by day and night, is to be attributed the present
insanity of this ill-fated young woman.
It has been stated in some of the Morning Papers, that she has an insane
brother also in confinement--this is without foundation.
The Jury of course brought in their Verdict, _Lunacy_.
In the _Whitehall Evening Post_ the first part of the account is the
same, but the end is as follows:--
The above unfortunate young person is a Miss Lamb, a mantua-maker, in
Little Queen-street, Lincoln's-inn-fields. She has been, since, removed
to Islington mad-house.
Mr. Norris of the Blue-Coat School has been confounded with Randal
Norris of the Inner Temple, another friend of the Lambs, but is not, I
think, the same.
The reference to the poetry and Coleridge's publication of it shows that
Lamb had already been invited to contribute to the second edition of
Coleridge's _Poems_. The words "and never" in the original have a line
through them which might mean erasure, but, I think, does not.
"Your own judgment..." Mrs. Coleridge had just become a mother: David
Hartley Coleridge was born on September 19.
This was Coleridge's reply to Lamb's letter, as given in Gillman's _Life
of Coleridge_:--
"[September 28, 1796.]
"Your letter, my friend, struck me with a mighty horror. It rushed upon
me and stupified my feelings. You bid me write you a religious letter; I
am not a man who would attempt to insult the greatness of your anguish
by any other consolation. Heaven knows that in the easiest fortunes
there is much dissatisfaction and weariness of spirit; much that calls
for the exercise of patience and resignation; but in storms, like these,
that shake the dwelling and make the heart tremble, there is no middle
way between despair and the yielding up of the whole spirit unto the
guidance of faith. And surely it is a matter of joy, that your faith in
Jesus has been preserved; the Comforter that should relieve you is not
far from you. But as you are a Christian, in the name of that Saviour,
who was filled with bitterness and made drunken with wormwood, I conjure
you to have recourse in frequent prayer to 'his God and your God,' the
God of mercies, and father of all comfort. Your poor father is, I hope,
almost senseless of the calamity; the unconscious instrument of Divine
Providence knows it not, and your mother is in heaven. It is sweet to be
roused from a frightful dream by the song of birds, and the gladsome
rays of the morning. Ah, how infinitely more sweet to be awakened from
the blackness and amazement of a sudden horror, by the glories of God
manifest, and the hallelujahs of angels.
"As to what regards yourself, I approve altogether of your abandoning
what you justly call vanities. I look upon you as a man, called by
sorrow and anguish and a strange desolation of hopes into quietness, and
a soul set apart and made peculiar to God; we cannot arrive at any
portion of heavenly bliss without in some measure imitating Christ. And
they arrive at the largest inheritance who imitate the most difficult
parts of his character, and bowed down and crushed under foot, cry in
fulness of faith, 'Father, thy will be done.'
"I wish above measure to have you for a little while here--no visitants
shall blow on the nakedness of your feelings--you shall be quiet, and
your spirit may be healed. I see no possible objection, unless your
father's helplessness prevent you, and unless you are necessary to him.
If this be not the case, I charge you write me that you will come.
"I charge you, my dearest friend, not to dare to encourage gloom or
despair--you are a temporary sharer in human miseries, that you may be
an eternal partaker of the Divine nature. I charge you, if by any means
it be possible, come to me.
"I remain, your affectionate,
"S.T. COLERIDGE."]
LETTER 9
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
[P.M. October 3, 1796.]
My dearest friend, your letter was an inestimable treasure to me. It
will be a comfort to you, I know, to know that our prospects are
somewhat brighter. My poor dear dearest sister, the unhappy and
unconscious instrument of the Almighty's judgments to our house, is
restored to her senses; to a dreadful sense and recollection of what has
past, awful to her mind, and impressive (as it must be to the end of
life) but temper'd with religious resignation, and the reasonings of a
sound judgment, which in this early stage knows how to distinguish
between a deed committed in a transient fit of frenzy, and the terrible
guilt of a Mother's murther. I have seen her. I found her this morning
calm and serene, far very very far from an indecent forgetful serenity;
she has a most affectionate and tender concern for what has happend.
Indeed from the beginning, frightful and hopeless as her disorder
seemed, I had confidence enough in her strength of mind, and religious
principle, to look forward to a time when _even she_ might recover
tranquillity. God be praised, Coleridge, wonderful as it is to tell, I
have never once been otherwise than collected, and calm; even on the
dreadful day and in the midst of the terrible scene I preserved a
tranquillity, which bystanders may have construed into indifference, a
tranquillity not of despair; is it folly or sin in me to say that it was
a religious principle that _most_ supported me? I allow much to other
favorable circumstances. I felt that I had something else to do than to
regret; on that first evening my Aunt was lying insensible, to all
appearance like one dying,--my father, with his poor forehead plastered
over from a wound he had received from a daughter dearly loved by him,
and who loved him no less dearly,--my mother a dead and murder'd corpse
in the next room--yet was I wonderfully supported. I closed not my eyes
in sleep that night, but lay without terrors and without despair. I have
lost no sleep since. I had been long used not to rest in things of
sense, had endeavord after a comprehension of mind, unsatisfied with the
"ignorant present time," and this kept me up. I had the whole weight of
the family thrown on me, for my brother, little disposed (I speak not
without tenderness for him) at any time to take care of old age and
infirmities, had now, with his bad leg, an exemption from such duties,
and I was now left alone. One little incident may serve to make you
understand my way of managing my mind. Within a day or 2 after the fatal
ONE, we drest for dinner a tongue, which we had had salted for some
weeks in the house. As I sat down a feeling like remorse struck
me,--this tongue poor Mary got for me, and can I partake of it now, when
she is far away--a thought occurrd and relieved me,--if I give in to
this way of feeling, there is not a chair, a room, an object in our
rooms, that will not awaken the keenest griefs, I must rise above such
weaknesses.--I hope this was not want of true feeling. I did not let
this carry me, tho', too far. On the very 2d day (I date from the day of
horrors) as is usual in such cases there were a matter of 20 people I do
think supping in our room. They prevailed on me to eat _with them_, (for
to eat I never refused). They were all making merry! in the room,--some
had come from friendship, some from busy curiosity, and some from
Interest; I was going to partake with them, when my recollection came
that my poor dead mother was lying in the next room, the very next room,
a mother who thro' life wished nothing but her children's welfare--
indignation, the rage of grief, something like remorse, rushed upon my
mind in an agony of emotion,--I found my way mechanically to the
adjoining room, and fell on my knees by the side of her coffin, asking
forgiveness of heaven, and sometimes of her, for forgetting her so soon.
Tranquillity returned, and it was the only violent emotion that mastered
me, and I think it did me good.
I mention these things because I hate concealment, and love to give a
faithful journal of what passes within me. Our friends have been very
good. Sam Le Grice who was then in town was with me the first 3 or 4
first days, and was as a brother to me, gave up every hour of his time,
to the very hurting of his health and spirits, in constant attendance
and humouring my poor father. Talk'd with him, read to him, play'd at
cribbage with him (for so short is the old man's recollection, that he
was playing at cards, as tho' nothing had happened, while the Coroner's
Inquest was sitting over the way!). Samuel wept tenderly when he went
away, for his mother wrote him a very severe letter on his loitering so
long in town, and he was forced to go. Mr. Norris of Christ Hospital has
been as a father to me, Mrs. Norris as a mother; tho' we had few claims
on them. A Gentleman, brother to my Godmother, from whom we never had
right or reason to expect any such assistance, sent my father twenty
pounds,--and to crown all these God's blessings to our family at such a
time, an old Lady, a cousin of my father and Aunt's, a Gentlewoman of
fortune, is to take my Aunt and make her comfortable for the short
remainder of her days.
My Aunt is recover'd and as well as ever, and highly pleased at thoughts
of going,--and has generously given up the interest of her little money
(which was formerly paid my Father for her board) wholely and solely to
my Sister's use. Reckoning this we have, Daddy and I, for our two selves
and an old maid servant to look after him, when I am out, which will be
necessary, £170 or £180 (rather) a year, out of which we can spare 50 or
60 at least for Mary, while she stays at Islington, where she must and
shall stay during her father's life for his and her comfort. I know John
will make speeches about it, but she shall not go into an hospital. The
good Lady of the mad house, and her daughter, an elegant sweet behaved
young Lady, love her and are taken with her amazingly, and I know from
her own mouth she loves them, and longs to be with them as much.--Poor
thing, they say she was but the other morning saying, she knew she must
go to Bethlem for life; that one of her brothers would have it so, but
the other would wish it not, but be obliged to go with the stream; that
she had often as she passed Bedlam thought it likely "here it may be my
fate to end my days--" conscious of a certain flightiness in her poor
head oftentimes, and mindful of more than one severe illness of that
nature before. A Legacy of £100, which my father will have at Xmas, and
this 20 I mentioned before, with what is in the house will much more
than set us Clear;--if my father, an old servant maid, and I, can't live
and live comfortably on £130 or £120 a year we ought to burn by slow
fires, and I almost would, that Mary might not go into an hospital. Let
me not leave one unfavourable impression on your mind respecting my
Brother. Since this has happened he has been very kind and brotherly;
but I fear for his mind,--he has taken his ease in the world, and is not
fit himself to struggle with difficulties, nor has much accustomed
himself to throw himself into their way,--and I know his language is
already, "Charles, you must take care of yourself, you must not abridge
yourself of a single pleasure you have been used to," &c &c and in that
style of talking. But you, a necessarian, can respect a difference of
mind, and love what is _amiable_ in a character not perfect. He has been
very good, but I fear for his mind. Thank God, I can unconnect myself
with him, and shall manage all my father's monies in future myself, if I
take charge of Daddy, which poor John has not even hinted a wish, at any
future time even, to share with me. The Lady at this mad house assures
me that I may dismiss immediately both Doctor and apothecary, retaining
occasionally an opening draught or so for a while, and there is a less
expensive establishment in her house, where she will only not have a
room and nurse to herself for £50 or guineas a year--the outside would
be 60--You know by oeconomy how much more, even, I shall be able to
spare for her comforts.
She will, I fancy, if she stays, make one of the family, rather than of
the patients, and the old and young ladies I like exceedingly, and she
loves dearly, and they, as the saying is, take to her very
extraordinarily, if it is extraordinary that people who see my sister
should love her. Of all the people I ever saw in the world my poor
sister was most and thoroughly devoid of the least tincture of
selfishness--I will enlarge upon her qualities, poor dear dearest soul,
in a future letter for my own comfort, for I understand her throughly;
and if I mistake not, in the most trying situation that a human being
can be found in, she will be found (I speak not with sufficient
humility, I fear, but humanly and foolishly speaking) she will be found,
I trust, uniformly great and amiable; God keep her in her present mind,
to whom be thanks and praise for all His dispensations to mankind.
LAMB.
Coleridge, continue to write; but do not for ever offend me by talking
of sending me cash. Sincerely, and on my soul, we do not want it. God
love you both!
I will write again very soon. Do you write directly.
These mentioned good fortunes and change of prospects had almost brought
my mind over to the extreme the very opposite to Despair; I was in
danger of making myself too happy; your letter brought me back to a view
of things which I had entertained from the beginning; I hope (for Mary I
can answer) but I hope that _I_ shall thro' life never have less
recollection nor a fainter impression of what has happened than I have
now; 'tis not a light thing, nor meant by the Almighty to be received
lightly. I must be serious, circumspect, and deeply religious thro'
life; by such means may _both_ of us escape madness in future, if it so
please the Almighty.
Send me word, how it fares with Sara. I repeat it, your letter was and
will be an inestimable treasure to me; you have a view of what my
situation demands of me like my own view; and I trust a just one.
[A word perhaps on Lamb's salary might be fitting here. For the first
three years, from joining the East India House on April 5, 1792, he
received nothing. This probationary period over, he was given £40 for
the year 1795-1796. This, however, was raised to £70 in 1796 and there
were means of adding to it a little, by extra work and by a small
holiday grant. In 1797 it was £80, in 1799 £90, and from that time until
1814 it rose by £10 every second year.
Samuel Le Grice was the younger brother of Valentine Le Grice. Both were
at Christ's Hospital with Lamb and Coleridge and are mentioned in the
_Elia_ essay on the school. Sam Le Grice afterwards had a commission in
the 60th Foot, and died in Jamaica in 1802, as we shall see.]
LETTER 10
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
[P.M. October 17, 1796.]
My dearest friend, I grieve from my very soul to observe you in your
plans of life veering about from this hope to the other, and settling no
where. Is it an untoward fatality (speaking humanly) that does this for
you, a stubborn irresistible concurrence of events? or lies the fault,
as I fear it does, in your own mind? You seem to be taking up splendid
schemes of fortune only to lay them down again, and your fortunes are an
ignis fatuus that has been conducting you, in thought, from Lancaster
Court, Strand, to somewhere near Matlock, then jumping across to Dr.
Somebody's whose son's tutor you were likely to be, and would to God the
dancing demon _may_ conduct you at last in peace and comfort to the
"life and labors of a cottager." You see from the above awkward
playfulness of fancy, that my spirits are not quite depressed; I should
ill deserve God's blessings, which since the late terrible event have
come down in mercy upon us, if I indulged regret or querulousness,--Mary
continues serene and chearful,--I have not by me a little letter she
wrote to me, for, tho' I see her almost every day yet we delight to
write to one another (for we can scarce see each other but in company
with some of the people of the house), I have not the letter by me but
will quote from memory what she wrote in it. "I have no bad terrifying
dreams. At midnight when I happen to awake, the nurse sleeping by the
side of me, with the noise of the poor mad people around me, I have no
fear. The spirit of my mother seems to descend, and smile upon me, and
bid me live to enjoy the life and reason which the Almighty has given
me--I shall see her again in heaven; she will then understand me better;
my Grandmother too will understand me better, and will then say no more,
as she used to do, 'Polly, what are those poor crazy moyther'd brains of
yours thinking of always?'"--Poor Mary, my Mother indeed _never
understood_ her right. She loved her, as she loved us all, with a
Mother's love; but in opinion, in feeling, and sentiment, and
disposition, bore so distant a resemblance to her daughter, that she
never understood her right. Never could believe how much _she_ loved
her--but met her caresses, her protestations of filial affection, too
frequently with coldness and repulse.--Still she was a good mother, God
forbid I should think of her but _most_ respectfully, _most_
affectionately. Yet she would always love my brother above Mary, who was
not worthy of one tenth of that affection, which Mary had a right to
claim. But it is my sister's gratifying recollection, that every act of
duty and of love she could pay, every kindness (and I speak true, when I
say to the hurting of her health, and, most probably, in great part to
the derangement of her senses) thro' a long course of infirmities and
sickness, she could shew her, SHE EVER DID. I will some day, as I
promised, enlarge to you upon my Sister's excellencies; 'twill seem like
exaggeration; but I will do it. At present short letters suit my state
of mind best. So take my kindest wishes for your comfort and
establishment in life, and for Sara's welfare and comforts with you. God
love you; God love us all--
C. LAMB.
[This letter is the only one in which Lamb speaks freely of his mother.
He dwells on her memory in _Blank Verse_, 1798, but in later years he
mentioned her in his writings only twice, in the _Elia_ essays "New
Year's Eve" and "My First Play," and then very indirectly: probably from
the wish to spare his sister pain, although Talfourd tells us that Mary
Lamb spoke of her mother often. Compare the poem on page 110.
In a letter written by Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart on September 21,
1803, there is further light on Mrs. Lamb's want of sympathetic
understanding of certain characters.
The references at the beginning are to Coleridge's idea of joining Perry
on the _Morning Chronicle_; of teaching Mrs. Evans' children; of
establishing a school at Derby, on the suggestion of Dr. Crompton; and
finally of moving from Bristol to settle down in a cottage at Nether
Stowey, and support himself by husbandry and literature.]
LETTER 11
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
Oct. 24th, 1796. [Monday.]
Coleridge, I feel myself much your debtor for that spirit of confidence
and friendship which dictated your last letter. May your soul find peace
at last in your cottage life! I only wish you were but settled. Do
continue to write to me. I read your letters with my sister, and they
give us both abundance of delight. Especially they please us two, when
you talk in a religious strain,--not but we are offended occasionally
with a certain freedom of expression, a certain air of mysticism, more
consonant to the conceits of pagan philosophy, than consistent with the
humility of genuine piety. To instance now in your last letter--you say,
"it is by the press [sic], that God hath given finite spirits both evil
and good (I suppose you mean simply bad men and good men), a portion as
it were of His Omnipresence!" Now, high as the human intellect
comparatively will soar, and wide as its influence, malign or salutary,
can extend, is there not, Coleridge, a distance between the Divine Mind
and it, which makes such language blasphemy? Again, in your first fine
consolatory epistle you say, "you are a temporary sharer in human
misery, that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine Nature." What
more than this do those men say, who are for exalting the man Christ
Jesus into the second person of an unknown Trinity,--men, whom you or I
scruple not to call idolaters? Man, full of imperfections, at best, and
subject to wants which momentarily remind him of dependence; man, a weak
and ignorant being, "servile" from his birth "to all the skiey
influences," with eyes sometimes open to discern the right path, but a
head generally too dizzy to pursue it; man, in the pride of speculation,
forgetting his nature, and hailing in himself the future God, must make
the angels laugh. Be not angry with me, Coleridge; I wish not to cavil;
I know I cannot _instruct_ you; I only wish to _remind_ you of that
humility which best becometh the Christian character. God, in the New
Testament (_our best guide_), is represented to us in the kind,
condescending, amiable, familiar light of a _parent_: and in my poor
mind 'tis best for us so to consider of Him, as our heavenly Father, and
our _best Friend_, without indulging too bold conceptions of His nature.
Let us learn to think humbly of ourselves, and rejoice in the
appellation of "dear children," "brethren," and "co-heirs with Christ of
the promises," seeking to know no further.
I am not insensible, indeed I am not, of the value of that first letter
of yours, and I shall find reason to thank you for it again and again
long after that blemish in it is forgotten. It will be a fine lesson of
comfort to us, whenever we read it; and read it we often shall, Mary and
I.
Accept our loves and best kind wishes for the welfare of yourself and
wife, and little one. Nor let me forget to wish you joy on your birthday
so lately past; I thought you had been older. My kind thanks and
remembrances to Lloyd. God love us all, and may He continue to be the
father and the friend of the whole human race!
Sunday Evening. C. LAMB.
[It is interesting to notice that with these letters Lamb suddenly
assumes a gravity, independence and sense of authority that hitherto his
correspondence has lacked. The responsibility of the household seems to
have awakened his extraordinary common sense and fine understanding
sense of justice. Previously he had ventured to criticise only
Coleridge's literary exercises; he places his finger now on conduct too.
Coleridge's "last letter" has not been preserved; but the "first fine
consolatory epistle" is printed above.
This letter contains the first mention of Charles Lloyd (1775-1839), who
was afterwards to be for a while so intimately associated with Lamb.
Charles Lloyd was the son of a Quaker banker of Birmingham. He had
published a volume of poems the year before and had met Coleridge when
that magnetic visionary had visited Birmingham to solicit subscribers
for _The Watchman_ early in 1796. The proposition that Lloyd should live
with Coleridge and become in a way his pupil was agreed to by his
parents, and in September he accompanied the philosopher to Nether
Stowey a day or so after David Hartley's birth, all eager to begin
domestication and tutelage. Lloyd was a sensitive, delicate youth, with
an acute power of analysis and considerable grasp of metaphysical ideas.
No connection ever began more amiably. He was, I might add, by only two
days Lamb's junior.]
LETTER 12
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Oct. 28th, 1796.
My dear Friend, I am not ignorant that to be a partaker of the Divine
Nature is a phrase to be met with in Scripture: I am only apprehensive,
lest we in these latter days, tinctured (some of us perhaps pretty
deeply) with mystical notions and the pride of metaphysics, might be apt
to affix to such phrases a meaning, which the primitive users of them,
the simple fishermen of Galilee for instance, never intended to convey.
With that other part of your apology I am not quite so well satisfied.
You seem to me to have been straining your comparing faculties to bring
together things infinitely distant and unlike; the feeble narrow-sphered
operations of the human intellect and the everywhere diffused mind of
Deity, the peerless wisdom of Jehovah. Even the expression appears to me
inaccurate--portion of omnipresence--omnipresence is an attribute whose
very essence is unlimitedness. How can omnipresence be affirmed of
anything in part? But enough of this spirit of disputatiousness. Let us
attend to the proper business of human life, and talk a little together
respecting our domestic concerns. Do you continue to make me acquainted
with what you were doing, and how soon you are likely to be settled once
for all.
I have satisfaction in being able to bid you rejoice with me in my
sister's continued reason and composedness of mind. Let us both be
thankful for it. I continue to visit her very frequently, and the people
of the house are vastly indulgent to her; she is likely to be as
comfortably situated in all respects as those who pay twice or thrice
the sum. They love her, and she loves them, and makes herself very
useful to them. Benevolence sets out on her journey with a good heart,
and puts a good face on it, but is apt to limp and grow feeble, unless
she calls in the aid of self-interest by way of crutch. In Mary's case,
as far as respects those she is with, 'tis well that these principles
are so likely to co-operate. I am rather at a loss sometimes for books
for her,--our reading is somewhat confined, and we have nearly exhausted
our London library. She has her hands too full of work to read much, but
a little she must read; for reading was her daily bread. Have you seen
Bowles's new poem on "Hope?" What character does it bear? Has he
exhausted his stores of tender plaintiveness? or is he the same in this
last as in all his former pieces? The duties of the day call me off from
this pleasant intercourse with my friend--so for the present adieu.
Now for the truant borrowing of a few minutes from business. Have you
met with a new poem called the "Pursuits of Literature?" From the
extracts in the "British Review" I judge it to be a very humorous thing;
in particular I remember what I thought a very happy character of Dr.
Darwin's poetry. Among all your quaint readings did you ever light upon
Walton's "Complete Angler"? I asked you the question once before; it
breathes the very spirit of innocence, purity, and simplicity of heart;
there are many choice old verses interspersed in it; it would sweeten a
man's temper at any time to read it; it would Christianise every
discordant angry passion; pray make yourself acquainted with it. Have
you made it up with Southey yet? Surely one of you two must have been a
very silly fellow, and the other not much better, to fall out like
boarding-school misses; kiss, shake hands, and make it up?
When will he be delivered of his new epic? _Madoc_ I think, is to be the
name of it; though that is a name not familiar to my ears. What progress
do you make in your hymns? What Review are you connected with? If with
any, why do you delay to notice White's book? You are justly offended at
its profaneness; but surely you have undervalued its _wit_, or you would
have been more loud in its praises. Do not you think that in _Slender's_
death and madness there is most exquisite humour, mingled with
tenderness, that is irresistible, truly Shakspearian? Be more full in
your mention of it. Poor fellow, he has (very undeservedly) lost by it;
nor do I see that it is likely ever to reimburse him the charge of
printing, etc. Give it a lift, if you can. I suppose you know that
Allen's wife is dead, and he, just situated as he was, never the better,
as the worldly people say, for her death, her money with her children
being taken off his hands. I am just now wondering whether you will ever
come to town again, Coleridge; 'tis among the things I dare not hope,
but can't help wishing. For myself, I can live in the midst of town
luxury and superfluity, and not long for them, and I can't see why your
children might not hereafter do the same. Remember, you are not in
Arcadia when you are in the west of England, and they may catch
infection from the world without visiting the metropolis. But you seem
to have set your heart upon this same cottage plan; and God prosper you
in the experiment! I am at a loss for more to write about; so 'tis as
well that I am arrived at the bottom of my paper.
God love you, Coleridge!--Our best loves and tenderest wishes await on
you, your Sara, and your little one.
C. L.
[Bowles's poem was "Hope, an allegorical sketch on slowly recovering
from sickness." See note on pages 78 and 79.
_The Pursuits of Literature_, was a literary satire in the form of
dialogues in verse, garnished with very outspoken notes, by Thomas James
Mathias (1754?-1835), which appeared between 1794 and 1797.
Southey had returned from Portugal in the summer, when the quarrel
between Coleridge and himself revived; but about the time of Hartley's
birth some kind of a reconciliation was patched up. _Madoc_, as it
happened, was not published until 1805, although in its first form it
was completed in 1797.
Writing to Charles Lloyd, sen., in December, 1796, Coleridge says that
he gives his evenings to his engagements with the _Critical Review_ and
_New Monthly Magazine_.
This is the passage in Falstaff's Letters describing Blender's death:--
DAVY TO SHALLOW
Master Abram is dead, gone, your Worship--dead! Master Abram! Oh! good
your Worship, a's gone.--A' never throve, since a' came from Windsor--
'twas his death. I call'd him a rebel, your Worship--but a' was all
subject--a' was subject to any babe, as much as a King--a' turn'd, like
as it were the latter end of a lover's lute--a' was all peace and
resignment--a' took delight in nothing but his book of songs and
sonnets--a' would go to the Stroud side under the large beech tree, and
sing, till 'twas quite pity of our lives to mark him; for his chin grew
as long as a muscle--Oh! a' sung his soul and body quite away--a' was
lank as any greyhound, and had such a scent! I hid his love-songs among
your Worship's law-books; for I thought if a' could not get at them, it
might be to his quiet; but a' snuff'd 'em out in a moment.--Good your
Worship, have the wise woman of Brentfort secured--Master Abram may have
been conjured--Peter Simple says, a' never look'd up, after a' sent to
the wise woman--Marry, a' was always given to look down afore his
elders; a' might do it, a' was given to it--your Worship knows it; but
then 'twas peak and pert with him--a' was a man again, marry, in the
turn of his heel.--A' died, your Worship, just about one, at the crow of
the cock.--I thought how it was with him; for a' talk'd as quick, aye,
marry, as glib as your Worship; and a' smiled, and look'd at his own
nose, and call'd "Sweet Ann Page." I ask'd him if a' would eat--so a'
bad us commend him to his Cousin Robert (a' never call'd your Worship so
before) and bade us get hot meat, for a' would not say nay to Ann
again.[*]--But a' never liv'd to touch it--a' began all in a moment to
sing "Lovers all, a Madrigal." 'Twas the only song Master Abram ever
learnt out of book, and clean by heart, your Worship--and so a' sung,
and smiled, and look'd askew at his own nose, and sung, and sung on,
till his breath waxed shorter, and shorter, and shorter, and a' fell
into a struggle and died. I beseech your Worship to think he was well
tended--I look'd to him, your Worship, late and soon, and crept at his
heel all day long, an it had been any fallow dog--but I thought a' could
never live, for a' did so sing, and then a' never drank with it--I knew
'twas a bad sign--yea, a' sung, your Worship, marry, without drinking a
drop.
[Footnote: Vide "Merry Wives of Windsor." Latter part of the 1st Scene,
1st Act.]]
LETTER 13
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Nov. 8th, 1796.
My Brother, my Friend,--I am distrest for you, believe me I am; not so
much for your painful, troublesome complaint, which, I trust, is only
for a time, as for those anxieties which brought it on, and perhaps even
now may be nursing its malignity. Tell me, dearest of my friends, is
your mind at peace, or has anything, yet unknown to me, happened to give
you fresh disquiet, and steal from you all the pleasant dreams of future
rest? Are you still (I fear you are) far from being comfortably settled?
Would to God it were in my power to contribute towards the bringing of
you into the haven where you would be! But you are too well skilled in
the philosophy of consolation to need my humble tribute of advice; in
pain and in sickness, and in all manner of disappointments, I trust you
have that within you which shall speak peace to your mind. Make it, I
entreat you, one of your puny comforts, that I feel for you, and share
all your griefs with you. I feel as if I were troubling you about
_little_ things; now I am going to resume the subject of our last two
letters, but it may divert us both from unpleasanter feelings to make
such matters, in a manner, of importance. Without further apology, then,
it was not that I did not relish, that I did not in my heart thank you
for, those little pictures of your feelings which you lately sent me, if
I neglected to mention them. You may remember you had said much the same
things before to me on the same subject in a former letter, and I
considered those last verses as only the identical thoughts better
clothed; either way (in prose or verse) such poetry must be welcome to
me. I love them as I love the Confessions of Rousseau, and for the same
reason: the same frankness, the same openness of heart, the same
disclosure of all the most hidden and delicate affections of the mind:
they make me proud to be thus esteemed worthy of the place of
friend-confessor, brother-confessor, to a man like Coleridge. This last
is, I acknowledge, language too high for friendship; but it is also, I
declare, too sincere for flattery. Now, to put on stilts, and talk
magnificently about trifles--I condescend, then, to your counsel,
Coleridge, and allow my first Sonnet (sick to death am I to make mention
of my sonnets, and I blush to be so taken up with them, indeed I do)--I
allow it to run thus, "_Fairy Land_" &c. &c., as I [? you] last wrote
it.
The Fragments I now send you I want printed to get rid of 'em; for,
while they stick burr-like to my memory, they tempt me to go on with the
idle trade of versifying, which I long--most sincerely I speak it--I
long to leave off, for it is unprofitable to my soul; I feel it is; and
these questions about words, and debates about alterations, take me off,
I am conscious, from the properer business of _my_ life. Take my sonnets
once for all, and do not propose any re-amendments, or mention them
again in any shape to me, I charge you. I blush that my mind can
consider them as things of any worth. And pray admit or reject these
fragments, as you like or dislike them, without ceremony. Call 'em
Sketches, Fragments, or what you will, but do not entitle any of my
_things_ Love Sonnets, as I told you to call 'em; 'twill only make me
look little in my own eyes; for it is a passion of which I retain
_nothing_; 'twas a weakness, concerning which I may say, in the words of
Petrarch (whose life is now open before me), "if it drew me out of some
vices, it also prevented the growth of many virtues, filling me with the
love of the creature rather than the Creator, which is the death of the
soul." Thank God, the folly has left me for ever; not even a review of
my love verses renews one wayward wish in me; and if I am at all
solicitous to trim 'em out in their best apparel, it is because they are
to make their appearance in good company. Now to my fragments. Lest you
have lost my Grandame, she shall be one. 'Tis among the few verses I
ever wrote (that to Mary is another) which profit me in the
recollection. God love her,--and may we two never love each other less!
These, Coleridge, are the few sketches I have thought worth preserving;
how will they relish thus detached? Will you reject all or any of them?
They are thine: do whatsoever thou listest with them. My eyes ache with
writing long and late, and I wax wondrous sleepy; God bless you and
yours, me and mine! Good night.
C. LAMB.
I will keep my eyes open reluctantly a minute longer to tell you, that I
love you for those simple, tender, heart-flowing lines with which you
conclude your last, and in my eyes best, sonnet (so you call 'em),
"So, for the mother's sake, the child was dear,
And dearer was the mother for the child."
Cultivate simplicity, Coleridge, or rather, I should say, banish
elaborateness; for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart, and
carries into daylight its own modest buds and genuine, sweet, and clear
flowers of expression. I allow no hot-beds in the gardens of Parnassus.
I am unwilling to go to bed, and leave my sheet unfilled (a good piece
of night-work for an idle body like me), so will finish with begging you
to send me the earliest account of your complaint, its progress, or (as
I hope to God you will be able to send me) the tale of your recovery, or
at least amendment. My tenderest remembrances to your Sara.--
Once more good night.
[Coleridge, on November 2, had begun to suffer from his lifelong enemy,
neuralgia, the result largely of worry concerning his future, so many of
his projects having broken down. He was subduing it with laudanum--the
beginning of that fatal habit.
We do not know what were the verses which Coleridge had sent Lamb,
possibly the three sonnets on the birth of Hartley, the third of which
is referred to below.
Lamb's decision in September to say or hear no more of his own poetry
here breaks down. The reference to the Fairy Land sonnet is only
partially explained by the parallel version which I printed on page 25;
for "Fairy Land" was Coleridge's version. Either Lamb had made a new
version, substituting "Fairy Land" for "Faery," or he wrote, "I allow it
to run thus: Fairy Land, &c., &c., as _you_ last wrote it." When
reprinted, however, it ran as Lamb originally wished. The other
fragments were those afterwards included in Coleridge's _Poems_, second
edition, 1797.
"Love Sonnets." Lamb changed his mind again on this subject, and yet
again.
Coleridge's last of the three sonnets on the birth of Hartley was
entitled "Sonnet to a Friend [Charles Lloyd] who asked how I felt when
the Nurse first presented my Infant to me." It closed with the lines
which Lamb copies.]
LETTER 14
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Nov. 14th, 1796.
Coleridge, I love you for dedicating your poetry to Bowles. Genius of
the sacred fountain of tears, it was he who led you gently by the hand
through all this valley of weeping, showed you the dark green yew trees
and the willow shades where, by the fall of waters, you might indulge an
uncomplaining melancholy, a delicious regret for the past, or weave fine
visions of that awful future,
"When all the vanities of life's brief day
Oblivion's hurrying hand hath swept away,
And all its sorrows, at the awful blast
Of the archangel's trump, are but as shadows past."
I have another sort of dedication in my head for my few things, which I
want to know if you approve of, and can insert. I mean to inscribe them
to my sister. It will be unexpected, and it will give her pleasure; or
do you think it will look whimsical at all? As I have not spoke to her
about it, I can easily reject the idea. But there is a monotony in the
affections, which people living together or, as we do now, very
frequently seeing each other, are apt to give in to: a sort of
indifference in the expression of kindness for each other, which demands
that we should sometimes call to our aid the trickery of surprise. Do
you publish with Lloyd or without him? in either case my little portion
may come last, and after the fashion of orders to a country
correspondent I will give directions how I should like to have 'em done.
The title-page to stand thus:--
POEMS,
CHIEFLY LOVE SONNETS
BY
CHARLES LAMB, OF THE INDIA HOUSE.
Under this title the following motto, which, for want of room, I put
over leaf, and desire you to insert, whether you like it or no. May not
a gentleman choose what arms, mottoes, or armorial bearings the herald
will give him leave, without consulting his republican friend, who might
advise none? May not a publican put up the sign of the Saracen's Head,
even though his undiscerning neighbour should prefer, as more genteel,
the Cat and Gridiron?
(MOTTO.)
"This beauty, in the blossom of my youth,
When my first fire knew no adulterate incense,
Nor I no way to flatter but my fondness,
In the best language my true tongue could tell me,
And all the broken sighs my sick heart lend me,
I sued and served. Long did I love this lady."
MASSINGER.
THE DEDICATION.
* * * * *
THE FEW FOLLOWING POEMS,
CREATURES OF THE FANCY AND THE FEELING
IN LIFE'S MORE VACANT HOURS,
PRODUCED, FOR THE MOST PART, BY
LOVE IN IDLENESS,
ARE,
WITH ALL A BROTHER'S FONDNESS,
INSCRIBED TO
MARY ANN LAMB,
THE AUTHOR'S BEST FRIEND AND SISTER.
* * * * *
This is the pomp and paraphernalia of parting, with which I take my
leave of a passion which has reigned so royally (so long) within me;
thus, with its trappings of laureatship, I fling it off, pleased and
satisfied with myself that the weakness troubles me no longer. I am
wedded, Coleridge, to the fortunes of my sister and my poor old father.
Oh! my friend, I think sometimes, could I recall the days that are past,
which among them should I choose? not those "merrier days," not the
"pleasant days of hope," not "those wanderings with a fair hair'd maid,"
which I have so often and so feelingly regretted, but the days,
Coleridge, of a _mother's_ fondness for her _school-boy_. What would I
give to call her back to earth for _one_ day, on my knees to ask her
pardon for all those little asperities of temper which, from time to
time, have given her gentle spirit pain; and the day, my friend, I trust
will come; there will be "time enough" for kind offices of love, if
"Heaven's eternal year" be ours. Hereafter, her meek spirit shall not
reproach me. Oh, my friend, cultivate the filial feelings! and let no
man think himself released from the kind "charities" of relationship:
these shall give him peace at the last; these are the best foundation
for every species of benevolence. I rejoice to hear, by certain
channels, that you, my friend, are reconciled with all your relations.
'Tis the most kindly and natural species of love, and we have all the
associated train of early feelings to secure its strength and
perpetuity. Send me an account of your health; _indeed_ I am solicitous
about you. God love you and yours. C. LAMB.
[It seems to have been Coleridge's intention to dedicate the second
edition of his _Poems_ to Bowles; but he changed his mind and dedicated
it to his brother, the Rev. George Coleridge. A sonnet to Bowles was
included in the volume, a kind of sub-dedication of the other sonnets,
but it had appeared also in the 1796 volume.
Lamb's instructions concerning his share in the 1797 volume were carried
out, except that the sub-title was omitted.
The quotations "merrier days" ("happier days") and "wanderings with a
fair-hair'd maid" are from Lamb's own sonnets; those in lines 9 and 10
from Dryden's Elegy on Mrs. Killigrew.
Coleridge had paid in the summer a long-deferred visit of reconciliation
to his family at Ottery St. Mary.]
LETTER 15
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[P.M. December 2, 1796 (Friday).]
I have delay'd writing thus long, not having by me my copy of your
poems, which I had lent. I am not satisfied with all your intended
omissions. Why omit 40: 63: 84: above all, let me protest strongly
against your rejecting the "Complaint of Ninathoma," 86. The words, I
acknowledge, are Ossian's, but you have added to them the "Music of
Caril." If a vicarious substitute be wanting, sacrifice (and 'twill be a
piece of self-denial _too_) the Epitaph on an Infant, of which its
Author seems so proud, so tenacious. Or, if your heart be set on
_perpetuating_ the four-line-wonder, I'll tell you what [to] do: sell
the copywright of it at once to a country statuary; commence in this
manner Death's prime poet laureat; and let your verses be adopted in
every village round instead of those hitherto famous ones "Afflictions
sore long time I bore, Physicians were in vain". I have seen your last
very beautiful poem in the Monthly Magazine--write thus, and you most
generally have written thus, and I shall never quarrel with you about
simplicity. With regard to my lines "Laugh all that weep," etc.--I would
willingly sacrifice them, but my portion of the volume is so
ridiculously little, that in honest truth I can't spare them. As things
are, I have very slight pretensions to participate in the
title-page.--White's book is at length reviewed in the Monthly; was it
your doing, or Dyer's to whom I sent him? Or rather do you not write in
the Critical? for I observed, in an Article of this Month's a line
quoted out of _that_ sonnet on Mrs. Siddons "with eager wond'ring and
perturb'd delight"--and a line from _that_ sonnet would not readily have
occurred to a stranger. That sonnet, Coleridge, brings afresh to my mind
the time when you wrote those on Bowles, Priestly, Burke--'twas 2
Christmases ago, and in that nice little smoky room at the Salutation,
which is even now continually presenting itself to my recollection, with
all its associated train of pipes, tobacco, Egghot, welch Rabbits,
metaphysics and Poetry.
Are we NEVER to meet again? How differently I am circumstanced now--I
have never met with any one, never shall meet with any one, who could or
can compensate me for the loss of your society--I have no one to talk
all these matters about to--I lack friends, I lack books to supply their
absence. But these complaints ill become me: let me compare my present
situation, prospects, and state of mind, with what they were but 2
months back--_but_ 2 months. O my friend, I am in danger of forgetting
the awful lessons then presented to me--remind me of them; remind me of
my Duty. Talk seriously with me when you do write. I thank you, from my
heart I thank you, for your sollicitude about my Sister. She is quite
well,--but must not, I fear, come to live with us yet a good while. In
the first place, because at present it would hurt her, and hurt my
father, for them to be together: secondly from a regard to the world's
good report, for I fear, I fear, tongues will be busy _whenever_ that
event takes place. Some have hinted, one man has prest it on me, that
she should be in perpetual confinement--what she hath done to deserve,
or the necessity of such an hardship, I see not; do you? I am starving
at the India house, near 7 o'clock without my dinner, and so it has been
and will be almost all the week. I get home at night o'erwearied, quite
faint,--and then to CARDS with my father, who will not let me enjoy a
meal in peace--but I must conform to my situation, and I hope I am, for
the most part, not unthankful.
I am got home at last, and, after repeated games at Cribbage have got my
father's leave to write awhile: with difficulty got it, for when I
expostulated about playing any more, he very aptly replied, "If you
won't play with me, you might as well not come home at all." The
argument was unanswerable, and I set to afresh.
I told you, I do not approve of your omissions. Neither do I quite
coincide with you in your arrangements: I have not time to point out a
better, and I suppose some self-associations of your own have determined
their place as they now stand. Your beginning indeed with the Joan of
Arc lines I coincide entirely with: I love a splendid Outset, a
magnificent Portico; and the Diapason is Grand--the Religious Musings--
when I read them, I think how poor, how unelevated, unoriginal, my blank
verse is, "Laugh all that weep" especially, where the subject demanded a
grandeur of conception: and I ask what business they have among
yours--but Friendship covereth a multitude of defects. Why omit 73? At
all events, let me plead for those former pages,--40. 63. 84. 86. I
should like, for old acquaintance sake, to spare 62. 119 would have made
a figure among _Shenstone_'s Elegies: _you_ may admit it or reject, as
you please. In the Man of Ross let the old line stand as it used:
"wine-cheer'd moments" much better than the lame present one. 94, change
the harsh word "foodful" into "dulcet" or, if not too harsh,
"nourishing." 91, "moveless": is that as good as "moping"?--8, would it
not read better omitting those 2 lines last but 6 about Inspiration? I
want some loppings made in the Chatterton; it wants but a little to make
it rank among the finest irregular Lyrics I ever read. Have you time and
inclination to go to work upon it--or is it too late--or do you think it
needs none? Don't reject those verses in one of your Watchmen--"Dear
native brook," &c.--nor, I think, those last lines you sent me, in which
"all effortless" is without doubt to be preferred to "inactive." If I am
writing more than ordinarily dully, 'tis that I am stupified with a
tooth-ache. 37, would not the concluding lines of the 1st paragraph be
well omitted--& it go on "So to sad sympathies" &c.? In 40, if you
retain it, "wove" the learned Toil is better than "urge," which spoils
the personification. Hang it, do not omit 48. 52. 53. What you do retain
tho', call sonnets for God's sake, and not effusions,--spite of your
ingenious anticipation of ridicule in your Preface. The last 5 lines of
50 are too good to be lost, the rest is not much worth. My tooth becomes
importunate--I must finish. Pray, pray, write to me: if you knew with
what an anxiety of joy I open such a long packet as you last sent me,
you would not grudge giving a few minutes now and then to this
intercourse (the only intercourse, I fear we two shall ever have), this
conversation, with your friend--such I boast to be called.
God love you and yours.
Write to me when you move, lest I direct wrong.
Has Sara no poems to publish? Those lines 129 are probably too light for
the volume where the Religious Musings are--but I remember some very
beautiful lines addrest by somebody at Bristol to somebody at London.
God bless you once more.
C. LAMB.
Thursday Night.
[This letter refers to the preparation of Coleridge's second edition of
his _Poems_. "Why omit 40, 63, 84?"--these were "Absence," "To the
Autumnal Moon" and the imitation from Ossian.
The "Epitaph on an Infant" ran thus:--
Ere Sin could blight, or Sorrow fade,
Death came with friendly care;
The opening bud to Heaven conveyed
And bade it blossom there.
Lamb applied the first two lines to a sucking pig in his _Elia_ essay on
"Roast Pig" many years later. The old epitaph runs:--
Afflictions sore long time I bore,
Physicians were in vain;
Till Heaven did please my woes to ease,
And take away my pain.
Coleridge's very beautiful poem in the _Monthly Magazine_ (for October)
was "Reflections on Entering into Active Life," beginning, "Low was our
pretty cot."
Lamb's lines, "Laugh all that weep," I cannot find. We learn later that
they were in blank verse.
_Falstaff's Letters_ was reviewed in the _Monthly Review_ for November,
1796, very favourably. The article was quite possibly by Coleridge.
The sonnet on Mrs. Siddons was written by Lamb and Coleridge together
when Coleridge was in London at the end of 1794, and it formed one of a
series of sonnets on eminent persons printed in the _Morning Chronicle_,
of which those on Bowles, Priestley and Burke were others. The quotation
from it was in an article in the November _Critical Review_ on the
"Musae Etonenses."
"One man has prest it on me." There is reason to suppose that this was
John Lamb, the brother.
As it happened Coleridge did not begin his second edition with the "Joan
of Arc" lines, but with the "Ode to the New Year." The "Religious
Musings" brought Coleridge's part of the volume to a close.
The poem on page 73 was "In the Manner of Spenser." The poems on pages
40, 63, 84, we know; that on page 86 was "The Complaint of Ninathoma."
"To Genevieve" was on page 62. That on page 119 was "To a Friend in
Answer to a Melancholy Letter." Coleridge never restored the phrase
"wine-cheer'd moments" to "The Man of Ross." He did not change "foodful"
to "dulcet" in "To an Infant." He did not alter "moveless" to "moping"
in "The Young Ass." He left the Inspiration passage as it was in the
"Monody on Chatterton." Not that he disregarded all Lamb's advice, as a
comparison of the 1796 and 1797 editions of the _Poems_ will show.
The poem "Dear native brook" was the sonnet "To the River Otter."
Coleridge took Lamb's counsel. The poem containing the phrase "all
effortless" was that "Addressed to a Young Man of Fortune" (Charles
Lloyd). Coleridge did not include it. The poem on page 37 was "To a
Young Lady with a Poem on the French Revolution." Nos. 48, 52 and 53
were the sonnets to Priestley, Kosciusko and Fayette. The last five
lines of 50 were in the sonnet to Sheridan. The lines on page 129 were
Sara's verses "The Silver Thimble." None of these were reprinted in
1797. The beautiful lines addressed from somebody at Bristol to somebody
at London were those from Sara Coleridge to Lamb, referred to on page
33. Coleridge persisted in the use of the word "effusion".]
LETTER 16
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Dated at end: Dec. 5, 1796.]
_To a young Lady going out to India_
Hard is the heart, that does not melt with Ruth
When care sits cloudy on the brow of Youth,
When bitter griefs the _female_ bosom swell
And Beauty meditates a fond farewell
To her loved native land, and early home,
In search of peace thro' "stranger climes to roam."[*]
The Muse, with glance prophetic, sees her stand,
Forsaken, silent Lady, on the strand
Of farthest India, sickening at the war
Of waves slow-beating, dull upon the shore
Stretching, at gloomy intervals, her eye
O'er the wide waters vainly to espy
The long-expected bark, in which to find
Some tidings of a world she has left behind.
In that sad hour shall start the gushing tear
For scenes her childhood loved, now doubly dear,
In that sad hour shall frantic memory awake
Pangs of remorse for slighted England's sake,
And for the sake of many a tender tye
Of Love or Friendship pass'd too lightly by.
Unwept, unpitied, midst an alien race,
And the cold looks of many a stranger face,
How will her poor heart bleed, and chide the day,
That from her country took her far away.
[Footnote: Bowles. ["The African," line 27.]]
[_Lamb has struck his pen through the foregoing poem._]
Coleridge, the above has some few decent [lines in] it, and in the
paucity of my portion of your volume may as well be inserted; I would
also wish to retain the following if only to perpetuate the memory of so
exquisite a pleasure as I have often received at the performance of the
tragedy of Douglas, when Mrs. Siddons has been the Lady Randolph. Both
pieces may be inserted between the sonnets and the sketches--in which
latter, the last leaf but one of them, I beg you to alter the words
"pain and want" to "pain and grief," this last being a more familiar and
ear-satisfying combination. Do it I beg of you. To understand the
following, if you are not acquainted with the play, you should know that
on the death of Douglas his mother threw herself down a rock; and that
at that time Scotland was busy in repelling the Danes.
THE TOMB OF DOUGLAS
_See the Tragedy of that name_
When her son, her Douglas died,
To the steep rock's fearful side
Fast the frantic mother hied.
O'er her blooming warrior dead
Many a tear did Scotland shed,
And shrieks of long and loud lament
From her Grampian hills she sent.
Like one awakening from a trance,
She met the shock of Lochlin's lance. Denmark
On her rude invader foe
Return'd an hundred fold the blow.
Drove the taunting spoiler home:
Mournful thence she took her way
To do observance at the tomb,
Where the son of Douglas [lay],
Round about the tomb did go
In solemn state and order slow,
Silent pace, and black attire,
Earl, or Knight, or good Esquire,
Who e'er by deeds of valour done
In battle had high honors won;
Whoe'er in their pure veins could trace
The blood of Douglas' noble race.
With them the flower of minstrels came,
And to their cunning harps did frame
In doleful numbers piercing rhimes,
Such strains as in the olden times
Had soothed the spirit of Fingal
Echoing thro' his fathers' Hall.
"Scottish maidens, drop a tear
O'er the beauteous Hero's bier.
Brave youth and comely 'bove compare;
All golden shone his burnish'd hair;
Valor and smiling courtesy
Played in the sunbeams of his eye.
Closed are those eyes that shone so fair
And stain'd with blood his yellow hair.
Scottish maidens drop a tear
O'er the beauteous Hero's bier."
"Not a tear, I charge you, shed
For the false Glenalvon dead;
Unpitied let Glenalvon lie,
Foul stain to arms and chivalry."
"Behind his back the traitor came,
And Douglas died without his fame."
[_Lamb has struck his pen through the lines against which I have put an
asterisk_.]
*"Scottish maidens, drop a tear,
*O'er the beauteous hero's bier."
*"Bending warrior, o'er thy grave,
Young light of Scotland early spent!
Thy country thee shall long lament,
*_Douglas 'Beautiful and Brave'!_
And oft to after times shall tell,
_In Hopes sweet prime my Hero fell_."
[_Lamb has struck his pen through the remainder_.]
"Thane or Lordling, think no scorn
Of the poor and lowly-born.
In brake obscure or lonely dell
The simple flowret prospers well;
The _gentler_ virtues cottage-bred, omitted
Thrive best beneath the humble shed.
Low-born Hinds, opprest, obscure,
Ye who patiently endure
To bend the knee and bow the head,
And thankful eat _another's bread_
Well may ye mourn your best friend dead,
Till Life with Grief together end:
He would have been the poor man's friend."
"Bending, warrior, o'er thy grave,
Young light of Scotland early spent! omitted
Thy country thee shall long lament,
Douglas, '_Beautiful and Brave_'!
And oft to after times shall tell, omitted
_In life's young prime my Hero fell_."
[Sidenote: Is "_morbid_ wantonness of woe" a good and allowable phrase?]
At length I have done with verse making. Not that I relish other
people's poetry less,--theirs comes from 'em without effort, mine is the
difficult operation of a brain scanty of ideas, made more difficult by
disuse. I have been reading the "Task" with fresh delight. I am glad you
love Cowper. I could forgive a man for not enjoying Milton, but I would
not call that man my friend, who should be offended with the "divine
chit-chat of Cowper." Write to me.--God love you and yours,
C. L.
[The name of the young lady going out to India is not known; the verses
were printed in the _Monthly Magazine_ for March, 1797, but not in
Coleridge's _Poems_, 1797. "The Tomb of Douglas" was included in that
volume. The poem in which the alteration "pain and want" was to be made
(but was not made, or was made and cancelled later) was "Fancy Employed
on Divine Subjects."
The "divine chit-chat of Cowper" was Coleridge's own phrase. It is a
pretty circumstance that Lamb and Cowper now share (with Keats) a
memorial in Edmonton church.]
* * * * *
LETTER 17
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Little Queen Street, Night of Dec. 9th,] 1796.
I am sorry I cannot now relish your poetical present as thoroughly as I
feel it deserves; but I do not the less thank Lloyd and you for it.
In truth, Coleridge, I am perplexed, & at times almost cast down. I am
beset with perplexities. The old hag of a wealthy relation, who took my
aunt off our hands in the beginning of trouble, has found out that she
is "indolent and mulish"--I quote her own words--and that her attachment
to us is so strong that she can never be happy apart. The Lady, with
delicate Irony, remarks that, if I am not an Hypocrite, I shall rejoyce
to receive her again; and that it will be a means of making me more fond
of home to have so dear a friend to come home to! The fact is, she is
jealous of my aunt's bestowing any kind recollections on us, while she
enjoys the patronage of her roof. She says she finds it inconsistent
with her own "ease and tranquility" to keep her any longer, & in fine
summons me to fetch her home. Now, much as I should rejoyce to
transplant the poor old creature from the chilling air of such
patronage, yet I know how straitend we are already, how unable already
to answer any demand which sickness or any extraordinary expence may
make. I know this, and all unused as I am to struggle with perplexities
I am somewhat nonplusd, to say no worse. This prevents me from a
thorough relish of what Lloyd's kindness and yours have furnished me
with. I thank you tho from my heart, and feel myself not quite alone in
the earth.
Before I offer, what alone I have to offer, a few obvious remarks on the
poems you sent me, I can[not] but notice the odd coincidence of two
young men, in one age, carolling their grandmothers. Love--what L[loyd]
calls "the feverish and romantic tye"--hath too long domineerd over all
the charities of home: the dear domestic tyes of father, brother,
husband. The amiable and benevolent Cowper has a beautiful passage in
his "Task,"--some natural and painful reflections on his deceased
parents: and Hayley's sweet lines to his mother are notoriously the best
things he ever wrote. Cowper's lines, some of them, are--
"How gladly would the man recall to life
The boy's neglected sire; a mother, too.
That softer name, perhaps more gladly still,
Might he demand them at the gates of death."
I cannot but smile to see my Granny so gayly deck'd forth: tho', I
think, whoever altered "thy" praises to "her" praises, "thy" honoured
memory to "her" honoured memory, did wrong--they best exprest my
feelings. There is a pensive state of recollection, in which the mind is
disposed to apostrophise the departed objects of its attachment, and,
breaking loose from grammatical precision, changes from the 1st to the
3rd, and from the 3rd to the 1st person, just as the random fancy or the
feeling directs. Among Lloyd's sonnets, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 11th,
are eminently beautiful. I think him too lavish of his expletives; the
_do's_ and _did's_, when they occur too often, bring a quaintness with
them along with their simplicity, or rather air of antiquity which the
patrons of them seem desirous of conveying.
The lines on Friday are very pleasing--"Yet calls itself in pride of
Infancy woman or man," &c., "affection's tottering troop"--are prominent
beauties. Another time, when my mind were more at ease, I could be more
particular in my remarks, and I would postpone them now, only I want
some diversion of mind. The _Melancholy Man_ is a charming piece of
poetry, only the "whys" (with submission) are too many. Yet the
questions are too good to be any of 'em omitted. For those lines of
yours, page 18, omitted in magazine, I think the 3 first better
retain'd--the 3 last, which are somewhat simple in the most affronting
sense of the word, better omitted: to this my taste directs me--I have
no claim to prescribe to you. "Their slothful loves and dainty
sympathies" is an exquisite line, but you knew _that_ when you wrote
'em, and I trifle in pointing such out. Tis altogether the sweetest
thing to me you ever wrote--tis all honey. "No wish profaned my
overwhelmed heart, Blest hour, it was a Luxury to be"--I recognise
feelings, which I may taste again, if tranquility has not taken his
flight for ever, and I will not believe but I shall be happy, very happy
again. The next poem to your friend is very beautiful: need I instance
the pretty fancy of "the rock's collected tears"--or that original line
"pour'd all its healthful greenness on the soul"?--let it be, since you
asked me, "as neighbouring fountains each reflect the whole"--tho' that
is somewhat harsh; indeed the ending is not so finish'd as the rest,
which if you omit in your forthcoming edition, you will do the volume
wrong, and the very binding will cry out. Neither shall you omit the 2
following poems. "The hour when we shall meet again," is fine fancy, tis
true, but fancy catering in the Service of the feeling--fetching from
her stores most splendid banquets to satisfy her. Do not, do not omit
it. Your sonnet to the _River Otter_ excludes those equally beautiful
lines, which deserve not to be lost, "as the tired savage," &c., and I
prefer that copy in your _Watchman_. I plead for its preference.
Another time, I may notice more particularly Lloyd's, Southey's,
Dermody's Sonnets. I shrink from them now: my teazing lot makes me too
confused for a clear judgment of things, too selfish for sympathy; and
these ill-digested, meaningless remarks I have imposed on myself as a
task, to lull reflection, as well as to show you I did not neglect
reading your valuable present. Return my acknowledgments to Lloyd; you
two appear to be about realising an Elysium upon earth, and, no doubt, I
shall be happier. Take my best wishes. Remember me most affectionately
to Mrs. C., and give little David Hartley--God bless its little
heart!--a kiss for me. Bring him up to know the meaning of his Christian
name, and what that name (imposed upon him) will demand of him.
C. LAMB.
God love you!
I write, for one thing, to say that I shall write no more till you send
me word where you are, for you are so soon to move.
My sister is pretty well, thank God. We think of you very often. God
bless you: continue to be my correspondent, and I will strive to fancy
that this world is _not_ "all barrenness."
[The poetical present, as the late Mr. Dykes Campbell pointed out in
_The Atheneum_, June 13, 1891, consisted of Lloyd's _Poems on the Death
of Priscilla Farmer_, to which Lamb had contributed "The Grandame," and
of a little privately-printed collection of poems by Coleridge and
Lloyd, which they had intended to publish, but did not. The pamphlet has
completely vanished. In addition to these two works the poetical present
also comprised another privately-printed collection, a little pamphlet
of twenty-eight sonnets which Coleridge had arranged for the purpose of
binding up with those of Bowles. It included three of Bowles', four of
Coleridge's, four of Lamb's, four of Southey's, and the remainder by
Dermody, Lloyd, Charlotte Smith, and others. A copy of this pamphlet is
preserved in the South Kensington Museum.
"The poems you sent me." This would be Lloyd's _Poems on the Death of
Priscilla Farmer_. When Lamb reprinted "The Grandame" in Coleridge's
second edition, 1797, he put back the original text.
I now take up Mr. Dykes Campbell's comments on the letter, where it
branches off from the _Priscilla Farmer_ volume to the vanished pamphlet
of poems by Coleridge and Lloyd:--
Beginning with Lloyd's "Melancholy Man" (first printed in the Carlisle
volume of 1795), he [Lamb] passes to Coleridge's poem on leaving the
honeymoon-cottage at Clevedon, "altogether the sweetest thing to me,"
says Lamb, "you ever wrote." The verses had appeared in the _Monthly
Magazine_ two months before.... That Lamb's counsel was followed to some
extent may be gathered from a comparison between the text of the
magazine and that of 1797:--
"Once I saw
(Hallowing his sabbath-day by quietness)
A wealthy son of Commerce saunter by,
Bristowa's citizen: he paus'd, and look'd,
With a pleas'd sadness, and gazed all around,
Then ey'd our Cottage, and gaz'd round again,
And said, _it was a blessed little place!_
And we _were_ blessed!"
_Monthly Magazine._
"Once I saw
(Hallowing his Sabbath-day by quietness)
A wealthy son of Commerce saunter by,
Bristowa's citizen. Methought it calm'd
His thirst of idle gold, and made him muse
With wiser feelings: for he paus'd, and look'd
With a pleas'd sadness, and gaz'd all around,
Then ey'd our cottage, and gaz'd round again,
And sigh'd and said, _it was a blessed place._
And we _were_ blessed."
_Poems_, 1797.
It will be observed that Coleridge in 1797 inserted some lines which
were not in the magazine. They were probably restored from a MS. copy
Lamb had previously seen, and if Coleridge did not cancel all that Lamb
wisely counselled, he certainly drew the sting of the "affronting
simplicity" by removing the word "little." The comical ambiguity of the
Bristol man's exclamation as first reported could hardly have failed to
drive Lamb's dull care away for a moment or two.
[In] "the next poem to your friend," ... [Lamb is] speaking of
Coleridge's lines "To Charles Lloyd"--those beginning
"A mount, not wearisome and bare and steep."
In the "forthcoming edition" the poet improved a little the barely
tolerated line, making it read,--
"As neighb'ring fountains image, each the whole,"
but did not take Lamb's hint to omit the five which closed the poem.
Lamb, however, got his way--perhaps took it--when the verses were
reprinted in 1803, in the volume he saw through the press for Coleridge.
"Neither shall you omit the 2 following poems. 'The hour when we shall
meet again' is [only?] a fine fancy, 'tis true, but fancy catering in
the service of the feeling--fetching from her stores most splendid
banquets to satisfy her. Do not, do not, omit it."
So wrote Lamb of these somewhat slender verses, but his friend had
composed them "during illness and in absence," and Lamb in his own
heart-sickness and loneliness detected the reality which underlay the
conventionality of expression. The critic slept, and even when he was
awake again in 1803 was fain to let the lines be reprinted with only the
concession of their worst couplet:--
"While finely-flushing float her kisses meek,
Like melted rubies, o'er my pallid cheek."
The second of the "2 following poems" was Coleridge's "Sonnet to the
River Otter." The version then before him "excludes," complains Lamb,
"those equally beautiful lines which deserve not to be lost, 'as the
tir'd savage,' &c., and I prefer the copy in your _Watchman_. I plead
for its preference." This pleading ... was not responded to in the way
Lamb wanted, but in the appendix to the 1797 volume Coleridge printed
the whole of the poem on an "Autumnal Evening," to which the "tir'd
savage" properly belonged....
"Lloyd's, Southey's, Dermody's Sonnets." Lamb here refers to the third
portion of the poetical present--the twenty-eight sonnets to be bound up
with those of Bowles. Thomas Dermody (1775-1802) was an Irish poet of
squalidly dissolute life. A collection of his verses appeared in 1792.]
LETTER 18
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Dec. 10th, 1796.
I had put my letter into the post rather hastily, not expecting to have
to acknowledge another from you so soon. This morning's present has made
me alive again: my last night's epistle was childishly querulous; but
you have put a little life into me, and I will thank you for your
remembrance of me, while my sense of it is yet warm; for if I linger a
day or two I may use the same phrase of acknowledgment, or similar; but
the feeling that dictates it now will be gone. I shall send you a _caput
mortuum_, not a _cor vivens_. Thy Watchman's, thy bellman's, verses, I
do retort upon thee, thou libellous varlet,--why, you cried the hours
yourself, and who made you so proud? But I submit, to show my humility,
most implicitly to your dogmas. I reject entirely the copy of verses you
reject. With regard to my leaving off versifying, you have said so many
pretty things, so many fine compliments, ingeniously decked out in the
garb of sincerity, and undoubtedly springing from a present feeling
somewhat like sincerity, that you might melt the most un-muse-ical
soul,--did you not (now for a Rowland compliment for your profusion of
Olivers)--did you not in your very epistle, by the many pretty fancies
and profusion of heart displayed in it, dissuade and discourage me from
attempting anything after you. At present I have not leisure to make
verses, nor anything approaching to a fondness for the exercise. In the
ignorant present time, who can answer for the future man? "At lovers'
perjuries Jove laughs"--and poets have sometimes a disingenuous way of
forswearing their occupation. This though is not my case. The tender
cast of soul, sombred with melancholy and subsiding recollections, is
favourable to the Sonnet or the Elegy; but from
"The sainted growing woof,
The teasing troubles keep aloof."
The music of poesy may charm for a while the importunate teasing cares
of life; but the teased and troubled man is not in a disposition to make
that music.
You sent me some very sweet lines relative to Burns, but it was at a
time when, in my highly agitated and perhaps distorted state of mind, I
thought it a duty to read 'em hastily and burn 'em. I burned all my own
verses, all my book of extracts from Beaumont and Fletcher and a
thousand sources: I burned a little journal of my foolish passion which
I had a long time kept--
"Noting ere they past away
The little lines of yesterday."
I almost burned all your letters,--I did as bad, I lent 'em to a friend
to keep out of my brother's sight, should he come and make inquisition
into our papers, for, much as he dwelt upon your conversation while you
were among us, and delighted to be with you, it has been his fashion
ever since to depreciate and cry you down,--you were the cause of my
madness--you and your damned foolish sensibility and melancholy--and he
lamented with a true brotherly feeling that we ever met, even as the
sober citizen, when his son went astray upon the mountains of Parnassus,
is said to have "cursed wit and Poetry and Pope." I quote wrong, but no
matter. These letters I lent to a friend to be out of the way for a
season; but I have claimed them in vain, and shall not cease to regret
their loss. Your packets, posterior to the date of my misfortunes,
commencing with that valuable consolatory epistle, are every day
accumulating--they are sacred things with me.
Publish your _Burns_ when and how you like, it will be new to me,--my
memory of it is very confused, and tainted with unpleasant associations.
Burns was the god of my idolatry, as Bowles of yours. I am jealous of
your fraternising with Bowles, when I think you relish him more than
Burns or my old favourite, Cowper. But you conciliate matters when you
talk of the "divine chit-chat" of the latter: by the expression I see
you thoroughly relish him. I love Mrs. Coleridge for her excuses an
hundredfold more dearly than if she heaped "line upon line,"
out-Hannah-ing Hannah More, and had rather hear you sing "Did a very
little baby" by your family fire-side, than listen to you when you were
repeating one of Bowles's sweetest sonnets in your sweet manner, while
we two were indulging sympathy, a solitary luxury, by the fireside at
the Salutation. Yet have I no higher ideas of heaven. Your company was
one "cordial in this melancholy vale"--the remembrance of it is a
blessing partly, and partly a curse.
When I can abstract myself from things present, I can enjoy it with a
freshness of relish; but it more constantly operates to an unfavourable
comparison with the uninteresting; converse I always and _only_ can
partake in. Not a soul loves Bowles here; scarce one has heard of Burns;
few but laugh at me for reading my Testament--they talk a language I
understand not: I conceal sentiments that would be a puzzle to them. I
can only converse with you by letter and with the dead in their books.
My sister, indeed, is all I can wish in a companion; but our spirits are
alike poorly, our reading and knowledge from the self-same sources, our
communication with the scenes of the world alike narrow: never having
kept separate company, or any "company" "_together_"--never having read
separate books, and few books _together_--what knowledge have we to
convey to each other? In our little range of duties and connexions, how
few sentiments can take place, without friends, with few books, with a
taste for religion rather than a strong religious habit! We need some
support, some leading-strings to cheer and direct us. You talk very
wisely, and be not sparing of _your advice_. Continue to remember us,
and to show us you do remember us: we will take as lively an interest in
what concerns you and yours. All I can add to your happiness, will be
sympathy. You can add to mine _more_; you can teach me wisdom. I am
indeed an unreasonable correspondent; but I was unwilling to let my last
night's letter go off without this qualifier: you will perceive by this
my mind is easier, and you will rejoice. I do not expect or wish you to
write, till you are moved; and of course shall not, till you announce to
me that event, think of writing myself. Love to Mrs. Coleridge and David
Hartley, and my kind remembrance to Lloyd, if he is with you.
C. LAMB.
I will get "Nature and Art,"--have not seen it yet--nor any of Jeremy
Taylor's works.
[The reference to the bellman's verses (the bellman, or watchman, used
to leave verses at the houses on his beat at Easter as a reminder of his
deserts) is not quite clear. Lamb evidently had submitted for the new
volume some lines which Coleridge would not pass--possibly the poem in
Letter No. 16.
Coleridge some time before had sent to Lamb the very sweet lines
relative to Burns, under the title, "To a Friend who had Declared His
Intention of Writing no more Poetry."
"Did a very little baby." In the Appendix to Vol. I. of the 1847 edition
of the _Biog. Lit._, Sara Coleridge writes, concerning children and
domestic evenings, "'Did a very little babby make a very great noise?'
is the first line of a nursery song, in which Mr. Coleridge recorded
some of his experience on this recondite subject." The song has
disappeared.
_Nature and Art_ was Mrs. Inchbald's story, published in 1796. Lamb
later became an enthusiast for Jeremy Taylor.]
LETTER 19
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Dated outside: Jan. 2, 1797.]
Your success in the higher species of the Ode is such, as bespeaks you
born for atchievements of loftier enterprize than to linger in the lowly
train of songsters and sonneteurs. Sincerely I think your Ode one of the
finest I have read. The opening is in the spirit of the sublimest
allegory. The idea of the "skirts of the departing year, seen far
onwards, waving on the wind" is one of those noble Hints at which the
Reader's imagination is apt to kindle into grand conceptions. Do the
words "impetuous" and "solemnize" harmonize well in the same line? Think
and judge. In the 2d strophe, there seems to be too much play of fancy
to be consistent with that continued elevation we are taught to expect
from the strain of the foregoing. The parenthized line (by the way I
abominate parentheses in this kind of poetry) at the beginning of 7th
page, and indeed all that gradual description of the throes and pangs of
nature in childbirth, I do not much like, and those 4 first lines,--I
mean "tomb gloom anguish and languish"--rise not above mediocrity. In
the Epode, your mighty genius comes again: "I marked ambition" &c. Thro'
the whole Epod indeed you carry along our souls in a full spring tide of
feeling and imaginat'n. Here is the "Storm of Music," as Cowper
expresses it. Would it not be more abrupt "Why does the northern
Conqueress stay" or "where does the northern Conqueress stay"?--this
change of measure, rather than the feebler "Ah! whither", "Foul her life
and dark her tomb, mighty army of the dead, dance like deathflies" &c.:
here is genius, here is poetry, rapid, irresistible. The concluding
line, is it not a personif: without use? "Nec deus intersit"--except
indeed for rhyme sake. Would the laws of Strophe and antistrophe, which,
if they are as unchangeable, I suppose are about as wise, [as] the Mede
and Persian laws, admit of expunging that line altogether, and changing
the preceding one to "and he, poor madman, deemd it quenchd in endless
night?"--_fond_ madman or _proud_ madman if you will, but poor is more
contemptuous. If I offer alterations of my own to your poetry, and admit
not yours in mine, it is upon the principle of a present to a rich man
being graciously accepted, and the same present to a poor man being
considered as in insult. To return--The Antistrophe that follows is not
inferior in grandeur or original: but is I think not faultless--e: g:
How is Memory _alone_, when all the etherial multitude are there?
Reflect. Again "storiedst thy sad hours" is harsh, I need not tell you,
but you have gained your point in expressing much meaning in few words:
"Purple locks and snow white glories" "mild Arcadians ever blooming"
"seas of milk and ships of amber" these are things the Muse talks about
when, to borrow H. Walpole's witty phrase, she is not finely-phrenzied,
only a little light-headed, that's all. "Purple locks." They may manage
things differently in fairy land, but your "golden tresses" are more to
my fancy. The spirit of the Earth is a most happy conceit, and the last
line is one of the luckiest I ever heard--"_and stood up beautiful_
before the cloudy seat." I cannot enough admire it. 'Tis somehow
picturesque in the very sound. The 2d Antistrophe (what is the meaning
of these things?) is fine and faultless (or to vary the alliteration and
not diminish the affectation) beautiful and blameless. I only except to
the last line as meaningless after the preceding, and useless
entirely--besides, why disjoin "nature and the world" here, when you had
confounded both in their pregnancy: "the common earth and nature,"
recollect, a little before--And there is a dismal superfluity in the
unmeaning vocable "unhurld"--the worse, as it is so evidently a
rhyme-fetch.--"Death like he dozes" is a prosaic conceit--indeed all the
Epode as far as "brother's corse" I most heartily commend to
annihilation. The enthusiast of the lyre should not be so feebly, so
tediously, delineative of his own feelings; 'tis not the way to become
"Master of our affections." The address to Albion is very agreeable, and
concludes even beautifully: "speaks safety to his island
child"--"Sworded"--epithet _I_ would change for "cruel."
The immediately succeeding lines are prosaic: "mad avarice" is an
unhappy combination; and "the coward distance yet with kindling pride"
is not only reprehensible for the antithetical turn, but as it is a
quotation: "safe distance" and "coward distance" you have more than once
had recourse to before--And the Lyric Muse, in her enthusiasm, should
talk the language of her country, something removed from common use,
something "recent," unborrowed. The dreams of destruction "soothing her
fierce solitude," are vastly grand and terrific: still you weaken the
effect by that superfluous and easily-conceived parenthesis that
finishes the page. The foregoing image, few minds _could_ have
conceived, few tongues could have so cloath'd; "muttring destempered
triumph" &c. is vastly fine. I hate imperfect beginnings and endings.
Now your concluding stanza is worthy of so fine an ode. The beginning
was awakening and striking; the ending is soothing and solemn--Are you
serious when you ask whether you shall admit this ode? it would be
strange infatuation to leave out your Chatterton; mere insanity to
reject this. Unless you are fearful that the splendid thing may be a
means of "eclipsing many a softer satellite" that twinkles thro' the
volume. Neither omit the annex'd little poem. For my part, detesting
alliterations, I should make the 1st line "Away, with this fantastic
pride of woe." Well may you relish Bowles's allegory. I need only tell
you, I have read, and will only add, that I dislike ambition's name
_gilded_ on his helmet-cap, and that I think, among the more striking
personages you notice, you omitted the _most_ striking, Remorse! "He saw
the trees--the sun--then hied him to his cave again"!!! The 2d stanza of
mania is superfl: the 1st was never exceeded. The 2d is too methodic:
for _her_. With all its load of beauties, I am more _affected_ with the
6 first stanzas of the Elegiac poem written during sickness. Tell me
your feelings. If the fraternal sentiment conveyed in the following
lines will atone for the total want of anything like merit or genius in
it, I desire you will print it next after my other sonnet to my sister.
Friend of my earliest years, & childish days,
My joys, my sorrows, thou with me hast shared
Companion dear; & we alike have fared
Poor pilgrims we, thro' life's unequal ways
It were unwisely done, should we refuse
To cheer our path, as featly as we may,
Our lonely path to cheer, as travellers use
With merry song, quaint tale, or roundelay.
And we will sometimes talk past troubles o'er,
Of mercies shewn, & all our sickness heal'd,
And in his judgments God remembring love;
And we will learn to praise God evermore
For those "Glad tidings of great joy" reveal'd
By that sooth messenger, sent from above.
1797.
If you think the epithet "sooth" quaint, substitute "blest messenger." I
hope you are printing my sonnets, as I directed you--particularly the
2d. "Methinks" &c. with my last added 6 lines at ye end: and all of 'em
as I last made 'em.
This has been a sad long letter of business, with no room in it for what
honest Bunyan terms heart-work. I have just room left to congratulate
you on your removal to Stowey; to wish success to all your projects; to
"bid fair peace" be to that house; to send my love and best wishes,
breathed warmly, after your dear Sara, and her little David Hartley. If
Lloyd be with you, bid him write to me: I feel to whom I am obliged
primarily for two very friendly letters I have received already from
him. A dainty sweet book that "Art and Nature" is. I am at present
re-re-reading Priestley's examinat of the Scotch Drs: how the Rogue
strings 'em up! three together! You have no doubt read that clear,
strong, humorous, most entertaining piece of reasoning. If not, procure
it, and be exquisitely amused. I wish I could get more of Priestley's
works. Can you recommend me to any more books, easy of access, such as
circulating shops afford? God bless you and yours.
Poor Mary is very unwell with a sore throat and a slight species of
scarlet fever. God bless her too.
Monday Morning, at Office.
[Coleridge had just published in quarto his _Ode on the Departing Year_.
In order that Lamb's letter may be intelligible it is necessary, I
think, to give the text of this edition in full. It will be found in the
Appendix to this volume. Lamb returns to his criticism in the next
letter.
The "annexed little poem" was that "Addressed to a Young Man of
Fortune," which began, and still begins, "Hence that fantastic
wantonness of woe."
Bowies' allegory was the poem, "Hope, An Allegorical Sketch," recently
published.
The poem was not included in the 1797 volume, but was printed in the
_Monthly Magazine_, October, 1797. Coleridge had moved to his cottage at
Nether Stowey on the last day of 1796.
Priestley's book would be _An Examination of Dr. Reid's Inquiry into the
Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, Dr. Beattie's Essay on the
Nature and Immutability of Truth, and Dr. Oswald's Appeal to Common
Sense in Behalf of Religion_, 1774.]
LETTER 20
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[P.M. Jan. 10, 1797.]
Saturday.
I am completely reconciled to that second strophe, and wa[i]ve all
objection. In spite of the Grecian Lyrists, I persist on [in] thinking
your brief personification of Madness useless; reverence forbids me to
say, impertinent. Golden locks and snow white glories are as incongruous
as your former, and if the great Italian painters, of whom my friend
knows about as much as the man in the moon, if these great gentlemen be
on your side, I see no harm in retaining the purple--the glories that I
have observed to encircle the heads of saints and madonnas in those old
paintings have been mostly of a dirty drab-color'd yellow--a dull
gambogium. Keep your old line: it will excite a confused kind of
pleasurable idea in the reader's mind, not clear enough to be called a
conception, nor just enough, I think, to reduce to painting. It is a
rich line, you say, and riches hide a many faults. I maintain, that in
the 2d antist: you _do_ disjoin Nature and the world, and contrary to
your conduct in the 2d strophe. "Nature joins her groans"--joins with
_whom_, a God's name, but the world or earth in line preceding? But this
is being over curious, I acknowledge. Nor _did_ I call the _last_ line
useless, I only objected to "unhurld." I cannot be made to like the
former part of that 2d Epode; I cannot be made to feel it, as I do the
parallel places in Isaiah, Jeremy and Daniel. Whether it is that in the
present case the rhyme impairs the efficacy; or that the circumstances
are feigned, and we are conscious of a made up lye in the case, and the
narrative is too long winded to preserve the semblance of truth; or that
lines 8. 9. 10. 14 in partic: 17 and 18 are mean and unenthusiastic; or
that lines 5 to 8 in their change of rhyme shew like art--I don't know,
but it strikes me as something meant to affect, and failing in its
purpose. Remember my waywardness of feeling is single, and singly stands
opposed to all your friends, and what is one among many! This I know,
that your quotations from the prophets have never escaped me, and never
fail'd to affect me strongly. I hate that simile. I am glad you have
amended that parenthesis in the account of Destruction. I like it well
now. Only utter [? omit] that history of child-bearing, and all will do
well. Let the obnoxious Epode remain, to terrify such of your friends as
are willing to be terrified. I think I would omit the Notes, not as not
good per se, but as uncongenial with the dignity of the Ode. I need not
repeat my wishes to have my little sonnets printed verbatim my last way.
In particular, I fear lest you should prefer printing my first sonnet,
as you have done more than once, "did the wand of Merlin wave"? It looks
so like _Mr._ Merlin, the ingenious successor of the immortal Merlin,
now living in good health and spirits, and nourishing in magical
reputation in Oxford Street; and on my life, one half who read it would
understand it so. Do put 'em forth finally as I have, in various
letters, settled it; for first a man's self is to be pleased, and then
his friends,--and, of course the greater number of his friends, if they
differ inter se. Thus taste may safely be put to the vote. I do long to
see our names together--not for vanity's sake, and naughty pride of
heart altogether, for not a living soul, I know or am intimate with,
will scarce read the book--so I shall gain nothing quoad famam,--and yet
there is a little vanity mixes in it, I cannot help denying. I am aware
of the unpoetical cast of the 6 last lines of my last sonnet, and think
myself unwarranted in smuggling so tame a thing into the book; only the
sentiments of those 6 lines are thoroughly congenial to me in my state
of mind, and I wish to accumulate perpetuating tokens of my affection to
poor Mary; that it has no originality in its cast, nor anything in the
feelings, but what is common and natural to thousands, nor aught
properly called poetry, I see; still it will tend to keep present to my
mind a view of things which I ought to indulge. These 6 lines, too, have
not, to a reader, a connectedness with the foregoing. Omit it, if you
like.--What a treasure it is to my poor indolent and unemployed mind,
thus to lay hold on a subject to talk about, tho' 'tis but a sonnet and
that of the lowest order. How mournfully inactive I am!--'Tis night:
good-night.
My sister, I thank God, is nigh recovered. She was seriously ill. Do, in
your next letter, and that right soon, give me some satisfaction
respecting your present situation at Stowey. Is it a farm you have got?
and what does your worship know about farming? Coleridge, I want you to
write an Epic poem. Nothing short of it can satisfy the vast capacity of
true poetic genius. Having one great End to direct all your poetical
faculties to, and on which to lay out your hopes, your ambition, will
shew you to what you are equal. By the sacred energies of Milton, by the
dainty sweet and soothing phantasies of honeytongued Spenser, I adjure
you to attempt the Epic. Or do something more ample than writing an
occasional brief ode or sonnet; something "to make yourself for ever
known,--to make the age to come your own". But I prate; doubtless you
meditate something. When you are exalted among the Lords of Epic fame, I
shall recall with pleasure, and exultingly, the days of your humility,
when you disdained not to put forth in the same volume with mine, your
religious musings, and that other poem from the Joan of Arc, those
promising first fruits of high renown to come. You have learning, you
have fancy, you have enthusiasm--you have strength and amplitude of wing
enow for flights like those I recommend. In the vast and unexplored
regions of fairyland, there is ground enough unfound and uncultivated;
search there, and realize your favourite Susquehanah scheme. In all our
comparisons of taste, I do not know whether I have ever heard your
opinion of a poet, very dear to me, the now out of fashion Cowley--favor
me with your judgment of him, and tell me if his prose essays, in
particular, as well as no inconsiderable part of his verse, be not
delicious. I prefer the graceful rambling of his essays, even to the
courtly elegance and ease of Addison--abstracting from this the latter's
exquisite humour. Why is not your poem on Burns in the Monthly Magazine?
I was much disappointed. I have a pleasurable but confused remembrance
of it.
When the little volume is printed, send me 3 or 4, at all events not
more than 6 copies, and tell me if I put you to any additional expence,
by printing with you. I have no thought of the kind, and in that case,
must reimburse you. My epistle is a model of unconnectedness, but I have
no partic: subject to write on, and must proportion my scribble in some
degree to the increase of postage. It is not quite fair, considering how
burdensome your correspondence from different quarters must be, to add
to it with so little shew of reason. I will make an end for this
evening. Sunday Even:--Farewell.
Priestly, whom I sin in almost adoring, speaks of "such a choice of
company, as tends to keep up that right bent, and firmness of mind,
which a necessary intercourse with the world would otherwise warp and
relax. Such fellowship is the true balsam of life, its cement is
infinitely more durable than that of the friendships of the world, and
it looks for its proper fruit, and complete gratification, to the life
beyond the Grave." Is there a possible chance for such an one as me to
realize in this world, such friendships? Where am I to look for 'em?
What testimonials shall I bring of my being worthy of such friendship?
Alas! the great and good go together in separate Herds, and leave such
as me to lag far far behind in all intellectual, and far more grievous
to say, in all moral, accomplishments. Coleridge, I have not one truly
elevated character among my acquaintance: not one Christian: not one but
undervalues Christianity. Singly what am I to do? Wesley (have you read
his life? was _he_ not an elevated character?) Wesley has said,
"Religion is not a solitary thing." Alas! it necessarily is so with me,
or next to solitary. 'Tis true, you write to me. But correspondence by
letter, and personal intimacy, are very widely different. Do, do write
to me, and do some good to my mind, already how much "warped and
relaxed" by the world!--'Tis the conclusion of another evening. Good
night. God have us all in his keeping. If you are sufficiently at
leisure, oblige me with an account of your plan of life at Stowey--your
literary occupations and prospects--in short make me acquainted with
every circumstance, which, as relating to you, can be interesting to me.
Are you yet a Berkleyan? Make me one. I rejoice in being, speculatively,
a necessarian. Would to God, I were habitually a practical one. Confirm
me in the faith of that great and glorious doctrine, and keep me steady
in the contemplation of it. You sometime since exprest an intention you
had of finishing some extensive work on the Evidences of Natural and
Revealed Religion. Have you let that intention go? Or are you doing any
thing towards it? Make to yourself other ten talents. My letter is full
of nothingness. I talk of nothing. But I must talk. I love to write to
you. I take a pride in it. It makes me think less meanly of myself. It
makes me think myself not totally disconnected from the better part of
Mankind. I know, I am too dissatisfied with the beings around me,--but I
cannot help occasionally exclaiming "Woe is me, that I am constrained to
dwell with Meshech, and to have my habitation among the tents of
Kedar"--I know I am no ways better in practice than my neighbours--but I
have a taste for religion, an occasional earnest aspiration after
perfection, which they have not. I gain nothing by being with such as
myself--we encourage one another in mediocrity--I am always longing to
be with men more excellent than myself. All this must sound odd to you;
but these are my predominant feelings, when I sit down to write to you,
and I should put force upon my mind, were I to reject them. Yet I
rejoyce, and feel my privilege with gratitude, when I have been reading
some wise book, such as I have just been reading--Priestley on
Philosophical necessity--in the thought that I enjoy a kind of
communion, a kind of friendship even, with the great and good. Books are
to me instead of friends. I wish they did not resemble the latter in
their scarceness.--And how does little David Hartley? "Ecquid in
antiquam virtutem?"--does his mighty name work wonders yet upon his
little frame, and opening mind? I did not distinctly understand
you,--you don't mean to make an actual ploughman of him? Mrs. C---- is
no doubt well,--give my kindest respects to her. Is Lloyd with you
yet?--are you intimate with Southey? What poems is he about to
publish--he hath a most prolific brain, and is indeed a most sweet poet.
But how can you answer all the various mass of interrogation I have put
to you in the course of this sheet. Write back just what you like, only
write something, however brief. I have now nigh finished my page, and
got to the end of another evening (Monday evening)--and my eyes are
heavy and sleepy, and my brain unsuggestive. I have just heart enough
awake to say Good night once more, and God love you my dear friend, God
love us all. Mary bears an affectionate remembrance of you.
CHARLES LAMB.
[The criticisms contained in the first paragraph bear upon Coleridge's
"Ode on the Departing Year," which had already appeared twice, in the
_Cambridge Intelligencer_ and in a quarto issued by Cottle, and was now
being revised for the second edition of the _Poems_.
The personification of Madness was contained in the line, afterwards
omitted:--
For still does Madness roam on Guilt's black dizzy height.
Lamb's objection to this line, considering his home circumstances at the
time, was very natural. In Antistrophe I. Coleridge originally said of
the ethereal multitude in Heaven--
Whose purple Locks with snow-white Glories shone.
In the 1797 _Poems_ the line ran--
Whose wreathed Locks with snow-white Glories shone;
and in the final version--
Whose locks with wreaths, whose wreaths with glories shone.
Coleridge must have supported his case, in the letter which Lamb is
answering, by a reference to the Italian painters.
Coleridge in the 1797 edition of his Poems made no alteration to meet
Lamb's strictures. The simile that Lamb hated is, I imagine, that of the
soldier on the war field. "The history of child-bearing" referred to is
the passage at the end of Strophe II. To the quarto Coleridge had
appended various notes. In 1797 he had only three, and added an
argument.
The reference to Merlin will be explained by a glance at the parallel
sonnets above. Merlin was entirely Coleridge's idea. A conjuror of that
name was just then among London's attractions.
The "last sonnet," which was not the last in the 1797 volume, but the
6th, was that beginning "If from my lips" (see first letter).
In connection with Lamb's question on the Stowey husbandry, the
following quotation from a letter from Coleridge to the Rev. J. P.
Estlin, belonging to this period, is interesting;--
Our house is better than we expected--there is a comfortable bedroom and
sitting-room for C. Lloyd, and another for us, a room for Nanny, a
kitchen, and out-house. Before our door a clear brook runs of very soft
water; and in the back yard is a nice _well_ of fine spring water. We
have a very pretty garden, and large enough to find us vegetables and
employment, and I am already an expert gardener, and both my hands can
exhibit a callum as testimonials of their industry. We have likewise a
sweet orchard.
Writing a little before this to Charles Lloyd, senior, Coleridge had
said: "My days I shall devote to the acquirement of practical husbandry
and horticulture."
The poem on Burns was that "To a Friend [Lamb] who had Declared His
Intention of Writing no more Poetry." It was printed first in a Bristol
paper and then in the _Annual Anthology_, 1800.
Priestley's remark is in the Dedication to John Lee, Esq., of Lincoln's
Inn, of "A Free Discussion of the Doctrines of Materialism and
Philosophical Necessity in a Correspondence between Dr. Price and Dr.
Priestley," etc., included in _Disquisitions Relating to Matter and
Spirit_, Vol. III., 1778. The discussion arose from the publication by
Priestley of _The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated_,
which itself is an appendage to _Disquisitions Relating to Matter and
Spirit_.
Three lives at least of John Wesley were published in the two years
following his death in 1791. Coleridge later studied Wesley closely, for
he added valuable notes to Southey's life (see the 1846 edition).
"A Berkleyan," _i.e._, a follower of Bishop Berkeley (1685-1753), who in
his _New Theory of Vision_ and later works maintained that "what we call
matter has no actual existence, and that the impressions which we
believe ourselves to receive from it are not, in fact, derived from
anything external to ourselves, but are produced within us by a certain
disposition of the mind, the immediate operation of God" (Benham's
_Dictionary of Religion_).
Coleridge when sending Southey one version of his poem to Charles Lamb,
entitled "This Lime-tree Bower my Prison" (to which we shall come
later), in July, 1797, appended to the following passage the note, "You
remember I am a _Berkleian_":--
Struck with joy's deepest calm, and gazing round
On the wide view, may gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily; a living thing
That acts upon the mind, and with such hues
As clothe the Almighty Spirit, when He makes
Spirits perceive His presence!
"A Necessarian." We should now say a fatalist.
Coleridge's work on the "Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion,"
which has before been mentioned, was, if ever begun, never completed.]
LETTER 21
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Dated at end: January 18, 1797.]
Dear Col,--You have learnd by this time, with surprise, no doubt, that
Lloyd is with me in town. The emotions I felt on his coming so unlooked
for are not ill expressed in what follows, & what, if you do not object
to them as too personal, & to the world obscure, or otherwise wanting in
worth, I should wish to make a part of our little volume.
I shall be sorry if that vol comes out, as it necessarily must do,
unless you print those very schoolboyish verses I sent you on not
getting leave to come down to Bristol last Summer. I say I shall be
sorry that I have addrest you in nothing which can appear in our joint
volume.
So frequently, so habitually as you dwell on my thoughts, 'tis some
wonder those thoughts came never yet in Contact with a poetical
mood--But you dwell in my heart of hearts, and I love you in all the
naked honesty of prose. God bless you, and all your little domestic
circle--my tenderest remembrances to your Beloved Sara, & a smile and a
kiss from me to your dear dear little David Hartley--The verses I refer
to above, slightly amended, I have sent (forgetting to ask your leave,
tho' indeed I gave them only your initials) to the Month: Mag: where
they may possibly appear next month, and where I hope to recognise your
Poem on Burns.
TO CHARLES LLOYD, AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR
Alone, obscure, without a friend,
A cheerless, solitary thing,
Why seeks my Lloyd the stranger out?
What offring can the stranger bring
Of social scenes, home-bred delights,
That him in aught compensate may
For Stowey's pleasant winter nights,
For loves & friendships far away?
In brief oblivion to forego
Friends, such as thine, so justly dear,
And be awhile with me content
To stay, a kindly loiterer, here--
For this a gleam of random joy,
Hath flush'd my unaccustom'd cheek,
And, with an o'er-charg'd bursting heart,
I feel the thanks, I cannot speak.
O! sweet are all the Muses' lays,
And sweet the charm of matin bird--
'Twas long, since these estranged ears
The sweeter voice of friend had heard.
The voice hath spoke: the pleasant sounds
In memory's ear, in after time
Shall live, to sometimes rouse a tear,
And sometimes prompt an honest rhyme.
For when the transient charm is fled,
And when the little week is o'er,
To cheerless, friendless solitude
When I return, as heretofore--
Long, long, within my aching heart,
The grateful sense shall cherishd be;
I'll think less meanly of myself,
That Lloyd will sometimes think on me.
1797.
O Col: would to God you were in London with us, or we two at Stowey with
you all. Lloyd takes up his abode at the Bull & Mouth Inn,--the Cat &
Salutation would have had a charm more forcible for me. _O noctes
caenaeque Deûm!_ Anglice--Welch rabbits, punch, & poesy.
Should you be induced to publish those very schoolboyish verses, print
'em as they will occur, if at all, in the Month: Mag: yet I should feel
ashamed that to you I wrote nothing better. But they are too personal, &
almost trifling and obscure withal. Some lines of mine to Cowper were in
last Month: Mag: they have not body of thought enough to plead for the
retaining of 'em.
My sister's kind love to you all.
C. LAMB.
[The verses to Lloyd were included in Coleridge's 1797 volume; but the
verses concerning the frustrated Bristol holiday were omitted.
Concerning this visit to London Charles Lloyd wrote to his brother
Robert: "I left Charles Lamb very warmly interested in his favour, and
have kept up a regular correspondence with him ever since; he is a most
interesting young man." Only two letters from Lamb to Charles Lloyd have
survived.
"We two"--Lamb and Lloyd. Not Lamb and his sister.]
LETTER 22
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Begun Sunday, February 5, 1797.
Dated on address by mistake: January 5, 1797.]
Sunday Morning.--You cannot surely mean to degrade the Joan of Arc into
a pot girl. You are not going, I hope, to annex to that most splendid
ornament of Southey's poem all this cock and a bull story of Joan the
publican's daughter of Neufchatel, with the lamentable episode of a
waggoner, his wife, and six children; the texture will be most
lamentably disproportionate. The first forty or fifty lines of these
addenda are, no doubt, in their way, admirable, too; but many would
prefer the Joan of Southey.
"On mightiest deeds to brood Of shadowy vastness, such as made my heart
Throb fast. Anon I paused, and in a state Of half expectance listen'd to
the wind;" "They wonder'd at me, who had known me once A chearful
careless damsel;" "The eye, That of the circling throng and of the
visible world Unseeing, saw the shapes of holy phantasy;" I see nothing
in your description of the Maid equal to these. There is a fine
originality certainly in those lines--"For she had lived in this bad
world as in a place of tombs, And touch'd not the pollutions of the
Dead"--but your "fierce vivacity" is a faint copy of the "fierce &
terrible benevolence" of Southey. Added to this, that it will look like
rivalship in you, & extort a comparison with S,--I think to your
disadvantage. And the lines, consider'd in themselves as an addition to
what you had before written (strains of a far higher mood), are but such
as Madame Fancy loves in some of her more familiar moods, at such times
as she has met Noll Goldsmith, & walk'd and talk'd with him, calling him
old acquaintance. Southey certainly has no pretensions to vie with you
in the sublime of poetry; but he tells a plain tale better than you. I
will enumerate some woeful blemishes, some of 'em sad deviations from
that simplicity which was your aim. "Hail'd who might be near" (the
canvas-coverture moving, by the by, is laughable); "a woman & six
children" (by the way,--why not nine children, it would have been just
half as pathetic again): "statues of sleep they seem'd." "Frost-mangled
wretch:" "green putridity:" "hail'd him immortal" (rather ludicrous
again): "voiced a sad and simple tale" (abominable!): "unprovender'd:"
"such his tale:" "Ah! suffering to the height of what was suffer'd" (a
most _insufferable line_): "amazements of affright:" "the hot sore brain
attributes its own hues of ghastliness and torture" (what shocking
confusion of ideas!). In these delineations of common & natural
feelings, in the familiar walks of poetry, you seem to resemble
Montauban dancing with Roubigne's tenants, "much of his native loftiness
remained in the execution." I was reading your Religious Musings the
other day, & sincerely I think it the noblest poem in the language, next
after the Paradise lost; & even that was not made the vehicle of such
grand truths. "There is one mind," &c., down to "Almighty's Throne," are
without a rival in the whole compass of my poetical reading. "Stands in
the sun, & with no partial gaze Views all creation"--I wish I could have
written those lines. I rejoyce that I am able to relish them. The
loftier walks of Pindus are your proper region. There you have no
compeer in modern times. Leave the lowlands, unenvied, in possession of
such men as Cowper & Southey. Thus am I pouring balsam into the wounds I
may have been inflicting on my poor friend's vanity. In your notice of
Southey's new volume you omit to mention the most pleasing of all, the
Miniature "There were Who form'd high hopes and flattering ones of thee,
Young Robert. Spirit of Spenser!--was the wanderer wrong?" Fairfax I
have been in quest of a long time. Johnson in his life of Waller gives a
most delicious specimen of him, & adds, in the true manner of that
delicate critic, as well as amiable man, "it may be presumed that this
old version will not be much read after the elegant translation of my
friend, Mr. Hoole." I endeavour'd--I wish'd to gain some idea of Tasso
from this Mr. Hoole, the great boast and ornament of the India House,
but soon desisted. I found him more vapid than smallest small beer
sun-vinegared. Your dream, down to that exquisite line--"I can't tell
half his adventures," is a most happy resemblance of Chaucer. The
remainder is so so. The best line, I think, is, "He belong'd, I believe,
to the witch Melancholy." By the way, when will our volume come out?
Don't delay it till you have written a new Joan of Arc. Send what
letters you please by me, & in any way you choose, single or double. The
India Co. is better adapted to answer the cost than the generality of my
friend's correspondents,--such poor & honest dogs as John Thelwall,
particularly. I cannot say I know Colson, at least intimately. I once
supped with him & Allen. I think his manners very pleasing. I will not
tell you what I think of Lloyd, for he may by chance come to see this
letter, and that thought puts a restraint on me. I cannot think what
subject would suit your epic genius; some philosophical subject, I
conjecture, in which shall be blended the Sublime of Poetry & of
Science. Your proposed Hymns will be a fit preparatory study wherewith
"to discipline your young noviciate soul." I grow dull; I'll go walk
myself out of my dulness.
_Sunday Night_.--You & Sara are very good to think so kindly & so
favourably of poor Mary. I would to God all did so too. But I very much
fear she must not think of coming home in my father's lifetime. It is
very hard upon her. But our circumstances are peculiar, & we must submit
to them. God be praised she is so well as she is. She bears her
situation as one who has no right to complain. My poor old aunt, whom
you have seen, the kindest, goodest creature to me when I was at school;
who used to toddle there to bring me fag, when I, school-boy like, only
despised her for it, & used to be ashamed to see her come & sit herself
down on the old coal hole steps as you went into the old grammar school,
& opend her apron & bring out her bason, with some nice thing she had
caused to be saved for me--the good old creature is now lying on her
death bed. I cannot bear to think on her deplorable state. To the shock
she received on that our evil day, from which she never completely
recovered, I impute her illness. She says, poor thing, she is glad she
is come home to die with me. I was always her favourite: "No after
friendship e'er can raise The endearments of our early days, Nor e'er
the heart such fondness prove, As when it first began to love." Lloyd
has kindly left me for a keep-sake, John Woolman. You have read it, he
says, & like it. Will you excuse one short extract? I think it could not
have escaped you:--"Small treasure to a resigned mind is sufficient. How
happy is it to be content with a little, to live in humility, & feel
that in us which breathes out this language--Abba! Father!"--I am almost
ashamed to patch up a letter in this miscellaneous sort; but I please
myself in the thought, that anything from me will be acceptable to you.
I am rather impatient, childishly so, to see our names affixed to the
same common volume. Send me two, when it does come out; 2 will be
enough--or indeed 1--but 2 better. I have a dim recollection that, when
in town, you were talking of the Origin of Evil as a most prolific
subject for a long poem. Why not adopt it, Coleridge? there would be
room for imagination. Or the description (from a Vision or Dream,
suppose) of an Utopia in one of the planets (the Moon, for instance). Or
a Five Days' Dream, which shall illustrate, in sensible imagery,
Hartley's 5 motives to conduct:--sensation (1), imagination (2),
ambition (3), sympathy (4), Theopathy (5). 1st banquets, music, etc.,
effeminacy,--and their insufficiency. 2d "beds of hyacinth & roses,
where young Adonis oft reposes;" "fortunate Isles;" "The pagan Elysium,"
etc., etc.; poetical pictures; antiquity as pleasing to the
fancy;--their emptiness, madness, etc. 3d warriors, poets; some famous,
yet more forgotten, their fame or oblivion now alike indifferent, pride,
vanity, etc. 4th all manner of pitiable stories, in Spenser-like
verse--love--friendship, relationship, &c. 5th Hermits--Christ and his
apostles--martyrs--heaven--&c., etc. An imagination like yours, from
these scanty hints, may expand into a thousand great Ideas--if indeed
you at all comprehend my scheme, which I scarce do myself.
_Monday Morn._--"A London letter. 9-1/2." Look you, master poet, I have
remorse as well as another man, & my bowels can sound upon occasion. But
I must put you to this charge, for I cannot keep back my protest,
however ineffectual, against the annexing your latter lines to those
former--this putting of new wine into old bottles. This my duty done, I
will cease from writing till you invent some more reasonable mode of
conveyance. Well may the "ragged followers of the nine" set up for
flocci-nauci-what-do-you-call-'em-ists! And I do not wonder that in
their splendid visions of Utopias in America they protest against the
admission of those _yellow_-complexioned, _copper_-color'd,
_white_-liver'd Gentlemen, who never proved themselves _their_ friends.
Don't you think your verses on a Young Ass too trivial a companion for
the Religious Musings? "Scoundrel monarch," alter _that_; and the Man of
Ross is scarce admissible as it now stands curtailed of its fairer half:
reclaim its property from the Chatterton, which it does but encumber, &
it will be a rich little poem. I hope you expunge great part of the old
notes in the new edition. That, in particular, most barefaced unfounded
impudent assertion, that Mr. Rogers is indebted for his story to Loch
Lomond, a poem by Bruce! I have read the latter. I scarce think you
have. Scarce anything is common to them both. The poor author of the
Pleasures of Memory was sorely hurt, Dyer says, by the accusation of
unoriginality. He never saw the Poem. I long to read your Poem on Burns;
I retain so indistinct a memory of it. In what shape and how does it
come into public? As you leave off writing poetry till you finish your
Hymns, I suppose you print now all you have got by you. You have scarce
enough unprinted to make a 2d volume with Lloyd. Tell me all about it.
What is become of Cowper? Lloyd told me of some verses on his mother. If
you have them by you, pray send 'em me. I do so love him! Never mind
their merit. May be _I_ may like 'em--as your taste and mine do not
always exactly _indentify_. Yours,
LAMB.
[Coleridge intended to print in his new edition the lines that he had
contributed to Southey's _Joan of Arc_, 1796, with certain additions,
under the title "The Progress of Liberty; or, The Visions of the Maid of
Orleans." Writing to Cottle Coleridge had said: "I much wish to send _My
Visions of the Maid of Arc_ and my corrections to Wordsworth ... and to
Lamb, whose taste and _judgment_ I see reason to think more correct and
philosophical than my own, which yet I place pretty high." Lamb's
criticisms are contained in this letter. Coleridge abandoned his idea of
including the poem in the 1797 edition, and the lines were not
separately published until 1817, in _Sibylline Leaves_, under the title
"The Destiny of Nations."
"Montauban ... Roubigné." An illustration from Henry Mackenzie's novel
_Julia de Roubigné_, 1777, from which Lamb took hints, a little later,
for the structure of part of his story _Rosamund Gray_.
This is the passage in "Religious Musings" that Lamb particularly
praises:--
There is one Mind, one omnipresent Mind,
Omnific. His most holy name is Love.
Truth of subliming import! with the which
Who feeds and saturates his constant soul,
He from his small particular orbit flies
With blest outstarting! From himself he flies,
Stands in the sun, and with no partial gaze
Views all creation; and he loves it all,
And blesses it, and calls it very good!
This is indeed to dwell with the Most High!
Cherubs and rapture-trembling Seraphim
Can press no nearer to the Almighty's throne.
Southey's new volume, which Coleridge had noticed, was his _Poems_,
second edition, Vol. I., 1797. The poem in question was "On My Own
Miniature Picture taken at Two Years of Age."
Edward Fairfax's "Tasso" (_Godfrey of Bulloigne, or the Recoverie of
Jerusalem_) was published in 1600. John Hoole, a later translator,
became principal auditor at the India House, and resigned in 1786. He
died in 1803.
Coleridge's dream was the poem called "The Raven."
Citizen John Thelwall (1764-1834), to whom many of Coleridge's early
letters are written, was a Jacobin enthusiast who had gone to the Tower
with Thomas Hardy and Home Tooke in 1794, but was acquitted at his
trial. At this time he was writing and lecturing on political subjects.
When, in 1818, Thelwall acquired _The Champion_ Lamb wrote squibs for it
against the Regent and others.
Colson was perhaps Thomas Coulson, a friend of Sir Humphry Davy and the
father of Walter Coulson (born? 1794) who was called "The Walking
Encyclopaedia," and was afterwards a friend of Hazlitt.
"To discipline your young noviciate soul." A line from "Religious
Musings," 1796:--
I discipline my young noviciate thought.
"My poor old aunt." Lamb's lines on his Aunt Hetty repeat some of this
praise; as also does the _Elia_ essay on "Christ's Hospital."
John Woolman (1720-1772), an American Quaker. His _Works_ comprise _A
Journal of the Life, Gospel, Labours, and Christian Experiences of that
Faithful Minister of Jesus Christ, John Woolman_, and _His Last Epistle
and other Writings_. Lamb often praised the book.
"A London letter, 9-1/2." A word on the postal system of those days may
not be out of place. The cost of the letter when a frank had not been
procured was borne by the recipient. The rate varied with the distance.
The charge from London to Bridgewater in 1797 was sevenpence. Later it
was raised to ninepence and tenpence. No regular post was set up between
Bridgewater and Nether Stowey until 1808, when the cost of the carriage
of a letter for the intervening nine miles was twopence.
"Flocci." See note on page II.
"The Young Ass," early versions, ended thus:--
Soothe to rest
The tumult of some Scoundrel Monarch's breast.
Coleridge changed the last line to--
The aching of pale Fashion's vacant breast.
Coleridge had asserted, in a 1796 note, that Rogers had taken the story
of Florio in the _Pleasures of Memory_ from Michael Bruce's _Loch Leven_
(not _Loch Lomond_). In the 1797 edition another note made apology for
the mistake.
Cowper's "Lines on the Receipt of my Mother's Picture out of Norfolk"
had been written in the spring of 1790. It is interesting to find Lamb
reading them just now, for his own _Blank Verse_ poems, shortly to be
written, have much in common with Cowper's verses, not only in manner
but in matter.]
LETTER 23
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Feb. 13th, 1797.
Your poem is altogether admirable--parts of it are even exquisite--in
particular your personal account of the Maid far surpasses any thing of
the sort in Southey. I perceived all its excellences, on a first
reading, as readily as now you have been removing a supposed film from
my eyes. I was only struck with [a] certain faulty disproportion in the
matter and the _style_, which I still think I perceive, between these
lines and the former ones. I had an end in view; I wished to make you
reject the poem, only as being discordant with the other; and, in
subservience to that end, it was politically done in me to over-pass,
and make no mention of merit which, could you think me capable of
_overlooking_, might reasonably damn for ever in your judgment all
pretensions in me to be critical. There, I will be judged by Lloyd,
whether I have not made a very handsome recantation. I was in the case
of a man whose friend has asked him his opinion of a certain young lady;
the deluded wight gives judgment against her _in toto_--don't like her
face, her walk, her manners--finds fault with her eyebrows--can see no
wit in her. His friend looks blank; he begins to smell a rat; wind veers
about; he acknowledges her good sense, her judgment in dress, a certain
simplicity of manners and honesty of heart, something too in her manners
which gains upon you after a short acquaintance,--and then her accurate
pronunciation of the French language and a pretty uncultivated taste in
drawing. The reconciled gentleman smiles applause, squeezes him by the
hand, and hopes he will do him the honour of taking a bit of dinner with
Mrs.--and him--a plain family dinner--some day next week. "For, I
suppose, you never heard we were married! I'm glad to see you like my
wife, however; you'll come and see her, ha?" Now am I too proud to
retract entirely. Yet I do perceive I am in some sort straitened; you
are manifestly wedded to this poem, and what fancy has joined let no man
separate. I turn me to the Joan of Arc, second book.
The solemn openings of it are with sounds which, Lloyd would say, "are
silence to the mind." The deep preluding strains are fitted to initiate
the mind, with a pleasing awe, into the sublimest mysteries of theory
concerning man's nature and his noblest destination--the philosophy of a
first cause--of subordinate agents in creation superior to man--the
subserviency of Pagan worship and Pagan faith to the introduction of a
purer and more perfect religion, which you so elegantly describe as
winning with gradual steps her difficult way northward from Bethabra.
After all this cometh Joan, a _publican's_ daughter, sitting on an
ale-house _bench_, and marking the _swingings_ of the _signboard_,
finding a poor man, his wife and six children, starved to death with
cold, and thence roused into a state of mind proper to receive visions
emblematical of equality; which what the devil Joan had to do with, I
don't know, or indeed with the French and American revolutions; though
that needs no pardon, it is executed so nobly. After all, if you
perceive no disproportion, all argument is vain: I do not so much object
to parts. Again, when you talk of building your fame on these lines in
preference to the "Religious Musings," I cannot help conceiving of you
and of the author of that as two different persons, and I think you a
very vain man.
I have been re-reading your letter. Much of it I _could_ dispute; but
with the latter part of it, in which you compare the two Joans with
respect to their predispositions for fanaticism, I _toto corde_
coincide; only I think that Southey's strength rather lies in the
description of the emotions of the Maid under the weight of
inspiration,--these (I see no mighty difference between _her_ describing
them or _you_ describing them), these if you only equal, the previous
admirers of his poem, as is natural, will prefer his; if you surpass,
prejudice will scarcely allow it, and I scarce think you will surpass,
though your specimen at the conclusion (I am in earnest) I think very
nigh equals them. And in an account of a fanatic or of a prophet the
description of her _emotions_ is expected to be most highly finished. By
the way, I spoke far too disparagingly of your lines, and, I am ashamed
to say, purposely. I should like you to specify or particularise; the
story of the "Tottering Eld," of "his eventful years all come and gone,"
is too general; why not make him a soldier, or some character, however,
in which he has been witness to frequency of "cruel wrong and strange
distress!" I think I should. When I laughed at the "miserable man
crawling from beneath the coverture," I wonder I [? you] did not
perceive it was a laugh of horror--such as I have laughed at Dante's
picture of the famished Ugolino. Without falsehood, I perceive an
hundred beauties in your narrative. Yet I wonder you do not perceive
something out-of-the way, something unsimple and artificial, in the
expression, "voiced a sad tale." I hate made-dishes at the muses'
banquet. I believe I was wrong in most of my other objections. But
surely "hailed him immortal," adds nothing to the terror of the man's
death, which it was your business to heighten, not diminish by a phrase
which takes away all terror from it. I like that line, "They closed
their eyes in sleep, nor knew 'twas death." Indeed, there is scarce a
line I do not like. "_Turbid_ ecstacy," is surely not so good as what
you _had_ written, "troublous." Turbid rather suits the muddy kind of
inspiration which London porter confers. The versification is,
throughout, to my ears unexceptionable, with no disparagement to the
measure of the "Religious Musings," which is exactly fitted to the
thoughts.
You were building your house on a rock, when you rested your fame on
that poem. I can scarce bring myself to believe, that I am admitted to a
familiar correspondence, and all the licence of friendship, with a man
who writes blank verse like Milton. Now, this is delicate flattery,
_indirect_ flattery. Go on with your "Maid of Orleans," and be content
to be second to yourself. I shall become a convert to it, when 'tis
finished.
This afternoon I attend the funeral of my poor old aunt, who died on
Thursday. I own I am thankful that the good creature has ended all her
days of suffering and infirmity. She was to me the "cherisher of
infancy," and one must fall on these occasions into reflections which it
would be commonplace to enumerate, concerning death, "of chance and
change, and fate in human life." Good God, who could have foreseen all
this but four months back! I had reckoned, in particular, on my aunt's
living many years; she was a very hearty old woman. But she was a mere
skeleton before she died, looked more like a corpse that had lain weeks
in the grave, than one fresh dead. "Truly the light is sweet, and a
pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun; but let a man live
many days and rejoice in them all, yet let him remember the days of
darkness, for they shall be many." Coleridge, why are we to live on
after all the strength and beauty of existence are gone, when all the
life of life is fled, as poor Burns expresses it? Tell Lloyd I have had
thoughts of turning Quaker, and have been reading, or am rather just
beginning to read, a most capital book, good thoughts in good language,
William Penn's "No Cross, no Crown;" I like it immensely. Unluckily I
went to one of his meetings, tell him, in St. John Street, yesterday,
and saw a man under all the agitations and workings of a fanatic, who
believed himself under the influence of some "inevitable presence." This
cured me of Quakerism; I love it in the books of Penn and Woolman, but I
detest the vanity of a man thinking he speaks by the Spirit, when what
he says an ordinary man might say without all that quaking and
trembling. In the midst of his inspiration--and the effects of it were
most noisy--was handed into the midst of the meeting a most terrible
blackguard Wapping sailor; the poor man, I believe, had rather have been
in the hottest part of an engagement, for the congregation of
broad-brims, together with the ravings of the prophet, were too much for
his gravity, though I saw even he had delicacy enough not to laugh out.
And the inspired gentleman, though his manner was so supernatural, yet
neither talked nor professed to talk anything more than good sober
sense, common morality, with now and then a declaration of not speaking
from himself. Among other things, looking back to his childhood and
early youth, he told the meeting what a graceless young dog he had been,
that in his youth he had a good share of wit: reader, if thou hadst seen
the gentleman, thou wouldst have sworn that it must indeed have been
many years ago, for his rueful physiognomy would have scared away the
playful goddess from the meeting, where he presided, for ever. A wit! a
wit! what could he mean? Lloyd, it minded me of Falkland in the
"Rivals," "Am I full of wit and humour? No, indeed you are not. Am I the
life and soul of every company I come into? No, it cannot be said you
are." That hard-faced gentleman, a wit! Why, Nature wrote on his fanatic
forehead fifty years ago, "Wit never comes, that comes to all." I should
be as scandalised at a _bon mot_ issuing from his oracle-looking mouth,
as to see Cato go down a country-dance. God love you all. You are very
good to submit to be pleased with reading my nothings. 'Tis the
privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense
re-spected.--Yours ever,
C. LAMB.
[Lamb's Aunt Hetty, Sarah Lamb, was buried at St. James's, Clerkenwell,
on February 13, 1797.
"As poor Burns expresses it." In the "Lament for James, Earl of
Glencairn," the Stanza:--
In weary being now I pine,
For a' the life of life is dead,
And hope has left my aged ken,
On forward wing for ever fled.
"Turning Quaker." Lamb refers to the Peel meeting-house in John Street,
Clerkenwell. Lamb afterwards used the story of the wit in the _Ella_
essay "A Quaker's Meeting." In his invocation to the reader he here
foreshadows his Elian manner.
"Falkland" is in Sheridan's comedy "The Rivals" (see Act II., Scene i).]
LETTER 24
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
April 7th, 1797.
Your last letter was dated the 10th February; in it you promised to
write again the next day. At least, I did not expect so long, so
unfriend-like, a silence. There was a time, Col., when a remissness of
this sort in a dear friend would have lain very heavy on my mind, but
latterly I have been too familiar with neglect to feel much from the
semblance of it. Yet, to suspect one's self overlooked and in the way to
oblivion, is a feeling rather humbling; perhaps, as tending to
self-mortification, not unfavourable to the spiritual state. Still, as
you meant to confer no benefit on the soul of your friend, you do not
stand quite clear from the imputation of unkindliness (a word by which I
mean the diminutive of unkindness). Lloyd tells me he has been very ill,
and was on the point of leaving you. I addressed a letter to him at
Birmingham: perhaps he got it not, and is still with you, I hope his
ill-health has not prevented his attending to a request I made in it,
that he would write again very soon to let me know how he was. I hope to
God poor Lloyd is not very bad, or in a very bad way. Pray satisfy me
about these things. And then David Hartley was unwell; and how is the
small philosopher, the minute philosopher? and David's mother?
Coleridge, I am not trifling, nor are these matter-of-fact [?course]
questions only. You are all very dear and precious to me; do what you
will, Col., you may hurt me and vex me by your silence, but you cannot
estrange my heart from you all. I cannot scatter friendship[s] like
chuck-farthings, nor let them drop from mine hand like hour-glass sand.
I have two or three people in the world to whom I am more than
indifferent, and I can't afford to whistle them off to the winds. By the
way, Lloyd may have told you about my sister. I told him. If not, I have
taken her out of her confinement, and taken a room for her at Hackney,
and spend my Sundays, holidays, etc., with her. She boards herself. In
one little half year's illness, and in such an illness of such a nature
and of such consequences! to get her out into the world again, with a
prospect of her never being so ill again--this is to be ranked not among
the common blessings of Providence. May that merciful God make tender my
heart, and make me as thankful, as in my distress I was earnest, in my
prayers. Congratulate me on an ever-present and never-alienable friend
like her. And do, do insert, if you have not _lost_, my dedication. It
will have lost half its value by coming so late. If you really are going
on with that volume, I shall be enabled in a day or two to send you a
short poem to insert. Now, do answer this. Friendship, and acts of
friendship, should be reciprocal, and free as the air; a friend should
never be reduced to beg an alms of his fellow. Yet I will beg an alms; I
entreat you to write, and tell me all about poor Lloyd, and all of you.
God love and preserve you all.
C. LAMB.
[Lloyd's domestication with Coleridge had been intermittent. It began in
September, 1796; in November Lloyd was very ill; in December Coleridge
told Mr. Lloyd that he would retain his son no longer as pupil but
merely as a lodger and friend; at Christmas Charles Lloyd was at
Birmingham; in January he was in London; in March he was ill again and
his experiment with Coleridge ended.
"The minute philosopher." A joking reference to Bishop Berkeley's
_Alciphron; or, The Minute Philosopher_.
For the dedication to which Lamb refers see above.]
LETTER 25
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
April 15th, 1797.
A VISION OF REPENTANCE
I saw a famous fountain in my dream,
Where shady pathways to a valley led;
A weeping willow lay upon that stream,
And all around the fountain brink were spread
Wide branching trees, with dark green leaf rich clad,
Forming a doubtful twilight desolate and sad.
The place was such, that whoso enter'd in
Disrobed was of every earthly thought,
And straight became as one that knew not sin,
Or to the world's first innocence was brought;
Enseem'd it now, he stood on holy ground,
In sweet and tender melancholy wrapt around.
A most strange calm stole o'er my soothed sprite;
Long time I stood, and longer had I staid,
When lo! I saw, saw by the sweet moonlight,
Which came in silence o'er that silent shade,
Where near the fountain SOMETHING like DESPAIR
Made of that weeping willow garlands for her hair.
And eke with painful fingers she inwove
Many an uncouth stem of savage thorn--
"The willow garland, _that_ was for her Love,
And _these_ her bleeding temples would adorn."
With sighs her heart nigh burst--salt tears fast fell,
As mournfully she bended o'er that sacred well.
To whom when I addrest myself to speak,
She lifted up her eyes, and nothing said;
The delicate red came mantling o'er her cheek,
And gathering up her loose attire, she fled
To the dark covert of that woody shade
And in her goings seem'd a timid gentle maid.
Revolving in my mind what this should mean,
And why that lovely Lady plained so;
Perplex'd in thought at that mysterious scene,
And doubting if 'twere best to stay or go,
I cast mine eyes in wistful gaze around,
When from the shades came slow a small and plaintive sound
"Psyche am I, who love to dwell
In these brown shades, this woody dell,
Where never busy mortal came,
Till now, to pry upon my shame.
"At thy feet what thou dost see
The Waters of Repentance be,
Which, night and day, I must augment
With tears, like a true penitent,
If haply so my day of grace
Be not yet past; and this lone place,
O'er-shadowy, dark, excludeth hence
All thoughts but grief and penitence."
"_Why dost thou weep, thou gentle maid!
And wherefore in this barren shade
Thy hidden thoughts with sorrow feed?
Can thing so fair repentance need?_"
"Oh! I have done a deed of shame,
And tainted is my virgin fame,
And stain'd the beauteous maiden white
In which my bridal robes were dight."
"_And who the promis'd spouse declare,
And what those bridal garments were_?"
"Severe and saintly righteousness
Compos'd the clear white bridal dress;
Jesus, the son of Heaven's high King
Bought with his blood the marriage ring.
"A wretched sinful creature, I
Deem'd lightly of that sacred tye,
Gave to a treacherous WORLD my heart,
And play'd the foolish wanton's part.
"Soon to these murky shades I came
To hide from the Sun's light my shame--
And still I haunt this woody dell,
And bathe me in that healing well,
Whose waters clear have influence
From sin's foul stains the soul to cleanse;
And night and day I them augment
With tears, like a true Penitent,
Until, due expiation made,
And fit atonement fully paid,
The Lord and Bridegroom me present
Where in sweet strains of high consent,
God's throne before, the Seraphim
Shall chaunt the extatic marriage hymn."
"_Now Christ restore thee soon_"--I said,
And thenceforth all my dream was fled.
The above you will please to print immediately before the blank verse
fragments. Tell me if you like it. I fear the latter half is unequal to
the former, in parts of which I think you will discover a delicacy of
pencilling not quite un-Spenser-like. The latter half aims at the
_measure_, but has failed to attain the _poetry_, of Milton in his
"Comus" and Fletcher in that exquisite thing ycleped the "Faithful
Shepherdess," where they both use eight-syllable lines. But this latter
half was finished in great haste, and as a task, not from that impulse
which affects the name of inspiration.
By the way, I have lit upon Fairfax's "Godfrey of Bullen" for
half-a-crown. Rejoice with me.
Poor dear Lloyd! I had a letter from him yesterday; his state of mind is
truly alarming. He has, by his own confession, kept a letter of mine
unopened three weeks, afraid, he says, to open it, lest I should speak
upbraidingly to him; and yet this very letter of mine was in answer to
one, wherein he informed me that an alarming illness had alone prevented
him from writing. You will pray with me, I know, for his recovery; for
surely, Coleridge, an exquisiteness of feeling like this must border on
derangement. But I love him more and more, and will not give up the hope
of his speedy recovery, as he tells me he is under Dr. Darwin's regimen.
God bless us all, and shield us from insanity, which is "the sorest
malady of all."
My kind love to your wife and child.
C. LAMB.
Pray write, now.
[I have placed the poem at the head from the text of Coleridge's
_Poems_, 1797; but the version of the letter very likely differed (see
next letter for at least one alteration).
Fairfax's _Godfrey of Bullen_ was his translation of Tasso, which is
mentioned above.
Lloyd, who was undergoing one of those attacks of acute melancholia to
which he was subject all his life, had been sent to Lichfield where
Erasmus Darwin had established a sanatorium.
"The sorest malady of all." From Lamb's lines to Cowper.]
LETTER 26
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
[Tuesday,] June 13th, 1797.
I stared with wild wonderment to see thy well-known hand again. It
revived many a pleasing recollection of an epistolary intercourse, of
late strangely suspended, once the pride of my life. Before I even
opened thy letter, I figured to myself a sort of complacency which my
little hoard at home would feel at receiving the new-comer into the
little drawer where I keep my treasures of this kind. You have done well
in writing to me. The little room (was it not a little one?) at the
Salutation was already in the way of becoming a fading idea! it had
begun to be classed in my memory with those "wanderings with a fair
hair'd maid," in the recollection of which I feel I have no property.
You press me, very kindly do you press me, to come to Stowey; obstacles,
strong as death, prevent me at present; maybe I shall be able to come
before the year is out; believe me, I will come as soon as I can, but I
dread naming a probable time. It depends on fifty things, besides the
expense, which is not nothing. Lloyd wants me to come and see him; but,
besides that you have a prior claim on me, I should not feel myself so
much at home with him, till he gets a house of his own. As to
Richardson, caprice may grant what caprice only refused, and it is no
more hardship, rightly considered, to be dependent on him for pleasure,
than to lie at the mercy of the rain and sunshine for the enjoyment of a
holiday: in either case we are not to look for a suspension of the laws
of nature. "Grill will be Grill." Vide Spenser.
I could not but smile at the compromise you make with me for printing
Lloyd's poems first; but there is [are] in nature, I fear, too many
tendencies to envy and jealousy not to justify you in your apology. Yet,
if any one is welcome to pre-eminence from me, it is Lloyd, for he would
be the last to desire it. So pray, let his name _uniformly_ precede
mine, for it would be treating me like a child to suppose it could give
me pain. Yet, alas! I am not insusceptible of the bad passions. Thank
God, I have the ingenuousness to be ashamed of them. I am dearly fond of
Charles Lloyd; he is all goodness, and I have too much of the world in
my composition to feel myself thoroughly deserving of his friendship.
Lloyd tells me that Sheridan put you upon writing your tragedy. I hope
you are only Coleridgeizing when you talk of finishing it in a few days.
Shakspeare was a more modest man; but you best know your own power.
Of my last poem you speak slightingly; surely the longer stanzas were
pretty tolerable; at least there was one good line in it,
"Thick-shaded trees, with dark green leaf rich clad."
To adopt your own expression, I call this a "rich" line, a fine full
line. And some others I thought even beautiful. Believe me, my little
gentleman will feel some repugnance at riding behind in the basket;
though, I confess, in pretty good company. Your picture of idiocy, with
the sugar-loaf head, is exquisite; but are you not too severe upon our
more favoured brethren in fatuity? Lloyd tells me how ill your wife and
child have been. I rejoice that they are better. My kindest remembrances
and those of my sister. I send you a trifling letter; but you have only
to think that I have been skimming the superficies of my mind, and found
it only froth. Now, do write again; you cannot believe how I long and
love always to hear about you. Yours, most affectionately,
CHARLES LAMB.
Monday Night.
["Little drawer where I keep ..." Lamb soon lost the habit of keeping
any letters, except Manning's.
"Wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid." Lamb's own line. See sonnet quoted
above.
Lamb's visit to Stowey was made in July, as we shall see.
"Grill will be Grill." See the _Faerie Queene_, Book II., Canto 12,
Stanzas 86 and 87. "Let Gryll be Gryll" is the right text.
Lloyd had joined the poetical partnership, and his poems were to precede
Lamb's in the 1797 volume. "Lloyd's connections," Coleridge had written
to Cottle, "will take off a great many [copies], more than a hundred."
Coleridge's tragedy was "Osorio," of which we hear first in March, 1797,
when Coleridge tells Cottle that Sheridan has asked him to write a play
for Drury Lane. It was finished in October, and rejected. In 1813, much
altered, it was performed under its new title, "Remorse," and published
in book form. Lamb wrote the Prologue.
The "last poem" of which Lamb speaks was "The Vision of Repentance." The
good line was altered to--
"Wide branching trees, with dark green leaf rich clad,"
when the poem appeared in the Appendix ("the basket," as Lamb calls it)
of the 1797 volume.
"Your picture of idiocy." Compare S. T. Coleridge to Thomas Poole, dated
"Greta Hall, Oct. 5, 1801" (_Thomas Poole and His Friends_): "We passed
a poor ideot boy, who exactly answered my description; he
"'Stood in the sun, rocking his sugar-loaf head,
And staring at a bough from morn to sunset,
See-sawed his voice in inarticulate noises.'"
See this passage, much altered, in "Remorse," II., I, 186-191. The lines
do not occur in "Osorio," yet they, or something like them, must have
been copied out by Coleridge for Lamb in June, 1797.]
LETTER 27
(_Possibly only a fragment_)
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Saturday,] June 24th, 1797.
Did you seize the grand opportunity of seeing Kosciusko while he was at
Bristol? I never saw a hero; I wonder how they look. I have been reading
a most curious romance-like work, called the "Life of John Buncle, Esq."
'Tis very interesting, and an extraordinary compound of all manner of
subjects, from the depth of the ludicrous to the heights of sublime
religious truth. There is much abstruse science in it above my cut and
an infinite fund of pleasantry. John Buncle is a famous fine man, formed
in nature's most eccentric hour. I am ashamed of what I write. But I
have no topic to talk of. I see nobody, and sit, and read or walk,
alone, and hear nothing. I am quite lost to conversation from disuse;
and out of the sphere of my little family, who, I am thankful, are
dearer and dearer to me every day, I see no face that brightens up at my
approach. My friends are at a distance; worldly hopes are at a low ebb
with me, and unworldly thoughts are not yet familiarised to me, though I
occasionally indulge in them. Still I feel a calm not unlike content. I
fear it is sometimes more akin to physical stupidity than to a
heaven-flowing serenity and peace. What right have I to obtrude all this
upon you? what is such a letter to you? and if I come to Stowey, what
conversation can I furnish to compensate my friend for those stores of
knowledge and of fancy, those delightful treasures of wisdom, which I
know he will open to me? But it is better to give than to receive; and I
was a very patient hearer and docile scholar in our winter evening
meetings at Mr. May's; was I not, Col.? What I have owed to thee, my
heart can ne'er forget.
God love you and yours. C. L.
Saturday.
[Thaddeus Kosciusko (1746-1817), the Polish patriot, to whom Coleridge
had a sonnet in his _Poems_, 1796, visited England and America after
being liberated from prison on the accession of Paul I., and settled in
France in 1798.
_The Life of John Buncle, Esq._, a book which Lamb (and also Hazlitt)
frequently praised, is a curious digressive novel, part religious, part
roystering, and wholly eccentric and individual, by Thomas Amory,
published, Vol. I., in 1756, and Vol. II., in 1766.
"Mr. May's." See note to the first letter.]
LETTER 28
(_Possibly only a fragment_)
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[No date. ? June 29, 1797.]
I discern a possibility of my paying you a visit next week. May I, can
I, shall I, come so soon? Have you _room_ for me, _leisure_ for me, and
are you all pretty well? Tell me all this honestly--immediately. And by
what _day_--coach could I come soonest and nearest to Stowey? A few
months hence may suit you better; certainly me as well. If so, say so. I
long, I yearn, with all the longings of a child do I desire to see you,
to come among you--to see the young philosopher, to thank Sara for her
last year's invitation in person--to read your tragedy--to read over
together our little book--to breathe fresh air--to revive in me vivid
images of "Salutation scenery." There is a sort of sacrilege in my
letting such ideas slip out of my mind and memory. Still that knave
Richardson remaineth--a thorn in the side of Hope, when she would lean
towards Stowey. Here I will leave off, for I dislike to fill up this
paper, which involves a question so connected with my heart and soul,
with meaner matter or subjects to me less interesting. I can talk, as I
can think, nothing else.
C. LAMB.
Thursday.
["Our little book." Coleridge's _Poems_, second edition.
"Salutation scenery." See note to the first letter.
"Richardson." See note on page 34.]
LETTER 29
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[No date. Probably July 19 or 26, 1797.]
I am scarcely yet so reconciled to the loss of you, or so subsided into
my wonted uniformity of feeling, as to sit calmly down to think of you
and write to you. But I reason myself into the belief that those few and
pleasant holidays shall not have been spent in vain. I feel improvement
in the recollection of many a casual conversation. The names of Tom
Poole, of Wordsworth and his good sister, with thine and Sara's, are
become "familiar in my mouth as household words." You would make me very
happy, if you think W. has no objection, by transcribing for me that
inscription of his. I have some scattered sentences ever floating on my
memory, teasing me that I cannot remember more of it. You may believe I
will make no improper use of it. Believe me I can think now of many
subjects on which I had planned gaining information from you; but I
forgot my "treasure's worth" while I possessed it. Your leg is now
become to me a matter of much more importance--and many a little thing,
which when I was present with you seemed scarce to _indent_ my notice,
now presses painfully on my remembrance. Is the Patriot come yet? Are
Wordsworth and his sister gone yet? I was looking out for John Thelwall
all the way from Bridgewater, and had I met him, I think it would have
moved almost me to tears. You will oblige me too by sending me my
great-coat, which I left behind in the oblivious state the mind is
thrown into at parting--is it not ridiculous that I sometimes envy that
great-coat lingering so cunningly behind?--at present I have none--so
send it me by a Stowey waggon, if there be such a thing, directing for
C. L., No. 45, Chapel-Street, Pentonville, near London. But above all,
_that Inscription!_--it will recall to me the tones of all your
voices--and with them many a remembered kindness to one who could and
can repay you all only by the silence of a grateful heart. I could not
talk much, while I was with you, but my silence was not sullenness, nor
I hope from any bad motive; but, in truth, disuse has made me awkward at
it. I know I behaved myself, particularly at Tom Poole's, and at
Cruikshank's, most like a sulky child; but company and converse are
strange to me. It was kind in you all to endure me as you did.
Are you and your dear Sara--to me also very dear, because very
kind--agreed yet about the management of little Hartley? and how go on
the little rogue's teeth? I will see White to-morrow, and he shall send
you information on that matter; but as perhaps I can do it as well after
talking with him, I will keep this letter open.
My love and thanks to you and all of you.
C. L.
Wednesday Evening.
[Lamb spent a week at Nether Stowey in July, 1797. Coleridge tells
Southey of this visit in a letter written in that month: "Charles Lamb
has been with me for a week. He left me Friday morning. The second day
after Wordsworth [who had just left Racedown, near Crewkerne, for
Alfoxden, near Stowey] came to me, dear Sara accidentally emptied a
skillet of boiling milk on my foot, which confined me during the whole
time of C. Lamb's stay and still prevents me from all walks longer than
a furlong." This is the cause of Lamb's allusion to Coleridge's leg, and
it also produced Coleridge's poem beginning "This lime-tree bower my
prison," addressed to Lamb, which opens as follows, the friends in the
fourth line being Lamb, Wordsworth and Dorothy Wordsworth. (Wordsworth
was then twenty-seven. The _Lyrical Ballads_ were to be written in the
next few months.)
Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,
Lam'd by the scathe of fire, lonely and faint,
This lime-tree bower my prison! They, meantime
My Friends, whom I may never meet again,
On springy heath, along the hill-top edge
Wander delighted, and look down, perchance,
On that same rifted Dell, where many an ash
Twists its wild limbs beside the ferny rock
Whose plumy ferns forever nod and drip,
Spray'd by the waterfall. But chiefly thou
My gentle-hearted _Charles!_ thou who had pin'd
And hunger'd after Nature many a year,
In the great City pent, winning thy way
With sad yet bowed soul, through evil and pain
And strange calamity!
Tom Poole was Thomas Poole (1765-1837), a wealthy tanner, and
Coleridge's friend, correspondent and patron, who lived at Stowey.
The Patriot and John Thelwall were one. See note on page 93.
"That inscription," The "Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew Tree," written
in 1795. Lamb refers to it again in 1815.
The address at Pentonville is the first indication given by Lamb that he
has left Little Queen Street. We last saw him there for certain in
Letter 17 on December 9. The removal had been made probably at the end
of 1796.
John Cruikshank, a neighbour of Coleridge, had married a Miss Budé on
the same day that Coleridge married Sara Flicker.
Of the business connected with White we know nothing.]
LETTER 30
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[P.M. August 24, 1797.]
Poor Charles Lloyd came to me about a fortnight ago. He took the
opportunity of Mr. Hawkes coming to London, and I think at his request,
to come with him. It seemed to me, and he acknowledged it, that he had
come to gain a little time and a little peace, before he made up his
mind. He was a good deal perplexed what to do--wishing earnestly that he
had never entered into engagements which he felt himself unable to
fulfill, but which on Sophia's account he could not bring himself to
relinquish. I could give him little advice or comfort, and feeling my
own inability painfully, eagerly snatched at a proposal he made me to go
to Southey's with him for a day or two. He then meant to return with me,
who could stay only one night. While there, he at one time thought of
going to consult you, but changed his intention and stayed behind with
Southey, and wrote an explicit letter to Sophia. I came away on the
Tuesday, and on the Saturday following, _last Saturday_, receiv'd a
letter dated Bath, in which he said he was on his way to
Birmingham,--that Southey was accompanying him,--and that he went for
the purpose of persuading Sophia to a Scotch marriage--I greatly feared,
that she would never consent to this, from what Lloyd had told me of her
character. But waited most anxiously the result. Since then I have not
had one letter. For God's sake, if you get any intelligence of or from
Chas Lloyd, communicate it, for I am much alarmed.
C. LAMB.
I wrote to Burnett what I write now to you,--was it from him you heard,
or elsewhere?--
He said if he _had_ come to you, he could never have brought himself to
leave you. In all his distress he was sweetly and exemplarily calm and
master of himself,--and seemed perfectly free from his disorder.--
How do you all at?
[This letter is unimportant, except in showing Lamb's power of sharing
his friends' troubles. Charles Lloyd was not married to Sophia
Pemberton, of Birmingham, until 1799; nothing rash being done, as Lamb
seems to think possible. The reference to Southey, who was at this time
living at Burton, in Hampshire, throws some light on De Quincey's
statement, in his "Autobiography," that owing to the objection of Miss
Pemberton's parents to the match, Lloyd secured the assistance of
Southey to carry the lady off.
Burnett was George Burnett (1776?-1811), one of Coleridge's fellow
Pantisocratists, whom we shall meet later.
The "he" of the second postscript is not Burnett, but Lloyd.]
LETTER 31
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[About September 20, 1797.]
WRITTEN A TWELVEMONTH AFTER THE EVENTS
[_Friday next, Coleridge, is the day on which my mother died._]
Alas! how am I changed! where be the tears,
The sobs and forced suspensions of the breath,
And all the dull desertions of the heart
With which I hung o'er my dear mother's corse?
Where be the blest subsidings of the storm
Within; the sweet resignedness of hope
Drawn heavenward, and strength of filial love,
In which I bow'd me to my Father's will?
My God and my Redeemer, keep not thou
My heart in brute and sensual thanklessness
Seal'd up, oblivious ever of that dear grace,
And health restor'd to my long-loved friend.
Long loved, and worthy known! Thou didst not keep
Her soul in death. O keep not now, my Lord,
Thy servants in far worse--in spiritual death
And darkness--blacker than those feared shadows
O' the valley all must tread. Lend us thy balms,
Thou dear Physician of the sin-sick soul,
And heal our cleansed bosoms of the wounds
With which the world hath pierc'd us thro' and thro'!
Give us new flesh, new birth; Elect of heaven
May we become, in thine election sure
Contain'd, and to one purpose steadfast drawn--
Our souls' salvation.
Thou and I, dear friend,
With filial recognition sweet, shall know
One day the face of our dear mother in heaven,
And her remember'd looks of love shall greet
With answering looks of love, her placid smiles
Meet with a smile as placid, and her hand
With drops of fondness wet, nor fear repulse.
Be witness for me, Lord, I do not ask
Those days of vanity to return again,
(Nor fitting me to ask, nor thee to give),
Vain loves, and "wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid;"
(Child of the dust as I am), who so long
My foolish heart steep'd in idolatry,
And creature-loves. Forgive it, O my Maker!
If in a mood of grief, I sin almost
In sometimes brooding on the days long past,
(And from the grave of time wishing them back),
Days of a mother's fondness to her child--
Her little one! Oh, where be now those sports
And infant play-games? Where the joyous troops
Of children, and the haunts I did so love?
0 my companions! O ye loved names
Of friend, or playmate dear, gone are ye now.
Gone divers ways; to honour and credit some:
And some, I fear, to ignominy and shame!
I only am left, with unavailing grief
One parent dead to mourn, and see one live
Of all life's joys bereft, and desolate:
Am left, with a few friends, and one above
The rest, found faithful in a length of years,
Contented as I may, to bear me on,
T' the not unpeaceful evening of a day
Made black by morning storms.
The following I wrote when I had returned from C. Lloyd, leaving him
behind at Burton with Southey. To understand some of it, you must
remember that at that time he was very much perplexed in mind.
A stranger and alone, I past those scenes
We past so late together; and my heart
Felt something like desertion, as I look'd
Around me, and the pleasant voice of friend
Was absent, and the cordial look was there
No more, to smile on me. I thought on Lloyd--
All he had been to me! And now I go
Again to mingle with a world impure;
With men who make a mock of holy things,
Mistaken, and of man's best hope think scorn.
The world does much to warp the heart of man;
And I may sometimes join its idiot laugh:
Of this I now complain not. Deal with me,
Omniscient Father, as Thou judgest best,
And in _Thy_ season soften thou my heart.
I pray not for myself: I pray for him
Whose soul is sore perplexed. Shine thou on him,
Father of Lights! and in the difficult paths
Make plain his way before him: his own thoughts
May he not think--his own ends not pursue--
So shall he best perform Thy will on earth.
Greatest and Best, Thy will be ever ours!
The former of these poems I wrote with unusual celerity t'other morning
at office. I expect you to like it better than anything of mine; Lloyd
does, and I do myself.
You use Lloyd very ill, never writing to him. I tell you again that his
is not a mind with which you should play tricks. He deserves more
tenderness from you.
For myself, I must spoil a little passage of Beaumont and Fletcher to
adapt it to my feelings:--
"I am prouder
That I was once your friend, tho' now forgot,
Than to have had another true to me."
If you don't write to me now, as I told Lloyd, I shall get angry, and
call you hard names--Manchineel and I don't know what else. I wish you
would send me my great-coat. The snow and the rain season is at hand,
and I have but a wretched old coat, once my father's, to keep 'em off,
and that is transitory.
"When time drives flocks from field to fold,
When ways grow foul and blood gets cold,"
I shall remember where I left my coat. Meet emblem wilt thou be, old
Winter, of a friend's neglect--cold, cold, cold! Remembrance where
remembrance is due.
C. LAMB.
[The two poems included in this letter were printed in _Blank Verse_, a
volume which Lamb and Lloyd issued in 1798.
Coleridge had written to Lloyd, we know, as late as July, because he
sent him a version of the poem "This Lime-tree Bower, my Prison;" but a
coolness that was to ripen into positive hostility had already begun. Of
this we shall see more later.
The passage from Beaumont and Fletcher is in "The Maid's Tragedy" (Act
II., Scene I), where Aspatia says to Amintor:--
Thus I wind myself
Into this willow garland, and am prouder
That I was once your love (though now refus'd)
Than to have had another true to me.
The scene is in Lamb's _Dramatic Specimens_.
The reference to Manchineel is explained by a passage in Coleridge's
dedication of his 1797 volume, then just published, to his brother, the
Rev. George Coleridge, where, speaking of the friends he had known, he
says:--
and some most false,
False and fair-foliag'd as the Manchineel,
Have tempted me to slumber in their shade
--the manchineel being a poisonous West Indian tree.
Between this and the next letter probably came correspondence that has
now been lost.]
LETTER 32
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
January 28th, 1798.
You have writ me many kind letters, and I have answered none of them. I
don't deserve your attentions. An unnatural indifference has been
creeping on me since my last misfortunes, or I should have seized the
first opening of a correspondence with _you_. To you I owe much under
God. In my brief acquaintance with you in London, your conversations won
me to the better cause, and rescued me from the polluting spirit of the
world. I might have been a worthless character without you; as it is, I
do possess a certain improvable portion of devotional feelings, tho'
when I view myself in the light of divine truth, and not according to
the common measures of human judgment, I am altogether corrupt and
sinful. This is no cant. I am very sincere.
These last afflictions, Coleridge, have failed to soften and bend my
will. They found me unprepared. My former calamities produced in me a
spirit of humility and a spirit of prayer. I thought they had
sufficiently disciplined me; but the event ought to humble me. If God's
judgments now fail to take away from me the heart of stone, what more
grievous trials ought I not to expect? I have been very querulous,
impatient under the rod--full of little jealousies and heartburnings.--I
had well nigh quarrelled with Charles Lloyd; and for no other reason, I
believe, than that the good creature did all he could to make me happy.
The truth is, I thought he tried to force my mind from its natural and
proper bent; he continually wished me to be from home; he was drawing me
_from_ the consideration of my poor dear Mary's situation, rather than
assisting me to gain a proper view of it with religious consolations. I
wanted to be left to the tendency of my own mind in a solitary state
which, in times past, I knew had led to quietness and a patient bearing
of the yoke. He was hurt that I was not more constantly with him; but he
was living with White, a man to whom I had never been accustomed to
impart my _dearest feelings_, tho' from long habits of friendliness, and
many a social and good quality, I loved him very much. I met company
there sometimes--indiscriminate company. Any society almost, when I am
in affliction, is sorely painful to me. I seem to breathe more freely,
to think more collectedly, to feel more properly and calmly, when alone.
All these things the good creature did with the kindest intentions in
the world, but they produced in me nothing but soreness and discontent.
I became, as he complained, "jaundiced" towards him ... but he has
forgiven me--and his smile, I hope, will draw all such humours from me.
I am recovering, God be praised for it, a healthiness of mind, something
like calmness--but I want more religion--I am jealous of human helps and
leaning-places. I rejoice in your good fortunes. May God at the last
settle you!--You have had many and painful trials; humanly speaking they
are going to end; but we should rather pray that discipline may attend
us thro' the whole of our lives ... A careless and a dissolute spirit
has advanced upon _me_ with large strides--pray God that my present
afflictions may be sanctified to me! Mary is recovering, but I see no
opening yet of a situation for her; your invitation went to my very
heart, but you have a power of exciting interest, of leading all hearts
captive, too forcible to admit of Mary's being with you.
I consider her as perpetually on the brink of madness. I think you would
almost make her dance within an inch of the precipice: she must be with
duller fancies and cooler intellects. I know a young man of this
description, who has suited her these twenty years, and may live to do
so still, if we are one day restored to each other. In answer to your
suggestions of occupation for me, I must say that I do not think my
capacity altogether suited for disquisitions of that kind.... I have
read little, I have a very weak memory, and retain little of what I
read; am unused to composition in which any methodising is required; but
I thank you sincerely for the hint, and shall receive it as far as I am
able: that is, endeavour to engage my mind in some constant and innocent
pursuit. I know my capacities better than you do.
Accept my kindest love, and believe me yours, as ever.
C. L.
[The first letter that has been preserved since September of the
previous year. In the meantime Lamb had begun to work on _Rosamund
Gray_, probably upon an impulse gained from the visit to Stowey, and was
also arranging to join Lloyd, who was living in London with White, in
the volume of poems to be called _Blank Verse_. Southey, writing many
years later to Edward Moxon, said of Lloyd and White: "No two men could
be imagined more unlike each other; Lloyd had no drollery in his nature;
White seemed to have nothing else. You will easily understand how Lamb
could sympathise with both."
The new calamity to which Lamb refers in this letter was probably a
relapse in Mary Lamb's condition. When he last mentioned her she was so
far better as to be able to be moved into lodgings at Hackney: all that
good was now undone. Coleridge seems to have suggested that she should
visit Stowey.
It was about this time that Lamb wrote the poem "The Old Familiar
Faces," which I quote below in its original form, afterwards changed by
the omission of the first four lines:--
THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES
Where are they gone, the old familiar faces?
I had a mother, but she died, and left me,
Died prematurely in a day of horrors--
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days--
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies--
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I loved a love once, fairest among women.
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her--
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man.
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.
Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood.
Earth seem'd a desert I was bound to traverse,
Seeking to find the old familiar faces.
Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother!
Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling?
So might we talk of the old familiar faces.
For some they have died, and some they have left me,
_And some are taken from me_; all are departed;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
January, 1798.
It is conjectured by Mr. J. A. Rutter, and there is much reason to
believe it a right theory, especially when taken into connection with
the present letter, that Lloyd was the friend of the fifth stanza and
Coleridge the friend of the seventh. The italicised half line might
refer to "Anna," but, since she is mentioned in the fourth stanza, it
more probably, I think, refers to Mary Lamb, who, as we have seen, had
been so ill as to necessitate removal from Hackney into more special
confinement again.
The letter was addressed to Coleridge at the Reverend A. Rowe's,
Shrewsbury. Coleridge had been offered the Unitarian pulpit at
Shrewsbury and was on the point of accepting when he received news of
the annuity of £150 which Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood had settled upon
him.
Between this letter and the next certainly came other letters to
Coleridge, now lost, one of which is referred to by Coleridge in the
letter to Lamb quoted below.]
LETTER 33
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[No date. Early Summer, 1798.]
THESES QUAEDAM THEOLOGICAE
1. Whether God loves a lying Angel better than a true Man?
2. Whether the Archangel Uriel _could_ affirm an untruth? and if he
_could_ whether he _would_?
3. Whether Honesty be an angelic virtue? or not rather to be reckoned
among those qualities which the Schoolmen term '_Virtutes minus
splendidoe et terrae et hominis participes_'?
4. Whether the higher order of Seraphim Illuminati ever sneer?
5. Whether pure intelligences can love?
6. Whether the Seraphim Ardentes do not manifest their virtues by the
way of vision and theory? and whether practice be not a sub-celestial
and merely human virtue?
7. Whether the Vision Beatific be anything more or less than a perpetual
representment to each individual Angel of his own present attainments
and future capabilities, somehow in the manner of mortal
looking-glasses, reflecting a perpetual complacency and
self-satisfaction?
8 and last. Whether an immortal and amenable soul may not come to be
damned at last, and the man never suspect it beforehand?
_Learned Sir, my Friend_,
Presuming on our long habits of friendship and emboldened further by
your late liberal permission to avail myself of your correspondence, in
case I want any knowledge, (which I intend to do when I have no
Encyclopaedia or Lady's Magazine at hand to refer to in any matter of
science,) I now submit to your enquiries the above Theological
Propositions, to be by you defended, or oppugned, or both, in the
Schools of Germany, whither I am told you are departing, to the utter
dissatisfaction of your native Devonshire and regret of universal
England; but to my own individual consolation if thro' the channel of
your wished return, Learned Sir, my Friend, may be transmitted to this
our Island, from those famous Theological Wits of Leipsic and Gottingen,
any rays of illumination, in vain to be derived from the home growth of
our English Halls and Colleges. Finally, wishing, Learned Sir, that you
may see Schiller and swing in a wood (_vide_ Poems) and sit upon a Tun,
and eat fat hams of Westphalia,
I remain,
Your friend and docile Pupil to instruct
CHARLES LAMB.
1798.
To S. T. Coleridge.
[Lamb's last letter to Coleridge for two years. See note to the next
letter.
Lamb's reading of Thomas Aquinas probably was at the base of his theses.
William Godwin, in his "History of Knowledge, Learning and Taste in
Great Britain," which had run through some years of the _New Annual
Register_, cited, in 1786, a number of the more grotesque queries of the
old Schoolmen. Mr. Kegan Paul suggested that Lamb went to Godwin for his
examination paper; but I should think this very unlikely. Some of the
questions hit Coleridge very hard.
This letter was first printed by Joseph Cottle in his _Early
Recollections_, 1837, with the remark: "Mr. Coleridge gave me this
letter, saying, 'These young visionaries will do each other no good.'"
It marks an epoch in Lamb's life, since it brought about, or, at any
rate, clinched, the only quarrel that ever subsisted between Coleridge
and himself.
The story is told in _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_. Briefly, Lloyd had
left Coleridge in the spring of 1797; a little later, in a state of much
perplexity, he had carried his troubles to Lamb, and to Southey, between
whom and Coleridge no very cordial feeling had existed for some time,
rather than to Coleridge himself, his late mentor. That probably fanned
the flame. The next move came from Coleridge. He printed in the _Monthly
Magazine_ for November, 1797, three sonnets signed Nehemiah
Higginbottom, burlesquing instances of "affectation of unaffectedness,"
and "puny pathos" in the poems of himself, of Lamb, and of Lloyd, the
humour of which Lamb probably did not much appreciate, since he believed
in the feelings expressed in his verse, while Lloyd was certainly
unfitted to esteem it. Coleridge effected even more than he had
contemplated, for Southey took the sonnet upon Simplicity as an attack
upon himself, which did not, however, prevent him, a little later, from
a similar exercise in ponderous humour under the too similar name of
Abel Shufflebottom.
In March, 1798, when a new edition of Coleridge's 1797 _Poems_ was in
contemplation, Lloyd wrote to Cottle, the publisher, asking that he
would persuade Coleridge to omit his (Lloyd's) portion, a request which
Coleridge probably resented, but which gave him the opportunity of
replying that no persuasion was needed for the omission of verses
published at the earnest request of the author.
Meanwhile a worse offence than all against Coleridge was perpetrated by
Lloyd. In the spring of 1798 was published at Bristol his novel, Edmund
Oliver, dedicated to Lamb, in which Coleridge's experiences in the army,
under the alias of Silas Tomkyn Comberback, in 1793-1794, and certain of
Coleridge's peculiarities, including his drug habit, were utilised.
Added to this, Lloyd seems to have repeated both to Lamb and Southey, in
distorted form, certain things which Coleridge had said of them, either
in confidence, or, at any rate, with no wish that they should be
repeated; with the result that Lamb actually went so far as to take
sides with Lloyd against his older friend. The following extracts from a
letter from Coleridge to Lamb, which I am permitted by Mr. Ernest
Hartley Coleridge to print, carries the story a little farther:--
[Spring of 1798.]
Dear Lamb,--Lloyd has informed me through Miss Wordsworth that you
intend no longer to correspond with me. This has given me little pain;
not that I do not love and esteem you, but on the contrary because I am
confident that your intentions are pure. You are performing what you
deem a duty, and humanly speaking have that merit which can be derived
from the performance of a painful duty. Painful, for you would not
without struggles abandon me in behalf of a man [Lloyd] who, wholly
ignorant of all but your name, became attached to you in consequence of
my attachment, caught _his_ from _my_ enthusiasm, and learned to love
you at my fireside, when often while I have been sitting and talking of
your sorrows and afflictions I have stopped my conversations and lifted
up wet eyes and prayed for you. No! I am confident that although you do
not think as a wise man, you feel as a good man.
From you I have received little pain, because for you I suffer little
alarm. I cannot say this for your friend; it appears to me evident that
his feelings are vitiated, and that his ideas are in their combination
merely the creatures of those feelings. I have received letters from
him, and the best and kindest wish which, as a Christian, I can offer in
return is that he may feel remorse....
When I wrote to you that my Sonnet to Simplicity was not composed with
reference to Southey, you answered me (I believe these were the words):
"It was a lie too gross for the grossest ignorance to believe;" and I
was not angry with you, because the assertion which the grossest
ignorance would believe a lie the Omniscient knew to be truth. This,
however, makes me cautious not too hastily to affirm the falsehood of an
assertion of Lloyd's that in Edmund Oliver's love-fit, leaving college,
and going into the army he had no sort of allusion to or recollection of
my love-fit, leaving college, and going into the army, and that he never
thought of my person in the description of Oliver's person in the first
letter of the second volume. This cannot appear stranger to me than my
assertion did to you, and therefore I will suspend my absolute faith....
I have been unfortunate in my connections. Both you and Lloyd became
acquainted with me when your minds were far from being in a composed or
natural state, and you clothed my image with a suit of notions and
feelings which could belong to nothing human. You are restored to
comparative saneness, and are merely wondering what is become of the
Coleridge with whom you were so passionately in love; _Charles Lloyd's_
mind has only changed his disease, and he is now arraying his ci-devant
Angel in a flaming San Benito--the whole ground of the garment a dark
brimstone and plenty of little devils flourished out in black. Oh, me!
Lamb, "even in laughter the heart is sad!"...
God bless you
S. T. COLERIDGE.
One other passage. In a letter from Lloyd at Birmingham to Cottle, dated
June, 1798, Lloyd says, in response to Cottle's suggestion that he
should visit Coleridge, "I love Coleridge, and can forget all that has
happened. At present I could not well go to Stowey.... Lamb quitted me
yesterday, after a fortnight's visit. I have been much interested in his
society. I never knew him so happy in my life. I shall write to
Coleridge to-day." Coleridge left for Germany in September.
"Schiller and swing in a wood." An allusion to Coleridge's sonnet to
Schiller:--
Ah! Bard tremendous in sublimity!
Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood
Wand'ring at eve with finely-frenzied eye
Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood!
Here should perhaps come Lamb's first letter to Robert Lloyd, not
available for this edition, but printed by Canon Ainger, and in _Charles
Lamb and the Lloyds_, where it is dated October. Lamb's first letter is
one of advice, apparently in reply to some complaints of his position
addressed to him by Lloyd. A second and longer letter which, though
belonging to August, 1798, may be mentioned here, also counsels,
commending the use of patience and humility. Lamb is here seen in the
character of a spiritual adviser. The letter is unique in his
correspondence.
Robert Lloyd was a younger brother of Charles Lloyd, and Lamb had
probably met him when on his visit to Birmingham in the summer. The boy,
then not quite twenty, was apprenticed to a Quaker draper at Saffron
Walden in Essex.]
LETTER 34
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Saturday, July 28th, 1798.
I am ashamed that I have not thanked you before this for the "Joan of
Arc," but I did not know your address, and it did not occur to me to
write through Cottle. The poem delighted me, and the notes amused me,
but methinks she of Neufchatel, in the print, holds her sword too "like
a dancer." I sent your _notice_ to Phillips, particularly requesting an
immediate insertion, but I suppose it came too late. I am sometimes
curious to know what progress you make in that same "Calendar:" whether
you insert the nine worthies and Whittington? what you do or how you can
manage when two Saints meet and quarrel for precedency? Martlemas, and
Candlemas, and Christmas, are glorious themes for a writer like you,
antiquity-bitten, smit with the love of boars' heads and rosemary; but
how you can ennoble the 1st of April I know not. By the way I had a
thing to say, but a certain false modesty has hitherto prevented me:
perhaps I can best communicate my wish by a hint,--my birthday is on the
10th of February, New Style; but if it interferes with any remarkable
event, why rather than my country should lose her fame, I care not if I
put my nativity back eleven days. Fine family patronage for your
"Calendar," if that old lady of prolific memory were living, who lies
(or lyes) in some church in London (saints forgive me, but I have forgot
_what_ church), attesting that enormous legend of as many children as
days in the year. I marvel her impudence did not grasp at a leap-year.
Three hundred and sixty-five dedications, and all in a family--you might
spit in spirit on the oneness of Maecenas' patronage!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to the eternal regret of his native Devonshire,
emigrates to Westphalia--"Poor Lamb (these were his last words), if he
wants any _knowledge_, he may apply to me,"--in ordinary cases, I
thanked him, I have an "Encyclopaedia" at hand, but on such an occasion
as going over to a German university, I could not refrain from sending
him the following propositions, to be by him defended or oppugned (or
both) at Leipsic or Gottingen.
THESES QUAEDAM THEOLOGICAE
I
"Whether God loves a lying angel better than a true man?"
II
"Whether the archangel Uriel _could_ knowingly affirm an untruth, and
whether, if he _could_, he _would_?"
III
"Whether honesty be an angelic virtue, or not rather belonging to that
class of qualities which the schoolmen term 'virtutes minus splendidæ et
hominis et terræ nimis participes?'"
IV
"Whether the seraphim ardentes do not manifest their goodness by the way
of vision and theory? and whether practice be not a sub-celestial, and
merely human virtue?"
V
"Whether the higher order of seraphim illuminati ever _sneer_?"
VI
"Whether pure intelligences can _love_, or whether they love anything
besides pure intellect?"
VII
"Whether the beatific vision be anything more or less than a perpetual
representment to each individual angel of his own present attainments,
and future capabilities, something in the manner of mortal
looking-glasses?"
VIII
"Whether an 'immortal and amenable soul' may not come _to be damned at
last, and the man never suspect it beforehand_?"
Samuel Taylor C. had not deigned an answer; was it impertinent of me to
avail myself of that offered source of knowledge? Lloyd is returned to
town from Ipswich where he has been with his brother. He has brought
home three acts of a Play which I have not yet read. The scene for the
most part laid in a Brothel. O tempora, O mores! but as friend Coleridge
said when he was talking bawdy to Miss ---- "to the pure all things are
pure."
Wishing "Madoc" may be born into the world with as splendid promise as
the second birth or purification of the Maid of Neufchatel,--I remain
yours sincerely,
C. LAMB.
I hope Edith is better; my kindest remembrances to her. You have a good
deal of trifling to forgive in this letter.
[This is Lamb's first letter to Southey that has been preserved.
Probably others came before it. Southey now becomes Lamb's chief
correspondent for some months. In Canon Ainger's transcript the letter
ends with "Love and remembrances to Cottle."
Southey's _Joan of Arc_, second edition, had been published by Cottle in
1798. It has no frontispiece: the print of Joan of Arc must have come
separately.
Phillips was Sir Richard Phillips (1767-1840), editor of the _Monthly
Magazine_ and the publisher satirised in Sorrow's _Lavengro_.
The Calendar ultimately became the _Annual Anthology_. Southey had at
first an idea of making it a poetical calendar or almanac.
"That old lady of prolific memory." Lamb is thinking, I imagine, of the
story in Howell's _Familiar Letters_ (also in Evelyn's _Diary_) of the
"Wonder of Nature" near the Hague. "That Wonder of Nature is a
Church-monument, where an Earl and a Lady are engraven with 365 Children
about them, which were all deliver'd at one Birth." The story tells that
a beggar woman with twins asked alms of the Countess, who denying that
it was possible for two children to be born at once and vilifying the
beggar, that woman cursed her and called upon God to show His judgment
upon her by causing her to bear "at one birth as many Children as there
are days in the year, which she did before the same year's end, having
never born Child before." Howell seems to have been convinced of the
authenticity of the story by the spectacle of the christening basin used
by the family. The beggar, who spoke on the third day of the year, meant
as many days as had been in that year--three.
Edith was Southey's wife.]
LETTER 35
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Oct. 18th, 1798.
Dear Southey,--I have at last been so fortunate as to pick up Wither's
Emblems for you, that "old book and quaint," as the brief author of
"Rosamund Gray" hath it; it is in a most detestable state of
preservation, and the cuts are of a fainter impression than I have seen.
Some child, the curse of antiquaries and bane of bibliopolical rarities,
hath been dabbling in some of them with its paint and dirty fingers, and
in particular hath a little sullied the author's own portraiture, which
I think valuable, as the poem that accompanies it is no common one; this
last excepted, the Emblems are far inferior to old Quarles. I once told
you otherwise, but I had not then read old Q. with attention. I have
picked up, too, another copy of Quarles for ninepence!!! O tempora! O
lectores!--so that if you have lost or parted with your own copy, say
so, and I can furnish you, for you prize these things more than I do.
You will be amused, I think, with honest Wither's "Supersedeas to all
them whose custom it is, without any deserving, to importune authors to
give unto them their books." I am sorry 'tis imperfect, as the lottery
board annexed to it also is. Methinks you might modernise and elegantise
this Supersedeas, and place it in front of your "Joan of Arc," as a
gentle hint to Messrs. Park, &c. One of the happiest emblems and
comicalest cuts is the owl and little chirpers, page 63.
Wishing you all amusement, which your true emblem-fancier can scarce
fail to find in even bad emblems, I remain your caterer to command,
C. LAMB.
Love and respects to Edith. I hope she is well. How does your Calendar
prosper?
[This letter contains Lamb's first reference to _Rosamund Gray_, his
only novel, which had been published a little earlier in the year.
"Wither's _Emblems_, an 'old book and quaint,'" was one of the few
volumes belonging to old Margaret, Rosamund's grandmother (Chapter I).
See next letter and note.
Wither's _Emblems_ was published in 1635; Quarles' in the same year. I
give Wither's "Supersedeas" in the Appendix to my large edition, vol.
vii., together with a reproduction of the owl and little chirpers from
the edition of 1635.]
LETTER 36
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
[October 29, 1798.]
Dear Southey,--I thank you heartily for the Eclogue; it pleases me
mightily, being so full of picture-work and circumstances. I find no
fault in it, unless perhaps that Joanna's ruin is a catastrophe too
trite: and this is not the first or second time you have clothed your
indignation, in verse, in a tale of ruined innocence. The old lady,
spinning in the sun, I hope would not disdain to claim some kindred with
old Margaret. I could almost wish you to vary some circumstances in the
conclusion. A gentleman seducer has so often been described in prose and
verse; what if you had accomplished Joanna's ruin by the clumsy arts and
rustic gifts of some country-fellow? I am thinking, I believe, of the
song,
"An old woman clothed in grey,
Whose daughter was charming and young,
And she was deluded away
By Roger's false nattering tongue."
A Roger-Lothario would be a novel character: I think you might paint him
very well. You may think this a very silly suggestion, and so, indeed,
it is; but, in good truth, nothing else but the first words of that
foolish ballad put me upon scribbling my "Rosamund." But I thank you
heartily for the poem. Not having anything of my own to send you in
return--though, to tell truth, I am at work upon something, which if I
were to cut away and garble, perhaps I might send you an extract or two
that might not displease you; but I will not do that; and whether it
will come to anything, I know not, for I am as slow as a Fleming painter
when I compose anything. I will crave leave to put down a few lines of
old Christopher Marlow's; I take them from his tragedy, "The Jew of
Malta." The Jew is a famous character, quite out of nature; but, when we
consider the terrible idea our simple ancestors had of a Jew, not more
to be discommended for a certain discolouring (I think Addison calls it)
than the witches and fairies of Marlow's mighty successor. The scene is
betwixt Barabas, the Jew, and Ithamora, a Turkish captive exposed to
sale for a slave.
BARABAS
(_A precious rascal_.)
"As for myself, I walk abroad a-nights,
And kill sick people groaning under walls:
Sometimes I go about, and poison wells;
And now and then, to cherish Christian thieves,
I am content to lose some of my crowns,
That I may, walking in my gallery,
See'm go pinioned along by my door.
Being young, I studied physic, and began
To practise first upon the Italian:
There I enriched the priests with burials,
And always kept the sexton's arms in ure
With digging graves and ringing dead men's knells;
And, after that, was I an engineer,
And in the wars 'twixt France and Germany,
Under pretence of serving [helping] Charles the Fifth,
Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems.
Then after that was I an usurer,
And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting,
And tricks belonging unto brokery,
I fill'd the jails with bankrupts in a year,
And with young orphans planted hospitals,
And every moon made some or other mad;
And now and then one hang'd himself for grief,
Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll.
How I with interest tormented him."
Now hear Ithamore, the other gentle nature, explain how he spent his
time:--
ITHAMORE
(_A comical dog_.)
"Faith, master, in setting Christian villages on fire,
Chaining of eunuchs, binding galley-slaves.
One time I was an hostler at [in] an inn,
And in the night-time secretly would I steal
To travellers' chambers, and there cut their throats.
Once at Jerusalem, where the pilgrims kneel'd,
I strowed powder on the marble stones,
And therewithal their knees would rankle so,
That I have laugh'd a-good to see the cripples
Go limping home to Christendom on stilts."
BARABAS
"Why, this is something"--
There is a mixture of the ludicrous and the terrible in these lines,
brimful of genius and antique invention, that at first reminded me of
your old description of cruelty in hell, which was in the true
Hogarthian style. I need not tell _you_ that Marlow was author of that
pretty madrigal, "Come live with me, and be my Love," and of the tragedy
of "Edward II.," in which are certain _lines_ unequalled in our English
tongue. Honest Walton mentions the said madrigal under the denomination
of "certain smooth verses made long since by Kit Marlow."
I am glad you have put me on the scent after old Quarles. If I do not
put up those eclogues, and that shortly, say I am no true-nosed hound. I
have had a letter from Lloyd; the young metaphysician of Caius is well,
and is busy recanting the new heresy, metaphysics, for the old dogma,
Greek. My sister, I thank you, is quite well. She had a slight attack
the other day, which frightened me a good deal; but it went off
unaccountably. Love and respects to Edith.
Yours sincerely,
C. LAMB.
[The eclogue was "The Ruined Cottage," in which Joanna and her widowed
mother are at first as happy as Rosamund Gray and old blind Margaret. As
in Lamb's story so in Southey's poem, this state of felicity is
overturned by a seducer.
"An old woman clothed in gray." This ballad still eludes research. Lamb
says that the first line put him upon writing _Rosamund Gray_, but he is
generally supposed to have taken his heroine's name from a song by
Charles Lloyd, entitled "Rosamund Gray," published among his _Poems_ in
1795. At the end of the novel Matravis, the seducer, in his ravings,
sings the ballad.
The "something" upon which Lamb was then at work was his play "John
Woodvil," in those early days known as "Pride's Cure."
"Your old description of cruelty in hell." In "Joan of Arc." See Letter
3.
"If I do not put up those eclogues." Lamb does not return to this
subject.
Lloyd had just gone to Cambridge, to Caius College.]
LETTER 37
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Nov. 3, 1798.
I have read your Eclogue ["The Wedding"] repeatedly, and cannot call it
bald, or without interest; the cast of it, and the design are completely
original, and may set people upon thinking: it is as poetical as the
subject requires, which asks no poetry; but it is defective in pathos.
The woman's own story is the tamest part of it--I should like you to
remould that--it too much resembles the young maid's history: both had
been in service. Even the omission would not injure the poem; after the
words "growing wants," you might, not unconnectedly, introduce "look at
that little chub" down to "welcome one." And, decidedly, I would have
you end it somehow thus,
"Give them at least this evening a good meal.
_Gives her money_.
Now, fare thee well; hereafter you have taught me
To give sad meaning to the village-bells," &c.,
which would leave a stronger impression (as well as more pleasingly
recall the beginning of the Eclogue), than the present common-place
reference to a better world, which the woman "must have heard at
church." I should like you, too, a good deal to enlarge the most
striking part, as it might have been, of the poem--"Is it idleness?"
&c., that affords a good field for dwelling on sickness and inabilities,
and old age. And you might also a good deal enrich the piece with a
picture of a country wedding: the woman might very well, in a transient
fit of oblivion, dwell upon the ceremony and circumstances of her own
nuptials six years ago, the smugness of the bride-groom, the feastings,
the cheap merriment, the welcomings, and the secret envyings of the
maidens--then dropping all this, recur to her present lot. I do not know
that I can suggest anything else, or that I have suggested anything new
or material.
I shall be very glad to see some more poetry, though I fear your trouble
in transcribing will be greater than the service my remarks may do them.
Yours affectionately,
C. LAMB.
I cut my letter short because I am called off to business.
LETTER 38
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Nov. 8th, 1798.
I do not know that I much prefer this Eclogue [Lamb has received 'The
Last of the Flock'] to the last ['The Wedding']; both are inferior to
the former ['The Ruined Cottage'].
"And when he came to shake me by the hand,
And spake as kindly to me as he used,
I hardly knew his voice--"
is the only passage that affected me.
Servants speak, and their language ought to be plain, and not much
raised above the common, else I should find fault with the bathos of
this passage:
"And when I heard the bell strike out,
I thought (what?) that I had never heard it toll
So dismally before."
I like the destruction of the martens' old nests hugely, having just
such a circumstance in my memory.[1] I should be very glad to see your
remaining Eclogue, if not too much trouble, as you give me reason to
expect it will be the second best.
I perfectly accord with your opinion of Old Wither. Quarles is a wittier
writer, but Wither lays more hold of the heart. Quarles thinks of his
audience when he lectures; Wither soliloquises in company with a full
heart. What wretched stuff are the "Divine Fancies" of Quarles! Religion
appears to him no longer valuable than it furnishes matter for quibbles
and riddles; he turns God's grace into wantonness. Wither is like an old
friend, whose warm-heartedness and estimable qualities make us wish he
possessed more genius, but at the same time make us willing to dispense
with that want. I always love W., and sometimes admire Q. Still that
portrait poem is a fine one; and the extract from "The Shepherds'
Hunting" places him in a starry height far above Quarles. If you wrote
that review in "Crit. Rev.," I am sorry you are so sparing of praise to
the "Ancient Marinere;"--so far from calling it, as you do, with some
wit, but more severity, "A Dutch Attempt," &c., I call it a right
English attempt, and a successful one, to dethrone German sublimity. You
have selected a passage fertile in unmeaning miracles, but have passed
by fifty passages as miraculous as the miracles they celebrate. I never
so deeply felt the pathetic as in that part,
"A spring of love gush'd from my heart,
And I bless'd them unaware--"
It stung me into high pleasure through sufferings. Lloyd does not like
it; his head is too metaphysical, and your taste too correct; at least I
must allege something against you both, to excuse my own dotage--
"So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be!"--&c., &c.
But you allow some elaborate beauties--you should have extracted 'em.
"The Ancient Marinere" plays more tricks with the mind than that last
poem, which is yet one of the finest written. But I am getting too
dogmatical; and before I degenerate into abuse, I will conclude with
assuring you that I am
Sincerely yours,
C. LAMB.
I am going to meet Lloyd at Ware on Saturday, to return on Sunday. Have
you any commands or commendations to the metaphysician? I shall be very
happy if you will dine or spend any time with me in your way through the
great ugly city; but I know you have other ties upon you in these parts.
Love and respects to Edith, and friendly remembrances to Cottle.
[Footnote 1: The destruction of the martens' nests, in "The Last of the
Family," runs thus:--
I remember,
Eight months ago, when the young Squire began
To alter the old mansion, they destroy'd
The martins' nests, that had stood undisturb'd
Under that roof, ... ay! long before my memory.
I shook my head at seeing it, and thought
No good could follow.]
[Lamb's ripe judgment of Wither will be found in his essay "On the
Poetical Works of George Wither," in the _Works_, 1818 (see Vol. I. of
this edition). "The portrait poem" would be "The Author's Meditation
upon Sight of His Picture," prefixed to _Emblems_, 1635.
_Lyrical Ballads_, by Wordsworth and Coleridge, had just been published
by Cottle. "The Ancient Mariner" stood first. "That last poem" was
Wordsworth's "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey." Southey
(?) reviewed the book in the _Critical Review_ for October, 1798. Of the
"Ancient Mariner" he said: "It is a Dutch attempt at German sublimity.
Genius has here been employed in producing a poem of little merit."
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, dated November 13,
1798, not available for this edition. Robert Lloyd seems to have said in
his last letter that the world was drained of all its sweets. Lamb sends
him a beautiful passage in praise of the world's good things--the first
foretaste in the correspondence of his later ecstatic manner.
Here also should come a letter from Lamb to Southey, which apparently
does not now exist, containing "The Dying Lover," an extract from Lamb's
play. I have taken the text from the version of the play sent to Manning
late in 1800.
THE DYING LOVER
_Margaret_. ... I knew a youth who died
For grief, because his Love proved so,
And married to another.
I saw him on the wedding day,
For he was present in the church that day,
And in his best apparel too,
As one that came to grace the ceremony.
I mark'd him when the ring was given,
His countenance never changed;
And when the priest pronounced the marriage blessing,
He put a silent prayer up for the bride,
_For they stood near who saw his lips move_.
He came invited to the marriage-feast
With the bride's friends,
And was the merriest of them all that day;
But they, who knew him best, call'd it feign'd mirth;
And others said,
He wore a smile like death's upon his face.
His presence dash'd all the beholders' mirth,
And he went away in tears.
_Simon_. What followed then?
_Marg_. Oh! then
He did not as neglected suitors use
Affect a life of solitude in shades,
But lived,
In free discourse and sweet society,
Among his friends who knew his gentle nature best.
Yet ever when he smiled,
There was a mystery legible in his face,
That whoso saw him said he was a man
Not long for this world.--
And true it was, for even then
The silent love was feeding at his heart
Of which he died:
Nor ever spake word of reproach,
Only he wish'd in death that his remains
Might find a poor grave in some spot, not far
From his mistress' family vault, "being the place
Where one day Anna should herself be laid."
The line in italics Lamb crossed through in the Manning copy. The last
four lines he crossed through and marked "_very_ bad." I have reproduced
them here because of the autobiographical hint contained in the word
Anna, which was the name given by Lamb to his "fair-haired maid" in his
love sonnets.]
LETTER 39
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
[Probably November, 1798.]
The following is a second Extract from my Tragedy _that is to be_,--'tis
narrated by an old Steward to Margaret, orphan ward of Sir Walter
Woodvil;--this, and the Dying Lover I gave you, are the only extracts I
can give without mutilation. I expect you to like the old woman's curse:
_Old Steward_.--One summer night, Sir Walter, as it chanc'd,
Was pacing to & fro in the avenue
That westward fronts our house,
Among those aged oaks, said to have been planted
Three hundred years ago
By a neighb'ring Prior of the Woodvil name,
But so it was,
Being overtask't in thought, he heeded not
The importune suitor who stood by the gate,
And beg'd an alms.
Some say he shov'd her rudely from the gate
With angry chiding; but I can never think
(Sir Walter's nature hath a sweetness in it)
That he would use a woman--an old woman--
With such discourtesy;
For old she was who beg'd an alms of him.
Well, he refus'd her;
Whether for importunity, I know not,
Or that she came between his meditations.
But better had he met a lion in the streets
Than this old woman that night;
For she was one who practis'd the black arts.
And served the devil--being since burn'd for witchcraft.
She look'd at him like one that meant to blast him,
And with a frightful noise
('Twas partly like a woman's voice,
And partly like the hissing of a snake)
She nothing said but this (Sir Walter told the words):
"A mischief, mischief, mischief,
And a nine-times killing curse,
By day and by night, to the caitive wight
Who shakes the poor like snakes from his door,
And shuts up the womb of his purse;
And a mischief, mischief, mischief,
And a nine-fold withering curse,--
For that shall come to thee, that will render thee
Both all that thou fear'st, and worse."
These words four times repeated, she departed,
Leaving Sir Walter like a man beneath
Whose feet a scaffolding had suddenly fal'n:
So he describ'd it.
_Margaret_.--A terrible curse!
_Old Steward_.--O Lady, such bad things are told of that old woman,
As, namely, that the milk she gave was sour,
And the babe who suck'd her shrivel'd like a mandrake;
And things besides, with a bigger horror in them,
Almost, I think, unlawful to be told!
_Margaret_.--Then must I never hear them. But proceed,
And say what follow'd on the witch's curse.
_Old Steward_.--Nothing immediate; but some nine months after,
Young Stephen Woodvil suddenly fell sick,
And none could tell what ail'd him: for he lay,
And pin'd, and pin'd, that all his hair came off;
And he, that was full-flesh'd, became as thin
As a two-months' babe that hath been starved in the nursing;--
And sure, I think,
He bore his illness like a little child,
With such rare sweetness of dumb melancholy
He strove to clothe his agony in smiles,
Which he would force up in his poor, pale cheeks,
Like ill-tim'd guests that had no proper business there;--
And when they ask'd him his complaint, he laid
His hand upon his heart to show the place
Where Satan came to him a nights, he said,
And prick'd him with a pin.--
And hereupon Sir Walter call'd to mind
The Beggar Witch that stood in the gateway,
And begg'd an alms--
_Margaret_.--I do not love to credit Tales of magic.
Heav'n's music, which is order, seems unstrung;
And this brave world,
Creation's beauteous work, unbeautified,
Disorder'd, marr'd, where such strange things are acted.
This is the extract I brag'd of, as superior to that I sent you from
Marlow. Perhaps you smile; but I should like your remarks on the above,
as you are deeper witch-read than I.
[The passage quoted in this letter, with certain alterations, became
afterwards "The Witch," a dramatic sketch independent of "John Woodvil."
By the phrase "without mutilation," Lamb possibly means to suggest that
Southey should print this sketch and "The Dying Lover" in the _Annual
Anthology_. That was not, however, done. "The Witch" was first printed
in the _Works_, 1818.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, postmarked November
20, 1798, not available for this edition. In this letter Lamb sends
Lloyd the extract from "The Witch" that was sent to Southey.]
LETTER 40
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Nov. 28th, 1798.
I can have no objection to your printing "Mystery of God" with my name
and all due acknowledgments for the honour and favour of the
communication; indeed, 'tis a poem that can dishonour no name. Now, that
is in the true strain of modern modesto-vanitas ... But for the sonnet,
I heartily wish it, as I thought it was, dead and forgotten. If the
exact circumstances under which I wrote could be known or told, it would
be an interesting sonnet; but to an indifferent and stranger reader it
must appear a very bald thing, certainly inadmissible in a compilation.
I wish you could affix a different name to the volume; there is a
contemptible book, a wretched assortment of vapid feelings, entitled
"Pratt's Gleanings," which hath damned and impropriated the title for
ever. Pray think of some other. The gentleman is better known (better
had he remained unknown) by an Ode to Benevolence, written and spoken
for and at the annual dinner of the Humane Society, who walk in
procession once a-year, with all the objects of their charity before
them, to return God thanks for giving them such benevolent hearts.
I like "Bishop Bruno;" but not so abundantly as your "Witch Ballad,"
which is an exquisite thing of its kind.
I showed my "Witch" and "Dying Lover" to Dyer last night; but George
could not comprehend how that could be poetry which did not go upon ten
feet, as George and his predecessors had taught it to do; so George read
me some lectures on the distinguishing qualities of the Ode, the
Epigram, and the Epic, and went home to illustrate his doctrine by
correcting a proof sheet of his own Lyrics. George writes odes where the
rhymes, like fashionable man and wife, keep a comfortable distance of
six or eight lines apart, and calls that "observing the laws of verse."
George tells you, before he recites, that you must listen with great
attention, or you'll miss the rhymes. I did so, and found them pretty
exact. George, speaking of the dead Ossian, exclaimeth, "Dark are the
poet's eyes." I humbly represented to him that his own eyes were dark [?
light], and many a living bard's besides, and recommended "Clos'd are
the poet's eyes." But that would not do. I found there was an antithesis
between the darkness of his eyes and the splendour of his genius; and I
acquiesced.
Your recipe for a Turk's poison is invaluable and truly Marlowish....
Lloyd objects to "shutting-up the womb of his purse" in my Curse (which
for a Christian witch in a Christian country is not too mild, I hope);
do you object? 1 think there is a strangeness in the idea, as well as
"shaking the poor like snakes from his door," which suits the speaker.
Witches illustrate, as fine ladies do, from their own familiar objects,
and snakes and the shutting up of wombs are in their way. I don't know
that this last charge has been before brought against 'em, nor either
the sour milk or the mandrake babe; but I affirm these be things a witch
would do if she could.
My Tragedy will be a medley (as [? and] I intend it to be a medley) of
laughter and tears, prose and verse, and in some places rhyme, songs,
wit, pathos, humour, and, if possible, sublimity; at least, it is not a
fault in my intention, if it does not comprehend most of these
discordant colours. Heaven send they dance not the "Dance of Death!" I
hear that the Two Noble Englishmen have parted no sooner than they set
foot on German earth, but I have not heard the reason--possibly, to give
novelists an handle to exclaim, "Ah me! what things are perfect?" I
think I shall adopt your emendation in the "Dying Lover," though I do
not myself feel the objection against "Silent Prayer."
My tailor has brought me home a new coat lapelled, with a velvet collar.
He assures me everybody wears velvet collars now. Some are born
fashionable, some achieve fashion, and others, like your humble servant,
have fashion thrust upon them. The rogue has been making inroads
hitherto by modest degrees, foisting upon me an additional button,
recommending gaiters; but to come upon me thus in a full tide of luxury,
neither becomes him as a tailor nor the ninth of a man. My meek
gentleman was robbed the other day, coming with his wife and family in a
one-horse shay from Hampstead; the villains rifled him of four guineas,
some shillings and half-pence, and a bundle of customers' measures,
which they swore were bank-notes. They did not shoot him, and when they
rode off he addrest them with profound gratitude, making a congee:
"Gentlemen, I wish you good night, and we are very much obliged to you
that you have not used us ill!" And this is the cuckoo that has had the
audacity to foist upon me ten buttons on a side and a black velvet
collar--A damn'd ninth of a scoundrel!
When you write to Lloyd, he wishes his Jacobin correspondents to address
him as _Mr_. C. L. Love and respects to Edith. I hope she is well.
Yours sincerely,
C. LAMB.
[The poem "Mystery of God" was, when printed in the _Annual Anthology_
for 1799, entitled "Living without God in the World." Lamb never
reprinted it. It is not clear to what sonnet Lamb refers, possibly that
to his sister, printed on page 78, which he himself never reprinted. It
was at that time intended to call Southey's collection _Gleanings_; Lamb
refers to the _Gleanings_ of Samuel Jackson Pratt (1749-1814), a very
busy maker of books, published in 1795-1799. His _Triumph of
Benevolence_ was published in 1786.
Southey's witch ballad was "The Old Woman of Berkeley."
George Dyer's principal works in verse are contained in his _Poems_,
1802, and _Poetics_, 1812. He retained the epithet "dark" for Ossian's
eyes.
Southey's recipe for a Turk's poison I do not find. It may have existed
only in a letter.
A reference to the poem in Letter 39 will explain the remarks about
witches' curses.
The Two Noble Englishmen (a sarcastic reference drawn, I imagine from
Palamon and Arcite) were Coleridge and Wordsworth, then in Germany.
Nothing definite is known, but they seem quite amicably to have decided
to take independent courses.
"Lloyd's Jacobin correspondents." This is Lamb's only allusion to the
attack which had been made by _The Anti-Jacobin_ upon himself, Lloyd and
their friends, particularly Coleridge and Southey. In "The New
Morality," in the last number of Canning's paper, they had been thus
grouped:--
And ye five other wandering Bards that move
In sweet accord of harmony and love,
C-----dge and S--tb--y, L--d, and L--be & Co.
Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux!
--Lepaux being the high-priest of Theophilanthropy. When "The New
Morality" was reprinted in _The Beauties of "The AntiJacobin_" in 1799,
a savage footnote on Coleridge was appended, accusing him of hypocrisy
and the desertion of his wife and children, and adding "_Ex uno disce_
his associates Southey and Lamb." Again, in the first number of the
_Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine_, August, 1798, was a picture by
Gilray, representing the worshippers of Lepaux, wherein Lloyd and Lamb
appeared as a toad and a frog reading their own _Blank Verse_, and
Coleridge and Southey, as donkeys, flourish "Dactylics" and "Saphics."
In September the federated poets were again touched upon in a parody of
the "Ode to the Passions":--
See! faithful to their mighty dam,
C----dge, S--th--y, L--d, and L--b
In splay-foot madrigals of love,
Soft moaning like the widow'd dove,
Pour, side-by-side, their sympathetic notes;
Of equal rights, and civic feasts,
And tyrant kings, and knavish priests,
Swift through the land the tuneful mischief floats.
And now to softer strains they struck the lyre,
They sung the beetle or the mole,
The dying kid, or ass's foal,
By cruel man permitted to expire.
Lloyd took the caricature and the verses with his customary seriousness,
going so far as to indite a "Letter to _The Anti-Jacobin_ Reviewers,"
which was printed in Birmingham in 1799. Therein he defended Lamb with
some vigour: "The person you have thus leagued in a partnership of
infamy with me is Mr. Charles Lamb, a man who, so far from being a
democrat, would be the first person to assent to the opinions contained
in the foregoing pages: he is a man too much occupied with real and
painful duties--duties of high personal self-denial--to trouble himself
about speculative matters."]
LETTER 41
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Dec. 27, 1798.
Dear Southey,--Your friend John May has formerly made kind offers to
Lloyd of serving me in the India house by the interest of his friend Sir
Francis Baring--It is not likely that I shall ever put his goodness to
the test on my own account, for my prospects are very comfortable. But I
know a man, a young man, whom he could serve thro' the same channel, and
I think would be disposed to serve if he were acquainted with his case.
This poor fellow (whom I know just enough of to vouch for his strict
integrity & worth) has lost two or three employments from illness, which
he cannot regain; he was once insane, & from the distressful uncertainty
of his livelihood has reason to apprehend a return of that malady--He
has been for some time dependant on a woman whose lodger he formerly
was, but who can ill afford to maintain him, and I know that on
Christmas night last he actually walk'd about the streets all night,
rather than accept of her Bed, which she offer'd him, and offer'd
herself to sleep in the kitchen, and that in consequence of that severe
cold he is labouring under a bilious disorder, besides a depression of
spirits, which incapacitates him from exertion when he most needs
it--For God's sake, Southey, if it does not go against you to ask
favors, do it now--ask it as for me--but do not do a violence to your
feelings, because he does not know of this application, and will suffer
no disappointment--What I meant to say was this--there are in the India
house what are called _Extra Clerks_, not on the Establishment, like me,
but employed in Extra business, by-jobs--these get about £50 a year, or
rather more, but never rise--a Director can put in at any time a young
man in this office, and it is by no means consider'd so great a favor as
making an established Clerk. He would think himself as rich as an
Emperor if he could get such a certain situation, and be relieved from
those disquietudes which I do fear may one day bring back his
distemper--
You know John May better than I do, but I know enough to believe that he
is a good man--he did make me that offer I have mention'd, but you will
perceive that such an offer cannot authorize me in applying for another
Person.
But I cannot help writing to you on the subject, for the young man is
perpetually before my eyes, and I should feel it a crime not to strain
all my petty interest to do him service, tho' I put my own delicacy to
the question by so doing--I have made one other unsuccessful attempt
already--
At all events I will thank you to write, for I am tormented with
anxiety--
I suppose you have somewhere heard that poor Mary Dollin has poisoned
herself, after some interviews with John Reid, the ci-devant Alphonso of
her days of hope.
How is Edith?
C. LAMB.
[John May was a friend and correspondent of Southey whom he had met at
Lisbon: not to be confounded with Coleridge's inn-keeping May.
Sir Francis Baring was a director of the East India Company. 1 have no
knowledge as to who the young man was; nor have I any regarding Mary
Dollin and John Reid.]
LETTER 42
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Jan. 21st, 1799.
I am requested by Lloyd to excuse his not replying to a kind letter
received from you. He is at present situated in most distressful family
perplexities, which I am not at liberty to explain; but they are such as
to demand all the strength of his mind, and quite exclude any attention
to foreign objects. His brother Robert (the flower of his family) hath
eloped from the persecutions of his father, and has taken shelter with
me. What the issue of his adventure will be, I know not. He hath the
sweetness of an angel in his heart, combined with admirable firmness of
purpose: an uncultivated, but very original, and, I think, superior
genius. But this step of his is but a small part of their family
troubles.
I am to blame for not writing to you before on _my own account_; but I
know you can dispense with the expressions of gratitude, or I should
have thanked you before for all May's kindness. He has liberally
supplied the person I spoke to you of with money, and had procured him a
situation just after himself had lighted upon a similar one and engaged
too far to recede. But May's kindness was the same, and my thanks to you
and him are the same. May went about on this business as if it had been
his own. But you knew John May before this: so I will be silent.
I shall be very glad to hear from you when convenient. I do not know how
your Calendar and other affairs thrive; but, above all, I have not heard
a great while of your "Madoc"--the _opus magnum_. I would willingly send
you something to give a value to this letter; but I have only one slight
passage to send you, scarce worth the sending, which I want to edge in
somewhere into my play, which, by the way, hath not received the
addition of ten lines, besides, since I saw you. A father, old Walter
Woodvil (the witch's PROTÉGÉ) relates this of his son John, who "fought
in adverse armies," being a royalist, and his father a parliamentary
man:--
"I saw him in the day of Worcester fight,
Whither he came at twice seven years,
Under the discipline of the Lord Falkland
(His uncle by the mother's side,
Who gave his youthful politics a bent
Quite _from_ the principles of his father's house;)
There did I see this valiant Lamb of Mars,
This sprig of honour, this unbearded John,
This veteran in green years, this sprout, this Woodvil,
(With dreadless ease guiding a fire-hot steed,
Which seem'd to scorn the manage of a boy),
Prick forth with such a _mirth_ into the field,
To mingle rivalship and acts of war
Even with the sinewy masters of the art,--
You would have thought the work of blood had been
A play-game merely, and the rabid Mars
Had put his harmful hostile nature off,
To instruct raw youth in images of war,
And practice of the unedged players' foils.
The rough fanatic and blood-practised soldiery
Seeing such hope and virtue in the boy,
Disclosed their ranks to let him pass unhurt,
Checking their swords' uncivil injuries,
As loth to mar that curious workmanship
Of Valour's beauty pourtray'd in his face."
Lloyd objects to "pourtray'd in his face,"--do you? I like the line.
I shall clap this in somewhere. I think there is a spirit through the
lines; perhaps the 7th, 8th, and 9th owe their origin to Shakspeare,
though no image is borrowed.
He says in "Henry the Fourth"--
"This infant Hotspur,
Mars in swathing clothes."
[See Pt. I., III., 2, 111, 112.]
But pray did Lord Falkland die before Worcester fight? In that case I
must make bold to unclify some other nobleman.
Kind love and respects to Edith.
C. LAMB.
[Charles Lloyd's perplexities turned probably once again on the question
of his marriage. How long Robert Lloyd was with Lamb we do not know; nor
of what nature were the "persecutions" to which he was subjected.
According to the evidence at our disposal, Charles Lloyd, sen., was a
good father.
Southey's _Madoc_ was not published until 1805.
The passage from the play was not printed in _John Woodvil_. This,
together with "The Dying Lover" are to be found only in the discarded
version, printed in the Notes to Vol. IV. of the present edition. Lord
Falkland had been killed at Newbury eight years before Worcester fight.
Lamb altered the names to Ashley and Naseby, although Sir Anthony Cooper
was not made Lord Ashley until sixteen years after Naseby was fought.]
LETTER 43
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
[Late January or early February, 1799.]
Dr. Southey,--Lloyd will now be able to give you an account of himself,
so to him I leave you for satisfaction. Great part of his troubles are
lightened by the partial recovery of his sister, who had been alarmingly
ill with similar diseases to his own. The other part of the family
troubles sleeps for the present, but I fear will awake at some future
time to _confound_ and _disunite_. He will probably tell you all about
it. Robert still continues here with me, his father has proposed
nothing, but would willingly lure him back with fair professions. But
Robert is endowed with a wise fortitude, and in this business has acted
quite from himself, and wisely acted. His parents must come forward in
the End. I like reducing parents to a sense of undutifulness. I like
confounding the relations of life. Pray let me see you when you come to
town, and contrive to give me some of your company.
I thank you heartily for your intended presents, but do by no means see
the necessity you are under of burthening yourself thereby. You have
read old Wither's Supersedeas to small purpose. You object to my pauses
being at the end of my lines. I do not know any great difficulty I
should find in diversifying or changing my blank verse; but I go upon
the model of Shakspere in my Play, and endeavour after a colloquial ease
and spirit, something like him. I could so easily imitate Milton's
versification; but my ear & feeling would reject it, or any approaches
to it, in the _drama_. I do not know whether to be glad or sorry that
witches have been detected aforetimes in shutting up of wombs. I
certainly invented that conceit, and its coincidence with fact is
incidental [? accidental], for I never heard it. I have not seen those
verses on Col. Despard--I do not read any newspapers. Are they short, to
copy without much trouble? I should like to see them.
I just send you a few rhymes from my play, the only rhymes in it--a
forest-liver giving an account of his amusements:--
What sports have you in the forest?
Not many,--some few,--as thus.
To see the sun to bed, and see him rise,
Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes,
Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him:
With all his fires and travelling glories round him:
Sometimes the moon on soft night-clouds to rest,
Like beauty nestling in a young man's breast,
And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep
Admiring silence, while those lovers sleep:
Sometimes outstretch'd in very idleness,
Nought doing, saying little, thinking less,
To view the leaves, thin dancers upon air,
Go eddying round; and small birds how they fare,
When mother Autumn fills their beaks with corn,
Filch'd from the careless Amalthea's horn;
And how the woods berries and worms provide,
Without their pains, when earth hath nought beside
To answer their small wants;
To view the graceful deer come trooping by,
Then pause, and gaze, then turn they know not why,
Like bashful younkers in society;
To mark the structure of a plant or tree;
And all fair things of earth, how fair they be! &c. &c.
I love to anticipate charges of unoriginality: the first line is almost
Shakspere's:--
"To have my love to bed & to arise."
_Midsummer Nights Dream_ [III., I, 174].
I think there is a sweetness in the versification not unlike some rhymes
in that exquisite play, and the last line but three is yours:
"An eye
That met the gaze, or turn'd it knew not why."
_Rosamund's Epistle_.
I shall anticipate all my play, and have nothing to shew you. An idea
for Leviathan:--
Commentators on Job have been puzzled to find out a meaning for
Leviathan,--'tis a whale, say some; a crocodile, say others. In my
simple conjecture, Leviathan is neither more nor less than the Lord
Mayor of London for the time being.
"Rosamund" sells well in London, maugre the non-reviewal of it.
I sincerely wish you better health, & better health to Edith, Kind
remembrances to her.
C. LAMB.
If you come to town by Ash Wednesday [February 6], you will certainly
see Lloyd here--I expect him by that time.
My sister Mary was never in better health or spirits than now.
[Writing in June, 1799, to Robert Lloyd, Priscilla, his sister, says:
"Lamb would not I think by any means be a person to take up your abode
with. He is too much like yourself--he would encourage those feelings
which it certainly is your duty to suppress. Your station in life--the
duties which are pointed out by that rank in society which you are
destined to fill--differ widely from his." When next we hear of Robert
Lloyd he has returned to Birmingham, where his father soon afterwards
bought him a partnership in a bookselling and printing business.
"Col. Despard." I have not found the verses. Colonel Edward Marcus
Despard, after a career that began brilliantly, was imprisoned in the
spring of 1798 and executed for High Treason in 1803.
The rhymed passage from _John Woodvil_ is that which is best known.
Hazlitt relates that Godwin was so taken with it when he first read it
that he asked every one he met to tell him the author and play, and at
last applied to Lamb himself.]
LETTER 44
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
March 15th, 1799.
Dear Southey,--I have received your little volume, for which I thank
you, though I do not entirely approve of this sort of intercourse, where
the presents are all one side. I have read the last Eclogue again with
great pleasure. It hath gained considerably by abridgment, and now I
think it wants nothing but enlargement. You will call this one of tyrant
Procrustes' criticisms, to cut and pull so to his own standard; but the
old lady is so great a favourite with me, I want to hear more of her;
and of "Joanna" you have given us still less. But the picture of the
rustics leaning over the bridge, and the old lady travelling abroad on a
summer evening to see her garden watered, are images so new and true,
that I decidedly prefer this "Ruin'd Cottage" to any poem in the book.
Indeed I think it the only one that will bear comparison with your "Hymn
to the Penates" in a former volume.
I compare dissimilar things, as one would a rose and a star for the
pleasure they give us, or as a child soon learns to choose between a
cake and a rattle; for dissimilars have mostly some points of
comparison. The next best poem, I think, is the First Eclogue; 'tis very
complete, and abounding in little pictures and realities. The remainder
Eclogues, excepting only the "Funeral," I do not greatly admire. I miss
_one_, which had at least as good a title to publication as the "Witch,"
or the "Sailor's Mother." You call'd it the "Last of the Family." The
"Old Woman of Berkeley" comes next; in some humours I would give it the
preference above any. But who the devil is Matthew of Westminster? You
are as familiar with these antiquated monastics, as Swedenborg, or, as
his followers affect to call him, the Baron, with his invisibles. But
you have raised a very comic effect out of the true narrative of Matthew
of Westminster. 'Tis surprising with how little addition you have been
able to convert with so little alteration his incidents, meant for
terror, into circumstances and food for the spleen. The Parody is _not_
so successful; it has one famous line indeed, which conveys the finest
death-bed image I ever met with:
"The doctor whisper'd the nurse, and the surgeon knew what he said."
But the offering the bride three times bears not the slightest analogy
or proportion to the fiendish noises three times heard! In "Jaspar," the
circumstance of the great light is very affecting. But I had heard you
mention it before. The "Rose" is the only insipid piece in the volume;
it hath neither thorns nor sweetness, and, besides, sets all chronology
and probability at defiance.
"Cousin Margaret," you know, I like. The allusions to the "Pilgrim's
Progress" are particularly happy, and harmonise tacitly and delicately
with old cousins and aunts. To familiar faces we do associate familiar
scenes and accustomed objects; but what hath Apollidon and his
sea-nymphs to do in these affairs? Apollyon I could have borne, though
he stands for the devil; but who is Apollidon? I think you are too apt
to conclude faintly, with some cold moral, as in the end of the poem
called "The Victory"--
"Be thou her comforter, who art the widow's friend;"
a single common-place line of comfort, which bears no proportion in
weight or number to the many lines which describe suffering. This is to
convert religion into mediocre feelings, which should burn, and glow,
and tremble. A moral should be wrought into the body and soul, the
matter and tendency, of a poem, not tagged to the end, like a "God send
the good ship into harbour," at the conclusion of our bills of lading.
The finishing of the "Sailor" is also imperfect. Any dissenting minister
may say and do as much.
These remarks, I know, are crude and unwrought; but I do not lay claim
to much accurate thinking. I never judge system-wise of things, but
fasten upon particulars. After all, there is a great deal in the book
that I must, for time, leave _unmentioned_, to deserve my thanks for its
own sake, as well as for the friendly remembrances implied in the gift.
I again return you my thanks.
Pray present my love to Edith. C. L.
[Southey's little volume was Vol. II. of the second edition of his
_Poems_, published in 1799. The last of the English Eclogues included in
it was "The Ruined Cottage," slightly altered from the version referred
to in letter 38. The "Hymn to the Penates" brought the first volume of
this edition to a close. The first Eclogue was "The Old Mansion House."
"The Old Woman of Berkeley" was called "A Ballad showing how an Old
Woman rode double and who rode before her." It was preceded by a long
quotation in Latin from Matthew of Westminster. Matthew of Westminster
is the imaginary name given to the unknown authors of a chronicle called
_Flares Historiarum_, belonging probably to the fifteenth century. The
Parody was "The Surgeon's Warning," which begins with the two lines that
Lamb prints as one:--
The Doctor whisper'd to the Nurse,
And the Surgeon knew what he said.
"The Rose" was blank verse, addressed to Edith Southey. "Cousin
Margaret" was a "Metrical Letter Written from London," in which there
are allusions to Bunyan. The reference to Apollidon is explained by
these lines:--
The Sylphs should waft us to some goodly isle,
Like that where whilome old Apollidon
Built up his blameless spell.]
LETTER 45
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
March 2Oth, 1799.
I am hugely pleased with your "Spider," "your old freemason," as you
call him. The three first stanzas are delicious; they seem to me a
compound of Burns and Old Quarles, those kind of home-strokes, where
more is felt than strikes the ear; a terseness, a jocular pathos, which
makes one feel in laughter. The measure, too, is novel and pleasing. I
could almost wonder Rob. Burns in his lifetime never stumbled upon it.
The fourth stanza is less striking, as being less original. The fifth
falls off. It has no felicity of phrase, no old-fashioned phrase or
feeling.
"Young hopes, and love's delightful dreams,"
savour neither of Burns nor Quarles; they seem more like shreds of many
a modern sentimental sonnet. The last stanza hath nothing striking in
it, if I except the two concluding lines, which are Burns all over. I
wish, if you concur with me, these things could be looked to. I am sure
this is a kind of writing, which comes tenfold better recommended to the
heart, comes there more like a neighbour or familiar, than thousands of
Hamuels and Zillahs and Madelons. I beg you will send me the
"Holly-tree," if it at all resemble this, for it must please me. I have
never seen it. I love this sort of poems, that open a new intercourse
with the most despised of the animal and insect race. I think this vein
may be further opened; Peter Pindar hath very prettily apostrophised a
fly; Burns hath his mouse and his louse; Coleridge, less successfully,
hath made overtures of intimacy to a jackass, therein only following at
unresembling distance Sterne and greater Cervantes. Besides these, I
know of no other examples of breaking down the partition between us and
our "poor earth-born companions." It is sometimes revolting to be put in
a track of feeling by other people, not one's own immediate thoughts,
else I would persuade you, if I could (I am in earnest), to commence a
series of these animal poems, which might have a tendency to rescue some
poor creatures from the antipathy of mankind. Some thoughts come across
me;--for instance--to a rat, to a toad, to a cockchafer, to a
mole--People bake moles alive by a slow oven-fire to cure consumption.
Rats are, indeed, the most despised and contemptible parts of God's
earth. I killed a rat the other day by punching him to pieces, and feel
a weight of blood upon me to this hour. Toads you know are made to fly,
and tumble down and crush all to pieces. Cockchafers are old sport; then
again to a worm, with an apostrophe to anglers, those patient tyrants,
meek inflictors of pangs intolerable, cool devils; to an owl; to all
snakes, with an apology for their poison; to a cat in boots or bladders.
Your own fancy, if it takes a fancy to these hints, will suggest many
more. A series of such poems, suppose them accompanied with plates
descriptive of animal torments, cooks roasting lobsters, fishmongers
crimping skates, &c., &c., would take excessively. I will willingly
enter into a partnership in the plan with you: I think my heart and soul
would go with it too--at least, give it a thought. My plan is but this
minute come into my head; but it strikes me instantaneously as something
new, good and useful, full of pleasure and full of moral. If old Quarles
and Wither could live again, we would invite them into our firm. Burns
hath done his part. I the other day threw off an extempore epitaph on
Ensign Peacock of the 3rd Regt. of the Royal East India Volunteers, who
like other boys in this scarlet tainted age was ambitious of playing at
soldiers, but dying in the first flash of his valour was at the
particular instance of his relations buried with military honours! like
any veteran scarr'd or chopt from Blenheim or Ramilies. (He was buried
in sash and gorget.)
MARMOR LOQUITUR
He lies a Volunteer so fine,
Who died of a decline,
As you or I, may do one day;
Reader, think of this, I pray;
And I numbly hope you'll drop a tear
For my poor Royal Volunteer.
He was as brave as brave could be,
Nobody was so brave as he;
He would have died in Honor's bed,
Only he died at home instead.
Well may the Royal Regiment swear,
They never had such a Volunteer.
But whatsoever they may say,
Death is a man that will have his way:
Tho' he was but an ensign in this world of pain;
In the next we hope he'll be a captain.
And without meaning to make any reflection on his mentals,
He begg'd to be buried in regimentals.
Sed hæ sunt lamentabilis nugæ--But 'tis as good as some epitaphs you and
I have read together in Christ-Church-yard.
Poor Sam. Le Grice! I am afraid the world, and the camp, and the
university, have spoilt him among them. 'Tis certain he had at one time
a strong capacity of turning out something better. I knew him, and that
not long since, when he had a most warm heart. I am ashamed of the
indifference I have sometimes felt towards him. I think the devil is in
one's heart. I am under obligations to that man for the warmest
friendship and heartiest sympathy, even for an agony of sympathy exprest
both by word and deed, and tears for me, when I was in my greatest
distress. But I have forgot that! as, I fear, he has nigh forgot the
awful scenes which were before his eyes when he served the office of a
comforter to me. No service was too mean or troublesome for him to
perform. I can't think what but the devil, "that old spider," could have
suck'd my heart so dry of its sense of all gratitude. If he does come in
your way, Southey, fail not to tell him that I retain a most
affectionate remembrance of his old friendliness, and an earnest wish to
resume our intercourse. In this I am serious. I cannot recommend him to
your society, because I am afraid whether he be quite worthy of it. But
I have no right to dismiss him from _my_ regard. He was at one time, and
in the worst of times, my own familiar friend, and great comfort to me
then. I have known him to play at cards with my father, meal-times
excepted, literally all day long, in long days too, to save me from
being teased by the old man, when I was not able to bear it.
God bless him for it, and God bless you, Southey.
C. L.
[Peter Pindar (Dr. John Wolcot) has an ode "To a Fly, taken out of a
Bowl of Punch." He also wrote "The Lousiad."
"Poor earth-born companions." From Burns' "Lines to a Mouse," 2nd
Stanza, line 5.
"Toads are made to fly." Filliping the toad was an old pastime. A toad
was placed on one end of a piece of wood, laid crosswise over a stone.
The other end was struck with a beetle (_i.e._, a mallet), and the toad
flew into the air. Falstaff says: "Fillip me with a three-man beetle."
As to worms and fishermen, the late Mrs. Coe, who as a girl had known
Lamb at Widford, told me that he could rarely, if ever, be tempted to
join the anglers. Affixing the worm was too much for him. "Barbarous,
barbarous," he used to say.
Lamb's project for a series of animal poems has to some extent been
carried out by a living poet, Mr. A. C. Benson. Neither Lamb nor Southey
pursued it.
We met Sam Le Grice in the letter of October 3, 1796. To what escapade
Lamb refers I do not know, but he was addicted to folly. It was Sam Le
Grice of whom Leigh Hunt in his _Autobiography_ tells the excellent tale
that he excused himself to his master for not having performed a task,
by the remark that he had had a "lethargy."
In April of this year died John Lamb, the father. Charles Lamb probably
at once moved from 45 Chapel Street to No. 36, where Mary Lamb joined
him.
Between this and the next letter should probably come a letter from Lamb
to Robert Lloyd, not available for this edition. It seems to follow upon
Robert Lloyd's departure from Lamb's house, and remarks that Lamb knows
but one being that he could ever consent to live perpetually with, and
that is Robert--but Robert must go whither prudence and paternal
regulations dictate. Lamb also refers to a poem of an intimate character
by Charles Lloyd in the _Annual Anthology_ ("Lines to a Brother and
Sister"), remarking that, in his opinion, these domestic addresses
should not always be made public. There is also a reference to Charles
Lloyd's novel, which Lamb says he wants to read if he may be permitted a
sight of it. This would be _Isabel_.]
LETTER 46
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Oct. 31st, 1799.
Dear Southey,--I have but just got your letter, being returned from
Herts, where I have passed a few red-letter days with much pleasure. I
would describe the county to you, as you have done by Devonshire, but
alas! I am a poor pen at that same. I could tell you of an old house
with a tapestry bed-room, the "judgment of Solomon" composing one
pannel, and "Actæon spying Diana naked" the other. I could tell of an
old marble hall, with Hogarth's prints and the Roman Caesars in marble
hung round. I could tell of a _wilderness_, and of a village church, and
where the bones of my honoured grandam lie; but there are feelings which
refuse to be translated, sulky aborigines, which will not be naturalised
in another soil. Of this nature are old family faces and scenes of
infancy.
I have given your address, and the books you want, to the Arches; they
will send them as soon as they can get them, but they do not seem quite
familiar to [? with] their names. I have seen Gebor! Gebor aptly so
denominated from Geborish, _quasi_ Gibberish. But Gebor hath some lucid
intervals. I remember darkly one beautiful simile veiled in uncouth
phrases about the youngest daughter of the Ark. I shall have nothing to
communicate, I fear, to the Anthology. You shall have some fragments of
my play, if you desire them, but I think I would rather print it whole.
Have you seen it, or shall I lend you a copy? I want your opinion of it.
I must get to business, so farewell. My kind remembrances to Edith.
C. LAMB.
[Lamb had probably been staying at Widford. Many years later he
described his Hertfordshire days in more than one essay (see the _Elia_
essays "Mackery End" and "Blakesmoor in H-----shire" and
"Dream-Children"). The old house was, of course, Blakesware. The
wilderness, which lay at the back of the house, is, with Widford,
mentioned in _Rosamund Gray_.
The Arches were the brothers Arch, the booksellers of Ludgate Hill.
Gebor stands for _Gebir_, Landor's poem, published in 1798. The simile
in question would be this: from Book VII., lines 248-251:--
Never so eager, when the world was waves,
Stood the less daughter of the ark, and tried
(Innocent this temptation) to recall
With folded vest and casting arm the dove.
The reference to Southey's Anthology is to Vol. II., then in
preparation. The play was now finished: it circulated in manuscript
before being published in 1802.
In a letter to Robert Lloyd, dated December 17, 1799, Lamb thanks him
for a present of porter, adding that wine makes him hot, and brandy
drunk, but porter warms without intoxication.
Here should come an unpublished letter from Lamb to Charles Lloyd at
Cambridge, asking for the return of his play. Kemble, he says, had
offered to put it in the hands of the proprietor of Drury Lane, and
therefore Lamb wishes to have a second copy in the house. Kemble, as it
turned out, returned no answer for a year, and then he stated that he
had lost the copy.
Lamb mentions Coleridge's settlement with his family in lodgings in the
Adelphi. Coleridge, having returned from Germany and undertaken work for
the _Morning Post_, took lodgings at 21 Buckingham Street, Strand, close
to the Adelphi, in November, 1799.
The letter is interesting in containing the first mention of Manning,
whom we are now to meet.]
LETTER 47
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
Dec., 1799.
Dear Manning,--The particular kindness, even up to a degree of
attachment, which I have experienced from you, seems to claim some
distinct acknowledgment on my part. I could not content myself with a
bare remembrance to you, conveyed in some letter to Lloyd.
Will it be agreeable to you, if I occasionally recruit your memory of
me, which must else soon fade, if you consider the brief intercourse we
have had. I am not likely to prove a troublesome correspondent. My
scribbling days are past. I shall have no sentiments to communicate, but
as they spring up from some living and worthy occasion.
I look forward with great pleasure to the performance of your promise,
that we should meet in London early in the ensuing year. The century
must needs commence auspiciously for me, that brings with it Manning's
friendship as an earnest of its after gifts.
I should have written before, but for a troublesome inflammation in one
of my eyes, brought on by night travelling with the coach windows
sometimes up.
What more I have to say shall be reserved for a letter to Lloyd. I must
not prove tedious to you in my first outset, lest I should affright you
by my ill-judged loquacity. I am, yours most sincerely, C. LAMB.
[This is the first letter that has been preserved in the correspondence
between Lamb and Manning. Lamb first met Manning at Cambridge, in the
autumn of 1799, when on a visit to Charles Lloyd. Much of Manning's
history will be unfolded as the letters proceed, but here it should be
stated that he was born on November 8, 1772, and was thus a little more
than two years older than Lamb. He was at this time acting as private
tutor in mathematics at Cambridge, among his pupils being Charles Lloyd,
of Caius, Manning's own college. Manning, however, did not take his
degree, owing to an objection to oaths and tests.
Lamb's reference to the beginning of the century shows that he shared
with many other non-mathematically-minded persons the belief that the
century begins with the hundredth, and not the hundred and first, year.
He says of Manning, in the _Elia_ essay "The Old and the New
Schoolmaster": "My friend M., with great painstaking, got me to think I
understood the first proposition in Euclid, but gave me over in despair
at the second."]
LETTER 48
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
Dec. 28th, 1799.
Dear Manning,--Having suspended my correspondence a decent interval, as
knowing that even good things may be taken to satiety, a wish cannot but
recur to learn whether you be still well and happy. Do all things
continue in the state I left them in Cambridge?
Do your night parties still flourish? and do you continue to bewilder
your company with your thousand faces running down through all the keys
of idiotism (like Lloyd over his perpetual harpsicord), from the smile
and the glimmer of half-sense and quarter-sense to the grin and hanging
lip of Betty Foy's own Johnny? And does the face-dissolving curfew sound
at twelve? How unlike the great originals were your petty terrors in the
postscript, not fearful enough to make a fairy shudder, or a Lilliputian
fine lady, eight months full of child, miscarry. Yet one of them, which
had more beast than the rest, I thought faintly resembled _one_ of your
brutifications. But, seriously, I long to see your own honest
Manning-face again. I did not mean a pun,--your _man's_ face, you will
be apt to say, I know your wicked will to pun. I cannot now write to
Lloyd and you too, so you must convey as much interesting intelligence
as this may contain, or be thought to contain, to him and Sophia, with
my dearest love and remembrances.
By the by, I think you and Sophia both incorrect with regard to the
_title_ of the _play_. Allowing your objection (which is not necessary,
as pride may be, and is in real life often, cured by misfortunes not
directly originating from its own acts, as Jeremy Taylor will tell you a
naughty desire is sometimes sent to cure it--I know you read these
_practical divines_). But allowing your objection, does not the
betraying of his father's secret directly spring from pride?--from the
pride of wine and a full heart, and a proud over-stepping of the
ordinary rules of morality, and contempt of the prejudices of mankind,
which are not to bind superior souls--"as _trust_ in _the matter_ of
_secret_ all _ties_ of _blood_, &c., &c., keeping of _promises_, the
feeble mind's religion, binding our _morning knowledge_ to the
performance of what _last night's ignorance_ spake"--does he not prate,
that "_Great Spirits_" must do more than die for their friend--does not
the pride of wine incite him to display some evidence of friendship,
which its own irregularity shall make great? This I know, that I meant
his punishment not alone to be a cure for his daily and habitual
_pride_, but the direct consequence and appropriate punishment of a
particular act of pride.
If you do not understand it so, it is my fault in not explaining my
meaning.
I have not seen Coleridge since, and scarcely expect to see
him,--perhaps he has been at Cambridge. I dined with him in town and
breakfasted with him and Priscilla, who you may tell Charles has
promised to come and see me when she returns [to] Clapham. I will write
to Charles on Monday.
Need I turn over to blot a fresh clean half-sheet? merely to say, what I
hope you are sure of without my repeating it, that I would have you
consider me, dear Manning, Your sincere friend,
C. LAMB.
What is your proper address?
["Betty Foy's own Johnny"--"The Idiot Boy," in the _Lyrical Ballads_.
"In the postscript." A reference presumably to some drawings of faces in
one of Manning's letters.
"The title of the play." Writing to Lamb on December 15, 1799, Manning
had said: "I had some conversation the other day with Sophia concerning
your tragedy; and she made some very sensible observations (as I
thought) with respect to the unfitness of its title, 'The Folly,' whose
consequences humble the pride and ambition of John's heart, does not
originate in the workings of those passions, but from an underpart in
his character, and as it were accidentally, _viz_., from the ebullitions
of a drunken mind and from a rash confidence."
"You will understand what I mean, without my explaining myself any
further. God bless you, and keep you from all evil things, that walk
upon the face of the earth--I mean nightmares, hobgoblins and spectres."
Lamb refers in this letter particularly to Act III. of his play. "I have
not seen Coleridge since." Since when is not clear. Possibly Coleridge
had been at Cambridge when Lamb was there.]
LETTER 49
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
? Jan. 23, 1800.
Dear Coleridge,--Now I write, I cannot miss this opportunity of
acknowledging the obligations myself, and the readers in general of that
luminous paper, the "Morning Post," are under to you for the very novel
and exquisite manner in which you combined political with grammatical
science, in your yesterday's dissertation on Mr. Wyndham's unhappy
composition. It must have been the death-blow to that ministry. I expect
Pitt and Grenville to resign. More especially the delicate and
Cottrellian grace with which you officiated, with a ferula for a white
wand, as gentleman usher to the word "also," which it seems did not know
its place.
I expect Manning of Cambridge in town to-night--will you fulfil your
promise of meeting him at my house? He is a man of a thousand. Give me a
line to say what day, whether Saturday, Sunday, Monday, &c., and if Sara
and the Philosopher can come. I am afraid if I did not at intervals call
upon you, I should _never see you_. But I forget, the affairs of the
nation engross your time and your mind.
Farewell. C.L.
[The first letter that has been preserved of the second period of Lamb's
correspondence with Coleridge, which was to last until the end.
In the _Morning Post_ of January 7, 1800, had appeared the
correspondence between Buonaparte and Lord Grenville, in which
Buonaparte made an offer of peace. Lord Grenville's Note, it was pointed
out in the _Morning Post_ for January 16, was really written by William
Windham, Secretary for War, and on January 22 appeared an article
closely criticising its grammar.
Here is the passage concerning "also," to which Lamb particularly
alludes a little later in the letter:--
... "The _same_ system, to the prevalence of which France justly
ascribes all her present miseries, is that which has _also_ involved the
rest of Europe in a long and destructive warfare, of a nature long since
unknown _to_ the practice of civilized nations." Here the connective
word "also" should have followed the word "Europe." As it at present
stands, the sentence implies that France, miserable as she may be, has,
however, not been involved in a warfare. The word "same" is absolutely
expletive; and by appearing to refer the reader to some foregoing
clause, it not only loads the sentence, but renders it obscure. The word
"to" is absurdly used for the word "in." A thing may be unknown _to_
practitioners, as humanity and sincerity may be unknown to the
practitioners of State-craft, and foresight, science, and harmony may
have been unknown to the planners and practitioners of Continental
Expeditions; but even "cheese-parings and candle-ends" cannot be known
or unknown "_to_" a practice!!
Windham was destined to be attacked by another stalwart in Lamb's
circle, for it was his speech in opposition to Lord Erskine's Cruelty to
Animals Bill in 1809 that inspired John Lamb to write his fierce
pamphlet (see page 434).
"Cottrellian grace." The Cotterells were Masters of the Ceremonies from
1641 to 1808.
The Philosopher was Hartley Coleridge, aged three, so called after his
great namesake, David Hartley. The Coleridges were now, as we have seen,
living at 21 Buckingham Street, Strand.]
LETTER 50
Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning
[P.M. Feb. 13, 1800.]
Dear Manning,--Olivia is a good girl, and if you turn to my letter, you
will find that this very plea you set up to vindicate Lloyd I had made
use of as a reason why he should never have employed Olivia to make a
copy of such a letter--a letter I could not have sent to my enemy's
b----h, if she had thought fit to seek me in the way of marriage. But
you see it in one view, I in another. Rest you merry in your opinion!
Opinion is a species of property; and though I am always desirous to
share with my friend to a certain extent, I shall ever like to keep some
tenets and some property properly my own. Some day, Manning, when we
meet, substituting Corydon and fair Amaryllis, for Charles Lloyd and
Mary Hayes, we will discuss together this question of moral feeling, "In
what cases and how far sincerity is a virtue?" I do not mean Truth--a
good Olivia-like creature--God bless her, who, meaning no offence, is
always ready to give an answer when she is asked why she did so and so;
but a certain forward-talking half-brother of hers, Sincerity, that
amphibious gentleman, who is so ready to perk up his obnoxious
sentiments unasked into your notice, as Midas would his ears into your
face uncalled for. But I despair of doing anything by a letter in the
way of explaining or coming to explanations. A good wish, or a pun, or a
piece of secret history, may be well enough that way conveyed; nay, it
has been known that intelligence of a turkey hath been conveyed by that
medium without much ambiguity. Godwin I am a good deal pleased with. He
is a very well-behaved, decent man, nothing very brilliant about him, or
imposing, as you may suppose; quite another guess sort of gentleman from
what your Anti-Jacobin Christians imagine him. I was well pleased to
find he has neither horns nor claws; quite a tame creature, I assure
you. A middle-sized man, both in stature and in understanding; whereas,
from his noisy fame, you would expect to find a Briareus Centimanus, or
a Tityus tall enough to pull Jupiter from his heavens.
I begin to think you Atheists not quite so tall a species. Coleridge
inquires after you pretty often. I wish to be the Pandar to bring you
together again once before I die. When we die, you and I must part; the
sheep, you know, take the right hand, and the goats the left. Stripped
of its allegory, you must know, the sheep are _I_ and the Apostles, and
the Martyrs, and the Popes, and Bishop Taylor, and Bishop Horsley, and
Coleridge, &c., &c.; the goats are the Atheists and the Adulterers, and
dumb dogs, and Godwin and M-----g, and that Thyestaean crew--yaw! how my
saintship sickens at the idea!
You shall have my play and the Falstaff letters in a day or two. I will
write to Lloyd by this day's post.
Pray, is it a part of your sincerity to show my letters to Lloyd? for
really, gentlemen ought to explain their virtues upon a first
acquaintance, to prevent mistakes.
God bless you, Manning. Take my trifling _as trifling_; and believe me,
seriously and deeply,
Your well-wisher and friend,
C. L.
[Mary Hayes was a friend of Mary Wollstonecraft, and also of Southey and
Coleridge. She wrote a novel, _Memoirs of Emma Courtney_, which Lloyd
says contained her own love letters to Godwin and Frend, and also
_Female Biography, or Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women_.
Lloyd and she had been very intimate. A passage from a letter of
Coleridge to Southey, dated January 25, 1800, bears upon the present
situation: "Miss Hayes I have seen. Charles Lloyd's conduct has been
atrocious beyond what you stated. Lamb himself confessed to me that
during the time in which he kept up his ranting, sentimental
correspondence with Miss Hayes, he frequently read her letters in
company, as a subject for _laughter_, and then sate down and answered
them quite _à la Rousseau_! Poor Lloyd! Every hour new-creates him; he
is his own posterity in a perpetually flowing series, and his body
unfortunately retaining an external identity, _their_ mutual
contradictions and disagreeings are united under one name, and of course
are called lies, treachery, and rascality!"
Another letter from Lamb to Manning at this time tells the story of the
Charles Lloyd and Mary Hayes imbroglio. Lloyd had written to Miss Hayes
a very odd letter concerning her Godwinite creed, in which he refers to
her belief that she was in love with him and repeats old stories that
she had been in love both with Godwin and Frend. Here is one sentence:
"In the confounding medley of ordinary conversation, I have interwoven
my abhorrence of your principles with a glanced contempt for your
personal character." This letter Lloyd had given to his sister Olivia to
copy--"An ignorant Quaker girl," says Lamb, "I mean ignorant in the best
sense, who ought not to know, that such a thing was possible or in rerum
naturae that a woman should court a man." Later: "As long as Lloyd or I
have known Col. [Coleridge] so long have we known him in the daily and
hourly habit of quizzing the world by lyes, most unaccountable and most
disinterested fictions." And here is one more passage: "To sum up my
inferences from the above facts, I am determined to live a merry Life in
the midst of Sinners. I try to consider all men as such, and to pitch
any expectations from human nature as low as possible. In this view, all
unexpected Virtues are Godsends and beautiful exceptions."
Lamb had just met William Godwin (1756-1836), probably having been
introduced to him by Coleridge. Godwin, known chiefly by his _Political
Justice_, 1793; _Caleb Williams_, 1794, and _St. Leon_, 1799, stood at
that time for everything that was advanced in thought and conduct. We
shall meet with him often in the correspondence of the next few years.
Bishop Horsley (then of Rochester, afterwards St. Asaph's) was probably
included ironically, on account of his hostility to Priestley.]
LETTER 51
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[P.M. March 1, 1800.]
I hope by this time you are prepared to say the "Falstaf's letters" are
a bundle of the sharpest, queerest, profoundest humours, of any these
juice-drained latter times have spawned. I should have advertised you,
that the meaning is frequently hard to be got at; and so are the future
guineas, that now lie ripening and aurifying in the womb of some
undiscovered Potosi; but dig, dig, dig, dig, Manning! I set to with an
unconquerable propulsion to write, with a lamentable want of what to
write. My private goings on are orderly as the movements of the spheres,
and stale as their music to angels' ears. Public affairs--except as they
touch upon me, and so turn into private, I cannot whip up my mind to
feel any interest in. I grieve, indeed, that War and Nature, and Mr.
Pitt, that hangs up in Lloyd's best parlour, should have conspired to
call up three necessaries, simple commoners as our fathers knew them,
into the upper house of Luxuries; Bread, and Beer, and Coals, Manning.
But as to France and Frenchmen, and the Abbé Sièyes and his
constitutions, I cannot make these present times present to me. I read
histories of the past, and I live in them; although, to abstract senses,
they are far less momentous than the noises which keep Europe awake. I
am reading Burnet's Own Times. Did you ever read that garrulous,
pleasant history? He tells his story like an old man past political
service, bragging to his sons on winter evenings of the part he took in
public transactions, when his "old cap was new." Full of scandal, which
all true history is. No palliatives, but all the stark wickedness, that
actually gives the _momentum_ to national actors. Quite the prattle of
age and out-lived importance. Truth and sincerity staring out upon you
perpetually in _alto relievo_. Himself a party man--he makes you a party
man. None of the Damned philosophical Humeian indifference, so cold, and
unnatural, and inhuman! None of the damned Gibbonian fine writing, so
fine and composite. None of Mr. Robertson's periods with three members.
None of Mr. Roscoe's sage remarks, all so apposite, and coming in so
clever, lest the reader should have had the trouble of drawing an
inference. Burnet's good old prattle I can bring present to my mind--I
can make the revolution present to me; the French Revolution, by a
converse perversity in my nature, I fling as far _from_ me. To quit this
damn'd subject, and to relieve you from two or three dismal yawns, which
I hear in spirit, I here conclude my more than commonly obtuse letter;
dull up to the dulness of a Dutch commentator on Shakspeare.
My love to Lloyd and Sophia. C. L.
["War and Nature, and Mr. Pitt." The war had sent up taxation to an
almost unbearable height. Pitt was Chancellor of Exchequer, as well as
Prime Minister.
Hume, Gibbon and Robertson were among the books which, in the Elia essay
"Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading," Lamb described as
_biblia-a-biblia_. William Roscoe's principal work was his _Life of
Lorenzo de' Medici_, 1795.]
LETTER 52
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[P.M. March 17, 1800.]
Dear Manning,--I am living in a continuous feast. Coleridge has been
with me now for nigh three weeks, and the more I see of him in the
quotidian undress and relaxation of his mind, the more cause I see to
love him, and believe him a _very good man_, and all those foolish
impressions to the contrary fly off like morning slumbers. He is engaged
in translations, which I hope will keep him this month to come. He is
uncommonly kind and friendly to me. He ferrets me day and night to _do
something_. He tends me, amidst all his own worrying and
heart-oppressing occupations, as a gardener tends his young _tulip_.
Marry come up! what a pretty similitude, and how like your humble
servant! He has lugged me to the brink of engaging to a newspaper, and
has suggested to me for a first plan the forgery of a supposed
manuscript of Burton the anatomist of melancholy. I have even written
the introductory letter; and, if I can pick up a few guineas this way, I
feel they will be most _refreshing_, bread being so dear. If I go on
with it, I will apprise you of it, as you may like to see my thing's!
and the _tulip_, of all flowers, loves to be admired most.
Pray pardon me, if my letters do not come very thick. I am so taken up
with one thing or other, that I cannot pick out (I will not say time,
but) fitting times to write to you. My dear love to Lloyd and Sophia,
and pray split this thin letter into three parts, and present them with
the _two biggest_ in my name.
They are my oldest friends; but ever the new friend driveth out the old,
as the ballad sings! God bless you all three! I would hear from Lloyd,
if I could.
C. L.
Flour has just fallen nine shillings a sack! we shall be all too rich.
Tell Charles I have seen his Mamma, and have almost fallen in love with
_her_, since I mayn't with Olivia. She is so fine and graceful, a
complete Matron-Lady-Quaker. She has given me two little books. Olivia
grows a charming girl--full of feeling, and thinner than she was.
But I have not time to fall in love.
Mary presents her _general compliments_. She keeps in fine health!
Huzza! boys, and down with the Atheists.
[Coleridge, having sent his wife and Hartley into the country, had, for
a while, taken up his abode with Lamb at Pentonville, and given up the
_Morning Post_ in order to proceed with his translation of Schiller's
_Wallenstein_. Lamb's forgery of Burton, together with those mentioned
in the next letter, which were never printed by Stuart, for whom they
were written, was included in the _John Woodvil_ volume, 1802, among the
"Curious Fragments, extracted from a commonplace book, which belonged to
Robert Burton, the famous Author of The Anatomy of Melancholy." See the
_Miscellaneous Prose_, Vol. I. of this edition.
"They are my oldest friends." Coleridge and Southey were, of course,
older. The ballad I have not found.
Mrs. Charles Lloyd, sen., _née_ Mary Farmer, and Olivia, her second
daughter, had been staying in London. Lamb had breakfasted with them.
The reference to Atheists is explained by a passage from Manning's
letter to Lamb in March, 1800: "One thing tho' I must beg of you--that
is not to call me Atheist in your letters--for though it may be mere
raillery in you, and not meant as a serious imputation on my Faith, yet,
if the Catholic or any other intolerant religion should [illegible] and
become established in England, (which [illegible] if the Bishop of
R----r may be the case) and if the post-people should happen to open and
read your letters, (which, considering the sometimes quaintness of their
form, they may possibly be incited to do) such names might send me to
Smithfield on a hurdle,--and nothing _upon earth_ is more discordant to
my wishes, than to become one of the Smithfield Illuminati."]
LETTER 53
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[P.M. April 5, 1800.]
C.L.'s moral sense presents her compliments to Doctor Manning, is very
thankful for his medical advice, but is happy to add that her disorder
has died of itself.
Dr. Manning, Coleridge has left us, to go into the north, on a visit to
his god Wordsworth. With him have flown all my splendid prospects of
engagement with the "Morning Post," all my visionary guineas, the
deceitful wages of unborn scandal. In truth, I wonder you took it up so
seriously. All my intention was but to make a little sport with such
public and fair game as Mr. Pitt, Mr. Wilberforce, Mrs. Fitzherbert, the
Devil, &c.--gentry dipped in Styx all over, whom no paper javelin-lings
can touch. To have made free with these cattle, where was the harm?
'twould have been but giving a polish to lampblack, not nigrifying a
negro primarily. After all, I cannot but regret my involuntary virtue.
Damn virtue that's thrust upon us; it behaves itself with such
constraint, till conscience opens the window and lets out the goose.
I had struck off two imitations of Burton, quite abstracted from any
modern allusions, which it was my intent only to lug in from time to
time to make 'em popular. Stuart has got these, with an introductory
letter; but, not hearing from him, I have ceased from my labours, but I
write to him today to get a final answer. I am afraid they won't do for
a paper. Burton is a scarce gentleman, not much known; else I had done
'em pretty well.
I have also hit off a few lines in the name of Burton, being a conceit
of "Diabolic Possession." Burton was a man often assailed by deepest
melancholy, and at other times much given to laughing and jesting, as is
the way with melancholy men. I will send them you: they were almost
extempore, and no great things; but you will indulge them. Robert Lloyd
is come to town. He is a good fellow, with the best heart, but his
feelings are shockingly _un_sane. Priscilla meditates going to see
Pizarro at Drury Lane to-night (from her uncle's) under cover of coming
to dine with me... _heu! tempora! heu! mores!_--I have barely time to
finish, as I expect her and Robin every minute.--Yours as usual.
C. L.
[For Coleridge's movements see note to the next letter.--"Pizarro" was
Sheridan's drama. It was acted this season, 1799-1800, sixty-seven
times. Lamb's next letter to Manning, which is not available for this
edition, contained the promised copy of the "Conceit of Diabolical
Possession." It also contained a copy of Thekla's song in "Wallenstein,"
in Lamb's translation (see Vol. IV.), which he says is better than the
original "a huge deal". Finally Lamb copies the old ballad "Edward,
Edward" and calls it "the very first dramatic poem in the English
language."]
LETTER 54
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Probably April 16 or 17, 1800.]
I send you, in this parcel, my play, which I beg you to present in my
name, with my respect and love, to Wordsworth and his sister. You blame
us for giving your direction to Miss Wesley; the woman has been ten
times after us about it, and we gave it her at last, under the idea that
no further harm would ensue, but she would once write to you, and you
would bite your lips and forget to answer it, and so it would end. You
read us a dismal homily upon "Realities." We know, quite as well as you
do, what are shadows and what are realities. You, for instance, when you
are over your fourth or fifth jorum, chirping about old school
occurrences, are the best of realities. Shadows are cold, thin things,
that have no warmth or grasp in them. Miss Wesley and her friend, and a
tribe of authoresses that come after you here daily, and, in defect of
you, hive and cluster upon us, are the shadows. You encouraged that
mopsey, Miss Wesley, to dance after you, in the hope of having her
nonsense put into a nonsensical Anthology. We have pretty well shaken
her off, by that simple expedient of referring her to you; but there are
more burrs in the wind. I came home t'other day from business, hungry as
a hunter, to dinner, with nothing, I am sure, of _the author but hunger_
about me, and whom found I closeted with Mary but a friend of this Miss
Wesley, one Miss Benje, or Benjey--I don't know how she spells her name.
I just came in time enough, I believe, luckily to prevent them from
exchanging vows of eternal friendship. It seems she is one of your
authoresses, that you first foster, and then upbraid us with. But I
forgive you. "The rogue has given me potions to make me love him." Well;
go she would not, nor step a step over our threshold, till we had
promised to come and drink tea with her next night. I had never seen her
before, and could not tell who the devil it was that was so familiar. We
went, however, not to be impolite. Her lodgings are up two pairs of
stairs in East Street. Tea and coffee, and macaroons--a kind of cake I
much love. We sat down. Presently Miss Benje broke the silence, by
declaring herself quite of a different opinion from D'Israeli, who
supposes the differences of human intellect to be the mere effect of
organization. She begged to know my opinion. I attempted to carry it off
with a pun upon organ; but that went off very flat. She immediately
conceived a very low opinion of my metaphysics; and, turning round to
Mary, put some question to her in French,--possibly having heard that
neither Mary nor I understood French. The explanation that took place
occasioned some embarrassment and much wondering. She then fell into an
insulting conversation about the comparative genius and merits of all
modern languages, and concluded with asserting that the Saxon was
esteemed the purest dialect in Germany. From thence she passed into the
subject of poetry; where I, who had hitherto sat mute and a hearer only,
humbly hoped I might now put in a word to some advantage, seeing that it
was my own trade in a manner. But I was stopped by a round assertion,
that no good poetry had appeared since Dr. Johnson's time. It seems the
Doctor has suppressed many hopeful geniuses that way by the severity of
his critical strictures in his "Lives of the Poets." I here ventured to
question the fact, and was beginning to appeal to names, but I was
assured "it was certainly the case." Then we discussed Miss More's book
on education, which I had never read. It seems Dr. Gregory, another of
Miss Benjey's friends, has found fault with one of Miss More's
metaphors. Miss More has been at some pains to vindicate herself--in the
opinion of Miss Benjey, not without success. It seems the Doctor is
invariably against the use of broken or mixed metaphor, which he
reprobates against the authority of Shakspeare himself. We next
discussed the question, whether Pope was a poet? I find Dr. Gregory is
of opinion he was not, though Miss Seward does not at all concur with
him in this. We then sat upon the comparative merits of the ten
translations of "Pizarro," and Miss Benjey or Benje advised Mary to take
two of them home; she thought it might afford her some pleasure to
compare them _verbatim_; which we declined. It being now nine o'clock,
wine and macaroons were again served round, and we parted, with a
promise to go again next week, and meet the Miss Porters, who, it seems,
have heard much of Mr. Coleridge, and wish to meet _us_, because we are
_his_ friends. I have been preparing for the occasion. I crowd cotton in
my ears. I read all the reviews and magazines of the past month against
the dreadful meeting, and I hope by these means to cut a tolerable
second-rate figure.
Pray let us have no more complaints about shadows. We are in a fair way,
_through you_, to surfeit sick upon them.
Our loves and respects to your host and hostess. Our dearest love to
Coleridge.
Take no thought about your proof-sheets; they shall be done as if
Woodfall himself did them. Pray send us word of Mrs. Coleridge and
little David Hartley, your little reality.
Farewell, dear Substance. Take no umbrage at any thing I have written.
C. LAMB, _Umbra_.
Land of Shadows,
Shadow-month the 16th or 17th, 1800.
Coleridge, I find loose among your papers a copy of "_Christabel_." It
wants about thirty lines; you will very much oblige me by sending me the
beginning as far as that line,--
"And the spring comes slowly up this way;"
and the intermediate lines between--
"The lady leaps up suddenly.
The lovely Lady Christabel;"
and the lines,--
"She folded her arms beneath her cloak,
And stole to the other side of the oak."
The trouble to you _will be small_, and the benefit to us _very great_!
A pretty antithesis! A figure in speech I much applaud.
Godwin has called upon us. He spent one evening here. Was very friendly.
Kept us up till midnight. Drank punch, and talked about you. He seems,
above all men, mortified at your going away. Suppose you were to write
to that good-natured heathen--"or is he a _shadow_?" If I do not
_write_, impute it to the long postage, of which you have so much cause
to complain. I have scribbled over a _queer letter_, as I find by
perusal; but it means no mischief.
I am, and will be, yours ever, in sober sadness,
C. L.
Write your _German_ as plain as sunshine, for that must correct itself.
You know I am homo unius linguae: in English, illiterate, a dunce, a
ninny.
[Having left Lamb, Coleridge went to Grasmere, where he stayed at Dove
Cottage with Wordsworth and finished his translation, which was ready
for the printer on April 22. To what Lamb alludes in his reference to
the homily on "Realities" I cannot say, but presumably Coleridge had
written a metaphysical letter on this subject. Lamb returns to the
matter at the end of the first part of his reply.
Miss Wesley was Sarah Wesley (1760-1828), the daughter of Charles Wesley
and, therefore, niece of the great John and Samuel. She moved much in
literary society. Miss Benjay, or Benjé, was in reality Elizabeth Ogilvy
Benger (1778-1827), a friend of Mrs. Inchbald, Mrs. Barbauld and the
Aikins, and other literary people. Madame de Stael called her the most
interesting woman she had met in England. She wrote novels and poems and
biographies. In those days there were two East Streets, one leading from
Red Lion Square to Lamb's Conduit Street, and one in the neighbourhood
of Clare Market.
D'Israeli was Isaac Disraeli, the author of _The Curiosities of
Literature_ and other books about books and authors; Miss More was
Hannah More, and her book, _Strictures on the Modern System of Female
Education, 1799_; Dr. Gregory I have not traced; Miss Seward was Anna
Seward, the Swan of Lichfield; and the Miss Porters were Jane and Anna
Maria, authors (later) respectively of _The Scottish Chiefs_ and
_Thaddeus of Warsaw_, and _The Hungarian Brothers_.
The proof-sheets were those of _Wallenstein_. Henry Sampson Woodfall was
the famous printer of the _Letters of Junius_.
_Christabel_, Coleridge's poem, had been begun in 1797; it was finished,
in so far as it was finished, later in the year 1800. It was published
first in 1816.
"_Homo unius linguae_." Lamb exaggerated here. He had much Latin, a
little Greek and apparently a little French. The sentence is in the
manner of Burton, whom Lamb had been imitating.
Here should come a letter dated April 23, 1800, to Robert Lloyd, which
treats of obedience to parental wish. Lloyd seems to have objected to
attend the meetings of the Society of Friends, of which he was a
birthright member. Lamb bids him go; adding that, if his own parents
were to live again, he would do more things to please them than merely
sitting still a few hours in a week.]
LETTER 55
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
[? Spring, 1800.]
By some fatality, unusual with me, I have mislaid the list of books
which you want. Can you, from memory, easily supply me with another?
I confess to Statius, and I detained him wilfully, out of a reverent
regard to your style. Statius, they tell me, is turgid. As to that other
Latin book, since you know neither its name nor subject, your wants (I
crave leave to apprehend) cannot be very urgent. Meanwhile, dream that
it is one of the lost Decades of Livy.
Your partiality to me has led you to form an erroneous opinion as to the
measure of delight you suppose me to take in obliging. Pray, be careful
that it spread no further. 'Tis one of those heresies that is very
pregnant. Pray, rest more satisfied with the portion of learning which
you have got, and disturb my peaceful ignorance as little as possible
with such sort of commissions.
Did you never observe an appearance well known by the name of the man in
the moon? Some scandalous old maids have set on foot a report that it is
Endymion. Dr. Stoddart talks of going out King's Advocate to Malta. He
has studied the Civil and Canon Law just three canon months, to my
knowledge. _Fiat justitia, ruat caelum._
Your theory about the first awkward step a man makes being the
consequence of learning to dance, is not universal. We have known many
youths bred up at Christ's, who never learned to dance, yet the world
imputes to them no very graceful motions. I remember there was little
Hudson, the immortal precentor of St. Paul's, to teach us our quavers:
but, to the best of my recollection, there was no master of motions when
we were at Christ's.
Farewell, in haste.
C.L.
[Talfourd does not date this letter, merely remarking that it belongs to
the present period. Canon Ainger dated it June 22, 1800; but this I
think cannot be right when we take into consideration Letter 60 and what
it says about Lamb's last letter to Coleridge (clearly that of May 12),
and the time that has since elapsed. The birth of Charles Lloyd's first
child, July 31, gives us the latest date to which Letter 60 could
belong.
"Your theory ..." This may have been contained in one of Coleridge's
letters, now lost; I do not find it in any of the known _Morning Post_
articles.]
LETTER 56
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
Monday, May 12th, 1800.
My dear Coleridge--I don't know why I write, except from the propensity
misery has to tell her griefs. Hetty died on Friday night, about eleven
o'clock, after eight days' illness; Mary, in consequence of fatigue and
anxiety, is fallen ill again, and I was obliged to remove her yesterday.
I am left alone in a house with nothing but Hetty's dead body to keep me
company. To-morrow I bury her, and then I shall be quite alone, with
nothing but a cat to remind me that the house has been full of living
beings like myself. My heart is quite sunk, and I don't know where to
look for relief. Mary will get better again; but her constantly being
liable to such relapses is dreadful; nor is it the least of our evils
that her case and all our story is so well known around us. We are in a
manner _marked_. Excuse my troubling you; but I have nobody by me to
speak to me. I slept out last night, not being able to endure the change
and the stillness. But I did not sleep well, and I must come back to my
own bed. I am going to try and get a friend to come and be with me
to-morrow. I am completely shipwrecked. My head is quite bad. I almost
wish that Mary were dead.--God bless you! Love to Sara and Hartley.
C. LAMB.
[Hetty was the Lambs' aged servant.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Thomas Manning clearly written on
May 12, 1800, the same day as that to Coleridge, stating that Lamb has
given up his house, and is looking for lodgings,--White (with whom he
had stayed) having "all kindness but not sympathy".]
LETTER 57
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[P.M. May 20, 1800.]
Dear Manning,--I feel myself unable to thank you sufficiently for your
kind letter. It was doubly acceptable to me, both for the choice poetry
and the kind honest prose which it contained. It was just such a letter
as I should have expected from Manning.
I am in much better spirits than when I wrote last. I have had a very
eligible offer to lodge with a friend in town. He will have rooms to let
at midsummer, by which time I hope my sister will be well enough to join
me. It is a great object to me to live in town, where we shall be much
more _private_, and to quit a house and neighbourhood where poor Mary's
disorder, so frequently recurring, has made us a sort of marked people.
We can be nowhere private except in the midst of London. We shall be in
a family where we visit very frequently; only my landlord and I have not
yet come to a conclusion. He has a partner to consult. I am still on the
tremble, for I do not know where we could go into lodgings that would
not be, in many respects, highly exceptionable. Only God send Mary well
again, and I hope all will be well! The prospect, such as it is, has
made me quite happy. I have just time to tell you of it, as I know it
will give you pleasure.--Farewell.
C. LAMB.
[Manning's letter containing the choice poetry has not been preserved.
The friend in town was John Mathew Gutch (1776-1861), with whom Lamb had
been at school at Christ's Hospital, who was now a law stationer, in
partnership with one Anderson, at 27 Southampton Buildings, Chancery
Lane, since demolished.]
LETTER 58
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[No date. ? May 25, 1800.]
Dear Manning, I am a letter in your debt, but I am scarcely rich enough
(in spirits) to pay you.--I am writing at an inn on the Ware road, in
the neighbourhood of which I am going to pass two days, being
Whitsuntide.--Excuse the pen, tis the best I can get.--Poor Mary is very
bad yet. I went yesterday hoping I should see her getting well, then I
might have come into the country more chearful, but I could not get to
see her. This has been a sad damp. Indeed I never in my life have been
more wretched than I was all day yesterday. I am glad I am going away
from business for a little while, for my head has been hot and ill. I
shall be very much alone where I am going, which always revives me. I
hope you will accept of this worthless memento, which I merely send as a
token that I am in your debt. I will write upon my return, on Thursday
at farthest. I return on Wednesday.--
God bless you.
I was afraid you would think me forgetful, and that made me scribble
this jumble.
Sunday.
[Here probably also should come an unpublished letter from Lamb to
Manning, in which Lamb remarks that his goddess is Pecunia.
In another letter to Manning belonging to the same period, Lamb returns
to the subject of poverty:--"You dropt a word whether in jest or
earnest, as if you would join me in some work, such as a review or
series of papers, essays, or anything.--Were you serious? I want home
occupation, & I more want money. Had you any scheme, or was it, as G.
Dyer says, en passant? If I don't have a Legacy left me shortly I must
get into pay with some newspaper for small gains. Mutton is twelvepence
a pound."
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, in which he
describes a visit to Gutch's family at Oxford, and mentions his
admiration for a fine head of Bishop Taylor in All Souls' Library, which
was an inducement to the Oxford visit. He refers to Charles Lloyd's
settlement in the Lakes, and suggests that it may be the means of again
uniting him and Coleridge; adding that such men as Coleridge and
Wordsworth would exclude solitude in the Hebrides or Thule.
The following undated letter, which may be placed a little too soon in
its present position, comes with a certain fitness here:--]
LETTER 59
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN MATHEW GUTCH
[No date. 1800.]
Dear Gutch, Anderson is not come home, and I am almost afraid to tell
you what has happen'd, lest it should seem to have happened by my fault
in not writing for you home sooner.--
This morning Henry, the eldest lad, was missing. We supposd he was only
gone out on a morning's stroll, and that he would return, but he did not
return & we discovered that he had opened your desk before he went, & I
suppose taken all the money he could find, for on diligent search I
could find none, and on opening your Letter to Anderson, which I thought
necessary to get at the key, I learn that you had a good deal of money
there.
Several people have been here after you to-day, & the boys seem quite
frightened, and do not know what to do. In particular, one gentleman
wants to have some writings finished by Tuesday--For God's sake set out
by the first coach. Mary has been crying all day about it, and I am now
just going to some law stationer in the neighbourhood, that the eldest
boy has recommended, to get him to come and be in the house for a day or
so, to manage. I cannot think what detains Anderson. His sister is quite
frightend about him. I am very sorry I did not write yesterday, but
Henry persuaded me to wait till he could ascertain when some job must be
done (at the furthest) for Mr. Foulkes, and as nothing had occurrd
besides I did not like to disturb your pleasures. I now see my error,
and shall be heartily ashamed to see you.
[_That is as far as the letter goes on the first page. We then turn
over, and find (as Gutch, to his immense relief, found before us)
written right across both pages:_]
A BITE!!!
Anderson is come home, and the wheels of thy business are going on as
ever. The boy is honest, and I am thy friend. And how does the
coach-maker's daughter? Thou art her Phaeton, her Gig, and her Sociable.
Commend me to Rob.
C. LAMB.
Saturday.
[This letter is the first example extant of Lamb's tendency to hoaxing.
Gutch was at that time courting a Miss Wheeley, the daughter of a
Birmingham coachbuilder. It was while he was in Birmingham that Lamb
wrote the letter. Anderson was his partner in business. Rob would be
Robert Lloyd, then at Birmingham again. This, and one other, are the
only letters of Lamb to Gutch that escaped destruction.]
LETTER 60
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
[? Late July, 1800.]
Dear Coleridge,--Soon after I wrote to you last, an offer was made me by
Gutch (you must remember him? at Christ's--you saw him, slightly, one
day with Thomson at our house)--to come and lodge with him at his house
in Southampton Buildings, Chancery-Lane. This was a very comfortable
offer to me, the rooms being at a reasonable rent, and including the use
of an old servant, besides being infinitely preferable to ordinary
lodgings _in our case_, as you must perceive. As Gutch knew all our
story and the perpetual liability to a recurrence in my sister's
disorder, probably to the end of her life, I certainly think the offer
very generous and very friendly. I have got three rooms (including
servant) under £34 a year. Here I soon found myself at home; and here,
in six weeks after, Mary was well enough to join me. So we are once more
settled. I am afraid we are not placed out of the reach of future
interruptions. But I am determined to take what snatches of pleasure we
can between the acts of our distressful drama.... I have passed two days
at Oxford on a visit, which I have long put off, to Gutch's family. The
sight of the Bodleian Library and, above all, a fine bust of Bishop
Taylor at All Souls', were particularly gratifying to me; unluckily, it
was not a family where I could take Mary with me, and I am afraid there
is something of dishonesty in any pleasures I take without _her_. She
never goes anywhere. I do not know what I can add to this letter. I hope
you are better by this time; and I desire to be affectionately
remembered to Sara and Hartley.
I expected before this to have had tidings of another little
philosopher. Lloyd's wife is on the point of favouring the world.
Have you seen the new edition of Burns? his posthumous works and
letters? I have only been able to procure the first volume, which
contains his life--very confusedly and badly written, and interspersed
with dull pathological and _medical_ discussions. It is written by a Dr.
Currie. Do you know the well-meaning doctor? Alas, _ne sutor ultra
crepitum_! [_A few words omitted here_.]
I hope to hear again from you very soon. Godwin is gone to Ireland on a
visit to Grattan. Before he went I passed much time with him, and he has
showed me particular attentions: N.B. A thing I much like. Your books
are all safe: only I have not thought it necessary to fetch away your
last batch, which I understand are at Johnson's the bookseller, who has
got quite as much room, and will take as much care of them as
myself--and you can send for them immediately from him.
I wish you would advert to a letter I sent you at Grasmere about
"Christabel," and comply with my request contained therein.
Love to all friends round Skiddaw.
C. LAMB.
[The Coleridges had recently moved into Greta Hall, Keswick.
Thomson would, I think, be Marmaduke Thompson, an old Christ's
Hospitaller, to whom Lamb dedicated _Rosamund Gray_. He became a
missionary.
"Another little philosopher." Derwent Coleridge was born September 14,
1800. Lloyd's eldest son, Charles Grosvenor Lloyd, was born July 31,
1800.
Dr. James Currie's Life of Burns was prefixed to an edition of his poems
in 1800. Dugald Stewart called it "a strong and faithful picture." It
was written to raise funds for Burns' widow and family.
Godwin had gone to stay with Curran: he saw much of Grattan also.
Johnson, the publisher and bookseller, lived at 72 St. Paul's
Churchyard. He published Priestley's works.]
LETTER 61
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Aug. 6th, 1800.
Dear Coleridge,--I have taken to-day, and delivered to Longman and Co.,
_Imprimis_: your books, viz., three ponderous German dictionaries, one
volume (I can find no more) of German and French ditto, sundry other
German books unbound, as you left them, Percy's Ancient Poetry, and one
volume of Anderson's Poets. I specify them, that you may not lose any.
_Secundo_: a dressing-gown (value, fivepence), in which you used to sit
and look like a conjuror, when you were translating "Wallenstein." A
case of two razors and a shaving-box and strap. This it has cost me a
severe struggle to part with. They are in a brown-paper parcel, which
also contains sundry papers and poems, sermons, _some few Epic_
Poems,--one about Cain and Abel, which came from Poole, &c., &c., and
also your tragedy; with one or two small German books, and that drama in
which Gotfader performs. _Tertio_: a small oblong box containing _all
your letters_, collected from all your waste papers, and which fill the
said little box. All other waste papers, which I judged worth sending,
are in the paper parcel aforesaid. But you will find _all_ your letters
in the box by themselves. Thus have I discharged my conscience and my
lumber-room of all your property, save and except a folio entitled
Tyrrell's Bibliotheca Politica, which you used to learn your politics
out of when you wrote for the Post, _mutatis mutandis, i.e._, applying
past inferences to modern _data_. I retain that, because I am sensible I
am very deficient in the politics myself; and I have torn up--don't be
angry, waste paper has risen forty per cent., and I can't afford to buy
it--all Buonaparte's Letters, Arthur Young's Treatise on Corn, and one
or two more light-armed infantry, which I thought better suited the
flippancy of London discussion than the dignity of Keswick thinking.
Mary says you will be in a damned passion about them when you come to
miss them; but you must study philosophy. Read Albertus Magnus de
Chartis Amissis five times over after phlebotomising,--'tis Burton's
recipe--and then be angry with an absent friend if you can. I have just
heard that Mrs. Lloyd is delivered of a fine boy, and mother and boy are
doing well. Fie on sluggards, what is thy Sara doing? Sara is obscure.
Am I to understand by her letter, that she sends a _kiss_ to Eliza
Buckingham? Pray tell your wife that a note of interrogation on the
superscription of a letter is highly ungrammatical--she proposes writing
my name _Lamb_? Lambe is quite enough. I have had the Anthology, and
like only one thing in it, _Lewti_; but of that the last stanza is
detestable, the rest most exquisite!--the epithet _enviable_ would dash
the finest poem. For God's sake (I never was more serious), don't make
me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print, or do it
in better verses. It did well enough five years ago when I came to see
you, and was moral coxcomb enough at the time you wrote the lines, to
feed upon such epithets; but, besides that, the meaning of gentle is
equivocal at best, and almost always means poor-spirited, the very
quality of gentleness is abhorrent to such vile trumpetings. My
_sentiment_ is long since vanished. I hope my _virtues_ have done
_sucking_. I can scarce think but you meant it in joke. I hope you did,
for I should be ashamed to think that you could think to gratify me by
such praise, fit only to be a cordial to some green-sick sonneteer.
I have hit off the following in imitation of old English poetry, which,
I imagine, I am a dab at. The measure is unmeasureable; but it most
resembles that beautiful ballad of the "Old and Young Courtier;" and in
its feature of taking the extremes of two situations for just parallel,
it resembles the old poetry certainly. If I could but stretch out the
circumstances to twelve more verses, i.e., if I had as much genius as
the writer of that old song, I think it would be excellent. It was to
follow an imitation of Burton in prose, which you have not seen. But
fate "and wisest Stewart" say No.
I can send you 200 pens and six quires of paper _immediately_, if they
will answer the carriage by coach. It would be foolish to pack 'em up
_cum multis libris et caeteris_,--they would all spoil. I only wait your
commands to coach them. I would pay five-and-forty thousand carriages to
read W.'s tragedy, of which I have heard so much and seen so
little--only what I saw at Stowey. Pray give me an order in writing on
Longman for "Lyrical Ballads." I have the first volume, and, truth to
tell, six shillings is a broad shot. I cram all I can in, to save a
multiplying of letters--those pretty comets with swingeing tails.
I'll just crowd in God bless you!
C. LAMB.
Wednesday night.
[The epic about Cain and Abel was "The Wanderings of Cain," which
Coleridge projected but never finished. The drama in which Got-fader
performs would be perhaps "Faust"--"Der Herr" in the Prologue--or some
old miracle play.
"'Tis Burton's recipe." Lamb was just now steeped in the _Anatomy_; but
there is no need to see if Burton says this.
"Eliza Buckingham." Sara Coleridge's message was probably intended for
Eliza, a servant at the Buckingham Street lodgings.
Lambe was _The Anti-Jacobin's_ idea of Lamb's name; and indeed many
persons adhered to it to the end. Mrs. Coleridge, when writing to her
husband under care of Lamb at the India House, added "e" to Lamb's name
to signify that the letter was for Coleridge. Wordsworth later also had
some of his letters addressed in the same way--for the same economical
reason.
Coleridge's "Lewti" was reprinted, with alterations, from the _Morning
Post_, in the _Annual Anthology_, Vol. II. Line 69 ran--
"Had I the enviable power;"
Coleridge changed this to--
"Voice of the Night! had I the power."
"This Lime-tree Bower my Prison; a Poem, addressed to Charles Lamb of
the India House, London," was also in the _Annual Anthology_. Lamb
objected to the phrase "My gentle-hearted Charles" (see above). Lamb
says "five years ago"; he means three. Coleridge did not alter the
phrase. It was against this poem that he wrote in pencil on his deathbed
in 1834: "Ch. and Mary Lamb--dear to my heart, yea, as it were, my
heart.--S. T. C. Aet. 63, 1834. 1797-1834 = 37 years!"
"I have hit off the following"--"A Ballad Denoting the Difference
between the Rich and the Poor," first printed among the Imitations of
Burton in the _John Woodvil_ volume, 1802, see Vol. IV.
"And wisest Stewart"--Stuart of the _Morning Post_. Adapted from
Milton's "Hymn on the Nativity"--
"But wisest Fate says no."
"W.'s (Wordsworth's) tragedy" was "The Borderers." The second edition of
_Lyrical Ballads_ was just ready.]
LETTER 62
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[P.M. August 9, 1800.]
Dear Manning,--I suppose you have heard of Sophia Lloyd's good fortune,
and paid the customary compliments to the parents. Heaven keep the
new-born infant from star-blasting and moon-blasting, from epilepsy,
marasmus, and the devil! May he live to see many days, and they good
ones; some friends, and they pretty regular correspondents, with as much
wit as wisdom as will eat their bread and cheese together under a poor
roof without quarrelling; as much goodness as will earn heaven! Here I
must leave off, my benedictory powers failing me. I could _curse_ the
sheet full; so much stronger is corruption than grace in the Natural
Man.
And now, when shall I catch a glimpse of your honest face-to-face
countenance again--your fine _dogmatical sceptical_ face, by
punch-light? O! one glimpse of the human face, and shake of the human
hand, is better than whole reams of this cold, thin correspondence--yea,
of more worth than all the letters that have sweated the fingers of
sensibility from Madame Sévigné and Balzac (observe my Larning!) to
Sterne and Shenstone.
Coleridge is settled with his wife and the young philosopher at Keswick
with the Wordsworths. They have contrived to spawn a new volume of
lyrical ballads, which is to see the light in about a month, and causes
no little excitement in the _literary world_. George Dyer too, that
good-natured heathen, is more than nine months gone with his twin
volumes of ode, pastoral, sonnet, elegy, Spenserian, Horatian,
Akensidish, and Masonic verse--Clio prosper the birth! it will be twelve
shillings out of somebody's pocket. I find he means to exclude "personal
satire," so it appears by his truly original advertisement. Well, God
put it into the hearts of the English gentry to come in shoals and
subscribe to his poems, for He never put a kinder heart into flesh of
man than George Dyer's!
Now farewell: for dinner is at hand. C. L.
[Southey's letters contain a glimpse (as Mr. J.A. Rutter has pointed
out) of Lamb and Manning by punch-light. Writing in 1824, describing a
certain expression of Mrs. Coleridge's face, Southey says:--
First, then, it was an expression of dolorous alarm, such as Le Brun
ought to have painted: but such as Manning never could have equalled,
when, while Mrs. Lloyd was keeping her room in child-bed, he and Charles
Lamb sate drinking punch in the room below till three in the morning--
Manning acting Le Brun's passions (punchified at the time), and Charles
Lamb (punchified also) roaring aloud and swearing, while the tears ran
down his cheeks, that it required more genius than even Shakespeare
possessed to personate them so well; Charles Lloyd the while (not
punchified) praying and entreating them to go to bed, and not disturb
his wife by the uproar they were making.
Southey's reminiscence, though interesting, is very confusing. Lamb does
not seem to have visited Cambridge between the end of 1799 and January
5, 1800. At the latter date the Lloyds were in the north. Possibly
Southey refers to an earlier illness of Mrs. Lloyd, which, writing after
a long interval, he confused with confinement.
"Balzac." Not, of course, the novelist; but Jean Louis Guez de Balzac
(1594-1654) the letter-writer.
Two or three lines have been omitted from this letter which can be read
as written only in the Boston Bibliophile edition.]
LETTER 63
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[P.M. August 11, 1800.]
My dear fellow (_N.B._ mighty familiar of late!) for me to come to
Cambridge now is one of God Almighty's impossibilities. Metaphysicians
tell us, even He can work nothing which implies a contradiction. I can
explain this by telling you that I am engaged to do double duty (this
hot weather!) for a man who has taken advantage of this very weather to
go and cool himself in "green retreats" all the month of August.
But for you to come to London instead!--muse upon it, revolve it, cast
it about in your mind. I have a bed at your command. You shall drink
rum, brandy, gin, aqua-vitae, usquebaugh, or whiskey a' nights; and for
the after-dinner trick I have eight bottles of genuine port, which, if
mathematically divided, gives 1-1/7 for every day you stay, provided you
stay a week. Hear John Milton sing,
"Let Euclid rest and Archimedes pause."
Twenty-first Sonnet.
And elsewhere,--
"What neat repast shall feast us, light[1] and choice,
Of Attic taste, with wine,[2] whence we may rise
To hear the lute well touch'd, or artful voice
Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?"
Indeed, the poets are full of this pleasing morality--
"Veni cito, Domine Manning!"
Think upon it. Excuse the paper: it is all I have.
_N.B._--I lives at No. 27 Southampton Buildings, Holborn.
C. LAMB.
[Footnote 1: We poets generally give _light_ dinners.]
[Footnote 2: No doubt the poet here alludes to port wine at 38s. the
dozen.]
LETTER 64
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Thursday, Aug. 14, 1800.
Read on and you'll come to the _Pens_.
My head is playing all the tunes in the world, ringing such peals. It
has just finished the "Merry Christ Church Bells," and absolutely is
beginning "Turn again, Whittington." Buz, buz, buz: bum, bum, bum:
wheeze, wheeze, wheeze: feu, feu, feu: tinky, tinky, tinky: _craunch_. I
shall certainly come to be damned at last. I have been getting drunk for
two days running. I find my moral sense in the last stage of a
consumption, and my religion burning as blue and faint as the tops of
evening bricks. Hell gapes and the Devil's great guts cry cupboard for
me. In the midst of this infernal torture, Conscience (and be damn'd to
her), is barking and yelping as loud as any of them.
I have sat down to read over again, and I think I do begin to spy out
something with beauty and design in it. I perfectly accede to all your
alterations, and only desire that you had cut deeper, when your hand was
in.
In the next edition of the "Anthology" (which Phoebus avert and those
nine other wandering maids also!) please to blot out _gentle-hearted_,
and substitute drunken: dog, ragged-head, seld-shaven, odd-eyed,
stuttering, or any other epithet which truly and properly belongs to the
gentleman in question. And for Charles read Tom, or Bob, or Richard _for
more delicacy_. Damn you, I was beginning to forgive you and believe in
earnest that the lugging in of my proper name was purely unintentional
on your part, when looking back for further conviction, stares me in the
face _Charles Lamb of the India House. Now_ I am convinced it was all
done in malice, heaped sack-upon-sack, congregated, studied malice. You
Dog! your 141st page shall not save you. I own I was just ready to
acknowledge that there is a something not unlike good poetry in that
page, if you had not run into the unintelligible abstraction-fit about
the manner of the Deity's making spirits perceive his presence. God, nor
created thing alive, can receive any honour from such thin show-box
attributes.
By-the-by, where did you pick up that scandalous piece of private
history about the angel and the Duchess of Devonshire? If it is a
fiction of your own, why truly it is a very modest one _for you_. Now I
do affirm that "Lewti" is a very beautiful poem. I _was_ in earnest when
I praised it. It describes a silly species of one not the wisest of
passions. _Therefore_ it cannot deeply affect a disenthralled mind. But
such imagery, such novelty, such delicacy, and such versification never
got into an "Anthology" before. I am only sorry that the cause of all
the passionate complaint is not greater than the trifling circumstance
of Lewti being out of temper one day. In sober truth, I cannot see any
great merit in the little Dialogue called "Blenheim." It is rather novel
and pretty; but the thought is very obvious and children's poor prattle,
a thing of easy imitation. _Pauper vult videri et_ EST.
"Gualberto" certainly has considerable originality, but sadly wants
finishing. It is, as it is, one of the very best in the book. Next to
"Lewti" I like the "Raven," which has a good deal of humour. I was
pleased to see it again, for you once sent it me, and I have lost the
letter which contained it. Now I am on the subject of Anthologies, I
must say I am sorry the old Pastoral way has fallen into disrepute. The
Gentry which now indite Sonnets are certainly the legitimate descendants
of the ancient shepherds. The same simpering face of description, the
old family face, is visibly continued in the line. Some of their
ancestors' labours are yet to be found in Allan Ramsay's and Jacob
Tonson's _Miscellanies_.
But, miscellanies decaying and the old Pastoral way dying of mere want,
their successors (driven from their paternal acres) now-a-days settle
and hive upon Magazines and Anthologies. This Race of men are uncommonly
addicted to superstition. Some of them are Idolaters and worship the
Moon. Others deify qualities, as love, friendship, sensibility, or bare
accidents, as Solitude. Grief and Melancholy have their respective
altars and temples among them, as the heathens builded theirs to Mors,
Febris, Palloris. They all agree in ascribing a peculiar sanctity to the
number fourteen. One of their own legislators affirmeth, that whatever
exceeds that number "encroacheth upon the province of the Elegy"--_vice
versa_, whatever "cometh short of that number abutteth upon the premises
of the Epigram." I have been able to discover but few _Images_ in their
temples, which, like the Caves of Delphos of old, are famous for giving
_Echoes_. They impute a religious importance to the letter O, whether
because by its roundness it is thought to typify the moon, their
principal goddess, or for its analogies to their own labours, all ending
where they began; or whatever other high and mystical reference, I have
never been able to discover, but I observe they never begin their
invocations to their gods without it, except indeed one insignificant
sect among them, who use the Doric A, pronounced like Ah! broad,
instead. These boast to have restored the old Dorian mood.
Now I am on the subject of poetry, I must announce to you, who,
doubtless, in your remote part of the Island, have not heard tidings of
so great a blessing, that GEORGE DYER hath prepared two ponderous
volumes full of Poetry and Criticism. They impend over the town, and are
threatened to fall in the winter. The first volume contains every sort
of poetry except personal satire, which George, in his truly original
prospectus, renounceth for ever, whimsically foisting the intention in
between the price of his book and the proposed number of subscribers.
(If I can, I will get you a copy of his _handbill_.) He has tried his
_vein_ in every species besides--the Spenserian, Thomsonian, Masonic and
Akensidish more especially. The second volume is all criticism; wherein
he demonstrates to the entire satisfaction of the literary world, in a
way that must silence all reply for ever, that the pastoral was
introduced by Theocritus and polished by Virgil and Pope--that Gray and
Mason (who always hunt in couples in George's brain) have a good deal of
poetical fire and true lyric genius--that Cowley was ruined by excess of
wit (a warning to all moderns)--that Charles Lloyd, Charles Lamb, and
William Wordsworth, in later days, have struck the true chords of poesy.
O, George, George, with a head uniformly wrong and a heart uniformly
right, that I had power and might equal to my wishes!--then I would call
the Gentry of thy native Island, and they should come in troops,
flocking at the sound of thy Prospectus Trumpet, and crowding who shall
be first to stand in thy List of Subscribers. I can only put twelve
shillings into thy pocket (which, I will answer for them, will not stick
there long), out of a pocket almost as bare as thine. [_Lamb here erases
six lines._]
Is it not a pity so much fine writing should be erased? But, to tell the
truth, I began to scent that I was getting into that sort of style which
Longinus and Dionysius Halicarnassus aptly call "the affected." But I am
suffering from the combined effect of two days' drunkenness, and at such
times it is not very easy to think or express in a natural series. The
ONLY useful OBJECT of this Letter is to apprize you that on Saturday I
shall transmit the PENS by the same coach I sent the Parcel. So enquire
them out. You had better write to Godwin _here_, directing your letter
to be forwarded to him. I don't know his address. You know your letter
must at any rate come to London first. C. L.
["Your satire upon me"--"This Lime-tree Bower my Prison" (see above).
"Those nine other wandering maids"--the Muses. A recollection of _The
Anti-Jacobin's_ verses on Lamb and his friends (see above).
"Your 141st page." "This Lime-tree Bower" again. By "unintelligible
abstraction-fit" Lamb refers to the passage:--
Ah! slowly sink
Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun!
Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,
Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds!
Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!
And kindle, thou blue Ocean! So my friend
Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,
Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round
On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily; and of such hues
As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet He makes
Spirits perceive His presence.
"That scandalous piece of private history." A reference to Coleridge's
"Ode to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire," reprinted in the _Annual
Anthology_ from the _Morning Post_.
"Blenheim"--Southey's ballad, "It was a summer's evening."
"Gualberto." The poem "St. Gualberto" by Southey, in the _Annual
Anthology_.
"The Raven" was referred to in Lamb's letter of Feb. 5, 1797.
George Dyer's _Poems_, in two volumes, were published in 1800. See note
to Letter 80.
Upon the phrase "the tops of evening bricks" in this letter, editors
have been divided. The late Dr. Garnett, who annotated the Boston
Bibliophile edition, is convinced that "evening" is the word, and he
says that the bricks meant were probably briquettes of compressed coal
dust.]
LETTER 65
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[P.M. August 24, 1800.]
Dear Manning,--I am going to ask a favour of you, and am at a loss how
to do it in the most delicate manner. For this purpose I have been
looking into Pliny's Letters, who is noted to have had the best grace in
begging of all the ancients (I read him in the elegant translation of
Mr. Melmoth), but not finding any case there exactly similar with mine,
I am constrained to beg in my own barbarian way. To come to the point
then, and hasten into the middle of things, have you a copy of your
Algebra to give away? I do not ask it for myself; I have too much
reverence for the Black Arts ever to approach thy circle, illustrious
Trismegist! But that worthy man and excellent Poet, George Dyer, made me
a visit yesternight, on purpose to borrow one, supposing, rationally
enough I must say, that you had made me a present of one before this;
the omission of which I take to have proceeded only from negligence; but
it is a fault. I could lend him no assistance. You must know he is just
now diverted from the pursuit of BELL LETTERS by a paradox, which he has
heard his friend Frend (that learned mathematician) maintain, that the
negative quantities of mathematicians were _merae nugae_, things
scarcely _in rerum naturá_, and smacking too much of mystery for
gentlemen of Mr. Frend's clear Unitarian capacity. However, the dispute
once set a-going has seized violently on George's pericranick; and it is
necessary for his health that he should speedily come to a resolution of
his doubts. He goes about teasing his friends with his new mathematics;
he even frantically talks of purchasing Manning's Algebra, which shows
him far gone, for, to my knowledge, he has not been master of seven
shillings a good time. George's pockets and ----'s brains are two things
in nature which do not abhor a vacuum.... Now, if you could step in, in
this trembling suspense of his reason, and he should find on Saturday
morning, lying for him at the Porter's Lodge, Clifford's Inn,--his
safest address--Manning's Algebra, with a neat manuscriptum in the blank
leaf, running thus, FROM THE AUTHOR! it might save his wits and restore
the unhappy author to those studies of poetry and criticism, which are
at present suspended, to the infinite regret of the whole literary
world.
N.B.--Dirty books [?backs], smeared leaves, and dogs' ears, will be
rather a recommendation than otherwise.
N.B.--He must have the book as soon as possible, or nothing can withhold
him from madly purchasing the book on tick.... Then shall we see him
sweetly restored to the chair of Longinus--to dictate in smooth and
modest phrase the laws of verse; to prove that Theocritus first
introduced the Pastoral, and Virgil and Pope brought it to its
perfection; that Gray and Mason (who always hunt in couples in George's
brain) have shown a great deal of poetical fire in their lyric poetry;
that Aristotle's rules are not to be servilely followed, which George
has shown to have imposed great shackles upon modern genius. His poems,
I find, are to consist of two vols.--reasonable octavo; and a third book
will exclusively contain criticisms, in which he asserts he has gone
_pretty deeply_ into the laws of blank verse and rhyme--epic poetry,
dramatic and pastoral ditto--all which is to come out before Christmas.
But above all he has _touched_ most _deeply_ upon the Drama, comparing
the English with the modern German stage, their merits and defects.
Apprehending that his _studies_ (not to mention his _turn_, which I take
to be chiefly towards the lyrical poetry) hardly qualified him for these
disquisitions, I modestly inquired what plays he had read? I found by
George's reply that he _had_ read Shakspeare, but that was a good while
since: he calls him a great but irregular genius, which I think to be an
original and just remark. (Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Ben Jonson,
Shirley, Marlowe, Ford, and the worthies of Dodsley's Collection--he
confessed he had read none of them, but professed his intention of
looking through them all, so as to be able to touch upon them in his
book.)
So Shakspeare, Otway, and I believe Rowe, to whom he was naturally
directed by Johnson's Lives, and these not read lately, are to stand him
in stead of a general knowledge of the subject. God bless his dear
absurd head!
By the by, did I not write you a letter with something about an
invitation in it?--but let that pass; I suppose it is not agreeable.
N.B. It would not be amiss if you were to accompany your present with a
dissertation on negative quantities.
C. L.
[Mr. Melmoth. A translation of the _Letters_ of Pliny the Younger was
made by William Melmoth in 1746.
Trismegistus--thrice greatest--was the term applied to Hermes, the
Egyptian philosopher. Manning had written _An Introduction to Arithmetic
and Algebra_, 1796, 1798.
William Frend (1757-1841), the mathematician and Unitarian, who had been
prosecuted in the Vice-Chancellor's Court at Cambridge for a tract
entitled "Peace and Union Recommended to the Associated Bodies of
Republicans and Anti-Republicans," in which he attacked much of the
Liturgy of the Church of England. He was found guilty and banished from
the University of Cambridge. He had been a friend of Robert Robinson,
whose life Dyer wrote, and remained a friend of Dyer to the end of his
life. Coleridge had been among the undergraduates who supported Frend at
his trial.
"...'s brain." In a later letter Lamb uses Judge Park's wig, when his
head is in it, as a simile for emptiness.]
LETTER 66
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
August 26th, 1800.
How do you like this little epigram? It is not my writing, nor had I any
finger in it. If you concur with me in thinking it very elegant and very
original, I shall be tempted to name the author to you. I will just hint
that it is almost or quite a first attempt.
HELEN REPENTANT TOO LATE
1
High-born Helen, round your dwelling
These twenty years I've paced in vain:
Haughty beauty, your lover's duty
Has been to glory in his pain.
2
High-born Helen! proudly telling
Stories of your cold disdain;
I starve, I die, now you comply,
And I no longer can complain.
3
These twenty years I've lived on tears,
Dwelling for ever on a frown;
On sighs I've fed, your scorn my bread;
I perish now you kind are grown.
4
Can I, who loved my Beloved
But for the "scorn was in her eye,"
Can I be moved for my Beloved,
When she "returns me sigh for sigh?"
5
In stately pride, by my bed-side,
High-born Helen's portrait's hung;
Deaf to my praise; my mournful lays
Are nightly to the portrait sung.
6
To that I weep, nor ever sleep,
Complaining all night long to her!
_Helen, grown old, no longer cold,
Said_, "You to all men I prefer."
Godwin returned from Wicklow the week before last, tho' he did not reach
home till the Sunday after. He might much better have spent that time
with you.--But you see your invitation would have been too late. He
greatly regrets the occasion he mist of visiting you, but he intends to
revisit Ireland in the next summer, and then he will certainly take
Keswick in his way. I dined with the Heathen on Sunday.
By-the-by, I have a sort of recollection that somebody, I think _you_,
promised me a sight of Wordsworth's Tragedy. I should be very glad of it
just now; for I have got Manning with me, and should like to read it
_with him_. But this, I confess, is a refinement. Under any
circumstances, alone in Cold Bath Prison, or in the desert island, just
when Prospero & his crew had set off, with Caliban in a cage, to Milan,
it would be a treat to me to read that play. Manning has read it, so has
Lloyd, and all Lloyd's family; but I could not get him to betray his
trust by giving me a sight of it. Lloyd is sadly deficient in some of
those virtuous vices. I have just lit upon a most beautiful fiction of
hell punishments, by the author of "Hurlothrumbo," a mad farce. The
inventor imagines that in hell there is a great caldron of hot water, in
which a man can scarce hold his finger, and an immense sieve over it,
into which the probationary souls are put.
"And all the little souls
Pop through the riddle holes."
Mary's love to Mrs. Coleridge--mine to all.
N.B.--I pays no Postage.--
George Dyer is the only literary character I am happily acquainted with.
The oftener I see him, the more deeply I admire him. He is goodness
itself. If I could but calculate the precise date of his death, I would
write a novel on purpose to make George the hero. I could hit him off to
a hair.
George brought a Dr. Anderson to see me. The Doctor is a very pleasant
old man, a great genius for agriculture, one that ties his
breeches-knees with Packthread, & boasts of having had disappointments
from ministers. The Doctor happened to mention an Epic Poem by one
Wilkie, called the "Epigoniad," in which he assured us there is not one
tolerable line from beginning to end, but all the characters, incidents,
&c., are verbally copied from _Homer_. George, who had been sitting
quite inattentive to the Doctor's criticism, no sooner heard the sound
of _Homer_ strike his pericraniks, than up he gets, and declares he must
see that poem immediately: where was it to be had? An epic poem of 800
[? 8,000] lines, and _he_ not hear of it! There must be some things good
in it, and it was necessary he should see it, for he had touched pretty
deeply upon that subject in his criticisms on the Epic. George has
touched pretty deeply upon the Lyric, I find; he has also prepared a
dissertation on the Drama and the comparison of the English and German
theatres. As I rather doubted his competency to do the latter, knowing
that his peculiar _turn_ lies in the lyric species of composition, I
questioned George what English plays he had read. I found that he _had_
read Shakspere (whom he calls an original, but irregular, genius), but
it was a good while ago; and he has dipt into Rowe and Otway, I suppose
having found their names in Johnson's Lives at full length; and upon
this slender ground he has undertaken the task. He never seem'd even to
have heard of Fletcher, Ford, Marlow, Massinger, and the Worthies of
Dodsley's Collection; but he is to read all these, to prepare him for
bringing out his "Parallel" in the winter. I find he is also determined
to vindicate Poetry from the shackles which Aristotle & some others have
imposed upon it, which is very good-natured of him, and very necessary
just now! Now I am _touching_ so deeply upon poetry, can I forget that I
have just received from Cottle a magnificent copy of his Guinea Epic.
Four-and-twenty Books to read in the dog-days! I got as far as the Mad
Monk the first day, & fainted. Mr. Cottle's genius strongly points him
to the _Pastoral_, but his inclinations divert him perpetually from his
calling. He imitates Southey, as Rowe did Shakspeare, with his "Good
morrow to ye; good master Lieut't." Instead of _a_ man, _a_ woman, _a_
daughter, he constantly writes one a man, one a woman, one his daughter.
Instead of _the_ king, _the_ hero, he constantly writes, he the king, he
the hero--two flowers of rhetoric palpably from the "Joan." But Mr.
Cottle soars a higher pitch: and when he _is_ original, it is in a most
original way indeed. His terrific scenes are indefatigable. Serpents,
asps, spiders, ghosts, dead bodies, staircases made of nothing, with
adders' tongues for bannisters--My God! what a brain he must have! He
puts as many plums in his pudding as my Grandmother used to do; and then
his emerging from Hell's horrors into Light, and treading on pure flats
of this earth for twenty-three Books together!
C. L.
[The little epigram was by Mary Lamb. It was printed first in the _John
Woodvil_ volume in 1802; and again, in a footnote to Lamb's essay
"Blakesmoor in H----shire," 1824.
Godwin's return was from his visit to Curran. Coleridge had asked him to
break his journey at Keswick.
"Wordsworth's Tragedy"--"The Borderers."
"I would write a novel." Lamb returns to this idea in Letter 91.
One of Dyer's printed criticisms of Shakespeare, in his _Poetics_, some
years later might be quoted: "Shakespeare had the inward clothing of a
fine mind; the outward covering of solid reading, of critical
observation, and the richest eloquence; and compared with these, what
are the trappings of the schools?"
"Cottle's Guinea Epic" would be _Alfred, an Epic Poem_, by Joseph
Cottle, the publisher.]
LETTER 67
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[P.M. August 28, 1800.]
George Dyer is an Archimedes, and an Archimagus, and a Tycho Brahé, and
a Copernicus; and thou art the darling of the Nine, and midwife to their
wandering babe also! We take tea with that learned poet and critic on
Tuesday night, at half-past five, in his neat library; the repast will
be light and Attic, with criticism. If thou couldst contrive to wheel up
thy dear carcase on the Monday, and after dining with us on tripe,
calves' kidneys, or whatever else the Cornucopia of St. Clare may be
willing to pour out on the occasion, might we not adjourn together to
the Heathen's--thou with thy Black Backs and I with some innocent volume
of the Bell Letters--Shenstone, or the like? It would make him wash his
old flannel gown (that has not been washed to my knowledge since it has
been _his_--Oh the long time!) with tears of joy. Thou shouldst settle
his scruples and unravel his cobwebs, and sponge off the sad stuff that
weighs upon his dear wounded pia mater; thou shouldst restore light to
his eyes, and him to his friends and the public; Parnassus should shower
her civic crowns upon thee for saving the wits of a citizen! I thought I
saw a lucid interval in George the other night--he broke in upon my
studies just at tea-time, and brought with him Dr. Anderson, an old
gentleman who ties his breeches' knees with packthread, and boasts that
he has been disappointed by ministers. The Doctor wanted to see _me_;
for, I being a Poet, he thought I might furnish him with a copy of
verses to suit his "Agricultural Magazine." The Doctor, in the course of
the conversation, mentioned a poem called "Epigoniad" by one Wilkie, an
epic poem, in which there is not one tolerable good line all through,
but every incident and speech borrowed from Homer. George had been
sitting inattentive seemingly to what was going on--hatching of negative
quantities--when, suddenly, the name of his old friend Homer stung his
pericranicks, and, jumping up, he begged to know where he could meet
with Wilkie's work. "It was a curious fact that there should be such an
epic poem and he not know of it; and he _must_ get a copy of it, as he
was going to touch pretty deeply upon the subject of the Epic--and he
was sure there must be some things good in a poem of 1400 lines!" I was
pleased with this transient return of his reason and recurrence to his
old ways of thinking: it gave me great hopes of a recovery, which
nothing but your book can completely insure. Pray come on Monday if you
_can_, and stay your own time. I have a good large room, with two beds
in it, in the handsomest of which thou shalt repose a-nights, and dream
of Spheroides. I hope you will understand by the nonsense of this letter
that I am _not_ melancholy at the thoughts of thy coming: I thought it
necessary to add this, because you love _precision_. Take notice that
our stay at Dyer's will not exceed eight o'clock, after which our
pursuits will be our own. But indeed I think a little recreation among
the Bell Letters and poetry will do you some service in the interval of
severer studies. I hope we shall fully discuss with George Dyer what I
have never yet heard done to my satisfaction, the reason of Dr.
Johnson's malevolent strictures on the higher species of the Ode.
["Thy Black Back"--Manning's Algebra.
Dr. Anderson was James Anderson (1739-1808), the editor, at that time,
of _Recreations in Agriculture, Natural History, Arts, and Miscellaneous
History_, published in monthly parts. Lamb gave him a copy of
verses--three extracts from _John Woodvil_ which were printed in the
number for November, 1800, as being "from an unpublished drama by C.
Lamb." They were the "Description of a Forest Life," "The General Lover"
("What is it you love?") and "Fragment or Dialogue," better known as
"The Dying Lover." All have slight variations from other versions. The
most striking is the epithet "lubbar bands of sleep," instead of "lazy
bands of sleep," in the "Description of a Forest Life."
Wilkie was William Wilkie (1721-1772), the "Scottish Homer," whose
_Epigoniad_ in nine books, based on the fourth book of the _Iliad_, was
published in 1757.]
LETTER 68
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[P.M. Sept. 22, 1800.]
Dear Manning,--You needed not imagine any apology necessary. Your fine
hare and fine birds (which just now are dangling by our kitchen blaze)
discourse most eloquent music in your justification. You just nicked my
palate. For, with all due decorum and leave may it be spoken, my worship
hath taken physic for his body to-day, and being low and puling,
requireth to be pampered. Foh! how beautiful and strong those buttered
onions come to my nose! For you must know we extract a divine spirit of
gravy from those materials which, duly compounded with a consistence of
bread and cream (y'clept bread-sauce), each to each giving double grace,
do mutually illustrate and set off (as skilful goldfoils to rare jewels)
your partridge, pheasant, woodcock, snipe, teal, widgeon, and the other
lesser daughters of the ark. My friendship, struggling with my carnal
and fleshly prudence (which suggests that a bird a man is the proper
allotment in such cases), yearneth sometimes to have thee here to pick a
wing or so. I question if your Norfolk sauces match our London
culinaric.
George Dyer has introduced me to the table of an agreeable old
gentleman, Dr. Anderson, who gives hot legs of mutton and grape pies at
his sylvan lodge at Isleworth, where, in the middle of a street, he has
shot up a wall most preposterously before his small dwelling, which,
with the circumstance of his taking several panes of glass out of
bedroom windows (for air), causeth his neighbours to speculate strangely
on the state of the good man's pericranicks. Plainly, he lives under the
reputation of being deranged. George does not mind this circumstance; he
rather likes him the better for it. The Doctor, in his pursuits, joins
agricultural to poetical science, and has set George's brains mad about
the old Scotch writers, Harbour, Douglas's Aeneid, Blind Harry, &c. We
returned home in a return postchaise (having dined with the Doctor), and
George kept wondering and wondering, for eight or nine turnpike miles,
what was the name, and striving to recollect the name, of a poet
anterior to Barbour. I begged to know what was remaining of his works.
"There is nothing _extant_ of his works, Sir, but by all accounts he
seems to have been a fine genius!" This fine genius, without anything to
show for it or any title beyond George's courtesy, without even a name!
and Barbour, and Douglas, and Blind Harry, now are the predominant
sounds in George's pia mater, and their buzzings exclude politics,
criticism, and algebra--the late lords of that illustrious lumber-room.
Mark, he has never read any of these bucks, but is impatient till he
reads them _all_ at the Doctor's suggestion. Poor Dyer! his friends
should be careful what sparks they let fall into such inflammable
matter.
Could I have my will of the heathen, I would lock him up from all access
of new ideas; I would exclude all critics that would not swear me first
(upon their Virgil) that they would feed him with nothing but the old,
safe, familiar notions and sounds (the rightful aborigines of his
brain)--Gray, Akenside and Mason. In these sounds, reiterated as often
as possible, there could be nothing painful, nothing distracting.
God bless me, here are the birds, smoking hot!
All that is gross and unspiritual in me rises at the sight!
Avaunt friendship and all memory of absent friends!
C. LAMB.
["Divine spirit of gravy." This passage is the first of Lamb's outbursts
of gustatory ecstasy, afterwards to become frequent in his writings.
Here should come a letter, dated October 9, 1800, in the richest spirit
of comedy, describing to Coleridge an evening with George Dyer and the
Cottles after the death of their brother Amos; and how Lamb, by praising
Joseph Cottle's poem, drew away that good man's thoughts from his grief.
"Joseph, who till now had sat with his knees cowering in by the
fireplace, wheeled about, and with great difficulty of body shifted the
same round to the corner of a table where I was sitting, and first
stationing one thigh over the other, which is his sedentary mood, and
placidly fixing his benevolent face right against mine, waited my
observations. At that moment it came strongly into my mind, that I had
got Uncle Toby before me, he looked so kind and so good." The letter,
printed in full in other editions, is, I am given to understand, not
available for this.]
LETTER 69
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[P.M. Oct. 16, 1800.]
Dear Manning,--Had you written one week before you did, I certainly
should have obeyed your injunction; you should have seen me before my
letter. I will explain to you my situation. There are six of us in one
department. Two of us (within these four days) are confined with severe
fevers; and two more, who belong to the Tower Militia, expect to have
marching orders on Friday. Now six are absolutely necessary. I have
already asked and obtained two young hands to supply the loss of the
_feverites_; and, with the other prospect before me, you may believe I
cannot decently ask leave of absence for myself. All I can promise (and
I do promise with the sincerity of Saint Peter, and the contrition of
sinner Peter if I fail) that I will come _the very first spare week_,
and go nowhere till I have been at Cambridge. No matter if you are in a
state of pupilage when I come; for I can employ myself in Cambridge very
pleasantly in the mornings. Are there not libraries, halls, colleges,
books, pictures, statues? I wish to God you had made London in your way.
There is an exhibition quite uncommon in Europe, which could not have
escaped _your genius_,--a live rattlesnake, ten feet in length, and the
thickness of a big leg. I went to see it last night by candlelight. We
were ushered into a room very little bigger than ours at Pentonville. A
man and woman and four boys live in this room, joint tenants with nine
snakes, most of them such as no remedy has been discovered for their
bite. We walked into the middle, which is formed by a half-moon of wired
boxes, all mansions of _snakes_,--whip-snakes, thunder-snakes,
pig-nose-snakes, American vipers, and _this monster_. He lies curled up
in folds; and immediately a stranger enters (for he is used to the
family, and sees them play at cards,) he set up a rattle like a
watchman's in London, or near as loud, and reared up a head, from the
midst of these folds, like a toad, and shook his head, and showed every
sign a snake can show of irritation. I had the foolish curiosity to
strike the wires with my finger, and the devil flew at me with his
toad-mouth wide open: the inside of his mouth is quite white. I had got
my finger away, nor could he well have bit me with his damn'd big mouth,
which would have been certain death in five minutes. But it frightened
me so much, that I did not recover my voice for a minute's space. I
forgot, in my fear, that he was secured. You would have forgot too, for
'tis incredible how such a monster can be confined in small
gauzy-looking wires. I dreamed of snakes in the night. I wish to heaven
you could see it. He absolutely swelled with passion to the bigness of a
large thigh. I could not retreat without infringing on another box, and
just behind, a little devil not an inch from my back, had got his nose
out, with some difficulty and pain, quite through the bars! He was soon
taught better manners. All the snakes were curious, and objects of
terror: but this monster, like Aaron's serpent, swallowed up the
impression of the rest. He opened his damn'd mouth, when he made at me,
as wide as his head was broad. I hallooed out quite loud, and felt pains
all over my body with the fright.
I have had the felicity of hearing George Dyer read out one book of "The
Farmer's Boy." I thought it rather childish. No doubt, there is
originality in it, (which, in your self-taught geniuses, is a most rare
quality, they generally getting hold of some bad models in a scarcity of
books, and forming their taste on them,) but no _selection_. _All_ is
described.
Mind, I have only heard read one book.
Yours sincerely,
Philo-Snake,
C. L.
[_The Farmer's Boy_, by Robert Bloomfield, was published in March, 1800,
and was immensely popular. Other criticisms upon it by Lamb will be
found in this work.
Lamb's visit to Cambridge was deferred until January 5, 1801.]
LETTER 70
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[P.M. Nov. 3, 1800.]
_Ecquid meditatur Archimedes?_ What is Euclid doing? What has happened
to learned Trismegist?--Doth he take it in ill part, that his humble
friend did not comply with his courteous invitation? Let it suffice, I
could not come--are impossibilities nothing--be they abstractions of the
intellects or not (rather) most sharp and mortifying realities? nuts in
the Will's mouth too hard for her to crack? brick and stone walls in her
way, which she can by no means eat through? sore lets, _impedimenta
viarum_, no thoroughfares? _racemi nimium alte pendentes_? Is the phrase
classic? I allude to the grapes in Aesop, which cost the fox a strain,
and gained the world an aphorism. Observe the superscription of this
letter. In adapting the size of the letters, which constitute _your_
name and Mr. _Crisp's_ name respectively, I had an eye to your different
stations, in life. 'Tis really curious, and must be soothing to an
_aristocrat_. I wonder it has never been hit on before my time. I have
made an acquisition latterly of a _pleasant hand_, one Rickman, to whom
I was introduced by George Dyer, not the most flattering auspices under
which one man can be introduced to another. George brings all sorts of
people together, setting up a sort of agrarian law, or common property,
in matter of society; but for once he has done me a great pleasure,
while he was only pursuing a principle, as _ignes fatui may_ light you
home. This Rickman lives in our Buildings, immediately opposite our
house; the finest fellow to drop in a' nights, about nine or ten
o'clock--cold bread-and-cheese time--just in the _wishing_ time of the
night, when you _wish_ for somebody to come in, without a distinct idea
of a probable anybody. Just in the nick, neither too early to be
tedious, nor too late to sit a reasonable time. He is a most pleasant
hand: a fine rattling fellow, has gone through life laughing at solemn
apes; himself hugely literate, oppressively full of information in all
stuff of conversation, from matter of fact to Xenophon and Plato--can
talk Greek with Porson, politics with Thelwall, conjecture with George
Dyer, nonsense with me, and anything with anybody: a great farmer,
somewhat concerned in an agricultural magazine--reads no poetry but
Shakspeare, very intimate with Southey, but never reads his poetry:
relishes George Dyer, thoroughly penetrates into the ridiculous wherever
found, understands the _first time_ (a great desideratum in common
minds)--you need never twice speak to him; does not want explanations,
translations, limitations, as Professor Godwin does when you make an
assertion: _up_ to anything, _down_ to everything--whatever _sapit
hominem_. A perfect _man_. All this farrago, which must perplex you to
read, and has put me to a little trouble to _select_, only proves how
impossible it is to describe a _pleasant hand_. You must see Rickman to
know him, for he is a species in one. A new class. An exotic, any slip
of which I am proud to put in my garden-pot. The clearest-headed fellow.
Fullest of matter with least verbosity. If there be any alloy in my
fortune to have met with such a man, it is that he commonly divides his
time between town and country, having some foolish family ties at
Christchurch, by which means he can only gladden our London hemisphere
with returns of light. He is now going for six weeks.
At last I have written to Kemble, to know the event of my play, which
was presented last Christmas. As I suspected, came an answer back that
the copy was lost, and could not be found--no hint that anybody had to
this day ever looked into it--with a courteous (reasonable!) request of
another copy (if I had one by me,) and a promise of a definite answer in
a week. I could not resist so facile and moderate a demand, so scribbled
out another, omitting sundry things, such as the witch story, about half
of the forest scene (which is too leisurely for story), and transposing
that damn'd soliloquy about England getting drunk, which, like its
reciter, stupidly stood alone, nothing prevenient or antevenient, and
cleared away a good deal besides; and sent this copy, written _all out_
(with alterations, &c., _requiring judgment_) in one day and a half! I
sent it last night, and am in weekly expectation of the tolling-bell and
death-warrant.
This is all my Lunnon news. Send me some from the _banks of Cam_, as the
poets delight to speak, especially George Dyer, who has no other name,
nor idea, nor definition of Cambridge: namely, its being a market-town,
sending members to Parliament, never entered into his definition: it was
and is, simply, the banks of the Cam or the fair Cam, as Oxford is the
banks of the Isis or the fair Isis. Yours in all humility, most
illustrious Trismegist,
C. LAMB.
(Read on; there's more at the bottom.)
You ask me about the "Farmer's Boy"--don't you think the fellow who
wrote it (who is a shoemaker) has a poor mind? Don't you find he is
always silly about _poor Giles_, and those abject kind of phrases, which
mark a man that looks up to wealth? None of Burns's poet-dignity. What
do you think? I have just opened him; but he makes me sick. Dyer knows
the shoemaker (a damn'd stupid hound in company); but George promises to
introduce him indiscriminately to all friends and all combinations.
[Mr. Crisp was Manning's landlord, a barber in St. Mary's Passage,
Cambridge. In one letter at least Lamb spells his name Crips--a joke he
was fond of.
"Rickman" was John Rickman (1771-1840), already a friend of Southey's,
whom he had met at Burton, near Christchurch, in Hampshire, where
Rickman's father lived. A graduate of Lincoln College, Oxford, he was at
this time secretary to Charles Abbot, afterwards Lord Colchester. He had
conducted the _Commercial, Agricultural_, and Manufacturer's Magazine,
and he was practically the originator of the census in England. We shall
meet with him often in the correspondence.
Kemble was John Philip Kemble, then manager of Drury Lane. The play was
"John Woodvil." For an account of the version which Lamb submitted, see
the Notes to Vol. IV.
George Dyer wrote a _History of Cambridge University_.
George Daniel, the antiquary and bookseller, tells us that many years
later he took Bloomfield to dine with Lamb at Islington.]
LETTER 71
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[P.M. Nov. 28, 1800.]
Dear Manning,--I have received a very kind invitation from Lloyd and
Sophia to go and spend a month with them at the Lakes. Now it
fortunately happens (which is so seldom the case!) that I have spare
cash by me, enough to answer the expenses of so long a journey; and I am
determined to get away from the office by some means. The purpose of
this letter is to request of you (my dear friend) that you will not take
it unkind if I decline my proposed visit to Cambridge _for the present_.
Perhaps I shall be able to take Cambridge _in my way_, going or coming.
I need not describe to you the expectations which such an one as myself,
pent up all my life in a dirty city, have formed of a tour to the Lakes.
Consider Grasmere! Ambleside! Wordsworth! Coleridge! I hope you will.*
Hills, woods, lakes, and mountains, to the eternal devil. I will eat
snipes with thee, Thomas Manning. Only confess, confess, a _bite_.
_P.S._ I think you named the 16th; but was it not modest of Lloyd to
send such an invitation! It shows his knowledge of money and time. I
would be loth to think he meant
"Ironic satire sidelong sklented
On my poor pursie."--BURNS.
For my part, with reference to my friends northward, I must confess that
I am not romance-bit about _Nature_. The earth, and sea, and sky (when
all is said) is but as a house to dwell in. If the inmates be courteous,
and good liquors flow like the conduits at an old coronation; if they
can talk sensibly and feel properly; I have no need to stand staring
upon the gilded looking-glass (that strained my friend's purse-strings
in the purchase), nor his five-shilling print over the mantelpiece of
old Nabbs the carrier (which only betrays his false taste). Just as
important to me (in a sense) is all the furniture of my world--
eye-pampering, but satisfies no heart. Streets, streets, streets,
markets, theatres, churches, Covent Gardens, shops sparkling with pretty
faces of industrious milliners, neat sempstresses, ladies cheapening,
gentlemen behind counters lying, authors in the street with spectacles,
George Dyers (you may know them by their gait), lamps lit at night,
pastry-cooks' and silver-smiths' shops, beautiful Quakers of
Pentonville, noise of coaches, drowsy cry of mechanic watchman at night,
with bucks reeling home drunk; if you happen to wake at midnight, cries
of Fire and Stop thief; inns of court, with their learned air, and
halls, and butteries, just like Cambridge colleges; old book-stalls,
Jeremy Taylors, Burtons on Melancholy, and Religio Medicis on every
stall. These are thy pleasures, O London with-the-many-sins. O City
abounding in whores, for these may Keswick and her giant brood go hang!
C. L.
[Charles Lloyd had just settled at Old Brathay, about three miles from
Ambleside.
Manning's reply to this letter indicates that Lamb's story of the
invitation to stay with Lloyd was a hoax. The first page, ended where I
have put the *asterisk--as in the letter, to Gutch. Manning writes:
"N.B. Your lake story completely took me in till I got to the 2d page. I
was pleased to think you were so rich, but I confess rather wondered how
you should be able conveniently to take so long a journey this
inside-fare time of the year."
Manning also says: "I condole, with you, Mr. Lamb, on the tragic fate of
your tragedie--I wonder what fool it was that read it! By the bye, you
would do me a very very great favour by letting me have a copy. If
Beggars might be chusers, I should ask to have it transcribed partly by
you and partly by your sister. I have a desire to possess some of Mary's
handwriting" (see Letter 79).
"Beautiful Quakers of Pentonville." This is almost certainly a reference
to Hester Savory, the original of Lamb's poem "Hester." The whole
passage is the first of three eulogies of London in the letters, all
very similar. To "The Londoner" we come later.]
LETTER 72
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
[Dec. 4, 1800.]
Dear Sir,--I send this speedily after the heels of Cooper (O! the dainty
expression) to say that Mary is obliged to stay at home on Sunday to
receive a female friend, from whom I am equally glad to escape. So that
we shall be by ourselves. I write, because it may make _some_ difference
in your marketting, &c.
C. L.
Thursday Morning.
I am sorry to put you to the expense of twopence postage. But I
calculate thus: if Mary comes she will
eat Beef 2 plates, 4d.
_Batter Pudding_ 1 do. 2d.
Beer, a pint, 2d.
Wine, 3 glasses, 11d. I drink no wine!
Chesnuts, after dinner, 2d.
Tea and supper at moderate
calculation, 9d.
---------
2s. 6d.
From which deduct 2d. postage
----------
2s. 4d.
You are a clear gainer by her not coming.
[If the date be correct this becomes the first extant letter proper
which Lamb sent to the author of _Political Justice_. Godwin was then
forty-four years old, and had long been busy upon his tragedy "Antonio,"
in which Lamb had been assisting with suggestions. In this connection I
place here the following document, which belongs, however, naturally to
an earlier date, but is not harmed by its present position.]
LETTER 73
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
[No date. Autumn, 1800.]
Queries. Whether the best conclusion would not be a solemn judicial
pleading, appointed by the king, before himself in person of Antonio as
proxy for Roderigo, and Guzman for himself--the form and ordering of it
to be highly solemn and grand. For this purpose, (allowing it,) the king
must be reserved, and not have committed his royal dignity by descending
to previous conference with Antonio, but must refer from the beginning
to this settlement. He must sit in dignity as a high royal arbiter.
Whether this would admit of spiritual interpositions, cardinals
&c.--appeals to the Pope, and haughty rejection of his interposition by
Antonio--(this merely by the way).
The pleadings must be conducted by short speeches--replies, taunts, and
bitter recriminations by Antonio, in his rough style. In the midst of
the undecided cause, may not a messenger break up the proceedings by an
account of Roderigo's death (no improbable or far-fetch'd event), and
the whole conclude with an affecting and awful invocation of Antonio
upon Roderigo's spirit, now no longer dependent upon earthly tribunals
or a froward woman's will, &c., &c.
Almanza's daughter is now free, &c.
This might be made _very affecting_. Better nothing follow after; if
anything, she must step forward and resolve to take the veil. In this
case, the whole story of the former nunnery _must_ be omitted. But, I
think, better leave the final conclusion to the imagination of the
spectator. Probably the violence of confining her in a convent is not
necessary; Antonio's own castle would be sufficient.
To relieve the former part of the Play, could not some sensible images,
some work for the Eye, be introduced? A gallery of Pictures, Almanza's
ancestors, to which Antonio might affectingly point his sister, one by
one, with anecdote, &c.
At all events, with the present want of action, the Play must not extend
above four Acts, unless it is quite new modell'd. The proposed
alterations might all be effected in a few weeks.
Solemn judicial pleadings always go off well, as in Henry the 8th,
Merchant of Venice, and perhaps Othello.
[Lamb, said Mr. Paul, writing of this critical Minute, was so genuinely
kind and even affectionate, in his criticism that Godwin did not
perceive his real disapproval.
Mr Swinburne, writing in _The Athenæum_ for May 13, 1876, made an
interesting comment upon one of Lamb's suggestions in the foregoing
document. It contains, he remarks, "a singular anticipation of one of
the most famous passages in the work of the greatest master of our own
age, the scene of the portraits in 'Hernani:' 'To relieve the former
part of the play, could not some sensible images, some work for the eye,
be introduced? _A gallery of pictures, Alexander's ancestors, to which
Antonio might affectingly point his sister, one by one, with anecdote_,
&c.' I know of no coincidence more pleasantly and strangely notable than
this between the gentle genius of the loveliest among English essayists
and the tragic invention of the loftiest among French poets."
After long negotiation "Antonio" was now actually in rehearsal at Drury
Lane, to be produced on December 13. Lamb supplied the epilogue.
Cooper was Godwin's servant.]
LETTER 74
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
Dec. 10th, 1800.
Wednesday Morning.
Dear Sir,--I expected a good deal of pleasure from your company
to-morrow, but I am sorry I must beg of you to excuse me. I have been
confined ever since I saw you with one of the severest colds I ever
experienced, occasioned by being in the night air on Sunday, and on the
following day, very foolishly. I am neither in health nor spirits to
meet company. I hope and trust I shall get out on Saturday night. You
will add to your many favours, by transmitting to me as early as
possible as many tickets as conveniently you can spare,--Yours truly,
C. L.
I have been plotting how to abridge the Epilogue. But I cannot see that
any lines can be spared, retaining the connection, except these two,
which are better out.
"Why should I instance, &c.,
The sick man's purpose, &c.,"
and then the following line must run thus,
"The truth by an example best is shown."
Excuse this _important_ postscript.
LETTER 75
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[P.M. Dec. 13, 1800.]
Don't spill the cream upon this letter.
I have received your letter _this moment_, not having been at the
office. I have just time to scribble down the epilogue. To your epistle
I will just reply, that I will certainly come to Cambridge before
January is out: I'll come _when I can_. You shall have an amended copy
of my play early next week. Mary thanks you; but her handwriting is too
feminine to be exposed to a Cambridge gentleman, though I endeavour to
persuade her that you understand algebra, and must understand her hand.
The play is the man's you wot of; but for God's sake (who would not like
to have so pious a _professor's_ work _damn'd_) do not mention it--it is
to come out in a feigned name, as one Tobin's. I will omit the
introductory lines which connect it with the play, and give you the
concluding tale, which is the mass and bulk of the epilogue. The _name_
is _Jack_ INCIDENT. It is about promise-breaking--you will see it all,
if you read the _papers_.
Jack, of dramatic genius justly vain,
Purchased a renter's share at Drury-lane;
A prudent man in every other matter,
Known at his club-room for an honest hatter;
Humane and courteous, led a civil life,
And has been seldom known to beat his wife;
But Jack is now grown quite another man,
Frequents the green-room, knows the plot and plan
Of each new piece,
And has been seen to talk with Sheridan!
In at the play-house just at six he pops,
And never quits it till the curtain drops,
Is never absent on the _author's night_,
Knows actresses and actors too--by sight;
So humble, that with Suett he'll confer,
Or take a pipe with plain Jack Bannister;
Nay, with an author has been known so free,
He once suggested a catastrophe--
In short, John dabbled till his head was turn'd;
His wife remonstrated, his neighbours mourn'd,
His customers were dropping off apace,
And Jack's affairs began to wear a piteous face.
One night his wife began a curtain lecture;
"My dearest Johnny, husband, spouse, protector,
Take pity on your helpless babes and me,
Save us from ruin, you from bankruptcy--
Look to your business, leave these cursed plays,
And try again your old industrious ways."
Jack who was always scared at the Gazette,
And had some bits of skull uninjured yet,
Promised amendment, vow'd his wife spake reason,
"He would not see another play that season--"
Three stubborn fortnights Jack his promise kept,
Was late and early in his shop, eat, slept,
And walk'd and talk'd, like ordinary men;
No _wit_, but John the hatter once again--
Visits his club: when lo! one _fatal night_
His wife with horror view'd the well-known sight--
John's _hat, wig, snuff-box_--well she knew his tricks--
And Jack decamping at the hour of six,
Just at the counter's edge a playbill lay,
Announcing that "Pizarro" was the play--
"O Johnny, Johnny, this is your old doing."
Quoth Jack, "Why what the devil storm's a-brewing?
About a harmless play why all this fright?
I'll go and see it if it's but for spite--
Zounds, woman! Nelson's[1] to be there to-night."
_N.B_.--This was intended for Jack Bannister to speak; but the sage
managers have chosen Miss _Heard_,--except Miss Tidswell, the worst
actress ever seen or _heard_. Now, I remember I have promised the loan
of my play. I will lend it _instantly_, and you shall get it ('pon
honour!) by this day week.
I must go and dress for the boxes! First night! Finding I have time, I
transcribe the rest. Observe, you have read the last first; it begins
thus:--the names I took from a little outline G. gave me. I have not
read the play.
"Ladies, ye've seen how Guzman's consort died,
Poor victim of a Spaniard brother's pride,
When Spanish honour through the world was blown,
And Spanish beauty for the best was known[2]
In that romantic, unenlighten'd time,
A _breach of promise_[3] was a sort of crime--
Which of you handsome English ladies here,
But deems the penance bloody and severe?
A whimsical old Saragossa[4] fashion,
That a dead father's dying inclination,
Should _live_ to thwart a living daughter's passion,[5]
Unjustly on the sex _we_[6] men exclaim,
Rail at _your_[7] vices,--and commit the same;--
Man is a promise-breaker from the womb,
And goes a promise-breaker to the tomb--
What need we instance here the lover's vow,
The sick man's purpose, or the great man's bow?[8]
The truth by few examples best is shown--
Instead of many which are better known,
Take poor Jack Incident, that's dead and gone.
Jack," &c. &c. &c.
Now you have it all-how do you like it? I am going to hear it recited!!!
C. L.
[Footnote 1: A good clap-trap. Nelson has exhibited two or three times
at both theatres--and advertised himself.]
[Footnote 2: Four _easy_ lines.]
[Footnote 3: For which the _heroine died_.]
[Footnote 4: In _Spain!!?]
[Footnote 5: Two _neat_ lines.]
[Footnote 6: Or _you_.]
[Footnote 7: Or _our_, as _they_ have altered it.]
[Footnote 8: Antithesis.]
["As one Tobin's." The rehearsals of "Antonio" were attended by Godwin's
friend, John Tobin, subsequently author of "The Honeymoon," in the hope,
on account of Godwin's reputation for heterodoxy, of deceiving people as
to the real authorship of the play. It was, however, avowed by Godwin on
the title-page.
Jack Bannister, the comedian, was a favourite actor of Lamb's. See the
_Elia_ essay "On some of the Old Actors."
Miss Heard was a daughter of William Heard, the author of "The
Snuff-Box," a feeble comedy. Miss Tidswell, by the irony of fate, had a
part in Lamb's own play, "Mr. H.," six years later.
"I have not read the play." Meaning probably, "I have not read it in its
final form." Lamb must have read it in earlier versions. I quote Mr.
Kegan Paul's summary of the plot of "Antonio":--
"Helena was betrothed, with her father's consent, to her brother
Antonio's friend, Roderigo. While Antonio and Roderigo were at the wars,
Helena fell in love with, and married, Don Gusman. She was the king's
ward, who set aside the pre-contract. Antonio, returning, leaves his
friend behind; he has had great sorrows, but all will be well when he
comes to claim his bride. When Antonio finds his sister is married, the
rage he exhibits is ferocious. He carries his sister off from her
husband's house, and demands that the king shall annul the marriage with
Gusman. There is then talk of Helena's entrance into a convent. At last
the king, losing patience, gives judgment, as he had done before, that
the pre-contract with Roderigo was invalid, and the marriage to Gusman
valid. Whereupon Antonio bursts through the guards, and kills his
sister."]
LETTER 76
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
Dec. 14, 1800.
Late o' Sunday.
Dear Sir,--I have performed my office in a slovenly way, but judge for
me. I sat down at 6 o'clock, and never left reading (and I read out to
Mary) your play till 10. In this sitting I noted down lines as they
occurred, exactly as you will read my rough paper. Do not be frightened
at the bulk of my remarks, for they are almost all upon single lines,
which, put together, do not amount to a hundred, and many of them merely
verbal. I had but one object in view, abridgement for compression sake.
I have used a dogmatical language (which is truly ludicrous when the
trivial nature of my remarks is considered), and, remember, my office
was to hunt out faults. You may fairly abridge one half of them, as a
fair deduction for the infirmities of Error, and a single reading, which
leaves only fifty objections, most of them merely against words, on no
short play. Remember, you constituted me Executioner, and a hangman has
been seldom seen to be ashamed of his profession before Master Sheriff.
We'll talk of the Beauties (of which I am more than ever sure) when we
meet,--Yours truly, C. L.
I will barely add, as you are on the very point of printing, that in my
opinion neither prologue nor epilogue should accompany the play. It can
only serve to remind your readers of its fate. _Both_ suppose an
audience, and, that jest being gone, must convert into burlesque. Nor
would I (but therein custom and decorum must be a law) print the actors'
names. Some things must be kept out of sight.
I have done, and I have but a few square inches of paper to fill up. I
am emboldened by a little jorum of punch (vastly good) to say that next
to _one man_, I am the most hurt at our ill success. The breast of
Hecuba, where she did suckle Hector, looked not to be more lovely than
Marshal's forehead when it spit forth sweat, at Critic-swords
contending. I remember two honest lines by Marvel, (whose poems by the
way I am just going to possess)
"Where every Mower's wholesome heat
Smells like an Alexander's sweat."
["Antonio" was performed on December 13, with John Philip Kemble in the
title-rôle, and was a complete failure. Lamb wrote an account of the
unlucky evening many years later in the "Old Actors" series in the
_London Magazine_ (see Vol. II. of the present edition). He speaks
there, as here, of Marshal's forehead--Marshal being John Marshall, a
friend of the Godwins.
After the play Godwin supped with Lamb, when it was decided to publish
"Antonio" at once. Lamb retained the MS. for criticism. The present
letter in the original contains his comments, the only one of which that
Mr. Kegan Paul thought worth reproducing being the following:--
"'Enviable' is a very bad word. I allude to 'Enviable right to bless
us.' For instance, Burns, comparing the ills of manhood with the state
of infancy, says, 'Oh! enviable early days;' here 'tis good, because the
passion lay in comparison. Excuse my insulting your judgment with an
illustration. I believe I only wanted to beg in the name of a favourite
Bardie, or at most to confirm my own judgment."
Lamb, it will be remembered, had refused to let Coleridge use "enviable"
in "Lewti." Burns's poem to which Lamb alludes is "Despondency, an Ode,"
Stanza 5, "Oh! enviable, early days."
Godwin's play was published in 1801 without Lamb's epilogue.]
LETTER 77
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
Dec. 16th, 1800.
We are damn'd!
Not the facetious epilogue could save us. For, as the editor of the
"Morning Post," quick-sighted gentleman! hath this morning truly
observed, (I beg pardon if I falsify his _words_, their profound _sense_
I am sure I retain,) both prologue and epilogue were worthy of
accompanying such a piece; and indeed (mark the profundity, Mister
Manning) were received with proper indignation by such of the audience
only as thought either worth attending to. PROFESSOR, thy glories wax
dim! Again, the incomparable author of the "True Briton" declareth in
_his_ paper (bearing same date) that the epilogue was an indifferent
attempt at humour and character, and failed in both. I forbear to
mention the other papers, because I have not read them. O PROFESSOR, how
different thy feelings now (_quantum mutatus ab illo professore, qui in
agris philosophiae tantas victorias aquisivisti_),--how different thy
proud feelings but one little week ago,--thy anticipation of thy nine
nights,--those visionary claps, which have soothed thy soul by day and
thy dreams by night! Calling in accidentally on the Professor while he
was out, I was ushered into the study; and my nose quickly (most
sagacious always) pointed me to four tokens lying loose upon thy table,
Professor, which indicated thy violent and satanical pride of heart.
Imprimis, there caught mine eye a list of six persons, thy friends, whom
thou didst meditate inviting to a sumptuous dinner on the Thursday,
anticipating the profits of thy Saturday's play to answer charges; I was
in the honoured file! Next, a stronger evidence of thy violent and
almost satanical pride, lay a list of all the morning papers (from the
"Morning Chronicle" downwards to the "Porcupine,") with the places of
their respective offices, where thou wast meditating to insert, and
didst insert, an elaborate sketch of the story of thy play--stones in
thy enemy's hand to bruise thee with; and severely wast thou bruised, O
Professor! nor do I know what oil to pour into thy wounds. Next, which
convinced me to a dead conviction of thy pride, violent and almost
satanical pride--lay a list of books, which thy un-tragedy-favoured
pocket could never answer; Dodsley's Old Plays, Malone's Shakspeare
(still harping upon thy play, thy philosophy abandoned meanwhile to
Christians and superstitious minds); nay, I believe (if I can believe my
memory), that the ambitious Encyclopaedia itself was part of thy
meditated acquisitions; but many a playbook was there. All these visions
are _damned_; and thou, Professor, must read Shakspere in future out of
a common edition; and, hark ye, pray read him to a little better
purpose! Last and strongest against thee (in colours manifest as the
hand upon Belshazzar's wall), lay a volume of poems by C. Lloyd and C.
Lamb. Thy heart misgave thee, that thy assistant might possibly not have
talent enough to furnish thee an epilogue! Manning, all these things
came over my mind; all the gratulations that would have thickened upon
him, and even some have glanced aside upon his humble friend; the
vanity, and the fame, and the profits (the Professor is £500 ideal money
out of pocket by this failure, besides £200 he would have got for the
copyright, and the Professor is never much beforehand with the world;
what he gets is all by the sweat of his brow and dint of brain, for the
Professor, though a sure man, is also a slow); and now to muse upon thy
altered physiognomy, thy pale and squalid appearance (a kind of _blue
sickness_ about the eyelids), and thy crest fallen, and thy proud demand
of £200 from thy bookseller changed to an uncertainty of his taking it
at all, or giving thee full £50. The Professor has won my heart by this
_his_ mournful catastrophe. You remember Marshall, who dined with him at
my house; I met him in the lobby immediately after the damnation of the
Professor's play, and he looked to me like an angel: his face was
lengthened, and ALL OVER SWEAT; I never saw such a care-fraught visage;
I could have hugged him, I loved him so intensely--"From every pore of
him a perfume fell." I have seen that man in many situations, and from
my soul I think that a more god-like honest soul exists not in this
world. The Professor's poor nerves trembling with the recent shock, he
hurried him away to my house to supper; and there we comforted him as
well as we could. He came to consult me about a change of catastrophe;
but alas! the piece was condemned long before that crisis. I at first
humoured him with a specious proposition, but have since joined his true
friends in advising him to give it up. He did it with a pang, and is to
print it as _his_.
L.
[The Professor was Lamb's name for Godwin.
The _Porcupine_ was Cobbett's paper.]
LETTERS 78 AND 79
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[Middle December.]
I send you all of Coleridge's letters to me, which I have preserved:
some of them are upon the subject of my play. I also send you Kemble's
two letters, and the prompter's courteous epistle, with a curious
critique on "Pride's Cure," by a young physician from EDINBRO, who
modestly suggests quite another kind of a plot. These are monuments of
my disappointment which I like to preserve.
In Coleridge's letters you will find a good deal of amusement, to see
genuine talent struggling against a pompous display of it. I also send
you the Professor's letter to me (careful Professor! to conceal his
_name_ even from his correspondent), ere yet the Professor's pride was
cured. Oh monstrous and almost satanical pride!
You will carefully keep all (except the Scotch Doctor's, _which burn in
status quo_), till I come to claim mine own.
C. LAMB.
For Mister Manning, Teacher of Mathematics and the Black Arts. There is
another letter in the inside cover of the book opposite the blank leaf
that _was_.
Mind this goes for a letter. (Acknowledge it _directly_, if only in ten
words.)
DEAR MANNING--(I shall want to hear this comes safe.) I have scratched
out a good deal, as you will see. Generally, what I have rejected was
either false in feeling, or a violation of character--mostly of the
first sort. I will here just instance in the concluding few lines of the
"Dying Lover's Story," which completely contradicted his character of
_silent_ and _unreproachful_. I hesitated a good deal what copy to send
you, and at last resolved to send the worst, because you are familiar
with it, and can make it out; and a stranger would find so much
difficulty in doing it, that it would give him more pain than pleasure.
This is compounded precisely of the two persons' hands you requested it
should be.--Yours sincerely,
C. LAMB.
[These were the letters accompanying the copy of "Pride's Cure" (or
"John Woodvil") which Charles and Mary Lamb together made for Manning,
as requested in the note on page 197.
All the letters mentioned by Lamb have vanished; unless by an unlikely
chance the bundle contained Coleridge's letters on Mrs. Lamb's death and
on the quarrel with Lamb and Lloyd.
Manning's reply, dated December, 1800, gives a little information
concerning the Edinburgh physician's letter--"that gentleman whose
fertile brain can, at a moment's warning, furnish you with 10 Thousand
models of a plot--'The greatest variety of Rapes, Murders, Deathsheads,
&c., &c., sold here.'" Manning thinks that the Scotch doctor understands
Lamb's tragedy better than Coleridge does. He adds: "P.S.--My verdict
upon the Poet's epitaph is 'genuine.'" This probably applies to a
question asked by Lamb concerning Wordsworth's poem of that name.]
LETTER 80
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
December 27th, 1800.
At length George Dyer's phrenesis has come to a crisis; he is raging and
furiously mad. I waited upon the heathen, Thursday was a se'nnight; the
first symptom which struck my eye and gave me incontrovertible proof of
the fatal truth was a pair of nankeen pantaloons four times too big for
him, which the said Heathen did pertinaciously affirm to be new.
They were absolutely ingrained with the accumulated dirt of ages; but he
affirmed them to be clean. He was going to visit a lady that was nice
about those things, and that's the reason he wore nankeen that day. And
then he danced, and capered, and fidgeted, and pulled up his pantaloons,
and hugged his intolerable flannel vestment closer about his poetic
loins; anon he gave it loose to the zephyrs which plentifully insinuate
their tiny bodies through every crevice, door, window or wainscot,
expressly formed for the exclusion of such impertinents. Then he caught
at a proof sheet, and catched up a laundress's bill instead--made a dart
at Blomfield's Poems, and threw them in agony aside. I could not bring
him to one direct reply; he could not maintain his jumping mind in a
right line for the tithe of a moment by Clifford's Inn clock. He must go
to the printer's immediately--the most unlucky accident--he had struck
off five hundred impressions of his Poems, which were ready for delivery
to subscribers, and the Preface must all be expunged. There were eighty
pages of Preface, and not till that morning had he discovered that in
the very first page of said Preface he had set out with a principle of
Criticism fundamentally-wrong, which vitiated all his following
reasoning. The Preface must be expunged, although it cost him £30--the
lowest calculation, taking in paper and printing! In vain have his real
friends remonstrated against this Midsummer madness. George is as
obstinate as a Primitive Christian--and wards and parries off all our
thrusts with one unanswerable fence;--"Sir, it's of great consequence
that the _world_ is not _misled_!"
As for the other Professor, he has actually begun to dive into Tavernier
and Chardin's _Persian_ Travels for a story, to form a new drama for the
sweet tooth of this fastidious age. Hath not Bethlehem College a fair
action for non-residence against such professors? Are poets so _few_ in
_this age_, that he must write poetry? Is _morals_ a subject so
exhausted, that he must quit that line? Is the metaphysic well (without
a bottom) drained dry?
If I can guess at the wicked pride of the Professor's heart, I would
take a shrewd wager that he disdains ever again to dip his pen in
_Prose_. Adieu, ye splendid theories! Farewell, dreams of political
justice! Lawsuits, where I was counsel for Archbishop Fenelon _versus_
my own mother, in the famous fire cause!
Vanish from my mind, professors, one and all! I have metal more
attractive on foot.
Man of many snipes, I will sup with thee, Deo volente et diabolo
nolente, on Monday night the 5th of January, in the new year, and crush
a cup to the infant century.
A word or two of my progress. Embark at six o'clock in the morning, with
a fresh gale, on a Cambridge one-decker; very cold till eight at night;
land at St. Mary's light-house, muffins and coffee upon table (or any
other curious production of Turkey or both Indies), snipes exactly at
nine, punch to commence at ten, with _argument_; difference of opinion
is expected to take place about eleven; perfect unanimity, with some
haziness and dimness, before twelve.--N.B. My single affection is not so
singly wedded to snipes; but the curious and epicurean eye would also
take a pleasure in beholding a delicate and well-chosen assortment of
teals, ortolans, the unctuous and palate-soothing flesh of geese wild
and tame, nightingales' brains, the sensorium of a young sucking-pig, or
any other Christmas dish, which I leave to the judgment of you and the
cook of Gonville. C. LAMB.
[Lamb's copy of George Dyer's _Poems_ is in the British Museum. It has
the original withdrawn 1800 title-page and the cancelled preface bound
up with it, and Lamb has written against the reference to the sacrifice,
in the new 1801 preface: "One copy of this cancelled preface, snatch'd
out of the fire, is prefaced to this volume." See Letter 93, page 234.
It runs to sixty-five pages, whereas the new one is but a few words.
Southey tells Grosvenor Bedford in one of his letters that Lamb gave
Dyer the title of Cancellarius Magnus. Dyer reprinted in the 1802
edition of his Poems the greater part of the cancelled preface and all
of the first page--so that it is difficult to say what the fallacy was.
The original edition of his _Poems_, was to be in three large volumes.
In 1802 it had come down to two small ones.
Godwin's Persian drama was "Abbas, King of Persia," but he could not get
it acted. The reference to Fénélon is to Godwin's _Political Justice_
(first edition, Vol. I., page 84) where he argues on the comparative
worth of the persons of Fénélon, a chambermaid, and Godwin's mother,
supposing them to have been present at the famous fire at Cambrai and
only one of them to be saved. (As a matter of fact Fénélon was not at
the fire.)
We must suppose that Lamb carried out his intention of visiting Manning
on January 5; but there is no confirmation.]
LETTER 81
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. January 30, 1801.]
Thanks for your Letter and Present. I had already borrowed your second
volume. What most please me are, the Song of Lucy.... _Simon's sickly
daughter_ in the Sexton made me _cry_. Next to these are the description
of the continuous Echoes in the story of Joanna's laugh, where the
mountains and all the scenery absolutely seem alive--and that fine
Shakesperian character of the Happy Man, in the Brothers,
--that creeps about the fields,
Following his fancies by the hour, to bring
Tears down his cheek, or solitary smiles
Into his face, _until the Setting Sun_
Write Fool upon his forehead.
I will mention one more: the delicate and curious feeling in the wish
for the Cumberland Beggar, that he may have about him the melody of
Birds, altho' he hear them not. Here the mind knowingly passes a fiction
upon herself, first substituting her own feelings for the Beggar's, and,
in the same breath detecting the fallacy, will not part with the
wish.--The Poet's Epitaph is disfigured, to my taste by the vulgar
satire upon parsons and lawyers in the beginning, and the coarse epithet
of pin point in the 6th stanza. All the rest is eminently good, and your
own. I will just add that it appears to me a fault in the Beggar, that
the instructions conveyed in it are too direct and like a lecture: they
don't slide into the mind of the reader, while he is imagining no such
matter. An intelligent reader finds a sort of insult in being told, I
will teach you how to think upon this subject. This fault, if I am
right, is in a ten-thousandth worse degree to be found in Sterne and
many many novelists & modern poets, who continually put a sign post up
to shew where you are to feel. They set out with assuming their readers
to be stupid. Very different from Robinson Crusoe, the Vicar of
Wakefield, Roderick Random, and other beautiful bare narratives. There
is implied an unwritten compact between Author and reader; I will tell
you a story, and I suppose you will understand it. Modern novels "St.
Leons" and the like are full of such flowers as these "Let not my reader
suppose," "Imagine, _if you can_"--modest!--&c.--I will here have done
with praise and blame. I have written so much, only that you may not
think I have passed over your book without observation,--I am sorry that
Coleridge has christened his Ancient Marinere "a poet's Reverie"--it is
as bad as Bottom the Weaver's declaration that he is not a Lion but only
the scenical representation of a Lion. What new idea is gained by this
Title, but one subversive of all credit, which the tale should force
upon us, of its truth? For me, I was never so affected with any human
Tale. After first reading it, I was totally possessed with it for many
days--I dislike all the miraculous part of it, but the feelings of the
man under the operation of such scenery dragged me along like Tom
Piper's magic whistle. I totally differ from your idea that the Marinere
should have had a character and profession. This is a Beauty in
Gulliver's Travels, where the mind is kept in a placid state of little
wonderments; but the Ancient Marinere undergoes such Trials, as
overwhelm and bury all individuality or memory of what he was, like the
state of a man in a Bad dream, one terrible peculiarity of which is:
that all consciousness of personality is gone. Your other observation is
I think as well a little unfounded: the Marinere from being conversant
in supernatural events _has_ acquired a supernatural and strange cast of
_phrase_, eye, appearance, &c. which frighten the wedding guest. You
will excuse my remarks, because I am hurt and vexed that you should
think it necessary, with a prose apology, to open the eyes of dead men
that cannot see. To sum up a general opinion of the second vol.--I do
not feel any one poem in it so forcibly as the Ancient Marinere, the Mad
Mother, and the Lines at Tintern Abbey in the first.--I could, too, have
wished the Critical preface had appeared in a separate treatise. All its
dogmas are true and just, and most of them new, _as_ criticism. But they
associate a _diminishing_ idea with the Poems which follow, as having
been written for _Experiment_ on the public taste, more than having
sprung (as they must have done) from living and daily circumstances.--I
am prolix, because I am gratifyed in the opportunity of writing to you,
and I don't well know when to leave off. I ought before this to have
reply'd to your very kind invitation into Cumberland. With you and your
Sister I could gang any where. But I am afraid whether I shall ever be
able to afford so desperate a Journey. Separate from the pleasure of
your company, I don't much care if I never see a mountain in my life. I
have passed all my days in London, until I have formed as many and
intense local attachments, as any of you mountaineers can have done with
dead nature. The Lighted shops of the Strand and Fleet Street, the
innumerable trades, tradesmen and customers, coaches, waggons,
playhouses, all the bustle and wickedness round about Covent Garden, the
very women of the Town, the Watchmen, drunken scenes, rattles,--life
awake, if you awake, at all hours of the night, the impossibility of
being dull in Fleet Street, the crowds, the very dirt & mud, the Sun
shining upon houses and pavements, the print shops, the old book stalls,
parsons cheap'ning books, coffee houses, steams of soups from kitchens,
the pantomimes, London itself a pantomime and a masquerade,--all these
things work themselves into my mind and feed me, without a power of
satiating me. The wonder of these sights impells me into night-walks
about her crowded streets, and I often shed tears in the motley Strand
from fulness of joy at so much Life.--All these emotions must be strange
to you. So are your rural emotions to me. But consider, what must I have
been doing all my life, not to have lent great portions of my heart with
usury to such scenes?--
My attachments are all local, purely local. I have no passion (or have
had none since I was in love, and then it was the spurious engendering
of poetry & books) to groves and vallies. The rooms where I was born,
the furniture which has been before my eyes all my life, a book case
which has followed me about (like a faithful dog, only exceeding him in
knowledge) wherever I have moved--old chairs, old tables, streets,
squares, where I have sunned myself, my old school,--these are my
mistresses. Have I not enough, without your mountains? I do not envy
you. I should pity you, did I not know, that the Mind will make friends
of any thing. Your sun & moon and skys and hills & lakes affect me no
more, or scarcely come to me in more venerable characters, than as a
gilded room with tapestry and tapers, where I might live with handsome
visible objects. I consider the clouds above me but as a roof,
beautifully painted but unable to satisfy the mind, and at last, like
the pictures of the apartment of a connoisseur, unable to afford him any
longer a pleasure. So fading upon me, from disuse, have been the
Beauties of Nature, as they have been confinedly called; so ever fresh &
green and warm are all the inventions of men and assemblies of men in
this great city. I should certainly have laughed with dear Joanna.
Give my kindest love, _and my sister's_, to D. & your_self_ and a kiss
from me to little Barbara Lewthwaite.
C. LAMB.
Thank you for Liking my Play!!
[This is the first--and perhaps the finest--letter from Lamb to
Wordsworth that has been preserved. Wordsworth, then living with his
sister Dorothy at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, was nearly thirty-one years of
age; Lamb was nearly twenty-six. The work criticised is the second
edition of the _Lyrical Ballads_. The second and sixth stanzas of the
"Poet's Epitaph" ran thus:--
A Lawyer art thou?--draw not nigh;
Go, carry to some other place
The hardness of thy coward eye,
The falshood of thy sallow face.
* * * * *
Wrapp'd closely in thy sensual fleece
O turn aside, and take, I pray,
That he below may rest in peace,
Thy pin-point of a soul away!
_St. Leon_ was by Godwin.
Of "The Ancient Mariner, a Poet's Reverie," Wordsworth had said in a
note to the first volume of _Lyrical Ballads_:--
"The Poem of my Friend has indeed great defects; first, that the
principal person has no distinct character, either in his profession of
Mariner, or as a human being who having been long under the controul of
supernatural impressions might be supposed himself to partake of
something supernatural; secondly, that he does not act, but is
continually acted upon; thirdly, that the events having no necessary
connection do not produce each other; and lastly, that the imagery is
somewhat too laboriously accumulated."
"The Mad Mother." The poem beginning, "Her eyes are wild, her head is
bare."
"I could, too, have wished." The passage from these words to "don't well
know when to leave off," used to be omitted in the editions of Lamb's
Letters. When Wordsworth sent the correspondence to Moxon, for
Talfourd's use, in 1835, he wrote:--
"There are, however, in them some parts which had better be kept
back.... I have also thought it proper to suppress every word of
criticism [Wordsworth meant adverse criticism] upon my own poems....
Those relating to my works are withheld, partly because I shrink from
the thought of assisting in any way to spread my own praises, and still
more I being convinced that the opinions or judgments of friends given
in this way are of little value."
"Joanna." Joanna of the laugh. "Barbara Lewthwaite." See Wordsworth's
"Pet Lamb."
"Thank you for Liking my Play!!" We must suppose this postscript to
contain a touch of sarcasm. Lamb had sent "John Woodvil" to Grasmere and
Keswick. Wordsworth apparently had been but politely interested in it.
Coleridge had written to Godwin: "Talking of tragedies, at every perusal
my love and admiration of his [Lamb's] play rises a peg."
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, dated at end
February 7, 1801, not available for this edition. It is one of the best
letters written by Lamb to Robert Lloyd, or to any one. Lamb first
praises Izaak Walton, whose _Compleat Angler_ he loved for two reasons:
for itself and for its connection with his own Hertfordshire country,
Hoddesdon, Broxbourne, Amwell and the Ware neighbourhood. The letter
passes to a third eulogy of London. Lamb closes by remarking that
Manning is "a dainty chiel, and a man of great power, an enchanter
almost."]
LETTER 82
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
Feb. 15, 1801.
I had need be cautious henceforward what opinion I give of the "Lyrical
Ballads." All the North of England are in a turmoil. Cumberland and
Westmoreland have already declared a state of war. I lately received
from Wordsworth a copy of the second volume, accompanied by an
acknowledgement of having received from me many months since a copy of a
certain Tragedy, with excuses for not having made any acknowledgement
sooner, it being owing to an "almost insurmountable aversion from
Letter-writing." This letter I answered in due form and time, and
enumerated several of the passages which had most affected me, adding,
unfortunately, that no single piece had moved me so forcibly as the
"Ancient Mariner," "The Mad Mother," or the "Lines at Tintern Abbey."
The Post did not sleep a moment. I received almost instantaneously a
long letter of four sweating pages from my Reluctant Letter-Writer, the
purport of which was, that he was sorry his 2d vol. had not given me
more pleasure (Devil a hint did I give that it had _not pleased me_),
and "was compelled to wish that my range of sensibility was more
extended, being obliged to believe that I should receive large influxes
of happiness and happy Thoughts" (I suppose from the L.B.)--With a deal
of stuff about a certain Union of Tenderness and Imagination, which in
the sense he used Imagination was not the characteristic of Shakspeare,
but which Milton possessed in a degree far exceeding other Poets: which
Union, as the highest species of Poetry, and chiefly deserving that
name, "He was most proud to aspire to;" then illustrating the said Union
by two quotations from his own 2d vol. (which I had been so unfortunate
as to miss). 1st Specimen--a father addresses his son:--
"When thou
First camest into the World, as it befalls
To new-born Infants, thou didst sleep away
Two days: and _Blessings from Thy father's Tongue
Then fell upon thee_."
The lines were thus undermarked, and then followed "This Passage, as
combining in an extraordinary degree that Union of Imagination and
Tenderness which I am speaking of, I consider as one of the Best I ever
wrote!"
2d Specimen.--A youth, after years of absence, revisits his native
place, and thinks (as most people do) that there has been strange
alteration in his absence:--
"And that the rocks
And everlasting Hills themselves were changed."
You see both these are good Poetry: but after one has been reading
Shakspeare twenty of the best years of one's life, to have a fellow
start up, and prate about some unknown quality, which Shakspeare
possessed in a degree inferior to Milton and _somebody else_!! This was
not to be _all_ my castigation. Coleridge, who had not written to me
some months before, starts up from his bed of sickness to reprove me for
my hardy presumption: four long pages, equally sweaty and more tedious,
came from him; assuring me that, when the works of a man of true genius
such as W. undoubtedly was, do not please me at first sight, I should
suspect the fault to lie "in me and not in them," etc. etc. etc. etc.
etc. What am I to do with such people? I certainly shall write them a
very merry Letter. Writing to _you_, I may say that the 2d vol. has no
such pieces as the three I enumerated. It is full of original thinking
and an observing mind, but it does not often make you laugh or cry.--It
too artfully aims at simplicity of expression. And you sometimes doubt
if Simplicity be not a cover for Poverty. The best Piece in it I will
send you, being _short_. I have grievously offended my friends in the
North by declaring my undue preference; but I need not fear you:--
"She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the Springs of Dove,
A maid whom there were few [none] to praise
And very few to love.
"A violet, by a mossy stone,
Half hidden from the eye.
Fair as a star when only one
Is shining in the sky.
"She lived unknown; and few could know,
When Lucy ceased to be.
But she is in the grave, and oh!
The difference to me."
This is choice and genuine, and so are many, many more. But one does not
like to have 'em rammed down one's throat. "Pray, take it--it's very
good--let me help you--eat faster."
[It cannot be too much regretted that Lamb's "very merry Letter" in
answer to Wordsworth and Coleridge's remonstrances has not been
preserved.
At the end of the letter is a passage which can be read only in the
Boston Bibliophile edition, referring to Dyer's Poems, to _John Woodvil_
and to Godwin.]
LETTER 83
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[Late February, 1801.]
You masters of logic ought to know (logic is nothing more than a
knowledge of _words_, as the Greek etymon implies), that all words are
no more to be taken in a literal sense at all times than a promise given
to a tailor. When I expressed an apprehension that you were mortally
offended, I meant no more than by the application of a certain formula
of efficacious sounds, which had _done_ in similar cases before, to
rouse a sense of decency in you, and a remembrance of what was due to
me! You masters of logic should advert to this phenomenon in human
speech, before you arraign the usage of us dramatic geniuses.
Imagination is a good blood mare, and goes well; but the misfortune is,
she has too many paths before her. 'Tis true I might have imaged to
myself, that you had trundled your frail carcass to Norfolk. I might
also, and did imagine, that you had not, but that you were lazy, or
inventing new properties in a triangle, and for that purpose moulding
and squeezing Landlord Crisp's three-cornered beaver into fantastic
experimental forms; or that Archimedes was meditating to repulse the
French, in case of a Cambridge invasion, by a geometric hurling of
folios on their red caps; or, peradventure, that you were in
extremities, in great wants, and just set out for Trinity-bogs when my
letters came. In short, my genius (which is a short word now-a-days for
what-a-great-man-am-I) was absolutely stifled and overlaid with its own
riches. Truth is one and poor, like the cruse of Elijah's widow.
Imagination is the bold face that multiplies its oil: and thou, the old
cracked pipkin, that could not believe it could be put to such purposes.
Dull pipkin, to have Elijah for thy cook! Imbecile recipient of so fat a
miracle! I send you George Dyer's Poems, the richest production of the
lyric muse _this century_ can justly boast: for Wordsworth's L.B. were
published, or at least written, before Christmas.
Please to advert to pages 291 to 296 for the most astonishing account of
where Shakspeare's muse has been all this while. I thought she had been
dead, and buried in Stratford Church, with the young man _that kept her
company_,--
"But it seems, like the Devil,
Buried in Cole Harbour.
Some say she's risen again,
'Gone prentice to a Barber."
N.B.--I don't charge anything for the additional manuscript notes, which
are the joint productions of myself and a learned translator of
Schiller, John Stoddart, Esq.
N.B. the 2nd.--I should not have blotted your book, but I had sent my
own out to be bound, as I was in duty bound. A liberal criticism upon
the several pieces, lyrical, heroical, amatory, and satirical, would be
acceptable. So, you don't think there's a Word's--worth of good poetry
in the great L.B.! I daren't put the dreaded syllables at their just
length, for my back tingles from the northern castigation. I send you
the three letters, which I beg you to return along with those former
letters, which I hope you are not going to print by your detention. But
don't be in a hurry to send them. When you come to town will do. Apropos
of coming to town, last Sunday was a fortnight, as I was coming to town
from the Professor's, inspired with new rum, I tumbled down, and broke
my nose. I drink nothing stronger than malt liquors.
I am going to change my lodgings, having received a hint that it would
be agreeable, at our Lady's next feast. I have partly fixed upon most
delectable rooms, which look out (when you stand a tiptoe) over the
Thames and Surrey Hills, at the upper end of King's Bench walks in the
Temple. There I shall have all the privacy of a house without the
encumbrance, and shall be able to lock my friends out as often as I
desire to hold free converse with my immortal mind; for my present
lodgings resemble a minister's levee, I have so increased my
acquaintance (as they call 'em), since I have resided in town. Like the
country mouse, that had tasted a little of urban manners, I long to be
nibbling my own cheese by my dear self without mouse-traps and
time-traps. By my new plan, I shall be as airy, up four pair of stairs,
as in the country; and in a garden, in the midst of [that] enchanting,
more than Mahometan paradise, London, whose dirtiest drab-frequented
alley, and her lowest bowing tradesman, I would not exchange for
Skiddaw, Helvellyn, James, Walter, and the parson into the bargain. O!
her lamps of a night! her rich goldsmiths, print-shops, toyshops,
mercers, hardwaremen, pastry-cooks! St. Paul's Churchyard! the Strand!
Exeter Change! Charing Cross, with the man _upon_ a black horse! These
are thy gods, O London! Ain't you mightily moped on the banks of the
Cam! Had not you better come and set up here? You can't think what a
difference. All the streets and pavements are pure gold, I warrant you.
At least I know an alchemy that turns her mud into that metal,--a mind
that loves to be at home in crowds.
'Tis half-past twelve o'clock, and all sober people ought to be a-bed.
Between you and me, the "Lyrical Ballads" are but drowsy performances.
C. LAMB (as you may guess).
[Lamb refers in his opening sentences to a letter from himself to
Manning which no longer exists. In Manning's last letter, dated February
24, he complains that he found on returning to Cambridge three copies of
a letter from Lamb suggesting that he was offended because he had not
answered.
The passage in George Dyer's _Poems_ between pages 291 and 296 is long,
but it is so quaint and so illustrative of its author's mind that I give
it in full, footnotes and all, in the Appendix to this volume.
Stoddart we have already met. He had translated, with Georg Heinrich
Noehden, Schiller's _Fiesco_, 1796, and _Don Carlos_, 1798. The copy of
Dyer's _Poems_ annotated by Lamb and Stoddart I have not seen.
"So, you don't think there's a Word's-worth..." Manning had written, on
February 24, 1801, of the second volume of _Lyrical Ballads_: "I think
'tis utterly absurd from one end to the other. You tell me 'tis good
poetry--if you mean that there is nothing puerile, nothing bombast or
conceited, everything else that is so often found to disfigure poetry, I
agree, but will you read it over and over again? Answer me that, Master
Lamb." The three letters containing the northern castigation are
unhappily lost.
"My back tingles." "Back" is not Lamb's word.
"I am going to change my lodgings." The Lambs were still at 34
Southampton Buildings; they moved to 16 Mitre Court Buildings just
before Lady Day, 1801.
"James, Walter, and the parson." In Wordsworth's poem "The Brothers."
Exeter Change, which stood where Burleigh Street now is, was a great
building, with bookstalls and miscellaneous stalls on the ground floor
and a menagerie above. It was demolished in 1829.]
LETTER 84
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
April, 1801.
I was not aware that you owed me anything beside that guinea; but I dare
say you are right. I live at No. 16 Mitre-court Buildings, a pistol-shot
off Baron Maseres'. You must introduce me to the Baron. I think we
should suit one another mainly. He lives on the ground floor for
convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story for the air! He keeps
three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress, not
caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the higher
mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles
lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would make up a harmony.
You must bring the baron and me together.--N.B. when you come to see me,
mount up to the top of the stairs--I hope you are not asthmatical--and
come in flannel, for it's pure airy up there. And bring your glass, and
I will shew you the Surrey Hills. My bed faces the river so as by
perking up upon my haunches, and supporting my carcase with my elbows,
without much wrying my neck, I can see the white sails glide by the
bottom of the King's Bench walks as I lie in my bed. An excellent tiptoe
prospect in the best room: casement windows with small panes, to look
more like a cottage. Mind, I have got no bed for you, that's flat; sold
it to pay expenses of moving. The very bed on which Manning lay--the
friendly, the mathematical Manning! How forcibly does it remind me of
the interesting Otway! "The very bed which on thy marriage night gave
thee into the arms of Belvidera, by the coarse hands of ruffians--"
(upholsterers' men,) &c. My tears will not give me leave to go on. But a
bed I will get you, Manning, on condition you will be my day-guest.
I have been ill more than month, with a bad cold, which comes upon me
(like a murderer's conscience) about midnight, and vexes me for many
hours. I have successively been drugged with Spanish licorice, opium,
ipecacuanha, paregoric, and tincture of foxglove (tinctura purpurae
digitalis of the ancients). I am afraid I must leave off drinking.
[Francis Maseres (1731-1824), whom Lamb mentions again in his _Elia_
essay on "The Old Benchers," was the mathematician (hence his interest
to Manning) and reformer. His rooms were at 5 King's Bench Walk. He
became Cursitor Baron of the Exchequer in 1773. To the end he wore a
three-cornered hat, a wig and ruffles. Priestley praised the Baron's
mathematical labours, in which he had the support of William Frend.]
LETTER 85
CHARLES LAME TO THOMAS MANNING
[No date. ? April, 1801.]
Dear Manning,--I sent to Brown's immediately. Mr. Brown (or Pijou, as he
is called by the moderns) denied the having received a letter from you.
The one for you he remembered receiving, and remitting to Leadenhall
Street; whither I immediately posted (it being the middle of dinner), my
teeth unpicked. There I learned that if you want a letter set right, you
must apply at the first door on the left hand before one o'clock. I
returned and picked my teeth. And this morning I made my application in
form, and have seen the vagabond letter, which most likely accompanies
this. If it does not, I will get Rickman to name it to the Speaker, who
will not fail to lay the matter before Parliament the next sessions,
when you may be sure to have all abuses in the Post Department
rectified.
N.B. There seems to be some informality epidemical. You direct yours to
me in Mitre Court; my true address is Mitre Court Buildings. By the
pleasantries of Fortune, who likes a joke or a _double entendre_ as well
as the best of her children, there happens to be another Mr. Lamb (that
there should be two!!) in Mitre Court.
Farewell, and think upon it.
C. L.
[Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, dated April 6,
1801, in praise of Jeremy Taylor, particularly the _Holy Dying_. Lamb
recommends Lloyd to read the story of the Ephesian matron in the eighth
section.
Here also should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, dated June 26,
1801, containing a very interesting criticism of George Frederick
Cooke's acting as Richard III. at Covent Garden. Lamb wrote for the
_Morning Post_, January 8, 1802, a criticism of Cooke in this part,
which will be found in Vol. I. of the present edition.]
LETTER 86
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
June 29, 1801.
Dear Sir,--Doctor Christy's Brother and Sister are come to town, and
have shown me great civilities. I in return wish to requite them,
having, _by God's grace_, principles of generosity _implanted_ (as the
moralists say) in my nature, which have been duly cultivated and watered
by good and religious friends, and a pious education. They have picked
up in the northern parts of the island an astonishing admiration of the
great author of the New Philosophy in England, and I have ventured to
promise their taste an evening's gratification by seeing Mr. Godwin
_face_ to _face!!!!!_ Will you do them and me _in_ them the pleasure of
drinking tea and supping with me at the _old_ number 16 on Friday or
Saturday next? An early nomination of the day will very much oblige
yours sincerely,
CH. LAMB.
[Dr. Christy's brother and sister I do not identify.]
LETTER 87
CHARLES LAMB TO WALTER WILSON
August 14th, 1801.
Dear Wilson.--I am extremely sorry that any serious difference should
subsist between us on account of some foolish behaviour of mine at
Richmond; you knew me well enough before--that a very little liquor will
cause a considerable alteration in me.
I beg you to impute my conduct solely to that, and not to any deliberate
intention of offending you, from whom I have received so many friendly
attentions. I know that you think a very important difference in opinion
with respect to some more serious subjects between us makes me a
dangerous companion; but do not rashly infer, from some slight and light
expressions which I may have made use of in a moment of levity in your
presence, without sufficient regard to your feelings--do not conclude
that I am an inveterate enemy to all religion. I have had a time of
seriousness, and I have known the importance and reality of a religious
belief.
Latterly, I acknowledge, much of my seriousness has gone off, whether
from new company or some other new associations; but I still retain at
bottom a conviction of the truth, and a certainty of the usefulness of
religion. I will not pretend to more gravity or feeling than I at
present possess; my intention is not to persuade you that any great
alteration is probable in me; sudden converts are superficial and
transitory; I only want you to believe that I have _stamina_ of
seriousness within me, and that I desire nothing more than a return of
that friendly intercourse which used to subsist between us, but which my
folly has suspended.
Believe me, very affectionately yours,
C. LAMB.
[Walter Wilson (1781-1847) was, perhaps, at this time, or certainly
previously, in the India House with Lamb. Later he became a bookseller,
and then, inheriting money, he entered at the Inner Temple. We meet him
again later in the correspondence, in connection with his _Life of
Defoe_, 1830.
One wonders if the following passage in Hazlitt's essay "On Coffee-House
Politicians" in _Table Talk_ has any reference to the Richmond
incident:--
"Elia, the grave and witty, says things not to be surpassed in essence:
but the manner is more painful and less a relief to my own thoughts.
Some one conceived he could not be an excellent companion, because he
was seen walking down the side of the Thames, _passibus iniquis_, after
dining at Richmond. The objection was not valid."]
LETTER 88
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[August,] 1801.
Dear Manning,--I have forborne writing so long (and so have you, for the
matter of that), until I am almost ashamed either to write or to forbear
any longer. But as your silence may proceed from some worse cause than
neglect--from illness, or some mishap which may have befallen you--I
begin to be anxious. You may have been burnt out, or you may have
married, or you may have broken a limb, or turned country parson; any of
these would be excuse sufficient for not coming to my supper. I am not
so unforgiving as the nobleman in "Saint Mark." For me, nothing new has
happened to me, unless that the poor "Albion" died last Saturday of the
world's neglect, and with it the fountain of my puns is choked up for
ever.
All the Lloyds wonder that you do not write to them. They apply to me
for the cause. Relieve me from this weight of ignorance, and enable me
to give a truly oracular response.
I have been confined some days with swelled cheek and rheumatism--they
divide and govern me with a viceroy-headache in the middle. I can
neither write nor read without great pain. It must be something like
obstinacy that I choose this time to write to you in after many months
interruption.
I will close my letter of simple inquiry with an epigram on Mackintosh,
the "Vindiciae Gallicae"-man--who has got a place at last--one of the
last I _did_ for the "Albion";--
"Though thou'rt like Judas, an apostate black,
In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack;
When he had gotten his ill-purchas'd pelf,
He went away, and wisely hanged himself:
This thou may do at last, yet much I doubt,
If thou hast any _Bowels_ to gush out!"
Yours, as ever,
C. LAMB.
[The Albion was at the time of its decease owned and edited by John
Fenwick, a friend of Lamb's whom we shall meet again. Lamb told the
story in the _Elia_ essay on "Newspapers" in the following passage:--
"From the office of the _Morning Post_ (for we may as well exhaust our
Newspaper Reminiscences at once) by change of property in the paper, we
were transferred, mortifying exchanged to the office of the Albion
Newspaper, late Rackstrow's Museum, in Fleet Street. What a transition--
from a handsome apartment, from rose-wood desks, and silver inkstands,
to an office--no office, but a _den_ rather, but just redeemed from the
occupation of dead monsters, of which it seemed redolent--from the
centre of loyalty and fashion, to a focus of vulgarity and sedition!
Here in murky closet, inadequate from its square contents to the receipt
of the two bodies of Editor, and humble paragraph-maker, together at one
time, sat in the discharge of his new Editorial functions (the 'Bigod'
of _Elia_) the redoubted John Fenwick.
"F., without a guinea in his pocket, and having left not many in the
pockets of his friends whom he might command, had purchased (on tick
doubtless) the whole and sole Editorship, Proprietorship, with all the
rights and titles (such as they were worth) of the Albion, from one
Lovell; of whom we know nothing, save that he had stood in the pillory
for a libel on the Prince of Wales. With this hopeless concern--for it
had been sinking ever since its commencement, and could now reckon upon
not more than a hundred subscribers--F. resolutely determined upon
pulling down the Government in the first instance, and making both our
fortunes by way of corollary. For seven weeks and more did this
infatuated Democrat go about borrowing seven shilling pieces, and lesser
coin, to meet the daily demands of the Stamp Office, which allowed no
credit to publications of that side in politics. An outcast from politer
bread, we attached our small talents to the forlorn fortunes of our
friend. Our occupation now was to write treason.
"Recollections of feelings--which were all that now remained from our
first boyish heats kindled by the French Revolution, when if we were
misled, we erred in the company of some, who are accounted very good men
now--rather than any tendency at this time to Republican doctrines--
assisted us in assuming a style of writing, while the paper lasted,
consonant in no very under-tone to the right earnest fanaticism of F.
Our cue was now to insinuate, rather than recommend, possible
abdications. Blocks, axes, Whitehall tribunals, were covered with
flowers of so cunning a periphrasis--as Mr. Bayes says, never naming the
_thing_ directly--that the keen eye of an Attorney-General was
insufficient to detect the lurking snake among them. There were times,
indeed, when we signed for our more gentleman-like occupation under
Stuart. But with change of masters it is ever change of service. Already
one paragraph, and another, as we learned afterwards from a gentleman at
the Treasury, had begun to be marked at that office, with a view of its
being submitted at least to the attention of the proper Law Officers--
when an unlucky, or rather lucky epigram from our pen, aimed at Sir
J------s M------h, who was on the eve of departing for India to reap the
fruits of his apostacy, as F. pronounced it, (it is hardly worth
particularising), happening to offend the nice sense of Lord, or, as he
then delighted to be called, Citizen Stanhope, deprived F. at once of
the last hopes of a guinea from the last patron that had stuck by us;
and breaking up our establishment, left us to the safe, but somewhat
mortifying, neglect of the Crown Lawyers."
There are, however, in Lamb's account, written thirty years afterwards,
some errors. He passed rather from the _Albion_ to the _Post_ than from
the _Post_ to the _Albion_ (see the notes in Vol. II.). Sir James
Mackintosh was not in 1801 on the eve of departing for India: he did not
get the post of Recordership of Bombay until two years later. The
epigram probably referred to an earlier rumour of a post for him. His
apostasy consisted in recanting in 1800 from the opinions set forth in
his _Vindiciae Gallicae_, 1791, a book supporting the French
Revolutionists, and in becoming a close friend of his old enemy Burke. I
have not succeeded in finding a file of the Albion, nor, I believe, has
any one else.
"The nobleman in 'St. Mark.'" Lamb was thinking of Luke xiv. 16-24.]
LETTER 89
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[P.M. August 31, 1801.]
I heard that you were going to China, with a commission from the
Wedgwoods to collect hints for their pottery, and to teach the Chinese
_perspective_. But I did not know that London lay in your way to Pekin.
I am seriously glad of it, for I shall trouble you with a small present
for the Emperor of Usbeck Tartary, as you go by his territories: it is a
fragment of a "Dissertation on the state of political parties in England
at the end of the eighteenth century," which will no doubt be very
interesting to his Imperial Majesty. It was written originally in
English for the use of the _two_ and _twenty_ readers of "The Albion"
(this _calculation_ includes a printer, four pressmen, and a devil); but
becoming of no use when "The Albion" stopped, I got it translated into
Usbeck Tartar by my good friend Tibet Kulm, who is come to London with a
_civil_ invitation from the Cham to the English nation to go over to the
worship of the Lama.
"The Albion" is dead--dead as nail in door--and my revenues have died
with it; but I am not as a man without hope. I have got a sort of
opening to the "Morning Chronicle," !!! Mister Manning, by means of that
common dispenser of benevolence, Mister Dyer. I have not seen Perry the
editor yet: but I am preparing a specimen. I shall have a difficult job
to manage, for you must know that Mister Perry, in common with the great
body of the Whigs, thinks "The Albion" _very low_. I find I must rise a
peg or so, be a little more decent and less abusive; for, to confess the
truth, I had arrived to an abominable pitch; I spared neither age nor
sex when my cue was given me. _N'importe_ (as they say in French): any
climate will suit me. So you are about to bring your old face-making
face to London. You could not come in a better time for my purposes; for
I have just lost Rickman, a faint idea of whose character I sent you. He
is gone to Ireland for a year or two, to make his fortune; and I have
lost by his going, what [it] seems to me I can never recover--_a
finished man_. His memory will be to me as the brazen serpent to the
Israelites,--I shall look up to it, to keep me upright and honest. But
he may yet bring back his honest face to England one day. I wish your
affairs with the Emperor of China had not been _so urgent_, that you
might have stayed in Great Britain a year or two longer, to have seen
him; for, judging from _my own_ experience, I almost dare pronounce you
never saw his equal. I never saw a man that could be at all a second or
substitute for him in any sort.
Imagine that what is here erased was an apology and explanation,
perfectly satisfactory you may be sure! for rating this man so highly at
the expense of ----, and ----, and ----, and M----, and ----, and ----,
and ----. But Mister Burke has explained this phenomenon of our nature
very prettily in his letter to a Member of the National Assembly, or
else in his Appeal to the old Whigs, I forget which. Do you remember an
instance, from Homer (who understood these matters tolerably well) of
Priam driving away his other sons with expressions of wrath and bitter
reproach, when Hector was just dead.
I live where I did, in a _private_ manner, because I don't like _state_.
Nothing is so disagreeable to me as the clamours and applauses of the
mob. For this reason I live in an _obscure_ situation in one of the
courts of the Temple.
C. L.
[Manning had taken up Chinese at Cambridge, and in 1800 he had moved to
Paris to study the language under Dr. Hagan. He did not, however, go to
China until 1806. The Wedgwoods were Coleridge's patrons. Lamb's
reference to them is, of course, a joke.
The _Morning Chronicle_ was then the chief Whig paper, the principal
opponent of the _Morning Post_. I have, I think, traced two or three of
Lamb's contributions to the _Chronicle_ at this period, but they are not
of his best. He quickly moved on to the _Post_, but, as we shall see,
only for a short period.
Rickman went to Dublin in 1801 with Abbot, the Chief Secretary for
Ireland, and was appointed Deputy-Keeper of the Privy Seal. He returned
in February, 1802.
The reference to Burke is to his justification of his particular
solicitude for the Crown, as the part of the British Constitution then
in danger, though not in itself more important than the other parts, in
the "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs." The Priam-Hector
illustration is there employed.
"Homer." See _The Iliad_, Book 24, lines 311-316. Pope translates
thus:--
Next on his sons his erring fury falls,
Polites, Paris, Agathon, he calls;
His threats Dïphobus and Dius hear,
Hippothoüs, Pammon, Helenus the seer,
And generous Antiphon: for yet these nine
Survived, sad relics of his numerous line.
Following this letter should come one from Lamb to John Rickman, dated
September 16, 1801 (the first of a valuable series printed in Canon
Ainger's latest edition), saying that he and his sister are at Margate.
He has been trying to write for the _Morning Chronicle_ but with little
success. Is now meditating a book: "Why should every creature make books
but I?" After a passage concerning George Burnett, Lamb describes Godwin
and his courtship of his second wife--"a very disgusting woman." "You
never saw such a philosophic coxcomb, nor any one play the Romeo so
unnaturally."
Here should come a mutilated letter, not yet printed, I believe, shown
to me by Mr. Bertram Dobell, from Lamb to Manning, written probably at
Margate, where this year's holidays were spent. It is deeply interesting
and I wish 1 could print it even with its imperfections. There are
references to White, Dyer, Coleridge ("Pity that such human frailties
should perch upon the margin of Ulswater Lake") and the Lloyds. Also to
politics and the riddle of life. "What we came here for I know no more
than [an] Ideot."]
LETTER 90
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
Sept. 9, 1801.
Dear Sir,--Nothing runs in my head when I think of your story, but that
you should make it as like the life of Savage as possible. That is a
known and familiar tale, and its effect on the public mind has been very
great. Many of the incidents in the true history are readily made
dramatical. For instance, Savage used to walk backwards and forwards o'
nights to his mother's window, to catch a glimpse of her, as she passed
with a candle. With some such situation the play might happily open. I
would plunge my Hero, exactly like Savage, into difficulties and
embarrassments, the consequences of an unsettled mind: out of which he
may be extricated by the unknown interference of his mother. He should
be attended from the beginning by a friend, who should stand in much the
same relation towards him as Horatio to Altamont in the play of the Fair
Penitent. A character of this sort seems indispensable. This friend
might gain interviews with the mother, when the son was refused sight of
her. Like Horatio with Calista, he might wring his [her?] soul. Like
Horatio, he might learn the secret _first_. He might be exactly in the
same perplexing situation, when he had learned it, whether to tell it or
conceal it from the Son (I have still Savage in my head) might _kill_ a
man (as he did) in an affray--he should receive a pardon, as Savage
did--and the mother might interfere to have him _banished_. This should
provoke the Friend to demand an interview with her husband, and disclose
the whole secret. The husband, refusing to believe anything to her
dishonour, should fight with him. The husband repents before he dies.
The mother explains and confesses everything in his presence. The son is
admitted to an interview with his now acknowledged mother. Instead of
embraces, she resolves to abstract herself from all pleasure, even from
his sight, in voluntary penance all her days after. This is crude
indeed!! but I am totally unable to suggest a better. I am the worst
hand in the world at a plot. But I understand enough of passion to
predict that your story, with some of Savage's, which has no repugnance,
but a natural alliance with it, cannot fail. The mystery of the
suspected relationship--the suspicion, generated from slight and
forgotten circumstances, coming at last to act as Instinct, and so to be
mistaken for Instinct--the son's unceasing pursuit and throwing of
himself in his mother's way, something like Falkland's eternal
persecution of Williams--the high and intricate passion in the mother,
the being obliged to shun and keep at a distance the thing nearest to
her heart--to be cruel, where her heart yearns to be kind, without a
possibility of explanation. You have the power of life and death and the
hearts of your auditors in your hands; still Harris will want a
skeleton, and he must have it. I can only put in some sorry hints. The
discovery to the son's friend may take place not before the 3d act--in
some such way as this. The mother may cross the street--he may point her
out to some gay companion of his as the Beauty of Leghorn--the pattern
for wives, &c. &c. His companion, who is an Englishman, laughs at his
mistake, and knows her to have been the famous Nancy Dawson, or any one
else, who captivated the English king. Some such way seems dramatic, and
speaks to the Eye. The audience will enter into the Friend's surprise,
and into the perplexity of his situation. These Ocular Scenes are so
many great landmarks, rememberable headlands and lighthouses in the
voyage. Macbeth's witch has a good advice to a magic [? tragic] writer,
what to do with his spectator.
"_Show_ his _eyes_, and grieve his heart."
The most difficult thing seems to be, What to do with the husband? You
will not make him jealous of his own son? that is a stale and an
unpleasant trick in Douglas, etc. Can't you keep him out of the way till
you want him, as the husband of Isabella is conveniently sent off till
his cue comes? There will be story enough without him, and he will only
puzzle all. Catastrophes are worst of all. Mine is most stupid. I only
propose it to fulfil my engagement, not in hopes to convert you.
It is always difficult to get rid of a woman at the end of a tragedy.
_Men_ may fight and die. A woman must either take poison, _which is a
nasty trick_, or go mad, which is not fit to be shown, or retire, which
is poor, only retiring is most reputable.
I am sorry I can furnish you no better: but I find it extremely
difficult to settle my thoughts upon anything but the scene before me,
when I am from home, I am from home so seldom. If any, the least hint
crosses me, I will write again, and I very much wish to read your plan,
if you could abridge and send it. In this little scrawl you must take
the will for the deed, for I most sincerely wish success to your
play.--Farewell,
C. L.
[This and the letter that follows it contain Lamb's suggestions for
Godwin's play "Faulkener," upon which he was now meditating, but which
was not performed until 1807. Lamb wrote the prologue, a poem in praise
of Defoe, since it was in _Roxana_, or at least in one edition of it,
that the counterpart to, or portion of, Godwin's plot is found. There,
however, the central figure is a daughter, not a son. See the letters to
Walter Wilson.
Mr. Swinburne, in the little article to which I have already alluded,
says of this and the following letter: "Several of Lamb's suggestions,
in spite of his own modest disclaimer ('I am the worst hand in the world
at a plot'), seem to me, especially as coming from the author of a
tragedy memorable alike for sweetness of moral emotion and emptiness of
theatrical subject, worthy of note for the instinctive intuition of high
dramatic effect implied in their rough and rapid outlines."
Richard Savage, the poet, whose life Johnson wrote, claimed to be the
illegitimate son of Lady Macclesfield by Lord Rivers. Savage killed
Sinclair in a tavern quarrel in 1727, and was condemned to death. His
pardon was obtained by the Countess of Hertford.
"The Fair Penitent" is by Nicholas Rowe.
Falkland and Williams are in Godwin's novel _Caleb Williams_, dramatised
by Colman as "The Iron Chest."
"Harris will want a skeleton." Thomas Harris, stage manager of Covent
Garden Theatre.
Nancy Dawson (1730?-1767), the famous dancer and _bona roba_.
"Douglas"--Home's tragedy.
"The husband of Isabella." In Southern's "Fatal Marriage."]
LETTER 91
(_Fragment_)
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
Margate, Sep. 17, 1801.
I shall be glad to come home and talk these matters over with you. I
have read your scheme very attentively. That Arabella has been mistress
to King Charles is sufficient to all the purposes of the story. It can
only diminish that respect we feel for her to make her turn whore to one
of the Lords of his Bed-chamber. Her son must not know that she has been
a whore: it matters not that she has been whore to a _King_: equally in
both cases it is against decorum and against the delicacy of a son's
respect that he should be privy to it. No doubt, many sons might feel a
wayward pleasure in the honourable guilt of their mothers; but is it a
true feeling? Is it the best sort of feeling? Is it a feeling to be
exposed on theatres to mothers and daughters? Your conclusion (or rather
Defoe's) comes far short of the tragic ending, which is always expected;
and it is not safe to disappoint. A tragic auditory wants _blood_. They
care but little about a man and his wife parting. Besides, what will you
do with the son, after all his pursuits and adventures? Even quietly
leave him to take guinea-and-a-half lodgings with mamma in Leghorn! O
impotent and pacific measures!... I am certain that you must mix up some
strong ingredients of distress to give a savour to your pottage. I still
think that you may, and must, graft the story of Savage upon Defoe. Your
hero must _kill a man or do some thing_. Can't you bring him to the
gallows or some great mischief, out of which she _must_ have recourse to
an explanation with her husband to save him. Think on this. The husband,
for instance, has great friends in Court at Leghorn. The son is
condemned to death. She cannot teaze him for a stranger. She must tell
the whole truth. Or she _may_ tease him, as for a stranger, till (like
Othello in Cassio's case) he begins to suspect her for her importunity.
Or, being pardoned, can she not teaze her husband to get him banished?
Something of this I suggested before. _Both_ is best. The murder and the
pardon will make business for the fourth act, and the banishment and
explanation (by means of the _Friend_ I want you to draw) the fifth. You
must not open any of the truth to Dawley by means of a letter. A letter
is a feeble messenger on the stage. Somebody, the son or his friend,
must, as a _coup de main_, be exasperated, and obliged to tell the
husband. Damn the husband and his "gentlemanlike qualities." Keep him
out of sight, or he will trouble all. Let him be in England on trade,
and come home, as Biron does in Isabella, in the fourth act, when he is
wanted. I am for introducing situations, sort of counterparts to
situations, which have been tried in other plays--_like_ but not the
_same_. On this principle I recommended a friend like Horatio in the
"Fair Penitent," and on this principle I recommend a situation like
Othello, with relation to Desdemona's intercession for Cassio. By-scenes
may likewise receive hints. The son may see his mother at a mask or
feast, as Romeo, Juliet. The festivity of the company contrasts with the
strong perturbations of the individuals. Dawley may be told his wife's
past unchastity at a mask by some witch-character--as Macbeth upon the
heath, in dark sentences. This may stir his brain, and be forgot, but
come in aid of stronger proof hereafter. From this, what you will
perhaps call whimsical way of counterparting, this honest stealing, and
original mode of plagiarism, much yet, I think, remains to be sucked.
Excuse these abortions. I thought you would want the draught soon again,
and I would not send it empty away.--Yours truly,
WILLIAM GODWIN!!!
Somers Town, 17th Sept., 1801.
[The point of signing this letter with Godwin's name and adding his
address (Lamb, it will be noticed, was then at Margate) is not clear.
I place here the following letter, not having any clue as to date, which
is immaterial:--]
LETTER 92
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAM GODWIN
Dear Mrs. G.,--Having observed with some concern that Mr. Godwin is a
little fastidious in what he eats for supper, I herewith beg to present
his palate with a piece of dried salmon. I am assured it is the best
that swims in Trent. If you do not know how to dress it, allow me to add
that it should be cut in thin slices and boiled in paper _previously
prepared in butter_. Wishing it exquisite, I remain,--Much as before,
yours sincerely,
C. LAMB.
Some add _mashed potatoes_.
[Following this letter should come a letter from Lamb to John Rickman,
describing the state of their two George friends: George the First
(George Dyer) and George the Second (George Burnett). Burnett, he says,
as ill becomes adversity as Dyer would prosperity. He tells also of
another poor acquaintance of Rickman's--one Simonds with a slit lip, who
has been to Lamb to borrow money. "Saving his dirty shirt and his
physiognomy and his 'bacco box, together with a certain kiddy air in his
walk, a man w'd have gone near to have mistaken him for a gentleman. He
has a sort of ambition to be so misunderstood."]
LETTER 93
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN RICKMAN
To
John Rickman, Esqr.,
Dublin Castle.
[No date. ? November, 1801.]
A letter from G. Dyer will probably accompany this. I wish I could
convey to you any notion of the whimsical scenes I have been witness to
in this fortnight past. 'Twas on Tuesday week the poor heathen scrambled
up to my door about breakfast time. He came thro' a violent rain with no
neckcloth on, and a _beard_ that made him a spectacle to men and angels,
and tap'd at the door. Mary open'd it, and he stood stark still and held
a paper in his hand importing that he had been ill with a fever. He
either wouldn't or couldn't speak except by signs. When you went to
comfort him he put his hand upon his heart and shook his head and told
us his complaint lay where no medicines could reach it. I was dispatch'd
for Dr. Dale, Mr. Phillips of St. Paul's Church yard, and Mr. Frend, who
is to be his executor. George solemnly delivered into Mr. Frend's hands
and mine an old burnt preface that had been in the fire, with
injunctions which we solemnly vow'd to obey that it should be printed
after his death with his last corrections, and that some account should
be given to the world why he had not fulfill'd his engagement with
subscribers. Having done this and borrow'd two guineas of his bookseller
(to whom he imparted in confidence that he should leave a great many
loose papers behind him which would only want methodizing and arranging
to prove very lucrative to any bookseller after his death), he laid
himself down on my bed in a mood of complacent resignation. By the aid
of meat and drink put into him (for I all along suspected a vacuum) he
was enabled to sit up in the evening, but he had not got the better of
his intolerable fear of dying; he expressed such philosophic
indifference in his speech and such frightened apprehensions in his
physiognomy that if he had truly been dying, and I had known it, I could
not have kept my countenance. In particular, when the doctor came and
ordered him to take little white powders (I suppose of chalk or alum, to
humour him), he ey'd him with a _suspicion_ which I could not account
for; he has since explain'd that he took it for granted Dr. Dale knew
his situation and had ordered him these powders to hasten his departure
that he might suffer as little pain as possible. Think what an aspect
the heathen put on with these fears upon a dirty face. To recount all
his freaks for two or three days while he thought he was going, and how
the fit operated, and sometimes the man got uppermost and sometimes the
author, and he had this excellent person to serve, and he must correct
some proof sheets for Phillips, and he could not bear to leave his
subscribers unsatisfy'd, but he must not think of these things now, he
was going to a place where he should satisfy all his debts--and when he
got a little better he began to discourse what a happy thing it would be
if there was a place where all the good men and women in the world might
meet, meaning heav'n, and I really believe for a time he had doubts
about his soul, for he was very near, if not quite, light-headed. The
fact was he had not had a good meal for some days and his little dirty
Niece (whom he sent for with a still dirtier Nephew, and hugg'd him, and
bid them farewell) told us that unless he dines out he subsists on tea
and gruels. And he corroborated this tale by ever and anon complaining
of sensations of gnawing which he felt about his heart, which he mistook
his stomach to be, and sure enough these gnawings were dissipated after
a meal or two, and he surely thinks that he has been rescued from the
jaws of death by Dr. Dale's white powders. He is got quite well again by
nursing, and chirps of odes and lyric poetry the day long--he is to go
out of town on Monday, and with him goes the dirty train of his papers
and books which follow'd him to our house. I shall not be sorry when he
takes his nipt carcase out of my bed, which it has occupied, and
vanishes with all his Lyric lumber, but I will endeavour to bring him in
future into a method of dining at least once a day. I have proposed to
him to dine with me (and he has nearly come into it) whenever he does
not go out; and pay me. I will take his money beforehand and he shall
eat it out. If I don't it will go all over the world. Some worthless
relations, of which the dirty little devil that looks after him and a
still more dirty nephew are component particles, I have reason to think
divide all his gains with some lazy worthless authors that are his
constant satellites. The Literary Fund has voted him seasonably £20 and
if I can help it he shall spend it on his own carcase. I have assisted
him in arranging the remainder of what he calls Poems and he will get
rid of 'em I hope in another. [_Here three lines are torn away at the
foot of the page, wherein Lamb makes the transition from George Dyer to
another poor author, George Burnett._]
I promised Burnet to write when his parcel went. He wants me to certify
that he is more awake than you think him. I believe he may be by this
time, but he is so full of self-opinion that I fear whether he and
Phillips will ever do together. What he is to do for Phillips he
whimsically seems to consider more as a favor done _to_ P. than a job
_from_ P. He still persists to call employment _dependence_, and prates
about the insolence of booksellers and the tax upon geniuses. Poor
devil! he is not launched upon the ocean and is sea-sick with
aforethought. I write plainly about him, and he would stare and frown
finely if he read this treacherous epistle, but I really am anxious
about him, and that [? it] nettles me to see him so proud and so
helpless. If he is not serv'd he will never serve himself. I read his
long letter to Southey, which I suppose you have seen. He had better
have been furnishing copy for Phillips than luxuriating in tracing the
causes of his imbecillity. I believe he is a little wrong in not
ascribing more to the structure of his own mind. He had his yawns from
nature, his pride from education.
I hope to see Southey soon, so I need only send my remembrance to him
now. Doubtless I need not tell him that Burnett is not to be foster'd in
self-opinion. His eyes want opening, to see himself a man of middling
stature. I am not oculist enough to do this. The booksellers may one day
remove the film. I am all this time on the most cordial supping terms of
amity with G. Burnett and really love him at times: but I must speak
freely of people behind their backs and not think it back-biting. It is
better than Godwin's way of telling a man he is a fool to his face.
I think if you could do any thing for George in the way of an office
(God knows whether you can in any haste [? case], but you did talk of
it) it is my firm belief that it would be his _only chance_ of
settlement; he will never live by his _literary exertions_, as he calls
them--he is too proud to go the usual way to work and he has no talents
to make that way unnecessary. I know he talks big in his letter to
Southey that his mind is undergoing an alteration and that the die is
now casting that shall consign him to honor or dishonour, but these
expressions are the convulsions of a fever, not the sober workings of
health. Translated into plain English, he now and then perceives he must
work or starve, and then he thinks he'll work; but when he goes about it
there's a lion in the way. He came dawdling to me for an Encyclopædia
yesterday. I recommended him to Norris' library and he said if he could
not get it there, Phillips was bound to furnish him with one; it was
Phillips' interest to do so, and all that. This was true with some
restrictions--but as to Phillips' interests to oblige G.B.! Lord help
his simple head! P. could by a _whistle_ call together a host of such
authors as G. B. like Robin Hood's merry men in green. P. has regular
regiments in pay. Poor writers are his crab-lice and suck at him for
nutriment. His round pudding chops are their _idea_ of plenty when _in
their idle fancies they aspire to be rich_.
What do you think of a life of G. Dyer? I can scarcely conceive a more
amusing novel. He has been connected with all sects in the world and he
will faithfully tell all he knows. Every body will read it; and if it is
not done according to my fancy I promise to put him in a novel when he
dies. Nothing shall escape _me_. If you think it feasible, whenever you
write you may encourage him. Since he has been so close with me I have
perceiv'd the workings of his inordinate vanity, his gigantic attention
to particles and to prevent open vowels in his odes, his solicitude that
the public may not lose any tittle of his poems by his death, and all
the while his utter ignorance that the world don't care a pin about his
odes and his criticisms, a fact which every body knows but himself--he
_is a rum genius_.
C. L.
[Dr. Dale would probably be Thomas Dale of Devonshire Square,
Bishopsgate, who had a large city practice in those days. He died in
1816.
"An old burnt preface." See note on page 210.
George Burnett we have already met. He was born probably in 1776. He
went to Balliol, met Southey and Coleridge and became a Pantisocratist.
Subsequently he became a dissenting minister at Yarmouth, and then a
medical student at Edinburgh; and later he succeeded George Dyer as
tutor in the family of Lord Stanhope. He became one of Phillips' hacks,
as Lamb's letter tells us. His principal work was the _Specimens of
English Prose Writers_, 1807, in three volumes, in which it has been
stated that Lamb had a hand. He died in want in 1811.
The reference to Southey being in Dublin is explained by the fact that,
through Rickman, he had been appointed private secretary to Mr. Corry,
Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland, at a salary of £400. He did not
long retain the post, as it was vexatious and the duties very irregular.
Lamb's next letter to Rickman, dated November 24, 1801, contains better
news of Dyer and returns to the subject of _John Woodvil_. "Dyer
regularly dines with me when he does not go a visiting, and brings his
shilling." Also, says Lamb, he talks of marrying. "He has not forgiven
me for betraying to you his purpose of writing his own Life. He says,
that if it once spreads, so many people will expect and wish to have a
place in it, that he is sure he shall disoblige all his friends."
Another, undated, letter to Rickman should probably come here-abouts,
saying that Dyer has been lent a house at Enfield full of books, where
he is at work on his Poems.
Here perhaps should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, returning
to Jeremy Taylor, and deprecating a selection from his works, which
Robert Lloyd had suggested that Lamb should make. (In 1805 Basil
Montagu, afterwards, if not now, a friend of Lamb's, published a volume
of _Selections from the Works of Taylor, Etc_.) Lamb says that Manning
and Coleridge are in town, and he is making a thorough alteration in the
structure of his play (_John Woodvil_) for publication.
Here perhaps should come a further undated letter to Rickman in which
Lamb says that the receipt of £50 for an old debt has made it possible
to print _John Woodvil_. Dyer, he says, is "the most unmanageable of
God's creatures." Burnett is in a very bad way again. Fenwick's paper
_The Plough_ has become a weekly. Godwin is not yet married. Fell,
Godwin's shadow, is writing a comedy: "An Owl making a Pun would be no
bad emblem of the unnatural attempt." In a postscript Lamb says that he
has since read the play and it is not bad: "Who knows, but Owls do make
Puns when they hoot by moonshine." The best news is that Lamb hopes to
be a theatrical critic for the _Morning Post_.
Here should come a letter to Rickman dated January 9, 1802, the
principal news in which is that George Dyer is consorting with the Earl
of Buchan, the "eccentric biographer of Fletcher of Saltoun," and has
brought him to see Lamb. "I wan't at home, but Mary was washing--a
pretty pickle to receive an Earl in! Lord have mercy upon us! a Lord in
my garret! My utmost ambition was some time or other to receive a
Secretary. Well, I am to breakfast with this mad Lord on Sunday." Lamb
refers to his article in the _Post_ on Cooke's "Richard III."
Here should come a letter to Rickman dated January 14, 1802, in which
Lamb confesses to the authorship of "Dick Strype" in the _Morning Post_
of January 6 (see Vol. IV.); also of a whimsical account of the Lord
Mayor's State Bed (see Vol. I.); and of some of the Twelfth Night
Epigrams (see Vol. IV.). He includes two epigrams which the editor
rejected.
Here should come a note to Rickman dated January 18, 1802, relating to a
joint subscription with Rickman's father for certain newspapers.
Here should come a letter to Rickman dated February 1, 1802, giving the
first draft of the epitaph for Mary Druitt (see Vol. IV.). He also says
that George Burnett, who had just been appointed tutor to the sons of
Lord ("Citizen") Stanhope, is perplexed because his pupils have run
away.
Here should come a note to Rickman, dated February 4, 1802, accompanying
three copies of _John Woodvil_ and saying that an annuity is to be
bought for George Dyer by certain friends.
Here should come a letter to Rickman, dated February 14, 1802, which
contains the news that Lamb has given up the _Post_. He feels much
relieved in consequence, in spite of the loss of money. George Dyer's
dinner money is now paid from his friends' fund, and Burnett is happy in
doing nothing for Lord Stanhope's salary. Mary Lamb does not want
Rickman to know that "Helen," in the _John Woodvil_ volume, is of her
writing.]
LETTER 94
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[No date. ? Feb. 15, 1802.]
Not a sentence, not a syllable of Trismegistus, shall be lost through my
neglect. I am his word-banker, his storekeeper of puns and syllogisms.
You cannot conceive (and if Trismegistus cannot, no man can) the strange
joy which I felt at the receipt of a letter from Paris. It seemed to
give me a learned importance, which placed me above all who had not
Parisian correspondents. Believe that I shall carefully husband every
scrap, which will save you the trouble of memory, when you come back.
You cannot write things so trifling, let them only be about Paris, which
I shall not treasure. In particular, I must have parallels of actors and
actresses. I must be told if any building in Paris is at all comparable
to St. Paul's, which, contrary to the usual mode of that part of our
nature called admiration, I have looked up to with unfading wonder every
morning at ten o'clock, ever since it has lain in my way to business. At
noon I casually glance upon it, being hungry; and hunger has not much
taste for the fine arts. Is any night-walk comparable to a walk from St.
Paul's to Charing Cross, for lighting and paving, crowds going and
coming without respite, the rattle of coaches and the cheerfulness of
shops? Have you seen a man guillotined yet? is it as good as hanging?
are the women _all_ painted, and the men _all_ monkeys? or are there not
a _few_ that look like _rational_ of _both sexes_? Are you and the First
Consul _thick_? All this expense of ink I may fairly put you to, as your
letters will not be solely for my proper pleasure, but are to serve as
memoranda and notices, helps for short memory, a kind of Rumfordising
recollection, for yourself on your return. Your letter was just what a
letter should be, crammed and very funny. Every part of it pleased me
till you came to Paris; and your damn'd philosophical indolence or
indifference stung me. You cannot stir from your rooms till you know the
language! What the devil!--are men nothing but word-trumpets? are men
all tongue and ear? have these creatures, that you and I profess to know
_something about_, no faces, gestures, gabble: no folly, no absurdity,
no induction of French education upon the abstract idea of men and
women, no similitude nor dis-similitude to English! Why! thou damn'd
Smell-fungus! your account of your landing and reception, and Bullen (I
forget how you spell it--it was spelt my way in Harry the Eighth's
time,) was exactly in that minute style which strong impressions INSPIRE
(writing to a Frenchman, I write as a Frenchman would). It appears to me
as if I should die with joy at the first landing in a foreign country.
It is the nearest pleasure, which a grown man can substitute for that
unknown one, which he can never know--the pleasure of the first entrance
into life from the womb. I dare say, in a short time, my habits would
come back like a "stronger man" armed, and drive out that new pleasure;
and I should soon sicken for known objects. Nothing has transpired here
that seems to me of sufficient importance to send dry-shod over the
water: but I suppose you will want to be told some news. The best and
the worst to me is, that I have given up two guineas a week at the
"Post," and regained my health and spirits, which were upon the wane. I
grew sick, and Stuart unsatisfied. _Ludisti satis, tempus abire est_; I
must cut closer, that's all.
In all this time I have done but one thing, which I reckon tolerable,
and that I will transcribe, because it may give you pleasure, being a
picture of _my_ humours. You will find it in my last page. It absurdly
is a first Number of a series, thus strangled in its birth.
More news! The Professor's Rib has come out to be a damn'd disagreeable
woman, so much so as to drive me and some more old cronies from his
house. If a man will keep snakes in his house, he must not wonder if
people are shy of coming to see him because of the _snakes_.
C. L.
Mister Fell--or as you, with your usual facetiousness and drollery, call
him, Mr. F + II--has stopped short in the middle of his play. Some
_friend_ has told him that it has not the least merit in it. Oh! that I
had the rectifying of the Litany! I would put in a _libera nos
(Scriptores videlicet) ab amicis_! That's all the news. _A propos_ (is
it pedantry, writing to a Frenchman, to express myself sometimes by a
French word, when an English one would not do as well? methinks, my
thoughts fall naturally into it).
_Apropos_, I think you wrong about my play. All the omissions are right.
And the supplementary scene, in which Sandford narrates the manner in
which his master is affected, is the best in the book. It stands where a
hodge-podge of German puerilities used to stand. I insist upon it that
you like that scene. Love me, love that scene.
I will now transcribe the "Londoner" (No. 1), and wind up all with
affection and humble servant at the end.
THE LONDONER. No. 1.
In compliance with my own particular humour, no less than with thy
laudable curiosity, Reader, I proceed to give thee some account of my
history and habits. I was born under the nose of St. Dunstan's steeple,
just where the conflux of the eastern and western inhabitants of this
twofold city meet and justle in friendly opposition at Temple-bar. The
same day which gave me to the world saw London happy in the celebration
of her great annual feast. This I cannot help looking upon as a lively
type or omen of the future great goodwill which I was destined to bear
toward the City, resembling in kind that solicitude which every Chief
Magistrate is supposed to feel for whatever concerns her interests and
well-being. Indeed, I consider myself in some sort a speculative Lord
Mayor of London: for, though circumstances unhappily preclude me from
the hope of ever arriving at the dignity of a gold chain and spital
sermon, yet thus much will I say of myself, in truth, that _Whittington_
himself with his _Cat_ (just emblem of _vigilance_ and a _furred gown_),
never went beyond me in affection, which I bear to the citizens. Shut
out from serving them in the most honourable mode, I aspire to do them
benefit in another, scarcely less honourable; and if I cannot, by virtue
of office, commit vice and irregularity to the _material Counter_, I
will, at least, erect a _spiritual one_, where they shall be _laid fast
by the heels_. In plain words, I will do my best endeavour to _write
them down_.
To return to _myself_ (from whence my zeal for the Public good is
perpetually causing me to digress), I will let thee, Reader, into
certain more of my peculiarities. I was born (as you have heard), bred,
and have passed most of my time, in a _crowd_. This has begot in me an
entire affection for that way of life, amounting to an almost
insurmountable aversion from solitude and rural scenes. This aversion
was never interrupted or suspended, except for a few years in the
younger part of my life, during a period in which I had fixed my
affections upon a charming young woman. Every man, while the _passion_
is upon him, is for a time at least addicted to groves and meadows, and
purling streams. During this short period of my existence, I contracted
just enough familiarity with rural objects to understand tolerably well
ever after the _Poets_, when they declaim in such passionate terms in
favour of a _country life_.
For my own part, now the _fit_ is long past, I have no hesitation in
declaring, that a mob of happy faces crowding up at the pit door of
Drury-Lane Theatre just at the hour of five, give me ten thousand finer
pleasures, than I ever received from all the flocks of _silly sheep_,
that have whitened the plains of _Arcadia_ or _Epsom Downs_.
This passion for crowds is no where feasted so full as in London. The
man must have a rare _recipe_ for melancholy, who can be dull in
Fleet-street. I am naturally inclined to _hypochondria_, but in London
it vanishes, like all other ills. Often when I have felt a weariness or
distaste at home, have I rushed out into her crowded Strand, and fed my
humour, till tears have wetted my cheek for inutterable sympathies with
the multitudinous moving picture, which she never fails to present at
all hours, like the shifting scenes of a skilful Pantomime.
The very deformities of London, which give distaste to others, from
habit do not displease me. The endless succession of shops, where Fancy
(miscalled Folly) is supplied with perpetual new gauds and toys, excite
in me no puritanical aversion. I gladly behold every appetite supplied
with its proper food. The obliging customer, and the obliged tradesmen--
things which live by bowing, and things which exist but for homage, do
not affect me with disgust; from habit I perceive nothing but urbanity,
where other men, more refined, discover meanness. I love the very smoke
of London, because it has been the medium most familiar to my vision. I
see grand principles of honour at work in the dirty ring which
encompasses two combatants with fists, and principles of no less eternal
justice in the tumultuous detectors of a pickpocket. The salutary
astonishment with which an execution is surveyed, convinces me more
forcibly than an hundred volumes of abstract polity, that the universal
instinct of man, in all ages, has leaned to order and good government.
Thus an art of extracting morality, from the commonest incidents of a
town life, is attained by the same well-natured alchemy, with which the
_Foresters of Arden_ in a beautiful country
Found tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing--
Where has spleen her food but in London--humour, interest, curiosity,
suck at her measureless breasts without a possibility of being satiated.
Nursed amid her noise, her crowds, her beloved smoke--what have I been
doing all my life, if I have not lent out my heart with usury to such
scenes?
Reader, in the course of my peregrinations about the great city, it is
hard, if I have not picked up matter, which may serve to amuse thee, as
it has done me, a winter evening long. When next we meet, I purpose
opening my budget--Till when, farewell.
* * * * *
"What is all this about?" said Mrs. Shandy. "A story of a cock and a
bull," said Yorick: and so it is; but Manning will take good-naturedly
what _God will send him_ across the water: only I hope he won't _shut_
his _eyes_, and _open_ his _mouth_, as the children say, for that is the
way to _gape_, and not to _read_. Manning, continue your laudable
purpose of making me your register. I will render back all your remarks;
and _I, not you_, shall have received usury by having read them. In the
mean time, may the great Spirit have you in his keeping, and preserve
our Englishmen from the inoculation of frivolity and sin upon French
earth.
_Allons_--or what is it you say, instead of _good-bye_?
Mary sends her kind remembrance, and covets the remarks equally with me.
C. LAMB.
[The reference to the "word-banker" and "register" is explained by
Manning's first letter to Lamb from Paris, in which he says: "I ... beg
you to keep all my letters. I hope to send you many--and I may in the
course of time, make some observations that I shall wish to recall to my
memory when I return to England."
"Are you and the First Consul _thick_?"--Napoleon, with whom Manning was
destined one day to be on terms. In 1803, on the declaration of war,
when he wished to return to England, Manning's was the only passport
that Napoleon signed; again, in 1817, on returning from China, Manning
was wrecked near St. Helena, and, waiting on the island for a ship,
conversed there with the great exile.
"Rumfordising." A word coined by Lamb from Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count
von Rumford, the founder of the Royal Institution, the deviser of the
Rumford stove, and a tireless scientific and philosophical
experimentalist.
"Smellfungus." An allusion to Sterne's attack on Smollett, in _The
Sentimental Journey_: "The lamented Smelfungus travelled from Boulogne
to Paris, from Paris to Rome, and so on; but he set out with the spleen
and jaundice, and every object he passed by was discoloured or
distorted."
"The _Post_." Lamb had been writing criticisms of plays; but Stuart, as
we have seen, wanted them on the same night as the performance and Lamb
found this impossible.
"I have done but one thing"--"The Londoner," referred to later.
"The Professor's Rib"--Godwin's second wife, the widow Clairmont (mother
of Jane Clairmont), whom he had married in December, 1801.
"Fell"--R. Fell, author of a _Tour through the Batavian Republic_, 1801.
Later he compiled a _Life of Charles James Fox_, 1808. Lamb knew him, as
well as Fenwick, through Godwin.
"_Apropos_, I think you wrong about my play." _John Woodvil_ had just
been published and Lamb had sent Manning a copy. Manning, in return, had
written from Paris early in February: "I showed your Tragedy to
Holcroft, who had taste enough to discover that 'tis full of poetry--but
the plot he condemns _in toto_. Tell me how it succeeds. I think you
were ill advised to retrench so much. I miss the beautiful Branches you
have lopped off and regret them. In some of the pages the sprinkling of
words is so thin as to be quite _outré_. There you were wrong again."
"The Londoner" was published in the _Morning Post_, February 1, 1802. I
have quoted the article from that paper, as Lamb's copy for Manning has
disappeared. Concerning it Manning wrote, in his next letter--April 6,
1802--"I like your 'Londoner' very much, there is a deal of happy fancy
in it, but it is not strong enough to be seen by the generality of
readers, yet if you were to write a volume of essays in the same stile
you might be sure of its succeeding."]
LETTER 95
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN RICKMAN
16, Mitre Court Buildings, Inner Temple,
April 10, 1802.
Dear Rickman,--The enclosed letter explains itself. It will save me the
danger of a corporal interview with the man-eater who, if very
sharp-set, may take a fancy to me, if you will give me a short note,
declaratory of probabilities. These from him who hopes to see you once
or twice more before he goes hence, to be no more seen: for there is no
tipple nor tobacco in the grave, whereunto he hasteneth.
C. LAMB.
How clearly the Goul writes, and like a gentleman!
[A friend of Burnett, named Simonds, is meant. Lamb calls him a "Goul"
in another letter, and elsewhere says he eats strange flesh. See note on
page 232.]
LETTER 96
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[No date. ?End of April, 1802.]
My dear Manning,--Although something of the latest, and after two
months' waiting, your letter was highly gratifying. Some parts want a
little explication; for example, "the god-like face of the First
Consul." _What god_ does he most resemble? Mars, Bacchus, or Apollo? or
the god Serapis who, flying (as Egyptian chronicles deliver) from the
fury of the dog Anubis (the hieroglyph of an English mastiff), lighted
on Monomotapa (or the land of apes), by some thought to be Old France,
and there set up a tyranny, &c. Our London prints of him represent him
gloomy and sulky, like an angry Jupiter. I hear that he is very small,
even less than me, who am "less than the least of the Apostles," at
least than they are painted in the Vatican. I envy you your access to
this great man, much more than your séances and conversaziones, which I
have a shrewd suspicion must be something dull. What you assert
concerning the actors of Paris, that they exceed our comedians, "bad as
ours are," is _impossible_. In one sense it may be true, that their fine
gentlemen, in what is called genteel comedy, may possibly be more brisk
and _dégagé_ than Mr. Caulfield or Mr. Whitfield; but have any of them
the power to move _laughter in excess_? or can a Frenchman _laugh_? Can
they batter at your judicious ribs till they _shake_, nothing both to be
so shaken? This is John Bull's criterion, and it shall be mine. You are
Frenchified. Both your tastes and morals are corrupt and perverted.
By-and-by you will come to assert, that Buonaparte is as great a general
as the old Duke of Cumberland, and deny that one Englishman can beat
three Frenchmen. Read "Henry the Fifth" to restore your orthodoxy. All
things continue at a stay-still in London. I cannot repay your new
novelties with my stale reminiscences. Like the prodigal, I have spent
my patrimony, and feed upon the superannuated chaff and dry husks of
repentance; yet sometimes I remember with pleasure the hounds and
horses, which I kept in the days of my prodigality. I find nothing new,
nor anything that has so much of the gloss and dazzle of novelty, as may
rebound in narrative, and cast a reflective glimmer across the channel.
Something I will say about people that you and I know. Fenwick is still
in debt, and the Professor has not done making love to his new spouse. I
think he never looks into an almanack, or he would have found by the
calendar that the honeymoon was extinct a moon ago. Lloyd has written to
me and names you. I think a letter from Maison Magnan (is that a person
or a thing?) would gratify him. G. Dyer is in love with an Ideot who
loves a Doctor, who is incapable of loving anything but himself. A
puzzling circle of perverse Providences! A maze as un-get-out-again-able
as the House which Jack built. Southey is Secretary to the Chancellor of
the Irish Exchequer; £400 a year. Stoddart is turned Doctor of Civil
Law, and dwells in Doctors' Commons. I fear _his_ commons are short, as
they say. Did I send you an epitaph I scribbled upon a poor girl who
died at nineteen, a good girl and a pretty girl, and a clever girl, but
strangely neglected by all her friends and kin?
"Under this cold marble stone
Sleep the sad remains of one
Who, when alive, by few or none
Was loved, as loved she might have been,
If she prosperous days had seen,
Or had thriving been, I ween.
Only this cold funeral stone
Tells she was beloved by one,
Who on the marble graves his moan."
Brief, and pretty, and tender, is it not? I send you this, being the
only piece of poetry I have _done_, since the muses all went with T. M.
to Paris. I have neither stuff in my brain, nor paper in my drawer, to
write you a longer letter. Liquor and company and wicked tobacco
a'nights, have quite dispericraniated me, as one may say; but you who
spiritualise upon Champagne may continue to write long letters, and
stuff 'em with amusement to the end. Too long they cannot be, any more
than a codicil to a will which leaves me sundry parks and manors not
specified in the deed. But don't be _two months_ before you write again.
These from merry old England, on the day of her valiant patron St.
George.
C. LAMB.
[This letter is usually dated 1803, but I feel sure it should be 1802.
Southey had given up his Irish appointment in that year, and Godwin's
honeymoon began in December, 1801.
"Even less than me." Mr. W. C. Hazlitt gives in _Mary and Charles Lamb_
a vivid impression of Lamb's spare figure. A farmer at Widford, Mr.
Charles Tween, himself not a big man, told Mr. Hazlitt that when walking
out with Lamb he would place his hands under his arm and lift him over
the stiles as if it were nothing. Napoleon's height was 5 feet 6 or 7
inches.
Thomas Caulfield, a brother of the antiquary and print-seller, James
Caulfield, was a comedian and mimic at Drury Lane; Whitfield was an
actor at Drury Lane, who later moved to Covent Garden.
"An epitaph." These lines were written upon a friend of Rickman's, Mary
Druitt of Wimborne. They were printed in the _Morning Post_ for February
7, 1804, signed C. L. See later.]
LETTER 97
(_Fragment_)
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Sept. 8th, 1802.
Dear Coleridge,--I thought of not writing till we had performed some of
our commissions; but we have been hindered from setting about them,
which yet shall be done to a tittle. We got home very pleasantly on
Sunday. Mary is a good deal fatigued, and finds the difference of going
to a place, and coming _from_ it. I feel that I shall remember your
mountains to the last day I live. They haunt me perpetually. I am like a
man who has been falling in love unknown to himself, which he finds out
when he leaves the lady. I do not remember any very strong impression
while they were present; but, being gone, their mementos are shelved in
my brain. We passed a very pleasant little time with the Clarksons. The
Wordsworths are at Montagu's rooms, near neighbours to us. They dined
with us yesterday, and I was their guide to Bartlemy Fair!
[In the summer of 1802 the Lambs paid a sudden visit to Coleridge at
Keswick. Afterwards they went to Grasmere, although the Wordsworths were
away from home; but they saw Thomas Clarkson, the philanthropist, then
living at Ullswater (see the next letter). They had reached London again
on September 5. Procter records that on being asked how he felt when
among the lakes and mountains, Lamb replied that in order to bring down
his thoughts from their almost painful elevation to the sober regions of
life, he was obliged to think of the ham and beef shop near St. Martin's
Lane. Lamb says that after such a holiday he finds his office work very
strange. "I feel debased; but I shall soon break in my mountain spirit."
The last two words were a recollection of his own poem "The Grandame"--
hers was else
A mountain spirit....
This letter, the original of which is I know not where, is here, for
dismal copyright reasons, very imperfectly given. Mr. Macdonald prints
it apparently in full, although Mrs. Gilchrist in her memoir of Mary
Lamb supplies another passage, as follows:--"Lloyd has written me a fine
letter of friendship all about himself and Sophia and love and cant
which I have not answered. I have not given up the idea of writing to
him but it will be done very plainly and sincerely, without acrimony."
Lamb also says that Pi-pos (as Coleridge's second child Derwent was
called) was the only one, except a beggar's brat, that he had ever
wanted to steal from its parents.
He says also: "I was pleased to recognise your blank-verse poem (the
Picture) in the _Morn. Post_ of Monday. It reads very well, and I feel
some dignity in the notion of being able to understand it better than
most Southern readers."
Coleridge's poem "The Picture; or, The Lover's Resolution," was printed
in the _Morning Post_ for September 6. Its scenery was probably pointed
out to Lamb by Coleridge at Keswick.
Basil Montagu, the lawyer, an old friend of Wordsworth's. It is his son
Edward who figures in the "Anecdote for Fathers."
Bartholomew Fair, held at Smithfield, continued until 1855, but its
glories had been decreasing for some years.]
LETTER 98
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
24th Sept., 1802, London.
My dear Manning,--Since the date of my last letter, I have been a
traveller. A strong desire seized me of visiting remote regions. My
first impulse was to go and see Paris. It was a trivial objection to my
aspiring mind, that I did not understand a word of the language, since I
certainly intend some time in my life to see Paris, and equally
certainly never intend to learn the language; therefore that could be no
objection. However, I am very glad I did not go, because you had left
Paris (I see) before I could have set out. I believe, Stoddart promising
to go with me another year prevented that plan. My next scheme, (for to
my restless, ambitious mind London was become a bed of thorns) was to
visit the far-famed Peak in Derbyshire, where the Devil sits, they say,
without breeches. _This_ my purer mind rejected as indelicate. And my
final resolve was a tour to the Lakes. I set out with Mary to Keswick,
without giving Coleridge any notice; for my time being precious did not
admit of it. He received us with all the hospitality in the world, and
gave up his time to show us all the wonders of the country. He dwells
upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite
enveloped on all sides by a net of mountains: great floundering bears
and monsters they seemed, all couchant and asleep. We got in in the
evening, travelling in a post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst of a
gorgeous sunshine, which transmuted all the mountains into colours,
purple, &c. &c. We thought we had got into fairyland. But that went off
(as it never came again--while we stayed we had no more fine sunsets);
and we entered Coleridge's comfortable study just in the dusk, when the
mountains were all dark with clouds upon their heads. Such an impression
I never received from objects of sight before, nor do I suppose 1 can
ever again.
Glorious creatures, fine old fellows, Skiddaw, &c. I never shall forget
ye, how ye lay about that night, like an intrenchment; gone to bed, as
it seemed for the night, but promising that ye were to be seen in the
morning. Coleridge had got a blazing fire in his study; which is a
large, antique, ill-shaped room, with an old-fashioned organ, never
played upon, big enough for a church, shelves of scattered folios, an
Æolian harp, and an old sofa, half-bed, &c. And all looking out upon the
last fading view of Skiddaw and his broad-breasted brethren: what a
night! Here we stayed three full weeks, in which time I visited
Wordsworth's cottage, where we stayed a day or two with the Clarksons
(good people and most hospitable, at whose house we tarried one day and
night), and saw Lloyd. The Wordsworths were gone to Calais. They have
since been in London and past much time with us: he is now gone into
Yorkshire to be married to a girl of small fortune, but he is in
expectation of augmenting his own in consequence of the death of Lord
Lonsdale, who kept him out of his own in conformity with a plan my lord
had taken up in early life of making everybody unhappy. So we have seen
Keswick, Grasmere, Ambleside, Ulswater (where the Clarksons live), and a
place at the other end of Ulswater--I forget the name--to which we
travelled on a very sultry day, over the middle of Helvellyn. We have
clambered up to the top of Skiddaw, and I have waded up the bed of
Lodore. In fine, I have satisfied myself, that there is such a thing as
that which tourists call _romantic_, which I very much suspected before:
they make such a spluttering about it, and toss their splendid epithets
around them, till they give as dim a light as at four o'clock next
morning the lamps do after an illumination. Mary was excessively tired,
when she got about half-way up Skiddaw, but we came to a cold rill (than
which nothing can be imagined more cold, running over cold stones), and
with the reinforcement of a draught of cold water she surmounted it most
manfully. Oh, its fine black head, and the bleak air atop of it, with a
prospect of mountains all about, and about, making you giddy; and then
Scotland afar off, and the border countries so famous in song and
ballad! It was a day that will stand out, like a mountain, I am sure, in
my life. But I am returned (I have now been come home near three
weeks--I was a month out), and you cannot conceive the degradation I
felt at first, from being accustomed to wander free as air among
mountains, and bathe in rivers without being controlled by any one, to
come home and _work_. I felt very _little_. I had been dreaming I was a
very great man. But that is going off, and I find I shall conform in
time to that state of life to which it has pleased God to call me.
Besides, after all, Fleet-Street and the Strand are better places to
live in for good and all than among Skiddaw. Still, I turn back to those
great places where I wandered about, participating in their greatness.
After all, I could not _live_ in Skiddaw. I could spend a year--two,
three years--among them, but I must have a prospect of seeing
Fleet-Street at the end of that time, or I should mope and pine away, I
know. Still, Skiddaw is a fine creature. My habits are changing, I
think: _i.e._ from drunk to sober. Whether I shall be happier or not
remains to be proved. I shall certainly be more happy in a morning; but
whether I shall not sacrifice the fat, and the marrow, and the kidneys,
_i.e._ the night, the glorious care-drowning night, that heals all our
wrongs, pours wine into our mortifications, changes the scene from
indifferent and flat to bright and brilliant!--O Manning, if I should
have formed a diabolical resolution, by the time you come to England, of
not admitting any spirituous liquors into my house, will you be my guest
on such shameworthy terms? Is life, with such limitations, worth trying?
The truth is, that my liquors bring a nest of friendly harpies about my
house, who consume me. This is a pitiful tale to be read at St. Gothard;
but it is just now nearest my heart. Fenwick is a ruined man. He is
hiding himself from his creditors, and has sent his wife and children
into the country. Fell, my other drunken companion (that has been: nam
hic caestus artemque repono), is turned editor of a "Naval Chronicle."
Godwin (with a pitiful artificial wife) continues a steady friend,
though the same facility does not remain of visiting him often. That
Bitch has detached Marshall from his house, Marshall the man who went to
sleep when the "Ancient Mariner" was reading: the old, steady,
unalterable friend of the Professor. Holcroft is not yet come to town. I
expect to see him, and will deliver your message. How I hate _this part_
of a letter. Things come crowding in to say, and no room for 'em. Some
things are too little to be told, _i.e._ to have a preference; some are
too big and circumstantial. Thanks for yours, which was most delicious.
Would I had been with you, benighted &c. I fear my head is turned with
wandering. I shall never be the same acquiescent being. Farewell; write
again quickly, for I shall not like to hazard a letter, not knowing
where the fates have carried you. Farewell, my dear fellow.
C. LAMB.
[Lamb suggests in Letter 54 that he knew some French. Marshall we met in
the letters to Godwin of December 14,1800, and to Manning, December 16,
1800.
"Holcroft"--Thomas Holcroft (1745-1809), a miscellaneous writer, who is
best known by his play "The Road to Ruin." Lamb says of him in his
"Letter to Southey" (see Vol. I. of this edition) that he was "one of
the most candid, most upright, and single-meaning men" that he had ever
met.]
LETTER 99
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
October 9, 1802.
CAROLUS AGNUS COLERIDGIO SUO S.
Carissime--Scribis, ut nummos scilicet epistolarios solvam et postremo
in Tartara abeam: immo tu potius Tartaricum (ut aiunt) deprehendisti,
qui me vernaculâ meâ linguâ pro scribâ conductitio per tot annos satis
eleganter usum ad Latinè impure et canino fere ore latrandum per tuasmet
epistolas benè compositas et concinnatas percellere studueris. Conabor
tamen: Attamen vereor, ut Ædes istas nostri Christi, inter quas tantâ
diligentiâ magistri improbâ [?improbi] bonis literulis, quasi per
clysterem quendam injectis, infrà supraque olim penitùs imbutus fui,
Barnesii et Marklandii doctissimorum virorum nominibus adhuc gaudentes,
barbarismis meis peregrinis et aliunde quæsitis valde dehonestavero
[_sic_]. Sed pergere quocunque placet. Adeste igitur, quotquot estis,
conjugationum declinationumve turmae, terribilia spectra, et tu imprimis
ades, Umbra et Imago maxima obsoletas (Diis gratiæ) Virgæ, quâ novissime
in mentem receptâ, horrescunt subito natales [nates], et parum deest quo
minùs braccas meas ultro usque ad crura demittam, et ipse puer
pueriliter ejulem.
Ista tua Carmina Chamouniana satis grandia esse mihi constat; sed hoc
mihi nonnihil displicet, quòd in iis illae montium Grisosonum inter se
responsiones totidem reboant anglice, _God, God_, haud aliter atque
temet audivi tuas monies Cumbrianas resonare docentes, _Tod, Tod_, nempe
Doctorem infelicem: vocem certe haud Deum Sonantem. Pro caeteris plaudo.
Itidem comparationes istas tuas satis callidas et lepidas certè novi:
sed quid hoc ad verum? cum illi Consulari viro et _mentem irritabilem_
istam Julianam: et etiam _astutias frigidulas_ quasdam Augusto
propriores, nequaquam congruenter uno afflatu comparationis causâ
insedisse affirmaveris: necnon nescio quid similitudinis etiam cum
Tiberio tertio in loco solicite produxetis. Quid tibi equidem cum uno
vel altero Caesare, cùm universi Duodecim ad comparationes tuas se ultro
tulerint? Praeterea, vetustati adnutans, comparationes iniquas odi.
Istas Wordsworthianas nuptias (vel potius cujusdam _Edmundii_ tui) te
retulisse mirificum gaudeo. Valeas, Maria, fortunata nimium, et antiquae
illae Mariae Virgini (comparatione plusquam Caesareanâ) forsitan
comparanda, quoniam "beata inter mulieres:" et etiam fortasse
Wordsworthium ipsum tuum maritum Angelo Salutatori aequare fas erit,
quoniam e Coelo (ut ille) descendunt et Musae et ipsi Musicolae: at
Wordsworthium Musarum observantissimum semper novi. Necnon te quoque
affinitate hâc novâ, Dorothea, gratulor: et tu certe alterum _donum
Dei_.
Istum Ludum, quem tu, Coleridgi, Americanum garris, a Ludo (ut Ludi
sunt) maximè abhorrentem praetereo: nempe quid ad Ludum attinet, totius
illae gentis Columbianae, a nostrâ gente, eadem stirpe ortâ, ludi
singuli causa voluntatem perperam alienare? Quasso ego materiam ludi: tu
Bella ingeris.
Denique valeas, et quid de Latinitate meâ putes, dicas; facias ut
opossum illum nostrum volantem vel (ut tu malis) quendam Piscem
errabundum, a me salvum et pulcherrimum esse jubeas. Valeant uxor tua
cum Hartleiio nostro. Soror mea salva est et ego: vos et ipsa salvere
jubet. Ulterius progrediri [? progredi] non liquet: homo sum aeratus.
P.S.--Pene mihi exciderat, apud me esse Librorum a Johanno Miltono
Latinè scriptorum volumina duo, quae (Deo volente) cum caeteris tuis
libris ocyùs citiùs per Maria [?] ad te missura [_sic_] curabo; sed me
in hoc tali genere rerum nullo modo _festinantem_ novisti: habes
confitentem reum. Hoc solum dici [_sic_] restat, praedicta volumina
pulchra esse et omnia opera Latina J. M. in se continere. Circa
defensionem istam Pro Pop°. Ang°. acerrimam in praesens ipse praeclaro
gaudio moror.
Jussa tua Stuartina faciam ut diligenter colam.
Iterum iterumque valeas:
Et facias memor sis nostri.
[I append a translation from the pen of Mr. Stephen Gwynn:--
CHARLES LAMB TO HIS FRIEND COLERIDGE, GREETING.
DEAR FRIEND--You write that I am to pay my debt, to wit in coin of
correspondence, and finally that I am to go to Tartarus: no but it is
you have caught a Tartar (as the saying is), since after all these years
employing my own vernacular tongue, and prettily enough for a hired
penman, you have set about to drive me by means of your well composed
and neatly turned epistles to gross and almost doggish barking in the
Latin. Still, I will try: And yet I fear that the Hostel of our
Christ,--wherein by the exceeding diligence of a relentless master I was
in days gone by deeply imbued from top to bottom with polite learning,
instilled as it were by a clyster--which still glories in the names of
the erudite Barnes and Markland, will be vilely dishonoured by my
outlandish and adscititious barbarisms. But I am determined to proceed,
no matter whither. Be with me therefore all ye troops of conjugations
and declensions, dread spectres, and approach thou chiefest, Shade and
Phantom of the disused (thank Heaven) Birch, at whose entry to my
imagination a sudden shiver takes my rump, and a trifle then more would
make me begin to let down my breeches to my calves, and turning boy,
howl boyishly.
That your Ode at Chamounix is a fine thing I am clear; but here is a
thing offends me somewhat, that in the ode your answers of the Grison
mountains to each other should so often echo in English God, God--in the
very tone that I have heard your own lips teaching your Cumbrian
mountains to resound Tod, Tod, meaning the unlucky doctor--a syllable
assuredly of no Godlike sound. For the rest, I approve.
Moreover, I certainly recognise that your comparisons are acute and
witty; but what has this to do with truth? since you have given to the
great Consul at once that irritable mind of Julius, and also a kind of
cold cunning, more proper to Augustus--attributing incongruous
characteristics in one breath for the sake of your comparison: nay, you
have even in the third instance laboriously drawn out some likeness to
Tiberius. What had you to do with one Caesar, or a second, when the
whole Twelve offered themselves to your comparison? Moreover, I agree
with antiquity, and think comparisons odious.
Your Wordsworth nuptials (or rather the nuptials of a certain Edmund of
yours) fill me with joy in your report. May you prosper, Mary, fortunate
beyond compare, and perchance comparable to that ancient Virgin Mary (a
comparison more than Cæsarean) since "blessed art thou among women:"
perhaps also it will be no impiety to compare Wordsworth himself your
husband to the Angel of Salutation, since (like the angel) from heaven
descend both Muses and the servants of the Muses: whose devoutest votary
I always know Wordsworth to be. Congratulations to thee, Dorothea, in
this new alliance: you also assuredly are another "gift of God."
As for your Ludus [Lloyd], whom you talk of as an "American," I pass him
by as no sportsman (as sport goes): what kind of sport is it, to
alienate utterly the good will of the whole Columbian people, our own
kin, sprung of the same stock, for the sake of one Ludd [Lloyd]? I seek
the material for diversion: you heap on War.
Finally, fare you well, and pray tell me what you think of my Latinity.
Kindly wish health and beauty from me to our flying possum or (as you
prefer to call it) roving Fish. Good health to your wife and my friend
Hartley. My sister and I are well. She also sends you greeting. I do not
see how to get on farther: I am a man in debt [or possibly in
"fetters"].
P.S.--I had almost forgot, I have by me two volumes of the Latin
writings of John Milton, which (D.V.) I will have sent you sooner or
later by Mary: but you know me no way precipitate in this kind: the
accused pleads guilty. This only remains to be said, that the aforesaid
volumes are handsome and contain all the Latin works of J. M. At present
I dwell with much delight on his vigorous defence of the English people.
I will be sure to observe diligently your Stuartial tidings.
Again and again farewell: and pray be mindful of me.
Coleridge's "Hymn before Sun-rise, in the Vale of Chamouni," was printed
in the _Morning Post_ for September 11, 1802. The poem contains this
passage:--
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!
Canon Ainger suggests that by Tod, the unlucky doctor, Lamb meant Dr.
William Dodd (1729-1777), the compiler of the _Beauties of Shakespeare_
and the forger, who was hanged at Tyburn.
"Your comparisons." Coleridge's "Comparison of the Present State of
France with that of Rome under Julius and Augustus Cæsar" was printed in
the _Morning Post_, September 21, September 25, and October 2, 1802. See
_Essays on His Own Times_, 1850, Vol. III., page 478.
Wordsworth's marriage to Mary Hutchinson, on October 4, 1802, had called
forth from Coleridge his ode on "Dejection," printed in the _Morning
Post_ for the same day, in which Wordsworth was addressed as Edmund. In
later editions Coleridge suppressed its personal character.
Ludus is Lloyd. Lamb means by "American" what we should mean by
pro-American.
"Stuartial." Referring to Daniel Stuart of the _Morning Post_.]
LETTER 100
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Oct. 11th, 1802.
Dear Coleridge,--Your offer about the German poems is exceedingly kind;
but I do not think it a wise speculation, because the time it would take
you to put them into prose would be nearly as great as if you versified
them. Indeed, I am sure you could do the one nearly as soon as the
other; so that, instead of a division of labour, it would be only a
multiplication. But I will think of your offer in another light. I dare
say I could find many things of a light nature to suit that paper, which
you would not object to pass upon Stuart as your own, and I should come
in for some light profits, and Stuart think the more highly of your
assiduity. "Bishop Hall's Characters" I know nothing about, having never
seen them. But I will reconsider your offer, which is very plausible;
for as to the drudgery of going every day to an editor with my scraps,
like a pedlar, for him to pick out, and tumble about my ribbons and
posies, and to wait in his lobby, &c., no money could make up for the
degradation. You are in too high request with him to have anything
unpleasant of that sort to submit to.
It was quite a slip of my pen, in my Latin letter, when I told you I had
Milton's Latin Works. I ought to have said his Prose Works, in two
volumes, Birch's edition, containing all, both Latin and English, a
fuller and better edition than Lloyd's of Toland. It is completely at
your service, and you must accept it from me; at the same time, I shall
be much obliged to you for your Latin Milton, which you think you have
at Howitt's; it will leave me nothing to wish for but the "History of
England," which I shall soon pick up for a trifle. But you must write me
word whether the Miltons are worth paying carriage for. You have a
Milton; but it is pleasanter to eat one's own peas out of one's own
garden, than to buy them by the peck at Covent Garden; and a book reads
the better, which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we
know the topography of its blots and dog's-ears, and can trace the dirt
in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins, or over a pipe,
which I think is the maximum. But, Coleridge, you must accept these
little things, and not think of returning money for them, for I do not
set up for a factor or general agent. As for the fantastic debt of 15£.,
I'll think you were dreaming, and not trouble myself seriously to attend
to you. My bad Latin you properly correct; but _natales_ for _nates_ was
an inadvertency: I knew better. _Progrediri_ or _progredi_ I thought
indifferent, my authority being Ainsworth. However, as I have got a fit
of Latin, you will now and then indulge me with an _epistola_. I pay the
postage of this, and propose doing it by turns. In that case I can now
and then write to you without remorse; not that you would mind the
money, but you have not always ready cash to answer small demands--the
_epistolarii nummi_.
Your "Epigram on the Sun and Moon in Germany" is admirable. Take 'em all
together, they are as good as Harrington's. I will muster up all the
conceits I can, and you shall have a packet some day. You and I together
can answer all demands surely: you, mounted on a terrible charger (like
Homer in the Battle of the Books) at the head of the cavalry: I will
lead the light horse. I have just heard from Stoddart. Allen and he
intend taking Keswick in their way home. Allen wished particularly to
have it a secret that he is in Scotland, and wrote to me accordingly
very urgently. As luck was, I had told not above three or four; but Mary
had told Mrs. Green of Christ's Hospital! For the present, farewell:
never forgetting love to Pi-pos and his friends.
C. LAMB.
[Coleridge, who seems to have been asked by Stuart of the _Morning Post_
for translations of German verse, had suggested, I presume, that he
should supply Lamb (who knew no German) with literal prose translations,
and that Lamb should versify them, as he had in the case of "Thekla's
Song" in Coleridge's translation of the first part of _Wallenstein_
nearly three years before. Lamb's suggestion is that he should send to
Stuart epigrams and paragraphs in Coleridge's name. Whether or not he
did so, I cannot say.
Bishop Hall's _Characters of Vices and Virtues_ was published in 1608.
Coleridge may have suggested that Lamb should imitate them for the
_Morning Post_. Lamb later came to know Hall's satires, for he quotes
from them in his review of Barron Field's poems in 1820.
Milton's prose works were edited by Thomas Birch, and by John Toland in
folio.
"My bad Latin"--in the letter of October 9, 1802. Ainsworth was Robert
Ainsworth, compiler of the _Thesaurus Linguæ Latinæ_, 1736, for many
years the best Latin dictionary.
"Your Epigram"--Coleridge's Epigram "On the Curious Circumstance that in
the German Language the Sun is feminine and the Moon masculine." It
appeared in the _Morning Post_ on October 11, 1802. Coleridge had been
sending epigrams and other verse to the _Post_ for some time. Harrington
was Sir John Harington (1561-1612), the author of many epigrams.
Stoddart and Allen we have met. I do not know anything of Mrs. Green.]
LETTER 101
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
Oct. 23rd, 1802.
Your kind offer I will not a second time refuse. You shall send me a
packet and I will do them into English with great care. Is not there one
about W'm. Tell, and would not that in the present state of discussions
be likely to _tell_? The Epigrams I meant are to be found at the end of
Harrington's Translation of Orlando Furioso: if you could get the book,
they would some of them answer your purpose to modernize. If you can't,
I fancy I can. Baxter's Holy Commonwealth I have luckily met with, and
when I have sent it, you shall if you please consider yourself indebted
to me 3s. 6d. the cost of it: especially as I purchased it after your
solemn injunctions. The plain case with regard to my presents (which you
seem so to shrink from) is that I have not at all affected the character
of a DONOR, or thought of violating your sacred Law of Give and Take:
but I have been _taking_ and partaking the good things of your House
(when I know you were not over-abounding) and I now _give_ unto you of
mine; and by the grace of God I happen to be myself a little
super-abundant at present. I expect I shall be able to send you my final
parcel in about a week: by that time I shall have gone thro' all
Milton's Latin Works. There will come with it the Holy Commonwealth, and
the identical North American Bible which you helped to dogs ear at
Xt's.--I call'd at Howell's for your little Milton, and also to fetch
away the White Cross Street Library Books, which I have not forgot: but
your books were not in a state to be got at then, and Mrs. H. is to let
me know when she packs up. They will be sent by sea; and my little
præcursor will come to you by the Whitehaven waggon accompanied with
pens, penknife &c.--Mrs. Howell was as usual very civil; and asked with
great earnestness, if it were likely you would come to Town in the
winter. She has a friendly eye upon you.
I read daily your political essays. I was particularly pleased with
"Once a Jacobin:" though the argument is obvious enough, the style was
less swelling than your things sometimes are, and it was plausible _ad
populum_. A vessel has just arrived from Jamaica with the news of poor
Sam Le Grice's death. He died at Jamaica of the yellow fever. His course
was rapid and he had been very foolish; but I believe there was more of
kindness and warmth in him than in almost any other of our
schoolfellows. The annual meeting of the Blues is to-morrow, at the
London Tavern, where poor Sammy dined with them two years ago, and
attracted the notice of all by the singular foppishness of his dress.
When men go off the stage so early, it scarce seems a noticeable thing
in their epitaphs, whether they had been wise or silly in their
lifetime.
I am glad the snuff and Pi-pos's Books please. "Goody Two Shoes" is
almost out of print. Mrs. Barbauld's stuff has banished all the old
classics of the nursery; and the shopman at Newbery's hardly deigned to
reach them off an old exploded corner of a shelf, when Mary asked for
them. Mrs. B.'s and Mrs. Trimmer's nonsense lay in piles about.
Knowledge insignificant and vapid as Mrs. B.'s books convey, it seems,
must come to a child in the _shape_ of _knowledge_, and his empty noddle
must be turned with conceit of his own powers when he has learnt that a
Horse is an animal, and Billy is better than a Horse, and such like;
instead of that beautiful Interest in wild tales which made the child a
man, while all the time he suspected himself to be no bigger than a
child. Science has succeeded to Poetry no less in the little walks of
children than with men. Is there no possibility of averting this sore
evil? Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with
Tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with
geography and natural history?
Damn them!--I mean the cursed Barbauld Crew, those Blights and Blasts of
all that is Human in man and child.
As to the Translations, let me do two or three hundred lines, and then
do you try the Nostrums upon Stuart in any way you please. If they go
down I will bray more. In fact, if I got or could but get 50 l. a year
only, in addition to what I have, I should live in affluence.
Have you anticipated it, or could not you give a Parallel of Bonaparte
with Cromwell, particularly as to the contrast in their deeds affecting
_foreign_ states? Cromwell's interference for the Albigenses,
B[uonaparte]'s against the Swiss. Then Religion would come in; and
Milton and you could rant about our countrymen of that period. This is a
hasty suggestion, the more hasty because I want my Supper. I have just
finished Chapman's Homer. Did you ever read it?--it has most the
continuous power of interesting you all along, like a rapid original, of
any, and in the uncommon excellence of the more finished parts goes
beyond Fairfax or any of 'em. The metre is fourteen syllables, and
capable of all sweetness and grandeur. Cowper's damn'd blank verse
detains you every step with some heavy Miltonism; Chapman gallops off
with you his own free pace. Take a simile for an example. The council
breaks up--
"Being abroad, the earth was overlaid
With flockers to them, that came forth; as when of frequent bees
Swarms rise out of a hollow rock, repairing the degrees
_Of their egression endlessly, with ever rising new_
From forth their sweet nest; as their store, still as it faded, grew,
_And never would cease sending forth her clusters to the spring_,
They still crowd out so: this flock here, that there, belabouring
The loaded flowers. So," &c. &c.
[_Iliad_, Book II., 70-77.]
What _endless egression of phrases_ the dog commands!
Take another: Agamemnon wounded, bearing his wound heroically for the
sake of the army (look below) to a woman in labour.
"He, with his lance, sword, mighty stones, poured his heroic wreak
On other squadrons of the foe, whiles yet warm blood did break
Thro' his cleft veins: but when the wound was quite exhaust and crude,
The eager anguish did approve his princely fortitude.
As when most sharp and bitter pangs distract a labouring dame,
Which the divine Ilithiæ, that rule the painful frame
Of human childbirth, pour on her; the Ilithiæ that are
The daughters of Saturnia; with whose extreme repair
The woman in her travail strives to take the worst it gives;
With thought, it _must be, 'tis love's fruit, the end for which she lives;
The mean to make herself new born, what comforts_ will redound:
So," &c.
[_Iliad_, Book XI., 228-239.]
I will tell you more about Chapman and his peculiarities in my next. I
am much interested in him.
Yours ever affectionately, and Pi-Pos's.
C.L.
[Coleridge was just now contributing political essays as well as verse
to the _Morning Post_. "Once a Jacobin always a Jacobin" appeared on
October 21, 1802. These were afterwards reprinted in _Essays on His Own
Times_. _Ad populum_ is a reminder of Coleridge's first political
essays, the _Conciones ad Populum_ of 1795.
"Goody Two Shoes"--One of Newbery's most famous books for children,
sometimes attributed to Goldsmith, though, I think, wrongly.
Mrs. Barbauld (1743-1825) was the author of _Hymns in Prose for
Children_, and she contributed to her brother John Aikin's _Evenings at
Home_, both very popular books. Lamb, who afterwards came to know Mrs.
Barbauld, described her and Mrs. Inchbald as the two bald women. Mrs.
Sarah Trimmer (1741-1810) was the author of many books for children; she
lives by the _Story of the Robins_.
The translation for Stuart either was not made or not accepted; nor did
Coleridge carry out the project of the parallel of Buonaparte with
Cromwell. Hallam, however, did so in his _Constitutional History of
England_, unfavourably to Cromwell.
George Chapman's _Odyssey_ was paraphrased by Lamb in his _Adventures of
Ulysses_, 1808. Lamb either did not return to the subject with
Coleridge, or his "next letter" has been lost.]
LETTER 102
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
Nov. 4th, 1802.
Observe, there comes to you, by the Kendal waggon to-morrow, the
illustrious 5th of November, a box, containing the Miltons, the strange
American Bible, with White's brief note, to which you will attend;
Baxter's "Holy Commonwealth," for which you stand indebted to me 3s.
6d.; an odd volume of Montaigne, being of no use to me, I having the
whole; certain books belonging to Wordsworth, as do also the strange
thick-hoofed shoes, which are very much admired at in London. All these
sundries I commend to your most strenuous looking after. If you find the
Miltons in certain parts dirtied and soiled with a crumb of right
Gloucester blacked in the candle (my usual supper), or peradventure a
stray ash of tobacco wafted into the crevices, look to that passage more
especially: depend upon it, it contains good matter. I have got your
little Milton which, as it contains Salmasius--and I make a rule of
never hearing but one side of the question (why should I distract
myself?)--I shall return to you when I pick up the _Latina opera_. The
first Defence is the greatest work among them, because it is uniformly
great, and such as is befitting the very mouth of a great nation
speaking for itself. But the second Defence, which is but a succession
of splendid episodes slightly tied together, has one passage which if
you have not read, I conjure you to lose no time, but read it; it is his
consolations in his blindness, which had been made a reproach to him. It
begins whimsically, with poetical flourishes about Tiresias and other
blind worthies (which still are mainly interesting as displaying his
singular mind, and in what degree poetry entered into his daily soul,
not by fits and impulses, but engrained and innate); but the concluding
page, i.e. of _this passage_ (not of the _Defensio_) which you will
easily find, divested of all brags and flourishes, gives so rational, so
true an enumeration of his comforts, so human, that it cannot be read
without the deepest interest. Take one touch of the religious part:--"Et
sane haud ultima Dei cura caeci--(_we blind folks_, I understand it not
_nos_ for _ego_;)--sumus; qui nos, quominus quicquam aliud praeter ipsum
cernere valemus, eo clementius atque benignius respicere dignatur. Vae
qui illudit nos, vae qui laedit, execratione publica devovendo; nos ab
injuriis hominum non modo incolumes, sed pene sacros divina lex
reddidit, divinus favor: nee tam _oculorum hebetudine_ quam _coelestium
alarum umbrâ_ has nobis fecisse tenebras videtur, factas illustrare
rursus interiore ac longe praestabiliore lumine haud raro solet. Huc
refero, quod et amici officiosius nunc etiam quam solebant, colunt,
observant, adsunt; quod et nonnulli sunt, quibuscum Pyladeas atque
Theseas alternare voces verorum amicorum liceat.
"Vade gubernaculum mei pedis.
Da manum ministro amico.
Da collo manum tuam, ductor autem viæ ero tibi ego."
All this, and much more, is highly pleasing to know. But you may easily
find it;--and I don't know why I put down so many words about it, but
for the pleasure of writing to you and the want of another topic.
Yours ever, C. LAMB.
To-morrow I expect with anxiety S.T.C.'s letter to Mr. Fox.
[Lamb refers to Milton's _Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano contra
Alexandrum Morum Ecclesiasten_. The following is a translation of the
Latin passage by Robert Fellowes:--
And indeed, in my blindness, I enjoy in no inconsiderable degree the
favour of the Deity; who regards me with more tenderness and compassion
in proportion as I am able to behold nothing but himself. Alas! for him
who insults me, who maligns and merits public execration! For the divine
law not only shields me from injury, but almost renders me too sacred to
attack; not indeed so much from the privation of my sight, as from the
overshadowing of those heavenly wings, which seem to have occasioned
this obscurity; and which, when occasioned, he is wont to illuminate
with an interior light, more precious and more pure. To this I ascribe
the more tender assiduities of my friends, their soothing attentions,
their kind visits, their reverential observances; among whom there are
some with whom I may interchange the Pyladean and Thesean dialogue of
inseparable friends.
_Orest_. Proceed, and be rudder of my feet, by showing me the most
endearing love. [Eurip. in _Orest_.]
And in another place--
"Lend your hand to your devoted friend,
Throw your arm round my neck, and
I will conduct you on the way."
Coleridge's first letter to Charles James Fox was printed in the
_Morning Post_ for November 4, 1802, his second on November 9.]
LETTER 103
Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning
[November, 1802.]
My dear Manning,--I must positively write, or I shall miss you at
Toulouse. I sit here like a decayed minute hand (I lie; _that_ does not
_sit_), and being myself the exponent of no time, take no heed how the
clocks about me are going. You possibly by this time may have explored
all Italy, and toppled, unawares, into Etna, while you went too near
those rotten-jawed, gap-toothed, old worn-out chaps of hell,--while I am
meditating a quiescent letter to the honest postmaster at Toulouse. But
in case you should not have been _felo de se_, this is to tell you, that
your letter was quite to my palate--in particular your just remarks upon
Industry, damned Industry (though indeed you left me to explore the
reason), were highly relishing.
I've often wished I lived in the Golden Age, when shepherds lay
stretched upon flowers, and roused themselves at their leisure,--the
genius there is in a man's natural idle face, that has not learned his
multiplication table! before doubt, and propositions, and corollaries,
got into the world! _Now_, as Joseph Cottle, a Bard of Nature, sings,
going up Malvern Hills,
"How steep! how painful the ascent!
It needs the evidence of _close deduction_
To know that ever I shall gain the top."
You must know that Joe is lame, so that he had some reason for so
singing. These two lines, I assure you, are taken _totidem literis_ from
a very _popular_ poem. Joe is also an Epic Poet as well as a
Descriptive, and has written a tragedy, though both his drama and
epopoiea are strictly _descriptive_, and chiefly of the _Beauties of
Nature_, for Joe thinks _man_ with all his passions and frailties not a
proper subject of the _Drama_. Joe's tragedy hath the following
surpassing speech in it. Some king is told that his enemy has engaged
twelve archers to come over in a boat from an enemy's country and
way-lay him; he thereupon pathetically exclaims--
"_Twelve_, dost thou say? Where be those dozen villains!"
Cottle read two or three acts out to us, very gravely on both sides,
till he came to this heroic touch,--and then he asked what we laughed
at? I had no more muscles that day. A poet that chooses to read out his
own verses has but a limited power over you. There is a bound where his
authority ceases.
Apropos: if you should go to Florence or to Rome, inquire what works are
extant in gold, silver, bronze, or marble, of Benvenuto Cellini, a
Florentine artist, whose Life doubtless, you have read; or, if not,
without controversy you must read: so hark ye, send for it immediately
from Lane's circulating library. It is always put among the romances,
very properly; but you have read it, I suppose. In particular, inquire
at Florence for his colossal bronze statue (in the grand square or
somewhere) of Perseus. You may read the story in Tooke's "Pantheon."
Nothing material has _transpired_ in these parts. Coleridge has indited
a violent philippic against Mr. Fox in the "Morning Post," which is a
compound of expressions of humility, gentlemen-ushering-in most arrogant
charges. It will do Mr. Fox no real injury among those that know him.
[Manning's letter of September 10 had told Lamb he was on his way to
Toulouse.
Cottle's epic was _Alfred_. The quoted lines were added in the twelfth
edition. He had also written _John the Baptist_.
"Cellini's Life." Lamb would probably have read the translation by
Nugent, 1771. Cellini's Perseus in bronze is in the Loggia de' Lanzi at
Florence.]
LETTER 104
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[Dated at end: Feb. 19th, 1803.]
My dear Manning,--The general scope of your letter afforded no
indications of insanity, but some particular points raised a scruple.
For God's sake don't think any more of "Independent Tartary." What have
you to do among such Ethiopians? Is there no _lineal descendant_ of
Prester John?
Is the chair empty? Is the sword unswayed?--depend upon't they'll never
make you their king, as long as any branch of that great stock is
remaining. I tremble for your Christianity. They'll certainly circumcise
you. Read Sir John Maundevil's travels to cure you, or come over to
England.
There is a Tartar-man now exhibiting at Exeter Change. Come and talk
with him, and hear what he says first. Indeed, he is no very favorable
specimen of his Countrymen! But perhaps the best thing you can do, is to
_try_ to get the idea out of your head. For this purpose repeat to
yourself every night, after you have said your prayers, the words
Independent Tartary, Independent Tartary, two or three times, and
associate with them the _idea of oblivion_ ('tis Hartley's method with
obstinate memories), or say, Independent, Independent, have I not
already got an _Independence_? That was a clever way of the old
puritans--pun-divinity. My dear friend, think what a sad pity it would
be to bury such _parts_ in heathen countries, among nasty,
unconversable, horse-belching, Tartar people! Some say, they are
Cannibals; and then conceive a Tartar-fellow _eating_ my friend, and
adding the _cool malignity_ of mustard and vinegar! I am afraid 'tis the
reading of Chaucer has misled you; his foolish stories about Cambuscan
and the ring, and the horse of brass. Believe me, there's no such
things, 'tis all the poet's _invention_; but if there were such
_darling_ things as old Chaucer sings, I would _up_ behind you on the
Horse of Brass, and frisk off for Prester John's Country. But these are
all tales; a Horse of Brass never flew, and a King's daughter never
talked with Birds! The Tartars, really, are a cold, insipid, smouchey
set. You'll be sadly moped (if you are not eaten) among them. Pray _try_
and cure yourself. Take Hellebore (the counsel is Horace's, 'twas none
of my thought _originally_). Shave yourself oftener. Eat no saffron, for
saffron-eaters contract a terrible Tartar-like yellow. Pray, to avoid
the fiend. Eat nothing that gives the heart-burn. _Shave the upper lip_.
Go about like an European. Read no books of voyages (they're nothing but
lies): only now and then a Romance, to keep the fancy _under_. Above
all, don't go to any sights of _wild beasts_. _That has been your ruin_.
Accustom yourself to write familiar letters on common subjects to your
friends in England, such as are of a moderate understanding. And think
about common things more. There's your friend Holcroft now, has written
a play. You used to be fond of the drama. Nobody went to see it.
Notwithstanding this, with an audacity perfectly original, he faces the
town down in a preface, that they _did like_ it very much. I have heard
a waspish punster say, "Sir, why did you not laugh at my jest?" But for
a man boldly to face me out with, "Sir, I maintain it, you did laugh at
my jest," is a little too much. I have seen H. but once. He spoke of you
to me in honorable terms. H. seems to me to be drearily dull. Godwin is
dull, but then he has a dash of affectation, which smacks of the
coxcomb, and your coxcombs are always agreeable. I supped last night
with Rickman, and met a merry _natural_ captain, who pleases himself
vastly with once having made a Pun at Otaheite in the O. language. 'Tis
the same man who said Shakspeare he liked, because he was so _much of
the Gentleman_. Rickman is a man "absolute in all numbers." I think I
may one day bring you acquainted, if you do not go to Tartary first; for
you'll never come back. Have a care, my dear friend, of Anthropophagi!
their stomachs are always craving. But if you do go among [them] pray
contrive to _stink_ as soon as you can that you may [? not] hang a [?
on] hand at the Butcher's. 'Tis terrible to be weighed out for 5d.
a-pound. To sit at table (the reverse of fishes in Holland), not as a
guest, but as a meat.
God bless you: do come to England. Air and exercise may do great things.
Talk with some Minister. Why not your father?
God dispose all for the best. I have discharged my duty.
Your sincere fr'd,
C. LAMB.
19th Feb., 1803, London.
[Manning's letter producing this reply is endorsed by Lamb, "Received
February 19, 1803," so that he lost no time. Manning wrote: "I am
actually thinking of Independent Tartary as I write this, but you go out
and skate--you go out and walk some times? Very true, that's a
distraction--but the moment I set myself down quietly to any-thing, in
comes Independent Tartary--for example I attend chemical lectures but
every drug that Mr. Vauquelin presents to me tastes of Cream of
Tartar--in short I am become good for nothing for a time, and as I said
before, I should not have written now, but to assure you of my friendly
and affectionate remembrance, but as you are not in the same unhappy
circumstances, I expect you'll write to me and not measure page for
page. This is the first letter I have begun for England for three months
except one I sent to my Father yesterday." Manning returned to London
before leaving for China. He did not sail until 1806.
Prester John, the name given by old writers to the King of Ethiopia in
Abyssinia. A corruption of Belul Gian, precious stone; in Latin first
Johanus preciosus, then Presbyter Johannes, and then Prester John. In
Sir John Mandeville's _Voiage and Travails_, 1356, Prester John is said
to be a lineal descendant of Ogier the Dane.--Hartley would be David
Hartley, the metaphysician, after whom Coleridge's son was named.--The
reader must go to Chaucer's "Squire's Tale" for Cambuscan, King of
Sarra, in Tartary; his horse of brass which conveyed him in a day
wherever he would go; and the ring which enabled his daughter Canacé to
understand the language of birds.
Holcroft's play was "A Tale of Mystery."
Rickman had returned from Ireland some months previously. The merry
natural captain was James Burney (1750-1821), with whom the Lambs soon
became very friendly. He was the centre of their whist-playing circle.
Burney, who was brother of Madame D'Arblay, had sailed with Captain
Cook.
"The reverse of fishes in Holland." An allusion to Andrew Marvell's
whimsical satire against the Dutch:--
The fish ofttimes the burgher dispossessed
And sat not as a meat but as a guest.
"Why not your father?" Manning's father was the Rev. William Manning,
rector of Diss, in Norfolk, who died in 1810.]
LETTER 105
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
March, 1803.
Dear Manning, I send you some verses I have made on the death of a young
Quaker you may have heard me speak of as being in love with for some
years while I lived at Pentonville, though I had never spoken to her in
my life. She died about a month since. If you have interest with the
Abbé de Lisle, you may get 'em translated: he has done as much for the
Georgics.
HESTER
When maidens such as Hester die,
Their place ye may not well supply,
Though ye among a thousand try,
With vain endeavour.
A month or more hath she been dead,
Yet cannot I by force be led
To think upon the wormy bed,
And her together.
A springy motion in her gait,
A rising step, did indicate
Of pride and joy no common rate,
That flush'd her spirit.
I know not by what name beside
I shall it call:--if 'twas not pride,
It was a joy to that allied,
She did inherit.
Her parents held the Quaker rule,
Which doth the human feeling cool,
But she was train'd in Nature's school,
Nature had blest her.
A waking eye, a prying mind,
A heart that stirs, is hard to bind,
A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind,
Ye could not Hester.
My sprightly neighbour, gone before
To that unknown and silent shore,
Shall we not meet, as heretofore,
Some summer morning,
When from thy cheerful eyes a ray
Hath struck a bliss upon the day,
A bliss that would not go away,
A sweet forewarning?
[This letter is possibly only a fragment. I have supplied "Hester" from
the 1818 text.
The young Quaker was Hester Savory, the daughter of Joseph Savory, a
goldsmith of the Strand. She was married July 1, 1802, and died a few
months after.
"The Abbé de Lisle." L'Abbé Jacques Delille (1738-1813), known by his
_Géorgiques_, 1770, a translation into French of Virgil's _Georgics_.]
LETTER 106
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: March 5, 1803.]
Dear Wordsworth, having a Guinea of your sister's left in hand, after
all your commissions, and as it does not seem likely that you will
trouble us, as the phrase is, for some time to come, I send you a pound
note, and with it the best things in the verse way I have lit upon for
many a day. I believe they will be new to you. You know Cotton, who
wrote a 2d part to Walton's Angler. A volume of his miscellaneous poems
is scarce. Take what follows from a poem call'd Winter. I omit 20
verses, in which a storm is described, to hasten to the best:--
21
Louder, and louder, still they[1] come,
Nile's Cataracts to these are dumb,
The Cyclops to these Blades are still,
Whose anvils shake the burning hill.
22
Were all the stars-enlighten'd skies
As full of ears, as sparkling eyes,
This rattle in the crystal hall
Would be enough to deaf them all.
23
What monstrous Race is hither tost,
Thus to alarm our British Coast,
With outcries such as never yet
War, or confusion, could beget?
24
Oh! now I know them, let us home,
Our mortal Enemy is come,
Winter, and all his blustring train
Have made a voyage o'er the main.
27
With bleak, and with congealing winds,
The earth in shining chain he binds;
And still as he doth further pass,
Quarries his way with liquid glass.
28
Hark! how the Blusterers of the Bear
Their gibbous Cheeks in triumph bear,
And with continued shouts do ring
The entry of their palsied king!
29
The squadron, nearest to your eye,
Is his forlorn of Infantry,
Bowmen of unrelenting minds,
Whose shafts are feather'd with the winds.
30
Now you may see his vanguard rise
Above the earthy precipice,
Bold Horse, on bleakest mountains bred,
With hail, instead of provend, fed.
31
Their lances are the pointed locks,
Torn from the brows of frozen rocks,
Their shields are chrystal as their swords,
The steel the rusted rock affords.
32
See, the Main Body now appears!
And hark! th' Aeolian Trumpeters.
By their hoarse levels do declare,
That the bold General rides there.
33
And look where mantled up in white
He sleds it, like the Muscovite.
I know him by the port he bears,
And his lifeguard of mountaineers.
34
Their caps are furr'd with hoary frosts,
The bravery their cold kingdom boasts;
Their spungy plads are milk-white frieze,
Spun from the snowy mountain's fleece.
35
Their partizans are fine carv'd glass,
Fring'd with the morning's spangled grass;
And pendant by their brawny thighs
Hang cimetars of burnish'd ice.
38
Fly, fly, the foe advances fast,
Into our fortress let us haste,
Where all the roarers of the north
Can neither storm, nor starve, us forth.
39
There under ground a magazine
Of sovran juice is cellar'd in,
Liquor that will the siege maintain,
Should Phoebus ne'er return again.
40
'Tis that, that gives the poet rage,
And thaws the gelly'd blood of age,
Matures the young, restores the old,
And makes the fainting coward bold.
41
It lays the careful head to rest,
Calms palpitations in the breast,
Renders our live's misfortunes sweet,
And Venus frolic in the sheet.
42
Then let the chill Scirocco blow,
And gird us round with hills of snow,
Or else go whistle to the shore,
And make the hollow mountains roar.
43
Whilst we together jovial sit,
Careless, and crown'd with mirth and wit,
Where tho' bleak winds confine us home,
Our fancies thro' the world shall roam.
44
We'll think of all the friends we know,
And drink to all, worth drinking to;
When, having drunk all thine and mine,
We rather shall want health than wine!
45
But, where friends fail us, we'll supply
Our friendships with our Charity.
Men that remote in sorrows live,
Shall by our lusty bumpers thrive.
46
We'll drink the wanting into wealth,
And those that languish into health,
Th' afflicted into joy, th' opprest
Into security & rest.
47
The worthy in disgrace shall find
Favour return again more kind,
And in restraint who stifled lye,
Shall taste the air of liberty.
48
The brave shall triumph in success,
The lovers shall have mistresses,
Poor unregarded virtue praise,
And the neglected Poet bays.
49
Thus shall our healths do others good,
While we ourselves do all we wou'd,
For freed from envy, and from care,
What would we be, but what we are?
50
'Tis the plump Grape's immortal juice,
That does this happiness produce,
And will preserve us free together,
Maugre mischance, or wind, & weather.
51
Then let old winter take his course,
And roar abroad till he be hoarse,
And his lungs crack with ruthless ire,
It shall but serve to blow our fire.
52
Let him our little castle ply
With all his loud artillery,
Whilst sack and claret man the fort,
His fury shall become our sport.
53
Or let him Scotland take, and there
Confine the plotting Presbyter;
His zeal may freeze, whilst we kept warm
With love and wine can know no harm.
[Footnote 1: The winds.]
How could Burns miss the series of lines from 42 to 49?
There is also a long poem from the Latin on the inconveniences of old
age. I can't set down the whole, tho' right worthy, having dedicated the
remainder of my sheet to something else. I just excerp here and there,
to convince you, if after this you need it, that Cotton was a first
rate. Tis old Callus speaks of himself, once the delight of the Ladies
and Gallants of Rome:--
The beauty of my shape & face are fled,
And my revolted form bespeaks me dead,
For fair, and shining age, has now put on
A bloodless, funeral complexion.
My skin's dry'd up, my nerves unpliant are,
And my poor limbs my nails plow up and tear.
My chearful eyes now with a constant spring
Of tears bewail their own sad suffering;
And those soft lids, that once secured my eye
Now rude, and bristled grown, do drooping lie,
Bolting mine eyes, as in a gloomy cave,
Which there on furies, and grim objects, rave.
'Twould fright the full-blown Gallant to behold
The dying object of a man so old.
And can you think, that once a man he was,
Of human reason who no portion has.
The letters split, when I consult my book,
And every leaf I turn does broader look.
In darkness do I dream I see the light,
When light is darkness to my perishd sight.
* * * * *
Is it not hard we may not from men's eyes
Cloak and conceal Age's indecencies.
Unseeming spruceness th' old man discommends,
And in old men, only to live, offends.
* * * * *
How can I him a living man believe,
Whom light, and air, by whom he panteth, grieve;
The gentle sleeps, which other mortals ease,
Scarce in a winter's night my eyelids seize.
* * * * *
The boys, and girls, deride me now forlorn,
And but to call me, Sir, now think it scorn,
They jeer my countnance, and my feeble pace,
And scoff that nodding head, that awful was.
* * * * *
A song written by Cowper, which in stile is much above his usual, and
emulates in noble plainness any old balad I have seen. Hayley has just
published it &c. with a Life. I did not think Cowper _up_ to it:--
SONG
ON THE LOSS OF THE ROYAL GEORGE
1
Toll for the Brave!
The Brave, that are no more!
All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast by their native shore.--
2
Eight hundred of the Brave,
Whose courage well was tried,
Had made the vessel heel,
And laid her on her side.
3
A Land breeze shook the shrouds,
And she was over set;
Down went the Royal George,
With all her sails complete.
4
Toll for the Brave!
Brave Kempenfelt is gone:
His last sea-fight is fought;
His work of glory done.
5
It was not in the battle,
No tempest gave the shock;
She sprang no fatal leak;
She ran upon no rock.
6
His sword was in its sheath;
His fingers held the pen,
When Kempenfelt went down,
With twice four hundred men.
7
Weigh the vessel up!
Once dreaded by our foes!
And mingle with the cup
The tear that England owes.
8
Her timbers yet are sound,
And she may float again,
Full charg'd with England's thunder,
And plow the distant main.
9
But Kempenfelt is gone,
His victories are o'er;
And he, and his eight hundred,
Shall plow the wave no more.
In your obscure part of the world, which I take to be Ultima Thule, I
thought these verses out of Books which cannot be accessible would not
be unwelcome. Having room, I will put in an Epitaph I writ for a _real
occasion_, a year or two back.
ON MARY DRUIT WHO DIED AGED 19
Under this cold marble stone
Sleep the sad remains of One,
Who, when alive, by few or none
2
Was lov'd, as lov'd she might have been,
If she prosp'rous days had seen,
Or had thriving been, I ween.
3
Only this cold funeral stone
Tells, she was belov'd by One,
Who on the marble graves his moan.
I conclude with Love to your Sister and Mrs. W.
Yours affect'y,
C. LAMB.
Mary sends Love, &c.
5th March, 1803.
On consulting Mary, I find it will be foolish inserting the Note as I
intended, being so small, and as it is possible you _may_ have to
_trouble_ us again e'er long; so it shall remain to be settled
hereafter. However, the verses shan't be lost.
N.B.--All orders executed with fidelity and punctuality by C. & M. Lamb.
[_On the outside is written:_] I beg to open this for a minute to add my
remembrances to you all, and to assure you I shall ever be happy to hear
from or see, much more to be useful to any of my old friends at
Grasmere.
J. STODDART.
A _lean_ paragraph of the Doctor's.
C. LAMB.
[Charles Cotton (1630-1687). Wordsworth praises the poem on Winter in
his preface to the 1815 edition of his works, and elsewhere sets up a
comparison between the character of Cotton and that of Burns.
Hayley's _Life of Cowper_ appeared first in 1803.
Lamb's epitaph was written at the request of Rickman. See also the
letter to Manning of April, 1802. Rickman seems to have supplied Lamb
with a prose epitaph and asked for a poetical version. Canon Ainger
prints an earlier version in a letter to Rickman, dated February 1,
1802. Lamb printed the epitaph in the _Morning Post_ for February 7,
1804, over his initials (see Vol. IV. of this edition). Mary Druit, or
Druitt, lived at Wimborne, and according to John Payne Collier, in _An
Old Man's Diary_, died of small-pox at the age of nineteen. He says that
Lamb's lines were cut on her tomb, but correspondence in _Notes and
Queries_ has proved this to be incorrect.
"The Doctor." Stoddart, having taken his D.C.L. in 1801, was now called
Dr. Stoddart.
Soon after this letter Mary Lamb was taken ill again.]
LETTER 107
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
April 13th, 1803.
My dear Coleridge,--Things have gone on better with me since you left
me. I expect to have my old housekeeper home again in a week or two. She
has mended most rapidly. My health too has been better since you took
away that Montero cap. I have left off cayenned eggs and such bolsters
to discomfort. There was death in that cap. I mischievously wished that
by some inauspicious jolt the whole contents might be shaken, and the
coach set on fire. For you said they had that property. How the old
Gentleman, who joined you at Grantham, would have clappt his hands to
his knees, and not knowing but it was an immediate visitation of God
that burnt him, how pious it would have made him; him, I mean, that
brought the Influenza with him, and only took places for one--a damn'd
old sinner, he must have known what he had got with him! However, I wish
the cap no harm for the sake of the _head it fits_, and could be content
to see it disfigure my healthy sideboard again. [_Here is a paragraph
erased._]
What do you think of smoking? I want your sober, _average noon opinion_
of it. I generally am eating my dinner about the time I should determine
it. [_Another small erasure._]
Morning is a Girl, and can't smoke--she's no evidence one way or other;
and Night is so evidently _bought over_, that _he_ can't be a very
upright Judge. May be the truth is, that _one_ pipe is wholesome, _two_
pipes toothsome, _three_ pipes noisome, _four_ pipes fulsome, _five_
pipes quarrelsome; and that's the _sum_ on't. But that is deciding
rather upon rhyme than reason.... After all, our instincts _may_ be
best. Wine, I am sure, good, mellow, generous Port, can hurt nobody,
unless they take it to excess, which they may easily avoid if they
observe the rules of temperance.
Bless you, old Sophist, who next to Human Nature taught me all the
corruption I was capable of knowing--And bless your Montero Cap, and
your trail (which shall come after you whenever you appoint), and your
wife and children--Pi-pos especially.
When shall we two smoke again? Last night I had been in a sad quandary
of spirits, in what they call the evening; but a pipe and some generous
Port, and King Lear (being alone), had its effects as a remonstrance. I
went to bed pot-valiant. By the way, may not the Ogles of Somersetshire
be remotely descended from King Lear?
Love to Sara, and ask her what gown she means that Mary has got of hers.
I know of none but what went with Miss Wordsworth's things to
Wordsworth, and was paid for out of their money. I allude to a part
which I may have read imperfectly in a letter of hers to you.
C. L.
[Coleridge had been in London early in April and had stayed with Lamb in
the Temple. From the following letter to his wife, dated April 4, we get
light on Lamb's allusion to his "old housekeeper," _i.e._, Mary Lamb,
and her rapid mending:--
"I had purposed not to speak of Mary Lamb, but I had better write it
than tell it. The Thursday before last she met at Rickman's a Mr. Babb,
an old friend and admirer of her mother. The next day she _smiled_ in an
ominous way; on Sunday she told her brother that she was getting bad,
with great agony. On Tuesday morning she laid hold of me with violent
agitation and talked wildly about George Dyer. I told Charles there was
not a moment to lose; and I did not lose a moment, but went for a
hackney-coach and took her to the private mad-house at Hugsden. She was
quite calm, and said it was the best to do so. But she wept bitterly two
or three times, yet all in a calm way. Charles is cut to the heart."
Lamb's first articulate doubts as to smoking are expressed in this
letter. One may perhaps take in this connection the passage on tobacco
and alcohol in the "Confessions of a Drunkard" (see Vol. I.).
"Montero cap"--a recollection of _Tristram Shandy_.
The Ogles and King Lear (_i.e._, leer)--merely a pun.]
LETTER 108
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[No date. May, 1803.]
Mary sends love from home.
DR. C.,--I do confess that I have not sent your books as I ought to be
[have] done; but you know how the human freewill is tethered, and that
we perform promises to ourselves no better than to our friends. A watch
is come for you. Do you want it soon, or shall I wait till some one
travels your way? You, like me, I suppose, reckon the lapse of time from
the waste thereof, as boys let a cock run to waste: too idle to stop it,
and rather amused with seeing it dribble. Your poems have begun
printing; Longman sent to me to arrange them, the old and the new
together. It seems you have left it to him. So I classed them, as nearly
as I could, according to dates. First, after the Dedication, (which must
march first) and which I have transplanted from before the Preface
(which stood like a dead wall of prose between) to be the first
poem--then comes "The Pixies," and the things most juvenile--then on "To
Chatterton," &c.--on, lastly, to the "Ode on the Departing Year," and
"Musings,"--which finish. Longman wanted the Ode first; but the
arrangement I have made is precisely that marked out in the dedication,
following the order of time. I told Longman I was sure that you would
omit a good portion of the first edition. I instanced in several
sonnets, &c.--but that was not his plan, and, as you have done nothing
in it, all I could do was to arrange 'em on the supposition that all
were to be retained. A few I positively rejected; such as that of "The
Thimble," and that of "Flicker and Flicker's wife," and that _not_ in
the manner of Spenser, which you yourself had stigmatised--and the "Man
of Ross,"--I doubt whether I should this last. It is not too late to
save it. The first proof is only just come. I have been forced to call
that Cupid's Elixir "Kisses." It stands in your first volume as an
Effusion, so that, instead of prefixing The Kiss to that of "One Kiss,
dear Maid," &c., _I_ have ventured to entitle it "To Sara." I am aware
of the nicety of changing even so mere a trifle as a title to so short a
piece, and subverting old associations; but two called "Kisses" would
have been absolutely ludicrous, and "Effusion" is no name; and these
poems come close together. I promise you not to alter one word in any
poem whatever, but to take your last text, where two are. Can you send
any wishes about the book? Longman, I think, should have settled with
you. But it seems you have left it to him. Write as soon as you possibly
can; for, without making myself responsible, I feel myself in some sort
accessory to the selection which I am to proof-correct. But I decidedly
said to Biggs that I was sure you would omit more. Those I have
positively rubbed off I can swear to _individually_, (except the "Man of
Ross," which is too familiar in Pope,) but no others--you have your cue.
For my part, I had rather all the _Juvenilia_ were kept--_memories
causa_.
Rob Lloyd has written me a masterly letter, containing a character of
his father;--see, how different from Charles he views the old man!
_Literatim_ "My father smokes, repeats Homer in Greek, and Virgil, and
is learning, when from business, with all the vigour of a young man
Italian. He is really a wonderful man. He mixes public and private
business, the intricacies of discording life with his religion and
devotion. No one more rationally enjoys the romantic scenes of nature,
and the chit-chat and little vagaries of his children; and, though
surrounded with an ocean of affairs, the very neatness of his most
obscure cupboard in the house passes not unnoticed. I never knew any one
view with such clearness, nor so well satisfied with things as they are,
and make such allowance for things which must appear perfect Syriac to
him." By the last he means the Lloydisms of the younger branches. His
portrait of Charles (exact as far as he has had opportunities of noting
him) is most exquisite. "Charles is become steady as a church, and as
straightforward as a Roman road. It would distract him to mention
anything that was not as plain as sense; he seems to have run the whole
scenery of life, AND NOW RESTS AS THE FORMAL PRECISIAN OF
NON-EXISTENCE." Here is genius I think, and 'tis seldom a young man, a
Lloyd, looks at a father (so differing) with such good nature while he
is alive. Write--
I am in post-haste, C. LAMB.
Love, &c., to Sara, P., and H.
[The date is usually given as March 20, but is May 20; certainly after
Coleridge's visit to town (see preceding letter).
_Poems_, by S. T. Coleridge, third edition, was now in preparation by
Longman & Rees. Lamb saw the volume through the press. The 1797 second
edition was followed, except that Lloyd's and Lamb's contributions were
omitted, together with the following poems by Coleridge: "To the Rev. W.
J. H.," "Sonnet to Koskiusko," "Written after a Walk" (which Lamb
inaccurately called "Flicker and Flicker's Wife"), "From a Young Lady"
("The Silver Thimble"), "On the Christening of a Friend's Child,"
"Introductory Sonnet to Lloyd's 'Poems on the Death of Priscilla
Farmer.'" "The Man of Ross" (whom Pope also celebrates in the _Moral
Essays_, III., lines 250-290) was retained, and also the "Lines in the
Manner of Spenser." The piece rechristened "Kisses" had been called "The
Composition of a Kiss." Biggs was the printer. See also the next letter.
Of Robert Lloyd's father we hear more later.]
LETTER 109
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
27th May, 1803.
My dear Coleridge,--The date of my last was one day prior to the receipt
of your letter, full of foul omens. I explain, lest you should have
thought mine too light a reply to such sad matter. I seriously hope by
this time you have given up all thoughts of journeying to the green
islands of the Blest--voyages in time of war are very precarious--or at
least, that you will take them in your way to the Azores. Pray be
careful of this letter till it has done its duty, for it is to inform
you that I have booked off your watch (laid in cotton like an untimely
fruit), and with it Condillac and all other books of yours which were
left here. These will set out on Monday next, the 29th May, by Kendal
waggon, from White Horse, Cripplegate. You will make seasonable
inquiries, for a watch mayn't come your way again in a hurry. I have
been repeatedly after Tobin, and now hear that he is in the country, not
to return till middle of June. I will take care and see him with the
earliest. But cannot you write pathetically to him, enforcing a speedy
mission of your books for literary purposes? He is too good a retainer
to Literature, to let her interests suffer through his default. And why,
in the name of Beelzebub, are your books to travel from Barnard's Inn to
the Temple, and then circuitously to Cripplegate, when their business is
to take a short cut down Holborn-hill, up Snow do., on to Woodstreet,
&c.? The former mode seems a sad superstitious subdivision of labour.
Well! the "Man of Ross" is to stand; Longman begs for it; the printer
stands with a wet sheet in one hand and a useless Pica in the other, in
tears, pleading for it; I relent. Besides, it was a Salutation poem, and
has the mark of the beast "Tobacco" upon it. Thus much I have done; I
have swept off the lines about _widows_ and _orphans_ in second edition,
which (if you remember) you most awkwardly and illogically caused to be
inserted between two _Ifs_, to the great breach and disunion of said
_Ifs_, which now meet again (as in first edition), like two clever
lawyers arguing a case. Another reason for subtracting the pathos was,
that the "Man of Ross" is too familiar to need telling what he did,
especially in worse lines than Pope told it; and it now stands simply as
"Reflections at an Inn about a known Character," and sucking an old
story into an accommodation with present feelings. Here is no breaking
spears with Pope, but a new, independent, and really a very pretty poem.
In fact, 'tis as I used to admire it in the first volume, and I have
even dared to restore
"If 'neath this roof thy _wine-cheer'd_ moments pass,"
for
"Beneath this roof if thy cheer'd moments pass."
"Cheer'd" is a sad general word; "_wine-cheer'd_" I'm sure you'd give
me, if I had a speaking-trumpet to sound to you 300 miles. But I am your
_factotum_, and that (save in this instance, which is a single case, and
I can't get at you) shall be next to a _fac-nihil_--at most, a
_fac-simile_. I have ordered "Imitation of Spenser" to be restored on
Wordsworth's authority; and now, all that you will miss will be "Flicker
and Flicker's Wife," "The Thimble," "Breathe, _dear harmonist_" and, _I
believe_, "The Child that was fed with Manna." Another volume will clear
off all your Anthologic Morning-Postian Epistolary Miscellanies; but
pray don't put "Christabel" therein; don't let that sweet maid come
forth attended with Lady Holland's mob at her heels. Let there be a
separate volume of Tales, Choice Tales, "Ancient Mariners," &c.
C. LAMB.
[Coleridge, who was getting more and more nervous about his health, had
long been on the point of starting on some southern travels with Thomas
Wedgwood, but Wedgwood had gone alone; his friend James Webbe Tobin,
mentioned later in the letter, lived at Nevis, in the West Indies:
possibly Coleridge had thoughts of returning with him. The Malta
experiment, of which we are to hear later, had not, I think, yet been
mooted.
"The Man of Ross." In the 1797 edition the poem had run thus, partly by
Lamb's advice (see the letters of June 10, 1796, and February 5,
1797):--
LINES WRITTEN AT THE KING'S-ARMS, ROSS, FORMERLY THE HOUSE OF THE "MAN
OF ROSS"
Richer than MISER o'er his countless hoards,
Nobler than KINGS, or king-polluted LORDS,
Here dwelt the MAN OF ROSS! O Trav'ller, hear!
Departed Merit claims a reverent tear.
Friend to the friendless, to the sick man health,
With generous joy he view'd his modest wealth;
He hears the widow's heaven-breath'd prayer of praise,
He marks the shelter'd orphan's tearful gaze,
Or where the sorrow-shrivel'd captive lay,
Pours the bright blaze of Freedom's noon-tide ray.
Beneath this roof if thy cheer'd moments pass,
Fill to the good man's name one grateful glass;
To higher zest shall MEM'RY wake thy soul,
And VIRTUE mingle in th' ennobled bowl.
But if, like me, thro' life's distressful scene
Lonely and sad thy pilgrimage hath been;
And if, thy breast with heart-sick anguish fraught,
Thou journeyest onward tempest-tost in thought;
Here cheat thy cares! in generous visions melt,
And dream of Goodness, thou hast never felt!
Lamb changed it by omitting lines 9 to 14, Coleridge agreeing. The poet
would not, however, restore "wine-cheer'd" as in his earliest version,
1794. In the edition of 1828 the six lines were put back. "Breathe, dear
Harmonist" was the poem "To the Rev. W. J. H.," and "The Child that was
fed with Manna" was "On the Christening of a Friend's Child."
"Lady Holland's mob." Elizabeth Vassall Fox, third Lady Holland
(1770-1845), was beginning her reign as a Muse. Lamb by his phrase means
occasional and political verse generally. The reference to "Christabel"
helps to controvert Fanny Godwin's remark in a letter to Mrs. Shelley,
on July 20, 1816, that Lamb "says _Christabel_ ought never to have been
published; that no one understood it."
Canon Ainger's transcript adds: "A word of your health will be richly
acceptable."]
LETTER 110
MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: July 9. P.M. July 11, 1803.]
My dear Miss Wordsworth--We rejoice with exceeding great joy to hear the
delightful tidings you were so _very_ kind to remember to send us--I
hope your dear sister is perfectly well, and makes an excellent nurse.
Are you not now the happiest family in the world?
I have been in better health and spirits this week past than since my
last illness--I continued so long so very weak & dejected I began to
fear I should never be at all comfortable again. I strive against low
spirits all I can, but it is a very hard thing to get the better of.
I am very uneasy about poor Coleridge, his last letters are very
melancholy ones. Remember me affectionately to him and Sara. I hope you
often see him.
Southey is in town. He seems as proud of his little girl as I suppose
your brother is of his boy; he says his home is now quite a different
place to what it used to be. I was glad to hear him say this--it used to
look rather chearless.
We went last week with Southey and Rickman and his sister to Sadlers
Wells, the lowest and most London-like of all our London amusements--the
entertainments were Goody Two Shoes, Jack the Giant Killer, and _Mary of
Buttermere_! Poor Mary was very happily married at the end of the piece,
to a sailor her former sweetheart. We had a prodigious fine view of her
father's house in the vale of Buttermere--mountains very like large
haycocks, and a lake like nothing at all. If you had been with us, would
you have laughed the whole time like Charles and Miss Rickman or gone to
sleep as Southey and Rickman did?
Stoddart is in expectation of going soon to Malta as Judge Advocate; it
is likely to be a profitable situation, fifteen hundred a year or more.
If he goes he takes with him his sister, and, as I hear from her as a
very great secret, a _wife_; you must not mention this because if he
stays in England he may not be rich enough to marry for some years. I do
not know why I should trouble you with a secret which it seems I am
unable to keep myself and which is of no importance to you to hear; if
he succeeds in this appointment he will be in a great bustle, for he
must set out to Malta in a month. In the mean time he must go to
Scotland to marry and fetch his wife, and it is a match against her
parents' consent, and they as yet know nothing of the Malta expedition;
so that he expects many difficulties, but the young lady and he are
determined to conquer them. He then must go to Salisbury to take leave
of his father and mother, who I pity very much, for they are old people
and therefore are not very likely ever to see their children again.
Charles is very well and very _good_--I mean very sober, but he is very
good in every sense of the word, for he has been very kind and patient
with me and I have been a sad trouble to him lately. He has shut out all
his friends because he thought company hurt me, and done every thing in
his power to comfort and amuse me. We are to go out of town soon for a
few weeks, when I hope I shall get quite stout and lively.
You saw Fenwick when you was with us--perhaps you remember his wife and
children were with his brother, a tradesman at Penzance. He (the
brother), who was supposed to be in a great way of business, has become
a bankrupt; they are now at Penzance without a home and without money;
and poor Fenwick, who has been Editor of a country newspaper lately, is
likely soon to be quite out of employ; I am distressed for them, for I
have a great affection for Mrs. Fenwick.
How pleasant your little house and orchard must be now. I almost wish I
had never seen it. I am always wishing to be with you. I could sit upon
that little bench in idleness day long. When you have a leisure hour, a
letter from [you], kind friend, will give me the greatest pleasure.
We have money of yours and I want you to send me some commission to lay
it out. Are you not in want of anything? I believe when we go out of
town it will be to Margate--I love the seaside and expect much benefit
from it, but your mountain scenery has spoiled us. We shall find the
flat country of the Isle of Thanet very dull.
Charles joins me in love to your brother and sister and the little John.
I hope you are building more rooms. Charles said I was so long answering
your letter Mrs. Wordsworth would have another little one before you
received it. Our love and compliments to our kind Molly, I hope she
grows younger and happier every day. When, and where, shall I ever see
you again? Not I fear for a very long time, you are too happy ever to
wish to come to London. When you write tell me how poor Mrs. Clarkson
does.
God bless you and yours.
I am your affectionate friend,
M. LAMB.
July 9th.
[Wordsworth's eldest child, John, was born on June 18, 1803. Southey's
little girl was Edith, born in September of the preceding year. It was
Southey who made the charming remark that no house was complete unless
it had in it a child rising six years, and a kitten rising six months.
Coleridge had been ill for some weeks after his visit to London. He was
about to visit Scotland with the Wordsworths.
Mary of Buttermere was Mary Robinson, the Beauty of Buttermere, whom the
swindler John Hatfield had married in October, 1802, under the false
name of Hope. Mary was the daughter of the landlord of the Fish Inn at
Buttermere, and was famous in the Lake Country for her charm. Coleridge
sent to the _Morning Post_ in October some letters on the imposture, and
Mary's name became a household word. Hatfield was hanged in September,
1803. Funds were meanwhile raised for Mary, and she ultimately married a
farmer, after being the subject of dramas, ballads and novels.
The play which the Lambs saw was by Charles Dibdin the Younger, produced
on April 11, 1803. Its title was "Edward and Susan; or, The Beauty of
Buttermere." A benefit performance for the real Beauty of Buttermere was
promised. Both Grimaldi and Belzoni were among the evening's
entertainers.
Stoddart was the King's and the Admiralty's Advocate at Malta from 1803
to 1807. He married Isabella Moncrieff in 1803. His sister was Sarah
Stoddart, of whom we are about to hear much.
According to the next letter the Lambs went not to Margate, but to the
Isle of Wight--to Cowes, with the Burneys.
Molly was an old cottager at Grasmere whom the Lambs had been friendly
with on their northern visit.
Mrs. Clarkson, the wife of Thomas Clarkson, was Catherine Buck. She
survived her husband, who died in 1846.]
LETTER 111
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN RICKMAN
Saturday Morning, July 16th, 1803.
Dear Rickman,--I enclose you a wonder, a letter from the shades. A dead
body wants to return, and be inrolled _inter vivos_. 'Tis a gentle
ghost, and in this Galvanic age it may have a chance.
Mary and I are setting out for the Isle of Wight. We make but a short
stay, and shall pass the time betwixt that place and Portsmouth, where
Fenwick is. I sadly wanted to explore the Peak this Summer; but Mary is
against steering without card or compass, and we should be at large in
Darbyshire.
We shall be at home this night and to-morrow, if you can come and take a
farewell pipe.
I regularly transmitted your Notices to the "Morning Post," but they
have not been duly honoured. The fault lay not in me.--
Yours truly,
C. LAMB.
[I cannot explain the reference to the dead body. Mr. Bertram Dobell
considers it to apply to an article which he believes Lamb to have
written, called "An Appeal from the Shades," printed in the _London
Magazine_, New Series, Vol. V. (see _Sidelights on Charles Lamb_, 1903,
pages 140-152). I cannot, however, think that Lamb could write in 1803
in the deliberate manner of that essay; that the "Appeal" is by him; or
that the reference in the letter is to an essay at all. I have no real
theory to put forward; but it once occurred to me that the letter from
the shades was from George Burnett, who had quarrelled with Rickman, may
reasonably be believed to have threatened suicide, and had now possibly
appealed to his mercy through Lamb. Later, Burnett entered the militia
as a surgeon, and at the beginning of 1804 he left for Poland.
Following this should come a letter from Lamb to Rickman, dated July 27,
1803. It is part of one from Captain Burney describing the adventures of
the Burneys and Lambs at Cowes. Lamb, says the Captain, on their way to
Newport "very ingeniously and unconsciously cast loose the fastenings of
the mast, so that mast, sprit, sails, and all the rest tumbled overboard
with a crash." Lamb on his part is amusing about the Captain and Martin
Burney, and says he longs for Holborn scenery again.]
LETTER 112
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[Dated at end: September 21, 1803.]
My dear Sarah, I returned home from my visit yesterday, and was much
pleased to find your letter; for I have been very anxious to hear how
you are going on. I could hardly help expecting to see you when I came
in; yet, though I should have rejoiced to have seen your merry face
again, I believe it was better as it was--upon the whole; and, all
things considered, it is certainly better you should go to Malta. The
terms you are upon with your Lover does (as you say it will) appear
wondrous strange to me; however, as I cannot enter into your feelings, I
certainly can have nothing to say to it, only that I sincerely wish you
happy in your own way, however odd that way may appear to me to be. I
would begin now to advise you to drop all correspondence with William;
but, as I said before, as I cannot enter into your feelings and views of
things, _your ways not being my ways_, why should I tell you what I
would do in your situation? So, child, take thy own ways, and God
prosper thee in them!
One thing my advising spirit must say--use as little _Secrecy_ as
possible; and, as much as possible, make a friend of your
sister-in-law--you know I was not struck with her at first sight; but,
upon your account, I have watched and marked her very attentively; and,
while she was eating a bit of cold mutton in our kitchen, we had a
serious conversation. From the frankness of her manner, I am convinced
she is a person I could make a friend of; why should not you? We talked
freely about you: she seems to have a just notion of your character, and
will be fond of you, if you will let her.
My father had a sister lived with us--of course, lived with my Mother,
her sister-in-law; they were, in their different ways, the best
creatures in the world--but they set out wrong at first. They made each
other miserable for full twenty years of their lives--my Mother was a
perfect gentlewoman, my Aunty as unlike a gentlewoman as you can
possibly imagine a good old woman to be; so that my dear Mother (who,
though you do not know it, is always in my poor head and heart) used to
distress and weary her with incessant and unceasing attention and
politeness, to gain her affection. The old woman could not return this
in kind, and did not know what to make of it--thought it all deceit, and
used to hate my Mother with a bitter hatred; which, of course, was soon
returned with interest. A little frankness, and looking into each
other's characters at first, would have spared all this, and they would
have lived, as they died, fond of each other for the last few years of
their life. When we grew up, and harmonised them a little, they
sincerely loved each other.
My Aunt and my Mother were wholly unlike you and your sister, yet in
some degree theirs is the secret history I believe of all
sisters-in-law--and you will smile when I tell you I think myself the
only woman in the world who could live with a brother's wife, and make a
real friend of her, partly from early observation of the unhappy example
I have just given you, and partly from a knack I know I have of looking
into people's real characters, and never expecting them to act out of
it--never expecting another to do as I would in the same case. When you
leave your Mother, and say, if you never shall see her again, you shall
feel no remorse, and when you make a _jewish_ bargain with your _Lover_,
all this gives me no offence, because it is your nature, and your
temper, and I do not expect or want you to be otherwise than you are. I
love you for the good that is in you, and look for no change. _But_,
certainly, you ought to struggle with the evil that does most easily
beset you--a total want of politeness in behaviour, I would say modesty
of behaviour, but that I should not convey to you my idea of the word
modesty; for I certainly do not mean that you want _real modesty_; and
what is usually called false, or mock, modesty is [a quality] I
certainly do not wish you to possess; yet I trust you know what I mean
well enough.
_Secrecy_, though you appear all frankness, is certainly a grand failing
of yours; it is likewise your _brother's_, and, therefore, a family
failing--by secrecy, I mean you both want the habit of telling each
other at the moment every thing that happens--where you go,--and what
you do,--the free communication of letters and opinions just as they
arrive, as Charles and I do,--and which is, after all, the only
groundwork of friendship. Your brother, I will answer for [it,] will
never tell his wife or his sister all that [is in] his mind--he will
receive letters, and not [mention it]. This is a fault Mrs. Stoddart can
never [tell him of;] but she can, and will, feel it: though, [on] the
whole, and in every other respect, she is [very] happy with him. Begin,
for God's sake, at the first, and tell her every thing that passes. At
first she may hear you with indifference; but in time this will gain her
affection and confidence; show her all your letters (no matter if she
does not show hers)--it is a pleasant thing for a friend to put into
one's hand a letter just fresh from the post. I would even say, begin
with showing her this, but that it is written freely and loosely, and
some apology ought to be made for it--which I know not how to make, for
I must write freely or not at all.
If you do this, she will tell your brother, you will say; and what then,
quotha? It will beget a freer communication amongst you, which is a
thing devoutly to be wished--
God bless you, and grant you may preserve your integrity, and remain
unmarried and penniless, and make William a good and a happy wife.
Your affectionate friend,
M. LAMB.
Charles is very unwell, and my head aches. He sends his love: mine, with
my best wishes, to your brother and sister.
I hope I shall get another letter from you.
Wednesday, 21st September, 1803.
[Sarah Stoddart was the sister of Dr. John Stoddart, who had just been
appointed the King's and the Admiralty's Advocate at Malta, whither Miss
Stoddart followed him. Her lover of that moment was a Mr. Turner, and
William was an earlier lover still. Her sister-in-law was Mrs. John
Stoddart, _née_ Isabella Moncrieff, whom her brother had only just
married.
"My Mother." This is the only reference to her mother in any of Mary
Lamb's letters. The sister was Sarah Lamb, usually known as Aunt Hetty.]
LETTER 113
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
Nov. 8, 1803.
My dear Sir,--I have been sitting down for three or four days
successively to the review, which I so much wished to do well, and to
your satisfaction. But I can produce nothing but absolute flatness and
nonsense. My health and spirits are so bad, and my nerves so irritable,
that I am sure, if I persist, I shall teaze myself into a fever. You do
not know how sore and weak a brain I have, or you would allow for many
things in me which you set down for whims. I solemnly assure you that I
never more wished to prove to you the value which I have for you than at
this moment; but although in so seemingly trifling a service I cannot
get through with it, I pray you to impute it to this one sole cause, ill
health. I hope I am above subterfuge, and that you will do me this
justice to think so.
You will give me great satisfaction by sealing my pardon and oblivion in
a line or two, before I come to see you, or I shall be ashamed to
come.--Your, with great truth,
C. LAMB.
LETTER 114
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
Nov. 10, 1803.
Dear Godwin,--You never made a more unlucky and perverse mistake than to
suppose that the reason of my not writing that cursed thing was to be
found in your book. I assure you most sincerely that I have been greatly
delighted with Chaucer. I may be wrong, but I think there is one
considerable error runs through it, which is a conjecturing spirit, a
fondness for filling out the picture by supposing what Chaucer did and
how he felt, where the materials are scanty. So far from meaning to
withhold from you (out of mistaken tenderness) this opinion of mine, I
plainly told Mrs. Godwin that I did find a _fault_, which I should
reserve naming until I should see you and talk it over. This she may
very well remember, and also that I declined naming this fault until she
drew it from me by asking me if there was not too much fancy in the
work. I then confessed generally what I felt, but refused to go into
particulars until I had seen you. I am never very fond of saying things
before third persons, because in the relation (such is human nature)
something is sure to be dropped. If Mrs. Godwin has been the cause of
your misconstruction, I am very angry, tell her; yet it is not an anger
unto death. I remember also telling Mrs. G. (which she may have _dropt_)
that I was by turns considerably more delighted than I expected. But I
wished to reserve all this until I saw you. I even had conceived an
expression to meet you with, which was thanking you for some of the most
exquisite pieces of criticism I had ever read in my life. In particular,
I should have brought forward that on "Troilus and Cressida" and
Shakespear which, it is little to say, delighted me, and instructed me
(if not absolutely _instructed_ me, yet put into _full-grown sense_ many
conceptions which had arisen in me before in my most discriminating
moods). All these things I was preparing to say, and bottling them up
till I came, thinking to please my friend and host, the author! when lo!
this deadly blight intervened.
I certainly ought to make great allowances for your misunderstanding me.
You, by long habits of composition and a greater command gained over
your own powers, cannot conceive of the desultory and uncertain way in
which I (an author by fits) sometimes cannot put the thoughts of a
common letter into sane prose. Any work which I take upon myself as an
engagement will act upon me to torment, _e.g._, when I have undertaken,
as three or four times I have, a school-boy copy of verses for Merchant
Taylors' boys, at a guinea a copy, I have fretted over them, in perfect
inability to do them, and have made my sister wretched with my
wretchedness for a week together. The same, till by habit I have
acquired a mechanical command, I have felt in making paragraphs. As to
reviewing, in particular, my head is so whimsical a head, that I cannot,
after reading another man's book, let it have been never so pleasing,
give any account of it in any methodical way. I cannot follow his train.
Something like this you must have perceived of me in conversation. Ten
thousand times I have confessed to you, talking of my talents, my utter
inability to remember in any comprehensive way what I read. I can
vehemently applaud, or perversely stickle, at _parts_; but I cannot
grasp at a whole. This infirmity (which is nothing to brag of) may be
seen in my two little compositions, the tale and my play, in both which
no reader, however partial, can find any story. I wrote such stuff about
Chaucer, and got into such digressions, quite irreducible into 1-1/5
column of a paper, that I was perfectly ashamed to show it you. However,
it is become a serious matter that I should convince you I neither slunk
from the task through a wilful deserting neglect, or through any (most
imaginary on your part) distaste of Chaucer; and I will try my hand
again, I hope with better luck. My health is bad and my time taken up,
but all I can spare between this and Sunday shall be employed for you,
since you desire it: and if I bring you a crude, wretched paper on
Sunday, you must burn it, and forgive me; if it proves anything better
than I predict, may it be a peace-offering of sweet incense between us.
C. LAMB.
[Lamb's review of Godwin's _Life of Chaucer_, issued in October, 1803,
has not been identified. Perhaps it was never completed. Writing to
Wordsworth, December 28, 1814, he says that his review of _The
Excursion_ is the first he ever did.
Lamb's early Merchant Taylors' verses have been lost, but two epigrams
that he wrote many years later for the sons of Hessey, the publisher,
have been preserved (see the letter to Southey, May 10, 1830).]
LETTER 115
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS POOLE
[Dated at end: Feb. 14, 1804.]
Dear Sir--I am sorry we have not been able to hear of lodgings to suit
young F. but we will not desist in the enquiry. In a day or two
something may turn up. Boarding houses are common enough, but to find a
family where he would be safe from impositions within & impositions
without is not so easy.--
I take this opportunity of thanking you for your kind attentions to the
Lad I took the liberty of recommending. _His_ mother was disposed to
have taken in young F. but could not possibly make room.
Your obliged &c
C. LAMB.
Temple, 14 Feb., 1804.
[I do not know to what lads the note refers, but probably young F. was
young Fricker, the brother of Mrs. Coleridge and Mrs. Southey. The note
is interesting only as giving another instance of Lamb's willing
helpfulness to others.]
LETTER 116
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[P.M. March 10, 1804.]
Dr C. I blunderd open this letter, its weight making me conjecture it
held an inclosure; but finding it poetry (which is no man's ground, but
waste and common) I perused it. Do you remember that you are to come to
us to-night?
C. L.
To Mr. Coleridge,
Mr. Tobin's,
Barnards Inn, Holborn.
[This is written on the back of a paper addressed (to save postage) to
Mr. Lamb, India House, containing a long extract from "Madoc" in
Southey's hand.
Coleridge, having been invited by Stoddart to Malta, was now in London
on his way thither. Tobin was probably James Webbe Tobin, brother of
John Tobin, the solicitor and dramatist.
Between this letter and the next comes a letter from Lamb to Robert
Lloyd, dated at the end March 13, 1804, in which Lamb congratulates
Robert Lloyd on his approaching marriage to Hannah Hart. The wedding was
celebrated on August 2, 1804.]
LETTER 117
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[No date. ? March, 1804.]
My dearest Sarah,--I will just write a few hasty lines to say Coleridge
is setting off sooner than we expected; and I every moment expect him to
call in one of his great hurrys for this. Charles intended to write by
him, but has not: most likely he will send a letter after him to
Portsmouth: if he does, you will certainly hear from him soon. We
rejoiced with exceeding joy to hear of your safe arrival: I hope your
brother will return home in a few years a very rich man. Seventy pounds
in one fortnight is a pretty beginning--
I envy your brother the pleasure of seeing Coleridge drop in
unexpectedly upon him; we talk--but it is but wild and idle talk--of
following him: he is to get my brother some little snug place of a
thousand a year, and we are to leave all, and come and live among ye.
What a pretty dream.
Coleridge is very ill. I dread the thought of his long voyage--write as
soon as he arrives, whether he does or not, and tell me how he is.
Jamaica bodies... [_words illegible_].
He has got letters of recommendation to Governor Ball, and God knows
who; and he will talk and talk, and be universally admired. But I wish
to write for him a _letter of recommendation_ to Mrs. Stoddart, and to
yourself, to take upon ye, on his first arrival, to be kind affectionate
nurses; and mind, now, that you perform this duty faithfully, and write
me a good account of yourself. Behave to him as you would to me, or to
Charles, if we came sick and unhappy to you.
I have no news to send you; Coleridge will tell you how we are going on.
Charles has lost the newspaper; but what we dreaded as an evil has
proved a great blessing, for we have both strangely recovered our health
and spirits since this has happened; and I hope, when I write next, I
shall be able to tell you Charles has begun something which will produce
a little money; for it is not well to be _very poor_--which we certainly
are at this present writing.
I sit writing here, and thinking almost you will see it tomorrow; and
what a long, long time it will be ere you receive this--When I saw your
letter, I fancy'd you were even just then in the first bustle of a new
reception, every moment seeing new faces, and staring at new objects,
when, at that time, every thing had become familiar to you; and the
strangers, your new dancing partners, had perhaps become gossiping
fireside friends. You tell me of your gay, splendid doings; tell me,
likewise, what manner of home-life you lead--Is a quiet evening in a
Maltese drawing room as pleasant as those we have passed in Mitre Court
and Bell yard?--Tell me all about it, every thing pleasant, and every
thing unpleasant, that befalls you.
I want you to say a great deal about yourself. _Are you happy? and do
you not repent going out?_ I wish I could see you for one hour only.
Remember me affectionately to your sister and brother; and tell me, when
you write, if Mrs. Stoddart likes Malta, and how the climate agrees with
her and with thee.
We heard you were taken prisoners, and for several days believed the
tale.
How did the pearls, and the fine court finery, bear the fatigues of the
voyage, and how often have they been worn and admired?
Rickman wants to know if you are going to be married yet--satisfy him in
that little particular when you write.
The Fenwicks send their love, and Mrs. Reynolds her love, and the little
old lady her best respects.
Mrs. Jefferies, who I see now and then, talks of you with tears in her
eyes, and, when she heard you was taken prisoner, Lord! how frightened
she was. She has heard, she tells me, that Mr. Stoddart is to have a
pension of two thousand a year, whenever he chuses to return to England.
God bless you, and send you all manner of comforts and happinesses.
Your most affectionate friend,
MARY LAMB.
How-do? how-do? No time to write. S.T.C. going off in a great hurry. CH.
LAMB.
[Miss Stoddart was now in Malta. Governor Ball was Sir Alexander Ball,
to whom Coleridge was to act as private secretary and of whom he wrote
some years later in _The Friend_.
"Charles has lost the newspaper"--his work on the _Morning Post_. Lamb's
principal period on this paper had begun after Stuart sold it in
September, 1803, and it lasted until February, 1804 (see notes in Vol.
II. of this edition).
"We heard you were taken prisoners"--by the French.
"Mrs. Reynolds"--Lamb's old schoolmistress and pensioner. Mrs. Jefferies
I do not know.]
LETTER 118
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[P.M. April 4, 1804.]
Mary would send her best love, but I write at office.
Thursday [April 5].
The £1 came safe.
My dear C.--I but just received your commission-abounding letter. All
shall be done. Make your European heart easy in Malta, all shall be
performed. You say I am to transcribe off part of your letters and send
to X somebody (but the name is lost under the wafer, so you must give it
me)--I suppose Wordsw'th.
I have been out of town since Saturday, the reason I had not your letter
before. N.B. N.B. Knowing I had 2 or 3 Easter holydays, it was my
intention to have ask'd you if my accompanying you to Portsm'th would
have been pleasant. But you were not visible, except just at the
critical moment of going off from the Inn, at which time I could not get
at you. So Deus aliter disposuit, and I went down into Hertfordshire.
I write in great bustle indeed--God bless you again. Attend to what I
have written mark'd X above, and don't merge any part of your Orders
under seal again.
C. LAMB.
[Addressed to "S. T. Coleridge, Esq'r., J. C. Mottley's, Esq'r.,
Portsmouth, Hants."
Coleridge had left London for Portsmouth on March 27; he sailed for
Malta on April 9.]
LETTER 119
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS POOLE
[Dated at end: Temple, 4th May, 1804.]
Dear Sir--I have no sort of connexion with the Morning Post at present,
nor acquaintance with its late Editor (the present Editor of the
Courier) to ask a favour of him with propriety; but if it will be of any
use, I believe I could get the insertions into the British Press (a
Morning Paper) through a friend.--
Yours truly
C. LAMB.
LETTER 120
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS POOLE
[Dated at end: Temple, 5 May, 1804.]
Dear Sir--I can get the insertions into the British Press without any
difficulty at all. I am only sorry that I have no interest in the M.
Post, having so much greater circulation. If your friend chuses it, you
will be so good as to return me the Critique, of which I forgot to take
a copy, and I suppose on Monday or Tuesday it will be in. The sooner I
have it, the better.
Yours &c.
C. LAMB.
I did formerly assist in the Post, but have no longer any engagement.--
[Stuart, having sold the _Morning Post_, was now developing the
_Courier_. The notes are interesting only as showing Lamb's attitude to
Stuart. Writing to the _Gentleman's Magazine_ in June, 1838, concerning
his association as editor with Coleridge, Stuart said: "But as for good
Charles Lamb, I never could make any-thing of his writings. Coleridge
often and repeatedly pressed me to settle him on a salary, and often and
repeatedly did I try; but it would not do. Of politics he knew nothing;
they were out of his line of reading and thought; and his drollery was
vapid, when given in short paragraphs fit for a newspaper: yet he has
produced some agreeable books, possessing a tone of humour and kind
feeling, in a quaint style, which it is amusing to read, and cheering to
remember."]
LETTER 121
CHARLES LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: June 2, 1804.]
Dear Miss Wordsworth, the task of letter-writing in my family falls to
me; you are the organ of correspondence in yours, so I address you
rather than your brother. We are all sensibly obliged to you for the
little scraps (Arthur's Bower and his brethren) which you sent up; the
bookseller has got them and paid Mrs. Fenwick for them. So while some
are authors for fame, some for money, you have commenced author for
charity. The least we can do, is to see your commissions fulfilled;
accordingly I have booked this 2d June 1804 from the Waggon Inn in
Cripplegate the watch and books which I got from your brother Richard,
together with Purchas's Pilgrimage and Brown's Religio Medici which I
desire your brother's acceptance of, with some _pens_, of which I
observed no great frequency when I tarried at Grasmere. (I suppose you
have got Coleridge's letter)--These things I have put up in a deal box
directed to Mr. Wordsworth, Grasmere, near Ambleside, Kendal, by the
Kendal waggon. At the same time I have sent off a parcel by C.'s desire
to Mr. T. Hutchinson to the care of Mr. "T. Monkhouse, or T. Markhouse"
(for C.'s writing is not very plain) Penrith, by the Penrith waggon this
day; which I beg you to apprize them of, lest my direction fail. In your
box, you will find a little parcel for Mrs. Coleridge, which she wants
as soon as possible; also for yourselves the Cotton, Magnesia, bark and
Oil, which come to £2. 3. 4. thus.
sh.
Thread and needles 17
Magnesia 8
bark 9. 8
Oil 8. 8
--------
2. 3. 4
packing case 2. 6
------
2. 5.10
deduct a guinea I owe you,
which C. was to pay, 1. 1. -
but did not
------
leaves you indebted 1. 4.10
whereby you may see how punctual I am.
I conclude with our kindest remembrances to your brother and Mrs. W.
We hear, the young John is a Giant.
And should you see Charles Lloyd, pray _forget_ to give my love to him.
Yours truly, D'r Miss W.
C. LAMB.
June 2, 1804.
I send you two little copies of verses by Mary L--b:--
DIALOGUE BETWEEN A MOTHER AND CHILD
_Child_.
(_Sings_)
"O Lady, lay your costly robes aside,
No longer may you glory in your pride."
_Mother_.
Wherefore to day art singing in mine ear
Sad songs were made so long ago, my dear?
This day I am to be a bride, you know.
Why sing sad songs were made so long ago?
_Child_.
"O Mother lay your costly robes aside,"
_For you may never be another's bride_:
That line I learnt not in the old sad song.
_Mother_.
I pray thee, pretty one, now hold thy tongue;
Play with the bride maids, and be glad, my boy,
For thou shall be a second father's joy.
_Child_.
One father fondled me upon his knee:
One father is enough alone for me.
Suggested by a print of 2 females after Leo[nardo da] Vinci, called
Prudence & Beauty, which hangs up in our ro[om].
O! that you could see the print!!
The Lady Blanch, regardless of all her lovers' fears,
To the Urseline Convent hastens, and long the Abbess hears:
"O Blanch, my child, repent thee of the courtly life ye lead."
Blanch looked on a rose-bud, and little seem'd to heed;
She looked on the rose-bud, she looked round, and thought
On all her heart had whisper'd, and all the Nun had taught.
"I am worshipped by lovers, and brightly shines my fame,
All Christendom resoundeth the noble Blanch's name;
Nor shall I quickly wither like the rose-bud from the tree,
My Queen-like graces shining when my beauty's gone from me.
But when the sculptur'd marble is raised o'er my head,
And the matchless Blanch lies lifeless among the noble dead,
This saintly Lady Abbess has made me justly fear.
It nothing will avail me that I were worshipt here."
I wish they may please you: we in these parts are not a little proud of
them.
C. L.
["The little scraps." Professor Knight informed me that the scraps were
not written but only copied by Miss Wordsworth. Arthur's Bower ran
thus:--
Arthur's bower has broke his band,
He comes riding up the land,
The King of Scots with all his power
Cannot build up Arthur's bower.
"Your brother Richard"--Wordsworth's eldest brother.
"Purchas's Pilgrimage." Samuel Purchas (1575?-1626) was the author of
_Purchas His Pilgrimage_, 1613; _Purchas His Pilgrim_, 1619; and
_Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes_, 1625. This last is
Purchas's best work, and is probably that which Lamb sent to Grasmere.
Mary Lamb's two poems, her earliest that we know, with the exception of
"Helen," were printed in the _Works_, 1818.]
LETTER 122
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[Late July, 1804.]
My dearest Sarah,--Your letter, which contained the news of Coleridge's
arrival, was a most welcome one; for we had begun to entertain very
unpleasant apprehensions for his safety; and your kind reception of the
forlorn wanderer gave me the greatest pleasure, and I thank you for it
in my own and my brother's name. I shall depend upon you for hearing of
his welfare; for he does not write himself; but, as long as we know he
is safe, and in such kind friends' hands, we do not mind. Your letters,
my dear Sarah, are to me very, very precious ones. They are the kindest,
best, most natural ones I ever received. The one containing the news of
the arrival of Coleridge perhaps the best I ever saw; and your old
friend Charles is of my opinion. We sent it off to Mrs. Coleridge and
the Wordsworths--as well because we thought it our duty to give them the
first notice we had of our dear friend's safety, as that we were proud
of shewing our Sarah's pretty letter.
The letters we received a few days after from you and your brother were
far less welcome ones. I rejoiced to hear your sister is well; but I
grieved for the loss of the dear baby; and I am sorry to find your
brother is not so successful as he at first expected to be; and yet I am
almost tempted to wish his ill fortune may send him over [to] us again.
He has a friend, I understand, who is now at the head of the Admiralty;
why may he not return, and make a fortune here?
I cannot condole with you very sincerely upon your little failure in the
fortune-making way. If you regret it, so do I. But I hope to see you a
comfortable English wife; and the forsaken, forgotten William, of
English-partridge memory, I have still a hankering after. However, I
thank you for your frank communication, and I beg you will continue it
in future; and if I do not agree with a good grace to your having a
Maltese husband, I will wish you happy, provided you make it a part of
your marriage articles that your husband shall allow you to come over
sea and make me one visit; else may neglect and overlookedness be your
portion while you stay there.
I would condole with you when the misfortune has fallen your poor leg;
but such is the blessed distance we are at from each other, that I hope,
before you receive this, that you forgot it ever happened.
Our compliments [to] the high ton at the Maltese court. Your brother is
so profuse of them to me, that being, as you know, so unused to them,
they perplex me sadly; in future, I beg they may be discontinued. They
always remind me of the free, and, I believe, very improper, letter I
wrote to you while you were at the Isle of Wight. The more kindly you
and your brother and sister took the impertinent advice contained in it,
the more certain I feel that it was unnecessary, and therefore highly
improper. Do not let your brother compliment me into the memory of it
again.
My brother has had a letter from your Mother, which has distressed him
sadly--about the postage of some letters being paid by my brother. Your
silly brother, it seems, has informed your Mother (I did not think your
brother could have been so silly) that Charles had grumbled at paying
the said postage. The fact was, just at that time we were very poor,
having lost the Morning Post, and we were beginning to practise a strict
economy. My brother, who never makes up his mind whether he will be a
Miser or a Spendthrift, is at all times a strange mixture of both: of
this failing, the even economy of your correct brother's temper makes
him an ill judge. The miserly part of Charles, at that time smarting
under his recent loss, then happened to reign triumphant; and he would
not write, or let me write, so often as he wished, because the postage
cost two and four pence. Then came two or three of your poor Mother's
letters nearly together; and the two and four pences he wished, but
grudged, to pay for his own, he was forced to pay for hers. In this
dismal distress, he applied to Fenwick to get his friend Motley to send
them free from Portsmouth. This Mr. Fenwick could have done for half a
word's speaking; but this he did not do. Then Charles foolishly and
unthinkingly complained to your brother in a half serious, half joking
way; and your brother has wickedly, and with malice afore thought, told
your Mother. O fye upon him! what will your Mother think of us?
I too feel my share of blame in this vexatious business; for I saw the
unlucky paragraph in my brother's letter; and I had a kind of foreboding
that it would come to your Mother's ears--although I had a higher
opinion of your brother's good sense than I find he deserved. By
entreaties and prayers, I might have prevailed on my brother to say
nothing about it. But I make a point of conscience never to interfere or
cross my brother in the humour he happens to be in. It always appears to
me to be a vexatious kind of Tyranny, that women have no business to
exercise over men, which, merely because _they having a better
judgement_, they have the power to do. Let _men_ alone, and at last we
find they come round to the right way, which _we_, by a kind of
intuition, perceive at once. But better, far better, that we should let
them often do wrong, than that they should have the torment of a Monitor
always at their elbows.
Charles is sadly fretted now, I know, at what to say to your Mother. I
have made this long preamble about it to induce [you,] if possible, to
reinstate us in your Mother's good graces. Say to her it was a jest
misunderstood; tell her Charles Lamb is not the shabby fellow she and
her son took him for; but that he is now and then a trifle whimsical or
so. I do not ask your brother to do this, for I am offended with him for
the mischief he has made.
I feel that I have too lightly passed over the interesting account you
sent me of your late disappointment. It was not because I did not feel
and compl[ete]ly enter into the affair with you. You surprise and please
me with the frank and generous way in which you deal with your Lovers,
taking a refusal from their so prudential hearts with a better grace and
more good humour than other women accept a suitor's service. Continue
this open artless conduct, and I trust you will at last find some man
who has sense enough to know you are well worth risking a peaceable life
of poverty for. I shall yet live to see you a poor, but happy, English
wife.
Remember me most affectionately to Coleridge; and I thank you again and
again for all your kindness to him. To dear Mrs. Stoddart and your
brother, I beg my best love; and to you all I wish health and happiness,
and a _soon_ return to Old England.
I have sent to Mr. Burrel's for your kind present; but unfortunately he
is not in town. I am impatient to see my fine silk handkerchiefs; and I
thank you for them, not as a present, for I do not love presents, but as
a [_word illegible_] remembrance of your old friend. Farewell.
I am, my best Sarah,
Your most affectionate friend,
MARY LAMB.
Good wishes, and all proper remembrances, from old nurse, Mrs. Jeffries,
Mrs. Reynolds, Mrs. Rickman, &c. &c. &c.
Long live Queen Hoop-oop-oop-oo, and all the old merry phantoms!
LETTER 123
CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
(_Same letter_)
My dear Miss Stoddart,--Mary has written so fully to you, that I have
nothing to add but that, in all the kindness she has exprest, and loving
desire to see you again, I bear my full part. You will, perhaps, like to
tear this half from the sheet, and give your brother only his strict
due, the remainder. So I will just repay your late kind letter with this
short postscript to hers. Come over here, and let us all be merry again.
C. LAMB.
[Coleridge reached Valetta on May 18, 1804; but no opportunity to send
letters home occurred until June 5. Miss Stoddart seems to have given up
all her lovers at home in the hope of finding one in Malta.
"The blessed distance." Here Mary Lamb throws out an idea afterwards
developed by her brother in the Elia essay on "Distant Correspondents."
Lamb's letter to Stoddart containing the complaint as to postage no
longer exists. Mrs. Stoddart, Sarah's mother, had remained in England,
at Salisbury.
Of Mr. Burrel I know nothing: he was probably an agent; nor can I
explain Queen Hoop-oop-oop-oo.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, dated September 13,
1804, not available for this edition, in which Lamb expresses his
inability to accept an invitation, having had a month's holiday at
Richmond. After alluding to Priscilla Lloyd's approaching marriage (to
Christopher Wordsworth) he says that these new nuptials do not make him
the less satisfied with his bachelor state.]
LETTER 124
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. October 13, 1804.]
(Turn over leaf for more letters.)
Dear Wordsworth--I have not forgot your commissions.
But the truth is, and why should I not confess it? I am not
plethorically abounding in Cash at this present. Merit, God knows, is
very little rewarded; but it does not become me to speak of myself. My
motto is "Contented with little, yet wishing for more." Now the books
you wish for would require some pounds, which I am sorry to say I have
not by me: so I will say at once, if you will give me a draft upon your
town-banker for any sum you propose to lay out, I will dispose of [it]
to the very best of my skill in choice old books, such as my own soul
loveth. In fact, I have been waiting for the liquidation of a debt to
enable myself to set about your commission handsomely, for it is a
scurvy thing to cry Give me the money first, and I am the first of the
family of the Lambs that have done it for many centuries: but the debt
remains as it was, and my old friend that I accommodated has generously
forgot it!
The books which you want I calculate at about £8.
Ben Jonson is a Guinea Book. Beaumont & Fletcher in folio, the right
folio, not now to be met with; the octavos are about £3. As to any other
old dramatists, I do not know where to find them except what are in
Dodsley's old plays, which are about £3 also: Massinger I never saw but
at one shop, but it is now gone, but one of the editions of Dodsley
contains about a fourth (the best) of his plays. Congreve and the rest
of King Charles's moralists are cheap and accessible. The works on
Ireland I will enquire after, but I fear, Spenser's is not to be had
apart from his poems; I never saw it. But you may depend upon my sparing
no pains to furnish you as complete a library of old Poets & Dramatists
as will be prudent to buy; for I suppose you do not include the £20
edition of Hamlet, single play, which Kemble has. Marlow's plays and
poems are totally vanished; only one edition of Dodsley retains one, and
the other two, of his plays: but John Ford is the man after Shakespear.
Let me know your will and pleasure soon: for I have observed, next to
the pleasure of buying a bargain for one's self is the pleasure of
persuading a friend to buy it. It tickles one with the image of an
imprudency without the penalty usually annex'd.
C. LAMB.
LETTER 125
MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
(_Same letter_)
[P.M. October 13, 1804.]
My dear Miss Wordsworth--I writ a letter immediately upon the receipt of
yours, to thank you for sending me the welcome tidings of your little
niece's birth, and Mrs. Wordsworth's safety, & waited till I could get a
frank to send it in. Not being able to procure one, I will defer my
thanks no longer for fear Mrs. Wordsworth should add another little baby
to your family, before my congratulations on the birth of the little
Dorothy arrive.
I hope Mrs. Wordsworth, & the pretty baby, & the young philosopher, are
well: they are three strangers to me whom I have a longing desire to be
acquainted with.
My brother desires me not to send such a long gossiping letter as that I
had intended for you, because he wishes to fill a large share of the
paper with his acknowledgments to Mr. Wordsworth for his letters, which
he considers as a very uncommon favor, your brother seldom writing
letters. I must beg my brother will tell Mr. Wordsworth how very proud
he has made me also by praising my poor verses. Will you be so kind as
to forward the opposite page to Mrs. Coleridge. This sheet of paper is
quite a partnership affair. When the parliament meets you shall have a
letter for your sole use.
My brother and I have been this summer to Richmond; we had a lodging
there for a month, we passed the whole time there in wandering about, &
comparing the views from the banks of the Thames with your mountain
scenery, & tried, & wished, to persuade ourselves that it was almost as
beautiful. Charles was quite a Mr. Clarkson in his admiration and his
frequent exclamations, for though we had often been at Richmond for a
few hours we had no idea it was so beautiful a place as we found it on a
month's intimate acquaintance.
We rejoice to hear of the good fortune of your brave sailor-brother, I
should have liked to have been with you when the news first arrived.
Your very friendly invitations have made us long to be with you, and we
promise ourselves to spend the first money my brother earns by writing
certain books (Charles often plans but never begins) in a journey to
Grasmere.
When your eyes (which I am sorry to find continue unwell) will permit
you to make use of your pen again I shall be very happy to see a letter
in your own hand writing.
I beg to be affectionately remembered to your brother & sister & remain
ever your affectionate friend
M. LAMB.
Compliments to old Molly.
LETTER 126
MARY LAMB TO MRS. S. T. COLERIDGE
(_Same letter_)
[P.M. October 13, 1804.]
My dear Mrs. Coleridge--I have had a letter written ready to send to
you, which I kept, hoping to get a frank, and now I find I must write
one entirely anew, for that consisted of matter not now in season, such
as condolence on the illness of your children, who I hope are now quite
well, & comfortings on your uncertainty of the safety of Coleridge, with
wise reasons for the delay of the letters from Malta, which must now be
changed for pleasant congratulations. Coleridge has not written to us,
but we have had two letters from the Stoddarts since the one I sent to
you, containing good accounts of him, but as I find you have had letters
from himself I need not tell you the particulars.
My brother sent your letters to Mr. Motley according to Coleridge's
direction, & I have no doubt but he forwarded them.
One thing only in my poor letter the time makes no alteration in, which
is that I have half a bed ready for you, & I shall rejoice with
exceeding great joy to have you with me. Pray do not change your mind
for I shall be sadly disappointed if you do. Will Hartley be with you? I
hope he will, for you say he goes with you to Liverpool, and I conclude
you come from thence to London.
I have seen your brother lately, and I find he entertains good hopes
from Mr. Sake, and his present employment I hear is likely to continue a
considerable time longer, so that I hope you may consider him as good as
provided for. He seems very steady, and is very well spoken of at his
office.
I have lately been often talking of you with Mrs. Hazlitt. William
Hazlitt is painting my brother's picture, which has brought us
acquainted with the whole family. I like William Hazlitt and his sister
very much indeed, & I think Mrs. Hazlitt a pretty good-humoured woman.
She has a nice little girl of the Pypos kind, who is so fond of my
brother that she stops strangers in the street to tell them when _Mr.
Lamb is coming to see her_.
I hope Mr. Southey and your sister and the little Edith are well. I beg
my love to them.
God bless you, and your three little darlings, & their wandering father,
who I hope will soon return to you in high health & spirits.
I remain ever your affectionate friend
MARY LAMB.
Compliments to Mr. Jackson and darling friend. I hope they are well.
[Charles Lamb adds:--]
C. Lamb particularly desires to be remembered to Southey and all the
Southeys, as well as to Mrs. C. and her little Coleridges. Mrs. C.'s
letters have all been sent as Coleridge left word, to Motley's,
Portsmouth.
[The Ben Jonson in Lamb's own library was the 1692 folio; his Beaumont
and Fletcher, which may be seen at the British Museum, was the folio
1647 or 1679.
Spenser's prose work, _View of the Present State of Ireland_, is that
referred to.
"John Ford." Lamb says in the _Dramatic Specimens_, 1808, "Ford was of
the first order of poets."
Dorothy Wordsworth (afterwards the wife of Edward Quillinan) was born
August 16, 1804.
"Your brave sailor-brother"--John Wordsworth.
Mrs. Coleridge now had three children--Hartley, Derwent and Sara. We do
not know whether or no she stayed with the Lambs, as suggested. Her
brother was George Fricker.
William Hazlitt's sister was Peggy Hazlitt. His sister-in-law, Mrs.
Hazlitt, was the wife of John Hazlitt, the miniature painter.
Hazlitt's portrait of Lamb was the one in the dress of a Venetian
senator, reproduced as frontispiece to Vol. I. of this edition. It now
hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.]
LETTER 127
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
7 Nov., 1804.
Dear Southey,--You were the last person from whom we heard of Dyer, and
if you know where to forward the news I now send to him, I shall be
obliged to you to lose no time. D.'s sister-in-law, who lives in St.
Dunstan's Court, wrote to him about three weeks ago, to the Hope Inn,
Cambridge, to inform him that Squire Houlbert, or some such name, of
Denmark Hill, has died, and left her husband a thousand pounds, and two
or three hundred to Dyer. Her letter got no answer, and she does not
know where to direct to him; so she came to me, who am equally in the
dark. Her story is, that Dyer's immediately coming to town now, and
signing some papers, will save him a considerable sum of money--how, I
don't understand; but it is very right he should hear of this. She has
left me barely time for the post; so I conclude with all Love, &c., to
all at Keswick.
Dyer's brother, who, by his wife's account, has got 1000_l_. left him,
is father of the little dirty girl, Dyer's niece and factotum.
In haste,
Yours truly,
C. LAMB.
If you send George this, cut off the last paragraph. D.'s laundress had
a letter a few days since; but George never dates.
LETTER 128
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. February 18, 1805.]
My dear Wordsworth, the subject of your letter has never been out of our
thoughts since the day we first heard of it, and many have been our
impulses towards you, to write to you, or to write to enquire about you;
but it never seemed the time. We felt all your situation, and how much
you would want Coleridge at such a time, and we wanted somehow to make
up to you his absence, for we loved and honoured your Brother, and his
death always occurs to my mind with something like a feeling of
reproach, as if we ought to have been nearer acquainted, and as if there
had been some incivility shown him by us, or something short of that
respect which we now feel: but this is always a feeling when people die,
and I should not foolishly offer a piece of refinement, instead of
sympathy, if I knew any other way of making you feel how little like
indifferent his loss has been to us. I have been for some time
wretchedly ill and low, and your letter this morning has affected me so
with a pain in my inside and a confusion, that I hardly know what to
write or how. I have this morning seen Stewart, the 2'd mate, who was
saved: but he can give me no satisfactory account, having been in quite
another part of the ship when your brother went down. But I shall see
Gilpin tomorrow, and will communicate your thanks, and learn from him
all I can. All accounts agree that just before the vessel going down,
your brother seemed like one overwhelmed with the situation, and
careless of his own safety. Perhaps he might have saved himself; but a
Captain who in such circumstances does all he can for his ship and
nothing for himself, is the noblest idea. I can hardly express myself, I
am so really ill. But the universal sentiment is, that your brother did
all that duty required; and if he had been more alive to the feelings of
those distant ones whom he loved, he would have been at that time a less
admirable object; less to be exulted in by them: for his character is
high with all that I have heard speak of him, and no reproach can fix
upon him. Tomorrow I shall see Gilpin, I hope, if I can get at him, for
there is expected a complete investigation of the causes of the loss of
the ship, at the East India House, and all the Officers are to attend:
but I could not put off writing to you a moment. It is most likely I
shall have something to add tomorrow, in a second letter. If I do not
write, you may suppose I have not seen G. but you shall hear from me in
a day or two. We have done nothing but think of you, particularly of
Dorothy. Mary is crying by me while I with difficulty write this: but as
long as we remember any thing, we shall remember your Brother's noble
person, and his sensible manly modest voice, and how safe and
comfortable we all were together in our apartment, where I am now
writing. When he returned, having been one of the triumphant China
fleet, we thought of his pleasant exultation (which he exprest here one
night) in the wish that he might meet a Frenchman in the seas; and it
seem'd to be accomplished, all to his heart's desire. I will conclude
from utter inability to write any more, for I am seriously unwell: and
because I mean to gather something like intelligence to send to you
to-morrow: for as yet, I have but heard second hand, and seen one
narrative, which is but a transcript of what was common to all the
Papers. God bless you all, and reckon upon us as entering into all your
griefs. [_Signature cut away._]
[This is the first of a series of letters bearing upon the loss of the
East Indiaman _Earl of Abergavenny_, which was wrecked off Portland Bill
on February 6, 1805, 200 persons and the captain, John Wordsworth, being
lost. The character of Wordsworth's "Happy Warrior" is said to have been
largely drawn from his brother John. His age was only thirty-three.]
LETTER 129
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. February 19, 1805.]
My dear Wordsworth, I yesterday wrote you a very unsatisfactory letter.
To day I have not much to add, but it may be some satisfaction to you
that I have seen Gilpin, and thanked him in all your names for the
assistance he tried to give: and that he has assured me that your
Brother did try to save himself, and was doing so when Gilpin called to
him, but he was then struggling with the waves and almost dead. G. heard
him give orders a very little before the vessel went down, with all
possible calmness, and it does not at all appear that your Brother in
any absence of mind neglected his own safety. But in such circumstances
the memory of those who escaped cannot be supposed to be very accurate;
and there appears to be about the Persons that I have seen a good deal
of reservedness and unwillingness to enter into detail, which is
natural, they being Officers of the Ship, and liable to be examined at
home about its loss. The examination is expected to day or to-morrow,
and if any thing should come out, that can interest you, I shall take an
early opportunity of sending it to you.
Mary wrote some few days since to Miss Stoddart, containing an account
of your Brother's death, which most likely Coleridge will have heard,
before the letter comes: we both wish it may hasten him back. We do not
know any thing of him, whether he is settled in any post (as there was
some talk) or not. We had another sad account to send him, of the death
of his schoolfellow Allen; tho' this, I am sure, will much less affect
him. I don't know whether you knew Allen; he died lately very suddenly
in an apoplexy. When you do and can write, particularly inform us of the
healths of you all. God bless you all. Mary will write to Dorothy as
soon as she thinks she will be able to bear it. It has been a sad
tidings to us, and has affected us more than we could have believed. I
think it has contributed to make me worse, who have been very unwell,
and have got leave for some few days to stay at home: but I am ashamed
to speak of myself, only in excuse for the unfeeling sort of huddle
which I now send. I could not delay it, having seen Gilpin, and I
thought his assurance might be some little ease to you.
We will talk about the Books, when you can better bear it. I have bought
none yet. But do not spare me any office you can put me on, now or when
you are at leisure for such things. Adopt me as one of your family in
this affliction; and use me without ceremony as such.
Mary's kindest Love to all.
C.L.
Tuesday [Feb. 19].
[Mary Lamb's letter to Miss Stoddart, here referred to, is no longer
preserved. Coleridge a little later accepted the post of private
secretary to the Governor of Malta, Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander John
Ball. Allen was Bob Allen, whom we have already met.]
LETTER 130
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
16 Mitre-court Buildings,
Saturday, 24th [_i.e._ 23rd] Feb., 1805.
Dear Manning,--I have been very unwell since I saw you. A sad depression
of spirits, a most unaccountable nervousness; from which I have been
partially relieved by an odd accident. You knew Dick Hopkins, the
swearing scullion of Caius? This fellow, by industry and agility, has
thrust himself into the important situations (no sinecures, believe me)
of cook to Trinity Hall and Caius College: and the generous creature has
contrived with the greatest delicacy imaginable, to send me a present of
Cambridge brawn. What makes it the more extraordinary is, that the man
never saw me in his life that I know of. I suppose he has _heard_ of me.
I did not immediately recognise the donor; but one of Richard's cards,
which had accidentally fallen into the straw, detected him in a moment.
Dick, you know, was always remarkable for flourishing. His card imports,
that "orders (to wit, for brawn), from any part of England, Scotland, or
Ireland, will be duly executed," &c. At first, I thought of declining
the present; but Richard knew my blind side when he pitched upon brawn.
'Tis of all my hobbies the supreme in the eating way. He might have sent
sops from the pan, skimmings, crumplets, chips, hog's lard, the tender
brown judiciously scalped from a fillet of veal (dexterously replaced by
a salamander), the tops of asparagus, fugitive livers, runaway gizzards
of fowls, the eyes of martyred pigs, tender effusions of laxative
woodcocks, the red spawn of lobsters, leverets' ears, and such pretty
filchings common to cooks; but these had been ordinary presents, the
everyday courtesies of dishwashers to their sweethearts. Brawn was a
noble thought. It is not every common gullet-fancier that can properly
esteem it. It is like a picture of one of the choice old Italian
masters. Its gusto is of that hidden sort. As Wordsworth sings of a
modest poet,--"you must love him, ere to you he will seem worthy of your
love;" so brawn, you must taste it, ere to you it will seem to have any
taste at all. But 'tis nuts to the adept: those that will send out their
tongues and feelers to find it out. It will be wooed, and not unsought
be won. Now, ham-essence, lobsters, turtle, such popular minions,
absolutely _court you_, lay themselves out to strike you at first smack,
like one of David's pictures (they call him _Darveed_), compared with
the plain russet-coated wealth of a Titian or a Correggio, as I
illustrated above. Such are the obvious glaring heathen virtues of a
corporation dinner, compared with the reserved collegiate worth of
brawn. Do me the favour to leave off the business which you may be at
present upon, and go immediately to the kitchens of Trinity and Caius,
and make my most respectful compliments to Mr. Richard Hopkins, and
assure him that his brawn is most excellent; and that I am moreover
obliged to him for his innuendo about salt water and bran, which I shall
not fail to improve. I leave it to you whether you shall choose to pay
him the civility of asking him to dinner while you stay in Cambridge, or
in whatever other way you may best like to show your gratitude to _my
friend_. Richard Hopkins, considered in many points of view, is a very
extraordinary character. Adieu: I hope to see you to supper in London
soon, where we will taste Richard's brawn, and drink his health in a
cheerful but moderate cup. We have not many such men in any rank of life
as Mr. R. Hopkins. Crisp the barber, of St. Mary's, was just such
another. I wonder _he_ never sent me any little token, some chestnuts,
or a pufif, or two pound of hair just to remember him by; gifts are like
nails.
_Praesens ut absens_, that is, your _present_ makes amends for your
absence.
Yours,
C. LAMB.
[This letter is, I take it, a joke: that is to say, the brawn was sent
to Lamb by Manning, who seems to have returned to Cambridge for a while,
and Lamb affects to believe that Hopkins, from whom it was bought, was
the giver. I think this view is supported by the reference to Mr. Crisp,
at the end,--Mr. Crisp being Manning's late landlord.
The following advertisement occurs in the _Cambridge Chronicle_ for
February 8, 1806. It is sent me by Dr. Wharry:--
"CAMBRIDGE BRAWN.
"R. HOPKINS, Cook of Trinity Hall and Caius College, begs leave to
inform the Nobility, Gentry, &c. that he has now ready for Sale, BRAWN,
BRAWN HEADS & CHEEKS.
"All orders will be thankfully received, and forwarded to any part of
the kingdom."
Lamb stayed at 3 St. Mary's Passage, now rebuilt and occupied by Messrs.
Leach & Son (1911).
The letter contains Lamb's second expression of epicurean rapture: the
first in praise of pig.
"As Wordsworth sings"--in the "Poet's Epitaph":--
He is retired as noontide dew,
Or fountain in a noon-day grove;
And you must love him, ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love.
"_Praesens ut absens_." Lamb enlarged upon the topic of gifts and giving
many years later, in the Popular Fallacy "That we must not look a Gift
Horse in the Mouth," 1826, and in his "Thoughts on Presents of Game,"
1833.]
LETTER 131
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. March 5, 1805.]
My dear Wordsworth, if Gilpin's statement has afforded you any
satisfaction, I can assure you that he was most explicit in giving it,
and even seemed anxious (interrupting me) to do away any misconception.
His statement is not contradicted by the last and fullest of the two
Narratives which have been published (the former being a mere transcript
of the newspapers), which I would send you if I did not suppose that you
would receive more pain from the unfeeling canting way in which it is
drawn up, than satisfaction from its contents; and what relates to your
brother in particular is very short. It states that your brother was
seen talking to the First Mate but a few minutes before the ship sank,
with apparent cheerfulness, and it contradicts the newspaper account
about his depression of spirits procrastinating his taking leave of the
Court of Directors; which the drawer up of the Narrative (a man high in
the India House) is likely to be well informed of. It confirms Gilpin's
account of his seeing your brother striving to save himself, and adds
that "Webber, a Joiner, was near the Captain, who was standing on the
hencoop when the ship went down, whom he saw washed off by a sea, which
also carried him (Webber) overboard;"--this is all which concerns your
brother personally. But I will just transcribe from it, a Copy of
Gilpin's account delivered in to the Court of Directors:--
"Memorandum respecting the Loss of the E. of A."
"At 10 A.M. being about 10 leagues to the westward of Portland, the
Commodore made the signal to bear up--did so accordingly; at this time
having maintop gallant mast struck, fore and mizen d°. on deck, and the
jib boom in the wind about W.S.W. At 3 P.M. got on board a Pilot, being
about 2 leagues to the westward of Portland; ranged and bitted both
cables at about ½ past 3, called all hands and got out the jib boom at
about 4. While crossing the east End of the Shambles, the wind suddenly
died away, and a strong tide setting the ship to the westward, drifted
her into the breakers, and a sea striking her on the larboard quarter,
brought her to, with her head to the northward, when she instantly
struck, it being about 5 P.M. Let out all the reefs, and hoisted the
topsails up, in hopes to shoot the ship across the Shambles. About this
time the wind shifted to the N.W. The surf driving us off, and the tide
setting us on alternately, sometimes having 4½ at others 9 fathoms, sand
of the sea about 8 feet; continued in this situation till about ½ past
7, when she got off. During the time she was on the Shambles, had from 3
to 4 feet water; kept the water at this height about 15 minutes, during
the whole time the pumps constantly going. Finding she gained on us, it
was determined to run her on the nearest shore. About 8 the wind shifted
to the eastward: the leak continuing to gain upon the pumps, having 10
or 11 feet water, found it expedient to bale at the forescuttles and
hatchway. The ship would not bear up--kept the helm hard a starboard,
she being water-logg'd: but still had a hope she could be kept up till
we got her on Weymouth Sands. Cut the lashings of the boats--could not
get the Long Boat out, without laying the main-top-sail aback, by which
our progress would have been so delayed, that no hope would have been
left us of running her aground, and there being several sloops in sight,
one having sent a small skiff on board, took away 2 Ladies and 3 other
passengers, and put them on board the sloop, at the same time promising
to return and take away a hundred or more of the people: she finding
much difficulty in getting back to the sloop, did not return. About this
time the Third Mate and Purser were sent in the cutter to get assistance
from the other ships. Continued pumping and baling till 11 P.M. when she
sunk. Last cast of the lead 11 fathoms; having fired guns from the time
she struck till she went down, about 2 A.M. boats came and took the
people from the wreck about 70 in number. The troops, in particular the
Dragoons, pumped very well.
"(Signed) THOS. GILPIN."
And now, my dear W.--I must apologize for having named my health. But
indeed it was because, what with the ill news, your letter coming upon
me in a most wretched state of ill spirits, I was scarce able to give it
an answer, and I felt what it required. But we will say no more about
it. I am getting better. And when I have persisted time enough in a
course of regular living I shall be well. But I am now well enough; and
have got to business afresh. Mary thanks you for your invitation. I have
wished myself with you daily since the news. I have wished that I were
Coleridge, to give you any consolation. You have not mourned without one
to have a feeling of it. And we have not undervalued the intimation of
your friendship. We shall one day prove it by intruding on your privacy,
when these griefs shall be a little calmed. This year, I am afraid, it
is impossible: but I shall store it up as among the good things to come,
which keep us up when life and spirits are sinking.
If you have not seen, or wish to see, the wretched narrative I have
mentioned, I will send it. But there is nothing more in it affecting
you. I have hesitated to send it, because it is unfeelingly done, and in
the hope of sending you something from some of the actual spectators;
but I have been disappointed, and can add nothing yet. Whatever I pick
up, I will store for you. It is perfectly understood at the E. I. House,
that no blame whatever belongs to the Captn. or Officers.
I can add no more but Mary's warmest Love to all. When you can write
without trouble, do it, for you are among the very chief of our
interests.
C. LAMB.
4 March.
LETTER 132
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: March 21, 1805.]
Dear Wordsworth, upon the receipt of your last letter before that which
I have just received, I wrote myself to Gilpin putting your questions to
him; but have yet had no answer. I at the same time got a person in the
India House to write a much fuller enquiry to a relative of his who was
saved, one Yates a midshipman. Both these officers (and indeed pretty
nearly all that are left) have got appointed to other ships and have
joined them. Gilpin is in the Comet, India man, now lying at Gravesend.
Neither Yates nor Gilpin have yet answered, but I am in daily
expectation. I have sent your letter of this morning also to Gilpin. The
waiting for these answers has been my reason for not writing you. I have
made very particular enquiries about Webber, but in vain. He was a
common seaman (not the ship's carpenter) and no traces of him are at the
I. House: it is most probable that he has entered in some Privateer, as
most of the crew have done. I will keep the £1 note till you find out
something I can do with it. I now write idly, having nothing to send:
but I cannot bear that you should think I have quite neglected your
commission. My letter to G. was such as I thought he could not but
answer: but he may be busy. The letter to Yates I hope I can promise
will be answered. One thing, namely why the other ships sent no
assistance, I have learn'd from a person on board one of them: the
firing was never once heard, owing to the very stormy night, and no
tidings came to them till next morning. The sea was quite high enough to
have thrown out the most expert swimmer, and might not your brother have
received some blow in the shock, which disabled him? We are glad to hear
poor Dorothy is a little better. None of you are able to bear such a
stroke. To people oppressed with feeling, the loss of a good-humoured
happy man that has been friendly with them, if he were no brother, is
bad enough. But you must cultivate his spirits, as a legacy: and believe
that such as he cannot be lost. He was a chearful soul! God bless you.
Mary's love always.
C. LAMB.
21st March, 1805.
LETTER 133
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. April 5, 1805.]
Dear Wordsworth, I have this moment received this letter from Gilpin in
reply to 3 or 4 short questions I put to him in my letter before yours
for him came. He does not notice having rec'd yours, which I sent
immediately. Perhaps he has already answered it to you. You see that his
hand is sprain'd, and your questions being more in number, may delay his
answer to you. My first question was, when it was he called to your
brother: the rest you will understand from the answers. I was beginning
to have hard thoughts of G. from his delay, but now I am confirm'd in my
first opinion that he is a rare good-hearted fellow. How is Dorothy? and
all of you?
Yours sincerely
C. LAMB.
4th question was, was Capt. W. standing near the shrouds or any place of
safety at the moment of sinking?
Comet,
Northfleet, March 3131, 1805.
Sir--I did not receive yours of 16th ins't, till this day, or sh'd. have
answered it sooner. To your first Question, I answer after the Ship had
sunk. To your second, my answer is, I was in the Starboard Mizen
Rigging--I thought I see the Capt'n hanging by a Rope that was fast to
the Mizen Mast. I came down and haild him as loud as I could, he was
about 10 feet distant from me. I threw a rope which fell close to him,
he seem'd quite Motionless and insensible (it was excessive cold), and
was soon after sweep'd away, and I see him no more. It was near about
five minutes after the Ship went down. With respect to the Capt'n and
Webber being on the same Hencoop, I can give no answer, all I can say, I
did not see them. Your fourth Question, I cannot answer, as I did not
see Capt. Wordsworth at the moment the Ship was going down, tho I was
then on the Poop less than one minute before I see the Capt'n there. The
Statement in the printed Pamphlet is by no means correct. I have
sprained my Wrist, most violently, and am now in great pain, which will,
I hope, be an apology for the shortness of this Letter.
believe me truly yours [*]
THOS. GILPIN.
This Letter as been detained till April 5th.
[Footnote: This is merely a kind way of expressing himself, for I have
no acquaintance with him, nor ever saw him but that once I got
introduced to him.
I think I did not mention in my last, that I sent yours to T. Evans,
Richmond. I hope you have got an answer.]
LETTER 134
MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
[P.M. May 7, 1805.]
My dear Miss Wordsworth--I thank you, my kind friend, for your most
comfortable letter. Till I saw your own handwriting, I could not
persuade myself that I should do well to write to you, though I have
often attempted it, but I always left off dissatisfied with what I had
written, and feeling that I was doing an improper thing to intrude upon
your sorrow. I wished to tell you, that you would one day feel the kind
of peaceful state of mind, and sweet memory of the dead which you so
happily describe as now almost begun, but I felt that it was improper,
and most grating to the feelings of the afflicted, to say to them that
the memory of their affliction would in time become a constant part not
only of their "dream, but of their most wakeful sense of happiness."
That you would see every object with, and through your lost brother, and
that that would at last become a real and everlasting source of comfort
to you, I felt, and well knew from my own experience in sorrow, but till
you yourself began to feel this I did not dare tell you so, but I send
you some poor lines which I wrote under this conviction of mind, and
before I heard Coleridge was returning home. I will transcribe them now
before I finish my letter, lest a false shame prevent me then, for I
know they are much worse than they ought to be, written as they were
with strong feeling and on such a subject. Every line seems to me to be
borrowed, but I had no better way of expressing my thoughts, and I never
have the power of altering or amending anything I have once laid aside
with dissatisfaction.
Why is he wandering on the sea?
Coleridge should now with Wordsworth be.
By slow degrees he'd steal away
Their woe, and gently bring a ray
(So happily he'd time relief)
Of comfort from their very grief.
He'd tell them that their brother dead
When years have passed o'er their head,
Will be remember'd with such holy,
True, and perfect melancholy
That ever this lost brother John
Will be their heart's companion.
His voice they'll always hear, his face they'll always see,
There's nought in life so sweet as such a memory.
Mr. and Mrs. Clarkson came to see us last week, I find it was at your
request they sought us out; you cannot think how glad we were to see
them, so little as we have ever seen of them, yet they seem to us like
very old friends. Poor Mrs. Clarkson looks very ill indeed, she walked
near a mile, and came up our high stairs, which fatigued her very much,
but when she had sat a while her own natural countenance with which she
cheared us in your little cottage seemed to return to her, and then I
began to have hopes she would get the better of her complaint. Charles
does not think she is so much altered as I do. I wish he may be the
better judge. We talked of nothing but you. She means to try to get
leave of Dr. Beddoes to come and see you--her heart is with you, and I
do not think it would hurt her so much to come to you, as it would
distress you to see her so ill.
She read me a part of your letter wherein you so kindly express your
wishes that we would come and see you this summer. I wish we could, for
I am sure it would be a blessed thing for you and for us to be a few
weeks together--I fear it must not be. Mrs. Clarkson is to be in town
again in a fortnight and then they have promised we shall see more of
them.
I am very sorry for the poor little Dorothy's illness--I hope soon to
hear she is perfectly recovered. Remember me with affection to your
brother, and your good sister. What a providence it is that your brother
and you have this kind friend, and these dear little ones--I rejoice
with her and with you that your brother is employed upon his poem again.
Pray remember us to Old Molly. Mrs. Clarkson says her house is a pattern
of neatness to all her neighbours--such good ways she learnt of
"Mistress." How well I remember the shining ornaments of her kitchen,
and her old friendly face, not [the] least ornamental part of it.
Excuse the haste I write in. I am unexpectedly to go out to dinner, else
I think I have much more to say, but I will not put it off till next
post, because you so kindly say I must not write if I feel unwilling--
you do not know what very great joy I have in being again writing to
you. Thank you for sending the letter of Mr. Evans, it was a very kind
one. Have you received one from a Cornet Burgoine? My brother wrote to
him and desires he would direct his answer to your brother.
God bless you and yours my dear friend.
I am yours affectionately
M. LAMB.
[Dr. Beddoes, who was attending Mrs. Clarkson, would be, I suppose,
Thomas Beddoes of Clifton (1760-1808), the father of Thomas Lovell
Beddoes and a friend of Coleridge and Southey.
In a letter from Dorothy Wordsworth to Mrs. Clarkson, dated April 19,
1805 (recently printed by Mr. Hale White in the _Athenaeum_), we read:--
I have great pleasure in thinking that you may see Miss Lamb; do not
miss it if you can possibly go without injury to yourself--they are the
best good creatures--blessings be with them! they have sympathised in
our sorrow as tenderly as if they had grown up in the same [town?] with
us and known our beloved John from his childhood. Charles has written to
us the most consolatory letters, the result of diligent and painful
inquiry of the survivors of the wreck,--for this we must love him as
long as we have breath. I think of him and his sister every day of my
life, and many times in the day with thankfulness and blessings. Talk to
dear Miss Lamb about coming into this country and let us hear what she
says of it. I cannot express how much we all wish to see her and her
brother while we are at Grasmere. We look forward to Coleridge's return
with fear and painful hope--but indeed I dare not look to it--I think as
little as I can of him.]
LETTER 135
CHARLES LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
[_Slightly torn. The conjectures in square brackets are
Talfourd's._]
Friday, 14th June, 1805.
My dear Miss Wordsworth, Your long kind letter has not been thrown away
(for it has given me great pleasure to find you are all resuming your
old occupations, and are better) but poor Mary to whom it is addrest
cannot yet relish it. She has been attacked by one of her severe
illnesses, and is at present _from home_. Last Monday week was the day
she left me; and I hope I may calculate upon having her again in a
month, or little more. I am rather afraid late hours have in this case
contributed to her indisposition. But when she begins to discover
symptoms of approaching illness, it is not easy to say what is best to
do. Being by ourselves is bad, and going out is bad. I get so irritable
and wretched with fear, that I constantly hasten on the disorder. You
cannot conceive the misery of such a foresight. I am sure that for the
week before she left me, I was little better than light-headed. I now am
calm, but sadly taken down, and flat. I have every reason to suppose
that this illness, like all her former ones, will be but temporary; but
I cannot always feel so. Meantime she is dead to me, and I miss a prop.
All my strength is gone, and I am like a [fool, ber]eft of her
co-operation. I dare not think, lest I [should think] wrong; so used am
I to look up to her [in the least] and the biggest perplexity. To say
_all that_ [I know of her] would be more than I think any body could
[believe or even under]stand; and when I hope to have her well [again
with me] it would be sinning against her feelings to go about to praise
her: for I can conceal nothing that I do from her. She is older, and
wiser, and better, than me, and all my wretched imperfections I cover to
myself by resolutely thinking on her goodness. She would share life and
death, heaven and hell, with me. She lives but for me. And I know I have
been wasting and teazing her life for five years past incessantly with
my cursed drinking and ways of going on. But even in this up-braiding of
myself I am offending against her, for I know that she has cleaved to me
for better, for worse; and if the balance has been against her hitherto,
it was a noble trade.
I am stupid and lose myself in what I write. I write rather what answers
to my feelings (which are sometimes sharp enough) than express my
present ones, for I am only flat and stupid.
Poor Miss Stoddart! she is coming to England under the notion of passing
her time between her mother and Mary, between London and Salisbury.
Since she talk'd of coming, word has been sent to Malta that her Mother
is gone out of her mind. This Letter, with mine to Stoddart with an
account of Allen's death, &c., has miscarried (taken by the French)
[_word missing_]. She is coming home, with no soul to receive [_words
missing_]. She has not a woman-friend in London.
I am sure you will excuse my writing [any more, I] am very poorly. I
cannot resist tra[nscribing] three or four Lines which poor Mary made
upon a Picture (a Holy Family) which we saw at an Auction only one week
before she left home. She was then beginning to show signs of ill
boding. They are sweet Lines, and upon a sweet Picture. But I send them,
only as the last memorial of her.
VIRGIN AND CHILD. L. DA VINCI
Maternal Lady with the Virgin-grace,
Heaven-born thy Jesus seemeth sure,
And thou a virgin pure.
Lady most perfect, when thy angel face
Men look upon, they wish to be
A Catholic, Madona fair, to worship thee.
You had her lines about the "Lady Blanch." You have not had some which
she wrote upon a copy of a girl from Titian, which I had hung up where
that print of Blanch and the Abbess (as she beautifully interpreted two
female figures from L. da Vinci) had hung, in our room. 'Tis light and
pretty.
Who art thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place
Of Blanch, the Lady of the matchless grace?
Come, fair and pretty, tell to me
Who in thy lifetime thou mightst be?
Thou pretty art and fair,
But with the Lady Blanch thou never must compare.
No need for Blanch her history to tell,
Whoever saw her face, they there did read it well.
But when I look on thee, I only know
There liv'd a pretty maid some hundred years ago.
This is a little unfair, to tell so much about ourselves, and to advert
so little to your letter, so full of comfortable tidings of you all. But
my own cares press pretty close upon me, and you can make allowance.
That you may go on gathering strength and peace is the next wish to
Mary's recovery.
I had almost forgot your repeated invitation. Supposing that Mary will
be well and able, there is another _ability_ which you may guess at,
which I cannot promise myself. In prudence we ought not to come. This
illness will make it still more prudential to wait. It is not a balance
of this way of spending our money against another way, but an absolute
question of whether we shall stop now, or go on wasting away the little
we have got beforehand, which my wise conduct has already incroach'd
upon one half. My best Love, however, to you all; and to that most
friendly creature, Mrs. Clarkson, and better health to her, when you see
or write to her.
C. LAMB.
[The reference to Miss Stoddart is explained later, in the next letter
but one.
Mary Lamb's two poems were included in the _Works_, 1818. "Lady Blanch"
is the poem quoted on page 300.]
LETTER 136
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[Dated by Mr. Hazlitt: July 27, 1805.]
Dear Archimedes,--Things have gone on badly with thy ungeometrical
friend; but they are on the turn. My old housekeeper has shown signs of
convalescence, and will shortly resume the power of the keys, so I
shan't be cheated of my tea and liquors. Wind in the west, which
promotes tranquillity. Have leisure now to anticipate seeing thee again.
Have been taking leave of tobacco in a rhyming address. Had thought
_that vein_ had long since closed up. [_A sentence omitted here._] Find
I can rhyme and reason too. Think of studying mathematics, to restrain
the fire of my genius, which G.D. recommends. Have frequent bleedings at
the nose, which shows plethoric. Maybe shall try the sea myself, that
great scene of wonders. Got incredibly sober and regular; shave oftener,
and hum a tune, to signify cheerfulness and gallantry.
Suddenly disposed to sleep, having taken a quart of pease with bacon and
stout. Will not refuse Nature, who has done such things for me!
Nurse! don't call me unless Mr. Manning comes.--What! the gentleman in
spectacles?--Yes.
_Dormit_.
C. L.
Saturday,
Hot Noon.
["Have been taking leave of tobacco." On August 10, 1824, Lamb tells
Hood that he designs to give up smoking.]
LETTER 137
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[? Sept. 18, 1805.]
My dear Sarah,--I have made many attempts at writing to you, but it has
always brought your troubles and my own so strongly into my mind, that I
have been obliged to leave off, and make Charles write for me. I am
resolved now, however few lines I write, this shall go; for I know, my
kind friend, you will like once more to see my own handwriting.
I have been for these few days past in rather better spirits, so that I
begin almost to feel myself once more a living creature, and to hope for
happier times; and in that hope I include the prospect of once more
seeing my dear Sarah in peace and comfort in our old garret. How did I
wish for your presence to cheer my drooping heart when I returned home
from banishment.
Is your being with, or near, your poor dear Mother necessary to her
comfort? does she take any notice of you? and is there any prospect of
her recovery? How I grieve for her and for you....
I went to the Admiralty about your Mother's pension; from thence I was
directed to an office in Lincoln's Inn, where they are paid. They
informed me at the office that it could not be paid to any person except
Mr. Wray, without a letter of attorney from your Mother; and as the
stamp for that will cost one pound, it will, perhaps, be better to leave
it till Mr. Wray comes to town, if he does come before Christmas; they
tell me it can be received any Thursday between this and Christmas, If
you send up a letter of Attorney, let it be in my name. If you think,
notwithstanding their positive assurance to the contrary, that you can
put me in any way of getting it without, let me know. Are you acquainted
with Mr. Pearce, and will my taking another letter from you to him be of
any service? or will a letter from Mr. Wray be of any use?--though I
fear not, for they said at the office they had orders to pay no pension
without a letter of Attorney. The attestation you sent up, they said,
was sufficient, and that the same must be sent every year. Do not let us
neglect this business; and make use of me in any way you can.
I have much to thank you and your kind brother for; I kept the dark
silk, as you may suppose: you have made me very fine; the broche is very
beautiful. Mrs. Jeffries wept for gratitude when she saw your present;
she desires all manner of thanks and good wishes. Your maid's sister was
gone to live a few miles from town; Charles, however, found her out, and
gave her the handkerchief.
I want to know if you have seen William, and if there is any prospect in
future there. All you said in your letter from Portsmouth that related
to him was burnt so in the fumigating, that we could only make out that
it was unfavourable, but not the particulars; tell us again how you go
on, and if you have seen him: I conceit affairs will some how be made up
between you at last.
I want to know how your brother goes on. Is he likely to make a very
good fortune, and in how long a time? And how is he, in the way of home
comforts?--I mean, is he very happy with Mrs. Stoddart? This was a
question I could not ask while you were there, and perhaps is not a fair
one now; but I want to know how you all went on--and, in short, twenty
little foolish questions that one ought, perhaps, rather to ask when we
meet, than to write about. But do make me a little acquainted with the
inside of the good Doctor's house, and what passes therein.
Was Coleridge often with you? or did your brother and Col. argue long
arguments, till between the two great arguers there grew a little
coolness?--or perchance the mighty friendship between Coleridge and your
Sovereign Governor, Sir Alexander Ball, might create a kind of jealousy,
for we fancy something of a coldness did exist, from the little mention
ever made of C. in your brother's letters.
Write us, my good girl, a long, gossiping letter, answering all these
foolish questions--and tell me any silly thing you can recollect--any,
the least particular, will be interesting to us, and we will never tell
tales out of school: but we used to wonder and wonder, how you all went
on; and when you was coming home we said, "Now we shall hear all from
Sarah."
God bless you, my dear friend.
I am ever your affectionate
MARY LAMB.
If you have sent Charles any commissions he has not executed, write me
word--he says he has lost or mislaid a letter desiring him to inquire
about a wig.
Write two letters--one of business and pensions, and one all about Sarah
Stoddart and Malta. Is Mr. Moncrief doing well there?
Wednesday morning.
We have got a picture of Charles; do you think your brother would like
to have it? If you do, can you put us in a way how to send it?
[Mrs. Stoddart was the widow of a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. Mr. Wray
and Mr. Pearce were presumably gentlemen connected with the Admiralty or
in some way concerned with the pension. "William" is still the early
William--not William Hazlitt, whom Sarah was destined to marry. Mr.
Moncrieff was Mrs. John Stoddart's eldest brother, who was a King's
Advocate in the Admiralty Court at Malta. The picture of Charles might
be some kind of reproduction of Hazlitt's portrait of him, painted in
the preceding year; but more probably, I think, a few copies of
Hancock's drawing, made in 1798 for Cottle, had been struck off.]
LETTER 138
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM AND DOROTHY
WORDSWORTH
[P.M. September 28, 1805.]
My dear Wordsworth (or Dorothy rather, for to you appertains the biggest
part of this answer by right.)--I will not again deserve reproach by so
long a silence. I have kept deluding myself with the idea that Mary
would write to you, but she is so lazy, or, I believe the true state of
the case, so diffident, that it must revert to me as usual. Though she
writes a pretty good style, and has some notion of the force of words,
she is not always so certain of the true orthography of them, and that
and a poor handwriting (in this age of female calligraphy) often deter
her where no other reason does. We have neither of us been very well for
some weeks past. I am very nervous, and she most so at those times when
I am: so that a merry friend, adverting to the noble consolation we were
able to afford each other, denominated us not unaptly Gum Boil and Tooth
Ache: for they use to say that a Gum Boil is a great relief to a Tooth
Ache. We have been two tiny excursions this summer, for three or four
days each: to a place near Harrow, and to Egham, where Cooper's Hill is:
and that is the total history of our Rustications this year. Alas! how
poor a sound to Skiddaw, and Helvellyn, and Borrodaile, and the
magnificent sesquipedalia of the year 1802. Poor old Molly! to have lost
her pride, that "last infirmity of Noble Mind," and her Cow--Providence
need not have set her wits to such an old Molly. I am heartily sorry for
her. Remember us lovingly to her. And in particular remember us to Mrs.
Clarkson in the most kind manner. I hope by southwards you mean that she
will be at or near London, for she is a great favorite of both of us,
and we feel for her health as much as is possible for any one to do. She
is one of the friendliest, comfortablest women we know, and made our
little stay at your cottage one of the pleasantest times we ever past.
We were quite strangers to her. Mr. C. is with you too?--our kindest
separate remembrances to him.
As to our special affairs, I am looking about me. I have done nothing
since the beginning of last year, when I lost my newspaper job, and
having had a long idleness, I must do something, or we shall get very
poor. Sometimes I think of a farce--but hitherto all schemes have gone
off,--an idle brag or two of an evening vaporing out of a pipe, and
going off in the morning; but now I have bid farewell to my "Sweet
Enemy" Tobacco, as you will see in my next page, I perhaps shall set
soberly to work. Hang Work! I wish that all the year were holyday. I am
sure that Indolence indefeazible Indolence is the true state of man, and
business the invention of the Old Teazer who persuaded Adam's Master to
give him an apron and set him a houghing. Pen and Ink, and Clerks, and
desks, were the refinements of this old torturer a thousand years after,
under pretence of Commerce allying distant shores, promoting and
diffusing knowledge, good, &c.--
A FAREWELL TO TOBACCO
May the Babylonish curse
Strait confound my stammering verse,
If I can a passage see
In this word-perplexity,
Or a fit expression find,
Or a language to my mind,
(Still the phrase is wide an acre)
To take leave of thee, Tobacco;
Or in any terms relate
Half my Love, or half my Hate,
For I hate yet love thee so,
That, whichever Thing I shew,
The plain truth will seem to be
A constrain'd hyperbole,
And the passion to proceed
More from a Mistress than a Weed.
Sooty retainer to the vine,
Bacchus' black servant, negro fine,
Sorcerer that mak'st us doat upon
Thy begrim'd complexion,
And, for thy pernicious sake
More and greater oaths to break
Than reclaimed Lovers take
'Gainst women: Thou thy siege dost lay
Much too in the female way,
While thou suck'st the labouring breath
Faster than kisses; or than Death.
Thou in such a cloud dost bind us,
That our worst foes cannot find us,
And Ill Fortune (that would thwart us)
Shoots at rovers, shooting at us;
While each man thro' thy heightening steam,
Does like a smoking Etna seem,
And all about us does express
(Fancy and Wit in richest dress)
A Sicilian Fruitfulness.
Thou through such a mist does shew us,
That our best friends do not know us;
And, for those allowed features,
Due to reasonable creatures,
Liken'st us to fell Chimeras,
Monsters, that, who see us, fear us,
Worse than Cerberus, or Geryon,
Or, who first loved a cloud, Ixion.
Bacchus we know, and we allow
His tipsy rites. But what art thou?
That but by reflex canst shew
What his deity can do,
As the false Egyptian spell
Aped the true Hebrew miracle--
Some few vapours thou may'st raise,
The weak brain may serve to amaze,
But to the reins and nobler heart
Canst nor life nor heat impart.
Brother of Bacchus, later born,
The old world was sure forlorn,
Wanting thee; that aidest more
The God's victories than before
All his panthers, and the brawls
Of his piping Bacchanals;
These, as stale, we disallow,
Or judge of _thee meant_: only thou
His true Indian Conquest art;
And, for Ivy round his dart,
The reformed God now weaves
A finer Thyrsus of thy leaves.
Scent to match thy rich perfume
Chymic art did ne'er presume
Through her quaint alembic strain;
None so sovran to the brain.
Nature, that did in thee excell,
Framed again no second smell.
Roses, violets, but toys
For the smaller sort of boys,
Or for greener damsels meant,
Thou'rt the only manly scent.
Stinking'st of the stinking kind,
Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind,
Africa that brags her foyson,
Breeds no such prodigious poison,
Henbane, nightshade, both together,
Hemlock, aconite--------
Nay rather,
Plant divine, of rarest virtue,
Blisters on the tongue would hurt you;
'Twas but in a sort I blamed thee,
None e'er prosper'd who defamed thee:
Irony all, and feign'd abuse,
Such as perplext Lovers use
At a need, when in despair
To paint forth their fairest fair,
Or in part but to express
That exceeding comeliness
Which their fancies does so strike,
They borrow language of Dislike,
And instead of Dearest Miss,
Honey, Jewel, Sweetheart, Bliss,
And, those forms of old admiring,
Call her Cockatrice and Syren,
Basilisk and all that's evil,
Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil,
Ethiop wench, and Blackamoor,
Monkey, Ape, and twenty more,
Friendly Traitress, Loving Foe:
Not that she is truly so,
But no other way they know
A contentment to express,
Borders so upon excess,
That they do not rightly wot,
Whether it be pain or not.
Or, as men, constrain'd to part
With what's nearest to their heart,
While their sorrow's at the height,
Lose discrimination quite,
And their hasty wrath let fall,
To appease their frantic gall,
On the darling thing whatever,
Whence they feel it death to sever,
Though it be, as they, perforce,
Guiltless of the sad divorce,
For I must (nor let it grieve thee,
Friendliest of plants, that I must) leave thee--
For thy sake, _TOBACCO_, I
Would do anything but die;
And but seek to extend my days
Long enough to sing thy praise.
But, as She, who once has been
A King's consort, is a Queen
Ever after; nor will bate
Any tittle of her state,
Though a widow, or divorced,
So I, from thy converse forced,
The old name and style retain,
(A right Katherine of Spain;)
And a seat too 'mongst the joys
Of the blest Tobacco Boys:
Where, though I by sour physician
Am debarr'd the full fruition
Of thy favours, I may catch
Some collateral sweets, and snatch
Sidelong odours, that give life
Like glances from a neighbour's wife;
And still dwell in the by-places,
And the suburbs of thy graces,
And in thy borders take delight,
An unconquer'd Canaanite.
I wish you may think this a handsome farewell to my "Friendly
Traitress." Tobacco has been my evening comfort and my morning curse for
these five years: and you know how difficult it is from refraining to
pick one's lips even, when it has become a habit. This Poem is the only
one which I have finished since so long as when I wrote "Hester Savory."
I have had it in my head to do it these two years, but Tobacco stood in
its own light when it gave me head aches that prevented my singing its
praises. Now you have got it, you have got all my store, for I have
absolutely not another line. No more has Mary. We have nobody about us
that cares for Poetry, and who will rear grapes when he shall be the
sole eater? Perhaps if you encourage us to shew you what we may write,
we may do something now and then before we absolutely forget the
quantity of an English line for want of practice. The "Tobacco," being a
little in the way of Withers (whom Southey so much likes) perhaps you
will somehow convey it to him with my kind remembrances. Then, everybody
will have seen it that I wish to see it: I have sent it to Malta.
I remain Dear W. and D--yours truly,
C. LAMB.
28th Sep., 1805.
["Hang Work." This paragraph is the germ of the sonnet entitled "Work"
which Lamb wrote fourteen years later (see the letter to Bernard Barton,
Sept. 11, 1822). He seems always to have kept his thoughts in sight.
The "Farewell to Tobacco" was printed in the _Reflector_, No. IV., 1811
or 1812, and then in the Works, 1818 (see Notes to Vol. IV. of this
edition). Lamb's farewell was frequently repeated; but it is a question
whether he ever entirely left off smoking. Talfourd says that he did;
but the late Mrs. Coe, who remembered Lamb at Widford about 1827-1830,
credited him with the company of a black clay pipe. It was Lamb who,
when Dr. Parr asked him how he managed to emit so much smoke, replied
that he had toiled after it as other men after virtue. And Macready
relates that he remarked in his presence that he wished to draw his last
breath through a pipe and exhale it in a pun. Coleridge writing to
Rickman (see _The Life and Letters of John Rickman_, 1912) says of Lamb
and smoking: "Were it possible to win C.L. from the pipe, other things
would follow with comparative ease, for till he gets a pipe I have
regularly observed that he is contented with porter--and that the
unconquerable appetite for spirit comes in with the tobacco--the oil of
which, especially in the gluttonous manner in which he _volcanizes_ it,
acts as an instant poison on his stomach or lungs".
"Hestor Savory." See above.]
LETTER 139
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[Early November, 1805.]
My dear Sarah,--Certainly you are the best letter-writer (besides
writing the best hand) in the world. I have just been reading over again
your two long letters, and I perceive they make me very envious. I have
taken a brand new pen, and put on my _spectacles_, and am peering with
all my might to see the lines in the paper, which the sight of your even
lines had well nigh tempted me to rule: and I have moreover taken two
pinches of snuff extraordinary, to clear my head, which feels more
cloudy than common this fine, chearful morning.
All I can gather from your clear and, I have no doubt, faithful history
of Maltese politics is, that the good Doctor, though a firm friend, an
excellent fancier of brooches, a good husband, an upright Advocate, and,
in short, all that they say upon tomb stones (for I do not recollect
that they celebrate any fraternal virtues there) yet is but a _moody_
brother, that your sister in law is pretty much like what all sisters in
law have been since the first happy invention of the happy marriage
state; that friend Coleridge has undergone no alteration by crossing the
Atlantic,--for his friendliness to you, as well as all the oddities you
mention, are just what one ought to look for from him; and that you, my
dear Sarah, have proved yourself just as unfit to flourish in a little,
proud Garrison Town as I did shrewdly suspect you were before you went
there.
If I possibly can, I will prevail upon Charles to write to your brother
by the conveyance you mention; but he is so unwell, I almost fear the
fortnight will slip away before I can get him in the right vein. Indeed,
it has been sad and heavy times with us lately: when I am pretty well,
his low spirits throws me back again; and when he begins to get a little
chearful, then I do the same kind office for him. I heartily wish for
the arrival of Coleridge; a few such evenings as we have sometimes
passed with him would wind us up, and set us a going again.
Do not say any thing, when you write, of our low spirits--it will vex
Charles. You would laugh, or you would cry, perhaps both, to see us sit
together, looking at each other with long and rueful faces, and saying,
"how do you do?" and "how do you do?" and then we fall a-crying, and say
we will be better on the morrow. He says we are like toothach and his
friend gum bile--which, though a kind of ease, is but an uneasy kind of
ease, a comfort of rather an uncomfortable sort.
I rejoice to hear of your Mother's amendment; when you can leave her
with any satisfaction to yourself--which, as her sister, I think I
understand by your letters, is with her, I hope you may soon be able to
do--let me know upon what plan you mean to come to Town. Your brother
proposed your being six months in Town, and six with your Mother; but he
did not then know of your poor Mother's illness. By his desire, I
enquired for a respectable family for you, to board with; and from
Capt'n. Burney I heard of one I thought would suit you at that time. He
particularly desires I would not think of your being with us, not
thinking, I conjecture, the home of a single man _respectable_ enough.
Your brother gave me most unlimited orders to domineer over you, to be
the inspector of all your actions, and to direct and govern you with a
stern voice and a high hand, to be, in short, a very elder brother over
you--does not the hearing of this, my meek pupil, make you long to come
to London? I am making all the proper enquiries against the time of the
newest and most approved modes (being myself mainly ignorant in these
points) of etiquette, and nicely correct maidenly manners.
But to speak seriously. I mean, when we mean [? meet], that we will lay
our heads together, and consult and contrive the best way of making the
best girl in the world the fine Lady her brother wishes to see her; and
believe me, Sarah, it is not so difficult a matter as one is sometimes
apt to imagine. I have observed many a demure Lady, who passes muster
admirably well, who, I think, we could easily learn to imitate in a week
or two. We will talk of these things when we meet. In the mean time, I
give you free license to be happy and merry at Salisbury in any way you
can. Has the partridge-season opened any communication between you and
William--as I allow you to be imprudent till I see you, I shall expect
to hear you have invited him to taste his own birds. Have you scratched
him out of your will yet? Rickman is married, and that is all the news I
have to send you.
Your Wigs were sent by Mr. Varvell about five months ago; therefore, he
could have arrived when you came away.
I seem, upon looking over my letter again, to have written too lightly
of your distresses at Malta; but, however I may have written, believe
me, I enter very feelingly into all your troubles. I love you, and I
love your brother; and between you, both of whom I think have been to
blame, I know not what to say--only this I say, try to think as little
as possible of past miscarriages; it was, perhaps, so ordered by
Providence, that you might return home to be a comfort to your poor
Mother. And do not, I conjure you, let her unhappy malady afflict you
too deeply. I speak from experience, and from the opportunity I have had
of much observation in such cases, that insane people, in the fancy's
they take into their heads, do not feel as one in a sane state of mind
does under the real evil of poverty, the perception of having done
wrong, or any such thing that runs in their heads.
Think as little as you can, and let your whole care be to be certain
that she is treated with _tenderness_. I lay a stress upon this, because
it is a thing of which people in her state are uncommonly susceptible,
and which hardly any one is at all aware of: a hired nurse never, even
though in all other respects they are good kind of people. I do not
think your own presence necessary, unless she _takes to you very much_,
except for the purpose of seeing with your own eyes that she is very
kindly treated.
I do so long to see you! God bless and comfort you!
Yours affectionately,
M. LAMB.
[Miss Stoddart had now returned to England, to her mother at Salisbury,
who had been and was very ill. Coleridge meanwhile had had coolnesses
with Stoddart and had transferred himself to the roof of the Governor.
Rickman married, on October 30, 1805, Susanna Postlethwaite of Harting,
in Sussex.]
LETTER 140
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
November 10, 1805.
Dear Hazlitt,--I was very glad to hear from you, and that your journey
was so _picturesque_. We miss you, as we foretold we should. One or two
things have happened, which are beneath the dignity of epistolary
communication, but which, seated about our fire at night, (the winter
hands of pork have begun) gesture and emphasis might have talked into
some importance. Something about Rickman's wife, for instance: how tall
she is and that she visits prank'd out like a Queen of the May with
green streamers--a good-natured woman though, which is as much as you
can expect from a friend's wife, whom you got acquainted with a
bachelor. Some things too about MONKEY, which can't so well be
written--how it set up for a fine Lady, and thought it had got Lovers,
and was obliged to be convinc'd of its age from the parish register,
where it was proved to be only twelve; and an edict issued that it
should not give itself airs yet these four years; and how it got leave
to be called Miss, by grace;--these and such like Hows were in my head
to tell you, but who can write? Also how Manning's come to town in
spectacles, and studies physic; is melancholy and seems to have
something in his head, which he don't impart. Then, how I am going to
leave off smoking. O la! your Leonardos of Oxford made my mouth water. I
was hurried thro' the gallery, and they escaped me. What do I say? I was
a Goth then, and should not have noticed them. I had not settled my
notions of Beauty. I have now for ever!--the small head, the [_here is
drawn a long narrow eye_] long Eye,--that sort of peering curve, the
wicked Italian mischief! the stick-at-nothing, Herodias'-daughter kind
of grace. You understand me. But you disappoint me, in passing over in
absolute silence the Blenheim Leonardo. Didn't you see it? Excuse a
Lover's curiosity. I have seen no pictures of note since, except Mr.
Dawe's gallery. It is curious to see how differently two great men treat
the same subject, yet both excellent in their way: for instance, Milton
and Mr. Dawe. Mr. Dawe has chosen to illustrate the story of Sampson
exactly in the point of view in which Milton has been most happy: the
interview between the Jewish Hero, blind and captive, and Dalilah.
Milton has imagined his Locks grown again, strong as horse-hair or
porcupine's bristles; doubtless shaggy and black, as being hairs "which
of a nation armed contained the strength." I don't remember, he _says_
black: but could Milton imagine them to be yellow? Do you? Mr. Dawe with
striking originality of conception has crowned him with a thin yellow
wig, in colour precisely like Dyson's, in curl and quantity resembling
Mrs. Professor's, his Limbs rather stout, about such a man as my Brother
or Rickman--but no Atlas nor Hercules, nor yet so bony as Dubois, the
Clown of Sadler's Wells. This was judicious, taking the spirit of the
story rather than the fact: for doubtless God could communicate national
salvation to the trust of flax and tow as well as hemp and cordage, and
could draw down a Temple with a golden tress as soon as with all the
cables of the British Navy.--Miss Dawe is about a portrait of sulky
Fanny Imlay, alias Godwin: but Miss Dawe is of opinion that her subject
is neither reserved nor sullen, and doubtless she will persuade the
picture to be of the same opinion. However, the features are tolerably
like--Too much of Dawes! Wasn't you sorry for Lord Nelson? I have
followed him in fancy ever since I saw him walking in Pall Mall (I was
prejudiced against him before) looking just as a Hero should look; and I
have been very much cut about it indeed. He was the only pretence of a
Great Man we had. Nobody is left of any Name at all. His Secretary died
by his side. I imagined him, a Mr. Scott, to be the man you met at
Hume's; but I learn from Mrs. Hume that it is not the same. I met Mrs.
H. one day, and agreed to go on the Sunday to Tea, but the rain
prevented us, and the distance. I have been to apologise, and we are to
dine there the first fine Sunday. Strange perverseness! I never went
while you staid here, and now I _go to find you_! What other news is
there, Mary?--What puns have I made in the last fortnight? You never
remember them. You have no relish for the Comic. "O! tell Hazlitt not to
forget to send the American Farmer. I dare say it isn't so good as he
fancies; but a Book's a Book." I have not heard from Wordsworth or from
Malta since. Charles Kemble, it seems, enters into possession to-morrow.
We sup at 109 Russell St. this evening. I wish your brother wouldn't
drink. It's a blemish in the greatest characters. You send me a modern
quotation poetical. How do you like this in an old play? Vittoria
Corombona, a spunky Italian Lady, a Leonardo one, nick-named the White
Devil, being on her trial for murder, &c.--and questioned about seducing
a Duke from his wife and the State, makes answer:
"Condemn you me for that the Duke did love me?
So may you blame some fair and chrystal river,
For that some melancholic distracted man
Hath drown'd himself in it."--
Our ticket was a £20. Alas!! are both yours blanks?
P.S.--Godwin has asked after you several times.
N.B.--I shall expect a Line from you, if but a bare Line, whenever you
write to Russell St., and a Letter often when you do not. I pay no
postage; but I will have consideration for you until parliament time and
franks. Luck to Ned Search and the new art of colouring. Monkey sends
her Love, and Mary especially.
Yours truly,
C. LAMB.
[Addressed to Hazlitt at Wem. This is the first letter from Lamb to
Hazlitt that has been preserved. The two men first met at Godwin's.
Holcroft and Coleridge were disputing which was best--man as he is, or
man as he ought to be. Lamb broke in with, "Give me man as he ought
_not_ to be."
Hazlitt at this date was twenty-six, some three years younger than Lamb.
He had just abandoned his project of being a painter and was settling
down to literary work.
"Rickman's wife." This passage holds the germ of Lamb's essay on "The
Behaviour of Married Persons," first printed in the _Reflector_, No.
IV., in 1811 or 1812, and afterwards included with the _Elia_ essays.
"Monkey" was Louisa Martin, a little girl of whom Lamb was fond and whom
he knew to the end of his life.
Manning studied medicine at the Westminster Hospital for six months
previous to May, 1806.
"The Oxford Leonardos ... the Blenheim Leonardo." The only Leonardos at
Oxford are the drawings at Christ Church. The Blenheim Leonardo was
probably Boltraffio's "Virgin and Child" which used to be ascribed to Da
Vinci, as indeed were many pictures he never painted. Hazlitt
subsequently wrote a work on the Picture Galleries of England, but he
mentions none of these works.
"Mr. Dawe's gallery." George Dawe (1781-1829), afterwards R.A., of whom
Lamb wrote his essay "Recollections of a Late Royal Academician," where
he alludes again to the picture of Samson (see Vol. I. of this edition).
"Dyson's." Dyson was a friend of Godwin. Mrs. Professor was Mrs. Godwin.
"Miss Dawe." I know nothing further of George Dawe's sister. Fanny Imlay
was the unfortunate daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (by Gilbert
Imlay the author). She committed suicide in 1816.
Nelson was killed on October 21, 1805. Scott was his chaplain, and he
was not killed.
Hume was Joseph Hume, an official at Somerset House, whom we shall meet
again directly.
The _American Farmer_ was very likely Gilbert Imlay's novel _The
Emigrants_, 1793, or possibly his _Topographical Description of the
Western Territory of North America_, 1792.
Charles Kemble, brother of John Philip Kemble and father of Fanny
Kemble.
John Hazlitt, the miniature painter, lived at 109 Russell Street. Lamb's
quotation, afterwards included in his _Dramatic Specimens_, 1808, is
from Webster's "The White Devil," Act III., Scene I.
The £20 ticket was presumably in the Lottery. Lamb's essay "The
Illustrious Defunct" (see Vol. I.) shows him to have been interested in
Lotteries; and in Letter No. 184 Mary Lamb states that he wrote Lottery
puffs.
"Ned Search." Hazlitt was engaged on an abridgment of _The Light of
Nature Pursued_, in seven volumes, 1768-1778, nominally by Edward
Search, but really by Abraham Tucker.
"The new art of colouring" is a reference, I fancy, to Tingry, mentioned
again below.]
LETTER 141
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[November 9 and 14, 1805.]
My dear Sarah,--After a very feverish night, I writ a letter to you; and
I have been distressed about it ever since. In the first place, I have
thought I treated too lightly your differences with your brother--which
I freely enter into and feel for, but which I rather wished to defer
saying much about till we meet. But that which gives me most concern is
the way in which I talked about your Mother's illness, and which I have
since feared you might construe into my having a doubt of your showing
her proper attention without my impertinent interference. God knows,
nothing of this kind was ever in my thoughts; but I have entered very
deeply into your affliction with regard to your Mother; and while I was
wishing, the many poor souls in the kind of desponding way she is in,
whom I have seen, came afresh into my mind; and all the mismanagement
with which I have seen them treated was strong in my mind, and I wrote
under a forcible impulse, which I could not at that time resist, but I
have fretted so much about it since, that I think it is the last time I
will ever let my pen run away with me.
Your kind heart will, I know, even if you have been a little displeased,
forgive me, when I assure you my spirits have been so much hurt by my
last illness, that at times I hardly know what I do. I do not mean to
alarm you about myself, or to plead an excuse; but I am very much
otherwise than you have always known me. I do not think any one
perceives me altered, but I have lost all self-confidence in my own
actions, and one cause of my low spirits is, that I never feel satisfied
with any thing I do--a perception of not being in a sane state
perpetually haunts me. I am ashamed to confess this weakness to you;
which, as I am so sensible of, I ought to strive to conquer. But I tell
you, that you may excuse any part of my letter that has given offence:
for your not answering it, when you are such a punctual correspondent,
has made me very uneasy.
Write immediately, my dear Sarah, but do not notice this letter, nor do
not mention any thing I said relative to your poor Mother. Your
handwriting will convince me you are friends with me; and if Charles,
who must see my letter, was to know I had first written foolishly, and
then fretted about the event of my folly, he would both ways be angry
with me.
I would desire you to direct to me at home, but your hand is so well
known to Charles, that that would not do. Therefore, take no notice of
my megrums till we meet, which I most ardently long to do. An hour spent
in your company would be a cordial to my drooping heart.
Pray write directly, and believe me, ever
Your affectionate friend,
M. LAMB.
Nov. l4.--I have kept this by me till to-day, hoping every day to hear
from you. If you found the seal a clumsy one, it is because I opened the
wafer.
Write, I beg, by the return of the post; and as I am very anxious to
hear whether you are, as I fear, dissatisfied with me, you shall, if you
please, direct my letter to Nurse. Her direction is, Mrs. Grant, at Mr.
Smith's, _Maidenhead_, Ram Court, Fleet Street.
I was not able, you know, to notice, when I writ to Malta, your letter
concerning an insult you received from a vile wretch there; and as I
mostly show my letters to Charles, I have never named it since. Did it
ever come to your brother's knowledge? Charles and I were very uneasy at
your account of it. I wish I could see you.
Yours ever,
M. LAMB.
I do not mean to continue a secret correspondence, but you must oblige
me with this one letter. In future I will always show my letters before
they go, which will be a proper check upon my wayward pen.
LETTER 142
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[P.M. Nov. 15, 1805.]
Dear Manning,--Certainly you could not have called at all hours from two
till ten, for we have been only out of an evening Monday and Tuesday in
this week. But if you think you have, your thought shall go for the
deed. We did pray for you on Wednesday night. Oysters unusually
luscious--pearls of extraordinary magnitude found in them. I have made
bracelets of them--given them in clusters to ladies. Last night we went
out in despite, because you were not come at your hour.
This night we shall be at home, so shall we certainly both Sunday,
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Take your choice, mind I don't say of
one, but choose which evening you will not, and come the other four.
Doors open at five o'clock. Shells forced about nine. Every gentleman
smokes or not as he pleases. O! I forgot, bring the £10, for fear you
should lose it.
C. L.
[Here should come a letter from Mary Lamb to Mrs. Clarkson, dated
December 25, 1805, printed by Mr. Macdonald. It states that Lamb has
been latterly in indifferent health, and is unimportant.]
LETTER 143
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
Thursday, 15th Jan., 1806.
Dear Hazlitt,--Godwin went to Johnson's yesterday about your business.
Johnson would not come down, or give any answer, but has promised to
open the manuscript, and to give you an answer in one month. Godwin will
punctually go again (Wednesday is Johnson's open day) yesterday four
weeks next: i.e. in one lunar month from this time. Till when Johnson
positively declines giving any answer. I wish you joy on ending your
Search. Mrs. H. was naming something about a Life of Fawcett, to be by
you undertaken: the great Fawcett, as she explain'd to Manning, when he
ask'd, _What Fawcett_? He innocently thought _Fawcett the player_. But
Fawcett the Divine is known to many people, albeit unknown to the
Chinese Enquirer. I should think, if you liked it, and Johnson declined
it, that Phillips is the man. He is perpetually bringing out
Biographies, Richardson, Wilkes, Foot, Lee Lewis, without number: little
trim things in two easy volumes price 12s. the two, made up of letters
to and from, scraps, posthumous trifles, anecdotes, and about forty
pages of hard biography. You might dish up a Fawcetiad in 3 months, and
ask 60 or 80 Pounds for it. I should dare say that Phillips would catch
at it--I wrote to you the other day in a great hurry. Did you get it?
This is merely a Letter of business at Godwin's request.
Lord Nelson is quiet at last. His ghost only keeps a slight fluttering
in odes and elegies in newspapers, and impromptus, which could not be
got ready before the funeral.
As for news--We have Miss Stoddart in our house, she has been with us a
fortnight and will stay a week or so longer. She is one of the few
people who are not in the way when they are with you. No tidings of
Coleridge. Fenwick is coming to town on Monday (if no kind angel
intervene) to surrender himself to prison. He hopes to get the Rules of
the Fleet. On the same, or nearly the same, day, Fell, my other quondam
co-friend and drinker, will go to Newgate, and his wife and 4 children,
I suppose, to the Parish. Plenty of reflection and motives of gratitude
to the wise disposer of all things in us, whose prudent conduct has
hitherto ensured us a warm fire and snug roof over our heads. _Nullum
numen abest si sit Prudentia_.
Alas! Prudentia is in the last quarter of her tutelary shining over me.
A little time and I--
But may be I may, at last, hit upon some mode of collecting some of the
vast superfluities of this money-voiding town. Much is to be got, and I
don't want much. All I ask is time and leisure; and I am cruelly off for
them.
When you have the inclination, I shall be very glad to have a letter
from you.--Your brother and Mrs. H., I am afraid, think hardly of us for
not coming oftener to see them, but we are distracted beyond what they
can conceive with visitors and visitings. I never have an hour for my
head to work quietly its own workings; which you know is as necessary to
the human system as sleep.
Sleep, too, I can't get for these damn'd winds of a night: and without
sleep and rest what should ensue? Lunacy. But I trust it won't.
Yours, dear H., mad or sober,
C. LAMB.
[Hazlitt's business was finding a publisher for his abridgment of Search
(see page 340). Johnson was Priestley's publisher. A letter to Godwin
from Coleridge in June, 1803 (see Kegan Paul's _Life of Godwin_, ii.,
96), had suggested such an abridgment, Coleridge adding that a friend of
his would make it, and that he would write a preface and see the proofs
through the press. Hence Godwin's share in the matter. Coleridge's part
of the transaction was not carried out.
Hazlitt's Life of Joseph Fawcett (?1758-1804), the poet and dissenting
preacher of Walthamstow and Old Jewry, whom he had known intimately, was
not written. The Fawcett of whom Manning, the Chinese Enquirer, was
thinking was John Fawcett, famous as Dr. Pangloss and Caleb Quotem.
"The Fleet"--the prison for debtors in Farringdon Street. Closed in
1844. The Rules of the Fleet were the limits within which prisoners for
debt were under certain conditions permitted to live: the north side of
Ludgate Hill, the Old Bailey up to Fleet Lane, Fleet Lane to Fleet
Market, and then back to Ludgate Hill. The Rules cost money: £10 for the
first £100 of the debt and for every additional £100, £4. Later, Fenwick
seems to have settled in America.
Here should come an undated letter to Hazlitt, accompanied by Tingry's
_Painter's and Varnisher's Guide_, 1804. Hazlitt, who was then painting,
seems to have wanted prints of trees, probably for a background. Lamb
says that he has been hunting in shop windows for him. He adds: "To
supply poetry and wildness, you may read the _American Farmer_ over
again." The postscript runs, "Johnson shall not be forgot at his month's
end."]
LETTER 144
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN RICKMAN
Jan. 25th, 1806.
Dear Rickman,--You do not happen to have any place at your disposal
which would suit a decayed Literatus? I do not much expect that you
have, or that you will go much out of the way to serve the object, when
you hear it is Fenwick. But the case is, by a _mistaking_ of his _turn_,
as they call it, he is reduced, I am afraid, to extremities, and would
be extremely glad of a place in an office. Now it does sometimes happen,
that just as a man wants a place, a place wants him; and though this is
a lottery to which none but G.B. would choose to trust his all, there is
no harm just to call in at Despair's office for a friend, and see if
_his_ number is come up (B.'s further case I enclose by way of episode).
Now, if you should happen, or anybody you know, to want a _hand_, here
is a young man of solid but not brilliant genius, who would turn his
hand to the making out dockets, penning a manifesto, or scoring a tally,
not the worse (I hope) for knowing Latin and Greek, and having in youth
conversed with the philosophers. But from these follies I believe he is
thoroughly awakened, and would bind himself by a terrible oath never to
imagine himself an extraordinary genius again.
Yours, &.,
C. LAMB.
[Mr. Hazlitt's text, which I follow here, makes Lamb appeal for Fenwick;
but other editors say Fell--except Talfourd, who says F. If, as Lamb
says in his previous letter, Fell was bound for Newgate and Fenwick only
for the Fleet, probably it was Fenwick. But the matter is not very
important. Fenwick and Fell both came into Lamb's life through Godwin
and at this point they drop out. The enclosure concerning George Burnett
is missing.]
LETTER 145
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: February 1st, 1806.]
Dear Wordsworth--I have seen the Books which you ordered, booked at the
White Horse Inn, Cripplegate, by the Kendal waggon this day 1st Feb'y.
1806; you will not fail to see after them in time. They are directed to
you at Grasmere. We have made some alteration in the Editions since your
sister's directions. The handsome quarto Spencer which she authorized
Mary to buy for £2. 12. 6, when she brought it home in triumph proved to
be _only the Fairy Queen_: so we got them to take it again and I have
procured instead a Folio, which luckily contains, besides all the Poems,
the view of the State of Ireland, which is difficult to meet with. The
Spencer, and the Chaucer, being noble old books, we did not think
Stockdale's modern volumes would look so well beside them; added to
which I don't know whether you are aware that the Print is _excessive_
small, same as Eleg. Extracts, or smaller, not calculated for eyes in
age; and Shakespear is one of the last books one should like to give up,
perhaps the one just before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book. So
we have used our own discretion in purchasing Pope's fine Quarto in six
volumes, which may be read ad ultimam horam vitae. It is bound like Law
Books (rather, half bound) and the Law Robe I have ever thought as
comely and gentlemanly a garb as a Book would wish to wear. The state of
the purchase then stands thus,
Urry's Chaucer £1. 16 --
Pope's Shakespeare 2. 2 --
Spenser 14 --
Milton 1. 5 --
Packing Case &c. 3. 6
____________
6. --. 6
Which your Brother immediately repaid us. He has the Bills for all (by
his desire) except the Spenser, which we took no bill with (not looking
to have our accounts audited): so for that and the Case he took a
separate receipt for 17/6. N.B. there is writing in the Shakespear: but
it is only variæ lectiones which some careful gentleman, the former
owner, was at the pains to insert in a very neat hand from 5
Commentators. It is no defacement. The fault of Pope's edition is, that
he has comically and coxcombically marked the Beauties: which is vile,
as if you were to chalk up the cheek and across the nose of a handsome
woman in red chalk to shew where the comeliest parts lay. But I hope the
noble type and Library-appearance of the Books will atone for that. With
the Books come certain Books and Pamphlets of G. Dyer, Presents or
rather Decoy-ducks of the Poet to take in his thus-far obliged friends
to buy his other works; as he takes care to inform them in M.S. notes to
the Title Pages, "G. Dyer, Author of other Books printed for Longman
&c." The books have lain at your dispatchful brother's a 12 months, to
the great staling of most of the subjects. The three Letters and what is
else written at the beginning of the respective _Presents_ will
ascertain the division of the Property. If not, none of the Donees, I
dare say, will grudge a community of property in this case. We were
constrained to pack 'em how we could, for room. Also there comes W.
Hazlitt's book about Human Action, for Coleridge; a little song book for
Sarah Coleridge; a Box for Hartley which your Brother was to have sent,
but now devolved on us--I don't know from whom it came, but the things
altogether were too much for Mr. (I've forgot his name) to take charge
of; a Paraphrase on the King and Queen of Hearts, of which I being the
Author beg Mr. Johnny Wordsworth's acceptance and opinion. _Liberal
Criticism_, as G. Dyer declares, I am always ready to attend to!--And
that's all, I believe. N.B. I must remain Debtor to Dorothy for 200
pens: but really Miss Stoddart (women are great gulfs of Stationery),
who is going home to Salisbury and has been with us some weeks, has
drained us to the very last pen: by the time S.T.C. passes thro' London
I reckon I shall be in full feather. No more news has transpired of that
Wanderer. I suppose he has found his way to some of his German friends.
A propos of Spencer (you will find him mentioned a page or two before,
near enough for an a propos), I was discoursing on Poetry (as one's apt
to deceive onesself, and when a person is willing to _talk_ of what one
likes, to believe that he also likes the same: as Lovers do) with a
Young Gentleman of my office who is deep read in Anacreon Moore, Lord
Strangford, and the principal Modern Poets, and I happen'd to mention
Epithalamiums and that I could shew him a very fine one of Spencer's. At
the mention of this, my Gentleman, who is a very fine Gentleman, and is
brother to the Miss Evans who Coleridge so narrowly escaped marrying,
pricked up his ears and exprest great pleasure, and begged that I would
give him leave to copy it: he did not care how long it was (for I
objected the length), he should be very happy to see _any thing by him_.
Then pausing, and looking sad, he ejaculated POOR SPENCER! I begged to
know the reason of his ejaculation, thinking that Time had by this time
softened down any calamities which the Bard might have endured--"Why,
poor fellow!" said he "he has lost his Wife!" "Lost his Wife?" said I,
"Who are you talking of?" "Why, Spencer," said he. "I've read the Monody
he wrote on the occasion, and _a very pretty thing it is_." This led to
an explanation (it could be delay'd no longer) that the sound Spencer,
which when Poetry is talk'd of generally excites an image of an old Bard
in a Ruff, and sometimes with it dim notions of Sir P. Sydney and
perhaps Lord Burleigh, had raised in my Gentleman a quite contrary image
of The Honourable William Spencer, who has translated some things from
the German very prettily, which are publish'd with Lady Di. Beauclerk's
Designs.
Nothing like defining of Terms when we talk. What blunders might I have
fallen into of quite inapplicable Criticism, but for this timely
explanation.
N.B. At the beginning of _Edm._ Spencer (to prevent mistakes) I have
copied from my own copy, and primarily from a book of Chalmers on
Shakspear, a Sonnet of Spenser's never printed among his poems. It is
curious as being manly and rather Miltonic, and as a Sonnet of Spenser's
with nothing in it about Love or Knighthood. I have no room for
remembrances; but I hope our doing your commission will prove we do not
quite forget you.
C. L.
1 Feb., 1806.
["Hazlitt's book about Human Action for Coleridge"--_An Essay on the
Principles of Human Action_, 1805.
"A Paraphrase of the King and Queen of Hearts." This was a little book
for children by Lamb, illustrated by Mulready and published by T.
Hodgkins (for the Godwins) in 1806. It was discovered through this
passage in this letter and is reprinted in facsimile in Vol. III. of my
large edition. The title ran _The King and Queen of Hearts, with the
Rogueries of the Knave who stole away the Queen's Pies_.
Coleridge had left Malta on September 21, 1805. He went to Naples, and
from there to Rome in January, 1806, where he stayed until May 18.
"A propos of Spencer." This portion of the letter, owing to a mistake of
Talfourd's, is usually tacked on to one dated June, 1806. "Miss Evans."
See note to Letter 3.
"Poor Spencer." William Robert Spencer (1769-1834) was the author of
_jeux d'esprit_ and poems. He is now known, if at all, by his ballad of
"Bed Gellert." He married the widow of Count Spreti, and in 1804
published a book of elegies entitled "The Year of Sorrow." Spencer was
among the translators of Bürger's "Leonore," his version being
illustrated by Lady Diana Beauclerk (his great-aunt) in 1796. Lamb used
this anecdote as a little article in the _Reflector_, No. II., 1811,
entitled "On the Ambiguities arising from Proper Names" (see Vol. I. of
this edition). Lamb, however, by always spelling the real poet with a
"c," did nothing towards avoiding the ambiguity!
This is the sonnet which Lamb copied into Wordsworth's Spenser from
George Chalmers' _Supplemental Apology for the Believers in the
Shakespeare-Papers_ (1799), page 94:--
To the Right worshipful, my singular good _friend_, Mr. Gabriel Harvey,
Doctor of the Laws:--
"Harvey, the happy above happiest men
I read: that sitting like a looker on
Of this world's stage, doest note with critique pen
The sharp dislikes of each condition:
And as one careless of suspition,
Ne fawnest for the favour of the great:
Ne fearest foolish reprehension
Of faulty men, which danger to thee threat.
But freely doest, of what thee list, entreat,
Like a great Lord of peerless liberty:
Lifting the good up to high honours seat,
And the Evil damning ever more to dy.
For life, _and_ death is [are] in thy doomful writing:
So thy renowne lives ever by endighting."
Dublin: this xviij of July, 1586;
Your devoted _friend_, during life,
EDMUND SPENSER.]
LETTER 146
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
[Dated at end: Feb. 19, 1806.]
Dear H.--Godwin has just been here in his way from Johnson's. Johnson
has had a fire in his house; this happened about five weeks ago; it was
in the daytime, so it did not burn the house down, but did so much
damage that the house must come down, to be repaired: his nephew that we
met on Hampstead Hill put it out: well, this fire has put him so back,
that he craves one more month before he gives you an answer.
I will certainly goad Godwin (if necessary) to go again this very day
four weeks; but I am confident he will want no goading.
Three or four most capital auctions of Pictures advertised. In May,
Welbore Ellis Agar's, the first private collection in England, so
Holcroft says. In March, Sir George Young's in Stratford-place (where
Cosway lives), and a Mr. Hulse's at Blackheath, both very capital
collections, and have been announc'd for some months. Also the Marquis
of Lansdowne's Pictures in March; and though inferior to mention,
lastly, the Tructhsessian gallery. Don't your mouth water to be here?
T'other night Loftus called, whom we have not seen since you went
before. We meditate a stroll next Wednesday, Fast-day. He happened to
light upon Mr. Holcroft's Wife, and Daughter, their first visit at our
house.
Your brother called last night. We keep up our intimacy. He is going to
begin a large Madona and child from Mrs. H. and baby, I fear he goes
astray after ignes fatui. He is a clever man. By the bye, I saw a
miniature of his as far excelling any in his shew cupboard (that of your
sister not excepted) as that shew cupboard excells the shew things you
see in windows--an old woman--damn her name--but most superlative; he
has it to clean--I'll ask him the name--but the best miniature I ever
saw, equal to Cooper and them fellows. But for oil pictures!--what has
he [to] do with Madonas? if the Virgin Mary were alive and visitable, he
would not hazard himself in a Covent-Garden-pit-door crowd to see her.
It ain't his style of beauty, is it?--But he will go on painting things
he ought not to paint, and not painting things he ought to paint.
Manning is not gone to China, but talks of going this Spring. God
forbid!
Coleridge not heard of.
I, going to leave off smoke. In mean time am so smoky with last night's
10 Pipes, that I must leave off.
Mary begs her kind remembrances.
Pray write to us--
This is no Letter, but I supposed you grew anxious about Johnson.
N.B.--Have taken a room at 3/- a week, to be in between 5 & 8 at night,
to avoid my _nocturnal_ alias _knock-eternal_ visitors. The first-fruits
of my retirement has been a farce which goes to manager tomorrow. _Wish
my ticket luck._ God bless you, and do write,--Yours, _fumosissimus_,
C. LAMB.
Wednesday, 19 Feb., 1806.
[Johnson was the publisher whom we have already seen considering
Hazlitt's abridgment of the _Light of Nature Revealed_.
Lamb was always interested in sales of pictures: the on-view days gave
him some of his best opportunities of seeing good painting. The
Truchsessian Picture Gallery was in New Road, opposite Portland Place.
Exhibitions were held annually, the pictures being for sale.
Loftus was Tom Loftus of Wisbech, a cousin of Hazlitt.
Holcroft's wife at that time, his fourth, was Louisa Mercier, who
afterwards married Lamb's friend, James Kenney, the dramatist. The
daughter referred to was probably Fanny Holcroft, who subsequently wrote
novels and translations.
Cooper, the miniature painter, was Samuel Cooper (1609-1672), a
connection by marriage of Pope's mother, and the painter of Cromwell and
other interesting men.
Lamb's _N.B._ contains his first mention of his farce "Mr. H." We are
not told where the 3s. room was situated. Possibly in the Temple.]
LETTER 147
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[? Feb. 20, 21 and 22, 1806.]
My dear Sarah,--I have heard that Coleridge was lately going through
Sicily to Rome with a party, but that, being unwell, he returned back to
Naples. We think there is some mistake in this account, and that his
intended journey to Rome was in his former jaunt to Naples. If you know
that at that time he had any such intention, will you write instantly?
for I do not know whether I ought to write to Mrs. Coleridge or not.
I am going to make a sort of promise to myself and to you, that I will
write you kind of journal-like letters of the daily what-we-do matters,
as they occur. This day seems to me a kind of new era in our time. It is
not a birthday, nor a new-year's day, nor a leave-off-smoking day; but
it is about an hour after the time of leaving you, our poor Phoenix, in
the Salisbury Stage; and Charles has just left me for the first time to
go to his lodgings; and I am holding a solitary consultation with myself
as to the how I shall employ myself.
Writing plays, novels, poems, and all manner of such-like vapouring and
vapourish schemes are floating in my head, which at the same time aches
with the thought of parting from you, and is perplext at the idea of
I-cannot-tell-what-about notion that I have not made you half so
comfortable as I ought to have done, and a melancholy sense of the dull
prospect you have before you on your return home. Then I think I will
make my new gown; and now I consider the white petticoat will be better
candle-light worth; and then I look at the fire, and think, if the irons
was but down, I would iron my Gowns--you having put me out of conceit of
mangling.
So much for an account of my own confused head; and now for yours.
Returning home from the Inn, we took that to pieces, and ca[n]vassed
you, as you know is our usual custom. We agreed we should miss you
sadly, and that you had been, what you yourself discovered, _not at all
in our way_; and although, if the Post Master should happen to open
this, it would appear to him to be no great compliment, yet you, who
enter so warmly into the interior of our affairs, will understand and
value it, as well as what we likewise asserted, that since you have been
with us you have done but one foolish thing, _vide_ Pinckhorn (excuse my
bad Latin, if it should chance to mean exactly contrary to what I
intend). We praised you for the very friendly way in which you regarded
all our whimsies, and, to use a phrase of Coleridge's, _understood us_.
We had, in short, no drawback on our eulogy on your merit, except
lamenting the want of respect you have to yourself--the want of a
certain dignity of action, you know what I mean, which--though it only
broke out in the acceptance of the old Justice's book, and was, as it
were, smothered and almost extinct, while you were here--yet is so
native a feeling in your mind, that you will do whatever the present
moment prompts you to do, that I wish you would take that one slight
offence seriously to heart, and make it a part of your daily
consideration to drive this unlucky propensity, root and branch, out of
your character.--Then, mercy on us, what a perfect little gentlewoman
you will be!!!--
You are not yet arrived at the first stage of your journey; yet have I
the sense of your absence so strong upon me, that I was really thinking
what news I had to send you, and what had happened since you had left
us. Truly nothing, except that Martin Burney met us in
Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, and borrowed four-pence, of the repayment of which
sum I will send you due notice.
Friday [Feb. 21, 1806].--Last night I told Charles of your matrimonial
overtures from Mr. White, and of the cause of that business being at a
_stand-still_. Your generous conduct in acquainting Mr. White with the
vexatious affair at Malta highly pleased him. He entirely approves of
it. You would be quite comforted to hear what he said on the subject.
He wishes you success, and, when Coleridge comes, will consult with him
about what is best to be done. But I charge you, be most strictly
cautious how you proceed yourself. Do not give Mr. W. any reason to
think you indiscreet; let him return of his own accord, and keep the
probability of his doing so full in your mind; so, I mean, as to
regulate your whole conduct by that expectation. Do not allow yourself
to see, or in any way renew your acquaintance with, William, nor do not
do any other silly thing of that kind; for, you may depend upon it, he
will be a kind of spy upon you, and, if he observes nothing that he
disapproves of, you will certainly hear of him again in time.
Charles is gone to finish the farce, and I am to hear it read this
night. I am so uneasy between my hopes and fears of how I shall like it,
that I do not know what I am doing. I need not tell you so, for before I
send this I shall be able to tell you all about it. If I think it will
amuse you, I will send you a copy. _The bed was very cold last night._
Feb. 21 [?22]. I have received your letter, and am happy to hear that
your mother has been so well in your absence, which I wish had been
prolonged a little, for you have been wanted to copy out the Farce, in
the writing of which I made many an unlucky blunder.
The said Farce I carried (after many consultations of who was the most
proper person to perform so important an office) to Wroughton, the
Manager of Drury Lane. He was very civil to me; said it did not depend
upon himself, but that he would put it into the Proprietors' hands, and
that we should certainly have an answer from them.
I have been unable to finish this sheet before, for Charles has taken a
week's holidays [from his] lodging, to rest himself after his labour,
and we have talked to-night of nothing but the Farce night and day; but
yesterday [I carri]ed it to Wroughton; and since it has been out of the
[way, our] minds have been a little easier. I wish you had [been with]
us, to have given your opinion. I have half a mind to sc[ribble] another
copy, and send it you. I like it very much, and cannot help having great
hopes of its success.
I would say I was very sorry for the death of Mr. White's father; but
not knowing the good old gentleman, I cannot help being as well
satisfied that he is gone--for his son will feel rather lonely, and so
perhaps he may chance to visit again Winterslow. You so well describe
your brother's grave lecturing letter, that you make me ashamed of part
of mine. I would fain rewrite it, leaving out my '_sage advice_;' but if
I begin another letter, something may fall out to prevent me from
finishing it,--and, therefore, skip over it as well as you can; it shall
be the last I ever send you.
It is well enough, when one is talking to a friend, to hedge in an odd
word by way of counsel now and then; but there is something mighty
irksome in its staring upon one in a letter, where one ought only to see
kind words and friendly remembrances.
I have heard a vague report from the _Dawes_ (the pleasant-looking young
lady we called upon was Miss Daw), that Coleridge returned back to
Naples: they are to make further enquiries, and let me know the
particulars. We have seen little or nothing of Manning since you went.
Your friend [George] Burnett calls as usual, for Charles to _point out
something for him_. I miss you sadly, and but for the fidget I have been
in about the Farce, I should have missed you still more. I am sorry you
cannot get your money. Continue to tell us all your perplexities, and do
not mind being called Widow Blackacre.
Say all in your mind about your _Lover_, now Charles knows of it; he
will be as anxious to hear as me. All the time we can spare from talking
of the characters and plot of the Farce, we talk of you. I have got a
fresh bottle of Brandy to-day: if you were here, you should have a
glass, _three parts brandy_--so you should. I bought a pound of bacon
to-day, not so good as yours. I wish the little caps were finished. I am
glad the Medicines and the Cordials bore the fatigue of their journey so
well. I promise you I will write often, and _not mind the postage_. God
bless you. Charles does _not_ send his love, because he is not here.
Yours affectionately,
M. LAMB.
_Write as often as ever you can_. Do not work too hard.
[Mr. Hazlitt dates this letter April, thinking that Mary Lamb's pen
slipped when she wrote February 21 half-way through. But I think
February must be right; because (1) Miss Stoddart has only just left,
and Lamb tells Hazlitt in January that she is staying a week or so
longer: April would make this time three months; and (2) Lamb has told
Hazlitt on February 19 that his farce is finished.
Coleridge left Malta for Rome on September 21, 1805. He was probably at
Naples from October, 1805, to the end of January, 1806, when he went to
Rome, remaining there until May 18. Writing to Mrs. Clarkson on March 2,
1806, Dorothy Wordsworth quotes from a letter written on February 25 by
Mary Lamb to Mrs. S.T. Coleridge and containing this passage: "My
Brother has received a letter from Stoddart dated December 26, in which
he tells him that Coleridge was then at Naples. We have also heard from
a Mr. Dawe that a friend of his had received a letter of the same date,
which mentioned Coleridge having been lately travelling towards Rome
with a party of gentlemen; but that he changed his mind and returned
back to Naples. Stoddart says nothing more than that he was driven to
Naples in consequence of the French having taken possession of Trieste."
(See the _Athenæum_, January 23, 1904.)
"_Vide_ Pinckhorn." I cannot explain this, unless a Justice Pinckhorn
had ogled Sarah Stoddart and offered her a present of a book. Mary Lamb,
by the way, some years later taught Latin to William Hazlitt, Junior,
Sarah's son.
Martin Charles Burney, the son of Captain Burney, born in 1788, a
devoted admirer of the Lambs to the end. He was now only eighteen. We
shall often meet him again.
Mr. White was not Lamb's friend James White.
Winterslow, in Wiltshire, about six miles from Salisbury, was a small
property belonging to Sarah Stoddart.
"Widow Blackacre." In Wycherley's "Plain Dealer:" a busy-body and
persistent litigant.]
LETTER 148
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[March, 1806.]
My dear Sarah,--No intention of forfeiting my promise, but mere want of
time, has prevented me from continuing my _journal_. You seem pleased
with the long, stupid one I sent, and, therefore, I shall certainly
continue to write at every opportunity. The reason why I have not had
any time to spare, is because Charles has given himself some holidays
after the hard labour of finishing his farce, and, therefore, I have had
none of the evening leisure I promised myself. Next week he promises to
go to work again. I wish he may happen to hit upon some new plan, to his
mind, for another farce: when once begun, I do not fear his
perseverance, but the holidays he has allowed himself, I fear, will
unsettle him. I look forward to next week with the same kind of anxiety
I did to the first entrance at the new lodging. We have had, as you
know, so many teasing anxieties of late, that I have got a kind of habit
of foreboding that we shall never be comfortable, and that he will never
settle to work: which I know is wrong, and which I will try with all my
might to overcome--for certainly, if I could but see things as they
really are, our prospects are considerably improved since the memorable
day of Mrs. Fenwick's last visit. I have heard nothing of that good
lady, or of the Fells, since you left us.
We have been visiting a little--to Norris's, to Godwin's; and last night
we did not come home from Captain Burney's till two o'clock: the
_Saturday night_ was changed to _Friday_, because Rickman could not be
there to-night. We had the best _tea things_, and the litter all cleared
away, and every thing as handsome as possible--Mrs. Rickman being of the
party. Mrs. Rickman is much _increased in size_ since we saw her last,
and the alteration in her strait shape wonderfully improves her.
Phillips was there, and Charles had a long batch of Cribbage with him:
and, upon the whole, we had the most chearful evening I have known there
a long time. To-morrow, we dine at Holcroft's. These things rather
fatigue me; but I look for a quiet week next week, and hope for better
times. We have had Mrs. Brooks and all the Martins, and we have likewise
been there; so that I seem to have been in a continual bustle lately. I
do not think Charles cares so much for the Martins as he did, which is a
fact you will be glad to hear--though you must not name them when you
write: always remember, when I tell you any thing about them, not to
mention their names in return.
We have had a letter from your brother, by the same mail as yours, I
suppose; he says he does not mean to return till summer, and that is all
he says about himself; his letter being entirely filled with a long
story about Lord Nelson--but nothing more than what the newspapers have
been full of, such as his last words, &c. Why does he tease you with so
much _good advice_? is it merely to fill up his letters as he filled
ours with Lord Nelson's exploits? or has any new thing come out against
you? has he discovered Mr. Curse-a-rat's correspondence? I hope you will
not write to that _news-sending_ gentleman any more. I promised never
more to give my _advice_, but one may be allowed to _hope_ a little; and
I also hope you will have something to tell me soon about Mr. W[hite]:
have you seen him yet? I am sorry to hear your Mother is not better, but
I am in a hoping humour just now, and I cannot help hoping that we shall
all see happier days. The bells are just now ringing for the taking of
the _Cape of Good Hope_.
I have written to Mrs. Coleridge to tell her that her husband is at
Naples; your brother slightly named his being there, but he did not say
that he had heard from him himself. Charles is very busy at the Office;
he will be kept there to-day till seven or eight o'clock: and he came
home very _smoky and drinky_ last night; so that I am afraid a hard
day's work will not agree very well with him.
0 dear! what shall I say next? Why this I will say next, that I wish you
was with me; I have been eating a mutton chop all alone, and I have been
just looking in the pint porter pot, which I find quite empty, and yet I
am still very dry. If you was with me, we would have a glass of brandy
and water; but it is quite impossible to drink brandy and water by
oneself; therefore, I must wait with patience till the kettle boils. I
hate to drink tea alone, it is worse than dining alone, We have got a
fresh cargo of biscuits from Captain Burney's. I have--
_March l4._--Here I was interrupted; and a long, tedious interval has
intervened, during which I have had neither time nor inclination to
write a word. The Lodging--that pride and pleasure of your heart and
mine--is given up, _and here he is again_--Charles, I mean--as unsettled
and as undetermined as ever. When he went to the poor lodging, after the
hollidays I told you he had taken, he could not endure the solitariness
of them, and I had no rest for the sole of my foot till I promised to
believe his solemn protestations that he could and would write as well
at home as there. Do you believe this?
I have no power over Charles: he will do--what he will do. But I ought
to have some little influence over myself. And therefore I am most
manfully resolving to turn over a new leaf with my own mind. Your visit
to us, though not a very comfortable one to yourself, has been of great
use to me. I set you up in my fancy as a kind of _thing_ that takes an
interest in my concerns; and I hear you talking to me, and arguing the
matter very learnedly, when I give way to despondency. You shall hear a
good account of me, and the progress I make in altering my fretful
temper to a calm and quiet one. It is but being once thorowly convinced
one is wrong, to make one resolve to do so no more; and I know my dismal
faces have been almost as great a drawback upon Charles's comfort, as
his feverish, teazing ways have been upon mine. Our love for each other
has been the torment of our lives hitherto. I am most seriously
intending to bend the whole force of my mind to counteract this, and I
think I see some prospect of success.
Of Charles ever bringing any work to pass at home, I am very doubtful;
and of the farce succeeding, I have little or no hope; but if I could
once get into the way of being chearful myself, I should see an easy
remedy in leaving town and living cheaply, almost wholly alone; but till
I do find we really are comfortable alone, and by ourselves, it seems a
dangerous experiment. We shall certainly stay where we are till after
next Christmas; and in the mean time, as I told you before, all my whole
thoughts shall be to _change_ myself into just such a chearful soul as
you would be in a lone house, with no companion but your brother, if you
had nothing to vex you--nor no means of wandering after _Curse-a-rats_.
Do write soon: though I write all about myself, I am thinking all the
while of you, and I am uneasy at the length of time it seems since I
heard from you. Your Mother, and Mr. White, is running continually in my
head; and this _second winter_ makes me think how cold, damp, and
forlorn your solitary house will feel to you. I would your feet were
perched up again on our fender.
Manning is not yet gone. Mrs. Holcroft is brought to bed. Mrs. Reynolds
has been confined at home with illness, but is recovering. God bless
you.
Yours affectionately,
M. LAMB.
["Norris's"--Randal Norris, sub-treasurer of the Inner Temple, whose
wife, _née_ Faint, came from Widford, where she had known Lamb's
grandmother, Mary Field.
Captain Burney's whist parties, in Little James Street, Pimlico, were,
as a rule, on Saturdays. Later Lamb established a Wednesday party.
Of Mrs. Brooks I have no knowledge; nor of him whom Mary Lamb called Mr.
Curse-a-rat.
"The _Cape of Good Hope_." The Cape of Good Hope, having been taken by
the English in 1795 from the Dutch, and restored to them at the Peace of
Amiens in 1802, had just been retaken by the English.
"Mrs. Holcroft is brought to bed." The child was Louisa, afterwards Mrs.
Badams, one of Lamb's correspondents late in life.]
LETTER 149
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN RICKMAN
March, 1806.
Dear Rickman,--I send you some papers about a salt-water soap, for which
the inventor is desirous of getting a parliamentary reward, like Dr.
Jenner. Whether such a project be feasible, I mainly doubt, taking for
granted the equal utility. I should suppose the usual way of paying such
projectors is by patents and contracts. The patent, you see, he has got.
A contract he is about with the Navy Board. Meantime, the projector is
hungry. Will you answer me two questions, and return them with the
papers as soon as you can? Imprimis, is there any chance of success in
application to Parliament for a reward? Did you ever hear of the
invention? You see its benefits and saving to the nation (always the
first motive with a true projector) are feelingly set forth: the last
paragraph but one of the estimate, in enumerating the shifts poor seamen
are put to, even approaches to the pathetic. But, agreeing to all he
says, is there the remotest chance of Parliament giving the projector
anything; and _when_ should application be made, now or after a report
(if he can get it) from the navy board? Secondly, let the infeasibility
be as great as you will, you will oblige me by telling me the way of
introducing such an application to Parliament, without buying over a
majority of members, which is totally out of projector's power. I vouch
nothing for the soap myself; for I always wash in _fresh water_, and
find it answer tolerably well for all purposes of cleanliness; nor do I
know the projector; but a relation of mine has put me on writing to you,
for whose parliamentary knowledge he has great veneration.
P.S. The Capt. and Mrs. Burney and Phillips take their chance at
cribbage here on Wednesday. Will you and Mrs. R. join the party? Mary
desires her compliments to Mrs. R., and joins in the invitation.
Yours truly,
C. LAMB.
[Rickman now held the post of private secretary to the Speaker, Charles
Abbot, afterwards Lord Colchester.
Captain Burney we have already met. His wife, Sarah Burney, was, there
is good reason to suppose, in Lamb's mind when he wrote the Elia essay
"Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist." Phillips was either Colonel Phillips,
a retired officer of marines, who had sailed with Burney and Captain
Cook, had known Dr. Johnson, and had married Burney's sister; or Ned
Phillips (Rickman's Secretary).]
LETTER 150
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
March 15, 1806.
Dear H.--I am a little surprised at no letter from you. This day week,
to wit, Saturday, the 8th of March, 1806, I booked off by the Wem coach,
Bull and Mouth Inn, directed to _you_, at the Rev. Mr. Hazlitt's, Wem,
Shropshire, a parcel containing, besides a book, &c., a rare print,
which I take to be a Titian; begging the said W.H. to acknowledge the
receipt thereof; which he not having done, I conclude the said parcel to
be lying at the inn, and may be lost; for which reason, lest you may be
a Wales-hunting at this instant, I have authorised any of your family,
whosoever first gets this, to open it, that so precious a parcel may not
moulder away for want of looking after. What do you in Shropshire when
so many fine pictures are a-going, a-going every day in London? Monday I
visit the Marquis of Lansdowne's, in Berkeley Square. Catalogue 2s. 6d.
Leonardos in plenty. Some other day this week I go to see Sir Wm.
Young's, in Stratford Place. Hulse's, of Blackheath, are also to be sold
this month; and in May, the first private collection in Europe, Welbore
Ellis Agar's. And there are you, perverting Nature in lying landscapes,
filched from old rusty Titians, such as I can scrape up here to send
you, with an additament from Shropshire Nature thrown in to make the
whole look unnatural. I am afraid of your mouth watering when I tell you
that Manning and I got into Angerstein's on Wednesday. _Mon Dieu_! Such
Claudes! Four Claudes bought for more than £10,000 (those who talk of
Wilson being equal to Claude are either mainly ignorant or stupid); one
of these was perfectly miraculous. What colours short of _bonâ fide_
sunbeams it could be painted in, I am not earthly colourman enough to
say; but I did not think it had been in the possibility of things. Then,
a music-piece by Titian--a thousand-pound picture--five figures standing
behind a piano, the sixth playing; none of the heads, as M. observed,
indicating great men, or affecting it, but so sweetly disposed; all
leaning separate ways, but so easy--like a flock of some divine
shepherd; the colouring, like the economy of the picture, so sweet and
harmonious--as good as Shakspeare's "Twelfth Night,"--_almost_, that is.
It will give you a love of order, and cure you of restless, fidgetty
passions for a week after--more musical than the music which it would,
but cannot, yet in a manner _does_, show. I have no room for the rest.
Let me say, Angerstein sits in a room--his study (only that and the
library are shown)--when he writes a common letter, as I am doing,
surrounded with twenty pictures worth £60,000. What a luxury! Apicius
and Heliogabalus, hide your diminished heads!
Yours, my dear painter,
C. LAMB.
[Angerstein's was the house of John Julius Angerstein (1735-1823) the
financier, in Pall Mall. He had a magnificent collection of pictures,
£60,000 worth of which were bought on his death by the nation, to form
the nucleus of our National Gallery. A portrait of Angerstein by
Lawrence hangs there. The Titian of which Lamb speaks is now attributed
to the School of Titian. It is called "A Concert." Angerstein's Claudes
are also in the National Gallery.]
LETTER 151
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
May 10, 1806.
My dear Manning--I didn't know what your going was till I shook a last
fist with you, and then 'twas just like having shaken hands with a
wretch on the fatal scaffold, and when you are down the ladder, you can
never stretch out to him again. Mary says you are dead, and there's
nothing to do but to leave it to time to do for us in the end what it
always does for those who mourn for people in such a case. But she'll
see by your letter you are not quite dead. A little kicking and agony,
and then--. Martin Burney _took me out_ a walking that evening, and we
talked of Mister Manning; and then I came home and smoked for you; and
at twelve o'Clock came home Mary and Monkey Louisa from the play, and
there was more talk and more smoking, and they all seemed first-rate
characters, because they knew a certain person. But what's the use of
talking about 'em? By the time you'll have made your escape from the
Kalmuks, you'll have staid so long I shall never be able to bring to
your mind who Mary was, who will have died about a year before, nor who
the Holcrofts were! Me perhaps you will mistake for Phillips, or
confound me with Mr. Daw, because you saw us together. Mary (whom you
seem to remember yet) is not quite easy that she had not a formal
parting from you. I wish it had so happened. But you must bring her a
token, a shawl or something, and remember a sprightly little Mandarin
for our mantle-piece, as a companion to the Child I am going to purchase
at the Museum. She says you saw her writings about the other day, and
she wishes you should know what they are. She is doing for Godwin's
bookseller twenty of Shakspear's plays, to be made into Children's
tales. Six are already done by her, to wit, 'The Tempest,' 'Winter's
Tale,' 'Midsummer Night,' 'Much Ado,' 'Two Gentlemen of Verona,' and
'Cymbeline:' 'The Merchant of Venice' is in forwardness. I have done
'Othello' and 'Macbeth,' and mean to do all the tragedies. I think it
will be popular among the little people. Besides money. It is to bring
in 60 guineas. Mary has done them capitally, I think you'd think. These
are the humble amusements we propose, while you are gone to plant the
cross of Christ among barbarous Pagan anthropophagi. Quam homo homini
praestat! but then, perhaps, you'll get murder'd, and we shall die in
our beds with a fair literary reputation. Be sure, if you see any of
those people whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, that you make
a draught of them. It will be very curious. O Manning, I am serious to
sinking almost, when I think that all those evenings, which you have
made so pleasant, are gone perhaps for ever. Four years you talk of,
maybe ten, and you may come back and find such alterations! Some
circumstance may grow up to you or to me, that may be a bar to the
return of any such intimacy. I daresay all this is Hum, and that all
will come back; but indeed we die many deaths before we die, and I am
almost sick when I think that such a hold as I had of you is gone. I
have friends, but some of 'em are changed. Marriage, or some
circumstance, rises up to make them not the same. But I felt sure of
you. And that last token you gave me of expressing a wish to have my
name joined with yours, you know not how it affected me: like a legacy.
God bless you in every way you can form a wish. May He give you health,
and safety, and the accomplishment of all your objects, and return you
again to us, to gladden some fireside or other (I suppose we shall be
moved from the Temple). I will nurse the remembrance of your steadiness
and quiet, which used to infuse something like itself into our nervous
minds. Mary called you our ventilator. Farewell, and take her best
wishes and mine.
One thing more. When you get to Canton, you will most likely see a young
friend of mine, Inspector of Teas, named Ball. He is a very good fellow
and I should like to have my name talked of in China. Give my kind
remembrances to the same Ball. Good bye.
C. L.
I have made strict inquiries through my friend Thompson as to your
affairs with the Comp'y. If there had been a committee yesterday an
order would have been sent to the captain to draw on them for your
passage money, but there was no Committee. But in the secretary's orders
to receive you on board, it was specified that the Company would defray
your passage, all the orders about you to the supercargoes are certainly
in your ship. Here I will manage anything you may want done. What can I
add but take care of yourself. We drink tea with the Holcrofts
to-morrow.
[Addressed to "Mr. Manning, Passenger on Board the _Thames_, East
Indiaman, Portsmouth."
Manning sailed for China this month. He did not return to England until
1817. His nominal purpose was to practise medicine there, not to spread
Christianity, as Lamb suggests--probably in fun.
This is Manning's reply to Lamb's letter:--
"Dear Lamb--As we are not sailed yet, and I have a few minutes, why
should not I give you a line to say that I received your kind letter
yesterday, and shall read it again before I have done with it. I am
sorry I had not time to call on Mary, but I did not even call on my own
Father, and he's 70 and loves me like a Father. I don't know that you
can do any thing for me at the India House: if you hear any thing there
about me, communicate it to Mr. Crabtree, 13, Newgate Street. I am not
dead, nor dying--some people go into Yorkshire for four [years], and I
have no currant jelly aboard. Tell Holcroft I received his kind letter."
"T. MANNING for ever."]
LETTER 152
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[Mr. W.C. Hazlitt dates: June 2, 1806.]
My dear Sarah,--You say truly that I have sent you too many make-believe
letters. I do not mean to serve you so again, if I can help it. I have
been very ill for some days past with the toothache. Yesterday, I had it
drawn; and I feel myself greatly relieved, but far from easy, for my
head and my jaws still ache; and, being unable to do any business, I
would wish to write you a long letter, to atone for my former offences;
but I feel so languid, that I am afraid wishing is all I can do.
I am sorry you are so worried with business; and I am still more sorry
for your sprained ancle. You ought not to walk upon it. What is the
matter between you and your good-natured maid you used to boast of? and
what the devil is the matter with your Aunt? You say she is
discontented. You must bear with them as well as you can; for,
doubtless, it is you[r] poor Mother's teazing that puts you all out of
sorts. I pity you from my heart.
We cannot come to see you this summer, nor do I think it advisable to
come and incommode you, when you for the same expence could come to us.
Whenever you feel yourself disposed to run away from your troubles, come
up to us again. I wish it was not such a long, expensive journey, then
you could run backwards and forwards every month or two.
I am very sorry you still hear nothing from Mr. White. I am afraid that
is all at an end. What do you intend to do about Mr. Turner?
I believe Mr. Rickman is well again, but I have not been able to get out
lately to enquire, because of my toothache. Louisa Martin is quite well
again.
William Hazlitt, the brother of him you know, is in town. I believe you
have heard us say we like him? He came in good time; for the loss of
Manning made Charles very dull, and he likes Hazlitt better than any
body, except Manning.
My toothache has moped Charles to death: you know how he hates to see
people ill.
Mrs. Reynolds has been this month past at Deptford, so that I never know
when Monday comes. I am glad you have got your Mother's pension.
My _Tales_ are to be published in separate story-books; I mean, in
single stories, like the children's little shilling books. I cannot send
you them in Manuscript, because they are all in the Godwins' hands; but
one will be published very soon, and then you shall have it _all in
print_. I go on very well, and have no doubt but I shall always be able
to hit upon some such kind of job to keep going on. I think I shall get
fifty pounds a year at the lowest calculation; but as I have not yet
seen any _money_ of my own earning, for we do not expect to be paid till
Christmas, I do not feel the good fortune, that has so unexpectedly
befallen me, half so much as I ought to do. But another year, no doubt,
I shall perceive it.
When I write again, you will hear tidings of the farce, for Charles is
to go in a few days to the Managers to enquire about it. But that must
now be a next-year's business too, even if it does succeed; so it's all
looking forward, and no prospect of present gain. But that's better than
no hopes at all, either for present or future times.
Charles has written Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, and has begun Hamlet;
you would like to see us, as we often sit, writing on one table (but not
on one cushion sitting), like Hermia and Helena in the Midsummer's
Night's Dream; or, rather, like an old literary Darby and Joan: I taking
snuff, and he groaning all the while, and saying he can make nothing of
it, which he always says till he has finished, and then he finds out he
has made something of it.
If I tell you that you Widow-Blackacreise, you must tell me I Tale-ise,
for my _Tales_ seem to be all the subject matter I write about; and when
you see them, you will think them poor little baby-stories to make such
a talk about; but I have no news to send, nor nothing, in short, to say,
that is worth paying two pence for. I wish I could get franks, then I
should not care how short or stupidly I wrote.
Charles smokes still, and will smoke to the end of the chapter.
Martin [Burney] has just been here. My Tales (_again_) and Charles's
Farce has made the boy mad to turn Author; and he has written a Farce,
and he has made the Winter's Tale into a story; but what Charles says of
himself is really true of Martin, for _he can make nothing at all of
it_: and I have been talking very eloquently this morning, to convince
him that nobody can write farces, &c., under thirty years of age. And so
I suppose he will go home and new model his farce.
What is Mr. Turner? and what is likely to come of him? and how do you
like him? and what do you intend to do about it? I almost wish you to
remain single till your Mother dies, and then come and live with us; and
we would either get you a husband, or teach you how to live comfortably
without. I think I should like to have you always to the end of our
lives living with us; and I do not know any reason why that should not
be, except for the great fancy you seem to have for marrying, which
after all is but a hazardous kind of an affair: but, however, do as you
like; every man knows best what pleases himself best.
I have known many single men I should have liked in my life (_if it had
suited them_) for a husband: but very few husbands have I ever wished
was mine, which is rather against the state in general; but one never is
disposed to envy wives their good husbands. So much for marrying--but
however, get married, if you can.
I say we shall not come and see you, and I feel sure we shall not: but,
if some sudden freak was to come into our wayward heads, could you at
all manage?--Your Mother we should not mind, but I think still it would
be so vastly inconvenient.--I am certain we shall not come, and yet
_you_ may tell me, when you write, if it would be horribly inconvenient
if we did; and do not tell me any lies, but say truly whether you would
rather we did or not.
God bless you, my dearest Sarah! I wish, for your sake, I could have
written a very amusing letter; but do not scold, for my head aches
sadly. Don't mind my headach, for before you get this it will be well,
being only from the pains of my jaws and teeth. Farewell.
Yours affectionately,
M. LAMB.
[This letter contains the first mention to Sarah Stoddart of William
Hazlitt, who was shortly to put an end to the claims both of Mr. White
and Mr. Turner.
The _Tales from Shakespear_, although mainly Mary Lamb's book, did not
bear her name for many years, not until after her brother's death. Her
connection with it was, however, made public in more than one literary
year-book of her day. Originally they were to be unsigned, but Godwin
"cheated" Lamb into putting a name to them (see letter of Jan. 29,
1807). The single stories, which Mrs. Godwin issued at sixpence each,
are now excessively rare. The ordinary first edition in two volumes is a
valuable possession, much desired by collectors.]
LETTER 153
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. June 26, 1806.]
Dear Wordsworth--We got the six pounds safe in your sister's
letters--are pleased, you may be sure, with the good news of Mrs.
W.--hope all is well over by this time. "A fine boy!--have you any more?
one more and a girl--poor copies of me" vide MR. H. a farce which the
Proprietors have done me the honor--but I will set down Mr. Wroughton's
own words. N.B. the ensuing letter was sent in answer to one which I
wrote begging to know if my piece had any chance, as I might make
alterations, &c. I writing on the Monday, there comes this letter on the
Wednesday. Attend.
(_Copy of a Letter from Mr. R'd. Wroughton_)
Sir, Your Piece of Mr. H--I am desired to say, is accepted at Drury Lane
Theatre, by the Proprietors, and, if agreeable to you, will be brought
forwards when the proper opportunity serves--the Piece shall be sent to
you for your Alterations in the course of a few days, as the same is not
in my Hands but with the Proprietors.
(dated) I am Sir,
66 Gower St., Your obedient ser't.,
Wednesday R'd. WROUGHTON.
June 11, 1806.
On the following Sunday Mr. Tobin comes. The scent of a manager's letter
brought him. He would have gone further any day on such a business. I
read the letter to him. He deems it authentic and peremptory. Our
conversation naturally fell upon pieces--different sorts of pieces--what
is the best way of offering a piece--how far the caprice of managers is
an obstacle in the way of a piece--how to judge of the merits of a
piece--how long a piece may remain in the hands of the managers before
it is acted--and my piece--and your piece--and my poor brother's
piece--my poor brother was all his life endeavouring to get a piece
accepted--
I am not sure that when _my poor Brother_ bequeathed the care of his
pieces to Mr. James Tobin he did not therein convey a legacy which in
some measure mollified the otherwise first stupefactions of grief. It
can't be expected that the present Earl Nelson passes all his time in
watering the laurels of the Admiral with Right Reverend Tears. Certainly
he steals a fine day now and then to plot how to lay out the grounds and
mansion at Burnham most suitably to the late Earl's taste, if he had
lived, and how to spend the hundred thousand pound parliament has given
him in erecting some little neat monument to his memory.
MR. H. I wrote that in mere wantonness of triumph. Have nothing more to
say about it. The Managers I thank my stars have decided its merits for
ever. They are the best judges of pieces, and it would be insensible in
me to affect a false modesty after the very flattering letter which I
have received and the ample--
I think this will be as good a pattern for Orders as I can think on. A
little thin flowery border round, neat not gaudy, and the Drury Lane
Apollo with the harp at the top. Or shall I have no Apollo?--simply
nothing? Or perhaps the Comic Muse?
The same form, only I think without the Apollo, will serve for the pit
and galleries. I think it will be best to write my name at full length;
but then if I give away a great many, that will be tedious. Perhaps _Ch.
Lamb_ will do. BOXES now I think on it I'll have in Capitals. The rest
in a neat Italian hand. Or better perhaps, BOXES, in old English
character, like Madoc or Thalaba?
I suppose you know poor Mountague has lost his wife. That has been the
reason for my sending off all we have got of yours separately. I thought
it a bad time to trouble him. The Tea 25 lb. in 5 5 lb. Papers, two
sheets to each, with the chocolate which we were afraid Mrs. W. would
want, comes in one Box and the Hats in a small one. I booked them off
last night by the Kendal waggon. There comes with this letter (no, it
comes a day or two earlier) a Letter for you from the Doctor at Malta,
about Coleridge, just received. Nothing of certainty, you see, only that
he is not at Malta. We supt with the Clarksons one night--Mrs. Clarkson
pretty well. Mr. C. somewhat fidgety, but a good man. The Baby has been
on a visit to Mrs. Charlotte Smith, Novellist and morals-trainer, but is
returned. [_A short passage omitted here._]
Mary is just stuck fast in All's Well that Ends Well. She complains of
having to set forth so many female characters in boy's clothes. She
begins to think Shakspear must have wanted Imagination. I to encourage
her, for she often faints in the prosecution of her great work, flatter
her with telling her how well such a play and such a play is done. But
she is stuck fast and I have been obliged to promise to assist her. To
do this it will be necessary to leave off Tobacco. But I had some
thoughts of doing that before, for I sometimes think it does not agree
with me. W. Hazlitt is in Town. I took him to see a very pretty girl
professedly, where there were two young girls--the very head and sum of
the Girlery was two young girls--they neither laughed nor sneered nor
giggled nor whispered--but they were young girls--and he sat and frowned
blacker and blacker, indignant that there should be such a thing as
Youth and Beauty, till he tore me away before supper in perfect misery
and owned he could not bear young girls. They drove him mad. So I took
him home to my old Nurse, where he recover'd perfect tranquillity.
Independent of this, and as I am not a young girl myself, he is a great
acquisition to us. He is, rather imprudently, I think, printing a
political pamphlet on his own account, and will have to pay for the
paper, &c. The first duty of an Author, I take it, is never to pay
anything. But non cuivis attigit adire Corinthum. The Managers I thank
my stars have settled that question for me.
Yours truly,
C. LAMB.
[Wordsworth's third child, Thomas, who did not grow up, was born June
16, 1806.
"A fine boy!" The quotation is from Mr. H.'s soliloquy after the
discovery of his name:--"No son of mine shall exist, to bear my
ill-fated name. No nurse come chuckling, to tell me it is a boy. No
midwife, leering at me from under the lids of professional gravity. I
dreamed of caudle. (_Sings in a melancholy tone_) Lullaby, Lullaby,--
hush-a-by-baby--how like its papa it is!--(_makes motions as if he was
nursing_). And then, when grown up, 'Is this your son, sir?' 'Yes, sir,
a poor copy of me,--a sad young dog!--just what his father was at his
age,--I have four more at home.' Oh! oh! oh!"
Tobin was James Tobin, whom we have already met, brother of the late
dramatist, John Tobin.
Poor Mountague would be Basil Montagu, whose second wife had just died.
He married afterwards Anne Skepper, whom Lamb came to know well, and of
whom he speaks in his _Elia_ essay "Oxford in the Vacation."
The Doctor was Dr. Stoddart. Coleridge had left Malta some months
before, as we have seen. He had also left Rome and was in some foreign
town unknown, probably not far from Leghorn, whence he sailed for
England in the following month, reaching Portsmouth in August.
The Baby was Mrs. Godwin, and Charlotte Smith was the poetess (of great
fame in her day, but now forgotten), who was then living at Tilford,
near Farnham, in Surrey. She died in the following October. The passage
which I have, with extreme reluctance, omitted, refers to the physical
development of the two ladies. Lamb was writing just then less for
Wordsworth than Antiquity.
Hazlitt's political pamphlet was his _Free Thoughts on Public Affairs_,
1806.]
LETTER 154
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[No date. ? Begun on Friday, July 4, 1806.]
Charles and Hazlitt are going to Sadler's Wells, and I am amusing myself
in their absence with reading a manuscript of Hazlitt's; but have laid
it down to write a few lines, to tell you how we are going on. Charles
has begged a month's hollidays, of which this is the first day, and they
are all to be spent at home. We thank you for your kind invitations, and
were half-inclined to come down to you; but after mature deliberation,
and many wise consultations, such as you know we often hold, we came to
the resolution of staying quietly at home: and during the hollidays we
are both of us to set stoutly to work and finish the Tales, six of them
being yet to do. We thought, if we went anywhere and left them undone,
they would lay upon our minds; and that when we returned, we should feel
unsettled, and our money all spent besides: and next summer we are to be
very rich, and then we can afford a long journey some where, I will not
say to Salisbury, because I really think it is better for you to come to
us; but of that we will talk another time.
The best news I have to send you is, that the Farce is accepted. That is
to say, the manager has written to say it shall be brought out when an
opportunity serves. I hope that it may come out by next Christmas: you
must come and see it the first night; for if it succeeds, it will be a
great pleasure to you, and if it should not, we shall want your
consolation. So you must come.
I shall soon have done my work, and know not what to begin next. Now,
will you set your brains to work and invent a story, either for a short
child's story, or a long one that would make a kind of Novel, or a Story
that would make a play. Charles wants me to write a play, but I am not
over anxious to set about it; but seriously will you draw me out a
skeleton of a story, either from memory of any thing that you have read,
or from your own invention, and I will fill it up in some way or other.
The reason I have not written so long is, that I worked, and worked, in
hopes to get through my task before the hollidays began; but at last I
was not able, for Charles was forced to get them now, or he could not
have had any at all: and having picked out the best stories first, these
latter ones take more time, being more perplext and unmanageable. But
however I hope soon to tell you that they are quite completed. I have
finished one to-day which teazed me more than all the rest put together.
The[y] sometimes plague me as bad as your _Lovers_ do you. How do you go
on, and how many new ones have you had lately?
I met Mrs. Fenwick at Mrs. Holcroft's the other day; she loo[ked very]
placid and smiling, but I was so disconcerted that I hardly knew how to
sit upon my chair. She invited us to come and see her, but we did not
invite her in return; and nothing at all was said in an explanatory
sort: so that matter rests at present.
Mrs. Rickman continues very ill--so ill, that there are no hopes of her
recovery--for which I am very sorry indeed.
I am sorry you are altogether so uncomfortable; I shall be glad to hear
you are settled at Salisbury: that must be better than living in a lone
house, companionless as you are. I wish you could afford to bring your
Mother up to London; but that is quite impossible.
Your brother wrote a letter a week ago (which passed through our hands)
to Wordsworth, to tell him all he knew of Coleridge; but as he had not
heard from C. for some time, there was nothing in the letter we did not
know before.
Thanks for your brother's letters. I preserve them very carefully, and
you shall have them (as the Manager says) when opportunity serves.
Mrs. Wordsworth is brought to bed; and I ought to write to Miss
Wordsworth to thank her for the information, but I suppose I shall defer
it till another child is coming. I do so hate writing letters. I wish
all my friends would come and live in town. Charles has been telling me
even it is better [than] two months that he ought to write to your
brother. [It is not] my dislike to writing letters that prevents my
[writing] to you, but sheer want of time, I assure you, because [I know]
you care not how stupidly I write, so as you do but [hear at the] time
what we are about.
Let me hear from you soon, and do let me hear some [good news,] and
don't let me hear of your walking with sprained ancles again; no
business is an excuse for making yourself lame.
I hope your poor Mother is better, and Aunty and Maid jog on pretty
well; remember me to them all in due form and order. Charles's love, and
our best wishes that all your little busy affairs may come to a
prosperous conclusion.
Yours affectionately,
M. LAMB.
Friday evening.
[_Added later:_--]
They (Hazlitt and Charles) came home from Sadler's Wells so dismal and
dreary dull on Friday, that I gave them both a good scolding--_quite a
setting to rights_; and I think it has done some good, for Charles has
been very chearful ever since. I begin to hope the _home hollidays_ will
go on very well. Mrs. Rickman is better. Rickman we saw at Captain
Burney's for the first time since her illness last night.
Write directly, for I am uneasy about your _Lovers_; I wish something
was settled. God bless you.
Once more, yours affectionately,
M. LAMB.
_Sunday morning [July 6, or more probably 13]_.--I did not put this in
the post, hoping to be able to write a less dull letter to you this
morning; but I have been prevented, so it shall go as it is. I am in
good spirits just at this present time, for Charles has been reading
over the _Tale_ I told you plagued me so much, and he thinks it one of
the very best: it is All's Well that Ends Well. You must not mind the
many wretchedly dull letters I have sent you; for, indeed, I cannot help
it, my mind is so _dry_ always after poring over my work all day. But it
will soon be over.
I am cooking a shoulder of Lamb (Hazlitt dines with us); it will be
ready at two o'Clock, if you can pop in and eat a bit with us.
[The programme at Sadler's Wells on July 4, 1806, was: "Aquatic Theatre,
Sadler's Wells. A new dance called Grist and Puff, or the Highland
Fling. The admired comic pantomime, Harlequin and the Water Kelpe. New
melodramatic Romance, The Invisible Ring; or, The Water Monstre and Fire
Spectre." The author of both was Mr. C. Dibdin, Jun. "Real water."
Mary Lamb's next work, after the _Tales from Shakespear_, was _Mrs.
Leicester's School_. Charles Lamb meanwhile was preparing his _Dramatic
Specimens_ and _Adventures of Ulysses_.
Mrs. Rickman did not die then, She lived until 1836.]
LETTER 155
MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
[P.M. August 29, 1806.]
My dear Miss Wordsworth--After I had put my letter in the post yesterday
I was uneasy all the night because of some few expressions relative to
poor Coleridge--I mean, in saying I wished your brother would come to
town and that I wished your brother would consult Mr. Southey. I am very
sure your brother will take no step in consequence of any foolish advice
that I can give him, so far I am easy, but the painful reflections I
have had during a sleepless night has induced me to write merely to
quiet myself, because I have felt ever since, that in the present
situation of Coleridge, returned after an absence of two years, and
feeling a reluctance to return to his family, I ought not to throw in
the weight of a hair in advising you or your Brother, and that I ought
not to have so much as named to you his reluctance to return to Keswick,
for so little is it in my power to calculate on his actions that perhaps
in a few days he may be on his return home.
You, my dear friend, will perfectly understand me that I do not mean
that I might not freely say to you anything that is upon my mind--but
[the] truth is, my poor mind is so weak that I never dare trust my own
judgement in anything: what I think one hour a fit of low spirits makes
me unthink the next. Yesterday I wrote, anxiously longing for Mr.
Wordsworth and Mr. Southey to endeavour to bring Mrs. C. to consent to a
separation, and to day I think of the letter I received from Mrs.
Coleridge, telling me, as joyful news, that her husband is arrived, and
I feel it very wrong in me even in the remotest degree to do anything to
prevent her seeing that husband--she and her husband being the only
people who ought to be concerned in the affair.
All that I have said, or meant to say, you will perfectly understand, it
being nothing more than to beg you will consider both my letter to day
and yesterday as if you had not read either, they being both equally the
effect of low spirits, brought on by the fatigue of Coleridge's
conversation and the anxious care even to misery which I have felt since
he has been here, that something could be done to make such an admirable
creature happy. Nor has, I assure you, Mrs. Coleridge been without her
full share in adding to my uneasiness. They say she grows fat and is
very happy--and people say I grow fat and look happy--
It is foolish to teize you about my anxieties, you will feel quite
enough on the subject yourself, and your little ones are all ill, and no
doubt you are fatigued with nursing, but I could not help writing to
day, to tell you how what I said yesterday has vext and worried me. Burn
both these foolish letters and do not name the subject of them, because
Charles will either blame me for having written something improper or he
will laugh at me for my foolish fears about nothing.
Though I wish you not to take notice of what I have said, yet I shall
rejoice to see a letter from you, and I hope, when you have half an
hour's leisure, to see a line from you. We have not heard from Coleridge
since he went out of town, but I dare say you have heard either from him
or Mrs. Clarkson.
I remain my dear friend
Yours most affectionately
M. LAMB.
Friday [August 29].
[For the full understanding of Mary Lamb's letter it is necessary to
read Coleridge's Life and his Letters. Coleridge on his return from
abroad reached London August 17, 1806, and took up his quarters with the
Lambs on the following day. He once more joined Stuart, then editing the
_Courier_, but much of his old enthusiasm had gone. In Mr. Dykes
Campbell's words:--
"Almost his first words to Stuart were: 'I am literally afraid, even to
cowardice, to ask for any person, or of any person.' Spite of the
friendliest and most unquestioning welcome from all most dear to him, it
was the saddest of home-comings, for the very sympathy held out with
both hands induced only a bitter, hopeless feeling of remorse--a
"'Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain;--
And genius given, and knowledge won in vain;--'
"of broken promises,--promises to friends and promises to himself; and
above all, sense of a will paralysed--dead perhaps, killed by his own
hand."
Coleridge remained at Lamb's at any rate until August 29, afterwards
taking rooms in the _Courier_ office at 348 Strand. Meanwhile his
reluctance to meet or communicate with his wife was causing his friends
much concern, none more so than Mary Lamb, who wrote at least two
letters filled with anxious sympathy to Dorothy Wordsworth on the
subject, asking for the mediation of Wordsworth or Southey. Her earlier
letter is missing.
To quote Mr. Dykes Campbell again:--
"On September 16--just a month after his landing--he wrote his first
letter to his wife, to say that he might be expected at Greta Hall on
the 29th.
"Before this, Wordsworth had informed Sir George Beaumont that Coleridge
'dare not go home, he recoils so much from the thought of domesticating
with Mrs. Coleridge, with whom, though on many accounts he much respects
her, he is so miserable that he dare not encounter it. What a deplorable
thing! I have written to him to say that if he does not come down
immediately I must insist upon seeing him some-where. If he appoints
London I shall go.
"'I believe if anything good is to be done for him it must be done by
me.'"
"It was this letter of Wordsworth, doubtless, which drew Coleridge to
the North. Dorothy's letter to Lady Beaumont, written on receipt of the
announcement of Coleridge's home-coming, goes copiously and minutely
into the reasons for the estrangement between the poet and his wife.
Miss Wordsworth still had hopes of an improvement. 'Poor soul!' she
writes, 'he had a struggle of many years, striving to bring Mrs. C. to a
change of temper, and something like communion with him in his
enjoyments. He is now, I trust, effectually convinced that he has no
power of that sort,' and may, she thinks, if he will be 'reconciled to
that one great want, want of sympathy,' live at home in peace and quiet.
'Mrs. C. has many excellent properties, as you observe; she is
unremitting in her attention as a nurse to her children, and, indeed, I
believe she would have made an excellent wife to many persons. Coleridge
is as little fitted for her as she for him, and I am truly sorry for
her.'"
It might perhaps be stated here that the separation was agreed upon in
December. At the end of that month Coleridge visited the Wordsworths at
Coleorton with Hartley, and in a few days began to be "more like his old
self"--in Dorothy Wordsworth's phrase.
I append an undated letter which may belong to this period:--]
LETTER 156
MARY LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Dear Coleridge--I have read your silly, very silly, letter, and between
laughing and crying I hardly know how to answer it. You are too serious
and too kind a vast deal, for we are not much used to either seriousness
or kindness from our present friends, and therefore your letter has put
me into a greater hurry of spirits that [? than] your pleasant segar did
last night, for believe me your two odd faces amused me much more than
the mighty transgression vexed me. If Charles had not smoked last night
his virtue would not have lasted longer than tonight, and now perhaps
with a little of your good counsel he will refrain. Be not too serious
if he smokes all the time you are with us--a few chearful evenings spent
with you serves to bear up our spirits many a long and weary year--and
the very being led into the crime by your segar that you thought so
harmless, will serve for our amusement many a dreary time when we can
get no letter nor hear no tidings of you.
You must positively must write to Mrs. Coleridge this day, and you must
write here, that I may know you write, or you must come and dictate a
letter for me to write to her. I know all that you would say in defence
of not writing and I allow in full force everything that [you] can say
or think, but yet a letter from me or you _shall go today_.
I wanted to tell you, but feared to begin the subject, how well your
children are, how Pypos thrives and what a nice child Sara is, and above
all I hear such favourable accounts from Southey, from Wordsworth and
Hazlitt, of Hartley.
I have got Wordsworth's letters out for you to look at, but you shall
not see them or talk of them without you like--Only come here as soon as
you receive this, and I will not teize you about writing, but will
manage a few lines, Charles and I between us. But something like a
letter shall go today.
Come directly
Yours affectionately,
M. LAMB.
LETTER 157
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[P.M. October 23, 1806.]
My dear Sarah--I thank you a thousand times for the beautiful work you
have sent me, I received the parcel from a strange gentleman yesterday.
I like the patterns very much, you have quite set me up in finery, but
you should have sent the silk handkerchief too. Will you make a parcel
of that and send it by the Salisbury coach--I should like to have it in
a few days because we have not yet been to Mr. Babbs and that
handkerchief would suit this time of year nicely.
I have received a long letter from your brother on the subject of your
intended marriage. I have no doubt but you also have one on this
business, therefore it is needless to repeat what he says. I am well
pleased to find that upon the whole he does not seem to see it in an
unfavorable light. He says that, if Mr. D. is a worthy man he shall have
no objection to become the brother of a farmer, and he makes an odd
request to me that I shall set out to Salisbury to look at and examine
into the merits of the said Mr. D., and speaks very confidently as if
you would abide by my determination. A pretty sort of an office
truly.--Shall I come?
The objections he starts are only such as you and I have already talked
over, such as the difference in age, education, habits of life, &c.
You have gone too far in this affair for any interference to be at all
desirable, and if you had not, I really do not know what my wishes would
be. When you bring Mr. Dowling at Christmas I suppose it will be quite
time enough for me to sit in judgement upon him, but my examination will
not be a very severe one. If you fancy a very young man, and he likes an
elderly gentlewoman; if he likes a learned and accomplished lady, and
you like a not very learned youth, who may need a little polishing,
which probably he will never acquire; it is all very well, and God bless
you both together and may you be both very long in the same mind.
I am to assist you too, your brother says, in drawing up the marriage
settlements--another thankful office! I am not, it seems, to suffer you
to keep too much money in your own power, and yet I am to take care of
you in case of bankruptcy &c., and I am to recommend to you, for the
better management of this point, the serious perusal of _Jeremy Taylor_
his opinion on the marriage state, especially his advice against
_separate interests_ in that happy state, and I am also to tell you how
desirable it is that the husband should have the intire direction of all
money concerns, except, as your good brother adds, in the case of his
own family, where the money, he observes, is very properly deposited in
Mrs. Stoddart's hands, she being better suited to enjoy such a trust
than any other woman, and therefore it is fit that the general rule
should not be extended to her.
We will talk over these things when you come to town, and as to
settlements, which are matters of which, I never having had a penny in
my own disposal, I never in my life thought of--and if I had been
blessed with a good fortune, and that marvellous blessing to boot, a
husband, I verily believe I should have crammed it all uncounted into
his pocket--But thou hast a cooler head of thy own, and I dare say will
do exactly what is expedient and proper, but your brother's opinion
seems somewhat like Mr. Barwis's and I dare say you will take it into
due consideration, yet perhaps an offer of your own money to take a farm
may make _uncle_ do less for his nephew, and in that case Mr. D. might
be a loser by your generosity. Weigh all these things well, and if you
can so contrive it, let your brother _settle_ the _settlements_ himself
when he returns, which will most probably be long before you want them.
You are settled, it seems, in the very house which your brother most
dislikes. If you find this house very inconvenient, get out of it as
fast as you can, for your brother says he sent you the fifty pound to
make you comfortable, and by the general tone of his letter I am sure he
wishes to make you easy in money matters: therefore why straiten
yourself to pay the debt you owe him, which I am well assured he never
means to take? Thank you for the letter and for the picture of pretty
little chubby nephew John.
I have been busy making waistcoats and plotting new work to succeed the
Tales. As yet I have not hit upon any thing to my mind.
Charles took an emendated copy of his farce to Mr. Wroughton the Manager
yesterday. Mr. Wroughton was very friendly to him, and expressed high
approbation of the farce, but there are two, he tells him, to come out
before it, yet he gave him hopes that it will come out this season, but
I am afraid you will not see it by Christmas. It will do for another
jaunt for you in the spring. We are pretty well and in fresh spirits
about this farce. Charles has been very good lately in the matter of
_Smoking_.
When you come bring the gown you wish to sell. Mrs. Coleridge will be in
town then, and if she happens not to fancy it, perhaps some other person
may.
Coleridge I believe is gone home; he left us with that design but we
have not heard from him this fortnight.
Louisa sends her love; she has been very unwell lately.
My respects to Coridon, Mother, and Aunty.
Farewel, my best wishes are with you.
Yours affectionately,
M. LAMB.
Thursday.
When I saw what a prodigious quantity of work you had put into the
finery I was quite ashamed of my unreasonable request, I will never
serve you so again, but I do dearly love worked muslin.
[Sarah Stoddart now had a new lover, Mr. Dowling, to whom she seems
actually to have become engaged. Mr. Barwis, I presume, was Mr.
Dowling's uncle. Coridon would, I imagine, be Mr. Dowling.]
LETTER 158
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
5th Dec., 1806.
Tuthill is at Crabtree's who has married Tuthill's sister.
Manning, your letter dated Hottentots, August the what-was-it? came to
hand. I can scarce hope that mine will have the same luck. China--
Canton--bless us--how it strains the imagination and makes it ache! I
write under another uncertainty, whether it can go to-morrow by a ship
which I have just learned is going off direct to your part of the world,
or whether the despatches may not be sealed up and this have to wait,
for if it is detained here, it will grow staler in a fortnight than in a
five months' voyage coming to you. It will be a point of conscience to
send you none but brand-new news (the latest edition), which will but
grow the better, like oranges, for a sea voyage. Oh, that you should be
so many hemispheres off--if I speak incorrectly you can correct me--why,
the simplest death or marriage that takes place here must be important
to you as news in the old Bastile. There's your friend Tuthill has got
away from France--you remember France? and Tuthill?--ten-to-one but he
writes by this post, if he don't get my note in time, apprising him of
the vessel sailing. Know then that he has found means to obtain leave
from Bonaparte without making use of any _incredible romantic pretences_
as some have done, who never meant to fulfil them, to come home; and I
have seen him here and at Holcroft's. I have likewise seen his wife,
this elegant little French woman whose hair reaches to her heels--by the
same token that Tom (Tommy H.) took the comb out of her head, not
expecting the issue, and it fell down to the ground to his utter
consternation, two ells long. An't you glad about Tuthill? Now then be
sorry for Holcroft, whose new play, called "The Vindictive Man," was
damned about a fortnight since. It died in part of its own weakness, and
in part for being choked up with bad actors. The two principal parts
were destined to Mrs. Jordan and Mr. Bannister, but Mrs. J. has not come
to terms with the managers, they have had some squabble, and Bannister
shot some of his fingers off by the going off of a gun. So Miss Duncan
had her part, and Mr. de Camp, a vulgar brother of Miss De Camp, took
his. He is a fellow with the make of a jockey, and the air of a
lamplighter. His part, the principal comic hope of the play, was most
unluckily Goldfinch, taken out of the "Road to Ruin," not only the same
character, but the identical Goldfinch--the same as Falstaff is in two
plays of Shakspeare. As the devil of ill-luck would have it, half the
audience did not know that H. had written it, but were displeased at his
stealing from the "Road to Ruin;" and those who might have borne a
gentlemanly coxcomb with his "That's your sort," "Go it"--such as Lewis
is--did not relish the intolerable vulgarity and inanity of the idea
stript of his manner. De Camp was hooted, more than hist, hooted and
bellowed off the stage before the second act was finished, so that the
remainder of his part was forced to be, with some violence to the play,
omitted. In addition to this, a whore was another principal character--a
most unfortunate choice in this moral day. The audience were as
scandalised as if you were to introduce such a personage to their
private tea-tables. Besides, her action in the play was gross--wheedling
an old man into marriage. But the mortal blunder of the play was that
which, oddly enough, H. took pride in, and exultingly told me of the
night before it came out, that there were no less than eleven principal
characters in it, and I believe he meant of the men only, for the
play-bill exprest as much, not reckoning one woman and one whore; and
true it was, for Mr. Powell, Mr. Raymond, Mr. Bartlett, Mr. H. Siddons,
Mr. Barrymore, &c. &c.,--to the number of eleven, had all parts equally
prominent, and there was as much of them in quantity and rank as of the
hero and heroine--and most of them gentlemen who seldom appear but as
the hero's friend in a farce--for a minute or two--and here they all had
their ten-minute speeches, and one of them gave the audience a serious
account how he was now a lawyer but had been a poet, and then a long
enumeration of the inconveniences of authorship, rascally booksellers,
reviewers, &c.; which first set the audience a-gaping; but I have said
enough. You will be so sorry, that you will not think the best of me for
my detail; but news is news at Canton. Poor H. I fear will feel the
disappointment very seriously in a pecuniary light. From what I can
learn he has saved nothing. You and I were hoping one day that he had;
but I fear he has nothing but his pictures and books, and a no very
flourishing business, and to be obliged to part with his long-necked
Guido that hangs opposite as you enter, and the game-piece that hangs in
the back drawing-room, and all those Vandykes, &c.! God should temper
the wind to the shorn connoisseur. I hope I need not say to you, that I
feel for the weather-beaten author and for all his household. I assure
you his fate has soured a good deal the pleasure I should have otherwise
taken in my own little farce being accepted, and I hope about to be
acted--it is in rehearsal actually, and I expect it to come out next
week. It is kept a sort of secret, and the rehearsals have gone on
privately, lest by many folks knowing it, the story should come out,
which would infallibly damn it. You remember I had sent it before you
went. Wroughton read it, and was much pleased with it. I speedily got an
answer. I took it to make alterations, and lazily kept it some months,
then took courage and furbished it up in a day or two and took it. In
less than a fortnight I heard the principal part was given to Elliston,
who liked it, and only wanted a prologue, which I have since done and
sent; and I had a note the day before yesterday from the manager,
Wroughton (bless his fat face--he is not a bad actor in some things), to
say that I should be summoned to the rehearsal after the next, which
next was to be yesterday. I had no idea it was so forward. I have had no
trouble, attended no reading or rehearsal, made no interest; what a
contrast to the usual parade of authors! But it is peculiar to modesty
to do all things without noise or pomp! I have some suspicion it will
appear in public on Wednesday next, for W. says in his note, it is so
forward that if wanted it may come out next week, and a new melo-drama
is announced for every day till then: and "a new farce is in rehearsal,"
is put up in the bills. Now you'd like to know the subject. The title is
"Mr. H.," no more; how simple, how taking! A great H. sprawling over the
play-bill and attracting eyes at every corner. The story is a coxcomb
appearing at Bath, vastly rich--all the ladies dying for him--all
bursting to know who he is--but he goes by no other name than Mr. H.--a
curiosity like that of the dames of Strasburg about the man with the
great nose. But I won't tell you any more about it. Yes, I will; but I
can't give you an idea how I have done it. I'll just tell you that after
much vehement admiration, when his true name comes out, "Hogsflesh," all
the women shun him, avoid him, and not one can be found to change their
name for him--that's the idea--how flat it is here!--but how whimsical
in the farce! and only think how hard upon me it is that the ship is
despatched to-morrow, and my triumph cannot be ascertained till the
Wednesday after--but all China will ring of it by and by. N.B. (But this
is a secret). The Professor has got a tragedy coming out with the young
Roscius in it in January next, as we say--January last it will be with
you--and though it is a profound secret now, as all his affairs are, it
cannot be much of one by the time you read this. However, don't let it
go any further. I understand there are dramatic exhibitions in China.
One would not like to be forestalled. Do you find in all this stuff I
have written anything like those feelings which one should send my old
adventuring friend, that is gone to wander among Tartars and may never
come again? I don't--but your going away, and all about you, is a
threadbare topic. I have worn it out with thinking--it has come to me
when I have been dull with anything, till my sadness has seemed more to
have come from it than to have introduced it. I want you, you don't know
how much--but if I had you here in my European garret, we should but
talk over such stuff as I have written--so--. Those "Tales from
Shakespear" are near coming out, and Mary has begun a new work. Mr. Dawe
is turned author: he has been in such a way lately--Dawe the painter, I
mean--he sits and stands about at Holcroft's and says nothing--then
sighs and leans his head on his hand. I took him to be in love--but it
seems he was only meditating a work,--"The Life of Morland,"--the young
man is not used to composition. Rickman and Captain Burney are well;
they assemble at my house pretty regularly of a Wednesday--a new
institution. Like other great men I have a public day, cribbage and
pipes, with Phillips and noisy Martin.
Good Heaven! what a bit only I've got left! How shall I squeeze all I
know into this morsel! Coleridge is come home, and is going to turn
lecturer on taste at the Royal Institution. I shall get £200 from the
theatre if "Mr. H." has a good run, and I hope £100 for the copyright.
Nothing if it fails; and there never was a more ticklish thing. The
whole depends on the manner in which the name is brought out, which I
value myself on, as a _chef-d'oeuvre_. How the paper grows less and
less! In less than two minutes I shall cease to talk to you, and you may
rave to the Great Wall of China. N.B. Is there such a wall! Is it as big
as Old London Wall by Bedlam? Have you met with a friend of mine, named
Ball, at Canton?--if you are acquainted, remember me kindly to him.
Amongst many queer cattle I have and do meet with at the India Ho. I
always liked his behaviour. Tell him his friend Evans &c. are well.
Woodruff not dead yet. May-be, you'll think I have not said enough of
Tuthill and the Holcrofts. Tuthill is a noble fellow, as far as I can
judge. The Holcrofts bear their disappointment pretty well, but indeed
they are sadly mortified. Mrs. H. is cast down. It was well, if it were
but on this account, that Tuthill is come home. N.B. If my little thing
don't succeed, I shall easily survive, having, as it were, compared to
H.'s venture, but a sixteenth in the lottery. Mary and I are to sit next
the orchestra in the pit, next the tweedledees. She remembers you. You
are more to us than five hundred farces, clappings, &c.
Come back one day. C. LAMB.
[The letter is addressed to T. Manning, Esq., Canton. At the end Lamb
adds:--
"Holcroft has just writ to me as follows:--
"'DEAR SIR, Miss L. has informed us you are writing to Manning. Will you
be kind enough to inform him directly from me that I and my family are
most truly anxious for his safety; that if praying could bring down
blessings on him we should pray morning noon and night; that his and our
good friends the Tuthills are once more happily safe in England, and
that I earnestly entreat not only a single letter but a correspondence
with him whenever the thing [is] practicable, with such an address as
may make letters from me likely to find him. In short, dear sir, if you
will be kind enough to speak of me to Manning, you cannot speak with
greater friendship and respect than I feel.
"'Yours with true friendship and kindness.'"
In the beginning of this letter we see the first germ of an idea
afterwards developed in the letter to Barren Field of August 31, 1817,
and again, more fully, in the _Elia_ essay "Distant Correspondents."
Tuthill, afterwards Sir George Leman Tuthill (1772-1835), was the
physician who, on a visit to Paris, was included among the English
_détenus_ and held a captive for several years. He was released only
after his wife had made a personal appeal to Napoleon on his return from
hunting. The words "incredible romantic pretences" refer chaffingly to
Manning's application to Napoleon for liberty to return to England two
or three years previously. Holcroft's "Vindictive Man" was produced at
Drury Lane on November 20, 1806. It was a complete failure. His "Road to
Ruin," produced in 1792 at Covent Garden, with "Gentleman" Lewis as
Goldfinch, had been a great success and is still occasionally played.
Holcroft was also a very voluminous author and translator, and the
partner of his brother-in-law, Mercier, in a printing business, which,
however, was unprofitable. Tommy was Holcroft's son.
"The dames of Strasburg"--in _Tristram Shandy_, Vol. IV.
"The Professor has a tragedy." This was "Faulkener," for which Lamb
wrote the prologue. Owing to the capriciousness of Master Betty, the
Young Roscius, it was not produced until December 16, 1807, and then
with Elliston in the principal part. It was only partially successful, a
result for which Godwin blamed Holcroft, who had revised the play.
Mary Lamb's new work was Mrs. Leicester's School.
"Mr. Dawe is turned author." The Life of George Morland, by George Dawe,
was published in 1807.
Coleridge's intended series of lectures on Taste was abandoned. He did
not actually deliver any until January 12, 1808.]
LETTER 159
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: December 11, 1806.]
Mary's Love to all of you--I wouldn't let her write--
Dear Wordsworth, Mr. H. came out last night and failed.
I had many fears; the subject was not substantial enough. John Bull must
have solider fare than a _Letter_. We are pretty stout about it, have
had plenty of condoling friends, but after all, we had rather it should
have succeeded. You will see the Prologue in most of the Morning Papers.
It was received with such shouts as I never witness'd to a Prologue. It
was attempted to be encored. How hard! a thing I did merely as a task,
because it was wanted--and set no great store by; and Mr. H.----!!
The quantity of friends we had in the house, my brother and I being in
Public Offices &c., was astonishing--but they yielded at length to a few
hisses. A hundred hisses--damn the word, I write it like kisses--how
different--a hundred hisses outweigh a 1000 Claps. The former come more
directly from the Heart--Well, 'tis withdrawn and there is an end.
Better Luck to us--
C. L.
11 Dec.--(turn over).
P.S. Pray when any of you write to the Clarksons, give our kind Loves,
and say we shall not be able to come and see them at Xmas--as I shall
have but a day or two,--and tell them we bear our mortification pretty
well.
["Mr. H." was produced at Drury Lane on December 10, with Elliston in
the title-role. Lamb's account of the evening is supplemented by Hazlitt
in his essay "On Great and Little Things" and by Crabb Robinson, a new
friend whom he had just made, in his _Diary_. See Vol. IV. of this
edition. The curious thing is that the management of Drury Lane
advertised the farce as a success and announced it for the next night.
But Lamb apparently interfered and it was not played again. Some few
years later "Mr. H." was performed acceptably in America.]
LETTER 160
CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
December 11 [1806].
Don't mind this being a queer letter. I am in haste, and taken up by
visitors, condolers, &c. God bless you!
Dear Sarah,--Mary is a little cut at the ill success of "Mr. H.," which
came out last night and _failed_. I know you'll be sorry, but never
mind. We are determined not to be cast down. I am going to leave off
tobacco, and then we must thrive. A smoking man must write smoky farces.
Mary is pretty well, but I persuaded her to let me write. We did not
apprise you of the coming out of "Mr. H." for fear of ill-luck. You were
much better out of the house. If it had taken, your partaking of our
good luck would have been one of our greatest joys. As it is, we shall
expect you at the time you mentioned. But whenever you come you shall be
most welcome.
God bless you, dear Sarah,
Yours most truly, C. L.
Mary is by no means unwell, but I made her let me write.
[Following this should come a letter from Mary Lamb to Mrs. Thomas
Clarkson, dated December 23, 1806. It again describes the ill success of
"Mr. H." "The blame rested chiefly with Charles and yet it should not be
called blame for it was mere ignorance of stage effect ... he seems
perfectly aware why and for what cause it failed. He intends to write
one more with all his dearly bought experience in his head, and should
that share same fate he will then turn his mind to some other pursuit."
Lamb did not write another farce for many years. When he did--"The
Pawnbroker's Daughter" (see Vol. IV.)--it deservedly was not acted.]
LETTER 161
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
[No date. ? 1806.]
I repent. Can that God whom thy votaries say that thou hast demolished
expect more? I did indite a splenetic letter, but did the black
Hypocondria never gripe _thy_ heart, till them hast taken a friend for
an enemy? The foul fiend Flibbertigibbet leads me over four inched
bridges, to course my own shadow for a traitor. There are certain
positions of the moon, under which I counsel thee not to take anything
written from this domicile as serious.
_I_ rank thee with Alves, Latinè Helvetius, or any of his cursed crew?
Thou art my friend, and henceforth my philosopher--thou shall teach
Distinction to the junior branches of my household, and Deception to the
greyhaired Janitress at my door.
What! Are these atonements? Can Arcadians be brought upon knees,
creeping and crouching?
Come, as Macbeth's drunken porter says, knock, knock, knock, knock,
knock, knock, knock--seven times in a day shall thou batter at my peace,
and if I shut aught against thee, save the Temple of Janus, may
Briareus, with his hundred hands, in each a brass knocker, lead me such
a life.
C. LAMB.
[I cannot account for this letter in the absence of its predecessor and
that from Godwin to which it replies.]
LETTER 162
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: January 29, 1807.]
Dear Wordsworth--
We have book'd off from Swan and Two Necks, Lad Lane, this day (per
Coach) the Tales from Shakespear. You will forgive the plates, when I
tell you they were left to the direction of Godwin, who left the choice
of subjects to the bad baby, who from mischief (I suppose) has chosen
one from damn'd beastly vulgarity (vide Merch. Venice) where no atom of
authority was in the tale to justify it--to another has given a name
which exists not in the tale, Nic Bottom, and which she thought would be
funny, though in this I suspect _his_ hand, for I guess her reading does
not reach far enough to know Bottom's Xtian name--and one of Hamlet, and
Grave digging, a scene which is not hinted at in the story, and you
might as well have put King Canute the Great reproving his courtiers--
the rest are Giants and Giantesses. Suffice it, to save our taste and
damn our folly, that we left it all to a friend W. G.--who in the first
place cheated me into putting a name to them, which I did not mean, but
do not repent, and then wrote a puff about their _simplicity_, &c., to
go with the advertisement as in my name! Enough of this egregious
dupery.--I will try to abstract the load of teazing circumstances from
the Stories and tell you that I am answerable for Lear, Macbeth, Timon,
Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, for occasionally a tail piece or correction of
grammar, for none of the cuts and all of the spelling. The rest is my
Sister's.--We think Pericles of hers the best, and Othello of mine--but
I hope all have some good. As You Like It we like least.
So much, only begging you to tear out the cuts and give them to Johnny,
as "Mrs. Godwin's fancy."
C. L.
Thursday,
29 Jan., 1807.
Our Love to all.
I had almost forgot,
My part of the Preface begins in the middle of a sentence, in last but
one page after a colon thus
:--_which if they be happily so done &c_.
the former part hath a more feminine turn and does hold me up something
as an instructor to young Ladies: but upon my modesty's honour I wrote
it not.
Godwin told My Sister that the Baby chose the Subjects. A fact in Taste.
[Lamb has run his pen lightly through "God bless me," at the beginning
of the postscript.
The plates to the _Tales from Shakespear_ will be found reproduced in
facsimile in Vol. III. of my large edition. They were designed probably
by Mulready.
An interval of nine months occurs before we come to another letter of
the date of which we can be certain. Of what happened in this time, we
know little or nothing, but I think it probable that the following
hitherto unpublished letter from Charles Lamb to the Clarksons explains
part of the long silence. The postmark gives no year, but it must be
either 1807 or 1808, and since the _Dramatic Specimens_ herein referred
to as in preparation were published in 1808, we may confidently assume
it to be 1807. The letter tells its own story only too clearly: the
Lambs had been on a visit to the Clarksons at Bury St. Edmunds; Mary
Lamb had again fallen ill while there; and her brother had just left her
once more at her Hoxton Asylum.]
LETTER 163
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS AND CATHERINE CLARKSON
[P.M. June (1807).]
Dear Mr. & Mrs. Clarkson, you will wish to know how we performed our
journey. My sister was tolerably quiet until we got to Chelmsford, where
she began to be very bad indeed, as your friends William Knight and his
family can tell you when you see them. What I should have done without
their kindness I don't know, but among other acts of great attention,
they provided me with a waistcoat to confine her arms, by the help of
which we went through the rest of our journey. But sadly tired and
miserably depressed she was before we arrived at Hoxton. We got there
about half past eight; and now 'tis all over, I have great satisfaction
that she is among people who have been used to her. In all probability a
few months or even weeks will restore her (her last illness confined her
ten weeks) but if she does recover I shall be very careful how I take
her so far from home again. I am so fatigued, for she talked in the most
wretched desponding way conceivable, particularly the last three stages,
she talked all the way,--so that you won't expect me to say much, or
even to express myself as I should do in thanks for your kindnesses. My
sister will acknowledge them when she can.--
I shall not have heard how she is to day until too late for the Post,
but if any great change takes place for better or worse, I shall
certainly let you know.
She tells me something about having given away one of my coats to your
servant. It is a new one, and perhaps may be of small use to him. If you
can get it me again, I shall very willingly give him a compensation. I
shall also be much obliged by your sending in a parcel all the
manuscripts, books &c. she left behind. I want in particular the
Dramatic Extracts, as my purpose is to make use of the remainder of my
holydays in completing them at the British Museum, which will be
employment & money in the end.
I am exceedingly harrassed with the journey, but that will go off in a
day or two, and I will set to work. I know you will grieve for us, but I
hope my sister's illness is not worse than many she has got through
before. Only I am afraid the fatigue of the journey may affect her
general health. You shall have notice how she goes on. In the mean time,
accept our kindest thanks.
[_Signature cut off_.]
LETTER 164
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[No date. Endorsed Oct., 1807.]
My dear Sarah,--I am two letters in your debt; but it has not been so
much from idleness, as a wish first to see how your comical love affair
would turn out. You know, I make a pretence not to interfere; but like
all old maids I feel a mighty solicitude about the event of love
stories. I learn from the Lover that he has not been so remiss in his
duty as you supposed. His Effusion, and your complaints of his
inconstancy, crossed each other on the road. He tells me his was a very
strange letter, and that probably it has affronted you. That it was a
strange letter I can readily believe; but that you were affronted by a
strange letter is not so easy for me to conceive, that not being your
way of taking things. But however it be, let some answer come, either to
him, or else to me, showing cause why you do not answer him. And pray,
by all means, preserve the said letter, that I may one day have the
pleasure of seeing how Mr. Hazlitt treats of love.
I was at your brother's on Thursday. Mrs. S. tells me she has not
written, because she does not like to put you to the expense of postage.
They are very well. Little Missy thrives amazingly. Mrs. Stoddart
conjectures she is in the family way again; and those kind of
conjectures generally prove too true. Your other sister-in-law, Mrs.
Hazlitt, was brought to bed last week of a boy: so that you are likely
to have plenty of nephews and nieces.
Yesterday evening we were at Rickman's; and who should we find there but
Hazlitt; though, if you do not know it was his first invitation there,
it will not surprise you as much as it did us. We were very much
pleased, because we dearly love our friends to be respected by our
friends.
The most remarkable events of the evening were, that we had a very fine
pine-apple; that Mr. Phillips, Mr. Lamb, and Mr. Hazlitt played at
Cribbage in the most polite and gentlemanly manner possible--and that I
won two rubbers at whist.
I am glad Aunty left you some business to do. Our compliments to her and
your Mother. Is it as cold at Winterslow as it is here? How do the Lions
go on? I am better, and Charles is tolerably well. Godwin's new Tragedy
will probably be damned the latter end of next week. Charles has written
the Prologue. Prologues and Epilogues will be his death. If you know the
extent of Mrs. Reynolds' poverty, you will be glad to hear Mr. Norris
has got ten pounds a year for her from the Temple Society. She will be
able to make out pretty well now.
Farewell--Determine as wisely as you can in regard to Hazlitt; and, if
your determination is to have him, Heaven send you many happy years
together. If I am not mistaken, I have concluded letters on the Corydon
Courtship with this same wish. I hope it is not ominous of change; for
if I were sure you would not be quite starved to death, nor beaten to a
mummy, I should like to see Hazlitt and you come together, if (as
Charles observes) it were only for the joke sake.
Write instantly to me.
Yours most affectionately,
M. LAMB.
Saturday morning.
[The reference to Godwin's tragedy, "Faulkener," which was produced on
December 16, 1807, would indicate a later date, except that that play
was so frequently postponed.
The Lover this time is, at last, William Hazlitt. Miss Stoddart was not
his first love; some time before he had wished to marry a Miss Railton
of Liverpool; then, in the Lakes, he had had passages with a farmer's
daughter involving a ducking at the hands of jealous rivals; while De
Quincey would have us believe that Hazlitt proposed to Dorothy
Wordsworth. But it was Sarah Stoddart whom he was destined to marry. A
specimen of Hazlitt's love letters (which Mary Lamb wished to see) will
be found in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt's _Memoirs of William Hazlitt_, Vol. I.,
page 153. The marriage turned out anything but a joke.
Mrs. Reynolds' poverty was in later years further relieved by an annuity
of £30 from Charles Lamb.]
LETTER 165
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
Dec. 21, 1807.
My dear Sarah,--I have deferred answering your last letter, in hopes of
being able to give you some intelligence that might be useful to you;
for I every day expected that Hazlitt or you would communicate the
affair to your brother; but, as the Doctor is silent upon the subject, I
conclude he yet knows nothing of the matter. You desire my advice; and
therefore I tell you I think you ought to tell your brother as soon as
possible; for, at present, he is on very friendly visiting terms with
Hazlitt, and, if he is not offended by a too long concealment, will do
every thing in his power to serve you. If you chuse that I should tell
him, I will; but I think it would come better from you. If you can
persuade Hazlitt to mention it, that would be still better; for I know
your brother would be unwilling to give credit to you, because you
deceived yourself in regard to Corydon. Hazlitt, I know, is shy of
speaking first; but I think it of such great importance to you to have
your brother friendly in the business, that, if you can overcome his
reluctance, it would be a great point gained. For you must begin the
world with ready money--at least an hundred pound; for, if you once go
into furnished lodgings, you will never be able to lay by money to buy
furniture.
If you obtain your brother's approbation, he might assist you, either by
lending or otherwise. I have a great opinion of his generosity, where he
thinks it would be useful.
Hazlitt's brother is mightily pleased with the match; but he says you
must have furniture, and be clear in the world at first setting out, or
you will be always behindhand. He also said he would give you what
furniture he could spare. I am afraid you can bring but few things away
from your house. What a pity that you have laid out so much money on
your cottage!--that money would have just done. I most heartily
congratulate you on having so well got over your first difficulties;
and, now that it is quite settled, let us have no more fears. I now mean
not only to hope and wish, but to persuade myself, that you will be very
happy together.
Endeavour to keep your mind as easy as you can. You ought to begin the
world with a good stock of health and spirits: it is quite as necessary
as ready money at first setting out. Do not teize yourself about coming
to town. When your brother learns how things are going on, we shall
consult him about meetings and so forth; but, at present, any hasty step
of that kind would not answer, I know. If Hazlitt were to go down to
Salisbury, or you were to come up here, without consulting your brother,
you know it would never do.
Charles is just come in to dinner; he desires his love and best wishes.
Yours affectionately,
M. LAMB.
Monday morning.
[Our next letter shows that when Dr. Stoddart was at length told of the
engagement he resented it.
We now come to two curious letters from Charles Lamb to Joseph Hume, not
available for this edition, which are printed by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in
_Lamb and Hazlitt_. The first, dated December 29, 1807, contains the
beginning of an elaborate hoax maintained by Lamb and Hume (who was
Joseph Hume, a clerk in the Victualling Office at Somerset House, and
the author of a translation of Tasso), in which Hazlitt, although the
victim, played his part. Lamb asserts that Hazlitt has cut his throat.
He also incidentally regrets that he cannot accept an invitation to dine
with Hume: "Cold bones of mutton and leather-roasted potatoes at Pimlico
at ten must carry it away from a certain Turkey and contingent
plumb-pudding at Montpelier at four (I always spell plumb-pudding with a
_b_, p-l-u-m-_b_--) I think it reads fatter and more suetty."
In reply to this letter came one from Hume, dated January 11, 1808,
referring to a humble petition and remonstrance by Hazlitt, dated
January 10, 1808, showing that he is not dead. The petition will be
found in full in _Lamb and Hazlitt_. It ends thus:--
"With all the sincerity of a man doubtful between life and death, the
petitioner declares that he looks upon the said Charles Lamb as the
ring-leader in this unjust conspiracy against him, and as the sole cause
and author of the jeopardy he is in: but that as losers have leave to
speak, he must say, that, if it were not for a poem he wrote on Tobacco
about two years ago, a farce called Mr. H----- he brought out last
winter with more wit than discretion in it, some prologues and epilogues
he has since written with good success, and some lively notes he is at
present writing on dead authors, he sees no reason why he should not be
considered as much a dead man as himself, and the undertaker spoken to
accordingly."
The next letter, dated January 12, 1808, carrying on the joke, consists
of speculations as to Hazlitt's reappearance. Lamb remarks that the
commonest reason for the return of the spirits of the dead is the desire
to reveal hidden treasures which they had hoarded in their lifetime. He
destroys this theory in the case of Hazlitt in the following passage:--
"I for my part always looked upon our dear friend as a man rich rather
in the gifts of his mind than in earthly treasures. He had few rents or
comings in, that I was ever aware of, small (if any) landed property,
and by all that I could witness he subsisted more upon the well-timed
contributions of a few chosen friends who knew his worth, than upon any
Estate which could properly be called his own. I myself have contributed
my part. God knows, I speak not this in reproach. I have never taken,
nor indeed did the Deceased offer, any _written acknowledgments_ of the
various sums which he has had of me, by which I could make the fact
manifest to the legal eye of an Executor or Administrator. He was not a
Man to affect these niceties in his transactions with his friends. He
would often say, Money was nothing between intimate acquaintances, that
Golden Streams had no Ebb, that a Purse mouth never regorged, that God
loved a chearful giver but the Devil hated a free taker, that a paid
Loan makes angels groan, with many such like sayings: he had always free
and generous notions about money. His nearest friends know this best."
Continuing the subject of the return of Spirits, Lamb decides that it
must be with the wish to establish some speculative point in religion.
"But whatever the cause of this re-appearance may prove to be, we may
now with truth assert that our deceased friend has attained to one
object of his pursuits, one hour's separate existence gives a dead man
clearer notions of metaphysics than all the treatises which in his state
of casual entanglement the least immersed spirit can out-spin. It is
good to leave such subjects to that period when we shall have no Heads
to ache, no brains to distort, no faces to lengthen, no clothes to
neglect."]
LETTER 166
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[P.M. February 12, 1808.]
My dear Sarah,--I have sent your letter and drawing off to Wm. Hazlitt's
father's in Shropshire, where I conjecture Hazlitt is. He left town on
Saturday afternoon, without telling us where he was going. He seemed
very impatient at not hearing from you. He was very ill and I suppose is
gone home to his father's to be nursed.
I find Hazlitt has mentioned to you an intention which we had of asking
you up to town, which we were bent on doing, but having named it since
to your brother, the Doctor expressed a strong desire that you should
not come to town to be at any other house than his own, for he said that
it would have a very strange appearance. His wife's father is coming to
be with them till near the end of April, after which time he shall have
full room for you. And if you are to be married, he wishes that you
should be married with all the proper decorums, _from his house_. Now
though we should be willing to run any hazards of disobliging him, if
there were no other means of your and Hazlitt's meeting, yet as he seems
so friendly to the match, it would not be worth while to alienate him
from you and ourselves too, for the slight accommodation which the
difference of a few weeks would make, provided always, and be it
understood, that if you, and H. make up your minds to be married before
the time in which you can be at your brother's, our house stands open
and most ready at a moment's notice to receive you. Only we would not
quarrel unnecessarily with your brother. Let there be a clear necessity
shewn, and we will quarrel with any body's brother. Now though I have
written to the above effect, I hope you will not conceive, but that both
my brother & I had looked forward to your coming with unmixed pleasure,
and we are really disappointed at your brother's declaration, for next
to the pleasure of being married, is the pleasure of making, or helping
marriages forward.
We wish to hear from you, that you do not take the _seeming change_ of
purpose in ill part; for it is but seeming on our part; for it was my
brother's suggestion, by him first mentioned to Hazlitt, and cordially
approved by me; but your brother has set his face against it, and it is
better to take him along with us, in our plans, if he will
good-naturedly go along with us, than not.
The reason I have not written lately has been that I thought it better
to leave you all to the workings of your own minds in this momentous
affair, in which the inclinations of a bye-stander have a right to form
a wish, but not to give a vote.
Being, with the help of wide lines, at the end of my last page, I
conclude with our kind wishes, and prayers for the best.
Yours affectionately,
M. LAMB.
H.'s direction is (if he is there) at Wem in Shropshire. I suppose as
letters must come to London first, you had better inclose them, while he
is there, for my brother in London.
[The drawing referred to, says Mr. W.C. Hazlitt, was a sketch of
Middleton Cottage, Miss Stoddart's house at Winterslow (see next
letter).]
LETTER 167
CHARLES LAMB TO THE REV. W. HAZLITT
Temple, 18th February, 1808.
Sir,--I am truly concerned that any mistake of mine should have caused
you uneasiness, but I hope we have got a clue to William's absence,
which may clear up all apprehensions. The people where he lodges in town
have received direction from him to forward one or two of his shirts to
a place called Winterslow, in the county of Hants [Wilts] (not far from
Salisbury), where the lady lives whose Cottage, pictured upon a card, if
you opened my letter you have doubtless seen, and though we have had no
explanation of the mystery since, we shrewdly suspect that at the time
of writing that Letter which has given you all this trouble, a certain
son of yours (who is both Painter and Author) was at her elbow, and did
assist in framing that very Cartoon which was sent to amuse and mislead
us in town, as to the real place of his destination.
And some words at the back of the said Cartoon, which we had not marked
so narrowly before, by the similarity of the handwriting to William's,
do very much confirm the suspicion. If our theory be right, they have
had the pleasure of their jest, and I am afraid you have paid for it in
anxiety. But I hope your uneasiness will now be removed, and you will
pardon a suspense occasioned by LOVE, who does so many worse mischiefs
every day.
The letter to the people where William lodges says, moreover, that he
shall be in town in a fortnight.
My sister joins in respects to you and Mrs. Hazlitt, and in our kindest
remembrances and wishes for the restoration of Peggy's health.
I am, Sir, your humble serv't.,
CH. LAMB.
[The Rev. William Hazlitt, Hazlitt's father (1737-1820), was a Unitarian
minister at Wem, in Shropshire, the son of an Irish Protestant.
Hazlitt's mother was Grace Loftus of Wisbech, a farmer's daughter.
Sarah Stoddart's letter containing the drawing referred to had been sent
by the Lambs to William Hazlitt at Wem, whereas Hazlitt, instead of
seeking his father's roof as arranged, had sought his betrothed's, and
had himself helped in the mystification.
Peggy was Hazlitt's only sister.]
LETTER 168
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[Dated at end: 26 February, 1808.]
Dear Missionary,--Your letters from the farthest ends of the world have
arrived safe. Mary is very thankful for your remembrance of her, and
with the less suspicion of mercenariness, as the silk, the _symbolum
materiale_ of your friendship, has not yet appeared. I think Horace says
somewhere, _nox longa_. I would not impute negligence or unhandsome
delays to a person whom you have honoured with your confidence; but I
have not heard of the silk, or of Mr. Knox, save by your letter. Maybe
he expects the first advances! or it may be that he has not succeeded in
getting the article on shore, for it is among the _res prohibitae et non
nisi smuggle-ationis viá fruendae_. But so it is, in the friendships
between _wicked men_, the very expressions of their good-will cannot but
be sinful. _Splendida vitia_ at best. Stay, while I remember it--Mrs.
Holcroft was safely delivered of a girl some day in last week. Mother
and child doing well. Mr. Holcroft has been attack'd with severe
rheumatism. They have moved to Clipstone Street. I suppose you know my
farce was damned. The noise still rings in my ears. Was you ever in the
pillory?--being damned is something like that. Godwin keeps a shop in
Skinner Street, Snow Hill, he is turned children's bookseller, and sells
penny, twopenny, threepenny, and fourpenny books. Sometimes he gets an
order for the dearer sort of Books. (Mind, all that I tell you in this
letter is true.) A treaty of marriage is on foot between William Hazlitt
and Miss Stoddart. Something about settlements only retards it. She has
somewhere about £80 a year, to be £120 when her mother dies. He has no
settlement except what he can claim from the Parish. _Pauper est Cinna,
sed amat_. The thing is therefore in abeyance. But there is love o' both
sides. Little Fenwick (you don't see the connexion of ideas here, how
the devil should you?) is in the rules of the Fleet. Cruel creditors!
operation of iniquitous laws! is Magna Charta then a mockery? Why, in
general (here I suppose you to ask a question) my spirits are pretty
good, but I have my depressions, black as a smith's beard, Vulcanic,
Stygian. At such times I have recourse to a pipe, which is like not
being at home to a dun; he comes again with tenfold bitterness the next
day.--(Mind, I am not in debt, I only borrow a similitude from others;
it shows imagination.) I have done two books since the failure of my
farce; they will both be out this summer. The one is a juvenile
book--"The Adventures of Ulysses," intended to be an introduction to the
reading of Telemachus! It is done out of the Odyssey, not from the
Greek: I would not mislead you; nor yet from Pope's Odyssey, but from an
older translation of one Chapman. The "Shakespear Tales" suggested the
doing it. Godwin is in both those cases my bookseller. The other is done
for Longman, and is "Specimens of English Dramatic Poets contemporary
with Shakespear." Specimens are becoming fashionable. We have--
"Specimens of Ancient English Poets," "Specimens of Modern English
Poets," "Specimens of Ancient English Prose Writers," without end. They
used to be called "Beauties." You have seen "Beauties of Shakespear?" so
have many people that never saw any beauties in Shakespear. Longman is
to print it, and be at all the expense and risk; and I am to share the
profits after all deductions; _i.e._ a year or two hence I must pocket
what they please to tell me is due to me. But the book is such as I am
glad there should be. It is done out of old plays at the Museum and out
of Dodsley's collection, &c. It is to have notes. So I go creeping on
since I was lamed with that cursed fall from off the top of Drury-Lane
Theatre into the pit, something more than a year ago. However, I have
been free of the house ever since, and the house was pretty free with me
upon that occasion. Damn 'em, how they hissed! It was not a hiss
neither, but a sort of a frantic yell, like a congregation of mad geese,
with roaring something like bears, mows and mops like apes, sometimes
snakes, that hiss'd me into madness. 'Twas like St. Anthony's
temptations. Mercy on us, that God should give his favourite children,
men, mouths to speak with, to discourse rationally, to promise smoothly,
to flatter agreeably, to encourage warmly, to counsel wisely: to sing
with, to drink with, and to kiss with: and that they should turn them
into mouths of adders, bears, wolves, hyenas, and whistle like tempests,
and emit breath through them like distillations of aspic poison, to
asperse and vilify the innocent labours of their fellow-creatures who
are desirous to please them! God be pleased to make the breath stink and
the teeth rot out of them all therefore! Make them a reproach, and all
that pass by them to loll out their tongue at them! Blind mouths! as
Milton somewhere calls them. Do you like Braham's singing? The little
Jew has bewitched me. I follow him like as the boys followed Tom the
Piper. He cured me of melancholy, as David cured Saul; but I don't throw
stones at him, as Saul did at David in payment. I was insensible to
music till he gave me a new sense. O, that you could go to the new opera
of "Kais" to-night! 'Tis all about Eastern manners; it would just suit
you. It describes the wild Arabs, wandering Egyptians, lying dervishes,
and all that sort of people, to a hair. You needn't ha' gone so far to
see what you see, if you saw it as I do every night at Drury-lane
Theatre. Braham's singing, when it is impassioned, is finer than Mrs.
Siddons's or Mr. Kemble's acting; and when it is not impassioned, it is
as good as hearing a person of fine sense talking. The brave little Jew!
Old Sergeant Hill is dead. Mrs. Rickman is in the family way. It is
thought that Hazlitt will have children, if he marries Miss Stoddart. I
made a pun the other day, and palmed it upon Holcroft, who grinned like
a Cheshire cat. (Why do cats grin in Cheshire?--Because it was once a
county palatine and the cats cannot help laughing whenever they think of
it, though I see no great joke in it.) I said that Holcroft said, being
asked who were the best dramatic writers of the day, "HOOK AND I." Mr.
Hook is author of several pieces, "Tekeli," &c. You know what _hooks and
eyes_ are, don't you? They are what little boys do up their breeches
with. Your letter had many things in it hard to be understood: the puns
were ready and Swift-like; but don't you begin to be melancholy in the
midst of Eastern customs! "The mind does not easily conform to foreign
usages, even in trifles: it requires something that it has been familiar
with." That begins one of Dr. Hawkesworth's papers in the "Adventurer,"
and is, I think, as sensible a remark as ever fell from the Doctor's
mouth. Do you know Watford in Hertfordshire? it is a pretty village.
Louisa goes to school there. They say the governess is a very
intelligent managing person, takes care of the morals of the pupils,
teaches them something beyond exteriors. Poor Mrs. Beaumont! Rickman's
aunt, she might have been a governess (as both her nieces ate) if she
had any ability or any education, but I never thought she was good for
anything; she is dead and so is her nephew. He was shot in half at Monte
Video, that is, not exactly in half, but as you have seen a 3 quarter
picture. Stoddart is in England. White is at Christ's Hospital, a wit of
the first magnitude, but had rather be thought a gentleman, like
Congreve. You know Congreve's repulse which he gave to Voltaire, when he
came to visit him as a _literary man_, that he wished to be considered
only in the light of a private gentleman. I think the impertinent
Frenchman was properly answered. I should just serve any member of the
French institute in the same manner, that wished to be introduced to me.
Bonaparte has voted 5,000 livres to Davy, the great young English
chemist; but it has not arrived. Coleridge has delivered two lectures at
the Royal Institution; two more were attended, but he did not come. It
is thought he has gone sick upon them. He a'n't well, that's certain.
Wordsworth is coming to see him. He sits up in a two pair of stairs room
at the "Courier" Office, and receives visitors on his close stool. How
is Mr. Ball? He has sent for a prospectus of the London Library.
Does any one read at Canton? Lord Moira is President of the Westminster
Library. I suppose you might have interest with Sir Joseph Banks to get
to be president of any similiar institution that should be set up at
Canton. I think public reading-rooms the best mode of educating young
men. Solitary reading is apt to give the headache. Besides, who knows
that you _do_ read? There are ten thousand institutions similar to the
Royal Institution, which have sprung up from it. There is the London
Institution, the Southwark Institution, the Russell Square Rooms
Institution, &c.--_College quasi Conlege_, a place where people read
together. Wordsworth, the great poet, is coming to town; he is to have
apartments in the Mansion House. He says he does not see much difficulty
in writing like Shakspeare, if he had a mind to try it. It is clear then
nothing is wanting but the mind. Even Coleridge a little checked at this
hardihood of assertion. Jones of Trinity, I suppose you know he is dead.
Dyer came to me the other evening at 11 o'clock, when there was a large
room full of company, which I usually get together on a Wednesday
evening (all great men have public days), to propose to me to have my
face done by a Miss Beetham (or Betham), a miniature painter, some
relation to Mrs. Beetham the Profilist or Pattern Mangle woman opposite
to St. Dunstan's, to put before my book of Extracts. I declined it.
Well, my dear Manning, talking cannot be infinite; I have said all I
have to say; the rest is but remembrances, which we shall bear in our
heads of you, while we have heads. Here is a packet of trifles nothing
worth; but it is a trifling part of the world where I live; emptiness
abounds. But, in fulness of affection, we remain yours,
C.L.
[Manning had written in April, 1807, saying that a roll of silk was on
its way to Mary Lamb. It was, however, another letter, not preserved,
which mentioned Mr. Knox as the bearer.
Godwin sold books at 41 Skinner Street under his wife's name--M.J.
Godwin. At first when he began, in 1805, in Hanway Street, he had used
the name of Thomas Hodgkins, his manager.
"Damn 'em, how they hissed." This passage has in it the germ of Lamb's
essay in _The Reflector_ two or three years later, "On the Custom of
Hissing at the Theatres" (see Vol. I.).
John Braham (?1774-1856), the great tenor and the composer of "The Death
of Nelson." Lamb praised him again in his _Elia_ essay "Imperfect
Sympathies," and later wrote an amusing article on Braham's recantation
of Hebraism (see "The Religion of Actors," Vol. I.). "Kais," composed by
Braham and Reeve, was produced at Drury Lane, February 11, 1808.
"Old Sergeant Hill." George Hill (1716-1808), nicknamed Serjeant
Labyrinth, the hero of many stories of absence-of-mind. He would have
appealed to Manning on account of his mathematical abilities. He died on
February 21.
"Hook and I." This pun is attributed also to others; who may very easily
have made it independently. Theodore Hook was then only nineteen, but
had already written "Tekeli," a melodrama, and several farces. Talfourd
omits the references to breeches.
"Dr. Hawkesworth." John Hawkesworth, LL.D. (?1715-1773), the editor of
Swift, a director of the East India Company, and the friend of Johnson
whom he imitated in _The Adventurer_. He also made one of the
translations of Fénélon's _Télémaque_, to which Lamb's _Adventures of
Ulysses_ was to serve as prologue.
James White, Lamb's friend and the author of _Falstaff's Letters_, was
for many years a clerk in the Treasurer's office at Christ's Hospital.
Later he founded an advertisement agency, which still exists.
"Congreve's repulse." The story is told by Johnson in the _Lives of the
Poets_. Congreve "disgusted him [Voltaire] by the despicable foppery of
desiring to be considered not as an author but a gentleman; to which the
Frenchman replied, 'that, if he had been only a gentleman, he should not
have come to visit him.'"
"Young Davy." Afterwards Sir Humphry Davy, and now one of Coleridge's
correspondents. He had been awarded the Napoleon prize of 3,000 francs
"for his discoveries announced in the _Philosophical Transactions_ for
the year 1807."
"Coleridge's lectures." Coleridge delivered the first on January 12,
1808, and the second on February 5. The third and fourth were eventually
delivered some time before April 3. The subject was not Taste but
Poetry. Coleridge's rooms over _The Courier_ office at No. 348 Strand
are described by De Quincey in his _Works_, Vol. II. (1863 edition),
page 98.
It was Coleridge's illness that was bringing Wordsworth to town, to be
followed by Southey, largely by the instrumentality of Charles and Mary
Lamb. It is conjectured that Coleridge was just then more than usually
in the power of drugs.
Sir Joseph Banks, as President of the Royal Society, had written a
letter to the East India Company supporting Manning's wish to practise
as a doctor in Canton.
The similar institutions that sprang up in imitation of the Royal
Institution have all vanished, except the London Institution in Finsbury
Circus.
"Writing like Shakspeare." This passage was omitted by Talfourd. He
seems to have shown it to Crabb Robinson, just after Lamb's death, as
one of the things that could not be published. Robinson (or Robinson's
editor, Dr. Sadler), in recording the event, substitutes a dash for
Wordsworth's name.
Miss Betham was Miss Mary Matilda Betham (1776-1852), afterwards a
correspondent of Lamb. We shall soon meet her again. She had written a
_Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and
Country_, 1804, and some poems. Among her sitters were Coleridge and
Mrs. Coleridge. The Profilist opposite St. Dunstan's was, I take it, E.
Beetham, Patent Washing-Mill Maker at 27 Fleet Street. I find this in
the 1808 Directory. The shop was close to Inner Temple Lane.
[Two undated letters to Miss Betham follow, which may well belong to
this time. Mr. Ernest Betham allows me to take them from his book, _A
House of Letters_.]
LETTER 169
CHARLES LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM
[No date. ?1808.]
Dear Miss B.--I send you three Tickets which will serve the first course
of C.'s Lectures, six in number, the first begins tomorrow. Excuse the
cover being not _or fa_, is not that french? I have no writing paper.
Yours truly,
C. LAMB.
N.B. It is my present, not C.'s, id. est he gave 'em me, I you.
LETTER 170
CHARLES LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM
Dear Miss Betham,--I am very sorry, but I was pre-engaged for this
evening when Eliza communicated the contents of your letter. She herself
also is gone to Walworth to pass some days with Miss Hays--
"G-d forbid I should
pass my days
with Miss H--ys"
but that is neither here nor there. We will both atone for this accident
by calling upon you as early as possible.
I am setting out to engage Mr. Dyer to your Party, but what the issue of
my adventure will be, cannot be known, till the wafer has closed up this
note for ever.
Yours truly,
C. LAMB.
Friday.
[We have already met Miss Hayes. Miss Betham was a friend of Dyer, as we
shall see.]
LETTER 171
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
March 11, 1808.
Dear Godwin,--The giant's vomit was perfectly nauseous, and I am glad
you pointed it out. I have removed the objection. To the other passages
I can find no other objection but what you may bring to numberless
passages besides, such as of Scylla snatching up the six men, etc., that
is to say, they are lively images of _shocking_ things. If you want a
book, which is not occasionally to _shock_, you should not have thought
of a tale which was so full of anthropophagi and wonders. I cannot alter
these things without enervating the Book, and I will not alter them if
the penalty should be that you and all the London booksellers should
refuse it. But speaking as author to author, I must say that I think
_the terrible_ in those two passages seems to me so much to preponderate
over the nauseous, as to make them rather fine than disgusting. Who is
to read them, I don't know: who is it that reads Tales of Terror and
Mysteries of Udolpho? Such things sell. I only say that I will not
consent to alter such passages, which I know to be some of the best in
the book. As an author I say to you an author, Touch not my work. As to
a bookseller I say, Take the work such as it is, or refuse it. You are
as free to refuse it as when we first talked of it. As to a friend I
say, Don't plague yourself and me with nonsensical objections. I assure
you I will not alter one more word.
[This letter refers to the proofs of Lamb's _Adventures of Ulysses_, his
prose paraphrase for children of Chapman's translation of the _Odyssey_,
which Mrs. Godwin was publishing. Godwin had written the following
letter:--
"Skinner St., March 10, 1808.
"DEAR LAMB,--I address you with all humility, because I know you to be
_tenax propositi_. Hear me, I entreat you, with patience.
"It is strange with what different feelings an author and a bookseller
looks at the same manuscript. I know this by experience: I was an
author, I am a bookseller. The author thinks what will conduce to his
honour: the bookseller what will cause his commodities to sell.
"_You_, or some other wise man, I have heard to say, It is children that
read children's books, when they are read, but it is parents that choose
them. The critical thought of the tradesman put itself therefore into
the place of the parent, and what the parent will condemn.
"We live in squeamish days. Amid the beauties of your manuscript, of
which no man can think more highly than I do, what will the squeamish
say to such expressions as these,--'devoured their limbs, yet warm and
trembling, lapping the blood,' p. 10. Or to the giant's vomit, p. 14; or
to the minute and shocking description of the extinguishing the giant's
eye in the page following. You, I daresay, have no formed plan of
excluding the female sex from among your readers, and I, as a
bookseller, must consider that if you have you exclude one half of the
human species.
"Nothing is more easy than to modify these things if you please, and
nothing, I think, is more indispensable.
"Give me, as soon as possible, your thoughts on the matter.
"I should also like a preface. Half our customers know not Homer, or
know him only as you and I know the lost authors of antiquity. What can
be more proper than to mention one or two of those obvious
recommendations of his works, which must lead every human creature to
desire a nearer acquaintance.--
"Believe me, ever faithfully yours,
W. GODWIN."
As a glance at the _Adventures of Ulysses_ will show (see Vol. III.),
Lamb did not make the alteration on pages 10 or 15 (pages 244 and 246 of
Vol. III.), although the giant's vomit has disappeared. _The Tales of
Terror_, 1801, were by Matthew Gregory Lewis, "Monk Lewis," as he was
called, and the _Mysteries of Udolpho_, 1794, by Mrs. Radcliffe.]
LETTER 172
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[Dated at end: March 12, 1808.]
Dear Sir,--Wordsworth breakfasts with me on Tuesday morning next; he
goes to Mrs. Clarkson the next day, and will be glad to meet you before
he goes. Can you come to us before nine or at nine that morning? I am
afraid, _W_. is so engaged with Coleridge, who is ill, we cannot have
him in an evening. If I do not hear from you, I will expect you to
breakfast on Tuesday.
Yours truly,
C. LAMB.
Saturday, 12 Mar., 1808.
[This is the first letter to Henry Crabb Robinson (1775-1867), whom Lamb
was destined to know very intimately, and to whose _Diary_ we are
indebted for much of our information concerning the Lambs. Robinson, who
was only a month younger than Lamb, had been connected with the _Times_
as foreign correspondent and foreign editor; in November, 1809, he gave
up journalism and began to keep his terms at the Middle Temple, rising
in time to be leader of the Norfolk Circuit. We shall see much more of
him. He knew Lamb well enough to accompany him, his sister and Hazlitt
to "Mr. H." in December, 1806.
Wordsworth left on April 3, by which time Coleridge was sufficiently
recovered to give two more lectures. The series closed in June.
Coleridge then went to Bury St. Edmunds to see the Clarksons, and then
to Grasmere, to the Wordsworths. His separation from Mrs. Coleridge had
already occurred, he and his wife remaining, however, on friendly
terms.]
LETTER 173
MARY LAMB TO SARAH STODDART
[P.M. March 16, 1808.]
My dear Sarah,--Do not be very angry that I have not written to you. I
have promised your brother to be at your wedding, and that favor you
must accept as an atonement for my offences--you have been in no want of
correspondence lately, and I wished to leave you both to your own
inventions.
The border you are working for me I prize at a very high rate because I
consider it as the last work you can do for me, the time so fast
approaching when you must no longer work for your friends. Yet my old
fault of giving away presents has not left me, and I am desirous of even
giving away this your last gift. I had intended to have given it away
without your knowledge, but I have intrusted my secret to Hazlitt, and I
suppose it will not remain a secret long, so I condescend to consult
you. It is to Miss Hazlitt, to whose superior claim I wish to give up my
right to this precious worked border. Her brother William is her great
favorite, and she would be pleased to possess his bride's last work. Are
you not to give the fellow-border to one sister-in-law, and therefore
has she not a just claim to it?--I never heard in the annals of weddings
(since the days of Nausicaa, and she only washed her old gowns for that
purpose) that the brides ever furnished the apparel of their maids.
Besides, I can be completely clad in your work without it, for the
spotted muslin will serve both for cap and hat (Nota bene, my hat is the
same as yours) and the gown you sprigged for me has never been made up,
therefore I can wear that--Or, if you like better, I will make up a new
silk which Manning has sent me from China. Manning would like to hear I
wore it for the first time at your wedding. It is a very pretty light
colour, but there is an objection (besides not being your work and that
is a very serious objection) and that is, Mrs. Hazlitt tells me that all
Winterslow would be in an uproar if the bridemaid was to be dressed in
anything but white, and although it is a very light colour I confess we
cannot call it white, being a sort of a dead-whiteish-bloom colour; then
silk, perhaps, in a morning is not so proper, though the occasion, so
joyful, might justify a full dress. Determine for me in this perplexity
between the sprig and the China-Manning silk. But do not contradict my
whim about Miss Hazlitt having the border, for I have set my heart upon
the matter: if you agree with me in this I shall think you have forgiven
me for giving away your pin; and that was a _mad_ trick, but I had many
obligations and no money. I repent me of the deed, wishing I had it now
to send to Miss H. with the border, and I cannot, will not, give her the
Doctor's pin, for having never had any presents from gentlemen in my
young days, I highly prize all they now give me, thinking my latter days
are better than my former.
You must send this same border in your own name to Miss Hazlitt, which
will save me the disgrace of giving away your gift, and make it amount
merely to a civil refusal.
I shall have no present to give you on your marriage, nor do I expect
that I shall be rich enough to give anything to baby at the first
christening, but at the second, or third child's I hope to have a coral
or so to spare out of my own earnings. Do not ask me to be Godmother,
for I have an objection to that--but there is I believe, no serious
duties attached to a bride's maid, therefore I come with a willing mind,
bringing nothing with me but many wishes, and not a few hopes, and a
very little of fears of happy years to come.
I am dear Sarah
Yours ever most affectionately
M. LAMB.
What has Charles done that nobody invites him to the wedding?
[The wedding was on May 1, 1808. Originally it was intended to perform
the ceremony at Winterslow, but London was actually the place: St.
Andrew's, Holborn. Mary Lamb was a bridesmaid and Charles Lamb was
present. He told Southey in a letter some years after: "I was at
Hazlitt's marriage, and had like to have been turned out several times
during the ceremony. Anything awful makes me laugh."
The episode of Nausicaa, to which Mary Lamb refers, had just been
rewritten by Charles Lamb in the _Adventures of Ulysses_.]
LETTER 174
CHARLES LAMB TO GEORGE DYER
From my Desk in Leadenhall Street,
Decr 5, 1808.
Dear Dyer,--Coleridge is not so bad as your fears have represented him;
it is true that he is Bury'd, altho' he is not dead; to understand this
quibble you must know that he is at Bury St. Edmunds, relaxing, after
the fatigues of lecturing and Londonizing. The little Rickmaness, whom
you enquire after so kindly, thrives and grows apace; she is already a
prattler, and 'tis thought that on some future day she may be a speaker.
[This was Mrs. Lefroy.] We hold our weekly meetings still at No. 16,
where altho' we are not so high as the top of Malvern, we are involved
in almost as much mist. Miss B[etham]'s merit "in every point of view,"
I am not disposed to question, altho' I have not been indulged with any
view of that lady, back, side, or front--_fie!_ Dyer, to praise a female
in such common market phrases--you who are held so courtly and so
attentive. My book is not yet out, that is not my "Extracts," my
"Ulysses" is, and waits your acceptance. When you shall come to town, I
hope to present you both together--never think of buying the
"Extracts"--half guinea books were never calculated for my friends.
Those poets have started up since your departure; William Hazlitt, your
friend and mine, is putting to press a collection of verses, chiefly
amatory, some of them pretty enough. How these painters encroach on our
province! There's Hoppner, Shee, Westall, and I don't know who besides,
and Tresham. It seems on confession, that they are not at the top of
their own art, when they seek to eke out their fame with the assistance
of another's; no large tea-dealer sells cheese; no great silversmith
sells razorstrops; it is only your petty dealers who mix commodities. If
Nero had been a great Emperor, he would never have played the
Violoncello! Who ever caught you, Dyer, designing a landscape, or taking
a likeness? I have no more to add, who am the friend of virtue, poetry,
painting, therefore in an especial manner,
Unalterably Thine
C. LAMB.
LETTER 175
MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT (LATE STODDART)
December 10th, 1808.
My dear Sarah,--I hear of you from your brother; but you do not write
yourself, nor does Hazlitt. I beg that one or both of you will amend
this fault as speedily as possible, for I am very anxious to hear of
your health. I hope, as you say nothing about your fall to your brother,
you are perfectly recovered from the effects of it.
You cannot think how very much we miss you and H. of a Wednesday
evening. All the glory of the night, I may say, is at an end. Phillips
makes his jokes, and there is no one to applaud him; Rickman argues, and
there is no one to oppose him.
The worst miss of all to me is, that, when we are in the dismals, there
is now no hope of relief from any quarter whatsoever. Hazlitt was most
brilliant, most ornamental, as a Wednesday-man; but he was a more useful
one on common days, when he dropt in after a quarrel or a fit of the
glooms. The Skeffington is quite out now, my brother having got drunk
with claret and Tom Sheridan. This visit, and the occasion of it, is a
profound secret, and therefore I tell it to nobody but you and Mrs.
Reynolds. Through the medium of Wroughton, there came an invitation and
proposal from T.S., that C.L. should write some scenes in a speaking
pantomime, the other parts of which Tom now, and his father formerly,
have manufactured between them. So, in the Christmas holydays, my
brother and his two great associates, we expect, will be all three
damned together: this is, I mean, if Charles's share, which is done and
sent in, is accepted.
I left this unfinished yesterday, in the hope that my brother would have
done it for me: his reason for refusing me was 'no exquisite reason;'
for it was, because he must write a letter to Manning in three or four
weeks, and therefore he could not be always writing letters, he said. I
wanted him to tell your husband about a great work which Godwin is going
to publish, to enlighten the world once more, and I shall not be able to
make out what it is. He (Godwin) took his usual walk one evening, a
fortnight since, to the end of Hatton Garden and back again. During that
walk, a thought came into his mind, which he instantly set down and
improved upon, till he brought it, in seven or eight days, into the
compass of a reasonable sized pamphlet. To propose a subscription to all
well disposed people, to raise a certain sum of money, to be expended in
the care of a cheap monument for the former and the future great dead
men,--the monument to be a white cross, with a wooden slab at the end,
telling their names and qualifications. This wooden slab and white cross
to be perpetuated to the end of time. To survive the fall of empires and
the destruction of cities by means of a map, which was, in case of an
insurrection among the people, or any other cause by which a city or
country may be destroyed, to be carefully preserved; and then, when
things got again into their usual order, the
white-cross-wooden-slab-makers were to go to work again, and set them in
their former places. This, as nearly as I can tell you, is the sum and
substance of it, but it is written remarkably well, in his very best
manner; for the proposal (which seems to me very like throwing salt on a
sparrow's tail to catch him) occupies but half a page, which is followed
by very fine writing on the benefits he conjectures would follow if it
were done. Very excellent thoughts on death, and on our feelings
concerning dead friends, and the advantages an old country has over a
new one, even in the slender memorials we have of great men who once
flourished.
Charles is come home, and wants his dinner; and so the dead men must be
no more thought on: tell us how you go on, and how you like Winterslow
and winter evenings.
Noales [Knowles] has not got back again, but he is in better spirits.
John Hazlitt was here on Wednesday, very sober.
Our love to Hazlitt.
Yours affectionately,
M. LAMB.
LETTER 176
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. HAZLITT
(_Added to same letter_)
Saturday.
There came this morning a printed prospectus from S.T. Coleridge,
Grasmere, of a weekly paper, to be called The Friend--a flaming
prospectus--I have no time to give the heads of it--to commence first
Saturday in January. There came also a notice of a Turkey from Mr.
Clarkson, which I am more sanguine in expecting the accomplishment of
than I am of Coleridge's prophecy.
C. LAMB.
["The Skeffington." Referring probably to some dramatic scheme in which
Sir Lumley Skeffington, an amateur playwright, had tried to engage
Lamb's pen. Lamb's share of the speaking pantomime for the Sheridans has
vanished. We do not even know if it were ever accepted.
The late Mr. Charles Kent, in his Centenary Edition of Lamb's works,
printed a comic opera, said, on the authority of P.G. Patmore, to be
Lamb's, and identified it with the experiment mentioned by Mary Lamb.
But an examination of the manuscript, which is in the British Museum,
convinces me that the writing is not Lamb's, while the matter has
nothing characteristic in it. Tom Sheridan, by the way, was just a month
younger than Lamb.
Noales was probably James Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862), the dramatist, a
protégé of Hazlitt's father. We shall meet him again in the
correspondence. After serving as a soldier and practising medicine he
had gone on the stage. Several years later he became one of Lamb's
friends.
_The Friend_, which probably had been in Coleridge's thoughts for some
time, was announced to begin on the first Saturday in January. Lamb's
scepticism was justified; the first number came out on June 1.]
LETTER 177
MARY LAMB TO MRS. THOMAS CLARKSON
[P.M. Dec. (10), 1808.]
My dear Mrs. Clarkson--I feel myself greatly indebted to Mr. Clarkson
for his care about our direction, since it has procured us the pleasure
of a line from you. Why are we all, my dear friend, so unwilling to sit
down and write a letter when we all so well know the great satisfaction
it is to hear of the welfare of an absent friend? I began to think that
you and all I connect in my mind with you were gone from us for
ever--Coleridge in a manner gave us up when he was in town, and we have
now lost all traces of him. At the time he was in town I received two
letters from Miss Wordsworth, which I never answered because I would not
complain to her of our old friend. As this has never been explained to
her it must seem very strange, more particularly so, as Miss Hutchinson
& Mrs. Wordsworth were in an ill state of health at the time. Will you
some day soon write a few words just to tell me how they all are and all
you know concerning them?
Do not imagine that I am now _complaining_ to you of Coleridge. Perhaps
we are both in fault, we expect _too much_, and he gives _too little_.
We ought many years ago to have understood each other better. Nor is it
quite all over with us yet, for he will some day or other come in with
the same old face, and receive (after a few spiteful words from me) the
same warm welcome as ever. But we could not submit to sit as hearers at
his lectures and not be permitted to see our old friend when
_school-hours_ were over. I beg you will not let what I have said give
you a moment's thought, nor pray do not mention it to the Wordsworths
nor to Coleridge, for I know he thinks I am apt to speak unkindly of
him. I am not good tempered, and I have two or three times given him
proofs that I am not. You say you are all in your "better way," which is
a very chearful hearing, for I trust you mean to include that your
health is _bettering_ too. I look forward with great pleasure to the
near approach of Christmas and Mr. Clarkson. And now the turkey you are
so kind as to promise us comes into my head & tells me it is so very
near that if writing before then should happen to be the least irksome
to you, I will be content to wait for intelligence of our old friends
till I have the pleasure of seeing Mr. Clarkson in town. I ought to say
this because I know at times how dreadfully irksome writing a letter is
to me, even when I have no reason in the world to give why it is so, and
I remember I have heard you express something of the same kind of
feelings.
I try to remember something to enquire after at Bury--The lady we
visited, the cherry tree Tom and I robbed, Tom my partner in the robbery
(Mr. Thomas C--- I suppose now), and your Cook maid that was so kind to
me, are all at present I can recollect. Of all the places I ever saw
Bury has made the liveliest impression on my memory. I have a very
indistinct recollection of the Lakes.
Charles joins with me in affectionate remembrances to you all, and he is
more warm in his expressions of gratitude for the turkey because he is
fonder of good eating than I am, though I am not amiss in that way.
God bless you my kind friends
I remain yours affectionately
M. LAMB.
Excuse this slovenly letter, if I were to write it over again I should
abridge it one half.
Saturday morning
No. 16 Mitre Court Buildings
Inner Temple.
LETTER 178
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. CLARKSON
(_Added to same letter_)
We have this moment received a very chearful letter from Coleridge, who
is now at Grasmere. It contains a prospectus for a new weekly
publication to be called _The Friend_. He says they are well there, and
in good spirits & that he has not been so well for a long time.
The Prospectus is of a weekly paper of a miscellaneous nature to be
call'd the Friend & to come out, the first number, the first Saturday in
January. Those who remember _The Watchman_ will not be very sanguine in
expecting a regular fulfillment of this Prophecy. But C. writes in
delightful spirits, & _if ever_, he may _now_ do this thing. I suppose
he will send you a Prospectus. I had some thought of inclosing mine. But
I want to shew it about. My kindest remembrance to Mr. C. & thanks for
the turkey.
C. LAMB.
[Coleridge, after delivering his lectures, had gone to Bury on a visit
to the Clarksons. He then passed on to Grasmere, to Wordsworth's new
house, Allan Bank, and settled down to project _The Friend_.
Tom Clarkson, with whom Mary Lamb robbed a cherry tree, became a
metropolitan magistrate. He died in 1837.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, dated February 25,
1809. It tells Lloyd where to look for Lamb when he reached town--at 16
Mitre Court Buildings, which he is leaving at Lady Day, or at 2 or 4
Inner Temple Lane. "Drury Lane Theatre is burnt to the ground." Robert
Lloyd spent a short while in London in the spring of 1809 and saw the
Lambs, Godwin, Captain Burney, James White and other persons. His
letters to his wife describing these experiences, printed in _Charles
Lamb and the Lloyds_, are amusingly fresh and enthusiastic.]
LETTER 179
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
28th March, 1809.
Dear Manning,--I sent you a long letter by the ships which sailed the
beginning of last month, accompanied with books, &c. Since I last wrote,
Holcroft is dead. He died on Thursday last and is not yet buried. He has
been opened by Carlisle and his heart was found completely ossified. He
has had a long and severe illness. He seemed very willing to live, and
to the last acted on his favorite principle of the power of the will to
overcome disease. I believe his strong faith in that power kept him
alive long after another person would have given him up, and the
physicians all concurred in positively saying he would not live a week,
many weeks before he died. The family are as well as can be expected. I
told you something about Mrs. Holcroft's plans. Since her death there
has been a meeting of his friends and a subscription has been mentioned.
I have no doubt that she will be set agoing, and that she will be fully
competent to the scheme which she proposes. Fanny bears it much better
than I could have supposed. So there is one of your friends whom you
will never see again! Perhaps the next fleet may bring you a letter from
Martin Burney, to say that he writes by desire of Miss Lamb, who is not
well enough to write herself, to inform you that her brother died on
Thursday last, 14th June, &c. But I hope _not_. I should be sorry to
give occasion to open a correspondence between Martin and you. This
letter must be short, for I have driven it off to the very moment of
doing up the packets; and besides, that which I refer to above is a very
long one; and if you have received my books, you will have enough to do
to read them. While I think on it, let me tell you we are moved. Don't
come any more to Mitre Court Buildings. We are at 34, Southampton
Buildings, Chancery Lane, and shall be here till about the end of May:
then we remove to No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, where I mean to live and
die; for I have such horror of moving, that I would not take a benefice
from the King, if I was not indulged with non-residence. What a
dislocation of comfort is comprised in that word moving! Such a heap of
little nasty things, after you think all is got into the cart: old
dredging-boxes, worn-out brushes, gallipots, vials, things that it is
impossible the most necessitous person can ever want, but which the
women, who preside on these occasions, will not leave behind if it was
to save your soul; they'd keep the cart ten minutes to stow in dirty
pipes and broken matches, to show their economy. Then you can find
nothing you want for many days after you get into your new lodgings. You
must comb your hair with your fingers, wash your hands without soap, go
about in dirty gaiters. Was I Diogenes, I would not move out of a
kilderkin into a hogshead, though the first had had nothing but small
beer in it, and the second reeked claret. Our place of final
destination,--I don't mean the grave, but No. 2 [4] Inner Temple
Lane,--looks out upon a gloomy churchyard-like court, called Hare Court,
with three trees and a pump in it. Do you know it? I was born near it,
and used to drink at that pump when I was a Rechabite of six years old.
If you see newspapers you will read about Mrs. Clarke. The sensation in
London about this nonsensical business is marvellous. I remember nothing
in my life like it. Thousands of ballads, caricatures, lives, of Mrs.
Clarke, in every blind alley. Yet in the midst of this stir, a sublime
abstracted dancing-master, who attends a family we know in Kensington,
being asked a question about the progress of the examination in the
House, inquired who Mrs. Clarke was? He had heard nothing of it. He had
evaded this omnipresence by utter insignificancy! The Duke should make
that man his confidential valet. I proposed locking him up, barring him
the use of his fiddle and red pumps, until he had minutely perused and
committed to memory the whole body of the examinations, which employed
the House of Commons a fortnight, to teach him to be more attentive to
what concerns the public. I think I told you of Godwin's little book,
and of Coleridge's prospectus, in my last; if I did not, remind me of
it, and I will send you them, or an account of them, next fleet. I have
no conveniency of doing it by this. Mrs.---- grows every day in
disfavour with God and man. I will be buried with this inscription over
me:--"Here lies C. L., the Woman-hater"--I mean that hated ONE WOMAN:
for the rest, God bless them, and when he makes any more, make 'em
prettier. How do you like the Mandarinesses? Are you on some little
footing with any of them? This is Wednesday. On Wednesdays is my levee.
The Captain, Martin, Phillips, (not the Sheriff,) Rickman, and some
more, are constant attendants, besides stray visitors. We play at whist,
eat cold meat and hot potatoes, and any gentleman that chooses smokes.
Why do you never drop in? You'll come some day, won't you?
C. LAMB, &c.
[Thomas Holcroft died on March 23, 1809, aged sixty-three. Mitre Court
Buildings, Southampton Buildings and Inner Temple Lane (Lamb's homes)
have all been rebuilt since Lamb's day.
"That word 'moving.'" Lamb later elaborated and condensed this passage,
in the _Elia_ essay "New Year's Eve": "Any alteration, on this earth of
mine, in diet or in lodging, puzzles and discomposes me. My
household-gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up
without blood."
"Mrs. Clarke." Mary Anne Clarke (1776-1852), mistress of the Duke of
York, Commander-in-Chief, whose reception of money from officers as a
return for procuring them preferment or promising to, by her influence
with the Duke, had just been exposed in Parliament, and was causing
immense excitement.
"Godwin's little book." Probably the _Essay on Sepulchres_. But Godwin's
Lives of Edward and John Phillips, Milton's nephews, appeared also at
this time.
"Mrs. ----." Most probably Mrs. Godwin once more.
"Not the Sheriff." Alluding to Sir Richard Phillips, the publisher, who
was elected Sheriff of London in 1807, and was knighted in 1808.
On the same day Lamb and his sister wrote a very charming joint letter
to Louisa Martin, which has not yet been published. See the Preface to
this volume, p. viii.]
LETTER 180
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[Dated by H. C. R.: May, 1809.]
Dear Sir,--Would you be so kind as, when you go to the Times office, to
see about an Advertisement which My Landlady's Daughter left for
insertion about ten days since and has not appeared, for a Governesses
Place? The references are to Thorpe & Graves 18 Lower Holborn, and to M.
B. 115 Oxford St. Though not anxious about attitudes, she pines for a
situation. I got home tolerably well, as I hear, the other evening. It
may be a warning to any one in future to ask me to a dinner party. I
always disgrace myself. I floated up stairs on the Coachman's back, like
Ariel; "On a bat's back I do fly, After sunset merrily."
In sobriety
I am
Yours truly
C. LAMB.
[Lamb used the simile of Ariel at least twice afterwards: at the close
of the _Elia_ essay "Rejoicings on the New Year's Coming-of-Age," and in
a letter to J. V. Asbury of Enfield, the Lambs' doctor.]
LETTER 181
MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
[June 2, 1809.]
You may write to Hazlitt, that I will _certainly_ go to Winterslough, as
my Father has agreed to give me 5l. to bear my expences, and has given
leave that I may stop till that is spent, leaving enough to defray my
Carriage on the 14th July.
So far Martin has written, and further than that I can give you no
intelligence, for I do not yet know Phillips's intentions; nor can I
tell you the exact time when we can come; nor can I positively say we
shall come at all; for we have scruples of conscience about there being
so many of us. Martin says, if you can borrow a blanket or two, he can
sleep on the floor, without either bed or mattress, which would save his
expences at the Hut; for, if Phillips breakfasts there, he must do so
too, which would swallow up all his money. And he and I have calculated
that, if he has no Inn expences, he may as well spare that money to give
you for a part of his roast beef.
We can spare you also just five pounds. You are not to say this to
Hazlitt, lest his delicacy should be alarmed; but I tell you what Martin
and I have planned, that, if you happen to be empty pursed at this time,
you may think it as well to make him up a bed in the best kitchen.
I think it very probable that Phillips will come; and, if you do not
like such a croud of us, for they both talk of staying a whole month,
tell me so, and we will put off our visit till next summer.
The 14th July is the day Martin has fixed for _coming_. I should have
written before, if I could have got a positive answer from them.
Thank you very much for the good work you have done for me. Mrs.
Stoddart also thanks you for the gloves. How often must I tell you never
to do any needle work for any body but me?
Martin Burney has been very ill, and still is very weak and pale. Mrs.
Holcroft and all her children, and all her scholars, have had the
measles. Your old friend, Mrs. Fenwick, is in town.
We are going to see Mrs. Martin and her daughter, Mrs. Fulton (Sarah
Martin), and I expect to see there the future husband of Louisa. It will
be a charming evening, doubtless.
I cannot write any more, for we have got a noble Life of Lord Nelson
lent us for a short time by my poor relation the book binder, and I want
to read as much of it as I can.
Yours affectionately,
M. LAMB.
On reading Martin's note over again, we guess the Captain means him to
stay only a fortnight. It is most likely we shall come the beginning of
July. Saturday [?June 3].
[The Lambs were proposing to spend their holidays with the Hazlitts, in
July, and to take Colonel Phillips and his nephew Martin Burney with
them. (Or possibly it was the other Phillips.) As it happened, however,
Mary Lamb was taken ill almost immediately after writing this letter,
and the visit had to be postponed until September and October.
The Hut was the Winterslow inn.
"My poor relation the book binder." See the letter to Barron Field, Oct.
4, 1827.]
LETTER 182
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
June 7th, 1809.
Dear Coleridge,--I congratulate you on the appearance of "The Friend."
Your first number promises well, and I have no doubt the succeeding
numbers will fulfil the promise. I had a kind letter from you some time
since, which I have left unanswered. I am also obliged to you, I
believe, for a review in the "Annual," am I not? The "Monthly Review"
sneers at me, and asks "if 'Comus' is not _good enough_ for Mr. Lamb?"
because I have said no good serious dramas have been written since the
death of Charles the First, except "Samson Agonistes"; so because they
do not know, or won't remember, that "Comus" was written long before, I
am to be set down as an undervaluer of Milton! O Coleridge, do kill
those reviews, or they will kill us--kill all we like! Be a friend to
all else, but their foe. I have been turned out of my chambers in the
Temple by a landlord who wanted them for himself; but I have got other
at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, far more commodious and roomy. I have two
rooms on third floor and five rooms above, with an inner staircase to
myself, and all new painted, &c., and all for £30 a year! I came into
them on Saturday week; and on Monday following, Mary was taken ill with
fatigue of moving, and affected, I believe, by the novelty of the home;
she could not sleep, and I am left alone with a maid quite a stranger to
me, and she has a month or two's sad distraction to go through. What sad
large pieces it cuts out of life--out of _her_ life, who is getting
rather old; and we may not have many years to live together! I am
weaker, and bear it worse than I ever did. But I hope we shall be
comfortable by and bye. The rooms are delicious, and the best look
backwards into Hare Court, where there is a pump always going. Just now
it is dry. Hare Court trees come in at the window, so that it's like
living in a garden. I try to persuade myself it is much pleasanter than
Mitre Court; but, alas! the household gods are slow to come in a new
mansion. They are in their infancy to me; I do not feel them yet; no
hearth has blazed to them yet. How I hate and dread new places!
I was very glad to see Wordsworth's book advertised; I am to have it
to-morrow lent me, and if Wordsworth don't send me an order for one upon
Longman, I will buy it. It is greatly extolled and liked by all who have
seen it. Let me hear from some of you, for I am desolate. I shall have
to send you, in a week or two, two volumes of Juvenile Poetry, done by
Mary and me within the last six months, and that tale in prose which
Wordsworth so much liked, which was published at Christmas, with nine
others, by us, and has reached a second edition. There's for you! We
have almost worked ourselves out of child's work, and I don't know what
to do. Sometimes I think of a drama, but I have no head for play-making;
I can do the dialogue, and that's all. I am quite aground for a plan,
and I must do something for money. Not that I have immediate wants, but
I have prospective ones. O money, money, how blindly thou hast been
worshipped, and how stupidly abused! Thou art health, and liberty, and
strength; and he that has thee may rattle his pockets at the foul fiend!
Nevertheless, do not understand by this that I have not quite enough for
my occasions for a year or two to come. While I think on it, Coleridge,
I fetch'd away my books which you had at the "Courier" Office, and found
all but a third volume of the old plays, containing "The White Devil,"
"Green's Tu Quoque," and the "Honest Whore,"--perhaps the most valuable
volume of them all--_that_ I could not find. Pray, if you can, remember
what you did with it, or where you took it out with you a walking
perhaps; send me word; for, to use the old plea, it spoils a set. I
found two other volumes (you had three), the "Arcadia," and "Daniel,"
enriched with manuscript notes. I wish every book I have were so noted.
They have thoroughly converted me to relish Daniel, or to say I relish
him, for, after all, I believe I did relish him. You well call him
sober-minded. Your notes are excellent. Perhaps you've forgot them. I
have read a review in the "Quarterly," by Southey, on the Missionaries,
which is most masterly. I only grudge it being there. It is quite
beautiful. Do remember my Dodsley; and pray do write; or let some of you
write. Clarkson tells me you are in a smoky house. Have you cured it? It
is hard to cure anything of smoking. Our little poems are but humble,
but they have no name. You must read them, remembering they were
task-work; and perhaps you will admire the number of subjects, all of
children, picked out by an old Bachelor and an old Maid. Many parents
would not have found so many. Have you read "Coelebs?" It has reached
eight editions in so many weeks; yet literally it is one of the very
poorest sort of common novels, with the draw-back of dull religion in
it. Had the religion been high and flavoured, it would have been
something. I borrowed this "Coelebs in Search of a Wife" of a very
careful, neat lady, and returned it with this stuff written in the
beginning:--
"If ever I marry a wife
I'd marry a landlord's daughter,
For then I may sit in the bar,
And drink cold brandy-and-water."
I don't expect you can find time from your "Friend" to write to me much,
but write something, for there has been a long silence. You know
Holcroft is dead. Godwin is well. He has written a very pretty, absurd
book about sepulchres. He was affronted because I told him it was better
than Hervey, but not so good as Sir T. Browne. This letter is all about
books; but my head aches, and I hardly know what I write; but I could
not let "The Friend" pass without a congratulatory epistle. I won't
criticise till it comes to a volume. Tell me how I shall send my packet
to you?--by what conveyance?--by Longman, Short-man, or how? Give my
kindest remembrances to Wordsworth. Tell him he must give me a book. My
kind love to Mrs. W. and to Dorothy separately and conjointly. I wish
you could all come and see me in my new rooms. God bless you all.
C. L.
[The first number of _The Friend_ was dated June 1, 1809.
Lamb's _Dramatic Specimens_ had been reviewed in the _Annual Review_ for
1808, with discrimination and approval (see Vol. IV. of my large
edition), but whether or not by Coleridge I do not know.
Wordsworth's book was his pamphlet on the "Convention of Cintra."
The Juvenile Poetry was _Poetry for Children. Entirely Original_. By the
author of _Mrs. Leicester's School_. In two volumes, 1809. _Mrs.
Leicester's School_, 1809, had been published a little before.
Wordsworth's favourite tale was Arabella Hardy's "The Sea Voyage."
I know nothing of the annotated copy of Sidney's _Arcadia_. Daniel's
_Poetical Works_, 12mo, 1718, two volumes, with marginalia by Lamb and
Coleridge, is still preserved. The copy of Hannah More's _Coelebs in
Search of a Wife_, 1809, with Lamb's verses, is not, I think, now known.
Southey's missionary article was in the first number of the _Quarterly_,
February, 1809.
Hervey wrote _Meditations among the Tombs_; Sir Thomas Browne, _Urn
Burial_.
Here should come four letters from Lamb to Charles Lloyd, Senior. They
are all printed in _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_. The first, dated June
13, 1809, contains an interesting criticism of a translation of the
twenty-fourth book of the _Iliad_, which Charles Lloyd, the father of
Robert Lloyd, had made. Lamb says that what he misses, and misses also
in Pope, is a savage-like plainness of speaking.
"The heroes in Homer are not half civilized--they utter all the cruel,
all the selfish, all the _mean thoughts_ even of their nature, which it
is the fashion of our great men to keep in."
Mr. Lloyd had translated [Greek: aoidous] (line 720) "minstrels." Lamb
says "minstrels I suspect to be a word bringing merely English or
English ballad feelings to the Mind. It expresses the thing and
something more, as to say Sarpedon was a Gentleman, or as somebody
translated Paul's address, 'Ye men of Athens,' 'Gentlemen of Athens.'"
The second letter, dated June 19, 1809, continues the subject. Lamb
writes: "I am glad to see you venture _made_ and _maid_ for rhymes. 'Tis
true their sound is the same. But the mind occupied in revolving the
different meaning of two words so literally the same, is diverted from
the objection which the mere Ear would make, and to the mind it is rhyme
enough."
In the third letter, dated July 31, 1809, Lamb remarks of translators of
Homer, that Cowper delays one as much, walking over a Bowling Green, as
Milton does, travelling over steep Alpine heights.
The fourth letter, undated, accompanies criticisms of Mr. Lloyd's
translation of the _Odyssey_, Books 1 and 2, Mr. Lloyd had translated
[Greek: Bous Helioio] (Book I, line 8) "Bullocks of the Sun." Lamb
wrote: "OXEN of the Sun, I conjure. Bullocks is too Smithfield and
sublunary a Word. Oxen of the Sun, or of Apollo, but in any case not
Bullocks."
With a letter to Robert Lloyd, belonging to this year, Lamb sends
_Poetry for Children_, and states that the poem "The Beggar Man" is by
his brother, John Lamb.]
LETTER 183
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Monday, Oct. 30th, 1809.
Dear Coleridge,--I have but this moment received your letter, dated the
9th instant, having just come off a journey from Wiltshire, where I have
been with Mary on a visit to Hazlitt. The journey has been of infinite
service to her. We have had nothing but sunshiny days and daily walks
from eight to twenty miles a-day; have seen Wilton, Salisbury,
Stonehenge, &c. Her illness lasted but six weeks; it left her weak, but
the country has made us whole. We came back to our Hogarth Room--I have
made several acquisitions since you saw them,--and found Nos. 8, 9, 10
of "The Friend." The account of Luther in the Warteburg is as fine as
anything I ever read. God forbid that a man who has such things to say
should be silenced for want of £100. This Custom-and-Duty Age would have
made the Preacher on the Mount take out a licence, and St. Paul's
Epistles would not have been missible without a stamp. Oh, that you may
find means to go on! But alas! where is Sir G. Beaumont?--Sotheby? What
is become of the rich Auditors in Albemarle Street? Your letter has
saddened me.
I am so tired with my journey, being up all night, I have neither things
nor words in my power. I believe I expressed my admiration of the
pamphlet. Its power over me was like that which Milton's pamphlets must
have had on his contemporaries, who were tuned to them. What a piece of
prose! Do you hear if it is read at all? I am out of the world of
readers. I hate all that do read, for they read nothing but reviews and
new books. I gather myself up unto the old things.
I have put up shelves. You never saw a book-case in more true harmony
with the contents, than what I've nailed up in a room, which, though
new, has more aptitudes for growing old than you shall often see--as one
sometimes gets a friend in the middle of life, who becomes an old friend
in a short time. My rooms are luxurious; one is for prints and one for
books; a Summer and a Winter parlour. When shall I ever see you in them?
C. L.
[Hazlitt has given some account of the Lambs' visit to Winterslow, but
the passage belongs probably to the year following. In his essay "On the
Conversation of Authors" he likens Lamb in the country to "the most
capricious poet Ovid among the Goths." "The country people thought him
an oddity, and did not understand his jokes. It would be strange if they
had, for he did not make any, while he stayed. But when he crossed the
country to Oxford, then he spoke a little. He and the old colleges were
hail-fellow well met; and in the quadrangles he 'walked gowned.'" Again,
in "A Farewell to Essay-writing," Hazlitt says: "I used to walk out at
this time with Mr. and Miss Lamb of an evening, to look at the Claude
Lorraine skies over our heads melting from azure into purple and gold,
and to gather mushrooms, that sprang up at our feet, to throw into our
hashed mutton."
Lamb's Hogarths were framed in black. It must have been about this time
that he began his essay "On the Genius of Hogarth," which was printed in
_The Reflector_ in 1811 (see Vol. I.).
_The Friend_ lasted until No. XXVII., March 15, 1810. The account of
Luther was in No. VIII., October 5, 1809. Coleridge had not been
supported financially as he had hoped, and had already begun to think of
stopping the paper.
Sir George Howland Beaumont (1753-1827), of Coleorton, the friend and
patron of men of genius, had helped, with Sotheby, in the establishment
of _The Friend_, and was instrumental subsequently in procuring a
pension for Coleridge. William Sotheby (1757-1833), the translator and
author, had received subscriptions for Coleridge's lectures.
"The rich Auditors in Albemarle Street"--those who had listened to
Coleridge's lectures at the Royal Institution.
"The pamphlet." Presumably Wordsworth's "Convention of Cintra."
"You never saw a book-case." Leigh Hunt wrote of Lamb's books in the
essay "My Books," in _The Literary Examiner_:--
"It looks like what it is, a selection made at precious intervals from
the book-stalls;--now a Chaucer at nine and two-pence; now a Montaigne
or a Sir Thomas Browne at two shillings; now a Jeremy Taylor, a Spinoza;
an old English Dramatist, Prior, and Sir Philip Sidney; and the books
are 'neat as imported.' The very perusal of the backs is a 'discipline
of humanity.' There Mr. Southey takes his place again with an old
Radical friend: there Jeremy Collier is at peace with Dryden: there the
lion, Martin Luther, lies down with the Quaker lamb, Sewel: there Guzman
d'Alfarache thinks himself fit company for Sir Charles Grandison, and
has his claims admitted. Even the 'high fantastical' Duchess of
Newcastle, with her laurel on her head, is received with grave honours,
and not the less for declining to trouble herself with the constitutions
of her maids."]
LETTER 184
MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
November 7th, 1809.
My dear Sarah--The dear, quiet, lazy, delicious month we spent with you
is remembered by me with such regret, that I feel quite discontent &
Winterslow-sick. I assure you, I never passed such a pleasant time in
the country in my life, both in the house & out of it, the card playing
quarrels, and a few gaspings for breath after your swift footsteps up
the high hills excepted, and those drawbacks are not unpleasant in the
recollection. We have got some salt butter to make our toast seem like
yours, and we have tried to eat meat suppers, but that would not do, for
we left our appetites behind us; and the dry loaf, which offended you,
now comes in at night unaccompanied; but, sorry am I to add, it is soon
followed by the pipe and the gin bottle. We smoked the very first night
of our arrival.
Great news! I have just been interrupted by Mr. Daw, who comes to tell
me he was yesterday elected a Royal Academician. He said none of his own
friends voted for him; he got it by strangers, who were pleased with his
picture of Mrs. White. Charles says he does not believe Northcote ever
voted for the admission of any one. Though a very cold day, Daw was in a
prodigious sweat, for joy at his good fortune.
More great news! my beautiful green curtains were put up yesterday, and
all the doors listed with green baize, and four new boards put to the
coal-hole, and fastening hasps put to the window, and my died Manning
silk cut out.
Yesterday was an eventful day: for yesterday too Martin Burney was to be
examined by Lord Eldon, previous to his being admitted as an Attorney;
but he has not yet been here to announce his success.
I carried the baby-caps to Mrs. [John] Hazlitt; she was much pleased,
and vastly thankful. Mr. [John] H. got fifty-four guineas at Rochester,
and has now several pictures in hand.
I am going to tell you a secret, for ---- says she would be sorry to
have it talked of. One night ---- came home from the ale-house, bringing
with him a great, rough, ill-looking fellow, whom he introduced to ----
as Mr. Brown, a gentleman he had hired as a mad keeper, to take care of
him, at forty pounds a year, being ten pounds under the usual price for
keepers, which sum Mr. Brown had agreed to remit out of pure friendship.
It was with great difficulty, and by threatening to call in the aid of
watchmen and constables, that ---- could prevail on Mr. Brown to leave
the house.
We had a good chearful meeting on Wednesday: much talk of Winterslow,
its woods & its nice sun flowers. I did not so much like Phillips at
Winterslow, as I now like him for having been with us at Winterslow. We
roasted the last of his 'beach, of oily nut prolific,' on Friday, at the
Captain's. Nurse is now established in Paradise, _alias_ the Incurable
Ward [of Westminster Hospital]. I have seen her sitting in most superb
state, surrounded by her seven incurable companions. They call each
other ladies. Nurse looks as if she would be considered as the first
lady in the ward: only one seemed at [all] like to rival her in dignity.
A man in the India House has resigned, by which Charles will get twenty
pounds a year; and White has prevailed on him to write some more
lottery-puffs. If that ends in smoke, the twenty pounds is a sure card,
and has made us very joyful.
I continue very well, & return you very sincere thanks for my good
health and improved looks, which have almost made Mrs. Godwin die with
envy; she longs to come to Winterslow as much as the spiteful elder
sister did to go to the well for a gift to spit diamonds--
Jane and I have agreed to boil a round of beef for your suppers, when
you come to town again. She, Jane, broke two of the Hogarth glasses
while we were away--whereat I made a great noise.
Farewel. Love to William, and Charles's love and good wishes for the
speedy arrival of the Life of Holcroft, & the bearer thereof.
Yours most affectionately,
M. LAMB.
Tuesday.
Charles told Mrs. Godwin, Hazlitt had found a well in his garden, which,
water being scarce in your country, would bring him in two hundred a
year; and she came in great haste the next morning to ask me if it were
true. Your brother and his &c. are quite well.
[George Dawe had just been elected not Royal Academician but Associate.
He became full R.A. in 1814.
Mrs. White was the wife of Anthony White, the surgeon, who had been
apprenticed to Sir Anthony Carlisle.
Northcote was James Northcote, R.A., whose _Conversations_ Hazlitt
recorded some years later.
Martin Burney never made a successful lawyer. His life was destined to
be unhappy and unprofitable, as we shall see later.
"I am going to tell you a secret." In the absence of the original these
blanks cannot be filled in, nor are they important.
"Lottery puffs." See note on page 340.
"The spiteful elder sister." This story is in Grimm, I think.
"The _Life of Holcroft_." The _Memoirs of Thomas Holcroft_, begun by
Holcroft and finished by Hazlitt, although completed in 1810, was not
published until 1816.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, dated January 1,
1810, thanking him for a turkey. Lamb mentions that his 1809 holiday had
been spent in Wiltshire, where he saw Salisbury Cathedral and
Stonehenge. He adds that Coleridge's _Friend_ is occasionally sublime.
This was the last letter of the correspondence. Robert Lloyd died on
October 26, 1811. Lamb wrote in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ a memoir of
him, which will be found in Vol. I. of this edition.]
LETTER 185
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
Jan. 2nd, 1810.
Mary sends her love.
Dear Manning,--When I last wrote to you, I was in lodgings. I am now in
chambers, No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, where I should be happy to see you
any evening. Bring any of your friends, the Mandarins, with you. I have
two sitting-rooms: I call them so _par excellence_, for you may stand,
or loll, or lean, or try any posture in them; but they are best for
sitting; not squatting down Japanese fashion, but the more decorous use
of the post----s which European usage has consecrated. I have two of
these rooms on the third floor, and five sleeping, cooking, &c., rooms,
on the fourth floor. In my best room is a choice collection of the works
of Hogarth, an English painter of some humour. In my next best are
shelves containing a small but well-chosen library. My best room
commands a court, in which there are trees and a pump, the water of
which is excellent--cold with brandy, and not very insipid without. Here
I hope to set up my rest, and not quit till Mr. Powell, the undertaker,
gives me notice that I may have possession of my last lodging. He lets
lodgings for single gentlemen. I sent you a parcel of books by my last,
to give you some idea of the state of European literature. There comes
with this two volumes, done up as letters, of minor poetry, a sequel to
"Mrs. Leicester;" the best you may suppose mine; the next best are my
coadjutor's; you may amuse yourself in guessing them out; but I must
tell you mine are but one-third in quantity of the whole. So much for a
very delicate subject. It is hard to speak of one's self, &c. Holcroft
had finished his life when I wrote to you, and Hazlitt has since
finished his life--I do not mean his own life, but he has finished a
life of Holcroft, which is going to press. Tuthill is Dr. Tuthill. I
continue Mr. Lamb. I have published a little book for children on titles
of honour: and to give them some idea of the difference of rank and
gradual rising, I have made a little scale, supposing myself to receive
the following various accessions of dignity from the king, who is the
fountain of honour--As at first, 1, Mr. C. Lamb; 2, C. Lamb, Esq.; 3,
Sir C. Lamb, Bart.; 4, Baron Lamb of Stamford;[1] 5, Viscount Lamb; 6,
Earl Lamb; 7, Marquis Lamb; 8, Duke Lamb. It would look like quibbling
to carry it on further, and especially as it is not necessary for
children to go beyond the ordinary titles of sub-regal dignity in our
own country, otherwise I have sometimes in my dreams imagined myself
still advancing, as 9th, King Lamb; 10th, Emperor Lamb; 11th, Pope
Innocent, higher than which is nothing but the Lamb of God. Puns I have
not made many (nor punch much), since the date of my last; one I cannot
help relating. A constable in Salisbury Cathedral was telling me that
eight people dined at the top of the spire of the cathedral; upon which
I remarked, that they must be very sharp-set. But in general I cultivate
the reasoning part of my mind more than the imaginative. Do you know
Kate *********. I am stuffed out so with eating turkey for dinner, and
another turkey for supper yesterday (turkey in Europe and turkey in
Asia), that I can't jog on. It is New-Year here. That is, it was
New-Year half a-year back, when I was writing this. Nothing puzzles me
more than time and space, and yet nothing puzzles me less, for I never
think about them. Miss Knap is turned midwife. Never having had a child
herself, she can't draw any wrong analogies from her own case. Dr.
Stoddart has had Twins. There was five shillings to pay the Nurse. Mrs.
Godwin was impannelled on a jury of Matrons last Sessions. She saved a
criminal's life by giving it as her opinion that ----. The Judge
listened to her with the greatest deference. The Persian ambassador is
the principal thing talked of now. I sent some people to see him worship
the sun on Primrose Hill at half past six in the morning, 28th November;
but he did not come, which makes me think the old fire-worshippers are a
sect almost extinct in Persia. Have you trampled on the Cross yet? The
Persian ambassador's name is Shaw Ali Mirza. The common people call him
Shaw Nonsense. While I think of it, I have put three letters besides my
own three into the India post for you, from your brother, sister, and
some gentleman whose name I forget. Will they, have they, did they, come
safe? The distance you are at, cuts up tenses by the root. I think you
said you did not know Kate *********, I express her by nine stars,
though she is but one, but if ever one star differed from another in
glory--. You must have seen her at her father's. Try and remember her.
Coleridge is bringing out a paper in weekly numbers, called the
"Friend," which I would send, if I could; but the difficulty I had in
getting the packets of books out to you before deters me; and you'll
want something new to read when you come home. It is chiefly intended to
puff off Wordsworth's poetry; but there are some noble things in it by
the by. Except Kate, I have had no vision of excellence this year, and
she passed by like the queen on her coronation day; you don't know
whether you saw her or not. Kate is fifteen: I go about moping, and sing
the old pathetic ballad I used to like in my youth--
"She's sweet Fifteen,
I'm _one year more_."
Mrs. Bland sung it in boy's clothes the first time I heard it. I
sometimes think the lower notes in my voice are like Mrs. Eland's. That
glorious singer Braham, one of my lights, is fled. He was for a season.
He was a rare composition of the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel, yet
all these elements mixed up so kindly in him, that you could not tell
which predominated; but he is gone, and one Phillips is engaged instead.
Kate is vanished, but Miss B ****** is always to be met with!
"Queens drop away, while blue-legg'd Maukin thrives;
And courtly Mildred dies while country Madge survives."
That is not my poetry, but Quarles's; but haven't you observed that the
rarest things are the least obvious? Don't show anybody the names in
this letter. I write confidentially, and wish this letter to be
considered as _private_. Hazlitt has written a _grammar_ for Godwin;
Godwin sells it bound up with a treatise of his own on language, but the
_grey mare is the better horse_. I don't allude to Mrs. Godwin, but to
the word _grammar_, which comes near to _grey mare_, if you observe, in
sound. That figure is called paranomasia in Greek. I am sometimes happy
in it. An old woman begged of me for charity. "Ah! sir," said she, "I
have seen better days;" "So have I, good woman," I replied; but I meant
literally, days not so rainy and overcast as that on which she begged:
she meant more prosperous days. Mr. Dawe is made associate of the Royal
Academy. By what law of association I can't guess. Mrs. Holcroft, Miss
Holcroft, Mr. and Mrs. Godwin, Mr. and Mrs. Hazlitt, Mrs. Martin and
Louisa, Mrs. Lum, Capt. Burney, Mrs. Burney, Martin Burney, Mr. Rickman,
Mrs. Rickman, Dr. Stoddart, William Dollin, Mr. Thompson, Mr. and Mrs.
Norris, Mr. Fenwick, Mrs. Fenwick, Miss Fenwick, a man that saw you at
our house one day, and a lady that heard me speak of you; Mrs. Buffam
that heard Hazlitt mention you, Dr. Tuthill, Mrs. Tuthill, Colonel
Harwood, Mrs. Harwood, Mr. Collier, Mrs. Collier, Mr. Sutton, Nurse, Mr.
Fell, Mrs. Fell, Mr. Marshall, are very well, and occasionally inquire
after you. [_Rest cut away_.]
[Footnote 1: Where my family come from. I have chosen that if ever I
should have my choice.]
["I have published a little book." This was, of course, an invention. In
the _Elia_ essay on "Poor Relations" Lamb says that his father's boyhood
was spent at Lincoln, and in Susan Yates' story in _Mrs. Leicester's
School_ we see the Lincolnshire fens, but of the history of the family
we know nothing, I fancy Stamford is a true touch.
"The Persian ambassador." A portrait of this splendid person is
preserved at the India Office. Leigh Hunt says that Dyer was among the
pilgrims to Primrose Hill.
"Kate *********." I have not identified this young lady.
"The old pathetic ballad." I have not found this.
"Mrs. Bland." Maria Theresa Bland (1769-1838), a Jewess, and a
mezzo-soprano famous in simple ballads, who was connected with Drury
Lane for many years.
"Braham is fled." Braham did not sing in London in 1810, but joined Mrs.
Billington in a long provincial tour. Phillips was Thomas Philipps
(1774-1841), singer and composer.
"Miss B ******." Miss Burrell. See note to letter of Feb. 18, 1818.
"Not my poetry, but Quarles's." In "An Elegie," Stanza 16. Lamb does not
quote quite correctly.
"Hazlitt's grammar." _A New and Improved Grammar of the English Tongue
... By William Hazlitt, to which is added A New Guide to the English
Tongue by E[dward] Baldwin_ (William Godwin). Published by M. J. Godwin.
1810.
"A woman begged of me." Lamb told this story at the end of his _Elia_
essay "A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars," in the _London Magazine_,
June, 1822, but the passage was not reprinted in book form. See Vol. II.
of this edition.
George Dawe was made A.R.A. in 1809, not R.A. until 1814.
Of the friends on Lamb's list we have already met several. Mr. and Mrs.
Norris were the Randal Norrises. Dr. Stoddart having left Malta was now
practising in Doctors Commons. Mr. and Mrs. Collier were the John Dyer
Colliers, the parents of John Payne Collier, who introduced Lamb to
Henry Crabb Robinson. Both Colliers were journalists. Thompson may be
Marmaduke Thompson of Christ's Hospital. We meet some Buffams later, in
the Moxon correspondence. Mr. Marshall was Godwin's friend. Of Mrs. Lum,
Mr. Dollin, Colonel and Mrs. Harwood, and Mr. Sutton, I know nothing.]
LETTER 186
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[Dated by H. C. R. Feb. 7, 1810.]
Dr R.--My Brother whom you have met at my rooms (a plump good looking
man of seven and forty!) has written a book about humanity, which I
transmit to you herewith. Wilson the Publisher has put it in his head
that you can get it Reviewed for him. I dare say it is not in the scope
of your Review--but if you could put it in any likely train, he would
rejoyce. For alas! our boasted Humanity partakes of Vanity. As it is, he
teazes me to death with chusing to suppose that I could get it into all
the Reviews at a moment's notice--I!! who have been set up as a mark for
them to throw at, and would willingly consign them all to Hell flames
and Megaera's snaky locks.
But here's the Book--and don't shew it Mrs. Collier, for I remember she
makes excellent Eel soup, and the leading points of the Book are
directed against that very process.
Yours truly C. LAMB.
At Home to-night--Wednesday [February 7].
[Addressed to "Henry Robinson, Esq., 56 Hatton Garden, 'with a Treatise
on Cruelty to Animals.'"
Lamb's brother, John Lamb, who was born in 1763, was now Accountant of
the South-Sea House. His character is described by Lamb in the _Elia_
essay "My Relations," where he figures as James Elia. Robinson's _Diary_
later frequently expresses Robinson's dislike of his dogmatic ways.
The pamphlet has been identified by Mr. L.S. Livingston as _A Letter to
the Right Hon. William Windham, on his opposition to Lord Erskine's Bill
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals_. It was published by Maxwell &
Wilson at 17 Skinner Street in 1810. No author's name is given. One copy
only is known, and that is in America, and the owner declines to permit
it to be reprinted. The particular passage referring to eel pie runs
thus:--
"If an eel had the wisdom of Solomon, he could not help himself in the
ill-usage that befalls him; but if he had, and were told, that it was
necessary for our subsistence that he should be eaten, that he must be
skinned first, and then broiled; if ignorant of man's usual practice, he
would conclude that the cook would so far use her reason as to cut off
his head first, which is not fit for food, as then he might be skinned
and broiled without harm; for however the other parts of his body might
be convulsed during the culinary operations, there could be no feeling
of consciousness therein, the communication with the brain being cut
off; but if the woman were immediately to stick a fork into his eye,
skin him alive, coil him up in a skewer, head and all, so that in the
extremest agony he could not move, and forthwith broil him to death:
then were the same Almighty Power that formed man from the dust, and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, to call the eel into a
new existence, with a knowledge of the treatment he had undergone, and
he found that the instinctive disposition which man has in common with
other carnivorous animals, which inclines him to cruelty, was not the
sole cause of his torments; but that men did not attend to consider
whether the sufferings of such insignificant creatures could be
lessened: that eels were not the only sufferers; that lobsters and other
shell fish were put into cold water and boiled to death by slow degrees
in many parts of the sea coast; that these, and many other such wanton
atrocities, were the consequence of carelessness occasioned by the pride
of mankind despising their low estate, and of the general opinion that
there is no punishable sin in the ill-treatment of animals designed for
our use; that, therefore, the woman did not bestow so much thought on
him as to cut his head off first, and that she would have laughed at any
considerate person who should have desired such a thing; with what
fearful indignation might he inveigh against the unfeeling metaphysician
that, like a cruel spirit alarmed at the appearance of a dawning of
mercy upon animals, could not rest satisfied with opposing the Cruelty
Prevention Bill by the plea of possible inconvenience to mankind, highly
magnified and emblazoned, but had set forth to the vulgar and unthinking
of all ranks, in the jargon of proud learning, that man's obligations of
morality towards the creatures subjected to his use are imperfect
obligations!"
Robinson's review was, I imagine, _The London Review_, founded by
Richard Cumberland in February, 1809, which, however, no longer existed,
having run its brief course by November, 1809.
"Megæra's snaky locks." From _Paradise Lost_, X., 559:--
and up the trees
Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks
That curl'd Megæra.
Here should come another letter from Lamb to Charles Lloyd, Senior,
dated March 10, 1810. It refers to Mr. Lloyd's translation of the first
seven books of the _Odyssey_ and is accompanied by a number of
criticisms. Lamb advises Mr. Lloyd to complete the _Odyssey_, adding
that he would prize it for its Homeric plainness and truths above the
confederate jumble of Pope, Broom and Fenton which goes under Pope's
name and is far inferior to his _Iliad_. Among the criticisms is one on
Mr. Lloyd's use of the word "patriotic," in which Lamb says that it
strikes his ears as being too modern; adding that in English few words
of more than three syllables chime well into a verse. The word
"sentiment" calls from him the remark that he would root it out of a
translation of Homer. "It came in with Sterne, and was a child he had by
Affectation."]
LETTER 187
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN MATHEW GUTCH
[April 9th, 1810.]
Dear Gutch,--I did not see your brother, who brought me Wither; but he
understood, he said, you were daily expecting to come to town: this has
prevented my writing. The books have pleased me excessively: I should
think you could not have made a better selection. I never saw
"Philaretè" before--judge of my pleasure. I could not forbear scribbling
certain critiques in pencil on the blank leaves. Shall I send them, or
may I expect to see you in town? Some of them are remarks on the
character of Wither and of his writings. Do you mean to have anything of
that kind? What I have said on "Philaretè" is poor, but I think some of
the rest not so bad: perhaps I have exceeded my commission in scrawling
over the copies; but my delight therein must excuse me, and pencil-marks
will rub out. Where is the Life? Write, for I am quite in the dark.
Yours, with many thanks,
C. LAMB.
Perhaps I could digest the few critiques prefixed to the Satires,
Shepherds Hunting, &c., into a short abstract of Wither's character and
works, at the end of his Life. But, may be, you don't want any thing,
and have said all you wish in the Life.
[John Mathew Gutch (1776-1861), whom we have met before, was at this
time living at Bristol, where he owned, edited and printed _Felix
Farley's Bristol Journal_. He had been printing for his own pleasure an
edition of George Wither's poems, which he had sent to Lamb for his
opinion, intending ultimately to edit Wither fully. Lamb returned the
volumes with a number of comments, many of which he afterwards
incorporated in his essay "On the poetry of George Wither," printed in
his _Works_ in 1818. Gutch subsequently handed the volumes to his friend
Dr. John Nott of the Hot Wells, Bristol, who had views of his own upon
Wither, and who commented in his turn on the poet and on Lamb's
criticism of the poet. In course of time the volumes fell into Lamb's
hands again, when Nott's comments on Wither and on Lamb received
treatment. They were ultimately given by Lamb to his friend Brook Pulham
of the India House (who made the caricature etching of "Ælia") and are
now in the possession of Mr. A.C. Swinburne, who told the story of the
book in the _Nineteenth Century_ for January, 1885, reprinted in his
_Miscellanies_, 1886. Some passages from that article will be found in
the notes to Lamb's essay on Wither in Vol. I. of the present edition.
The last word was with Nott, for when Gutch printed a three- or
four-volume edition of Wither in 1820, under Nott's editorship, many of
Lamb's best things were included as Nott's.]
LETTER 188
CHARLES LAMB TO BASIL MONTAGU
Mr. Hazlitt's: Winterslow, near Sarum,
12th July, 1810.
Dear [Montagu],--I have turned and twisted the MSS. in my head, and can
make nothing of them. I knew when I took them that I could not; but I do
not like to do an act of ungracious necessity at once; so I am ever
committing myself by half engagements and total failures. I cannot make
any body understand why I can't do such things. It is a defect in my
occiput. I cannot put other people's thoughts together; I forget every
paragraph as fast as I read it; and my head has received such a shock by
an all-night journey on the top of the coach, that I shall have enough
to do to nurse it into its natural pace before I go home. I must devote
myself to imbecility. I must be gloriously useless while I stay here.
How is Mrs. [M.]? will she pardon my inefficiency? The city of Salisbury
is full of weeping and wailing. The Bank has stopt payment; and every
body in the town kept money at it, or has got some of its notes. Some
have lost all they had in the world. It is the next thing to seeing a
city with a plague within its walls. The Wilton people are all undone.
All the manufacturers there kept cash at the Salisbury bank; and I do
suppose it to be the unhappiest county in England this, where I am
making holiday.
We purpose setting out for Oxford Tuesday fortnight, and coming thereby
home. But no more night travelling. My head is sore (understand it of
the inside) with that deduction of my natural rest which I suffered
coming down. Neither Mary nor I can spare a morsel of our rest. It is
incumbent on us to be misers of it. Travelling is not good for us--we
travel so seldom. If the Sun be Hell, it is not for the fire, but for
the sempiternal motion of that miserable Body of Light. How much more
dignified leisure hath a mussel glued to his unpassable rocky limit, two
inch square! He hears the tide roll over him, backwards and forwards
twice a-day (as the d----d Salisbury Long Coach goes and returns in
eight and forty hours), but knows better than to take an outside
night-place a top on't. He is the Owl of the Sea. Minerva's fish. The
fish of Wisdom.
Our kindest remembrances to Mrs. [M.].
Yours truly, C. LAMB.
[If the date is correct we must suppose that the Lambs had made a second
visit to the Hazlitts and were intending to return by way of Oxford (see
next Letter).
Basil Montagu was a barrister and humanitarian, a friend of Wordsworth
and Coleridge, and afterwards step-father-in-law of Procter. He was born
in 1770 and lived until 1851. Lamb probably addressed to him many other
letters, also to his third wife, Carlyle's "noble lady." But the
correspondence was destroyed by Mrs. Procter.
The MSS. referred to cannot now be identified.]
LETTER 189
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
August 9th, 1810.
Dear H.,--Epistemon is not well. Our pleasant excursion has ended sadly
for one of us. You will guess I mean my sister. She got home very well
(I was very ill on the journey) and continued so till Monday night, when
her complaint came on, and she is now absent from home.
I am glad to hear you are all well. I think I shall be mad if I take any
more journeys with two experiences against it. I find all well here.
Kind remembrances to Sarah--have just got her letter.
H. Robinson has been to Blenheim. He says you will be sorry to hear that
we should have asked for the Titian Gallery there. One of his friends
knew of it, and asked to see it. It is never shown but to those who
inquire for it.
The pictures are all Titians, Jupiter and Ledas, Mars and Venuses, &c.,
all naked pictures, which may be a reason they don't show it to females.
But he says they are very fine; and perhaps it is shown separately to
put another fee into the shower's pocket. Well, I shall never see it.
I have lost all wish for sights. God bless you. I shall be glad to see
you in London.
Yours truly, C. LAMB.
Thursday.
[Hazlitt subsequently saw the Blenheim Titians and wrote of them with
gusto in his description of the Picture Galleries of England.
Next should come a letter from Lamb to Mrs. Thomas Clarkson, dated
September 18, 1810, not available for this edition; relating to the
illness of Mary Lamb and stating that she is "quite restored and will be
with me in little more than a week."]
LETTER 190
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Friday, 19 Oct., 1810. _E.I.Ho_.
Dr W.--I forwarded the Letter which you sent to me, without opening it,
to your Sister at Binfield. She has returned it to me, and begs me to
tell you that she intends returning from B. on Monday or Tuesday next,
when Priscilla leaves it, and that it was her earnest wish to spend
another week with us in London, but she awaits another Letter from home
to determine her. I can only say that she appeared so much pleased with
London, and that she is so little likely to see it again for a long
time, that if you can spare her, it will be almost a pity not. But
doubtless she will have heard again from you, before I can get a reply
to this Letter & what she next hears she says will be decisive. If
wanted, she will set out immediately from London. Mary has been very ill
which you have heard I suppose from the Montagues. She is very weak and
low spirited now. I was much pleased with your continuation of the Essay
on Epitaphs. It is the only sensible thing which has been written on
that subject & it goes to the Bottom. In particular I was pleased with
your Translation of that Turgid Epitaph into the plain feeling under it.
It is perfectly a Test. But what is the reason we have so few good
Epitaphs after all?
A very striking instance of your position might be found in the Church
yard of Ditton upon Thames, if you know such a place. Ditton upon Thames
has been blessed by the residence of a Poet, who for Love or Money, I do
not well know which, has dignified every grave stone for the last few
years with bran new verses, all different, and all ingenious, with the
Author's name at the Bottom of each. The sweet Swan of Thames has
artfully diversified his strains & his rhymes, that the same thought
never occurs twice. More justly perhaps, as no thought ever occurs at
all, there was a physical impossibility that the same thought should
recur. It is long since I saw and read these inscriptions, but I
remember the impression was of a smug Usher at his desk, in the
intervals of instruction levelling his pen. Of Death as it consists of
dust and worms and mourners and uncertainty he had never thought, but
the word death he had often seen separate & conjunct with other words,
till he had learned to skill of all its attributes as glibly as
Unitarian Belsham will discuss you the attributes of the word God, in a
Pulpit, and will talk of infinity with a tongue that dangles from a
scull that never reached in thought and thorough imagination two inches,
or further than from his hand to his mouth, or from the vestry to the
Sounding Board. [But the] epitaphs were trim and sprag & patent, &
pleased the survivors of Thames Ditton above the old mumpsimus of
Afflictions Sore.
To do justice though, it must be owned that even the excellent Feeling
which dictated this Dirge when new, must have suffered something in
passing thro' so many thousand applications, many of them no doubt quite
misplaced, as I have seen in Islington Churchy'd (I think) an Epitaph to
an Infant who died Ætatis 4 months, with this seasonable inscription
appended, Honor thy Fath'r. and Moth'r. that thy days may be long in the
Land &c.--Sincerely wishing your children better [_words cut out with
signature_].
[Binfield, near Windsor, was the home of Dorothy Wordsworth's uncle, Dr.
Cookson, Canon of Windsor.
Priscilla, _nèe_ Lloyd, a sister of Charles Lloyd, had married
Christopher Wordsworth, afterwards Master of Trinity, in 1804.
Wordsworth's "Essay on Epitaphs" was printed in part in _The Friend_,
February 22, 1810. For the remainder see Wordsworth's _Works_, Part II.
began with a reference to _Rosamund Gray_. I quote the passage
containing the turgid example.
Let us return to an instance of common life. I quote it with reluctance,
not so much for its absurdity as that the expression in one place will
strike at first sight as little less than impious; and it is indeed,
though unintentionally so, most irreverent. But I know no other example
that will so forcibly illustrate the important truth I wish to
establish. The following epitaph is to be found in a church-yard in
Westmoreland; which the present Writer has reason to think of with
interest as it contains the remains of some of his ancestors and
kindred. The date is 1673.
"Under this Stone, Reader, inter'd doth lye,
Beauty and Virtue's true epitomy.
At her appearance the noone-son
Blush'd and shrunk in 'cause quite outdon.
In her concentered did all graces dwell:
God pluck'd my rose that He might take a smel.
I'll say no more: but weeping wish I may
Soone with thy dear chaste ashes com to lay.
Sic efflevit Maritus."
Can anything go beyond this in extravagance? yet, if the fundamental
thoughts be translated into a natural style, they will be found
reasonable and affecting--"The woman who lies here interred, was in my
eyes a perfect image of beauty and virtue; she was to me a brighter
object than the sun in heaven: God took her, who was my delight, from
this earth to bring her nearer to Himself. Nothing further is worthy to
be said than that weeping I wish soon to lie by thy dear chaste ashes.
Thus did the husband pour out his tears."
Wordsworth wrote an epitaph on Lamb, but it was too long to be used. A
few lines are now on the tablet in Edmonton Church.
Lamb had begun his criticisms of churchyard epitaphs very early:
Talfourd tells that, when quite a little boy, after reading a number of
flattering inscriptions, he asked Mary Lamb where all the bad people
were buried.]
LETTER 191
MARY LAMB TO MISS WORDSWORTH
[P.M. November 13, 1810.]
My dear friend--My brother's letter, which I did not see, I am sure has
distressed you sadly. I was then so ill as to alarm him exceedingly, and
he thought me quite incapable of any kind of business. It is a great
mortification to me to be such an useless creature, and I feel myself
greatly indebted to you for the very kind manner in which you take this
ungracious matter: but I will say no more on this unpleasant subject. I
am at present under the care of Dr. Tuthill. I think I have derived
great benefit from his medicines. He has also made a water drinker of
me, which, contrary to my expectations, seems to agree with me very
well.
I very much regret that you were so untimely snatched away; the lively
recollection you seem to retain of London scenes will I hope induce you
to return, in happier times, for I must still hope for better days.
We have had many pleasant hours with Coleridge,--if I had not known how
ill he is I should have had no idea of it, for he has been very
chearful. But yet I have no good news to send you of him, for two days
ago, when I saw him last, he had not begun his course of medicine &
regimen under Carlisle. I have had a very chearful letter from Mrs.
Clarkson. She complained a little of your friend Tom, but she says she
means to devote the winter to the task of new molding him, I am afraid
she will find it no easy task.
Mrs. Montague was very sorry to find you gone. I have not seen much of
her, for I have kept very much at home since her return. I mean to stay
at home and keep early hours all this winter.
I have a new maid coming this evening. Betty, that you left here, went
from me last week, and I took a girl lately from the country, who was
fetched away in a few days by her sister, who took it into her head that
the Temple was an improper place for a girl to live in. I wish the one
that is coming may suit me. She is seven & twenty, with a very plain
person, therefore I may hope she will be in little danger here.
Henry Robinson, and many other friends that you made here, enquire
continually after you. The Spanish lady is gone, and now poor Robinson
is left quite forlorn.
The streets remind me so much of you that I wish for you every showy
shop I pass by. I hope we had many pleasant fireside hours together, but
I almost fear the stupid dispirited state I was in made me seem a very
flat companion; but I know I listened with great pleasure to many
interesting conversations. I thank you for what you have done for
Phillips, his fate will be decided in about a week. He has lately
breakfasted with Sir Joseph Banks, who received him with great civility
but made him no promise of support. Sir Joseph told him a new candidate
had started up who it was expected would be favoured by the council. I
am afraid Phillips stands a very poor chance.
I am doing nothing, I wish I was, for if I were once more busily
employed at work, I should be more satisfied with myself. I should not
feel so helpless, & so useless.
I hope you will write soon, your letters give me great pleasure; you
have made me so well acquainted with all your household, that I must
hope for frequent accounts how you are all going on. Remember us
affectionately to your brother & sister. I hope the little Katherine
continues mending. God bless you all & every one.
Your affectionate friend
M. LAMB.
Nov'r. 13, 1810.
LETTER 192
CHARLES LAMB TO Miss WORDSWORTH
(_Added to same letter_)
Mary has left a little space for me to fill up with nonsense, as the
Geographers used to cram monsters in the voids of their maps & call it
Terra Incognita. She has told you how she has taken to water, like a
hungry otter. I too limp after her in lame imitation, but it goes
against me a little _at first_. I have been _aquavorous_ now for full
four days, and it seems a moon. I am full of cramps & rheumatisms, and
cold internally so that fire won't warm me, yet I bear all for virtues
sake. Must I then leave you, Gin, Rum, Brandy, Aqua Vitae--pleasant
jolly fellows--Damn Temperance and them that first invented it, some
Anti Noahite. Coleridge has powdered his head, and looks like Bacchus,
Bacchus ever sleek and young. He is going to turn sober, but his Clock
has not struck yet, meantime he pours down goblet after goblet, the 2d
to see where the 1st is gone, the 3d to see no harm happens to the
second, a fourth to say there's another coming, and a 5th to say he's
not sure he's the last. William Henshaw is dead. He died yesterday, aged
56. It was but a twelvemonth or so back that his Father, an ancient
Gunsmith & my Godfather, sounded me as to my willingness to be guardian
to this William in case of his (the old man's) death. William had three
times broke in business, twice in England, once in t'other Hemisphere.
He returned from America a sot & hath liquidated all debts. What a
hopeful ward I am rid of. Ætatis 56. I must have taken care of his
morals, seen that he did not form imprudent connections, given my
consent before he could have married &c. From all which the stroke of
death hath relieved me. Mrs. Reynolds is the name of the Lady to whom I
will remember you to-morrow. Farewell. Wish me strength to continue.
I've been eating jugg'd Hare. The toast & water makes me quite sick.
C. LAMB.
[After the preceding letter Mary Lamb had been taken ill--but not, I
think, mentally--and Dorothy Wordsworth's visit was put off.
Coleridge, _The Friend_ having ceased, had come to London with the
Montagus on October 26 to stay with them indefinitely at 55 Frith
Street, Soho. But a few days after his arrival Montagu had inadvisedly
repeated what he unjustifiably called a warning phrase of Wordsworth's
concerning Coleridge's difficult habits as a guest--the word "nuisance"
being mentioned--and this had so plunged Coleridge in grief that he left
Soho for Hammersmith, where his friends the Morgans were living.
Montagu's indiscretion led to a quarrel between Coleridge and Wordsworth
which was long of healing. This is no place in which to tell the story,
which has small part in Lamb's life; but it led to one of the few
letters from Coleridge to Lamb that have been preserved (see Mr. E.H.
Coleridge's edition of Coleridge's _Letters_, page 586).
Carlisle was Sir Anthony Carlisle (1768-1840), the surgeon and a friend
of Lamb.
"The Spanish lady"--Madam Lavaggi. See Robinson's _Diary_, 1869, Vol.
I., page 303.
"Phillips." This would be Ned Phillips, I presume, not the Colonel. I
have not discovered for what post he was trying.
"The little Katherine." Catherine Wordsworth, born September 6, 1808,
lived only until June 4, 1812.
"I have been _aquavorous_." Writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on December 23
Crabb Robinson says that Lamb has abstained from alcohol and tobacco
since Lord Mayor's Day (November 9).
"William Henshaw." I know nothing more of this unfortunate man.]
LETTER 193
MARY LAMB TO MISS WORDSWORTH
[P.M. Nov. 23, 1810.]
My dear Friend, Miss Monkhouse left town yesterday, but I think I am
able to answer all your enquiries. I saw her on Sunday evening at Mrs.
Montagu's. She looked very well & said her health was greatly improved.
She promised to call on me before she left town but the weather having
been very bad I suppose has prevented her. She received the letter which
came through my brother's hands and I have learned from Mrs. Montagu
that all your commissions are executed. It was Carlisle that she
consulted, and she is to continue taking his prescriptions in the
country. Mr. Monkhouse & Mr. Addison drank tea with us one evening last
week. Miss Monkhouse is a very pleasing girl, she reminds me, a little,
of Miss Hutchinson. I have not seen Henry Robinson for some days past,
but I remember he told me he had received a letter from you, and he
talked of Spanish papers which he should send to Mr. Southey. I wonder
he does not write, for I have always understood him to be a very regular
correspondent, and he seemed very proud of your letter. I am tolerably
well, but I still affect the invalid--take medicines, and keep at home
as much as I possibly can. Water-drinking, though I confess it to be a
flat thing, is become very easy to me. Charles perseveres in it most
manfully.
Coleridge is just in the same state as when I wrote last--I have not
seen him since Sunday, he was then at Mr. Morgan's but talked of taking
a lodging.
Phillips feels a certainty that he shall lose his election, for the new
candidate is himself a Fellow of the Royal Society, and [it] is thought
Sir Joseph Banks will favour him. It will now be soon decided.
My new maid is now sick in bed. Am I not unlucky? She would have suited
me very well if she had been healthy, but I must send her away if she is
not better tomorrow.
Charles promised to add a few lines, I will therefore leave him plenty
of room, for he may perhaps think of something to entertain you. I am
sure I cannot.
I hope you will not return to Grasmere till all fear of the Scarlet
Fever is over, I rejoice to hear so good an account of the children and
hope you will write often. When I write next I will endeavour to get a
frank. This I cannot do but when the parliament is sitting, and as you
seemed anxious about Miss Monkhouse I would not defer sending this,
though otherwise it is not worth paying one penny for.
God bless you all.
Yours affectionately
M. LAMB.
LETTER 194
CHARLES LAMB TO Miss WORDSWORTH
(_Added to same letter_)
We are in a pickle. Mary from her affectation of physiognomy has hired a
stupid big country wench who looked honest, as she thought, and has been
doing her work some days but without eating--eats no butter nor meat,
but prefers cheese with her tea for breakfast--and now it comes out that
she was ill when she came with lifting her mother about (who is now with
God) when she was dying, and with riding up from Norfolk 4 days and
nights in the waggon. She got advice yesterday and took something which
has made her bring up a quart of blood, and she now lies, a dead weight
upon our humanity, in her bed, incapable of getting up, refusing to go
into an hospital, having no body in town but a poor asthmatic dying
Uncle, whose son lately married a drab who fills his house, and there is
no where she can go, and she seems to have made up her mind to take her
flight to heaven from our bed.--O God! O God!--for the little
wheelbarrow which trundled the Hunchback from door to door to try the
various charities of different professions of Mankind!
Here's her Uncle just crawled up, he is far liker Death than He. O the
Parish, the Parish, the hospital, the infirmary, the charnel house,
these are places meet for such guests, not our quiet mansion where
nothing but affluent plenty and literary ease should abound.--Howard's
House, Howard's House, or where the Parylitic descended thro' the
sky-light (what a God's Gift) to get at our Savior. In this perplexity
such topics as Spanish papers and Monkhouses sink into comparative
insignificance. What shall we do?--If she died, it were something:
gladly would I pay the coffin maker and the bellman and searchers--O
Christ. C. L.
[Miss Monkhouse was the daughter of the Wordsworths' and Lambs' friend,
Thomas Monkhouse.
"Mr. Addison." I have not traced this gentleman.
Miss Hutchinson was Sarah Hutchinson, sister of Mrs. Wordsworth.
"The Hunchback." In the _Arabian Nights_.
"Howard's House." This would be Cold-Bath Fields Prison, erected in 1794
upon some humane suggestions of Howard the Philanthropist.]
LETTER 195
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
Wednesday, November 28, 1810.
Dear Hazlitt--I sent you on Saturday a Cobbett, containing your reply to
the _Edinburgh Review_, which I thought you would be glad to receive as
an example of attention on the part of Mr. Cobbett to insert it so
speedily. Did you get it? We have received your pig, and return you
thanks; it will be dressed in due form, with appropriate sauce, this
day. Mary has been very ill indeed since you saw her; that is, as ill as
she can be to remain at home. But she is a good deal better now, owing
to a very careful regimen. She drinks nothing but water, and never goes
out; she does not even go to the Captain's. Her indisposition has been
ever since that night you left town; the night Miss W[ordsworth] came.
Her coming, and that d----d Mrs. Godwin coming and staying so late that
night, so overset her that she lay broad awake all that night, and it
was by a miracle that she escaped a very bad illness, which I thoroughly
expected. I have made up my mind that she shall never have any one in
the house again with her, and that no one shall sleep with her, not even
for a night; for it is a very serious thing to be always living with a
kind of fever upon her; and therefore I am sure you will take it in good
part if I say that if Mrs. Hazlitt comes to town at any time, however
glad we shall be to see her in the daytime, I cannot ask her to spend a
night under our roof. Some decision we must come to, for the harassing
fever that we have both been in, owing to Miss Wordsworth's coming, is
not to be borne; and I would rather be dead than so alive. However, at
present, owing to a regimen and medicines which Tuthill has given her,
who very kindly volunteer'd the care of her, she is a great deal
quieter, though too much harassed by company, who cannot or will not see
how late hours and society teaze her.
Poor Phillips had the cup dash'd out of his lips as it were. He had
every prospect of the situation, when about ten days since one of the
council of the R. Society started for the place himself, being a rich
merchant who lately failed, and he will certainly be elected on Friday
next. P. is very sore and miserable about it.
Coleridge is in town, or at least at Hammersmith. He is writing or going
to write in the _Courier_ against Cobbett, and in favour of paper money.
No news. Remember me kindly to Sarah. I write from the office.
Yours ever, C. LAMB.
I just open'd it to say the pig, upon proof, hath turned out as good as
I predicted. My fauces yet retain the sweet porcine odour. I find you
have received the Cobbett. I think your paper complete.
Mrs. Reynolds, who is a sage woman, approves of the pig.
["A Cobbett." This was Cobbett's _Political Register_ for November 24,
1810, containing Hazlitt's letter upon "Mr. Malthus and the Edinburgh
Reviewers," signed "The Author of a Reply to the _Essay on Population_."
Hazlitt's reply had been criticised in the _Edinburgh_ for August,
probably only just published.
The postscript contains Lamb's first passage in praise of roast pig.
I place next the following undated letter to Godwin from Mr. Kegan
Paul's _William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries_, as it seems to
be connected with the decision concerning visitors expressed in the
letter to Hazlitt.]
LETTER 196
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
Dear Godwin,--I have found it for several reasons indispensable to my
comfort, and to my sister's, to have no visitors in the forenoon. If I
cannot accomplish this I am determined to leave town.
I am extremely sorry to do anything in the slightest degree that may
seem offensive to you or to Mrs. Godwin, but when a general rule is
fixed on, you know how odious in a case of this sort it is to make
exceptions; I assure you I have given up more than one friendship in
stickling for this point. It would be unfair to those from whom I have
parted with regret to make exceptions, which I would not do for them.
Let me request you not to be offended, and to request Mrs. G. not to be
offended, if I beg both your compliances with this wish. Your friendship
is as dear to me as that of any person on earth, and if it were not for
the necessity of keeping tranquillity at home, I would not seem so
unreasonable.
If you were to see the agitation that my sister is in, between the fear
of offending you and Mrs. G. and the difficulty of maintaining a system
which she feels we must do to live without wretchedness, you would
excuse this seeming strange request, which I send you with a trembling
anxiety as to its reception with you, whom I would never offend. I rely
on your goodness.
C. LAMB.
LETTER 197
MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
[? End of 1810 or early 1811.]
My dear Sarah,--I have taken a large sheet of paper, as if I were going
to write a long letter; but that is by no means my intention, for I only
have time to write three lines to notify what I ought to have done the
moment I received your welcome letter. Namely, that I shall be very much
joyed to see you. Every morning lately I have been expecting to see you
drop in, even before your letter came; and I have been setting my wits
to work to think how to make you as comfortable as the nature of our
inhospitable habits will admit. I must work while you are here; and I
have been slaving very hard to get through with something before you
come, that I may be quite in the way of it, and not teize you with
complaints all day that I do not know what to do.
I am very sorry to hear of your mischance. Mrs. Rickman has just buried
her youngest child. I am glad I am an old maid; for, you see, there is
nothing but misfortunes in the marriage state.
Charles was drunk last night, and drunk the night before; which night
before was at Godwin's, where we went, at a short summons from Mr. G.,
to play a solitary rubber, which was interrupted by the entrance of Mr.
and little Mrs. Liston; and after them came Henry Robinson, who is now
domesticated at Mr. Godwin's fireside, and likely to become a formidable
rival to Tommy Turner. We finished there at twelve o'clock (Charles and
Liston brim-full of gin and water and snuff): after which Henry Robinson
spent a long evening by our fireside at home; and there was much gin and
water drunk, albeit only one of the party partook of it. And H.R.
professed himself highly indebted to Charles for the useful information
he gave him on sundry matters of taste and imagination, even after
Charles could not speak plain for tipsiness. But still he swallowed the
flattery and the spirits as savourily as Robinson did his cold water.
Last night was to be a night, but it was not. There was a certain son of
one of Martin's employers, one young Mr. Blake; to do whom honour, Mrs.
Burney brought forth, first rum, then a single bottle of champaine, long
kept in her secret hoard; then two bottles of her best currant wine,
which she keeps for Mrs. Rickman, came out; and Charles partook
liberally of all these beverages, while Mr. Young Blake and Mr. Ireton
talked of high matters, such as the merits of the Whip Club, and the
merits of red and white champaine. Do I spell that last word right?
Rickman was not there, so Ireton had it all his own way.
The alternating Wednesdays will chop off one day in the week from your
jolly days, and I do not know how we shall make it up to you; but I will
contrive the best I can. Phillips comes again pretty regularly, to the
great joy of Mrs. Reynolds. Once more she hears the well-loved sounds
of, 'How do you do, Mrs. Reynolds? How does Miss Chambers do?'
I have spun out my three lines amazingly. Now for family news. Your
brother's little twins are not dead, but Mrs. John Hazlitt and her baby
may be, for any thing I know to the contrary, for I have not been there
for a prodigious long time. Mrs. Holcroft still goes about from
Nicholson to Tuthil, and from Tuthil to Godwin, and from Godwin to
Tuthil, and from Tuthil to Godwin, and from Godwin to Tuthil, and from
Tuthil to Nicholson, to consult on the publication, or no publication,
of the life of the good man, her husband. It is called the Life
Everlasting. How does that same Life go on in your parts? Good bye, God
bless you. I shall be glad to see you when you come this way.
Yours most affectionately,
M. LAMB.
I am going in great haste to see Mrs. Clarkson, for I must get back to
dinner, which I have hardly time to do. I wish that dear, good, amiable
woman would go out of town. I thought she was clean gone; and yesterday
there was a consultation of physicians held at her house, to see if they
could keep her among them here a few weeks longer.
[This letter is dated by Mr. Hazlitt November 30, 1810, but I doubt if
that can be right. See extract from Crabb Robinson above, testifying to
Lamb's sobriety between November 9 and December 23.
Liston was John Liston (1776?-1846), the actor, whose mock biography
Lamb wrote some years later (see Vol. I. of this edition). His wife was
a diminutive comedienne, famous as Queen Dollalolla in "Tom Thumb." Lamb
may have known Liston through the Burneys, for he is said to have been
an usher in Dr. Burney's school--Dr. Charles Burney, Captain Burney's
brother.
"Henry Robinson." Crabb Robinson's _Diary_ shows us that his
domestication by Godwin's fireside was not of long duration. I do not
know who Tommy Turner was. Mr. Ireton was probably William Ayrton, the
musical critic, a friend and neighbour of the Burneys, and later a
friend of the Lambs, as we shall see.
"The alternating Wednesdays." The Lambs seem to have given up their
weekly Wednesday evening, which now became fortnightly. Later it was:
changed to Thursday and made monthly.
Mrs. Reynolds had been a Miss Chambers.]
LETTER 198
MARY LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM
[No date. Feb., 1811.]
My dear Matilda,--Coleridge has given me a very chearful promise that he
will wait on Lady Jerningham any day you will be pleased to appoint; he
offered to write to you; but I found it was to be done _tomorrow_, and
as I am pretty well acquainted with his tomorrows, I thought good to let
you know his determination _today_. He is in town today, but as he is
often going to Hammersmith for a night or two, you had better perhaps
send the invitation through me, and I will manage it for you as well as
I can. You had better let him have four or five days' previous notice,
and you had better send the invitation as soon as you can; for he seems
tolerably well just now. I mention all these betters, because I wish to
do the best I can for you, perceiving, as I do, it is a thing you have
set your heart upon. He dined one [d]ay in company with Catilana (is
that the way you spell her Italian name?--I am reading Sallust, and had
like to have written Catiline). How I should have liked, and how you
would have liked, to have seen Coleridge and Catilana together!
You have been very good of late to let me come and see you so seldom,
and you are a little goodish to come so seldom here, because you stay
away from a kind motive. But if you stay away always, as I fear you mean
to do, I would not give one pin for your good intentions. In plain
words, come and see me very soon; for though I be not sensitive as some
people, I begin to feel strange qualms for having driven you from me.
Yours affectionately,
M. LAMB.
Wednesday.
Alas! Wednesday shines no more to me now.
Miss Duncan played famously in the new comedy, which went off as
famously. By the way, she put in a spiteful piece of wit, I verily
believe of her own head; and methought she stared me full in the face.
The words were "As silent as an author in company." Her hair and herself
looked remarkably well.
[Angelica Catalani (1782-1849) was the great singer. I find no record of
Coleridge's meeting with her.
"Miss Duncan." Praise of this lady in Miss Hardcastle and other parts
will be found in Leigh Hunt's _Critical Essays on the Performers of the
London Theatres_, 1807. At this time she was playing with the Drury Lane
Company at the Lyceum. They produced several new plays.]
LETTER 199
(Fragment)
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN MORGAN
[Dated at end: March 8, 1811.]
There--don't read any further, because the Letter is not intended for
you but for Coleridge, who might perhaps not have opened it directed to
him suo nomine. It is to invite C. to Lady Jerningham's on Sunday. Her
address is to be found within. We come to Hammersmith notwithstanding on
Sunday, and hope Mrs. M. will not think of getting us Green Peas or any
such expensive luxuries. A plate of plain Turtle, another of Turbot,
with good roast Beef in the rear, and, as Alderman Curtis says, whoever
can't make a dinner of that ought to be damn'd. C. LAMB.
Friday night, 8 Mar., 1811.
[This is Lamb's only existing letter to Coleridge's friend, John Morgan.
Coleridge had not found a lodging and was still with the Morgans at 7
Portland Place, Hammersmith.
Alderman Sir William Curtis, M.P., afterwards Lord Mayor of London, was
the subject of much ridicule by the Whigs and Radicals, and the hero of
Peter Pindar's satire "The Fat Knight and the Petition." It was he who
first gave the toast of the three R.'s--"reading, riting and
rithmetic."]
LETTER 200
MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
2 Oct., 1811.
Temple.
My dear Sarah,--I have been a long time anxiously expecting the happy
news that I have just received. I address you because, as the letter has
been lying some days at the India House, I hope you are able to sit up
and read my congratulations on the little live boy you have been so many
years wishing for. As we old women say, 'May he live to be a great
comfort to you!' I never knew an event of the kind that gave me so much
pleasure as the little long-looked-for-come-at-last's arrival; and I
rejoiced to hear his honour has begun to suck--the word was not
distinctly written and I was a long time making out the solemn fact. I
hope to hear from you soon, for I am desirous to know if your nursing
labours are attended with any difficulties. I wish you a happy
_getting-up_, and a merry christening.
Charles sends his love, perhaps though he will write a scrap to Hazlitt
at the end. He is now looking over me, he is always in my way, for he
has had a month's holydays at home, but I am happy to say they end on
Monday--when mine begin, for I am going to pass a week at Richmond with
Mrs. Burney. She has been dying, but she went to the Isle of Wight and
recovered once more, and she is finishing her recovery at Richmond. When
there I intend to read Novels and play at Piquet all day long.
Yours truly,
M. LAMB.
LETTER 201
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
(_Added to same letter_)
Dear Hazlitt,
I cannot help accompanying my sister's congratulations to Sarah with
some of my own to you on this happy occasion of a man child being born--
Delighted Fancy already sees him some future rich alderman or opulent
merchant; painting perhaps a little in his leisure hours for amusement
like the late H. Bunbury, Esq.
Pray, are the Winterslow Estates entailed? I am afraid lest the young
dog when he grows up should cut down the woods, and leave no groves for
widows to take their lonesome solace in. The Wem Estate of course can
only devolve on him, in case of your brother leaving no male issue.
Well, my blessing and heaven's be upon him, and make him like his
father, with something a better temper and a smoother head of hair, and
then all the men and women must love him.
Martin and the Card-boys join in congratulations. Love to Sarah. Sorry
we are not within Caudle-shot. C. LAMB.
If the widow be assistant on this notable occasion, give our due
respects and kind remembrances to her.
[William Hazlitt's son, William Hazlitt, afterwards the Registrar, was
born on September 26, 1811, He had been preceded by another boy, in
1809, who lived, however, only a few months.
"H. Bunbury." Henry William Bunbury, the caricaturist and painter, and
the husband of Goldsmith's friend, Catherine Horneck, the "Jessamy
Bride." He died in 1811.
The Card-boys would be Lamb's Wednesday visitors.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Charles Lloyd, Senior, dated
September 8, 1812. It is printed in _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_: a
letter of criticism of Mr. Lloyd's translation of the _Epistles_ of
Horace.
A letter from Lamb to Charles Lloyd, Junior, belonging to this period,
is now no more, in common with all but two of his letters, the remainder
of which were destroyed by Lloyd's son, Charles Grosvenor Lloyd. Writing
to Daniel Stuart on October 13, 1812, Wordsworth says. "Lamb writes to
Lloyd that C.'s play [Coleridge's "Remorse"] is accepted."
We now come to a period of three years in Lamb's life which is
represented in the correspondence by only two or three letters. Not
until August 9, 1814, does he return to his old manner. During this time
Lamb is known to have written his first essay on Christ's Hospital, his
"Confessions of a Drunkard," the little but excellent series of
Table-Talk in _The Examiner_ and some verses in the same paper. Possibly
he wrote many letters too, but they have disappeared. We know from Crabb
Robinson's _Diary_ that it was a social period with the Lambs; the India
House work also becoming more exacting than before.]
LETTER 202
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN DYER COLLIER
[No date. Probably 1812.]
Dear Sir--Mrs. Collier has been kind enough to say that you would
endeavour to procure a reporter's situation for W. Hazlitt. I went to
consult him upon it last night, and he acceded very eagerly to the
proposal, and requests me to say how very much obliged he feels to your
kindness, and how glad he should be for its success. He is, indeed, at
his wits' end for a livelihood; and, I should think, especially
qualified for such an employment, from his singular facility in
retaining all conversations at which he has been ever present. I think
you may recommend him with confidence. I am sure I shall _myself_ be
obliged to you for your exertions, having a great regard for him.
Yours truly,
C. LAMB.
Sunday morning.
[John Payne Collier, who prints this in his _Old Man's Diary_, adds:
"The result was that my father procured for Hazlitt the situation of a
parliamentary reporter on the _Morning Chronicle_; but he did not retain
it long, and as his talents were undoubted, Mr. Perry transferred to him
the office of theatrical critic, a position which was subsequently held
for several years by a person of much inferior talents."
Crabb Robinson mentions in his _Diary_ under the date December 24, 1812,
that Hazlitt is in high spirits from his engagement with Perry as
parliamentary reporter at four guineas a week.
I place here, not having any definite date, a letter on a kindred
subject from Mary Lamb:--]
LETTER 203
MARY LAMB TO MRS. JOHN DYER COLLIER
[No date.]
Dear Mrs. C.--This note will be given to you by a young friend of mine,
whom I wish you would employ: she has commenced business as a
mantua-maker, and, if you and my girls would try her, I think she could
fit you all three, and it will be doing her an essential service. She
is, I think, very deserving, and if you procure work for her among your
friends and acquaintances, so much the better. My best love to you and
my girls. We are both well.
Yours affectionately,
MARY LAMB.
[John Payne Collier remarks: "Southey and Coleridge, as is well known,
married two sisters of the name of Fricker. I never saw either of them,
but a third sister settled as a mantua-maker in London, and for some
years she worked for my mother and her daughters. She was an intelligent
woman, but by no means above her business, though she was fond of
talking of her two poet-married relations. She was introduced to my
mother by the following note from Mary Lamb, who always spoke of my
sisters as _her_ girls."
Mary Lamb had herself worked as a mantua-maker for some years previous
to the autumn of 1796.]
LETTER 204
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN SCOTT
[P.M. (? Feb.), 1814.]
Sir--Your explanation is perfectly pleasant to me, and I accede to your
proposal most willingly.
As I began with the beginning of this month, I will if you please call
upon you for _your part of the engagement_ (supposing I shall have
performed mine) on the 1st of March next, and thence forward if it suit
you quarterly.--You will occasionally wink at BRISKETS & VEINY PIECES.
Your hble. Svt.
C. LAMB.
Saturday.
[John Scott (1783-1821) we shall meet later, in 1820, in connection with
the _London Magazine_, which he edited until the fatal termination of
his quarrel with _Blackwood's_. Scott had just become editor of _The
Champion_.
Lamb's only contribution to _The Champion_ under Scott, which can be
identified, is the essay "On the Melancholy of Tailors," but there is
little doubt that he supplied many of the extracts from old authors
which were printed from time to time, and possibly one or two comic
letters also. See the letter of Dec. 12, 1814.]
LETTER 205
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: August 9, 1814.]
Dear Wordsworth, I cannot tell you how pleased I was at the receit of
the great Armful of Poetry which you have sent me, and to get it before
the rest of the world too! I have gone quite through with it, and was
thinking to have accomplishd that pleasure a second time before I wrote
to thank you, but M. Burney came in the night (while we were out) and
made holy theft of it, but we expect restitution in a day or two. It is
the noblest conversational poem I ever read. A day in heaven. The part
(or rather main body) which has left the sweetest odour on my memory (a
bad term for the remains of an impression so recent) is the Tales of the
Church yard. The only girl among seven brethren, born out of due time
and not duly taken away again--the deaf man and the blind man--the
Jacobite and the Hanoverian whom antipathies reconcile--the
Scarron-entry of the rusticating parson upon his solitude--these were
all new to me too. My having known the story of Margaret (at the
beginning), a very old acquaintance, even as long back as I saw you
first at Stowey, did not make her reappearance less fresh. I don't know
what to pick out of this Best of Books upon the best subjects for
partial naming.
That gorgeous Sunset is famous, I think it must have been the identical
one we saw on Salisbury plain five years ago, that drew Phillips from
the card table where he had sat from rise of that luminary to its
unequall'd set, but neither he nor I had gifted eyes to see those
symbols of common things glorified such as the prophets saw them, in
that sunset--the wheel--the potter's clay--the wash pot--the wine
press--the almond tree rod--the baskets of figs--the fourfold visaged
head, the throne and him that sat thereon.
One feeling I was particularly struck with as what I recognised so very
lately at Harrow Church on entering in it after a hot and secular day's
pleasure,--the instantaneous coolness and calming, almost transforming,
properties of a country church just entered--a certain fragrance which
it has--either from its holiness, or being kept shut all the week, or
the air that is let in being pure country--exactly what you have reduced
into words but I am feeling I cannot. The reading your lines about it
fixed me for a time, a monument, in Harrow Church, (do you know it?)
with its fine long Spire white as washd marble, to be seen by vantage of
its high scite as far as Salisbury spire itself almost--
I shall select a day or two very shortly when I am coolest in brain to
have a steady second reading, which I feel will lead to many more, for
it will be a stock book with me while eyes or spectacles shall be lent
me.
There is a deal of noble matter about mountain scenery, yet not so much
as to overpower and discountenance a poor Londoner or South country man
entirely, though Mary seems to have felt it occasionally a little too
powerfully, for it was her remark during reading it that by your system
it was doubtful whether a Liver in Towns had a Soul to be Saved. She
almost trembled for that invisible part of us in her.
Save for a late excursion to Harrow and a day or two on the banks of the
Thames this Summer, rural images were fast fading from my mind, and by
the wise provision of the Regent all that was countryfy'd in the Parks
is all but obliterated. The very colour of green is vanishd, the whole
surface of Hyde Park is dry crumbling sand (Arabia Arenosa), not a
vestige or hint of grass ever having grown there, booths and drinking
places go all round it for a mile and half I am confident--I might say
two miles in circuit--the stench of liquors, _bad_ tobacco, dirty people
and provisions, conquers the air and we are stifled and suffocated in
Hyde Park.
Order after Order has been issued by L'd. Sidmouth in the name of the
Regent (acting in behalf of his Royal father) for the dispersion of the
varlets, but in vain. The vis unita of all the Publicans in London,
Westm'r., Marybone, and miles round is too powerful a force to put down.
The Regent has rais'd a phantom which he cannot lay. There they'll stay
probably for ever. The whole beauty of the Place is gone--that
lake--look of the Serpentine--it has got foolish ships upon it--but
something whispers to have confidence in nature and its revival--
at the coming of the _milder day_
These monuments shall all be overgrown.
Meantime I confess to have smoked one delicious Pipe in one of the
cleanliest and goodliest of the booths--a tent rather, "O call it not a
booth!"--erected by the public Spirit of Watson, who keeps the Adam and
Eve at Pancras (the ale houses have all emigrated with their train of
bottles, mugs, corkscrews, waiters, into Hyde Park--whole Ale houses
with all their Ale!) in company with some of the guards that had been in
France and a fine French girl (habited like a Princess of Banditti)
which one of the dogs had transported from the Garonne to the
Serpentine. The unusual scene, in H. Park, by Candlelight in open air,
good tobacco, bottled stout, made it look like an interval in a
campaign, a repose after battle, I almost fancied scars smarting and was
ready to club a story with my comrades of some of my lying deeds.
After all, the fireworks were splendent--the Rockets in clusters, in
trees and all shapes, spreading about like young stars in the making,
floundering about in Space (like unbroke horses) till some of Newton's
calculations should fix them, but then they went out. Any one who could
see 'em and the still finer showers of gloomy rain fire that fell
sulkily and angrily from 'em, and could go to bed without dreaming of
the Last Day, must be as hardened an Atheist as * * * * * *.
Again let me thank you for your present and assure you that fireworks
and triumphs have not distracted me from receiving a calm and noble
enjoyment from it (which I trust I shall often), and I sincerely
congratulate you on its appearance.
With kindest remembrances to you & household, we remain--yours sincerely
C. LAMB and sister.
9 Aug., 1814.
[With this letter Lamb's second epistolary period may be said to begin.
Wordsworth had sent Lamb a copy of _The Excursion_, which had been
published in July, 1814. In connection with this letter Lamb's review of
the poem in the _Quarterly_ (see Vol. I. of this edition) should be
read. The tales of the churchyard are in Books VI. and VII. The story of
Margaret had been written in 1795.
The "sunset scene" (see letter of September 19, 1814) is at the end of
Book II. Lamb refers to his visit to Hazlitt at Winterslow, near
Salisbury, in 1809, with Mary Lamb, Colonel Phillips and Martin Burney.
Wordsworth was not with them. This is the passage:--
So was he lifted gently from the ground,
And with their freight homeward the shepherds moved
Through the dull mist, I following--when a step,
A single step, that freed me from the skirts
Of the blind vapour, opened to my view
Glory beyond all glory ever seen
By waking sense or by the dreaming soul!
The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,
Was of a mighty city--boldly say
A wilderness of building, sinking far
And self-withdrawn into a boundless depth,
Far sinking into splendour--without end!
Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold,
With alabaster domes, and silver spires,
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high
Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright,
In avenues disposed; there, towers begirt
With battlements that on their restless fronts
Bore stars--illumination of all gems!
By earthly nature had the effect been wrought
Upon the dark materials of the storm
Now pacified; on them, and on the coves
And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto
The vapours had receded, taking there
Their station under a cerulean sky.
Oh, 'twas an unimaginable sight!
Clouds, mists, streams, watery rocks and emerald turf,
Clouds of all tincture, rocks and sapphire sky,
Confused, commingled, mutually inflamed,
Molten together, and composing thus,
Each lost in each, that marvellous array
Of temple, palace, citadel, and huge
Fantastic pomp of structure without name,
In fleecy folds voluminous, enwrapped.
Right in the midst, where interspace appeared
Of open court, an object like a throne
Under a shining canopy of state
Stood fixed; and fixed resemblances were seen
To implements of ordinary use,
But vast in size, in substance glorified;
Such as by Hebrew Prophets were beheld
In vision--forms uncouth of mightiest power
For admiration and mysterious awe.
In August, 1814, London was in a state of jubilation over the
declaration of peace between England and France. Lord Sidmouth, late Mr.
Addington, the Home Secretary, known as "The Doctor," was one of Lamb's
butts in his political epigrams.
"* * * * * *." I assume these stars to stand for Godwin.]
LETTER 206
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
13 August, 1814.
Dear Resuscitate,--there comes to you by the vehicle from Lad Lane this
day a volume of German; what it is I cannot justly say, the characters
of those northern nations having been always singularly harsh and
unpleasant to me. It is a contribution of Dr. Southey towards your
wants, and you would have had it sooner but for an odd accident. I wrote
for it three days ago, and the Dr., as he thought, sent it me. A book of
like exterior he did send, but being disclosed, how far unlike. It was
the _Well-bred Scholar_,--a book with which it seems the Dr. laudably
fills up those hours which he can steal from his medical avocations.
Chesterfield, Blair, Beattie, portions from "The Life of Savage," make
up a prettyish system of morality and the Belles Lettres, which Mr.
Mylne, a Schoolmaster, has properly brought together, and calls the
collection by the denomination above mentioned. The Doctor had no sooner
discovered his error than he despatched man and horse to rectify the
mistake, and with a pretty kind of ingenuous modesty in his note seemeth
to deny any knowledge of the _Well-bred Scholar_; false modesty surely
and a blush misplaced; for, what more pleasing than the consideration of
professional austerity thus relaxing, thus improving; but so, when a
child I remember blushing, being caught on my knees to my maker, or
doing otherwise some pious and praiseworthy action; _now_ I rather love
such things to be seen. Henry Crabb Robinson is out upon his circuit,
and his books are inaccessible without his leave and key. He is
attending the Midland Circuit,--a short term, but to him, as to many
young Lawyers, a long vacation sufficiently dreary. I thought I could do
no better than transmit to him, not extracts, but your very letter
itself, than which I think I never read any thing more moving, more
pathetic, or more conducive to the purpose of persuasion. The Crab is a
sour Crab if it does not sweeten him. I think it would draw another
third volume of Dodsley out of me; but you say you don't want any
English books? Perhaps, after all, that's as well; one's romantic
credulity is for ever misleading one into misplaced acts of foolery.
Crab might have answered by this time: his juices take a long time
supplying, but they'll run at last,--I know they will,--pure golden
pippin. His address is at T. Robinson's, Bury, and if on Circuit, to be
forwarded immediately--such my peremptory superscription. A fearful
rumour has since reached me that the Crab is on the eve of setting out
for France. If he is in England, your letter will reach him, and I
flatter myself a touch of the persuasive of my own, which accompanies
it, will not be thrown away; if it be, he is a Sloe, and no true-hearted
crab, and there's an end. For that life of the German Conjuror which you
speak of, "Colerus de Vitâ Doctoris vix-Intelligibilis," I perfectly
remember the last evening we spent with Mrs. Morgan and Miss Brent, in
London-Street,--(by that token we had raw rabbits for supper, and Miss
Brent prevailed upon me to take a glass of brandy and water after
supper, which is not my habit,)--I perfectly remember reading portions
of that life in their parlour, and I think it must be among their
Packages. It was the very last evening we were at that house. What is
gone of that frank-hearted circle, Morgan and his cos-lettuces? He ate
walnuts better than any man I ever knew. Friendships in these parts
stagnate. One piece of news I know will give you pleasure--Rickman is
made a Clerk to the House of Commons, £2000 a year with greater
expectat'us--but that is not the news--but it is that poor card-playing
Phillips, that has felt himself for so many years the outcast of
Fortune, which feeling pervaded his very intellect, till it made the
destiny it feared, withering his hopes in the great and little games of
life--by favor of the single star that ever shone upon him since his
birth, has strangely stept into Rickman's Secretaryship--sword, bag,
House and all--from a hopeless £100 a year eaten up beforehand with
desperate debts, to a clear £400 or £500--it almost reconciles me to the
belief of a moral government of the world--the man stares and gapes and
seems to be always wondering at what has befaln him--he tries to be
eager at Cribbage, but alas! the source of that Interest is dried up for
ever, he no longer plays for his next day's meal, or to determine
whether he shall have a half dinner or a whole dinner, whether he shall
buy a pair of black silk stockings, or wax his old ones a week or two
longer, the poor man's relish of a Trump, the Four Honors, is gone--and
I do not know whether if we could get at the bottom of things whether
poor star-doomed Phillips with his hair staring with despair was not a
happier being than the sleek well combed oily-pated Secretary that has
succeeded. The gift is, however, clogged with one stipulation, that the
Secretary is to remain a Single Man. Here I smell Rickman. Thus are gone
at once all Phillips' matrimonial dreams. Those verses which he wrote
himself, and those which a superior pen (with modesty let me speak as I
name no names) endited for him to Elisa, Amelia &c.--for Phillips was a
wife-hunting, probably from the circumstance of his having formed an
extreme rash connection in early life which paved the way to all his
after misfortunes, but there is an obstinacy in human nature which such
accidents only serve to whet on to try again. Pleasure thus at two
entrances quite shut out--I hardly know how to determine of Phillips's
result of happiness. He appears satisfyd, but never those bursts of
gaiety, those moment-rules from the Cave of Despondency, that used to
make his face shine and shew the lines which care had marked in it. I
would bet an even wager he marries secretly, the Speaker finds it out,
and he is reverted to his old Liberty and a hundred pounds a year--these
are but speculations--I can think of no other news. I am going to eat
Turbot, Turtle, Venison, marrow pudding--cold punch, claret, madeira,--
at our annual feast at half-past four this day. Mary has ordered the
bolt to my bedroom door inside to be taken off, and a practicable latch
to be put on, that I may not bar myself in and be suffocated by my
neckcloth, so we have taken all precautions, three watchmen are engaged
to carry the body up-stairs--Pray for me. They keep bothering me, (I'm
at office,) and my ideas are confused. Let me know if I can be of any
service as to books. God forbid the Architectonicon should be sacrificed
to a foolish scruple of some Book-proprietor, as if books did not belong
with the highest propriety to those that understand 'em best.
C. LAMB.
[Since Lamb's last letter to him (October 30, 1809) Coleridge had done
very little. _The Friend_ had been given up; he had made his London home
with the Morgans; had delivered the pictures on Shakespeare and
contributed to _The Courier_; "Remorse" had been produced with Lamb's
prologue, January 23, 1813; the quarrel with Wordsworth had been to some
extent healed; he had sold his German books; and the opium-habit was
growing on him. He was now at Bristol, living with Joseph Wade, and
meditating a great work on Christianity which Cottle was to print, and
which ultimately became the _Biographia Literaria_.
The term "Resuscitate" may refer to one of Coleridge's frequent threats
of dying.
Dr. Henry Herbert Southey (1783-1865) was brother of the poet. He had
just settled in London.
"Mylne" was William Milns, author of the _Well-Bred Scholar_, 1794.
Crabb Robinson does not mention Coleridge's letter, nor make any
reference to it, in his _Diary_. He went to France in August after
circuit. It was at this time (August 23) that Coleridge wrote to John
Murray concerning a translation of Goethe's _Faust_, which Murray
contemplated (see _Letters_, E. H. Coleridge, page 624). The suggestion
that Coleridge should translate _Faust_ for Murray came _viâ_ Crabb
Robinson _viâ_ Lamb.
The "life of the German conjuror." There were several Colerus'. John
Colerus of Amsterdam wrote a Life of Spinoza. Lamb may have meant this,
John Colerus of Berlin invented a perpetual calendar and John Jacob
Colerus examined Platonic doctrine. There are still others.
The Morgans had moved to Ashley, near Box. Miss Brent was Mrs. Morgan's
sister.
"Our annual feast"--the annual dinner of the India House clerks.
"The Architectonicon." Lamb refers possibly to some great projected work
of Coleridge's. The term is applied to metaphysicians. Possibly Goethe
is referred to.]
LETTER 207
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
26th August, 1814.
Let the hungry soul rejoice: there is corn in Egypt. Whatever thou hast
been told to the contrary by designing friends, who perhaps inquired
carelessly, or did not inquire at all, in hope of saving their money,
there is a stock of "Remorse" on hand, enough, as Pople conjectures, for
seven years' consumption; judging from experience of the last two years.
Methinks it makes for the benefit of sound literature, that the best
books do not always go off best. Inquire in seven years' time for the
"Rokebys" and the "Laras," and where shall they be found?--fluttering
fragmentally in some thread-paper--whereas thy "Wallenstein" and thy
"Remorse" are safe on Longman's or Pople's shelves, as in some Bodleian;
there they shall remain; no need of a chain to hold them fast--perhaps
for ages--tall copies--and people shan't run about hunting for them as
in old Ezra's shrievalty they did for a Bible, almost without effect
till the great-great-grand-niece (by the mother's side) of Jeremiah or
Ezekiel (which was it?) remembered something of a book, with odd reading
in it, that used to lie in the green closet in her aunt Judith's
bedchamber.
Thy caterer Price was at Hamburgh when last Pople heard of him, laying
up for thee, like some miserly old father for his generous-hearted son
to squander.
Mr. Charles Aders, whose books also pant for that free circulation which
thy custody is sure to give them, is to be heard of at his kinsmen,
Messrs. Jameson and Aders, No. 7, Laurence-Pountney-Lane, London,
according to the information which Crabius with his parting breath left
me. Crabius is gone to Paris. I prophesy he and the Parisians will part
with mutual contempt. His head has a twist Alemagne, like thine, dear
mystic.
I have been reading Madame Stael on Germany. An impudent clever woman.
But if "Faust" be no better than in her abstract of it, I counsel thee
to let it alone. How canst thou translate the language of cat-monkeys?
Fie on such fantasies! But I will not forget to look for Proclus. It is
a kind of book which when one meets with it one shuts the lid faster
than one opened it. Yet I have some bastard kind of recollection that
somewhere, some time ago, upon some stall or other, I saw it. It was
either that or Plotinus, 205-270 A.D., Neoplatonist, or Saint
Augustine's "City of God." So little do some folks value, what to
others, _sc_. to you, "well used," had been the "Pledge of Immortality."
Bishop Bruno I never touched upon. Stuffing too good for the brains of
such "a Hare" as thou describest. May it burst his pericranium, as the
gobbets of fat and turpentine (a nasty thought of the seer) did that old
dragon in the Apocrypha! May he go mad in trying to understand his
author! May he lend the third volume of him before he has quite
translated the second, to a friend who shall lose it, and so spoil the
publication; and may his friend find it and send it him just as thou or
some such less dilatory spirit shall have announced the whole for the
press; lastly, may he be hunted by Reviewers, and the devil jug him! So
I think I have answered all the questions except about Morgan's
cos-lettuces. The first personal peculiarity I ever observed of him (all
worthy souls are subject to 'em) was a particular kind of rabbit-like
delight in munching salads with oil without vinegar after dinner--a
steady contemplative browsing on them--didst never take note of it?
Canst think of any other queries in the solution of which I can give
thee satisfaction? Do you want any books that I can procure for you? Old
Jimmy Boyer is dead at last. Trollope has got his living, worth £1000
a-year net. See, thou sluggard, thou heretic-sluggard, what mightest
thou not have arrived at! Lay thy animosity against Jimmy in the grave.
Do not _entail_ it on thy posterity.
CHARLES LAMB.
[Coleridge's play "Remorse" had been published by Pople in 1813. A copy
of the first edition now brings about thirty shillings; but this is
largely owing to the presence in the volume of Lamb's prologue. But
_Rokeby_ and _Lara_ bring their pounds too.
"Thy caterer Price." I do not identify.
Charles Aders we shall meet. Crabius was, of course, Crabb Robinson.
"Such 'a Hare.'" Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855), who afterwards knew
Coleridge, was then at Cambridge, after living at Weimar. I find no
record of his translating Bruno; but this possibly was he.
"Jimmy Boyer." The Rev. James Boyer, Headmaster of Christ's Hospital in
Lamb and Coleridge's day, died in 1814. His living, the richest in the
Hospital's gift, was that of Colne Engaine, which passed to the Rev.
Arthur William Trollope, Headmaster of Christ's Hospital until 1826.
Boyer had been a Spartan, and Coleridge and he had had passages, but in
the main Coleridge's testimony to him is favourable and kindly (see
Lamb's Christ's Hospital essay, Vol. II. of this edition).]
LETTER 208
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. illegible. Sept. 19, 1814.]
My dear W. I have scarce time or quiet to explain my present situation,
how unquiet and distracted it is.... Owing to the absence of some of my
compeers, and to the deficient state of payments at E. I. H. owing to
bad peace speculations in the Calico market (I write this to W. W., Esq.
Collector of Stamp duties for the conjoint northern counties, not to W.
W. Poet) I go back, and have for this many days past, to evening work,
generally at the rate of nine hours a day. The nature of my work too,
puzzling and hurrying, has so shaken my spirits, that my sleep is
nothing but a succession of dreams of business I cannot do, of
assistants that give me no assistance, of terrible responsibilities. I
reclaimed your book, which Hazlit has uncivilly kept, only 2 days ago,
and have made shift to read it again with shatterd brain. It does not
lose--rather some parts have come out with a prominence I did not
perceive before--but such was my aching head yesterday (Sunday) that the
book was like a Mount'n. Landscape to one that should walk on the edge
of a precipice. I perceived beauty dizzily. Now what I would say is,
that I see no prospect of a quiet half day or hour even till this week
and the next are past. I then hope to get 4 weeks absence, and if _then_
is time enough to begin I will most gladly do what you require, tho' I
feel my inability, for my brain is always desultory and snatches off
hints from things, but can seldom follow a "work" methodically. But that
shall be no excuse. What I beg you to do is to let me know from Southey,
if that will be time enough for the "Quarterly," i.e. suppose it done in
3 weeks from this date (19 Sept.): if not it is my bounden duty to
express my regret, and decline it. Mary thanks you and feels highly
grateful for your Patent of Nobility, and acknowleges the author of
Excursion as the legitimate Fountain of Honor. We both agree, that to
our feeling Ellen is best as she is. To us there would have been
something repugnant in her challenging her Penance as a Dowry! the fact
is explicable, but how few to whom it could have been renderd explicit!
The unlucky reason of the detention of Excursion was, Hazlit and we
having a misunderstanding. He blowed us up about 6 months ago, since
which the union hath snapt, but M. Burney borrowd it for him and after
reiterated messages I only got it on Friday. His remarks had some vigor
in them, particularly something about an old ruin being _too modern for
your Primeval Nature, and about a lichen_, but I forget the Passage, but
the whole wore a slovenly air of dispatch and disrespect. That objection
which M. Burney had imbibed from him about Voltaire, I explaind to M. B.
(or tried) exactly on your principle of its being a characteristic
speech. That it was no settled comparative estimate of Voltaire with any
of his own tribe of buffoons--no injustice, even _you_ spoke it, for I
dared say you never could relish Candide. I know I tried to get thro' it
about a twelvemonth since, and couldn't for the Dullness. Now, I think I
have a wider range in buffoonery than you. Too much toleration perhaps.
I finish this after a raw ill bakd dinner, fast gobbled up, to set me
off to office again after working there till near four. O Christ! how I
wish I were a rich man, even tho' I were squeezed camel-fashion at
getting thro' that Needles eye that is spoken of in the _Written Word_.
Apropos, are you a Xtian? or is it the Pedlar and the Priest that are?
I find I miscalld that celestial splendor of the mist going off, a
_sunset_. That only shews my inaccuracy of head.
Do pray indulge me by writing an answer to the point of time mentioned
above, or _let Southey_. I am asham'd to go bargaining in this way, but
indeed I have no time I can reckon on till the 1st week in Octo'r. God
send I may not be disappointed in that!
Coleridge swore in letter to me he would review Exc'n. in the Quarterly.
Therefore, tho' _that_ shall not stop me, yet if I can do anything,
_when_ done, I must know of him if he has anything ready, or I shall
fill the world with loud exclaims.
I keep writing on, knowing the Postage is no more for much writing, else
so faggd & disjointed I am with damnd India house work, I scarce know
what I do. My left arm reposes on "Excursion." I feel what it would be
in quiet. It is now a sealed Book.
O happy Paris, seat of idleness and pleasure! From some return'd English
I hear that not such a thing as a counting house is to be seen in her
streets, scarce a desk--Earthquakes swallow up this mercantile city and
its gripple merchants, as Drayton hath it, "born to be the curse of this
brave isle." I invoke this not on account of any parsimonious habits the
mercantile interest may have, but, to confess truth, because I am not
fit for an office.
Farewell, in haste, from a head that is ill to methodize, a stomach to
digest, and all out of Tune. Better harmonies await you.
C. LAMB.
[Wordsworth had been appointed in 1813 Distributor of Stamps for the
county of Westmoreland. Lamb is writing again about _The Excursion_,
which at the instigation of Southey, to whom Wordsworth had made the
suggestion, he is to review for the _Quarterly_.
"Hazlitt and we having a misunderstanding." The precise cause of the
trouble we do not know, but in Crabb Robinson's _Diary_, in 1811, it is
said that a slight coolness had begun between the two men on account of
money which Lamb did not feel justified in lending to Hazlitt. Between
1811 and 1814, however, they were friendly again. It was Hazlitt's
hostile attitude to Wordsworth that brought about Robinson's split with
him, although that also was mended: literary men are short haters.
Hazlitt reviewed _The Excursion_--from Lamb's copy, which in itself was
a cause of grievance--in _The Examiner_, in three numbers, August 21, 28
and October 2. Wordsworth had described _Candide_, in Book II., as the
"dull product of a scoffer's pen." Hazlitt wrote thus:--
... We cannot however agree with Mr. Wordsworth that _Candide_ is
_dull_. It is, if our author pleases, "the production of a scoffer's
pen," or it is any thing, but dull. _Rasselas_ indeed is dull; but then
it is privileged dulness. It may not be proper in a grave, discreet,
orthodox, promising young divine, who studies his opinions in the
contraction or distension of his patron's brow, to allow any merit to a
work like _Candide_; but we conceive that it would have been more in
character, that is, more manly, in Mr. Wordsworth, nor do we think it
would have hurt the cause he espouses, if he had blotted out the
epithet, after it had peevishly escaped him. Whatsoever savours of a
little, narrow, inquisitorial spirit, does not sit well on a poet and a
man of genius. The prejudices of a philosopher are not natural....
Lamb himself made the same criticism, three years later, at Haydon's
dinner party.
Hazlitt had also said of _The Excursion_ that--
Such is the severe simplicity of Mr. Wordsworth's taste, that we doubt
whether he would not reject a druidical temple, or time-hallowed ruin,
as too modern and artificial for his purpose. He only familiarises
himself or his readers with a stone, covered with lichens, which has
slept in the same spot of ground from the creation of the world, or with
the rocky fissure between two mountains, caused by thunder, or with a
cavern scooped out by the sea. His mind is, as it were, coeval with the
primary forms of things, holds immediately from nature; and his
imagination "owes no allegiance" but "to the elements."
"Are you a Xtian?"--referring to the sentiments of Wanderer and the
Pastor--two characters of _The Excursion_.
"A _sunset_." See preceding letter to Wordsworth.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Southey, dated October 20, 1814,
stating that Lamb has deposited with Mr. Grosvenor Bedford, Southey's
friend and correspondent, his review of _The Excursion_. "Who can cram
into a strait coop of a review any serious idea of such a vast and
magnificent poem?"]
LETTER 209
MARY LAMB TO BARBARA BETHAM (Aged 14)
Nov'r. 2, 1814.
It is very long since I have met with such an agreeable surprise as the
sight of your letter, my kind young friend, afforded me. Such a nice
letter as it is too. And what a pretty hand you write. I congratulate
you on this attainment with great pleasure, because I have so often felt
the disadvantage of my own wretched handwriting.
You wish for London news. I rely upon your sister Ann for gratifying you
in this respect, yet I have been endeavouring to recollect whom you
might have seen here, and what may have happened to them since, and this
effort has only brought the image of little Barbara Betham, unconnected
with any other person, so strongly before my eyes that I seem as if I
had no other subject to write upon. Now I think I see you with your feet
propped upon the fender, your two hands spread out upon your knees--an
attitude you always chose when we were in familiar confidential
conversation together--telling me long stories of your own home, where
now you say you are "Moping on with the same thing every day," and which
then presented nothing but pleasant recollections to your mind. How well
I remember your quiet steady face bent over your book. One day,
conscience struck at having wasted so much of your precious time in
reading, and feeling yourself, as you prettily said, "quite useless to
me," you went to my drawers and hunted out some unhemmed
pocket-handkerchiefs, and by no means could I prevail upon you to resume
your story books till you had hemmed them all. I remember, too, your
teaching my little maid to read--your sitting with her a whole evening
to console her for the death of her sister; and that she in her turn
endeavoured to become a comforter to you, the next evening, when you
wept at the sight of Mrs. Holcroft, from whose school you had recently
eloped because you were not partial to sitting in the stocks. Those
tears, and a few you once dropped when my brother teased you about your
supposed fondness for an apple dumpling, were the only interruptions to
the calm contentedness of your unclouded brow. We still remain the same
as you left us, neither taller nor wiser, or perceptibly older, but
three years must have made a great alteration in you. How very much,
dear Barbara, I should like to see you!
We still live in Temple Lane, but I am now sitting in a room you never
saw. Soon after you left us we we[re] distressed by the cries of a cat,
which seemed to proceed from the garrets adjoining to ours, and only
separated from ours by a locked door on the farther side of my brother's
bedroom, which you know was the little room at the top of the kitchen
stairs. We had the lock forced and let poor puss out from behind a
pannel of the wainscot, and she lived with us from that time, for we
were in gratitude bound to keep her, as she had introduced us to four
untenanted, unowned rooms, and by degrees we have taken possession of
these unclaimed apartments--First putting up lines to dry our clothes,
then moving my brother's bed into one of these, more commodious than his
own room. And last winter, my brother being unable to pursue a work he
had begun, owing to the kind interruptions of friends who were more at
leisure than himself, I persuaded him that he might write at his ease in
one of these rooms, as he could not then hear the door knock, or hear
himself denied to be at home, which was sure to make him call out and
convict the poor maid in a fib. Here, I said, he might be almost really
not at home. So I put in an old grate, and made him a fire in the
largest of these garrets, and carried in one table, and one chair, and
bid him write away, and consider himself as much alone as if he were in
a new lodging in the midst of Salisbury Plain, or any other wide
unfrequented place where he could expect few visitors to break in upon
his solitude. I left him quite delighted with his new acquisition, but
in a few hours he came down again with a sadly dismal face. He could do
nothing, he said, with those bare whitewashed walls before his eyes. He
could not write in that dull unfurnished prison.
The next day, before he came home from his office, I had gathered up
various bits of old carpetting to cover the floor; and, to a little
break the blank look of the bare walls, I hung up a few old prints that
used to ornament the kitchen, and after dinner, with great boast of what
an improvement I had made, I took Charles once more into his new study.
A week of busy labours followed, in which I think you would not have
disliked to have been our assistant. My brother and I almost covered the
wall with prints, for which purpose he cut out every print from every
book in his old library, coming in every now and then to ask my leave to
strip a fresh poor author--which he might not do, you know, without my
permission, as I am elder sister. There was such pasting, such
consultation where their portraits, and where the series of pictures
from Ovid, Milton, and Shakespear would show to most advantage, and in
what obscure corner authors of humbler note might be allowed to tell
their stories. All the books gave up their stores but one, a translation
from Ariosto, a delicious set of four and twenty prints, and for which I
had marked out a conspicuous place; when lo! we found at the moment the
scissars were going to work that a part of the poem was printed at the
back of every picture. What a cruel disappointment! To conclude this
long story about nothing, the poor despised garret is now called the
print room, and is become our most favorite sitting room.
Your sister Ann will tell you that your friend Louisa is going to
France. Miss Skepper is out of town, Mrs. Reynolds desires to be
remembered to you, and so does my neighbour Mrs. Norris, who was your
doctress when you were unwell, her three little children are grown three
big children. The Lions still live in Exeter Change. Returning home
through the Strand, I often hear them roar about twelve oclock at night.
I never hear them without thinking of you, because you seemed so pleased
with the sight of them, and said your young companions would stare when
you told them you had seen a Lion.
And now my dear Barbara fare well, I have not written such a long letter
a long time, but I am very sorry I had nothing amusing to write about.
Wishing you may pass happily through the rest of your school days, and
every future day of your life.
I remain, your affectionate Friend,
M. LAMB.
My brother sends his love to you, with the kind remembrance your letter
shewed you have of us as I was. He joins with me in respects to your
good father and mother, and to your brother John, who, if I do not
mistake his name, is your tall young brother who was in search of a fair
lady with a large fortune. Ask him if he has found her yet. You say you
are not so tall as Louisa--you must be, you cannot so degenerate from
the rest of your family. Now you have begun, I shall hope to have the
pleasure of hearing from [you] again. I shall always receive a letter
from you with very great delight.
[This charming letter is to a younger sister of Matilda Betham. What the
work was which in 1814 drove Lamb into an empty room I do not know. It
may have been something which came to nought. Beyond the essay on
Tailors (see Vol. I.) and a few brief scraps for _The Champion_ he did
practically nothing that has survived until some verses in 1818, a few
criticisms in 1819, and in 1820 the first of the _Elia_ essays for the
_London Magazine_. Louisa was Louisa Holcroft, about to go to France
with her mother and stepfather, James Kenney. Miss Skepper was Basil
Montagu's stepdaughter, afterwards the wife of B. W. Procter (Barry
Cornwall). Exeter Change, where there was a menagerie, was in the Strand
(see note above). There is a further reference to the tallness of John
Betham in Lamb's letter to Landor in 1832.]
LETTER 210
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN SCOTT
[Dated at end: Dec. 12, 1814.]
Sir, I am sorry to seem to go off my agreement, but very particular
circumstances have happened to hinder my fulfillment of it at present.
If any single Essays ever occur to me in future, you shall have the
refusal of them. Meantime I beg you to consider the thing as at an end.
Yours,
with thanks & acknowlg'nt
C. LAMB.
Monday ev: 12 Dec., 1814.
[_See Letter to Scott above._]
LETTER 211
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. Dec. 28, 1814.]
Dear W. your experience about tailors seems to be in point blank
opposition to Burton, as much as the author of the Excursion does toto
coelo differ in his notion of a country life from the picture which W.H.
has exhibited of the same. But with a little explanation you and B. may
be reconciled. It is evident that he confined his observations to the
genuine native London tailor. What freaks Tailor-nature may take in the
country is not for him to give account of. And certainly some of the
freaks recorded do give an idea of the persons in question being beside
themselves, rather than in harmony with the common moderate self
enjoym't of the rest mankind. A flying tailor, I venture to say, is no
more in rerum naturâ than a flying horse or a Gryphon. His wheeling his
airy flight from the precipice you mention had a parallel in the
melancholy Jew who toppled from the monument. Were his limbs ever found?
Then, the man who cures diseases by words is evidently an inspired
tailor. Burton never affirmed that the act of sewing disqualified the
practiser of it from being a fit organ for supernatural revelation. He
never enters into such subjects. 'Tis the common uninspired tailor which
he speaks of. Again the person who makes his smiles to be _heard_, is
evidently a man under possession; a demoniac taylor. A greater hell than
his own must have a hand in this. I am not certain that the cause which
you advocate has much reason for triumph. You seem to me to substitute
light headedness for light heartedness by a trick, or not to know the
difference. I confess, a grinning tailor would shock me.--Enough of
tailors.--
The "'scapes" of the great god Pan who appeared among your mountains
some dozen years since, and his narrow chance of being submerged by the
swains, afforded me much pleasure. I can conceive the water nymphs
pulling for him. He would have been another Hylas. W. Hylas. In a mad
letter which Capel Loft wrote to M.M. Phillips (now S'r. Rich'd.) I
remember his noticing a metaphysical article by Pan, signed H. and
adding "I take your correspondent to be the same with Hylas." Hylas has
[? had] put forth a pastoral just before. How near the unfounded
conjecture of the certainly inspired Loft (unfounded as we thought it)
was to being realized! I can conceive him being "good to all that wander
in that perilous flood." One J. Scott (I know no more) is edit'r of
_Champ_.
Where is Coleridge?
That Review you speak of, I am only sorry it did not appear last month.
The circumstances of haste and peculiar bad spirits under which it was
written, would have excused its slightness and inadequacy, the full load
of which I shall suffer from its lying by so long as it will seem to
have done from its postponement. I write with great difficulty and can
scarce command my own resolution to sit at writing an hour together. I
am a poor creature, but I am leaving off Gin. I hope you will see good
will in the thing. I had a difficulty to perform not to make it all
Panegyrick; I have attempted to personate a mere stranger to you;
perhaps with too much strangeness. But you must bear that in mind when
you read it, and not think that I am in mind distant from you or your
Poem, but that both are close to me among the nearest of persons and
things. I do but act the stranger in the Review. Then, I was puzzled
about extracts and determined upon not giving one that had been in the
Examiner, for Extracts repeated give an idea that there is a meagre
allow'ce, of good things. By this way, I deprived myself of Sr. W.
Irthing and the reflections that conclude his story, which are the
flower of the Poem. H. had given the reflections before me. _Then_ it is
the first Review I ever did, and I did not know how long I might make
it. But it must speak for itself, if Giffard and his crew do not put
words in its mouth, which I expect. Farewell. Love to all. Mary keeps
very bad.
C. LAMB.
[Lamb seems to have sent Wordsworth a copy of _The Champion_ containing
his essay, signed Burton, Junior, "On the Melancholy of Tailors."
Wordsworth's letter of reply, containing the examples of other tailors,
is no longer in existence. "A greater hell" is a pun: the receptacle
into which tailors throw scraps is called a hell. See Lamb's "Satan in
Search of a Wife" and notes (Vol. IV.) for more on this topic.
"W. H."--Hazlitt: referring again to his review of _The Excursion_ in
_The Examiner_.
"The melancholy Jew"--Mr. Lyon Levy, a diamond merchant, who jumped off
the Monument commemorating the Fire of London, on January 18, 1810.
"The ''scapes' of the great god Pan." A reference to Hazlitt's
flirtation with a farmer's daughter in the Lake country, ending almost
in immersion (see above). Hylas, seeking for water with a pitcher, so
enraptured the nymphs of the river with his beauty that they drew him
in.
Capell Lofft (1751-1824) was a lawyer and philanthropist of independent
means who threw himself into many popular discussions and knew many
literary men. He was the patron of Robert Bloomfield. Lamb was amused by
him, but annoyed that his initials were also C. L. "M. M. Phillips"--for
_Monthly Magazine_, which Phillips published.
"One J. Scott." See note above.
"Where is Coleridge?" Coleridge was now at Calne, in Wiltshire, with the
Morgans. He was being treated for the drug habit by a Dr. Page.
"That Review." Lamb's review of _The Excursion_, which, although the
_Quarterly_ that contains it is dated October, 1814, must have been
delayed until the end of the year. The episode of Sir W. Irthing (really
Sir Alfred Irthing) is in Book VII. Lamb's foreboding as to Clifford's
action was only too well justified, as we shall see.
"Mary keeps very bad." Mary Lamb, we learn from Crabb Robinson's
_Diary_, had been taken ill some time between December 11 and December
24, having tired herself by writing an article on needlework for the
_British Lady's Magazine_ (see Vol. I. of this edition). She did not
recover until February, 1815.]
LETTER 212
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. illegible. ?Early Jan., 1815.]
Dear Wordsworth, I told you my Review was a very imperfect one. But what
you will see in the Quarterly is a spurious one which Mr. Baviad Gifford
has palm'd upon it for mine. I never felt more vexd in my life than when
I read it. I cannot give you an idea of what he has done to it out of
spite at me because he once sufferd me to be called a lunatic in his
Thing. The _language_ he has alterd throughout. Whatever inadequateness
it had to its subject, it was in point of composition the prettiest
piece of prose I ever writ, and so my sister (to whom alone I read the
MS.) said. That charm if it had any is all gone: more than a third of
the substance is cut away, and that not all from one place, but
_passim_, so as to make utter nonsense. Every warm expression is changed
for a nasty cold one. I have not the cursed alteration by me, I shall
never look at it again, but for a specimen I remember I had said the
Poet of the Excurs'n "walks thro' common forests as thro' some Dodona or
enchanted wood, and every casual bird that flits upon the boughs, like
that miraculous one in Tasso, but in language more piercing than any
articulate sounds, reveals to him far higher lovelays." It is now
(besides half a dozen alterations in the same half dozen lines) "but in
language more _intelligent_ reveals to him"--that is one I remember. But
that would have been little, putting his damnd Shoemaker phraseology
(for he was a shoemaker) in stead of mine, which has been tinctured with
better authors than his ignorance can comprehend--for I reckon myself a
dab at _Prose_--verse I leave to my betters--God help them, if they are
to be so reviewed by friend and foe as you have been this quarter. I
have read "It won't do." But worse than altering words, he has kept a
few members only of the part I had done best, which was to explain all I
could of your "scheme of harmonies," as I had ventured to call it,
between the external universe and what within us answers to it. To do
this I had accumulated a good many short passages, rising in length to
the end, weaving in the Extracts as if they came in as a part of the
text, naturally, not obtruding them as specimens. Of this part a little
is left, but so as without conjuration no man could tell what I was
driving it [? at]. A proof of it you may see (tho' not judge of the
whole of the injustice) by these words: I had spoken something about
"natural methodism--" and after follows "and therefore the tale of
Margaret sh'd have been postponed" (I forget my words, or his words):
now the reasons for postponing it are as deducible from what goes
before, as they are from the 104th psalm. The passage whence I deduced
it has vanished, but clapping a colon before a _therefore_ is always
reason enough for Mr. Baviad Gifford to allow to a reviewer that is not
himself. I assure you my complaints are founded. I know how sore a word
alterd makes one, but indeed of this Review the whole complexion is
gone. I regret only that I did not keep a copy. I am sure you would have
been pleased with it, because I have been feeding my fancy for some
months with the notion of pleasing you. Its imperfection or
inadequateness in size and method I knew, but for the _writing part_ of
it, I was fully satisfied. I hoped it would make more than atonement.
Ten or twelve distinct passages come to my mind, which are gone, and
what is left is of course the worse for their having been there, the
eyes are pulld out and the bleeding sockets are left. I read it at
Arch's shop with my face burning with vexation secretly, with just such
a feeling as if it had been a review written against myself, making
false quotations from me. But I am ashamd to say so much about a short
piece. How are _you_ served! and the labors of years turn'd into
contempt by scoundrels.
But I could not but protest against your taking that thing as mine.
Every _pretty_ expression, (I know there were many) every warm
expression, there was nothing else, is vulgarised and frozen--but if
they catch me in their camps again let them spitchcock me. They had a
right to do it, as no name appears to it, and Mr. Shoemaker Gifford I
suppose never wa[i]ved a right he had since he commencd author. God
confound him and all caitiffs.
C. L.
[For the full understanding of this letter it is necessary to read
Lamb's review (see Vol. I. of this edition).
William Gifford (1756-1826), editor of the _Quarterly_, had been a
shoemaker's apprentice. Lamb calls him Mr. Baviad Gifford on account of
his satires, _The Moeviad_ and _The Baviad_, against the Delia Cruscan
school of poetry, of which Robert Merry had been the principal member.
Some of Lamb's grudge against Gifford, which was of old standing (see
notes to Lamb's review, Vol. I.), was repaid in his sonnet "St. Crispin
to Mr. Gifford" (see Vol. IV. of this edition). Gifford's connection
with Canning, in the _Anti-Jacobin_, could not have improved his
position with Lamb.
"I have read 'It won't do.'" A reference to the review of _The
Excursion_ in the _Edinburgh_ for November, by Jeffrey, beginning "This
will never do."]
LETTER 213
CHARLES LAMB TO MR. SARGUS
[Dated at end: Feb. 23, 1815.]
Dr Sargus--This is to give you notice that I have parted with the
Cottage to Mr. Grig Jun'r. to whom you will pay rent from Michaelmas
last. The rent that was due at Michaelmas I do not wish you to pay me. I
forgive it you as you may have been at some expences in repairs.
Yours
CH. LAMB.
Inner Temple Lane, London,
23 Feb., 1815.
[In 1812 Lamb inherited, through his godfather, Francis Fielde, who is
mentioned in the _Elia_ essay "My First Play," a property called Button
Snap, near Puckeridge, in Hertfordshire, consisting of a small cottage
and about an acre of ground. In 1815 he sold it for £50, and the
foregoing letter is an intimation of the transaction to his tenant. The
purchaser, however, was not a Mr. Grig, but a Mr. Greg (see notes to "My
First Play" in Vol. II. of this edition). In my large edition I give a
picture of the cottage.
I append here an undated letter to Joseph Hume which belongs to a time
posterior to the sale of the cottage. It refers to Tuthill's candidature
for the post of physician to St. Luke's Hospital.
The letter is printed in Mr. Kegan Paul's _William Godwin: His Friends
and Acquaintances_, as though it were written to Godwin, and all Lamb's
editors follow in assuming the Philosopher to be the recipient, but
internal evidence practically proves that Hume was addressed; for there
is the reference to Mrs. Hume and her daughters, and Godwin lived not in
Kensington but in Skinner Street.]
LETTER 214
CHARLES LAMB TO JOSEPH HUME
"Bis dat qui dat cito."
[No date.]
I hate the pedantry of expressing that in another language which we have
sufficient terms for in our own. So in plain English I very much wish
you to give your vote to-morrow at Clerkenwell, instead of Saturday. It
would clear up the brows of my favourite candidate, and stagger the
hands of the opposite party. It commences at nine. How easy, as you come
from Kensington (_à propos_, how is your excellent family?) to turn down
Bloomsbury, through Leather Lane (avoiding Lay Stall St. for the
disagreeableness of the name). Why, it brings you in four minutes and a
half to the spot renowned on northern milestones, "where Hicks' Hall
formerly stood." There will be good cheer ready for every independent
freeholder; where you see a green flag hang out go boldly in, call for
ham, or beef, or what you please, and a mug of Meux's Best. How much
more gentleman-like to come in the front of the battle, openly avowing
one's sentiments, than to lag in on the last day, when the adversary is
dejected, spiritless, laid low. Have the first cut at them. By Saturday
you'll cut into the mutton. I'd go cheerfully myself, but I am no
freeholder (Fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium), but I sold it for £50. If they'd
accept a copy-holder, we clerks are naturally _copy_-holders.
By the way, get Mrs. Hume, or that agreeable Amelia or Caroline, to
stick a bit of green in your hat. Nothing daunts the adversary more than
to wear the colours of your party. Stick it in cockade-like. It has a
martial, and by no means disagreeable effect.
Go, my dear freeholder, and if any chance calls you out of this
transitory scene earlier than expected, the coroner shall sit lightly on
your corpse. He shall not too anxiously enquire into the circumstances
of blood found upon your razor. That might happen to any gentleman in
shaving. Nor into your having been heard to express a contempt of life,
or for scolding Louisa for what Julia did, and other trifling
incoherencies.
Yours sincerely,
C. LAMB.
["Lay Stall St." This street, which is still found in Clerkenwell, was
of course named from one of the laystalls or public middens which were a
feature of London when sanitation was in its infancy.
"Where Hicks' Hall formerly stood." Hicks' Hall, the old Sessions House
of the County of Middlesex, stood in St. John Street, Clerkenwell, until
its demolition in 1782, when the justices removed to the new Sessions
House on Clerkenwell Green. The milestones on the Great North Road,
which had long been measured from Hicks' Hall, were reinscribed "----
Miles from the spot where Hicks' Hall formerly stood." Thus Hicks' Hall
remained a household word long after it had ceased to exist. The
adventures of Jedediah Jones in search of "the spot where Hicks' Hall
formerly stood" are amusingly set forth in Knight's _London_, Vol. I.,
pages 242-244.
We meet Hume's daughters again in Letter 540. I append a letter with no
date, which may come here:--]
LETTER 215
CHARLES LAMB TO [MRS. HUME?]
[No date.]
Dear Mrs. H.: Sally who brings this with herself back has given every
possible satisfaction in doing her work, etc., but the fact is the poor
girl is oppressed with a ladylike melancholy, and cannot bear to be so
much alone, as she necessarily must be in our kitchen, which to say the
truth is damn'd solitary, where she can see nothing and converse with
nothing and not even look out of window. The consequence is she has been
caught shedding tears all day long, and her own comfort has made it
indispensable to send her home. Your cheerful noisy children-crowded
house has made her feel the change so much the more.
Our late servant always complained of the _want of children_, which she
had been used to in her last place. One man's meat is another man's
poison, as they say. However, we are eternally obliged to you, as much
as if Sally could have staid. We have got an old woman coming, who is
too stupid to know when she is alone and when she is not.
Yours truly,
C. LAMB, for self and sister.
Have you heard from ......
[I take it that Mrs. H. is Mrs. Hume, because Hume had a large family.
It was of him, in his paternal light, that Lamb said, "one fool makes
many."]
LETTER 216
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. partly illegible. April 7, 1815.]
The conclusion of this epistle getting gloomy, I have chosen this part
to desire our kindest Loves to Mrs. Wordsworth and to _Dorothea_. Will
none of you ever be in London again?
Dear Wordsw'th, you have made me very proud with your successive book
presents. I have been carefully through the two volumes to see that
nothing was omitted which used to be there. I think I miss nothing but a
Character in Antithet. manner which I do not know why you left out; the
moral to the boys building the giant, the omission whereof leaves it in
my mind less complete; and one admirable line gone (or something come in
stead of it) "the stone-chat and the glancing sand-piper," which was a
line quite alive. I demand these at your hand. I am glad that you have
not sacrificed a verse to those scoundrels. I would not have had you
offer up the poorest rag that lingered upon the stript shoulders of
little Alice Fell, to have atoned all their malice. I would not have
given 'em a red cloak to save their souls. I am afraid lest that
substitution of a shell (a flat falsification of the history) for the
household implement as it stood at first, was a kind of tub thrown out
to the beast, or rather thrown out for him. The tub was a good honest
tub in its place, and nothing could fairly be said against it. You say
you made the alteration for the "friendly reader," but the malicious
will take it to himself. Damn 'em; if you give 'em an inch &c. The
preface is noble and such as you should write: I wish I could set my
name to it--Imprimatur--but you have set it there yourself, and I thank
you. I had rather be a door-keeper in your margin, than have their
proudest text swelling with my eulogies. The poems in the volumes which
are new to me are so much in the old tone that I hardly received them as
novelties. Of those, of which I had no previous knowlege, the four yew
trees and the mysterious company which you have assembled there, most
struck me--"Death the Skeleton and Time the Shadow--" It is a sight not
for every youthful poet to dream of--it is one of the last results he
must have gone thinking-on for years for. Laodamia is a very original
poem; I mean original with reference to your own manner. You have
nothing like it. I should have seen it in a strange place, and greatly
admired it, but not suspected its derivation. Let me in this place, for
I have writ you several letters without naming it, mention that my
brother, who is a picture collector, has picked up an undoubtable
picture of Milton. He gave a few shillings for it, and could get no
history with it, but that some old lady had had it for a great many
years. Its age is ascertainable from the state of the canvas, and you
need only see it to be sure that it is the original of the heads in the
Tonson Editions, with which we are all so well familiar. Since I saw you
I have had a treat in the reading way which comes not every day. The
Latin Poems of V. Bourne, which were quite new to me. What a heart that
man had, all laid out upon town scenes, a proper counterpoise to _some
people's_ rural extravaganzas. Why I mention him is that your Power of
Music reminded me of his poem of the balad singer in the Seven Dials. Do
you remember his epigram on the old woman who taught Newton the A. B.
C., which after all, he says, he hesitates not to call Newton's
_Principia_. I was lately fatiguing myself with going thro' a volume of
fine words by _L'd. Thurlow_--excellent words, and if the heart could
live by words alone, it could desire no better regale--but what an
aching vacuum of matter; I don't stick at the madness of it, for that is
only a consequence of shutting his eyes and thinking he is in the age of
the old Elisabeth poets; from thence I turned to V. Bourne--what a sweet
unpretending pretty-mannered _matter-ful_ creature, sucking from every
flower, making a flower of every thing, his diction all Latin and his
thoughts all English. Bless him, Latin wasn't good enough for him, why
wasn't he content with the language which Gay and Prior wrote in.
I am almost sorry that you printed Extracts from those first Poems, or
that you did not print them at length. They do not read to me as they do
all together. Besides they have diminished the value of the original
(which I possess) as a curiosity. I have hitherto kept them distinct in
my mind as referring to a particular period of your life. All the rest
of your poems are so much of a piece, they might have been written in
the same week--these decidedly speak of an earlier period. They tell
more of what you had been reading.
We were glad to see the poems by a female friend. The one of the wind is
masterly, but not new to us. Being only three, perhaps you might have
clapt a D. at the corner and let it have past as a printer's mark to the
uninitiated, as a delightful hint to the better-instructed. As it is,
Expect a formal criticism on the Poems of your female friend, and she
must expect it.
I should have written before, but I am cruelly engaged and like to be.
On Friday I was at office from 10 in the morning (two hours dinner
except) to 11 at night, last night till 9. My business and office
business in general has increased so. I don't mean I am there every
night, but I must expect a great deal of it. I never leave till 4--and
do not keep a holyday now once in ten times, where I used to keep all
red letter days, and some fine days besides which I used to dub Nature's
holydays. I have had my day. I had formerly little to do. So of the
little that is left of life I may reckon two thirds as dead, for Time
that a man may call his own is his Life, and hard work and thinking
about it taints even the leisure hours, stains Sunday with workday
contemplations--this is Sunday, and the headache I have is part late
hours at work the 2 preceding nights and part later hours over a
consoling pipe afterw'ds. But I find stupid acquiescence coming over me.
I bend to the yoke, and it is almost with me and my household as with
the man and his consort--
To them each evening had its glittering star
And every Sabbath day its golden sun--
To such straits am I driven for the Life of life, Time--O that from that
superfluity of Holyday leisure my youth wasted "Age might but take some
hours youth wanted not.--" N.B. I have left off spirituous liquors for 4
or more months, with a moral certainty of its lasting. Farewell, dear
Wordsworth.
[Wordsworth had just brought out, with Longmans, his _Poems_ ...
_including Lyrical Ballads and the Miscellaneous Pieces of the Author_,
1815, in two volumes. The "Character in the Antithetical Manner" was
omitted from all editions of Wordsworth's poems between 1800 and 1836.
In the 1800 version of "Rural Architecture" there had been these last
lines, expunged in the editions of 1805 and 1815, but restored with a
slight alteration in later editions:--
--Some little I've seen of blind boisterous works
In Paris and London, 'mong Christians or Turks,
Spirits busy to do and undo:
At remembrance whereof my blood sometimes will flag,
--Then, light-hearted Boys, to the top of the Crag;
And I'll build up a Giant with you.
In the original form of the "Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew Tree" there
had been these lines:--
His only visitants a straggling sheep,
The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper.
Wordsworth had altered them to:--
His only visitants a straggling sheep,
The stone-chat, or the sand-lark, restless Bird,
Piping along the margin of the lake.
In the 1820 edition Wordsworth put back the original form.
"Those scoundrels." Principally the critic of the _Edinburgh_, Jeffrey,
but Wordsworth's assailants generally.
"That substitution of a shell." In the original draft of "The Blind
Highland Boy" the adventurous voyage was made in
A Household Tub, like one of those
Which women use to wash their clothes.
In the new version the vessel was a turtle's shell.
"The preface." Wordsworth quotes from Lamb's essay in _The Reflector_ on
the genius of Hogarth, referring to the passage as "the language of one
of my most esteemed Friends." It is Lamb's description of Imagination as
that which "draws all things to one, which makes things animate or
inanimate, beings with their attributes, subjects with their
accessories, take one colour and serve to one effect."
"The four yew trees." The poem is called "Yew Trees." This is the
passage in question:--
But worthier still of note
Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;
Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved;
Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks
That threaten the profane;--a pillared shade,
Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,
By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged
Perennially--beneath whose sable roof
Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked
With unrejoicing berries--ghostly Shapes
May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope,
Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton
And Time the Shadow; there to celebrate,
As in a natural temple scattered o'er
With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,
United worship; or in mute repose
To lie, and listen to the mountain flood
Murmuring from Giaramara's inmost caves.
"Picture of Milton." This portrait, a reproduction of which I give in my
large edition, is now in America, the property of the New York Public
Library.
"V. Bourne." Lamb afterwards translated some of Bourne's _Poemata_ and
wrote critically of them in the _Englishman's Magazine_ in 1831 (see
Vols. I. and IV.).
"Lord Thurlow." But see Letter to Bernard Barton of December 5, 1828,
and note.
"Extracts from those first Poems." Wordsworth included extracts from
juvenile pieces, which had been first published in his _Descriptive
Sketches_, 1793.
"A female friend"--Dorothy Wordsworth. The three poems were "Address to
a Child" (beginning, "What way does the Wind come from?"), "The Mother's
Return" and "The Cottager to Her Infant."
"To them each evening had its glittering star ... "--_The Excursion_,
Book V.
"Age might but take some hours ..." From Wordsworth's "Small
Celandine":--
Age might but take the things Youth needed not.]
LETTER 217
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. April 28, 1815.]
Excuse this maddish letter: I am too tired to write in formal--
Dear Wordsw'th. The more I read of your two last volumes, the more I
feel it necessary to make my acknowledgm'ts for them in more than one
short letter. The Night Piece to which you refer me I meant fully to
have noticed, but the fact is I come so fluttering and languid from
business, tired with thoughts of it, frightened with fears of it, that
when I get a few minutes to sit down to scribble (an action of the hand
now seldom natural to me--I mean voluntary pen-work) I lose all
presential memory of what I had intended to say, and say what I
can,--talk about Vincent Bourne or any casual image instead of that
which I had meditated--by the way, I must look out V. B. for you.--So I
had meant to have mentioned Yarrow Visited, with that stanza, "But thou
that didst appear so fair--" than which I think no lovelier stanza can
be found in the wide world of poetry--yet the poem on the whole seems
condemned to leave behind it a melancholy of imperfect satisfaction, as
if you had wronged the feeling with which in what preceded it you had
resolved never to visit it, and as if the Muse had determined in the
most delicate manner to make you, and _scarce make you_, feel it. Else,
it is far superior to the other, which has but one exquisite verse in
it, the last but one, or the two last--this has all fine, except perhaps
that _that_ of "studious ease and generous cares" has a little tinge of
the _less romantic_ about it. The farmer of Tilsbury vale is a charming
counter part to poor Susan, with the addition of that delicacy towards
aberrations from the strict path which is so fine in the Old Thief and
the boy by his side, which always brings water into my eyes. Perhaps it
is the worse for being a repetition. Susan stood for the representative
of poor Rus in Urbe. There was quite enough to stamp the moral of the
thing never to be forgotten. "Fast volumes of vapour" &c. The last verse
of Susan was to be got rid of at all events. It threw a kind of dubiety
upon Susan's moral conduct. Susan is a servant maid. I see her trundling
her mop and contemplating the whirling phenomenon thro' blurred optics;
but to term her a poor outcast seems as much as to say that poor Susan
was no better than she should be, which I trust was not what you meant
to express. Robin Goodfellow supports himself without that _stick_ of a
moral which you have thrown away,--but how I can be brought in felo de
omittendo for that Ending to the boy builders is a mystery. I can't say
positively now--I only know that no line oftener or readier occurs than
that "Light hearted boys, I will build up a giant with you." It comes
naturally with a warm holyday and the freshness of the blood. It is a
perfect summer Amulet that I tye round my legs to quicken their motion
when I go out a Maying. (N.B.) I don't often go out a maying.--_Must_ is
the tense with me now. Do you take the Pun? Young Romilly is divine, the
reasons of his mother's grief being remediless. I never saw parental
love carried up so high, towering above the other Loves. Shakspeare had
done something for the filial in Cordelia, and by implication for the
fatherly too in Lear's resentment--he left it for you to explore the
depths of the maternal heart. I get stupid, and flat and flattering--
what's the use of telling you what good things you have written, or--I
hope I may add--that I know them to be good. Apropos--when I first
opened upon the just mentioned poem, in a careless tone I said to Mary
as if putting a riddle "What is good for a bootless bean?" to which with
infinite presence of mind (as the jest book has it) she answered, a
"shoeless pea." It was the first joke she ever made. Joke the 2d I make
you distinguish well in your old preface between the verses of Dr.
Johnson of the man in the Strand, and that from the babes of the wood. I
was thinking whether taking your own glorious lines--
And for the love was in her soul
For the youthful Romilly--
which, by the love I bear my own soul, I think have no parallel in any
of the best old Balads, and just altering it to--
And from the great respect she felt
For Sir Samuel Romilly--
would not have explained the boundaries of prose expression and poetic
feeling nearly as well. Excuse my levity on such an occasion. I never
felt deeply in my life, if that poem did not make me, both lately and
when I read it in MS. No alderman ever longed after a haunch of buck
venison more than I for a Spiritual taste of that White Doe you promise.
I am sure it is superlative, or will be when _drest_, i.e. printed. All
things read raw tome in MS.--to compare magna parvis, I cannot endure my
own writings in that state. The only one which I think would not very
much win upon me in print is Peter Bell. But I am not certain. You ask
me about your preface. I like both that and the Supplement without an
exception. The account of what you mean by Imagination is very valuable
to me. It will help me to like some things in poetry better, which is a
little humiliating in me to confess. I thought I could not be instructed
in that science (I mean the critical), as I once heard old obscene
beastly Peter Pindar in a dispute on Milton say he thought that if he
had reason to value himself upon one thing more than another it was in
knowing what good verse was. Who lookd over your proof sheets, and left
_ordebo_ in that line of Virgil?
My brothers picture of Milton is very finely painted, that is, it might
have been done by a hand next to Vandyke's. It is the genuine Milton,
and an object of quiet gaze for the half hour at a time. _Yet_ tho' I am
confident there is no better one of him, the face does not quite answer
to Milton. There is a tinge of petit (or petite, how do you spell it)
querulousness about. Yet hang it, now I remember better, there is
not--it is calm, melancholy, and poetical.
_One_ of the copies you sent had precisely the same pleasant blending of
a sheet of 2d vol. with a sheet of 1st. I think it was page 245; but I
sent it and had it rectifyd. It gave me in the first impetus of cutting
the leaves just such a cold squelch as going down a plausible turning
and suddenly reading "no thoroughfare." Robinson's is entire; he is gone
to Bury his father.
I wish you would write more criticism, about Spenser &c. I think I could
say something about him myself--but Lord bless me--these "merchants and
their spicy drugs" which are so harmonious to sing of, they lime-twig up
my poor soul and body, till I shall forget I ever thought myself a bit
of a genius! I can't even put a few thoughts on paper for a newspaper. I
"engross," when I should pen a paragraph. Confusion blast all mercantile
transactions, all traffick, exchange of commodities, intercourse between
nations, all the consequent civilization and wealth and amity and link
of society, and getting rid of prejudices, and knowlege of the face of
the globe--and rot the very firs of the forest that look so romantic
alive, and die into desks. Vale.
Yours dear W. and all yours'. C. LAMB.
[_Added at foot of the first page:_] N.B. Don't read that Q. Review--I
will never look into another.
[Lamb continues his criticism of the 1815 edition of Wordsworth's
_Poems_. The "Night Piece" begins--
The sky is overcast.
The stanza from "Yarrow Visited" is quoted on page 557. The poem
followed "Yarrow Unvisited" in the volume. The one exquisite verse in
"Yarrow Unvisited" first ran:--
Your cottage seems a bower of bliss,
It promises protection
To studious ease and generous cares
And every chaste affection.
Wordsworth altered to--
A covert for protection
Of tender thoughts that nestle there,
The brood of chaste affection.
"Poor Susan" had in the 1800 version ended thus:--
Poor Outcast! return--to receive thee once more
The house of thy Father will open its door,
And thou once again, in thy plain russet gown,
May'st hear the thrush sing from a tree of its own.
Wordsworth expunged this stanza in the 1815 edition. "Fast volumes of
vapour" should be "Bright volumes of vapour." For the Old Thief see "The
Two Thieves."
"_Felo de omittendo._" See the preceding letter, where Lamb remonstrated
with Wordsworth for omitting the last lines from "Rural Architecture."
Wordsworth seems to have charged Lamb with the criticism that decided
their removal.
"The Pun." Canon Ainger pointed out that Hood, in his "Ode to
Melancholy," makes the same pun very happily:--
Even as the blossoms of the May,
Whose fragrance ends in must.
"Young Romilly." In "The Force of Prayer," which opens with the
question--
What is good for a bootless bene?
Later Mary Lamb made another joke, when at Munden's farewell performance
she said, "Sic transit gloria Munden!"
The stanzas from which Lamb quotes run:--
"What is good for a bootless bene?"
The Falconer to the Lady said;
And she made answer "Endless sorrow!"
In that she knew that her Son was dead.
She knew it by the Falconer's words,
And from the look of the Falconer's eye;
And from the love which was in her soul
For her youthful Romilly.
Sir Samuel Romilly (1757-1818), the lawyer and law reformer, was the
great opponent of capital punishment for small offences.
In the preface to the 1802 edition of _Lyrical Ballads_, etc.,
Wordsworth had quoted Dr. Johnson's prosaic lines:--
I put my hat upon my head
And walked into the Strand,
And there I met another man
Whose hat was in his hand.
--contrasting them with these lines from the "Babes in the Wood":--
These pretty Babes with hand in hand
Went wandering up and down;
But never more they saw the Man
Approaching from the Town.
"Peter Pindar." John Wolcot (1738-1819), whom Lamb had met at Henry
Rogers', brother of the poet.]
LETTER 218
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
London, May 6th, 1815.
Dear Southey,--I have received from Longman a copy of "Roderick," with
the author's compliments, for which I much thank you. I don't know where
I shall put all the noble presents I have lately received in that way;
the "Excursion," Wordsworth's two last vols., and now "Roderick," have
come pouring in upon me like some irruption from Helicon. The story of
the brave Maccabee was already, you may be sure, familiar to me in all
its parts. I have, since the receipt of your present, read it quite
through again, and with no diminished pleasure. I don't know whether I
ought to say that it has given me more pleasure than any of your long
poems. "Kehama" is doubtless more powerful, but I don't feel that firm
footing in it that I do in "Roderick;" my imagination goes sinking and
floundering in the vast spaces of unopened-before systems and faiths; I
am put out of the pale of my old sympathies; my moral sense is almost
outraged; I can't believe, or with horror am made to believe, such
desperate chances against omnipotences, such disturbances of faith to
the centre. The more potent the more painful the spell. Jove and his
brotherhood of gods, tottering with the giant assailings, I can bear,
for the soul's hopes are not struck at in such contests; but your
Oriental almighties are too much types of the intangible prototype to be
meddled with without shuddering. One never connects what are called the
attributes with Jupiter. I mention only what diminishes my delight at
the wonder-workings of "Kehama," not what impeaches its power, which I
confess with trembling.
But "Roderick" is a comfortable poem. It reminds me of the delight I
took in the first reading of the "Joan of Arc." It is maturer and better
than _that_, though not better to me now than that was then. It suits me
better than "Madoc." I am at home in Spain and Christendom. I have a
timid imagination, I am afraid. I do not willingly admit of strange
beliefs or out-of-the-way creeds or places. I never read books of
travel, at least not farther than Paris or Rome. I can just endure
Moors, because of their connection as foes with Christians; but
Abyssinians, Ethiops, Esquimaux, Dervises, and all that tribe, I hate. I
believe I fear them in some manner. A Mahometan turban on the stage,
though enveloping some well known face (Mr. Cook or Mr. Maddox, whom I
see another day good Christian and English waiters, innkeepers, &c.),
does not give me pleasure unalloyed. I am a Christian, Englishman,
Londoner, _Templar_. God help me when I come to put off these snug
relations, and to get abroad into the world to come! I shall be like
_the crow on the sand_, as Wordsworth has it; but I won't think on
it--no need, I hope, yet.
The parts I have been most pleased with, both on 1st and 2nd readings,
perhaps, are Florinda's palliation of Roderick's crime, confessed to him
in his disguise--the retreat of Palayo's family first discovered,--his
being made king--"For acclamation one form must serve, _more solemn for
the breach of old observances_." Roderick's vow is extremely fine, and
his blessing on the vow of Alphonso:
"Towards the troop he spread his arms,
As if the expanded soul diffused itself,
And carried to all spirits _with the act_
Its affluent inspiration."
It struck me forcibly that the feeling of these last lines might have
been suggested to you by the Cartoon of Paul at Athens. Certain it is
that a better motto or guide to that famous attitude can no where be
found. I shall adopt it as explanatory of that violent, but dignified
motion.
I must read again Landor's "Julian." I have not read it some time. I
think he must have failed in Roderick, for I remember nothing of him,
nor of any distinct character as a character--only fine-sounding
passages. I remember thinking also he had chosen a point of time after
the event, as it were, for Roderick survives to no use; but my memory is
weak, and I will not wrong a fine Poem by trusting to it.
The notes to your poem I have not read again; but it will be a
take-downable book on my shelf, and they will serve sometimes at
breakfast, or times too light for the text to be duly appreciated.
Though some of 'em, one of the serpent Penance, is serious enough, now I
think on't.
Of Coleridge I hear nothing, nor of the Morgans. I hope to have him like
a re-appearing star, standing up before me some time when least expected
in London, as has been the case whylear.
I am _doing_ nothing (as the phrase is) but reading presents, and walk
away what of the day-hours I can get from hard occupation. Pray accept
once more my hearty thanks, and expression of pleasure for your
remembrance of me. My sister desires her kind respects to Mrs. S. and to
all at Keswick.
Yours truly,
C. LAMB.
The next Present I look for is the "White Doe." Have you seen Mat.
Betham's "Lay of Marie?" I think it very delicately pretty as to
sentiment, &c.
[Southey's _Roderick, the Last of the Goths_, was published in 1814.
Driven from his throne by the Moors, Roderick had disguised himself as a
monk under the name of Father Maccabee. _The Curse of Kehama_ had been
published in 1810; Madoc in 1805; _Joan of Arc_ (see Letter 3, &c.) in
1796. Southey was now Poet Laureate.
"I never read books of travels." Writing to Dilke, of _The Athenaeum_,
for books, some years later, Lamb makes a point of "no natural history
or useful learning" being sent--such as Giraffes, Pyramids and
Adventures in Central Africa. None the less, as a boy, he tells us, he
had read Bruce and applied his Abyssinian methods to the New River (see
the _Elia_ essay on Newspapers).
"The crow on the sand." In "The Farmer of Tilsbury Vale":--
As lonely he stood as a crow on the sands.
Verse xii., line 4
Florinda's palliation of Roderick's crime is in Book X.; the retreat of
Pelayo's family discovered, in Book XVI.; Pelayo made king, in Book
XVIII. Landor's _Count Julian_, published in 1812, dealt with the same
story, Florinda, whom Roderick violated, having been the daughter of the
Count, a Spanish Goth. Julian devoted himself to Roderick's ruin, even
turning traitor for the purpose. Southey's notes are tremendous--
sometimes filling all but a line or two of the page.
"The _White Doe_." Wordsworth's poem _The White Doe of Rylstone_, to be
published this year, 1815.
"Matilda Betham's _Lay of Marie_." We shall come to this shortly. The
poem was still in MS.]
LETTER 219
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Aug. 9th, 1815.
Dear Southey,--Robinson is not on the circuit, as I erroneously stated
in a letter to W. W., which travels with this, but is gone to Brussels,
Ostend, Ghent, etc. But his friends the Colliers, whom I consulted
respecting your friend's fate, remember to have heard him say, that
Father Pardo had effected his escape (the cunning greasy rogue), and to
the best of their belief is at present in Paris. To my thinking, it is a
small matter whether there be one fat friar more or less in the world. I
have rather a taste for clerical executions, imbibed from early
recollections of the fate of the excellent Dodd. I hear Buonaparte has
sued his habeas corpus, and the twelve judges are now sitting upon it at
the Rolls.
Your boute-feu (bonfire) must be excellent of its kind. Poet Settle
presided at the last great thing of the kind in London, when the pope
was burnt in form. Do you provide any verses on this occasion? Your fear
for Hartley's intellectuals is just and rational. Could not the
Chancellor be petitioned to remove him? His lordship took Mr. Betty from
under the paternal wing. I think at least he should go through a course
of matter-of-fact with some sober man after the mysteries. Could not he
spend a week at Poole's before he goes back to Oxford? Tobin is dead.
But there is a man in my office, a Mr. Hedges, who proses it away from
morning to night, and never gets beyond corporal and material verities.
He'd get these crack-brain metaphysics out of the young gentleman's head
as soon as any one I know. When I can't sleep o' nights, I imagine a
dialogue with Mr. H. upon any given subject, and go prosing on in fancy
with him, till I either laugh or fall asleep. I have literally found it
answer. I am going to stand godfather; I don't like the business; I
cannot muster up decorum for these occasions; I shall certainly disgrace
the font. I was at Hazlitt's marriage, and had like to have been turned
out several times during the ceremony. Any thing awful makes me laugh. I
misbehaved once at a funeral. Yet I can read about these ceremonies with
pious and proper feelings. The realities of life only seem the
mockeries. I fear I must get cured along with Hartley, if not too
inveterate. Don't you think Louis the Desirable is in a sort of
quandary?
After all, Bonaparte is a fine fellow, as my barber says, and I should
not mind standing bareheaded at his table to do him service in his fall.
They should have given him Hampton Court or Kensington, with a tether
extending forty miles round London. Qu. Would not the people have
ejected the Brunswicks some day in his favour? Well, we shall see.
C. LAMB.
["Father Pardo." I have not traced this fat friar.
"The excellent Dodd." The Rev. William Dodd (1729-1777), compiler of
_The Beauties of Shakespeare_, was hanged for forgery in 1777, when Lamb
was two years old. The case caused immense public interest.
"Buonaparte." Waterloo had been fought on June 18.
"Your boute-feu." The bonfire in honour of Waterloo flamed on Skiddaw on
August 21. See Southey's description in his letter to his brother,
August 23, 1815 (_Life and Correspondence_, Vol. IV., page 120).
"Poet Settle." Elkanah Settle (1648-1724) was chief organiser of the
procession on the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's birthday in 1680,
when the Pope was burned in effigy.
Hartley Coleridge, now almost nineteen, after having been to school at
Ambleside, had been sent to Oxford through the instrumentality of his
uncle, Southey. At the time of Lamb's letter he was staying at Calne
with his father. Mr. Betty was the Young Roscius, whom we have already
seen, who, after retiring from the Phenomenon stage of his career in
1808, had since been to school and to Cambridge upon his earnings, and
had now become an adult actor. Poole was Thomas Poole of Nether Stowey,
whom we have seen: Coleridge's old and very sensible friend. Tobin would
probably be James Webbe Tobin, the brother of the dramatist. He had died
in 1814.
"I am going to stand godfather." To what child I do not know.
"Louis the Desirable"--Louis XVIII., styled by the Royalists "_Le
Desiré_."]
LETTER 220
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. August 9, 1815.]
9th Aug. 1815.
Dear Wordsworth, We acknowlege with pride the receit of both your hand
writings, and desire to be ever had in kindly remembrance by you both
and by Dorothy. Miss Hutchinson has just transmitted us a letter
containing, among other chearful matter, the annunciation of a child
born. Nothing of consequence has turned up in our parts since your
departure. Mary and I felt quite queer after your taking leave (you W.
W.) of us in St. Giles's. We wishd we had seen more of you, but felt we
had scarce been sufficiently acknowleging for the share we had enjoyed
of your company. We felt as if we had been not enough _expressive_ of
our pleasure. But our manners _both_ are a little too much on this side
of too-much-cordiality. We want presence of mind and presence of heart.
What we feel comes too late, like an after thought impromptu. But
perhaps you observed nothing of that which we have been painfully
conscious of, and are, every day, in our intercourse with those we stand
affected to through all the degrees of love. Robinson is on the Circuit.
Our Panegyrist I thought had forgotten one of the objects of his
youthful admiration, but I was agreeably removed from that scruple by
the laundress knocking at my door this morning almost before I was up,
with a present of fruit from my young friend, &c.--There is something
inexpressibly pleasant to me in these _presents_. Be it fruit, or fowl,
or brawn, or _what not_. _Books_ are a legitimate cause of acceptance.
If presents be not the soul of friendship, undoubtedly they are the most
spiritual part of the body of that intercourse. There is too much
narrowness of thinking in this point. The punctilio of acceptance
methinks is too confined and straitlaced. I could be content to receive
money, or clothes, or a joint of meat from a friend; why should he not
send me a dinner as well as a dessert? I would taste him in the beasts
of the field, and thro' all creation. Therefore did the basket of fruit
of the juvenile Talfourd not displease me. Not that I have any thoughts
of bartering or reciprocating these things. To send him any thing in
return would be to reflect suspicion of mercenariness upon what I know
he meant a freewill offering. Let him overcome me in bounty. In this
strife a generous nature loves to be overcome. Alsager (whom you call
Alsinger--and indeed he is rather _singer_ than _sager_, no reflection
upon his naturals neither) is well and in harmony with himself and the
world. I don't know how he and those of his constitution keep their
nerves so nicely balanced as they do. Or have they any? or are they made
of packthread? He is proof against weather, ingratitude, meat under
done, every weapon of fate. I have just now a jagged end of a tooth
pricking against my tongue, which meets it half way in a wantonness of
provocation, and there they go at it, the tongue pricking itself like
the viper against the file, and the tooth galling all the gum inside and
out to torture, tongue and tooth, tooth and tongue, hard at it, and I to
pay the reckoning, till all my mouth is as hot as brimstone, and I'd
venture the roof of my mouth that at this moment, at which I conjecture
my full-happinessed friend is picking his crackers, not one of the
double rows of ivory in his privileged mouth has as much as a flaw in
it, but all perform their functions, and having performed it, expect to
be picked (luxurious steeds!) and rubbed down. I don't think he could be
robbed, or could have his house set on fire, or ever want money. I have
heard him express a similar opinion of his own impassibility. I keep
acting here Heautontimorumenos. M. Burney has been to Calais and has
come home a travelld Monsieur. He speaks nothing but the Gallic Idiom.
Field is on circuit. So now I believe I have given account of most that
you saw at our Cabin. Have you seen a curious letter in Morn. Chron., by
C. Ll., the genius of absurdity, respecting Bonaparte's suing out his
Habeas Corpus. That man is his own moon. He has no need of ascending
into that gentle planet for mild influences. You wish me some of your
leisure. I have a glimmering aspect, a chink-light of liberty before me,
which I pray God may prove not fallacious. My remonstrances have stirred
up others to remonstrate, and altogether, there is a plan for separating
certain parts of business from our department, which if it take place
will produce me more time, i.e. my evenings free. It may be a means of
placing me in a more conspicuous situation which will knock at my nerves
another way, but I wait the issue in submission. If I can but begin my
own day at 4 o Clock in the afternoon, I shall think myself to have Eden
days of peace and liberty to what I have had. As you say, how a man can
fill 3 volumes up with an Essay on the Drama is wonderful. I am sure a
very few sheets would hold all I had to say on the subject, and yet I
dare say ---- as Von Slagel. Did you ever read Charron on Wisdom? or
Patrick's Pilgrim? if neither, you have two great pleasures to come. I
mean some day to attack Caryl on Job, six Folios. What any man can
write, surely I may read. If I do but get rid of auditing
Warehousekeepers Acc'ts. and get no worse-harassing task in the place of
it, what a Lord of Liberty I shall be. I shall dance and skip and make
mouths at the invisible event, and pick the thorns out of my pillow and
throw 'em at rich men's night caps, and talk blank verse, hoity toity,
and sing "A Clerk I was in London Gay," ban, ban, CaCaliban, like the
emancipated monster, and go where I like, up this street or down that
ally. Adieu, and pray that it may be my luck. Good be to you all.
C. LAMB.
["A child born." This was George Hutchinson, Mrs. Wordsworth's nephew.
"Our Panegyrist"--Thomas Noon Talfourd. This is Lamb's first mention of
his future biographer. Talfourd was then just twenty, had published some
poems, and was reading law with Chitty, the special pleader. He had met
Lamb at the beginning of 1815 through William Evans, owner of _The
Pamphleteer_, had scoured London for a copy of _Rosamund Gray_, and had
written of Lamb in _The Pamphleteer_ as one of the chief of living
poets. He then became an ardent supporter of Wordsworth, his principal
criticism of whom was written later for the _New Monthly Magazine_.
"If presents be not the soul of friendship." Lamb's "Thoughts on
Presents of Game," written many years later for _The Athenaeum_, carries
on this theme (see Vol. I.).
"Alsager." Thomas Massa Alsager, a friend of Crabb Robinson, and through
him of Lamb, was a strange blend of the financial and the musical
critic. He controlled the departments of Money and Music for _The Times_
for many years.
"Field"--Barron Field (see note later).
"C. Ll."--Capell Lofft (see note on page 475). He wrote to the Morning
Chronicle for August 2 and 3, 1815, as Lamb says. The gist of his
argument was in this sentence:--
[7th para.] Bonaparte with the concurrence of the _Admiralty_, is
_within_ the limits of British _local_ allegiance. He is a _temporary_,
considered as private, though not a natural born _subject_, and as
_such_ within the limits of 31 Car. II. the _Habeas Corpus_ Act, [etc.].
On August 10 he wrote again, quoting the lines from "The Tempest":--
The nobler action is,
In virtue than in vengeance:--He being here
The sole drift of our purpose, wrath here ends;
Not a frown further.
"An Essay on the Drama." This cryptic passage refers, I imagine, to a
translation by John Black, afterwards the editor of the _Morning
Chronicle_, of August Von Schlegel's _Lectures on Dramatic Art and
Literature_, 2 vols., 1815. Does Lamb mean
"And yet, I dare say, _I know as much_ as Von Slagel _did_"?
"Charron on Wisdom" and "Patrick's Pilgrim." Pierre Charron's _De la
Sagesse_, and Bishop Patrick's _Parable of the Pilgrim_, 1664, a curious
independent anticipation of Bunyan. Lamb had written of both these books
in a little essay contributed in 1813 to _The Examiner_, entitled "Books
with One Idea in them" (see Vol. I.).
"A Clerk I was in London Gay." A song sung in Colman's "Inkle and
Yarico," which Lamb actually did use as a motto for his _Elia_ essay
"The Superannuated Man," dealing with his emancipation, ten years
later.]
LETTER 221
MARY LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
[Dated at end: August 20, 1815.]
My dear friend, It is less fatigue to me to write upon lines, and I want
to fill up as much of my paper as I can in gratitude for the pleasure
your very kind letter has given me. I began to think I should not hear
from you; knowing you were not fond of letter-writing I quite forgave
you, but I was very sorry. Do not make a point of conscience of it, but
if ever you feel an inclination you cannot think how much a few lines
would delight me. I am happy to hear so good an account of your sister
and child, and sincerely wish her a perfect recovery. I am glad you did
not arrive sooner, you escaped much anxiety. I have just received a very
chearful letter from Mrs. Morgan--the following I have picked out as I
think it will interest you. "Hartley Coleridge has been with us for two
months. Morgan invited him to pass the long vacation here in the hope
that his father would be of great service to him in his studies: he
seems to be extremely amiable. I believe he is to spend the next
vacation at Lady Beaumont's. Your old friend Coleridge is very hard at
work at the preface to a new Edition which he is just going to publish
in the same form as Mr. Wordsworth's--at first the preface was not to
exceed five or six pages, it has however grown into a work of great
importance. I believe Morgan has already written nearly two hundred
pages. The title of it is '_Autobiographia Literaria_' to which are
added '_Sybilline Leaves_,' a collection of Poems by the same author.
Calne has lately been much enlivened by an excellent company of
players--last week they performed the 'Remorse' to a very crowded and
brilliant audience; two of the characters were admirably well supported;
at the request of the actors Morgan was behind the scenes all the time
and assisted in the music &c."
Thanks to your kind interference we have had a very nice letter from Mr.
Wordsworth. Of them and of you we think and talk quite with a painful
regret that we did not see more of you, and that it may be so long
before we meet again.
I am going to do a queer thing--I have wearied myself with writing a
long letter to Mrs. Morgan, a part of which is an incoherent rambling
account of a jaunt we have just been taking. I want to tell you all
about it, for we so seldom do such things that it runs strangely in my
head, and I feel too tired to give you other than the mere copy of the
nonsense I have just been writing.
"Last Saturday was the grand feast day of the India House Clerks. I
think you must have heard Charles talk of his yearly turtle feast. He
has been lately much wearied with work, and, glad to get rid of all
connected with it, he _used_ Saturday, the feast day being a holiday,
_borrowed_ the Monday following, and we set off on the outside of the
Cambridge Coach from Fetter Lane at eight o'clock, and were driven into
Cambridge in great triumph by Hell Fire Dick five minutes before three.
Richard is in high reputation, he is private tutor to the Whip Club.
Journeys used to be tedious torments to me, but seated out in the open
air I enjoyed every mile of the way--the first twenty miles was
particularly pleasing to me, having been accustomed to go so far on that
road in the Ware Stage Coach to visit my Grandmother in the days of
other times.
"In my life I never spent so many pleasant hours together as I did at
Cambridge. We were walking the whole time--out of one College into
another. If you ask me which I like best I must make the children's
traditionary unoffending reply to all curious enquirers--'_Both_.' I
liked them all best. The little gloomy ones, because they were little
gloomy ones. I felt as if I could live and die in them and never wish to
speak again. And the fine grand Trinity College, Oh how fine it was! And
King's College Chapel, what a place! I heard the Cathedral service
there, and having been no great church goer of late years, _that_ and
the painted windows and the general effect of the whole thing affected
me wonderfully.
"I certainly like St. John's College best. I had seen least of it,
having only been over it once, so, on the morning we returned, I got up
at six o'clock and wandered into it by myself--by myself indeed, for
there was nothing alive to be seen but one cat, who followed me about
like a dog. Then I went over Trinity, but nothing hailed me there, not
even a cat.
"On the Sunday we met with a pleasant thing. We had been congratulating
each other that we had come alone to enjoy, as the miser his feast, all
our sights greedily to ourselves, but having seen all we began to grow
flat and wish for this and tother body with us, when we were accosted by
a young gownsman whose face we knew, but where or how we had seen him we
could not tell, and were obliged to ask his name. He proved to be a
young man we had seen twice at Alsager's. He turned out a very pleasant
fellow--shewed us the insides of places--we took him to our Inn to
dinner, and drank tea with him in such a delicious college room, and
then again he supped with us. We made our meals as short as possible, to
lose no time, and walked our young conductor almost off his legs. Even
when the fried eels were ready for supper and coming up, having a
message from a man who we had bribed for the purpose, that then we might
see Oliver Cromwell, who was not at home when we called to see him, we
sallied out again and made him a visit by candlelight--and so ended our
sights. When we were setting out in the morning our new friend came to
bid us good bye, and rode with us as far as Trompington. I never saw a
creature so happy as he was the whole time he was with us, he said we
had put him in such good spirits that [he] should certainly pass an
examination well that he is to go through in six weeks in order to
qualify himself to obtain a fellowship.
"Returning home down old Fetter Lane I could hardly keep from crying to
think it was all over. With what pleasure [Charles] shewed me Jesus
College where Coleridge was--the barbe[r's shop] where Manning was--the
house where Lloyd lived--Franklin's rooms, a young schoolfellow with
whom Charles was the first time he went to Cambridge: I peeped in at his
window, the room looked quite deserted--old chairs standing about in
disorder that seemed to have stood there ever since they had sate in
them. I write sad nonsense about these things, but I wish you had heard
Charles talk his nonsense over and over again about his visit to
Franklin, and how he then first felt himself commencing gentleman and
had eggs for his breakfast." Charles Lamb commencing gentleman!
A lady who is sitting by me seeing what I am doing says I remind her of
her husband, who acknowledged that the first love letter he wrote to her
was a copy of one he had made use of on a former occasion.
This is no letter, but if you give me any encouragement to write again
you shall have one entirely to yourself: a little encouragement will do,
a few lines to say you are well and remember us. I will keep this
tomorrow, maybe Charles will put a few lines to it--I always send off a
humdrum letter of mine with great satisfaction if I can get him to
freshen it up a little at the end. Let me beg my love to your sister
Johanna with many thanks. I have much pleasure in looking forward to her
nice bacon, the maker of which I long have had a great desire to see.
God bless you, my dear Miss Hutchinson, I remain ever
Your affectionate friend
M. LAMB.
Aug'st. 20.
LETTER 222
CHARLES LAMB TO Miss HUTCHINSON
(_Added to same letter_)
Dear Miss Hutchinson, I subscribe most willingly to all my sister says
of her Enjoyment at Cambridge. She was in silent raptures all the while
_there_ and came home riding thro' the air (her 1st long outside
journey) triumphing as if she had been _graduated_. I remember one
foolish-pretty expression she made use of, "Bless the little churches
how pretty they are," as those symbols of civilized life opened upon her
view one after the other on this side Cambridge. You cannot proceed a
mile without starting a steeple, with its little patch of villagery
round it, enverduring the waste. I don't know how you will pardon part
of her letter being a transcript, but writing to another Lady first
(probably as the _easiest task_ *) it was unnatural not to give you an
acco't of what had so freshly delighted her, and would have been a piece
of transcendant rhetorick (above her modesty) to have given two
different accounts of a simple and univocal pleasure. Bless me how
learned I write! but I always forget myself when I write to Ladies. One
cannot tame one's erudition down to their merely English apprehensions.
But this and all other faults you will excuse from yours truly
C. LAMB.
Our kindest loves to Joanna, if she will accept it from us who are
merely NOMINAL to her, and to the child and child's parent. Yours again
C. L.
[_Mary Lamb adds this footnote:_--]
* "_Easiest Task_." Not the true reason, but Charles had so connected
Coleridge & Cambridge in my mind, by talking so much of him there, and a
letter coming so fresh from _him_, in a manner _that was the reason_ I
wrote to them first. I make this apology perhaps quite unnecessarily,
but I am of a very jealous temper myself, and more than once recollect
having been offended at seeing kind expressions which had particularly
pleased me in a friend's letter repeated word for word to
another--Farewell once more.
[I have no idea why this charming letter was held back when Talfourd
copied the Lamb-Wordsworth correspondence. The name of the young man who
showed the Lambs such courtesy is not known.
Coleridge's literary plans were destined to change. The _Biographia
Literaria_ was published alone in 1817, and _Sibylline Leaves_ alone
later in the same year.--"Remorse" had been acted at Calne in June for
the second time, a previous visit having been paid in 1813. Coleridge
gave the manager a "flaming testimonial."--Lady Beaumont was the wife of
Sir George Beaumont.
"Oliver Cromwell." The portrait by Cooper at Sidney Sussex College.
F.W. Franklin was with Lamb at Christ's Hospital. Afterwards he became
Master of the Blue Coat School at Hertford. He is mentioned in the
_Elia_ essay on Christ's Hospital.]
LETTER 223
MARY LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM
[No date. ? Late summer, 1815.]
My dear Miss Betham,--My brother and myself return you a thousand thanks
for your kind communication. We have read your poem many times over with
increased interest, and very much wish to see you to tell you how highly
we have been pleased with it. May we beg one favour?--I keep the
manuscript in the hope that you will grant it. It is that, either now or
when the whole poem is completed, you will read it over with us. When I
say with _us_, of course I mean Charles. I know that you have many
judicious friends, but I have so often known my brother spy out errors
in a manuscript which has passed through many judicious hands, that I
shall not be easy if you do not permit him to look yours carefully
through with you; and also you _must_ allow him to correct the press for
you.
If I knew where to find you I would call upon you. Should you feel
nervous at the idea of meeting Charles in the capacity of a _severe
censor_, give me a line, and I will come to you any where, and convince
you in five minutes that he is even timid, stammers, and can scarcely
speak for modesty and fear of giving pain when he finds himself placed
in that kind of office. Shall I appoint a time to see you here when he
is from home? I will send him out any time you will name; indeed, I am
always naturally alone till four o'clock. If you are nervous about
coming, remember I am equally so about the liberty I have taken, and
shall be till we meet and laugh off our mutual fears.
Yours most affectionately
M. LAMB.
LETTER 224
CHARLES LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM
[No date. 1815].
Dear Miss Betham,--That accursed word trill has vexed me excessively. I
have referred to the MS. and certainly the printer is exonerated, it is
much more like a _tr_ than a _k_. But what shall I say of myself?
If you can trust me hereafter, I will be more careful. I will go thro'
the Poem, unless you should feel more safe by doing it yourself. In fact
a second person looking over a proof is liable to let pass anything that
sounds plausible. The act of looking it over seeming to require only an
attention to the words that they have the proper component letters, one
scarce thinks then (or but half) of the sense.--You will find one line I
have ventured to alter in 3'd sheet. You had made hope & yoke rhime,
which is intolerable. Every body can see & carp at a bad rhime or no
rhime. It strikes as slovenly, like bad spelling.
I found out another _sung_ but I could not alter it, & I would not delay
the time by writing to you. Besides it is not at all conspicuous--it
comes in by the bye 'the strains I sung.' The other obnoxious word was
in an eminent place, at the beginning of her Lay, when all ears are upon
her.
I must conclude hastily,
dear M. B.
Yours
C. L.
[These letters refer to _The Lay of Marie_. In Mr. Ernest Betham's _A
House of Letters_ will be found six other letters (see pp. 161, 163,
164, 166, 232) all bearing upon Matilda Betham's poem.]
LETTER 225
CHARLES LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM
Dr Miss Betham,--All this while I have been tormenting myself with the
thought of having been ungracious to you, and you have been all the
while accusing yourself. Let us absolve one another & be quits. My head
is in such a state from incapacity for business that I certainly know it
to be my duty not to undertake the veriest trifle in addition. I hardly
know how I can go on. I have tried to get some redress by explaining my
health, but with no great success. No one can tell how ill I am, because
it does not come out to the exterior of my face, but lies in my scull
deep & invisible. I wish I was leprous & black jaundiced skin-over, and
[? or] that all was as well within as my cursed looks. You must not
think me worse than I am. I am determined not to be overset, but to give
up business rather and get 'em to allow me a trifle for services past. O
that I had been a shoe-maker or a baker, or a man of large independ't
fortune. O darling Laziness! heaven of Epicurus! Saints Everlasting
Rest! that I could drink vast potations of thee thro' unmeasured
Eternity. Otium _cum_ vel _sine_ dignitate. Scandalous, dishonorable,
any-kind-of-_repose_. I stand not upon the _dignified_ sort. Accursed
damned desks, trade, commerce, business--Inventions of that old original
busybody brainworking Satan, Sabbathless restless Satan--
A curse relieves. Do you ever try it?
A strange Letter this to write to a Lady, but mere honey'd sentences
will not distill. I dare not ask who revises in my stead. I have drawn
you into a scrape. I am ashamed, but I know no remedy. My unwellness
must be my apology. God bless you (tho' he curse the India House & fire
it to the ground) and may no unkind Error creep into Marie, may all its
readers like it as well as I do & everybody about you like its kind
author no worse. Why the devil am I never to have a chance of scribbling
my own free thoughts, verse or prose, again? Why must I write of Tea &
Drugs & Price Goods & bales of Indigo--farewell.
C. LAMB.
[_Written at head of Letter on margin the following_:--]
Mary goes to her Place on Sunday--I mean your maid, foolish Mary. She
wants a very little brains only to be an excellent Serv. She is
excellently calculated for the country, where nobody has brains.
[Mr. Ernest Betham, in _A House of Letters_, dates the foregoing June 1,
1816; but I place it here none the less.
In the passage concerning work and leisure we see another hint of the
sonnet on "Work" which Lamb was to write a little later.
Here should come two notes to William Ayrton, printed by Mr. Macdonald,
referring to the musical use of the word "air."]
LETTER 226
CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
Thursday 19 Oct. 1815.
My brother is gone to Paris.
Dear Miss H.--I am forced to be the replier to your Letter, for Mary has
been ill and gone from home these five weeks yesterday. She has left me
very lonely and very miserable. I stroll about, but there is no rest but
at one's own fireside, and there is no rest for me there now. I look
forward to the worse half being past, and keep up as well as I can. She
has begun to show some favorable symptoms. The return of her disorder
has been frightfully soon this time, with scarce a six month's interval.
I am almost afraid my worry of spirits about the E. I. House was partly
the cause of her illness, but one always imputes it to the cause next at
hand; more probably it comes from some cause we have no control over or
conjecture of. It cuts sad great slices out of the time, the little time
we shall have to live together. I don't know but the recurrence of these
illnesses might help me to sustain her death better than if we had had
no partial separations. But I won't talk of death. I will imagine us
immortal, or forget that we are otherwise; by God's blessing in a few
weeks we may be making our meal together, or sitting in the front row of
the Pit at Drury Lane, or taking our evening walk past the theatres, to
look at the outside of them at least, if not to be tempted in. Then we
forget we are assailable, we are strong for the time as rocks, the wind
is tempered to the shorn Lambs. Poor C. Lloyd, and poor Priscilla, I
feel I hardly feel enough for him, my own calamities press about me and
involve me in a thick integument not to be reached at by other folks'
misfortunes. But I feel all I can, and all the kindness I can towards
you all. God bless you. I hear nothing from Coleridge. Yours truly
C. LAMB.
[Mary Lamb had recovered from her preceding attack in February. She did
not recover from the present illness until December.
"The wind is tempered to the shorn Lambs." "'But God tempers the wind,'
said Maria, 'to the shorn lamb'" (Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_). Also
in Henri Estienne (1594).
"Poor C. Lloyd, and poor Priscilla." Priscilla Wordsworth (_neé_ Lloyd)
died this month, aged thirty-three. Charles Lloyd having just completed
his translation of the tragedies of Alfieri, published in 1815, had been
prostrated by the most serious visitation of his malady that he had yet
suffered.]
LETTER 227
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
Dec. 25th, 1815.
Dear old friend and absentee,--This is Christmas-day 1815 with us; what
it may be with you I don't know, the 12th of June next year perhaps; and
if it should be the consecrated season with you, I don't see how you can
keep it. You have no turkeys; you would not desecrate the festival by
offering up a withered Chinese bantam, instead of the savoury grand
Norfolcian holocaust, that smokes all around my nostrils at this moment
from a thousand firesides. Then what puddings have you? Where will you
get holly to stick in your churches, or churches to stick your dried
tea-leaves (that must be the substitute) in? What memorials you can have
of the holy time, I see not. A chopped missionary or two may keep up the
thin idea of Lent and the wilderness; but what standing evidence have
you of the Nativity?--'tis our rosy-cheeked, homestalled divines, whose
faces shine to the tune of _unto us a child_; faces fragrant with the
mince-pies of half a century, that alone can authenticate the cheerful
mystery--I feel.
I feel my bowels refreshed with the holy tide--my zeal is great against
the unedified heathen. Down with the Pagodas--down with the idols--
Ching-chong-fo--and his foolish priesthood! Come out of Babylon, O my
friend! for her time is come, and the child that is native, and the
Proselyte of her gates, shall kindle and smoke together! And in sober
sense what makes you so long from among us, Manning? You must not expect
to see the same England again which you left.
Empires have been overturned, crowns trodden into dust, the face of the
western world quite changed: your friends have all got old--those you
left blooming--myself (who am one of the few that remember you) those
golden hairs which you recollect my taking a pride in, turned to silvery
and grey. Mary has been dead and buried many years--she desired to be
buried in the silk gown you sent her. Rickman, that you remember active
and strong, now walks out supported by a servant-maid and a stick.
Martin Burney is a very old man. The other day an aged woman knocked at
my door, and pretended to my acquaintance; it was long before I had the
most distant cognition of her; but at last together we made her out to
be Louisa, the daughter of Mrs. Topham, formerly Mrs. Morton, who had
been Mrs. Reynolds, formerly Mrs. Kenney, whose first husband was
Holcroft, the dramatic writer of the last century. St. Paul's Church is
a heap of ruins; the Monument isn't half so high as you knew it, divers
parts being successively taken down which the ravages of time had
rendered dangerous; the horse at Charing Cross is gone, no one knows
whither,--and all this has taken place while you have been settling
whether Ho-hing-tong should be spelt with a ---- or a ----. For aught I
see you had almost as well remain where you are, and not come like a
Struldbug into a world where few were born when you went away. Scarce
here and there one will be able to make out your face; all your opinions
will be out of date, your jokes obsolete, your puns rejected with
fastidiousness as wit of the last age. Your way of mathematics has
already given way to a new method, which after all is I believe the old
doctrine of Maclaurin, new-vamped up with what he borrowed of the
negative quantity of fluxions from Euler.
Poor Godwin! I was passing his tomb the other day in Cripplegate
churchyard. There are some verses upon it written by Miss Hayes, which
if I thought good enough I would send you. He was one of those who would
have hailed your return, not with boisterous shouts and clamours, but
with the complacent gratulations of a philosopher anxious to promote
knowledge as leading to happiness--but his systems and his theories are
ten feet deep in Cripplegate mould. Coleridge is just dead, having lived
just long enough to close the eyes of Wordsworth, who paid the debt to
nature but a week or two before. Poor Col., but two days before he died
he wrote to a bookseller proposing an epic poem on the "Wanderings of
Cain," in twenty-four books. It is said he has left behind him more than
forty thousand treatises in criticism and metaphysics, but few of them
in a state of completion. They are now destined, perhaps, to wrap up
spices. You see what mutations the busy hand of Time has produced, while
you have consumed in foolish voluntary exile that time which might have
gladdened your friends--benefited your country; but reproaches are
useless. Gather up the wretched reliques, my friend, as fast as you can,
and come to your old home. I will rub my eyes and try to recognise you.
We will shake withered hands together, and talk of old things--of St.
Mary's Church and the barber's opposite, where the young students in
mathematics used to assemble. Poor Crisp, that kept it afterwards, set
up a fruiterer's shop in Trumpington-street, and for aught I know,
resides there still, for I saw the name up in the last journey I took
there with my sister just before she died. I suppose you heard that I
had left the India House, and gone into the Fishmongers' Almshouses over
the bridge. I have a little cabin there, small and homely; but you shall
be welcome to it. You like oysters, and to open them yourself; I'll get
you some if you come in oyster time. Marshall, Godwin's old friend, is
still alive, and talks of the faces you used to make.
Come as soon as you can. C. LAMB.
[Since Lamb's last letter Manning had entered Lhassa, the sacred city of
Thibet, being the first Englishman to do so. He remained there until
April, 1812, when he returned to Calcutta. Then he took up his abode
once more in Canton, and, in 1816, moved to Peking as interpreter to
Lord Amherst's embassy, returning to England the following year.
"Norfolcian." Manning was a Norfolk man.
"Maclaurin." Here Lamb surprises the reader by a reasonable remark.
Colin Maclaurin, the mathematician, was the author of _A Treatise of
Fluxions_.
Coleridge actually had begun many years before an epic on the subject of
the "Wanderings of Cain."]
LETTER 228
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
Dec. 26th, 1815.
Dear Manning,--Following your brother's example, I have just ventured
one letter to Canton, and am now hazarding another (not exactly a
duplicate) to St. Helena. The first was full of unprobable romantic
fictions, fitting the remoteness of the mission it goes upon; in the
present I mean to confine myself nearer to truth as you come nearer
home. A correspondence with the uttermost parts of the earth necessarily
involves in it some heat of fancy; it sets the brain agoing; but I can
think on the half-way house tranquilly. Your friends, then, are not all
dead or grown forgetful of you through old age, as that lying letter
asserted, anticipating rather what must happen if you kept tarrying on
for ever on the skirts of creation, as there seemed a danger of your
doing--but they are all tolerably well and in full and perfect
comprehension of what is meant by Manning's coming home again. Mrs.
Kenney (ci-devant Holcroft) never let her tongue run riot more than in
remembrances of you. Fanny expends herself in phrases that can only be
justified by her romantic nature. Mary reserves a portion of your silk,
not to be buried in (as the false nuncio asserts), but to make up spick
and span into a new bran gown to wear when you come. I am the same as
when you knew me, almost to a surfeiting identity. This very night I am
going to _leave off tobacco_! Surely there must be some other world in
which this unconquerable purpose shall be realised. The soul hath not
her generous aspirings implanted in her in vain. One that you knew, and
I think the only one of those friends we knew much of in common, has
died in earnest. Poor Priscilla, wife of Kit Wordsworth! Her brother
Robert is also dead, and several of the grown-up brothers and sisters,
in the compass of a very few years. Death has not otherwise meddled much
in families that I know. Not but he has his damn'd eye upon us, and is
w[h]etting his infernal feathered dart every instant, as you see him
truly pictured in that impressive moral picture, "The good man at the
hour of death." I have in trust to put in the post four letters from
Diss, and one from Lynn, to St. Helena, which I hope will accompany this
safe, and one from Lynn, and the one before spoken of from me, to
Canton. But we all hope that these latter may be waste paper. I don't
know why I have forborne writing so long. But it is such a forlorn hope
to send a scrap of paper straggling over wide oceans. And yet I know
when you come home, I shall have you sitting before me at our fireside
just as if you had never been away. In such an instant does the return
of a person dissipate all the weight of imaginary perplexity from
distance of time and space! I'll promise you good oysters. Cory is dead,
that kept the shop opposite St. Dunstan's, but the tougher materials of
the shop survive the perishing frame of its keeper. Oysters continue to
flourish there under as good auspices. Poor Cory! But if you will absent
yourself twenty years together, you must not expect numerically the same
population to congratulate your return which wetted the sea-beach with
their tears when you went away. Have you recovered the breathless
stone-staring astonishment into which you must have been thrown upon
learning at landing that an Emperor of France was living in St. Helena?
What an event in the solitude of the seas! like finding a fish's bone at
the top of Plinlimmon; but these things are nothing in our western
world. Novelties cease to affect. Come and try what your presence can.
God bless you.--Your old friend, C. LAMB.
[Robert Lloyd had died in 1811, and within a few days one of his
brothers and one of his sisters.
"The good man at the hour of death." I have not found the picture to
which Lamb refers. Probably a popular print of the day, or he may have
been incorrectly remembering Blake's "Death of the Good Old Man" in
Blair's _Grave_.
Manning, by changing his plans, did not reach St. Helena when he
expected to; not, indeed, until July, 1817, when he met Napoleon.]
LETTER 229
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: April 9, 1816.]
Dear Wordsworth--Thanks for the books you have given me and for all the
Books you mean to give me. I will bind up the Political Sonnets and Ode
according to your Suggestion. I have not bound the poems yet. I wait
till People have done borrowing them. I think I shall get a chain, and
chain them to my shelves More Bodleiano, and People may come and read
them at chain's length. For of those who borrow, some read slow, some
mean to read but don't read, and some neither read nor meant to read,
but borrow to leave you an opinion of their sagacity. I must do my
money-borrowing friends the justice to say that there is nothing of this
caprice or wantonness of alienation in them. When they borrow my money,
they never fail to make use of it. Coleridge has been here about a
fortnight. His health is tolerable at present, though beset with
temptations. In the first place, the Cov. Card. Manager has declined
accepting his Tragedy, tho' (having read it) I see no reason upon earth
why it might not have run a very fair chance, tho' it certainly wants a
prominent part for a Miss O Neil or a Mr. Kean. However he is going to
day to write to Lord Byron to get it to Drury. Should you see Mrs. C.,
who has just written to C. a letter which I have given him, it will be
as well to say nothing about its fate till some answer is shaped from
Drury. He has two volumes printing together at Bristol, both finished as
far as the composition goes; the latter containing his fugitive Poems,
the former his Literary Life. Nature, who conducts every creature by
instinct to its best end, has skilfully directed C. to take up his abode
at a Chemist's Laboratory in Norfolk Street. She might as well have sent
a Helluo Librorum for cure to the Vatican. God keep him inviolate among
the traps and pitfalls. He has done pretty well as yet.
Tell Miss H. my sister is every day wishing to be quietly sitting down
to answer her very kind Letter, but while C. stays she can hardly find a
quiet time, God bless him.
Tell Mrs. W. her Postscripts are always agreeable. They are so legible
too. Your manual graphy is terrible, dark as Lycophron. "Likelihood" for
instance is thus typified [_here Lamb makes an illegible scribble_].
I should not wonder if the constant making out of such Paragraphs is the
cause of that weakness in Mrs. W.'s Eyes as she is tenderly pleased to
express it. Dorothy I hear has mounted spectacles; so you have
deoculated two of your dearest relations in life. Well, God bless you
and continue to give you power to write with a finger of power upon our
hearts what you fail to impress in corresponding lucidness upon our
outward eyesight.
Mary's Love to all, She is quite well.
I am call'd off to do the deposits on Cotton Wool--but why do I relate
this to you who want faculties to comprehend the great mystery of
Deposits, of Interest, of Warehouse rent, and Contingent Fund--Adieu. C.
LAMB.
A longer Letter when C. is gone back into the Country, relating his
success, &c.--_my_ judgment of _your_ new Books &c. &c.--I am scarce
quiet enough while he stays.
Yours again
C. L.
Tuesday 9 Apr. 1816.
[Wordsworth had sent Lamb, presumably in proof (see next letter),
_Thanksgiving Ode_, 18 _Jan_. 1816, _with other short pieces chiefly
referring to recent events_, 1816--the subject of the ode being the
peace that had come upon Europe with the downfall of Napoleon. It
follows in the collected works the sonnets to liberty.
"More Bodleiano." According to Macray's _Annals of the Bodleian Library_
(second edition, 1890, page 121), books seem to have been chained in the
Bodleian Library up to 1751. The process of removing the chains seems to
have begun in 1757. In 1761 as many as 1,448 books were unchained at a
cost of a ½d. a piece. A dozen years later discarded chains were sold at
the rate of 2d. for a long chain, 1½d. for a short one, and if one
hankered after a hundred-weight of them, the wish could be gratified on
payment of 14s. Many loose chains are still preserved in the library as
relics.
"For of those who borrow." Lamb's _Elia_ essay, "The Two Races of Men,"
may have had its germ in this passage.
Coleridge came to London from Calne in March bringing with him the
manuscript of "Zapolya." He had already had correspondence with Lord
Byron concerning a tragedy for Drury Lane, on whose committee Byron had
a seat, but he had done nothing towards writing it. "Zapolya" was never
acted. It was published in 1817. Coleridge's lodgings were at 43 Norfolk
Street, Strand. See next letter for further news of Coleridge at this
time.]
LETTER 230
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[April 26, 1816.]
SIR,
Please to state the Weights and Amounts of the following Lots of sold
Sale, 181 for Your obedient Servant,
CHAS. LAMB.
_Accountant's Office_,
26 Apr. 1816
Dear W. I have just finished the pleasing task of correcting the Revise
of the Poems and letter. I hope they will come out faultless. One
blunder I saw and shuddered at. The hallucinating rascal had printed
_battered_ for _battened_, this last not conveying any distinct sense to
his gaping soul. The Reader (as they call 'em) had discovered it and
given it the marginal brand, but the substitutory _n_ had not yet
appeared. I accompanied his notice with a most pathetic address to the
Printer not to neglect the Correction. I know how such a blunder would
"batter at your Peace." [_Batter is written batten and corrected to
batter in the margin_.] With regard to the works, the Letter I read with
unabated satisfaction. Such a thing was wanted, called for. The parallel
of Cotton with Burns I heartily approve; Iz. Walton hallows any page in
which his reverend name appears. "Duty archly bending to purposes of
general benevolence" is exquisite. The Poems I endeavored not to
understand, but to read them with my eye alone, and I think I succeeded.
(Some people will do that when they come out, you'll say.) As if I were
to luxuriate to-morrow at some Picture Gallery I was never at before,
and going by to day by chance, found the door open, had but 5 minutes to
look about me, peeped in, just such a _chastised_ peep I took with my
mind at the lines my luxuriating eye was coursing over unrestrained,--
not to anticipate another day's fuller satisfaction. Coleridge is
printing Xtabel, by L'd Byron's recommendation to Murray, with what he
calls a vision, Kubla Khan--which said vision he repeats so enchantingly
that it irradiates and brings heaven and Elysian bowers into my parlour
while he sings or says it, but there is an observation "Never tell thy
dreams," and I am almost afraid that Kubla Khan is an owl that won't
bear day light, I fear lest it should be discovered by the lantern of
typography and clear redacting to letters, no better than nonsense or no
sense. When I was young I used to chant with extacy _Mild Arcadians ever
blooming_, till somebody told me it was meant to be nonsense. Even yet I
have a lingering attachment to it, and think it better than Windsor
Forest, Dying Xtian's address &c.--C. has sent his Tragedy to D.L.T.--it
cannot be acted this season, and by their manner of receiving it, I hope
he will be able to alter it to make them accept it for next. He is at
present under the medical care of a Mr. Gilman (Killman?) a Highgate
Apothecary, where he plays at leaving off Laud----m. I think his
essentials not touched: he is very bad, but then he wonderfully picks up
another day, and his face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient
glory, an Archangel a little damaged.
Will Miss H. pardon our not replying at length to her kind Letter? We
are not quiet enough. Morgan is with us every day, going betwixt
Highgate and the Temple. Coleridge is absent but 4 miles, and the
neighborhood of such a man is as exciting as the presence of 50 ordinary
Persons. 'Tis enough to be within the whiff and wind of his genius, for
us not to possess our souls in quiet. If I lived with him or the _author
of the Excursion_, I should in a very little time lose my own identity,
and be dragged along in the current of other people's thoughts, hampered
in a net. How cool I sit in this office, with no possible interruption
further than what I may term _material_; there is not as much
metaphysics in 36 of the people here as there is in the first page of
Locke's treatise on the Human understanding, or as much poetry as in any
ten lines of the Pleasures of Hope or more natural Beggar's Petition. I
never entangle myself in any of their speculations. Interruptions, if I
try to write a letter even, I have dreadful. Just now within 4 lines I
was call'd off for ten minutes to consult dusty old books for the
settlement of obsolete Errors. I hold you a guinea you don't find the
Chasm where I left off, so excellently the wounded sense closed again
and was healed.
N.B. Nothing said above to the contrary but that I hold the personal
presence of the two mentioned potent spirits at a rate as high as any,
but I pay dearer, what amuses others robs me of myself, my mind is
positively discharged into their greater currents, but flows with a
willing violence. As to your question about work, it is far less
oppressive to me than it was, from circumstances; it takes all the
golden part of the day away, a solid lump from ten to four, but it does
not kill my peace as before. Some day or other I shall be in a taking
again. My head akes and you have had enough. God bless you.
C. LAMB.
[Lamb had been correcting the proofs of Wordsworth's _Letter to a Friend
of Burns_ and his _Thanksgiving Ode, with other short Pieces_, both
published in 1816. In the _Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns_, which
was called forth by the intended republication of Burns' life by Dr.
Currie, Wordsworth incidentally compares Burns and Cotton. The phrase
which Lamb commends is in the description of "Tam o' Shanter" (page
22)--"This reprobate sits down to his cups, while the storm is roaring,
and heaven and earth are in confusion;--the night is driven on by song
and tumultuous noise--laughter and jest thicken as the beverage improves
upon the palate--conjugal fidelity archly bends to the service of
general benevolence--selfishness is not absent, but wearing the mask of
social cordiality...."
Coleridge's _Christabel_ (with _Kubla Khan_ and _The Pains of Sleep_)
was published by Murray in 1816. It ran into a second edition quickly,
but was not too well received. The _Edinburgh_ indeed described it as
destitute of one ray of genius. In a letter from Fanny Godwin to Mary
Shelley, July 20, 1816, in Dowden's _Life of Shelley_, we read that
"Lamb says _Christabel_ ought never to have been published; and that no
one understood it, and _Kubla Khan_ is nonsense." But this was probably
idle gossip. Lamb had admired _Christabel_ to the full, but he may have
thought its publication in an incomplete state an error.
Coleridge was introduced to Mr. James Gillman of the Grove, Highgate, by
Dr. Adams of Hatton Garden, to whom he had applied for medical aid.
Adams suggested that Gillman should take Coleridge into his house.
Gillman arranged on April 11 that Adams should bring Coleridge on the
following day. Coleridge went alone and conquered. He promised to begin
domestication on the next day, and "I looked with impatience," wrote
Gillman in his _Life of Coleridge_, "for the morrow ... I felt indeed
almost spellbound, without the desire of release." Coleridge did not
come on the morrow, but two days later. He remained with the Gillmans
for the rest of his life.
_The Pleasures of Hope_, by Thomas Campbell; _The Beggar's
Petition_--"Pity the sorrows of a poor old man"--by Thomas Moss
(1740-1808), a ditty in all the recitation books. Lamb alluded to it in
the _London Magazine_ version of his _Elia_ essay, "A Complaint of the
Decay of Beggars."
Here should come a brief note from Lamb to Leigh Hunt, dated May 13,
1816, accompanying _Falstaff's Letters_, etc., and a gift of "John
Woodvil." This is Lamb's first letter to James Henry Leigh Hunt
(1784-1859) that has been preserved. He had known Hunt (an old Christ's
Hospitaller, but later than Lamb's day) for some years. To his
_Reflector_ he contributed a number of essays and humorous letters in
1810-1811; and he had written also for _The Examiner_ in 1812 and during
Hunt's imprisonment in 1813-1815. The Lambs visited him regularly at the
Surrey Jail. One of Lamb's most charming poems is inscribed "To T. L.
H."--Thornton Leigh Hunt, whom he called his "favourite child."]
LETTER 231
CHARLES LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM
[Dated at end: June 1, 1816.]
Dear Miss Betham,--I have sent your _very pretty lines_ to Southey in a
frank as you requested. Poor S. what a grievous loss he must have had!
Mary and I rejoice in the prospect of seeing you soon in town. Let _us_
be among the very first persons you come to see. Believe me that you can
have no friends who respect and love you more than ourselves. Pray
present our kind remembrances to Barbara, and to all to whom you may
think they will be acceptable.
Yours very sincerely,
C. LAMB.
Have you seen _Christabel_ since its publication?
E. I. H. June 1 1816.
[Southey's eldest son, Herbert, had died in April of this year. Here
should come a letter from Lamb to H. Dodwell, of the India House, dated
August, 1816, not available for this edition. Lamb writes from Calne, in
Wiltshire, where he and his sister were making holiday, staying with the
Morgans. He states that he has lost all sense of time, and recollected
that he must return to work some day only through the accident of
playing _Commerce_ instead of whist.]
LETTER 232
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. September 23, 1816.]
My dear Wordsworth, It seems an age since we have corresponded, but
indeed the interim has been stuffd out with more variety than usually
checquers my same-seeming existence.--Mercy on me, what a traveller have
I been since I wrote you last! what foreign wonders have been explored!
I have seen Bath, King Bladud's ancient well, fair Bristol, seed-plot of
suicidal Chatterton, Marlbro', Chippenham, Calne, famous for nothing in
particular that I know of--but such a vertigo of locomotion has not
seized us for years. We spent a month with the Morgans at the last named
Borough--August--and such a change has the change wrought in us that we
could not stomach wholesome Temple air, but are absolutely rusticating
(O the gentility of it) at Dalston, about one mischievous boy's stone's
throw off Kingsland Turnpike, one mile from Shoreditch church,--thence
we emanate in various directions to Hackney, Clapton, Totnam, and such
like romantic country. That my lungs should ever prove so dainty as to
fancy they perceive differences of air! but so it is, tho' I am almost
ashamed of it, like Milton's devil (turn'd truant to his old Brimstone)
I am purging off the foul air of my once darling tobacco in this Eden,
absolutely snuffing up pure gales, like old worn out Sin playing at
being innocent, which never comes again, for in spite of good books and
good thoughts there is something in a Pipe that virtue cannot give tho'
she give her unendowed person for a dowry. Have you read the review of
Coleridge's character, person, physiognomy &c. in the Examiner--his
features even to his _nose_--O horrible license beyond the old Comedy.
He is himself gone to the sea side with his favorite Apothecary, having
left for publication as I hear a prodigious mass of composition for a
Sermon to the middling ranks of people to persuade them they are not so
distressed as is commonly supposed. Methinks he should recite it to a
congregation of Bilston Colliers,--the fate of Cinna the Poet would
instantaneously be his. God bless him, but certain that rogue Examiner
has beset him in most unmannerly strains. Yet there is a kind of respect
shines thro' the disrespect that to those who know the rare compound
(that is the subject of it) almost balances the reproof, but then those
who know him but partially or at a distance are so extremely apt to drop
the qualifying part thro' their fingers. The "after all, Mr. Wordsworth
is a man of great talents, if he did not abuse them" comes so dim upon
the eyes of an Edinbro' review reader, that have been gloating-open
chuckle-wide upon the preceding detail of abuses, it scarce strikes the
pupil with any consciousness of the letters being there, like letters
writ in lemon. There was a cut at me a few months back by the same hand,
but my agnomen or agni-nomen not being calculated to strike the popular
ear, it dropt anonymous, but it was a pretty compendium of observation,
which the author has collected in my disparagement, from some hundreds
of social evenings which we had spent together,--however in spite of
all, there is something tough in my attachment to H---- which these
violent strainings cannot quite dislocate or sever asunder. I get no
conversation in London that is absolutely worth attending to but his.
There is monstrous little sense in the world, or I am monstrous clever,
or squeamish or something, but there is nobody to talk to--to talk
_with_ I should say--and to go talking to one's self all day long is too
much of a good thing, besides subjecting one to the imputation of being
out of one's senses, which does no good to one's temporal interest at
all. By the way, I have seen Coler'ge but once this 3 or 4 months. He is
an odd person, when he first comes to town he is quite hot upon
visiting, and then he turns off and absolutely never comes at all, but
seems to forget there are any such people in the world. I made one
attempt to visit him (a morning call) at Highgate, but there was
something in him or his apothecary which I found so
unattractively-repulsing-from any temptation to call again, that I stay
away as naturally as a Lover visits. The rogue gives you Love Powders,
and then a strong horse drench to bring 'em off your stomach that they
mayn't hurt you. I was very sorry the printing of your Letter was not
quite to your mind, but I surely did not think but you had arranged the
manner of breaking the paragraphs from some principle known to your own
mind, and for some of the Errors, I am confident that Note of Admiration
in the middle of two words did not stand so when I had it, it must have
dropt out and been replaced wrong, so odious a blotch could not have
escaped me. Gifford (whom God curse) has persuaded squinting Murray
(whom may God not bless) not to accede to an offer Field made for me to
print 2 vols. of Essays, to include the one on Hog'rth and 1 or 2 more,
but most of the matter to be new, but I dare say I should never have
found time to make them; M. would have had 'em, but shewed specimens
from the Reflector to G---, as he acknowleged to Field, and Crispin did
for me. "Not on his soal but on his soul, damn'd Jew" may the
malediction of my eternal antipathy light--We desire much to hear from
you, and of you all, including Miss Hutchinson, for not writing to whom
Mary feels a weekly (and did for a long time feel a daily) Pang. How is
Southey?--I hope his pen will continue to move many years smoothly and
continuously for all the rubs of the rogue Examiner. A pertinacious
foul-mouthed villain it is!
This is written for a rarity at the seat of business: it is but little
time I can generally command from secular calligraphy--the pen seems to
know as much and makes letters like figures--an obstinate clerkish
thing. It shall make a couplet in spite of its nib before I have done
with it,
"and so I end
Commending me to your love, my dearest friend."
from Leaden Hall, Septem'r something, 1816
C. LAMB.
[The Lambs had taken summer lodgings--at 14 Kingsland Row,
Dalston--which they retained for some years.
Hazlitt's article on Coleridge was in _The Examiner_ for September 8.
Among other things Hazlitt said: "Mr. Shandy would have settled the
question at once: 'You have little or no nose, Sir.'"
One passage in the article gives colour to the theory that Hazlitt
occasionally borrowed from Lamb's conversation. In Lamb's letter to
Wordsworth of April 20, 1816, he has the celebrated description of
Coleridge, "an archangel a little damaged." Hazlitt in this article
writes: "If he had had but common moral principle, that is, sincerity,
he would have been a great man; nor hardly, as it is, appears to us--
"'Less than arch-angel ruined, and the excess
Of glory obscur'd.'"
Hazlitt may have heard Lamb's epithet, backed probably by the same
passage from_ Paradise Lost_.
Crabb Robinson tells us, in his _Diary_, that Coleridge was less hurt by
the article than he anticipated. "He denies H., however, originality,
and ascribes to L. [Lamb] the best ideas in H.'s articles. He was not
displeased to hear of his being knocked down by John Lamb lately."
Coleridge's new work was _The Statesman's Manual; or, the Bible the best
Guide to Political Skill and Foresight: A Lay Sermon_, 1816. It had been
first announced as "A Lay Sermon on the Distresses of the Country,
addressed to the Middle and Higher Orders," and Hazlitt's article had
been in the nature of an anticipatory review.
I do not find anywhere the "cut" at Lamb from Hazlitt's hand, or indeed
any one's hand, to which Lamb refers. Hazlitt at this time was living at
No. 19 York Street, Westminster, in Milton's old house.
"Agni-nomen." From _agnus_, a lamb.
"After all, Mr. Wordsworth ..."--the _Edinburgh Review_ article on _The
Excursion_, in November, 1814, beginning, "This will never do," had at
least two lapses into fairness: "But the truth is, that Mr. Wordsworth,
with all his perversities, is a person of great powers"; and "Nobody can
be more disposed to do justice to the great powers of Mr. Wordsworth
than we are."
"The printing of your Letter." _The Letter to a Friend of Burns_ (see
above).
"2 vols. of Essays." These were printed with poems as _The Works of
Charles Lamb_ by the Olliers in 1818 (see later).
"Crispin"--Gifford (see note to the letter to Wordsworth, early January,
1815).
"Southey." Hazlitt's attacks on the Laureate were continuous.]
LETTER 233
MARY LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
[No date. Middle of November, 1816.]
Inner Temple.
My dear friend, I have procured a frank for this day, and having been
hindered all the morning have no time left to frame excuses for my long
and inexcusable silence, and can only thank you for the very kind way in
which you overlook it. I should certainly have written on the receipt of
yours but I had not a frank, and also I wished to date my letter from my
own home where you expressed so cordial a wish to hear we had arrived.
We have passed ten, I may call them very good weeks, at Dalston, for
they completely answered the purpose for which we went. Reckoning our
happy month at Calne, we have had quite a rural summer, and have
obtained a very clear idea of the great benefit of quiet--of early hours
and time intirely at one's own disposal, and no small advantages these
things are; but the return to old friends--the sight of old familiar
faces round me has almost reconciled me to occasional headachs and fits
of peevish weariness--even London streets, which I sometimes used to
think it hard to be eternally doomed to walk through before I could see
a green field, seem quite delightful.
Charles smoked but one pipe while we were at Dalston and he has not
transgressed much since his return. I hope he will only smoke now with
his fellow-smokers, which will give him five or six clear days in the
week. Shame on me, I did not even write to thank you for the bacon, upon
which, and some excellent eggs your sister added to her kind present, we
had so many nice feasts. I have seen Henry Robinson, who speaks in
raptures of the days he passed with you. He says he never saw a man so
happy in _three wives_ as Mr. Wordsworth is. I long to join you and make
a fourth, and we cannot help talking of the possibility in some future
fortunate summer of venturing to come so far, but we generally end in
thinking the possibility impossible, for I dare not come but by post
chaises, and the expence would be enormous, yet it was very pleasing to
read Mrs. Wordsworth's kind invitation and to feel a kind of latent hope
of what might one day happen.
You ask how Coleridge maintains himself. I know no more than you do.
Strange to say, I have seen him but once since he has been at Highgate,
and then I met him in the street. I have just been reading your kind
letter over again and find you had some doubt whether we had left the
Temple entirely. It was merely a lodging we took to recruit our health
and spirits. From the time we left Calne Charles drooped sadly, company
became quite irksome, and his anxious desire to leave off smoking, and
his utter inability to perform his daily resolutions against it, became
quite a torment to him, so I prevailed with him to try the experiment of
change of scene, and set out in one of the short stage coaches from
Bishopsgate Street, Miss Brent and I, and we looked over all the little
places within three miles and fixed on one quite countrified and not two
miles from Shoreditch Church, and entered upon it the next day. I
thought if we stayed but a week it would be a little rest and respite
from our troubles, and we made a ten weeks stay, and very comfortable we
were, so much so that if ever Charles is superannuated on a small
pension, which is the great object of his ambition, and we felt our
income straitened, I do think I could live in the country entirely--at
least I thought so while I was there but since I have been at home I
wish to live and die in the Temple where I was born. We left the trees
so green it looked like early autumn, and can see but one leaf "The last
of its clan" on our poor old Hare Court trees. What a rainy summer!--and
yet I have been so much out of town and have made so much use of every
fine day that I can hardly help thinking it has been a fine summer. We
calculated we walked three hundred and fifty miles while we were in our
country lodging. One thing I must tell you, Charles came round every
morning to a shop near the Temple to get shaved. Last Sunday we had such
a pleasant day, I must tell you of it. We went to Kew and saw the old
Palace where the King was brought up, it was the pleasantest sight I
ever saw, I can scarcely tell you why, but a charming old woman shewed
it to us. She had lived twenty six years there and spoke with such a
hearty love of our good old King, whom all the world seems to have
forgotten, that it did me good to hear her. She was as proud in pointing
out the plain furniture (and I am sure you are now sitting in a larger
and better furnished room) of a small room in which the King always
dined, nay more proud of the simplicity of her royal master's taste,
than any shower of Carlton House can be in showing the fine things
there, and so she was when she made us remark the smallness of one of
the Princesses' bedrooms, and said she slept and also dressed in that
little room. There are a great many good pictures but I was most pleased
with one of the King when he was about two years old, such a pretty
little white-headed boy.
I cannot express how much pleasure a letter from you gives us. If I
could promise my self I should be always as well as I am now, I would
say I will be a better correspondent in future. If Charles has time to
add a line I shall be less ashamed to send this hasty scrawl. Love to
all and every one. How much I should like once more to see Miss
Wordsworth's handwriting, if she would but write a postscript to your
next, which I look to receive in a few days.
Yours affectionately
M. LAMB.
[_Charles Lamb adds at the head:_--]
Mary has barely left me room to say How d'ye. I have received back the
Examiner containing the delicate enquiry into certain infirm parts of S.
T. C.'s character. What is the general opinion of it? Farewell. My love
to all.
C. LAMB.
["Miss Brent." Mrs. Morgan's sister.
Crabb Robinson had been in the Lake Country in September and October.
"To a shop near the Temple." Possibly to Mr. A---- of Flower-de-Luce
Court, mentioned by Lamb in the footnote to his essay "On the Melancholy
of Tailors" (see Vol. I.).
"Our good old King"--George III., then in retirement. Carlton House was
the home of the Regent, whom Lamb (and probably his sister) detested--as
his "Triumph of the Whale" and other squibs (see Vol. IV.) show.
Here should come a letter to Rickman, dated December 30, 1816. The chief
news in it is that George Dyer has been made one of Lord Stanhope's ten
Residuary Legatees. This, says Lamb, will settle Dyer's fate: he will
have to throw his dirty glove at some one and marry.]
LETTER 234
MARY LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
[No date. ? Late 1816.]
My dear Miss Hutchinson, I had intended to write you a long letter, but
as my frank is dated I must send it off with a bare acknowledgment of
the receipt of your kind letter. One question I must hastily ask you. Do
you think Mr. Wordsworth would have any reluctance to write (strongly
recommending to their patronage) to any of his rich friends in London to
solicit employment for Miss Betham as a Miniature Painter? If you give
me hopes that he will not be averse to do this, I will write to you more
fully stating the infinite good he would do by performing so irksome a
task as I know asking favours to be. In brief, she has contracted debts
for printing her beautiful poem of "Marie," which like all things of
original excellence does not sell at all.
These debts have led to little accidents unbecoming a woman and a
poetess to suffer. Retirement with such should be voluntary.
[_Charles Lamb adds:_--]
The Bell rings. I just snatch the Pen out of my sister's hand to finish
rapidly. Wordsw'th. may tell De Q that Miss B's price for a Virgin and
Child is three guineas.
Yours (all of you) ever
C. L.
["De Q"--Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859), the "opium-eater," then living
at Grasmere. Lamb and De Quincey had first met in 1804; but it was not
until 1821 that they became really intimate, when Lamb introduced him to
the _London Magazine_.
Miss Betham painted miniature portraits, among others, of Mrs. S. T.
Coleridge and Sara Coleridge.
Here should come a note to William Ayrton dated April 18, 1817, thanking
him for much pleasure at "Don Giovanni" (see note to next letter).
Somewhen in 1816 should come a letter from Lamb to Leigh Hunt on the
publication of _The Story of Rimini_, mentioned in _Leigh Hunt's
Correspondence_, of which this is the only sentence that is preserved:
"The third Canto is in particular my favourite: we congratulate you most
sincerely on the trait [? taste] of your prison fruit."]
LETTER 235
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM AYRTON
EPISTLE
TO WILL'M. AYRTON ESQ'RE.
Temple, May 12, 1817.
My dear friend,
Before I end,--
Have you any
More orders for Don Giovanni
To give
Him that doth live
Your faithful Zany?
Without raillery
I mean Gallery
Ones:
For I am a person that shuns
All ostentation
And being at the top of the fashion;
And seldom go to operas
But in formâ pauperis.
I go to the play
In a very economical sort of a way,
Rather to see
Than be seen.
Though I'm no ill sight
Neither,
By candle-light,
And in some kinds of weather.
You might pit me
For height
Against Kean;
But in a grand tragic scene
I'm nothing:--
It would create a kind of loathing
To see me act Hamlet;
There'd be many a damn let
Fly
At my presumption
If I should try,
Being a fellow of no gumption.
By the way, tell me candidly how you relish
This, which they call
The lapidary style?
Opinions vary.
The late Mr. Mellish
Could never abide it.
He thought it vile,
And coxcombical.
My friend the Poet Laureat,
Who is a great lawyer at
Anything comical,
Was the first who tried it;
But Mellish could never abide it.
But it signifies very little what Mellish said,
Because he is dead.
For who can confute
A body that's mute?--
Or who would fight
With a senseless sprite?--
Or think of troubling
An impenetrable old goblin
That's dead and gone,
And stiff as stone,
To convince him with arguments pro and con,
As if some live logician,
Bred up at Merton,
Or Mr. Hazlitt, the Metaphysician--
Hey, Mr. Ayrton!
With all your rare tone.
For tell me how should an apparition
List to your call,
Though you talk'd for ever,--
Ever so clever,
When his ear itself,
By which he must hear, or not hear at all,
Is laid on the shelf?
Or put the case
(For more grace)
It were a female spectre--
Now could you expect her
To take much gust
In long speeches,
With her tongue as dry as dust,
In a sandy place,
Where no peaches,
Nor lemons, nor limes, nor oranges hang,
To drop on the drought of an arid harangue,
Or quench,
With their sweet drench,
The fiery pangs which the worms inflict,
With their endless nibblings,
Like quibblings,
Which the corpse may dislike, but can ne'er contradict--
Hey, Mr. Ayrton?
With all your rare tone--
I am.
C. LAMB.
[The text is from Ayrton's transcript in a private volume lately in the
possession of Mr. Edward Ayrton, lettered _Lamb's Works_, Vol. III.,
uniform with the 1818 edition.
William Ayrton (1777-1858), a friend and neighbour of the Burneys, and a
member of Lamb's whist-playing set, was a musical critic, and at this
time director of the King's Theatre in the Haymarket, where he had just
produced Mozart's "Don Giovanni." His wife was Marianne Arnold, sister
of Samuel James Arnold, manager of the Lyceum Theatre.
"You might pit me for height against Kean." This was so. Edmund Kean was
small in stature, though not so "immaterially" built as Lamb is said to
have been.
"Mr. Mellish." Possibly the Joseph Charles Mellish who translated
Schiller.
The Laureate, Southey, had first tried the lapidary style in "Gooseberry
Pie"; later, without rhymes, in "Thalaba."
Some time in the intervening three months before the next letter the
Lambs went to Brighton for their holiday.]
LETTER 236
CHARLES LAMB TO BARRON FIELD
Aug. 31st, 1817.
My dear Barren,--The bearer of this letter so far across the seas is Mr.
Lawrey, who comes out to you as a missionary, and whom I have been
strongly importuned to recommend to you as a most worthy creature by Mr.
Fenwick, a very old, honest friend of mine, of whom, if my memory does
not deceive me, you have had some knowledge heretofore as editor of the
"Statesman"--a man of talent, and patriotic. If you can show him any
facilities in his arduous undertaking, you will oblige us much. Well,
and how does the land of thieves use you? and how do you pass your time
in your extra-judicial intervals? Going about the streets with a
lantern, like Diogenes, looking for an honest man? You may look long
enough, I fancy. Do give me some notion of the manners of the
inhabitants where you are. They don't thieve all day long, do they? No
human property could stand such continuous battery. And what do they do
when they an't stealing?
Have you got a theatre? What pieces are performed? Shakespear's, I
suppose--not so much for the poetry, as for his having once been in
danger of leaving his country on account of certain "small deer."
Have you poets among you? Cursed plagiarists, I fancy, if you have any.
I would not trust an idea or a pocket-handkerchief of mine among 'em.
You are almost competent to answer Lord Bacon's problem, whether a
nation of atheists can subsist together. You are practically in one:--
"So thievish 'tis, that the eighth commandment itself
Scarce seemeth there to be."
Our old honest world goes on with little perceptible variation. Of
course you have heard of poor Mitchell's death, and that G. Dyer is one
of Lord Stanhope's residuaries. I am afraid he has not touched much of
the residue yet. He is positively as lean as Cassius. Barnes is going to
Demerara or Essequibo, I am not quite certain which. A[lsager] is turned
actor. He came out in genteel comedy at Cheltenham this season, and has
hopes of a London engagement.
For my own history, I am just in the same spot, doing the same thing
(videlicet, little or nothing,) as when you left me; only I have
positive hopes that I shall be able to conquer that inveterate habit of
smoking which you may remember I indulged in. I think of making a
beginning this evening, viz., Sunday 31st August, 1817, not Wednesday,
2nd Feb., 1818, as it will be perhaps when you read this for the first
time. There is the difficulty of writing from one end of the globe
(hemispheres I call 'em) to another! Why, half the truths I have sent
you in this letter will become lies before they reach you, and some of
the lies (which I have mixed for variety's sake, and to exercise your
judgment in the finding of them out) may be turned into sad realities
before you shall be called upon to detect them. Such are the defects of
going by different chronologies. Your now is not my now; and again, your
then is not my then; but my now may be your then, and _vice versá_.
Whose head is competent to these things?
How does Mrs. Field get on in her geography? Does she know where she is
by this time? I am not sure sometimes you are not in another planet; but
then I don't like to ask Capt. Burney, or any of those that know
anything about it, for fear of exposing my ignorance.
Our kindest remembrances, however, to Mrs. F., if she will accept of
reminiscences from another planet, or at least another hemisphere.
C. L.
[This is Lamb's first letter that has been preserved to Barron Field.
Barron Field (1786-1846) was a lawyer, a son of Henry Field, apothecary
to Christ's Hospital, and brother of a fellow-clerk of Lamb's in the
India House. He had also been a contributor to Leigh Hunt's _Reflector_
in 1810-1812. Field was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court of New
South Wales, whither he sailed in 1816, reaching Sydney in February,
1817. His wife was a Miss Jane Carncroft.
This letter forms the groundwork of Lamb's _Elia_ essay on "Distant
Correspondents" (see Vol. II.), which may be read with it as an example
of the difference in richness between Lamb's epistolary and finished
literary style.
"So thievish 'tis ..." A perversion of Coleridge's lines, in _The
Ancient Mariner:_--
So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.
"Poor Mitchell's death." This may have been one of the lies referred to
a little lower. If so, Thomas Mitchell (1783-1845) was probably
intended, as he had been at Christ's Hospital, and was a friend of Leigh
Hunt's, and might thus have known Lamb and Field. He translated
Aristophanes. The only Mitchell of any importance who died in 1817 was
Colonel Mitchell, who commanded a brigade at Waterloo; but Lamb would
hardly know anything of him.
George Dyer, who had been tutor in the family of the third Earl of
Stanhope (Citizen Stanhope), was one of the ten executors to whom that
peer's estate was left, after paying a few legacies. Among them was
another of Lamb's acquaintances, Joseph Jekyll, mentioned in the _Elia_
essay on the Old Benchers. Dyer repudiated the office, but the heir
persuaded him to accept an annuity.
Thomas Barnes (1785-1841), another old Christ's Hospitaller, and a
contributor to _The Reflector_, became editor of _The Times_ in 1817.
His projected journey was one of the "lies"; nor did Alsager, another
_Times_ man, whom we have already met, turn actor.]
LETTER 237
CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES AND LOUISA KENNEY
Londres, October, [1817].
Dear Friends,--It is with infinite regret I inform you that the pleasing
privilege of receiving letters, by which I have for these twenty years
gratified my friends and abused the liberality of the Company trading to
the Orient, is now at an end. A cruel edict of the Directors has swept
it away altogether. The devil sweep away their patronage also. Rascals
who think nothing of sponging upon their employers for their Venison and
Turtle and Burgundy five days in a week, to the tune of five thousand
pounds in a year, now find out that the profits of trade will not allow
the innocent communication of thought between their underlings and their
friends in distant provinces to proceed untaxed, thus withering up the
heart of friendship and making the news of a friend's good health worse
than indifferent, as tidings to be deprecated as bringing with it
ungracious expenses. Adieu, gentle correspondence, kindly conveyance of
soul, interchange of love, of opinions, of puns and what not! Henceforth
a friend that does not stand in visible or palpable distance to me, is
nothing to me. They have not left to the bosom of friendship even that
cheap intercourse of sentiment the twopenny medium. The upshot is, you
must not direct any more letters through me. To me you may annually, or
biennially, transmit a brief account of your goings on [on] a single
sheet, from which after I have deducted as much as the postage comes to,
the remainder will be pure pleasure. But no more of those pretty
commission and counter commissions, orders and revoking of orders,
obscure messages and obscurer explanations, by which the intellects of
Marshall and Fanny used to be kept in a pleasing perplexity, at the
moderate rate of six or seven shillings a week. In short, you must use
me no longer as a go-between. Henceforth I write up NO THOROUGHFARE.
Well, and how far is Saint Valery from Paris; and do you get wine and
walnuts tolerable; and the vintage, does it suffer from the wet? I take
it, the wine of this season will be all wine and water; and have you any
plays and green rooms, and Fanny Kellies to chat with of an evening; and
is the air purer than the old gravel pits, and the bread so much whiter,
as they say? Lord, what things you see that travel! I dare say the
people are all French wherever you go. What an overwhelming effect that
must have! I have stood one of 'em at a time, but two I generally found
overpowering, I used to cut and run; but, then, in their own vineyards
may be they are endurable enough. They say marmosets in Senegambia are
so pleasant as the day's long, jumping and chattering in the orange
twigs; but transport 'em, one by one, over here into England, they turn
into monkeys, some with tails, some without, and are obliged to be kept
in cages.
I suppose you know we've left the Temple _pro tempore_. By the way, this
conduct has caused strange surmises in a good lady of our acquaintance.
She lately sent for a young gentleman of the India House, who lives
opposite her, at Monroe's, the flute shop in Skinner Street, Snow
Hill,--I mention no name, you shall never get out of me what lady I
mean,--on purpose to ask all he knew about us. I had previously
introduced him to her whist-table. Her inquiries embraced every possible
thing that could be known of me, how I stood in the India house, what
was the amount of my salary, what it was likely to be hereafter, whether
I was thought to be clever in business, why I had taken country
lodgings, why at Kingsland in particular, had I friends in that road,
was anybody expected to visit me, did I wish for visitors, would an
unexpected call be gratifying or not, would it be better if she sent
beforehand, did anybody come to see me, wasn't there a gentleman of the
name of Morgan, did he know him, didn't he come to see me, did he know
how Mr. Morgan lived, she never could make out how they were maintained,
was it true that he lived out of the profits of a linendraper's shop in
Bishopsgate Street (there she was a little right, and a little wrong--M.
is a gentleman tobacconist); in short, she multiplied demands upon him
till my friend, who is neither over-modest nor nervous, declared he
quite shuddered. After laying as bare to her curiosity as an anatomy he
trembled to think what she would ask next. My pursuits, inclinations,
aversions, attachments (some, my dear friends, of a most delicate
nature), she lugged 'em out of him, or would, had he been privy to them,
as you pluck a horse-bean from its iron stem, not as such tender
rosebuds should be pulled. The fact is I am come to Kingsland, and that
is the real truth of the matter, and nobody but yourselves should have
extorted such a confession from me. I suppose you have seen by the
Papers that Manning is arrived in England. He expressed some
mortifications at not finding Mrs. Kenney in England. He looks a good
deal sunburnt, and is got a little reserved, but I hope it will wear
off. You will see by the Papers also that Dawe is knighted. He has been
painting the Princess of Coborg and her husband. This is all the news I
could think of. Write _to_ us, but not _by_ us, for I have near ten
correspondents of this latter description, and one or other comes
pouring in every day, till my purse strings and heart strings crack. Bad
habits are not broken at once. I am sure you will excuse the apparent
indelicacy of mentioning this, but dear is my shirt, but dearer is my
skin, and it's too late when the steed is stole, to shut the
door.--Well, and does Louisa grow a fine girl, is she likely to have her
mother's complexion, and does Tom polish in French air--Henry I
mean--and Kenney is not so fidgety, and YOU sit down sometimes for a
quiet half-hour or so, and all is comfortable, no bills (that you call
writs) nor anything else (that you are equally sure to miscall) to annoy
you? Vive la gaite de coeur et la bell pastime, vive la beau France et
revive ma cher Empreur.
C. LAMB.
[James Kenney and his wife were now living at St. Valery. Marshall was
Godwin's old friend, whom we have already seen, and Fanny was Fanny
Holcroft.
Lamb's friend Fanny Kelly is first mentioned by Lamb in this letter.
Frances Maria Kelly (1790-1882), to give her her full name, was then
playing at the Lyceum. We shall soon see much of her.
"We've left the Temple _pro tempore_"--referring to the Dalston
lodgings.
"What lady I mean." Mrs. Godwin lived in Skinner Street.
Manning, on his return from China, was wrecked near Sunda on February
17, 1817. The passengers were taken to St. Helena, and he did not reach
England until the summer. This must give us the date of the present
letter, previously attributed to October, 1816.
George Dawe was not knighted. Probably it was rumoured that he was to
be. His portrait of Princess Charlotte of Saxe-Coburg (who died in 1817
so soon after her marriage) was very popular.
Louisa would be Louisa Holcroft. In Tom Holcroft, Lamb later took some
interest.]
LETTER 238
MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
[P.M. November 21, 1817.]
My dear Miss Wordsworth, Your kind letter has given us very great
pleasure,--the sight of your hand writing was a most welcome surprize to
us. We have heard good tidings of you by all our friends who were so
fortunate as to visit you this summer, and rejoice to see it confirmed
by yourself. You have quite the advantage in volunteering a letter.
There is no merit in replying to so welcome a stranger.
We have left the Temple. I think you will be sorry to hear this. I know
I have never been so well satisfied with thinking of you at Rydal Mount
as when I could connect the idea of you with your own Grasmere Cottage.
Our rooms were dirty and out of repair, and the inconveniences of living
in chambers became every year more irksome, and so at last we mustered
up resolution enough to leave the good old place that so long had
sheltered us--and here we are, living at a Brazier's shop, No. 20, in
Russell Street, Covent Garden, a place all alive with noise and bustle,
Drury Lane Theatre in sight from our front and Covent Garden from our
back windows. The hubbub of the carriages returning from the play does
not annoy me in the least--strange that it does not, for it is quite
tremendous. I quite enjoy looking out of the window and listening to the
calling up of the carriages and the squabbles of the coachmen and
linkboys. It is the oddest scene to look down upon, I am sure you would
be amused with it. It is well I am in a chearful place or I should have
many misgivings about leaving the Temple. I look forward with great
pleasure to the prospect of seeing my good friend Miss Hutchinson. I
wish Rydal Mount with all its inhabitants enclosed were to be
transplanted with her and to remain stationary in the midst of Covent
Garden. I passed through the street lately where Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth
lodged; several fine new houses, which were then just rising out of the
ground, are quite finished and a noble entrance made that way into
Portland Place.
I am very sorry for Mr. De Quincey--what a blunder the poor man made
when he took up his dwelling among the mountains. I long to see my
friend Py pos. Coleridge is still at Little Hampton with Mrs. Gillman,
he has been so ill as to be confined to his room almost the whole time
he has been there.
Charles has had all his Hogarths bound in a book, they were sent home
yesterday, and now that I have them all together and perceive the
advantage of peeping close at them through my spectacles I am reconciled
to the loss of them hanging round the room, which has been a great
mortification to me--in vain I tried to console myself with looking at
our new chairs and carpets, for we have got new chairs, and carpets
covering all over our two sitting rooms, I missed my old friends and
could not be comforted--then I would resolve to learn to look out of the
window, a habit I never could attain in my life, and I have given it up
as a thing quite impracticable--yet when I was at Brighton last summer,
the first week I never took my eyes off from the sea, not even to look
in a book. I had not seen the sea for sixteen years. Mrs. Morgan, who
was with us, kept her liking, and continued her seat in the window till
the very last, while Charles and I played truant and wandered among the
hills, which we magnified into little mountains and _almost as good as_
Westmoreland scenery. Certainly we made discoveries of many pleasant
walks which few of the Brighton visitors have ever dreamed of--for like
as is the case in the neighbourhood of London, after the first two or
three miles we were sure to find ourselves in a perfect solitude. I hope
we shall meet before the walking faculties of either of us fail. You say
you can walk fifteen miles with ease,--that is exactly my stint, and
more fatigues me; four or five miles every third or fourth day, keeping
very quiet between, was all Mrs. Morgan could accomplish.
God bless you and yours. Love to all and each one.
I am ever yours most affectionately M. LAMB.
LETTER 239
CHARLES LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
(_Same letter._)
Dear Miss Wordsworth, Here we are, transplanted from our native soil. I
thought we never could have been torn up from the Temple. Indeed it was
an ugly wrench, but like a tooth, now 'tis out and I am easy. We never
can strike root so deep in any other ground. This, where we are, is a
light bit of gardener's mold, and if they take us up from it, it will
cost no blood and groans like mandrakes pull'd up. We are in the
individual spot I like best in all this great city. The theatres with
all [_a few words cut away: Talfourd has "their noises. Convent
Garden"_] dearer to me than any gardens of Alcinous, where we are
morally sure of the earliest peas and 'sparagus. Bow Street, where the
thieves are examined, within a few yards of us. Mary had not been here
four and twenty hours before she saw a Thief. She sits at the window
working, and casually throwing out her eyes, she sees a concourse of
people coming this way, with a constable to conduct the solemnity. These
little incidents agreeably diversify a female life. It is a delicate
subject, but is Mr. * * * really married? and has he found a gargle to
his mind? O how funny he did talk to me about her, in terms of such mild
quiet whispering speculative profligacy. But did the animalcule and she
crawl over the rubric together, or did they not? Mary has brought her
part of this letter to an orthodox and loving conclusion, which is very
well, for I have no room for pansies and remembrances. What a nice
holyday I got on Wednesday by favor of a princess dying. [_A line and
signature cut away_.]
[The Lambs' house in Russell Street is now (1912) a fruiterer's: it has
been rebuilt. Russell Street, Covent Garden, in those days was divided
into Great Russell Street (from the Market to Brydges Street, now
Catherine Street) and Little Russell Street, (from Brydges Street to
Drury Lane). The brazier, or ironmonger, was Mr. Owen, Nos. 20 and 21.
The Wordsworths had moved to Rydal Mount in 1813.
"I am very sorry for Mr. De Quincey." Probably a reference to one of the
opium-eater's illnesses.
It was at Littlehampton that Coleridge met Henry Francis Cary, the
translator of Dante, afterwards one of Lamb's friends.
"Spot I like best in all this great city." See Vol. I. of this edition,
for a little essay by Lamb on places of residence in London.
"Mr. * * *." One can but conjecture as to these asterisks. De Quincey,
who was very small, married at the close of 1816.
"A princess dying"--Princess Charlotte of Saxe-Coburg. She was buried,
amid national lamentation, on November 19, 1817.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Ayrton dated November 25, 1817,
which Lamb holds is peculiarly neatly worded.]
LETTER 240
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN PAYNE COLLIER
The Garden of England,
December 10, 1817.
Dear J. P. C.,--I know how zealously you feel for our friend S. T.
Coleridge; and I know that you and your family attended his lectures
four or five years ago. He is in bad health and worse mind: and unless
something is done to lighten his mind he will soon be reduced to his
extremities; and even these are not in the best condition. I am sure
that you will do for him what you can; but at present he seems in a mood
to do for himself. He projects a new course, not of physic, nor of
metaphysic, nor a new course of life, but a new course of lectures on
Shakspear and Poetry. There is no man better qualified (always excepting
number one); but I am pre-engaged for a series of dissertations on India
and India-pendence, to be completed at the expense of the Company, in I
know not (yet) how many volumes foolscap folio. I am busy getting up my
Hindoo mythology; and for the purpose I am once more enduring Southey's
Curse. To be serious, Coleridge's state and affairs make me so; and
there are particular reasons just now, and have been any time for the
last twenty years, why he should succeed. He will do so with a little
encouragement. I have not seen him lately; and he does not know that I
am writing.
Yours (for Coleridge's sake) in haste, C. LAMB.
[The "Garden of England" of the address stands, of course, for Covent
Garden.
This is the first letter to Collier that has been preserved. John Payne
Collier (1789-1883), known as a Shakespearian critic and editor of old
plays and poems, was then a reporter on _The Times_. He had recently
married. Wordsworth also wrote to Collier on this subject, Coleridge's
lectures were delivered in 1818, beginning on January 27, in
Flower-de-Luce Court. Their preservation we owe to Collier's shorthand
notes.
"My Hindoo mythology ... Southey's Curse"--_The Curse of Kehama_.]
LETTER 241
CHARLES LAMB TO BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON
December [26], 1817.
My dear Haydon,--I will come with pleasure to 22, Lisson Grove North, at
Rossi's, half-way up, right-hand side--if I can find it.
Yours,
C. LAMB.
20, Russell Court, Covent Garden East,
half-way up, next the corner, left hand side.
[The first letter that has been preserved to Haydon, the painter.
Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846) was then principally known by his
"Judgment of Solomon": he was at this time at work upon his most famous
picture, "Christ's Entry into Jerusalem." Lamb's note is in acceptance
of the invitation to the famous dinner which Haydon gave on December
28,1817, to Wordsworth, Keats, Monkhouse and others, with the
Comptroller of Stamps thrown in. Haydon's _Diary_ describes the evening
with much humour. See Appendix.]
LETTER 242
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
18 Feb. 1818. East India House.
(Mary shall send you all the _news_, which I find I have left out.)
My dear Mrs. Wordsworth, I have repeatedly taken pen in hand to answer
your kind letter. My sister should more properly have done it, but she
having failed, I consider myself answerable for her debts. I am now
trying to do it in the midst of Commercial noises, and with a quill
which seems more ready to glide into arithmetical figures and names of
Goods, Cassia, Cardemoms, Aloes, Ginger, Tea, than into kindly responses
and friendly recollections.
The reason why I cannot write letters at home is, that I am never alone.
Plato's (I write to _W. W._ now) Plato's double animal parted never
longed [? more] to be reciprocally reunited in the system of its first
creation, than I sometimes do to be but for a moment single and
separate. Except my morning's walk to the office, which is like treading
on sands of gold for that reason, I am never so. I cannot walk home from
office but some officious friend offers his damn'd unwelcome courtesies
to accompany me. All the morning I am pestered. I could sit and gravely
cast up sums in great Books, or compare sum with sum, and write PAID
against this and UNP'D against t'other, and yet reserve in some "corner
of my mind" some darling thoughts all my own--faint memory of some
passage in a Book--or the tone of an absent friend's Voice--a snatch of
Miss Burrell's singing--a gleam of Fanny Kelly's divine plain face--The
two operations might be going on at the same time without thwarting, as
the sun's two motions (earth's I mean), or as I sometimes turn round
till I am giddy, in my back parlour, while my sister is walking
longitudinally in the front--or as the shoulder of veal twists round
with the spit, while the smoke wreathes up the chimney--but there are a
set of amateurs of the Belle Lettres--the gay science--who come to me as
a sort of rendezvous, putting questions of criticism, of British
Institutions, Lalla Rooks &c., what Coleridge said at the Lecture last
night--who have the form of reading men, but, for any possible use
Reading can be to them but to talk of, might as well have been
Ante-Cadmeans born, or have lain sucking out the sense of an Egypt'n.
hieroglyph as long as the Pyramids will last before they should find it.
These pests worrit me at business and in all its intervals, perplexing
my accounts, poisoning my little salutary warming-time at the fire,
puzzling my paragraphs if I take a newspaper, cramming in between my own
free thoughts and a column of figures which had come to an amicable
compromise but for them. Their noise ended, one of them, as I said,
accompanys me home lest I should be solitary for a moment; he at length
takes his welcome leave at the door, up I go, mutton on table, hungry as
hunter, hope to forget my cares and bury them in the agreeable
abstraction of mastication, knock at the door, in comes Mrs. Hazlitt, or
M. Burney, or Morgan, or Demogorgon, or my brother, or somebody, to
prevent my eating alone, a Process absolutely necessary to my poor
wretched digestion. O the pleasure of eating alone!--eating my dinner
alone! let me think of it. But in they come, and make it absolutely
necessary that I should open a bottle of orange--for my meat turns into
stone when any one dines with me, if I have not wine--wine can mollify
stones. Then _that_ wine turns into acidity, acerbity, misanthropy, a
hatred of my interrupters (God bless 'em! I love some of 'em dearly),
and with the hatred a still greater aversion to their going away. Bad is
the dead sea they bring upon me, choaking and death-doing, but worse is
the deader dry sand they leave me on if they go before bed time. Come
never, I would say to these spoilers of my dinner, but if you come,
never go. The fact is, this interruption does not happen very often, but
every time it comes by surprise that present bane of my life, orange
wine, with all its dreary stifling consequences, follows. Evening
Company I should always like had I any mornings, but I am saturated with
human faces (_divine_ forsooth) and voices all the golden morning, and
five evenings in a week would be as much as I should covet to be in
company, but I assure you that is a wonderful week in which I can get
two, or one, to myself. I am never C. L. but always C. L. and Co.
He, who thought it not good for man to be alone, preserve me from the
more prodigious monstrosity of being never by myself. I forget bed time,
but even there these sociable frogs clamber up to annoy me. Once a week,
generally some singular evening that, being alone, I go to bed at the
hour I ought always to be abed, just close to my bedroom window, is the
club room of a public house, where a set of singers, I take them to be
chorus-singers of the two theatres (it must be _both of them_), begin
their orgies. They are a set of fellows (as I conceive) who being
limited by their talents to the burthen of the song at the play houses,
in revenge have got the common popular airs by Bishop or some cheap
composer arranged for choruses, that is, to be sung all in chorus. At
least I never can catch any of the text of the plain song, nothing but
the Babylonish choral howl at the tail on't. "That fury being
quenchd"--the howl I mean--a curseder burden succeeds, of shouts and
clapping and knocking of the table. At length over tasked nature drops
under it and escapes for a few hours into the society of the sweet
silent creatures of Dreams, which go away with mocks and mows at
cockcrow. And then I think of the words Christobel's father used (bless
me, I have dipt in the wrong ink) to say every morning by way of variety
when he awoke--"Every knell, the Baron saith, Wakes us up to a world of
death," or something like it. All I mean by this senseless interrupted
tale is, that by my central situation I am a little over companied. Not
that I have any animosity against the good creatures that are so anxious
to drive away the Harpy solitude from me. I like 'em, and cards, and a
chearful glass, but I mean merely to give you an idea between office
confinement and after office society, how little time I can call my own.
I mean only to draw a picture, not to make an inference. I would not
that I know of have it otherwise. I only wish sometimes I could exchange
some of my faces and voices for the faces and voices which a late
visitation brought most welcome and carried away leaving regret, but
more pleasure, even a kind of gratitude, at being so often favored with
that kind northern visitation. My London faces and noises don't hear
me--I mean no disrespect--or I should explain myself that instead of
their return 220 times a year and the return of W. W. &c. 7 times in 104
weeks, some more equal distribution might be found. I have scarce room
to put in Mary's kind love and my poor name.
CH. LAMB.
This to be read last.
W. H. goes on lecturing against W. W. and making copious use of
quotations from said W. W. to give a zest to said lectures. S. T. C. is
lecturing with success. I have not heard either him or H. but I dined
with S. T. C. at Gilman's a Sunday or 2 since and he was well and in
good spirits. I mean to hear some of the course, but lectures are not
much to my taste, whatever the Lecturer may be. If _read_, they are
dismal flat, and you can't think why you are brought together to hear a
man read his works which you could read so much better at leisure
yourself; if delivered extempore, I am always in pain lest the gift of
utterance should suddenly fail the orator in the middle, as it did me at
the dinner given in honor of me at the London Tavern. "Gentlemen" said
I, and there I stoppt,--the rest my feelings were under the necessity of
supplying. Mrs. Wordsworth _will_ go on, kindly haunting us with visions
of seeing the lakes once more which never can be realized. Between us
there is a great gulf--not of inexplicable moral antipathies and
distances, I hope (as there seemd to be between me and that Gentleman
concern'd in the Stamp office that I so strangely coiled up from at
Haydons). I think I had an instinct that he was the head of an office. I
hate all such people--Accountants, Deputy Accountants. The dear abstract
notion of the East India Company, as long as she is unseen, is pretty,
rather Poetical; but as SHE makes herself manifest by the persons of
such Beasts, I loathe and detest her as the Scarlet what-do-you-call-her
of Babylon. I thought, after abridging us of all our red letter days,
they had done their worst, but I was deceived in the length to which
Heads of offices, those true Liberty haters, can go. They are the
tyrants, not Ferdinand, nor Nero--by a decree past this week, they have
abridged us of the immemorially observed custom of going at one o'clock
of a Saturday, the little shadow of a holiday left us. Blast them. I
speak it soberly. Dear W. W., be thankful for your Liberty.
We have spent two very pleasant Evenings lately with Mr. Monkhouse.
[Mary Lamb's letter of news either was not written or has not been
preserved.
Lamb returned to the subject of this essay for his Popular Fallacy "That
Home is Home" in 1826 (see Vol. II. of this edition). A little
previously to that essay he had written an article in the _New Times_ on
unwelcome callers (see Vol. I.).
"Miss Burrell"--Fanny Burrell, afterwards Mrs. Gould. Lamb wrote in
praise of her performance in "Don Giovanni in London" (see Vol. I. of
this edition).
"Fanny Kelly's divine plain face." Only seventeen months later Lamb
proposed to Miss Kelly.
"What Coleridge said." Coleridge was still lecturing on Shakespeare and
poetry in Flower-de-Luce Court.
"The two theatres"--Drury Lane and Covent Garden.
"Bishop"--Sir Henry Rowley Bishop (1786-1855), composer of "Home, Sweet
Home."
"Christabel's father."
Each matin bell, the Baron saith,
Knells us back to a world of death.
Part II., lines 1 and 2.
"W. H. goes on lecturing." Hazlitt was delivering a course of lectures
on the English poets at the Surrey Institution.
"'Gentleman' said I." On another occasion Lamb, asked to give a toast,
gave the best he knew--woodcock on toast. See also his toasts at
Haydon's dinner. I do not know when or why the dinner was given to him;
perhaps after the failure of "Mr. H."
"Gentleman concern'd in the Stamp office." See note to the preceding
letter.
"Our red letter days." Lamb repeats the complaint in his _Elia_ essay
"Oxford in the Vacation." In 1820, I see from the Directory, the
Accountant's Office, where Lamb had his desk, kept sacred only five
red-letter days, where, ten years earlier, it had observed many.
"Mr. Monkhouse," Thomas Monkhouse, a friend of the Wordsworths and of
Lamb. He was at Haydon's dinner.
Here should come a note from Lamb to Charles and James Ollier, dated May
28, 1818, which apparently accompanied final proofs of Lamb's _Works_.
Lamb remarks, "There is a Sonnet to come in by way of dedication." This
would be that to Martin Burney at the beginning of Vol. II. The _Works_
were published in two volumes with a beautiful dedication to Coleridge
(see Vol. IV. of the present edition). Charles Ollier (1788-1859) was a
friend of Leigh Hunt's, for whom he published, as well as for Shelley.
He also brought out Keats' first volume. The Olliers' address was The
Library, Vere Street, Oxford Street.]
LETTER 243
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES AND JAMES OLLIER
[P.M. June 18, 1818.]
Dear Sir (whichever opens it)
I am going off to Birmingh'm. I find my books, whatever faculty of
selling they may have (I wish they had more for {_your/my_} sake), are
admirably adapted for giving away. You have been bounteous. SIX more and
I shall have satisfied all just claims. Am I taking too great a liberty
in begging you to send 4 as follows, and reserve 2 for me when I come
home? That will make 31. Thirty-one times 12 is 372 shillings, Eighteen
pounds twelve Shillings!!!--but here are my friends, to whom, if you
_could_ transmit them, as I shall be away a month, you will greatly
oblige the obliged
C. LAMB.
Mr. Ayrton, James Street, Buckingham Gate
Mr. Alsager, Suffolk Street East, Southwark, by Horsemonger Lane
and in one parcel
directed to R. Southey, Esq., Keswick, Cumberland
one for R. S.;
and one for W'm. Wordsworth, Esq'r.
If you will be kind enough simply to write "from the Author" in all
4--you will still further etc.--
Either Longman or Murray is in the frequent habit of sending books to
Southey and will take charge of the Parcel. It will be as well to write
in at the beginning thus
R. Southey Esq. from the Author.
W. Wordsworth Esq. from the Author.
Then, if I can find the remaining 2, left for me at Russell St when I
return, rather than encroach any more on the heap, I will engage to make
no more new friends ad infinitum, YOURSELVES being the last.
Yours truly C. L.
I think Southey will give us a lift in that damn'd Quarterly. I meditate
an attack upon that Cobler Gifford, which shall appear immediately after
any favourable mention which S. may make in the Quarterly. It can't in
decent _gratitude_ appear _before_.
[We know nothing of Lamb's visit to Birmingham. He is hardly likely to
have stayed with any of the Lloyd family. The attack on Gifford was
probably the following sonnet, printed in _The Examiner_ for October 3
and 4, 1819:--
ST. CRISPIN TO MR. GIFFORD
All unadvised, and in an evil hour,
Lured by aspiring thoughts, my son, you daft
The lowly labours of the Gentle Craft
For learned toils, which blood and spirits sour.
All things, dear pledge, are not in all men's power;
The wiser sort of shrub affects the ground;
And sweet content of mind is oftener found
In cobbler's parlour, than in critic's bower.
The sorest work is what doth cross the grain;
And better to this hour you had been plying
The obsequious awl with well-waxed finger flying,
Than ceaseless thus to till a thankless vein;
Still teazing Muses, which are still denying;
Making a stretching-leather of your brain.]
LETTER 244
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
Monday, Oct. 26th, 1818.
Dear Southey,--I am pleased with your friendly remembrances of my little
things. I do not know whether I have done a silly thing or a wise one;
but it is of no great consequence. I run no risk, and care for no
censures. My bread and cheese is stable as the foundations of Leadenhall
Street, and if it hold out as long as the "foundations of our empire in
the East," I shall do pretty well. You and W.W. should have had your
presentation copies more ceremoniously sent; but I had no copies when I
was leaving town for my holidays, and rather than delay, commissioned my
bookseller to send them thus nakedly. By not hearing from W.W. or you, I
began to be afraid Murray had not sent them. I do not see S.T.C. so
often as I could wish. He never comes to me; and though his host and
hostess are very friendly, it puts me out of my way to go see one person
at another person's house. It was the same when he resided at Morgan's.
Not but they also were more than civil; but after all one feels so
welcome at one's own house. Have you seen poor Miss Betham's
"Vignettes"? Some of them, the second particularly, "To Lucy," are sweet
and good as herself, while she was herself. She is in some measure
abroad again. I am _better than I deserve_ to be. The hot weather has
been such a treat! Mary joins in this little corner in kindest
remembrances to you all.
C.L.
[The letter treats of Lamb's _Works_, just published. Matilda Betham
followed up _The Lay of Marie_ with a volume entitled _Vignettes_.
"I am _better than I deserve_." Why Lamb underlined these words I do not
know, but it may have been a quotation from Coleridge. Carlyle in his
account of his visit to Coleridge at Highgate (in the _Life of John
Sterling_) puts it into Coleridge's mouth in connection with a lukewarm
cup of tea. Although lukewarm it was better, he said, than he deserved.
That was later, but it may have been a saying of which Coleridge was
fond.]
LETTER 245
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Dec. 24th, 1818.
My dear Coleridge,--I have been in a state of incessant hurry ever since
the receipt of your ticket. It found me incapable of attending you, it
being the night of Kenney's new comedy[1] ... You know my local
aptitudes at such a time; I have been a thorough rendezvous for all
consultations. My head begins to clear up a little; but it has had bells
in it. Thank you kindly for your ticket, though the mournful prognostic
which accompanies it certainly renders its permanent pretensions less
marketable; but I trust to hear many a course yet. You excepted
Christmas week, by which I understood _next week_; I thought Christmas
week was that which Christmas Sunday ushered in. We are sorry it never
lies in your way to come to us; but, dear Mahomet, we will come to you.
Will it be convenient to all the good people at Highgate, if we take a
stage up, _not next Sunday_, but the following, viz., 3rd January,
1819--shall we be too late to catch a skirt of the old out-goer;--how
the years crumble from under us! We shall hope to see you before then;
but, if not, let us know if _then_ will be convenient. Can we secure a
coach home?
Believe me ever yours, C. LAMB.
I have but one holiday, which is Christmas-day itself nakedly: no pretty
garnish and fringes of St. John's day, Holy Innocents &c., that used to
bestud it all around in the calendar. _Improbe labor!_ I write six hours
every day in this candle-light fog-den at Leadheall.
[Footnote 1: Canon Ainger supplies the four missing words: "which has
utterly failed."]
[The ticket was for a new course of lectures, either on the History of
Philosophy, or Six Plays of Shakespeare, both of which began in
December, 1818, and continued into 1819.
Kenney's new farce was "A Word for the Ladies," produced at Covent
Garden on December 17.
"To catch a skirt of the old out-goer." A reference to Coleridge's
line--
I saw the skirts of the departing year.
Somewhere at this point should come a delightful letter from Lamb to
John Chambers. John Chambers was the brother of Charles Chambers. He was
a colleague of Lamb's at the India House (see the _Elia_ essay "The
Superannuated Man"), and survived until 1872. It was to John Chambers
that Lamb made the remark that he (Lamb) was probably the only man in
England who had never worn boots and never ridden a horse. The letter,
which is concerned with the peculiarities of India House clerks, is
famous for the remark on Tommy Bye, a fellow-clerk at the India House,
that "his sonnets are most like Petrarch of any foreign poet, or what we
may suppose Petrarch would have written if Petrarch had been born a
fool." We meet Bye again in the next letter but one to Wordsworth. I can
find no trace of his sonnets in book form. Possibly they were never
published.]
LETTER 246
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[_This letter is written in black and red ink, changing with each
line._]
[P.M. April 26, 1819.]
Dear Wordsworth, I received a copy of Peter Bell a week ago, and I hope
the author will not be offended if I say I do not much relish it. The
humour, if it is meant for humour, is forced, and then the price.
Sixpence would have been dear for it. Mind, I do not mean _your_ Peter
Bell, but _a_ Peter Bell which preceded it about a week, and is in every
bookseller's shop window in London, the type and paper nothing differing
from the true one, the preface signed W.W., and the supplementary
preface quoting as the author's words an extract from supplementary
preface to the Lyrical Balads. Is there no law against these rascals? I
would have this Lambert Simnel whipt at the cart's tail. Then there is
Rogers! he has been re-writing your Poem of the Stride, and publishing
it at the end of his "Human Life." Tie him up to the Cart, hangman,
while you are about it. Who started the spurious P.B. I have not heard.
I should guess, one of the sneering brothers--the vile Smiths--but I
have heard no name mentioned. Peter Bell (not the mock one) is
excellent. For its matter, I mean. I cannot say that the style of it
quite satisfies me. It is too lyrical. The auditors to whom it is
feigned to be told, do not _arride me_. I had rather it had been told
me, the reader, at once. Heartleap Well is the tale for me, in matter as
good as this, in manner infinitely before it, in my poor judgment. Why
did you not add the Waggoner? Have I thanked you, though, yet, for Peter
Bell? I would not _not have it_ for a good deal of money. C---- is very
foolish to scribble about books. Neither his tongue nor fingers are very
retentive. But I shall not say any thing to him about it. He would only
begin a very long story, with a very long face, and I see him far too
seldom to teaze him with affairs of business or conscience when I do see
him. He never comes near our house, and when we go to see him, he is
generally writing, or thinking he is writing, in his study till the
dinner comes, and that is scarce over before the stage summons us away.
The mock P. B. had only this effect on me, that after twice reading it
over in hopes to find _some_thing diverting in it, I reach'd your two
books off the shelf and set into a steady reading of them, till I had
nearly finished both before I went to bed. The two of your last edition,
of course, I mean. And in the morning I awoke determining to take down
the Excursion. I wish the scoundrel imitator could know this. But why
waste a wish on him? I do not believe that paddling about with a stick
in a pond and fishing up a dead author whom _his_ intolerable wrongs had
driven to that deed of desperation, would turn the heart of one of these
obtuse literary Bells. There is no Cock for such Peters. Damn 'em. I am
glad this aspiration came upon the red ink line. It is more of a bloody
curse. I have delivered over your other presents to Alsager and G.
D.--A. I am sure will value it and be proud of the hand from which it
came. To G. D. a poem is a poem. His own as good as any bodie's, and god
bless him, any bodie's as good as his own, for I do not think he has the
most distant guess of the possibility of one poem being better than
another. The Gods by denying him the very faculty itself of
discrimination have effectually cut off every seed of envy in his bosom.
But with envy, they excided Curiosity also, and if you wish the copy
again, which you destined for him, I think I shall be able to find it
again for you--on his third shelf, where he stuffs his presentation
copies, uncut, in shape and matter resembling a lump of dry dust, but on
carefully removing that stratum, a thing like a Pamphlet will emerge. I
have tried this with fifty different Poetical Works that have been given
G. D. in return for as many of his own performances, and I confess I
never had any scruple in taking _my own_ again wherever I found it,
shaking the adherencies off--and by this means one Copy of "my Works"
served for G.D. and with a little dusting was made over to my good
friend Dr. Stoddart, who little thought whose leavings he was taking
when he made me that graceful bow. By the way, the Doctor is the only
one of my acquaintance who bows gracefully, my Town acquaintance I mean.
How do you like my way of writing with two Inks? I think it is pretty
and mottley. Suppose Mrs. W. adopts it, the next time she holds the pen
for you.
[_The ink differs with every word of the following paragraph_:--]
My dinner waits. I have no time to indulge any longer in these laborious
curiosities. God bless you and cause to thrive and to burgeon whatsoever
you write, and fear no inks of miserable poetasters.
Yours truly
CHARLES LAMB.
Mary's love.
[The _Peter Bell_ to which Lamb refers was written by John Hamilton
Reynolds (1796-1852), the friend of Keats, and later Hood's
brother-in-law. The parody is a travesty of Wordsworth generally rather
than of _Peter Bell_, which had not then been published.
James and Horace Smith, of the _Rejected Addresses_, which contained a
parody of Wordsworth under the title "The Baby's Debut," had nothing to
do with it. Lamb's indignation was shared by Coleridge, who wrote as
follows to Taylor and Hessey, the publishers, on April 16, 1819, on the
announcement of Reynolds' work:--
Dear Sirs, I hope, nay I feel confident, that you will interpret this
note in th' real sense--namely, as a proof of the esteem and respect
which I entertain toward you both. Looking in the Times this morning I
was startled by an advertisement of PETER BELL--a Lyrical Ballad--with a
very significant motto from one of our Comedies of Charles the IInd's
reign, tho' what it signifies I wish to ascertain. Peter Bell is a Poem
of Mr. Wordsworth's--and I have not heard, that it has been published by
him.--If it have, and with his name (I have reason to believe, that he
never published anonymously) and this now advertised be a ridicule on
it--I have nothing to say--But if it have not, I have ventured to pledge
myself for you, that you would not wittingly give the high
respectability of your names to an attack on a _Manuscript_ work, which
no man could assail but by a base breach of trust.
It is stated in the article on Reynolds in the _Dictionary of National
Biography_ that Coleridge asserted positively that Lamb was the
objectionable parodist; but this letter suggests that that was not so.
"_Peter Bell_ (not the mock one)." Crabb Robinson's _Diary_, in the
original MS., for June 6, 1812, contains this passage:--
With C. Lamb. Lent him Peter Bell. To my surprise he finds nothing in it
good. He complains of the slowness of the narrative, as if that were not
the _art_ of the Poet. W. he says has great thoughts, but here are none
of them. He has no interest in the Ass. These are to me inconceivable
judgments from C. L. whose taste in general I acquiesce in and who is
certainly an enthusiast for W.
Again, on May 11, 1819, after the poem was published, Robinson says:--
L. spoke of Peter Bell which he considers as one of the worst of
Wordsworth's works. The lyric narrative L. has no taste for. He is
disgusted by the introduction, which he deems puerile and the story he
thinks ill told, though he allows the idea to be good.
"Rogers." At the end of Samuel Rogers' poem, _Human Life_, 1819, is a
ballad, entitled "The Boy of Egremond," which has for subject the same
incident as that in Wordsworth's "Force of Prayer"--beginning
What is good for a bootless bene?
--the death of the Young Romilly as he leapt across the Strid. In
Wordsworth the answer to the question is "Endless sorrow." Rogers' poem
begins:--
"Say what remains when hope is fled?"
She answered "Endless weeping."
Wordsworth's _Peter Bell_ was published a week after the mock one. To
_The Waggoner_ we shall come shortly.
The significance of the allusion to Coleridge is not perfectly clear;
but I imagine it to refer to the elaborate examination of Wordsworth's
poetry in the _Biographia Literaria_.
"These obtuse literary Bells." Peter Bell, in the poem, sounds the river
with his staff, and draws forth the dead body of the ass's master. Lamb
passes, in his curse, to a reference to St. Peter.
"Taking my own again." This, if, as one may suppose, adapted from
Molière's "Je reprendre mon bien partout où je le trouve," is an
indication that Lamb knew the Frenchman's comedies.
Here should come a business note to John Rickman dated May 21, 1819,
given in the Boston Bibliophile edition.]
LETTER 247
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
May 28, 1819.
My dear M.,--I want to know how your brother is, if you have heard
lately. I want to know about you. I wish you were nearer. How are my
cousins, the Gladmans of Wheathamstead, and farmer Bruton? Mrs. Bruton
is a glorious woman.
Hail, Mackeray End--
This is a fragment of a blank verse poem which I once meditated, but got
no further. The E.I.H. has been thrown into a quandary by the strange
phenomenon of poor Tommy Bye, whom I have known man and mad-man
twenty-seven years, he being elder here than myself by nine years and
more. He was always a pleasant, gossiping, half-headed, muzzy, dozing,
dreaming, walk-about, inoffensive chap; a little too fond of the
creature--who isn't at times? but Tommy had not brains to work off an
over-night's surfeit by ten o'clock next morning, and unfortunately, in
he wandered the other morning drunk with last night, and with a
superfoetation of drink taken in since he set out from bed. He came
staggering under his double burthen, like trees in Java, bearing at once
blossom, fruit, and falling fruit, as I have heard you or some other
traveller tell, with his face literally as blue as the bluest firmament;
some wretched calico that he had mopped his poor oozy front with had
rendered up its native dye, and the devil a bit would he consent to wash
it, but swore it was characteristic, for he was going to the sale of
indigo, and set up a laugh which I did not think the lungs of mortal man
were competent to. It was like a thousand people laughing, or the Goblin
Page. He imagined afterwards that the whole office had been laughing at
him, so strange did his own sounds strike upon his _non_sensorium. But
Tommy has laughed his last laugh, and awoke the next day to find himself
reduced from an abused income of £600 per annum to one-sixth of the sum,
after thirty-six years' tolerably good service. The quality of mercy was
not strained in his behalf; the gentle dews dropt not on him from
heaven. It just came across me that I was writing to Canton. How is
Ball? "Mr. B. is a P----." Will you drop in to-morrow night? Fanny Kelly
is coming, if she does not cheat us. Mrs. _Gold_ is well, but proves
"uncoined," as the lovers about Wheathampstead would say.
O hard hearted Burrell
With teeth like a squirrel--
I have not had such a quiet half hour to sit down to a quiet letter for
many years. I have not been interrupted above four times. I wrote a
letter the other day in alternate lines, black ink and red, and you
cannot think how it chilled the flow of ideas. Next Monday is
Whit-Monday. What a reflection! Twelve years ago, and I should have kept
that and the following holiday in the fields a-Maying. All of those
pretty pastoral delights are over. This dead, everlasting dead desk--how
it weighs the spirit of a gentleman down! This dead wood of the desk
instead of your living trees! But then, again, I hate the Joskins, _a
name for Hertfordshire bumpkins_. Each state of life has its
inconvenience; but then, again, mine has more than one. Not that I
repine, or grudge, or murmur at my destiny. I have meat and drink, and
decent apparel; I shall, at least, when I get a new hat.
A red-haired man has just interrupted me. He has broke the current of my
thoughts. I haven't a word to add. I don't know why I send this letter,
but I have had a hankering to hear about you some days. Perhaps it will
go off, before your reply comes. If it don't, I assure you no letter was
ever welcomer from you, from Paris or Macao. C. LAMB.
[At the beginning of this letter is an unprinted passage saying that
Charles Lloyd and his wife are in London and that such proximity is not
too comfortable. "Would you like to see him?" or "isn't it better to
lean over a stile in a sort of careless easy half astronomical position
eyeing the blue expanse?"
Manning, who had now settled in England, but in retirement, was living
in Hertfordshire, at Totteridge. The Gladmans and Brutons are mentioned
in the _Elia_ essay "Mackery End in Hertfordshire":--
"The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End; or Mackarel End, as it is
spelt, perhaps more properly, in some old maps of Hertfordshire; a
farm-house,--delightfully situated within a gentle walk from
Wheathampstead. I can just remember having been there, on a visit to a
great-aunt, when I was a child, under the care of Bridget; who, as I
have said, is older than myself by some ten years. I wish that I could
throw into a heap the remainder of our joint existences, that we might
share them in equal division. But that is impossible. The house was at
that time in the occupation of a substantial yeoman, who had married my
grandmother's sister. His name was Gladman. My grandmother was a Bruton,
married to a Field. The Gladmans and the Brutons are still flourishing
in that part of the country, but the Fields are almost extinct."
The Goblin Page is in Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_.
"Mrs. _Gold_ is well"--_née_ Fanny Burrell.
"This dead wood of the desk." Lamb used this figure more than once, in
his letters and elsewhere. In the _Elia_ essay "The Superannuated Man"
he says: "I had grown to my desk, as it were; and the wood had entered
into my soul."]
LETTER 248
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. June 7, 1819.]
My dear Wordsworth, you cannot imagine how proud we are here of the
DEDICATION. We read it twice for once that we do the poem--I mean all
through--yet Benjamin is no common favorite--there is a spirit of
beautiful tolerance in it--it is as good as it was in 1806--and will be
as good in 1829 if our dim eyes shall be awake to peruse it.
Methinks there is a kind of shadowing affinity between the subject of
the narrative and the subject of the dedication--but I will not enter
into personal themes--else, substituting ******* **** for Ben, and the
Honble United Company of Merch'ts trading to the East Indies for the
Master of the misused Team, it might seem by no far fetched analogy to
point its dim warnings hitherward--but I reject the omen--especially as
its import seems to have been diverted to another victim.
Poor Tommy Bye, whom I have known (as I express'd it in a letter to
Manning), man and mad man 27 years--he was my gossip in Leadenhall
St.--but too much addicted to turn in at a red lattice--came wandering
into his and my common scene of business--you have seen the orderly
place--reeling drunk at nine o Clock-with his face of a deep blue,
contracted by a filthy dowlas muckinger which had given up its dye to
his poor oozy visnomy--and short to tell, after playing various pranks,
laughing loud laughters three mad explosions they were--in the following
morning the "tear stood in his eye"--for he found his abused income of
clear £600 inexorably reduced to £100--he was my dear gossip--alas!
Benjamin!...
I will never write another letter with alternate inks. You cannot
imagine how it cramps the flow of the style. I can conceive Pindar (I do
not mean to compare myself [to] _him_) by the command of Hiero, the
Sicilian tyrant (was not he the tyrant of some place? fie on my neglect
of history--) conceive him by command of Hiero, or Perillus, set down to
pen an a Isthmian or Nemean Panegyre in lines alternate red and black. I
maintain he couldn't have done it--it would have been a strait laced
torture to his muse, he would have call'd for the Bull for a relief.
Neither could Lycidas, or the Chorics (how do you like the word?) of
Samson Agonistes, have been written with two inks. Your couplets with
points, Epilogues to Mr. H.'s, &c. might be even benefited by the
twyfount. Where one line (the second) is for point, and the first for
rhime, I think the alternation would assist, like a mould. I maintain
it, you could not have written your stanzas on pre existence with 2
inks. Try another, and Rogers the Banker, with his silver standish
having one ink only, I will bet my Ode on Tobacco, against the Pleasures
of Memory--and Hope too--shall put more fervor of enthusiasm into the
same subject than you can with your two--he shall do it stans pede in
uno as it were.
The Waggoner is very ill put up in boards, at least it seems to me
always to open at the dedication--but that is a mechanical fault.
I re-read the White Doe of Rylston--the title should be always written
at length--as Mary Sabilla Novello, a very nice woman of our
acquaintance, always signs hers at the bottom of the shortest note. Mary
told her, if her name had been Mary Ann, she would have signed M.A.
Novello, or M. only, dropping the A--which makes me think, with some
other triflings, that she understands something of human nature. My pen
goes galloping on most rhapsodically, glad to have escaped the bondage
of Two Inks.
Manning had just sent it home and it came as fresh to me as the immortal
creature it speaks of. M. sent it home with a note, having this passage
in it, "I cannot help writing to you while I am reading Wordsw'ths poem.
I am got into the 3rd Canto, and say that it raises my opinion of him
very much indeed.[*] 'Tis broad; noble; poetical; with a masterly
scanning of human actions, absolutely above common readers. What a manly
(implied) interpretation of (bad) party-actions, as trampling the bible,
&c."--and so he goes on.
[Footnote *: N.B. M---- from his peregrinations is 12 or 14 years
_behind_ in his knowledge of who has or has not written good verse of
late.]
I do not know which I like best, the prologue (the latter part
specially) to P. Bell, or the Epilogue to Benjamin. Yes, I tell stories,
I do know. I like the last best, and the Waggoner altogether as a
pleasanter remembrance to me than the Itinerant. If it were not, the
page before the first page would and ought to make it so.
The sonnets are not all new to me. Of what are, the 9th I like best.
Thank you for that to Walton. I take it as a favor done to me, that,
being so old a darling of mine, you should bear testimony to his worth
in a book containing a DEDI----
I cannot write the vain word at full length any longer.
If as you say, the Waggoner in some sort came at my call, O for a potent
voice to call forth the Recluse from his profound Dormitory, where he
sleeps forgetful of his foolish charge The World.
Had I three inks I would invoke him!
Talfourd has written a most kind Review of J. Woodvil, &c., in the
Champion. He is your most zealous admirer, in solitude and in crowds. H.
Crabbe Robinson gives me any dear Prints that I happen to admire, and I
love him for it and for other things. Alsager shall have his copy, but
at present I have lent it _for a day only_, not chusing to part with my
own. Mary's love. How do you all do, amanuenses both--marital and
sororal?
C. LAMB.
[Wordsworth had just put forth _The Waggoner_, which was dedicated to
Lamb in the following terms:--
My dear friend--When I sent you, a few weeks ago, "The Tale of Peter
Bell," you asked "Why 'The Waggoner' was not added?" To say the truth,
from the higher tone of imagination, and the deeper touches of passion
aimed at in the former, I apprehended this little piece could not
accompany it without disadvantage. In the year 1806, if I am not
mistaken, "The Waggoner" was read to you in manuscript, and as you have
remembered it for so long a time, I am the more encouraged to hope that,
since the localities on which the poem partly depends did not prevent
its being interesting to you, it may prove acceptable to others. Being,
therefore, in some measure the cause of its present appearance, you must
allow me the gratification of inscribing it to you, in acknowledgment of
the pleasure I have derived from your writings, and of the high esteem
with which
I am very truly yours,
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
The poem, which had been written many years before, tells the story of
Benjamin, a waggoner in the Lake county, who one stormy night,
succumbing to the temptations of the Cherry Tree Inn, fell from good
estate. Lamb's asterisks stand, of course, for Charles Lamb.
"Your stanzas on pre existence"--the "Ode on Intimations of
Immortality."
_The Pleasures of Hope_ was Campbell's poem.
Mary Sabilla Novello was the wife of Vincent Novello, the organist, and
Lamb's friend.
_The White Doe of Rylstone_ had been published in 1815.
The 9th sonnet. Certain sonnets had been published with _The Waggoner_.
The 9th was that beginning:--
Grief, thou hast lost an ever ready Friend.
Wordsworth's sonnet upon Walton begins:--
While flowing rivers yield a blameless sport.
_The Recluse_ was not published until 1888, and then only Book I.
_The Champion_, in which Talfourd reviewed Lamb's _Works_, had now
become the property of John Thelwall.]
LETTER 249
CHARLES LAMB TO FANNY KELLY
20 July, 1819.
Dear Miss Kelly,--We had the pleasure, _pain_ I might better call it, of
seeing you last night in the new Play. It was a most consummate piece of
Acting, but what a task for you to undergo! at a time when your heart is
sore from real sorrow! it has given rise to a train of thinking, which I
cannot suppress.
Would to God you were released from this way of life; that you could
bring your mind to consent to take your lot with us, and throw off for
ever the whole burden of your Profession. I neither expect or wish you
to take notice of this which I am writing, in your present over occupied
& hurried state.--But to think of it at your leisure. I have quite
income enough, if that were all, to justify for me making such a
proposal, with what I may call even a handsome provision for my
survivor. What you possess of your own would naturally be appropriated
to those, for whose sakes chiefly you have made so many hard sacrifices.
I am not so foolish as not to know that I am a most unworthy match for
such a one as you, but you have for years been a principal object in my
mind. In many a sweet assumed character I have learned to love you, but
simply as F.M. Kelly I love you better than them all. Can you quit these
shadows of existence, & come & be a reality to us? can you leave off
harassing yourself to please a thankless multitude, who know nothing of
you, & begin at last to live to yourself & your friends?
As plainly & frankly as I have seen you give or refuse assent in some
feigned scene, so frankly do me the justice to answer me. It is
impossible I should feel injured or aggrieved by your telling me at
once, that the proposal does not suit you. It is impossible that I
should ever think of molesting you with idle importunity and persecution
after your mind [was] once firmly spoken--but happier, far happier,
could I have leave to hope a time might come, when our friends might be
your friends; our interests yours; our book-knowledge, if in that
inconsiderable particular we have any little advantage, might impart
something to you, which you would every day have it in your power ten
thousand fold to repay by the added cheerfulness and joy which you could
not fail to bring as a dowry into whatever family should have the honor
and happiness of receiving _you_, the most welcome accession that could
be made to it.
In haste, but with entire respect & deepest affection, I subscribe
myself
C. LAMB.
[It was known, on the authority of the late Mr. Charles Kent, that Fanny
Kelly, the actress, had received an offer of marriage from Lamb; but my
own impression was that it was made much later in life than this letter,
first printed in 1903 by Mr. John Hollingshead, indicates. Miss Kelly,
who at this time was engaged at the Lyceum, would be twenty-nine on
October 15; Lamb was forty-four in February. His salary was now £600 a
year.
Lamb had long admired Miss Kelly as an actress. In his _Works_,
published in 1818, was this sonnet:--
To Miss Kelly
You are not, Kelly, of the common strain,
That stoop their pride and female honour down
To please that many-headed beast _the town_,
And vend their lavish smiles and tricks for gain;
By fortune thrown amid the actors' train,
You keep your native dignity of thought;
The plaudits that attend you come unsought,
As tributes due unto your natural vein.
Your tears have passion in them, and a grace
Of genuine freshness, which our hearts avow;
Your smiles are winds whose ways we cannot trace,
That vanish and return we know not how--
And please the better from a pensive face,
And thoughtful eye, and a reflecting brow.
That Lamb had been pondering his offer for some little time is
suggested, Mr. Macdonald remarks, by a passage in one of his articles on
Miss Kelly in _The Examiner_ earlier in this month, where he says of her
as Rachel, in "The Jovial Crew," probably with full knowledge that it
would meet her eye and be understood (a truly Elian method of
love-lettering), "'What a lass that were,' said a stranger who sate
beside us ... 'to go a gipseying through the world with.'"
This was Miss Kelly's reply:--
Henrietta Street, July 20th, 1819.
An early & deeply rooted attachment has fixed my heart on one from whom
no worldly prospect can well induce me to withdraw it, but while I thus
_frankly_ & decidedly decline your proposal, believe me, I am not
insensible to the high honour which the preference of such a mind as
yours confers upon me--let me, however, hope that all thought upon this
subject will end with this letter, & that you will henceforth encourage
no other sentiment towards me than esteem in my private character and a
continuance of that approbation of my humble talents which you have
already expressed so much & so often to my advantage and gratification.
Believe me I feel proud to acknowledge myself
Your obliged friend
F. M. Kelly.
Lamb at once wrote again as follows:--]
Letter 250
Charles Lamb to Fanny Kelly
July 20th, 1819.
Dear Miss Kelly,--_Your injunctions shall be obeyed to a tittle_. I feel
myself in a lackadaisacal no-how-ish kind of a humour. I believe it is
the rain, or something. I had thought to have written seriously, but I
fancy I succeed best in epistles of mere fun; puns & _that_ nonsense.
You will be good friends with us, will you not? let what has past "break
no bones" between us. You will not refuse us them next time we send for
them?
Yours very truly, C. L.
Do you observe the delicacy of not signing my full name?
N.B. Do not paste that last letter of mine into your Book.
[Writing again of Miss Kelly, in the "Hypocrite," in _The Examiner_ of
August 1 and 2, Lamb says: "She is in truth not framed to tease or
torment even in jest, but to utter a hearty _Yes_ or _No_; to yield or
refuse assent with a noble sincerity. We have not the pleasure of being
acquainted with her, but we have been told that she carries the same
cordial manners into private life."
Miss Kelly died unmarried at the age of ninety-two.
"Break no bones." Here Lamb makes one of his puns. By "bones" he meant
also the little ivory discs which were given to friends of the
management, entitling them to free entry to the theatre. With this
explanation the next sentence of the letter becomes clear.]
Letter 251
Charles Lamb to Thomas Noon Talefourd(?)
[August, 1819.]
Dear T. We are at Mr. Bays's, Hatter, Trumpington Street, Cambridge. Can
you come down? You will be with us, all but Bed, which you can get at an
Inn. We shall be most glad to see you. Be so good as send me Hazlit's
volume, just published at Hone's, directed as above. Or, much better,
bring it. Yours, hic et ubique,
C. Lamb.
[The little note printed above (by permission of the Master of
Magdalene) proves that Lamb was in Cambridge in 1819. The evidence is
that the only book by Hazlitt which Hone published was _Political
Essays, with Sketches by Public Characters_, printed for William Hone,
45 Ludgate Hill, 1819. If then Hazlitt's book determines the year, we
may take the testimony of the sonnet "Written at Cambridge, August 15,
1819" as to the month, especially as Lamb at that time always took his
holidays in the summer; and this gives us August: a peculiarly
satisfactory conclusion for Cambridge men, because it shows that it was
to Cambridge that he went for comfort and solace after Miss Kelly's
refusal.
The letter has still further value in adding another Lamb domicile to
the list, Mr. Bays's house being still in existence although no longer
in Trumpington Street, but King's Parade.
"T." may easily have been Talfourd, who had just been writing an
enthusiastic review of Lamb's _John Woodvil_ in _The Champion_ and was
only too happy to serve his hero in any way. But it might be Tom
Holcroft.]
Letter 252
Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge
[No date. ? Summer, 1819.]
Dr C. Your sonnet is capital. The Paper ingenious, only that it split
into 4 parts (besides a side splinter) in the carriage. I have
transferred it to the common English Paper, _manufactured of rags_, for
better preservation. I never knew before how the Iliad and Odyssey were
written. Tis strikingly corroborated by observations on Cats. These
domestic animals, put 'em on a rug before the fire, wink their eyes up
and listen to the Kettle, and then PURR, which is their Poetry.
On Sunday week we kiss your hands (if they are clean). This next Sunday
I have been engaged for some time.
With remembces to your good Host and Hostess
Yours ever C. Lamb.
[The sonnet was Coleridge's "Fancy in Nubibus; or, The Poet in the
Clouds," printed in _Blackwood_, November, 1819, but now sent to Lamb in
manuscript, apparently on some curious kind of paper.
This is the sonnet:--
O! it is pleasant, with a heart at ease,
Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,
To make the shifting clouds be what you please,
Or let the easily persuaded eyes
Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould
Of a friend's fancy; or with head bent low
And cheek aslant see rivers flow of gold
'Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go
From mount to mount through Cloudland, gorgeous land!
Or, list'ning to the tide, with closed sight,
Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand
By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,
Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee
Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.
See next letter to Coleridge.
Possibly it is to this summer that an undated note to Crabb Robinson
belongs (in the Dr. Williams' Library) in which Lamb says they are
setting out to see Lord Braybrooke's house at Audley End.]
LETTER 253
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOLCROFT, JR.
[No date. Autumn, 1819.]
Dear Tom, Do not come to us on Thursday, for we are moved into country
lodgings, tho' I am still at the India house in the mornings. See
Marshall and Captain Betham _as soon as ever you can_. I fear leave
cannot be obtained at the India house for your going to India. If you go
it must be as captain's clerk, if such a thing could be obtain'd.
For God's sake keep your present place and do not give it up, or neglect
it; as you perhaps will not be able to go to India, and you see how
difficult of attainment situations are.
Yours truly
C. LAMB.
[Thomas Holcroft was the son of Lamb's friend, the dramatist. Apparently
he did not take Lamb's advice, for he lost his place, which was some
small Parliamentary post under John Rickman, in November, 1819. Crabb
Robinson, Anthony Robinson and Lamb took up the matter and subscribed
money, and Holcroft went out to India.]
LETTER 254
CHARLES LAMB TO JOSEPH COTTLE
[Dated at end: Nov. 5, 1819.]
Dear Sir--It is so long since I have seen or heard from you, that I fear
that you will consider a request I have to make as impertinent. About
three years since, when I was one day at Bristol, I made an effort to
see you, but you were from home. The request I have to make is, that you
would very much oblige me, if you have any small portrait of yourself,
by allowing me to have it copied, to accompany a selection of
"Likenesses of Living Bards" which a most particular friend of mine is
making. If you have no objections, and could oblige me by transmitting
such portrait to me at No. 44 Russell Street, Covent Garden, I will
answer for taking the greatest care of it, and returning it safely the
instant the Copier has done with it. I hope you will pardon the liberty
From an old friend
and well-wisher,
CHARLES LAMB.
London 5th Nov. 1819.
[Lamb's visit to Bristol was made probably when he was staying at Calne
with the Morgans in 1816. The present letter refers to an extra
illustrated copy of Byron's _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, which
was being made by William Evans, of _The Pamphleteer_, and which is now
in the British Museum. Owing to Cottle's hostility to Byron, and Byron's
scorn of Cottle, Lamb could hardly explain the nature of the book more
fully. See note to the following letter.]
LETTER 255
CHARLES LAMB TO JOSEPH COTTLE
[Not dated. ? Late 1819.]
Dear Sir--My friend whom you have obliged by the loan of your picture,
having had it very exactly copied (and a very spirited Drawing it is, as
every one thinks that has seen it--the copy is not much inferior, done
by a daughter of Josephs, R.A.)--he purposes sending you back the
original, which I must accompany with my warm thanks, both for that, and
your better favor, the "Messiah," which, I assure you, I have read thro'
with great pleasure; the verses have great sweetness and a New
Testament-plainness about them which affected me very much.
I could just wish that in page 63 you had omitted the lines 71 and '2,
and had ended the period with
"The willowy brook was there, but that sweet sound--
_When_ to be heard again on Earthly ground?"--
two very sweet lines, and the sense perfect.
And in page 154, line 68, "I come _ordained a world to save_,"--these
words are hardly borne out by the story, and seem scarce accordant with
the modesty with which our Lord came to take his common portion among
the Baptismal Candidates. They also anticipate the beauty of John's
recognition of the Messiah, and the subsequent confirmation from the
voice and Dove.
You will excuse the remarks of an old brother bard, whose career, though
long since pretty well stopt, was coeval in its beginning with your own,
and who is sorry his lot has been always to be so distant from you. It
is not likely that C.L. will ever see Bristol again; but, if J.C. should
ever visit London, he will be a most welcome visitor to C.L.
My sister joins in cordial remembrances and I request the favor of
knowing, at your earliest opportunity, whether the Portrait arrives
safe, the glass unbroken &c. Your glass broke in its coming.
Morgan is a little better--can read a little, &c.; but cannot join Mrs.
M. till the Insolvent Act (or whatever it is called) takes place. Then,
I hope, he will stand clear of all debts. Meantime, he has a most
exemplary nurse and kind Companion in Miss Brent.
Once more, Dear Sir,
Yours truly
C. LAMB.
[Cottle sent Lamb a miniature of himself by Branwhite, which had been
copied in monochrome for Mr. Evans' book. G.J. Joseph, A.R.A., made a
coloured drawing of Lamb for the same work. It serves as frontispiece to
Vol. I. of the present edition. Byron's lines refer as a matter of fact
not to Joseph but to Amos Cottle:--
O, Amos Cottle!--Phoebus! what a name.
and so forth. Mr. Evans, however, dispensed with Amos. Another
grangerised edition of the same satire, also in the British Museum,
compiled by W.M. Tartt, has an engraving of Amos Cottle and two
portraits of Lamb--the Hancock drawing, and the Brook Pulham caricature.
Byron's lines touching Lamb ran thus:--
Yet let them not to vulgar Wordsworth stoop,
The meanest object of the lowly group,
Whose verse, of all but childish prattle void,
Seems blessed harmony to Lambe and Lloyd.
A footnote states that Lamb and Lloyd are the most ignoble followers of
Southey & Co.
Cottle's _Messiah_, of which the earlier portion had been published long
since, was completed in 1815. Canon Ainger says that lines 71 and 72 in
Lamb's copy (not that of 1815), following upon the couplet quoted,
were:--
(While sorrow gave th' involuntary tear)
Had ceased to vibrate on our listening ear.
Coleridge's friend Morgan had just come upon evil times. Subsequently
Lamb and Southey united in helping him to the extent of £10 a year
each.]
LETTER 256
CHARLES LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
[P.M. 25 Nov., 1819.]
Dear Miss Wordsworth, you will think me negligent, but I wanted to see
more of Willy, before I ventured to express a prediction. Till yesterday
I had barely seen him--Virgilium Tantum Vidi--but yesterday he gave us
his small company to a bullock's heart--and I can pronounce him a lad of
promise. He is no pedant nor bookworm, so far I can answer. Perhaps he
has hitherto paid too little attention to other men's inventions,
preferring, like Lord Foppington, the "natural sprouts of his own." But
he has observation, and seems thoroughly awake. I am ill at remembering
other people's bon mots, but the following are a few. Being taken over
Waterloo Bridge, he remarked that if we had no mountains, we had a fine
river at least, which was a Touch of the Comparative, but then he added,
in a strain which augured less for his future abilities as a Political
Economist, that he supposed they must take at least a pound a week Toll.
Like a curious naturalist he inquired if the tide did not come up a
little salty. This being satisfactorily answered, he put another
question as to the flux and reflux, which being rather cunningly evaded
than artfully solved by that she-Aristotle Mary, who muttered something
about its getting up an hour sooner and sooner every day, he sagely
replied, "Then it must come to the same thing at last" which was a
speech worthy of an infant Halley! The Lion in the 'Change by no means
came up to his ideal standard. So impossible it is for Nature in any of
her works to come up to the standard of a child's imagination. The
whelps (Lionets) he was sorry to find were dead, and on particular
enquiry his old friend the Ouran Outang had gone the way of all flesh
also. The grand Tiger was also sick, and expected in no short time to
exchange this transitory world for another--or none. But again, there
was a Golden Eagle (I do not mean that of Charing) which did much ARRIDE
and console him. William's genius, I take it, leans a little to the
figurative, for being at play at Tricktrack (a kind of minor
Billiard-table which we keep for smaller wights, and sometimes refresh
our own mature fatigues with taking a hand at), not being able to hit a
ball he had iterate aimed at, he cried out, "I cannot hit that beast."
Now the balls are usually called men, but he felicitously hit upon a
middle term, a term of approximation and imaginative reconciliation, a
something where the two ends, of the brute matter (ivory) and their
human and rather violent personification into _men_, might meet, as I
take it, illustrative of that Excellent remark in a certain Preface
about Imagination, explaining "like a sea-beast that had crawled forth
to sun himself." Not that I accuse William Minor of hereditary plagiary,
or conceive the image to have come ex traduce. Rather he seemeth to keep
aloof from any source of imitation, and purposely to remain ignorant of
what mighty poets have done in this kind before him. For being asked if
his father had ever been on Westminster Bridge, he answer'd that he did
not know.
It is hard to discern the Oak in the Acorn, or a Temple like St. Paul's
in the first stone which is laid, nor can I quite prefigure what
destination the genius of William Minor hath to take. Some few hints I
have set down, to guide my future observations. He hath the power of
calculation in no ordinary degree for a chit. He combineth figures,
after the first boggle, rapidly. As in the Tricktrack board, where the
hits are figured, at first he did not perceive that 15 and 7 made 22,
but by a little use he could combine 8 with 25--and 33 again with 16,
which approacheth something in kind (far let me be from flattering him
by saying in degree) to that of the famous American boy. I am sometimes
inclined to think I perceive the future satirist in him, for he hath a
sub-sardonic smile which bursteth out upon occasion, as when he was
asked if London were as big as Ambleside, and indeed no other answer was
given, or proper to be given, to so ensnaring and provoking a question.
In the contour of scull certainly I discern something paternal. But
whether in all respects the future man shall transcend his father's
fame, Time the trier of geniuses must decide. Be it pronounced
peremptorily at present, that Willy is a well-mannerd child, and though
no great student, hath yet a lively eye for things that lie before him.
Given in haste from my desk at Leadenhall. Your's and yours' most
sincerely
C. LAMB.
[This letter, which refers to a visit paid to the Lambs in Great Russell
Street by Wordsworth's son, William, then nine years old, is remarkable,
apart from its charm and humour, for containing more of the absolute
method of certain of Lamb's _Elia_ passages than anything he had yet
written.
"Lord Foppington"--in Vanbrugh's "Relapse." Lamb used this speech as the
motto of his _Elia_ essay "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading."
"Like a sea-beast." Lamb alludes to the preface to the edition of 1815
of Wordsworth's poems, where he quotes illustratively from his
"Resolution and Independence":--
Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf
Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself.
"If his father had ever been on Westminster Bridge." An allusion to
Wordsworth's sonnet "Composed on Westminster Bridge":--
Earth has not anything to show more fair.
"The American boy." This was Zerah Colburn, the mathematical prodigy,
born in Vermont State in 1804 and exhibited in America and Europe by his
father.]
LETTER 257
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Jan. 10th, 1820.
Dear Coleridge,--A Letter written in the blood of your poor friend would
indeed be of a nature to startle you; but this is nought but harmless
red ink, or, as the witty mercantile phrase hath it, Clerk's Blood. Damn
'em! my brain, guts, skin, flesh, bone, carcase, soul, TIME, is all
theirs. The Royal Exchange, Gresham's Folly, hath me body and spirit. I
admire some of Lloyd's lines on you, and I admire your postponing
reading them. He is a sad Tattler, but this is under the rose. Twenty
years ago he estranged one friend from me quite, whom I have been
regretting, but never could regain since; he almost alienated you (also)
from me, or me from you, I don't know which. But that breach is closed.
The dreary sea is filled up. He has lately been at work "telling again,"
as they call it, a most gratuitous piece of mischief, and has caused a
coolness betwixt me and (not a friend exactly, but) [an] intimate
acquaintance. I suspect, also, he saps Manning's faith in me, who am to
Manning more than an acquaintance. Still I like his writing verses about
you. Will your kind host and hostess give us a dinner next Sunday, and
better still, _not expect us_ if the weather is very bad. Why you should
refuse twenty guineas per sheet for Blackwood's or any other magazine
passes my poor comprehension. But, as Strap says, you know best. I have
no quarrel with you about præprandial avocations--so don't imagine one.
That Manchester sonnet I think very likely is Capel Lofft's. Another
sonnet appeared with the same initials in the same paper, which turned
out to be Procter's. What do the rascals mean? Am I to have the
fathering of what idle rhymes every beggarly Poetaster pours forth! Who
put your marine sonnet and about Browne into "Blackwood"? I did not. So
no more, till we meet.
Ever yours,
C. L.
[Charles Lloyd, returned to health, had written _Desultory Thoughts in
London_, in which both Coleridge and Lamb appeared, Coleridge as *** and
Lamb as **. The poem was published in 1821. Lloyd probably had sent it
in manuscript or proof to Lamb and Coleridge. Some of Lloyd's lines on
Coleridge run thus:--
How shall I fitly speak on such a theme?
He is a treasure by the world neglected,
Because he hath not, with a prescience dim,
Like those whose every aim is self-reflected,
Pil'd up some fastuous trophy, that of him
Might tell, what mighty powers the age rejected,
But taught his lips the office of a _pen_--
By fools he's deem'd a being lost to men.
* * * * *
No! with magnanimous self-sacrifice,
And lofty inadvertency of fame,
He felt there is a bliss in _being_ wise,
Quite independent of the wise man's _name_.
Who now can say how many a soul may rise
To a nobility of moral aim
It ne'er had known, but for that spirit brave,
Which, being freely gifted, freely gave?
Sometimes I think that I'm a blossom blighted;
But this I ken, that should it not prove so,
If I am not inexorably spited
Of all that dignifies mankind below;
By him I speak of, I was so excited,
While reason's scale was poising to and fro,
"To the better cause;" that him I have to bless
For that which it is comfort to possess.
* * * * *
No! Those who most have seen me, since the hour
When thou and I, in former happier days,
Frank converse held, though many an adverse power
Have sought the memory of those times to raze,
Can vouch that more it stirs me (thus a tower,
Sole remnant of vast castle, still betrays
Haply its former splendour) to have prov'd
Thy love, than by fresh friends to have been lov'd.
The story of one of Lloyd's former indiscretions is told in the earlier
letters of this collection. I cannot say what friend he quite alienated,
unless it was James White. The nature of the later offence of which Lamb
accuses Lloyd is now unknown.
"That Manchester sonnet." A sonnet entitled "Manchester," referring to
the Luddites, and signed C. L., by Capel Lofft. Procter's "C.L." sonnet
was upon Macready.
The marine sonnet was "Fancy in Nubibus" (see page 559).
"About Browne" refers to a note by Coleridge on Sir Thomas Browne in the
same number, signed G.J.--possibly James Gillman's initials reversed.
We learn from a letter from Coleridge to J. H. Green (January 14, 1820)
that the visit to Highgate which Lamb mentions was a New Year visit of
annual occurrence. Lamb's reference to praeprandial avocations touches
upon Coleridge's habit of coming down to see his guests only when dinner
was ready.]
LETTER 258
MARY LAMB TO MRS. VINCENT NOVELLO
Newington, Monday.
[Spring of 1820.]
My dear Friend,--Since we heard of your sad sorrow, you have been
perpetually in our thoughts; therefore, you may well imagine how welcome
your kind remembrance of it must be. I know not how enough to thank you
for it. You bid me write a long letter; but my mind is so possessed with
the idea that you must be occupied with one only thought, that all
trivial matters seem impertinent. I have just been reading again Mr.
Hunt's delicious Essay; which I am sure must have come so home to your
hearts, I shall always love him for it. I feel that it is all that one
can think, but which none but he could have done so prettily. May he
lose the memory of his own babies in seeing them all grow old around
him! Together with the recollection of your dear baby, the image of a
little sister I once had comes as fresh into my mind as if I had seen
her as lately. A little cap with white satin ribbon, grown yellow with
long keeping, and a lock of light hair, were the only relics left of
her. The sight of them always brought her pretty, fair face to my view,
that to this day I seem to have a perfect recollection of her features.
I long to see you, and I hope to do so on Tuesday or Wednesday in next
week. Percy Street! I love to write the word; what comfortable ideas it
brings with it! We have been pleasing ourselves ever since we heard this
piece of unexpected good news with the anticipation of frequent drop-in
visits, and all the social comfort of what seems almost next-door
neighbourhood.
Our solitary confinement has answered its purpose even better than I
expected. It is so many years since I have been out of town in the
Spring, that I scarcely knew of the existence of such a season. I see
every day some new flower peeping out of the ground, and watch its
growth; so that I have a sort of an intimate friendship with each. I
know the effect of every change of weather upon them--have learned all
their names, the duration of their lives, and the whole progress of
their domestic economy. My landlady, a nice, active old soul that wants
but one year of eighty, and her daughter, a rather aged young
gentlewoman, are the only labourers in a pretty large garden; for it is
a double house, and two long strips of ground are laid into one, well
stored with fruit-trees, which will be in full blossom the week after I
am gone, and flowers, as many as can be crammed in, of all sorts and
kinds. But flowers are flowers still; and I must confess I would rather
live in Russell Street all my life, and never set my foot but on the
London pavement, than be doomed always to enjoy the silent pleasures I
now do. We go to bed at ten o'clock. Late hours are life-shortening
things; but I would rather run all risks, and sit every night--at some
places I could name--wishing in vain at eleven o'clock for the entrance
of the supper tray, than be always up and alive at eight o'clock
breakfast, as I am here. We have a scheme to reconcile these things. We
have an offer of a very low-rented lodging a mile nearer town than this.
Our notion is, to divide our time, in alternate weeks, between quiet
rest and dear London weariness. We give an answer to-morrow; but what
that will be, at this present writing, I am unable to say. In the
present state of our undecided opinion, a very heavy rain that is now
falling may turn the scale. "Dear rain, do go away," and let us have a
fine cheerful sunset to argue the matter fairly in. My brother walked
seventeen miles yesterday before dinner. And notwithstanding his long
walk to and from the office, we walk every evening; but I by no means
perform in this way so well as I used to do. A twelve-mile walk one hot
Sunday morning made my feet blister, and they are hardly well now.
Charles is not yet come home; but he bid me, with many thanks, to
present his _love_ to you and all yours, to all whom and to each
individually, and to Mr. Novello in particular, I beg to add mine. With
the sincerest wishes for the health and happiness of all, believe me,
ever, dear Mary Sabilla, your most affectionate friend,
MARY ANN LAMB.
[Leigh Hunt's essay "Deaths of Little Children" appeared in _The
Indicator_ for April 5, 1820; it was suggested by the same loss as that
which prompted Mary Lamb's letter.
The Lambs at this time were staying at Mrs. Bedford's, Church Street,
Stoke Newington, as we know from an unpublished letter from Mary Lamb to
Miss Kelly, dated March 27, 1820. To this letter I have referred in the
Preface. It states that Mary Lamb, who was teaching Miss Kelly Latin at
the time, has herself taken to French in the evenings.]
LETTER 259
CHARLES LAMB TO JOSEPH COTTLE
London, India House,
[? May 26th, 1820.]
My dear Sir,--I am quite ashamed of not having acknowledged your kind
present earlier, but that unknown something, which was never yet
discovered, though so often speculated upon, which stands in the way of
lazy folks answering letters, has presented its usual obstacle. It is
not forgetfulness, nor disrespect, nor incivility, but terribly like all
these bad things.
I have been in my time a great epistolary scribbler; but the passion,
and with it the facility, at length wears out; and it must be pumped up
again by the heavy machinery of duty or gratitude, when it should run
free.
I have read your "Fall of Cambria" with as much pleasure as I did your
"Messiah." Your Cambrian poem I shall be tempted to repeat oftenest, as
Human poems take me in a mood more frequently congenial than Divine. The
character of Llewellyn pleases me more than any thing else, perhaps; and
then some of the Lyrical Pieces are fine varieties.
It was quite a mistake that I could dislike anything you should write
against Lord Byron, for I have a thorough aversion to his character and
a very moderate admiration of his genius; he is great in so little a
way. To be a poet is to be the man--not a petty portion of occasional
low passion worked up into a permanent form of humanity. Shakespear has
thrust such rubbishy feelings into a corner-the dark, dusky heart of Don
John, in the _Much Ado about Nothing_. The fact is, I have not seen your
"Expostulatory Epistle" to him. I was not aware, till your question,
that it was out. I shall inquire, and get it forthwith.
Southey is in town, whom I have seen slightly; Wordsworth expected, whom
I hope to see much of. I write with accelerated motion; for I have two
or three bothering clerks and brokers about me, who always press in
proportion as you seem to be doing something that is not business. I
could exclaim a little profanely, but I think you do not like swearing.
I conclude, begging you to consider that I feel myself much obliged by
your kindness, and shall be most happy at any and at all times to hear
from you.
CHARLES LAMB
Dear Sir, yours truly,
[Joseph Cottle, the Bristol publisher, had apparently just sent Lamb a
copy of his _Fall of Cambria_, although it had been published some years
before. Perhaps Lamb had sent him his _Works_, and it was a return gift.
Cottle's very serious _Expostulatory Epistle to Lord Byron_ (who had
cast ridicule upon him and his brother in _English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers_) was issued in 1820, after the publication of _Don Juan_ had
begun.
Southey arrived in London on May Day, 1820. Wordsworth followed early in
June.]
LETTER 260
CHARLES LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
(_Incomplete_)
[May 25, 1820.]
Dear Miss W.--There can be none to whom the last volume of W. W. has
come more welcome than to me. I have traced the Duddon in thought and
with repetition along the banks (alas!) of the Lea--(unpoetical name);
it is always flowing and murmuring and dashing in my ears. The story of
_Dion_ is divine--the genius of Plato falling on him like moonlight--the
finest thing ever expressed. Then there is _Elidure_ and _Kirkstone
Pass_--the last not new to me--and let me add one of the sweetest of
them all to me, _The Longest Day_. Loving all these as much as I can
love poetry new to me, what could I wish or desire more or extravagantly
in a new volume? That I did not write to W. W. was simply that he was to
come so soon, and that flattens letters....
Yours,
C. L.
[I print from Professor Knight's text, in his _Life of Wordsworth_.
Canon Ainger supplies omissions--a reference to Martin Burney's black
eye.
The Wordsworths were in town this summer, to attend the wedding of
Thomas Monkhouse and Miss Horrocks. We know from Crabb Robinson's
_Diary_ that they were at Lamb's on June 2: "Not much was said about his
[W. W.'s] new volume of poems. But he himself spoke of the 'Brownie's
Cell' as his favourite." The new volume was _The River Duddon, a Series
of Sonnets_, ... 1820. "The Longest Day" begins:--
Let us quit the leafy arbour.
Between this letter and the next Lamb wrote and sent off his first
contribution to the _London Magazine_ over the signature Elia--"The
South-Sea House," which was printed in the number for August, 1820.]
LETTER 261
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[P.M. July 13, 1820.]
Dear Sir, I do not know whose fault it is we have not met so long. We
are almost always out of town. You must come and beat up our quarters
there, when we return from Cambridge. It is not in our power to accept
your invitation. To-day we dine out; and set out for Cambridge on
Saturday morning. Friday of course will be past in packing, &c.,
moreover we go from Dalston. We return from Cam. in 4 weeks, and will
contrive an early meeting.
Meantime believe us,
Sincerely yours,
C. L., &c.
_Thursday_,
[It was during this visit to Cambridge that Lamb wrote his _Elia_ essay
on "Oxford in the Vacation."]
LETTER 262
CHARLES AND MARY LAMB TO SAMUEL JAMES ARNOLD
[No date. ? 1820.]
Dear Sir, We beg to convey our kindest acknowledgements to Mr. Arnold
for the very pleasant privilege he has favoured us with. My yearly
holidays end with next week, during which we shall be mostly in the
country, and afterwards avail ourselves fully of the privilege.
Sincerely wishing you crowded houses, etc.,
We remain,
Yours truly,
CH. & M. LAMB.
[Arnold, brother-in-law of Ayrton, was the lessee of the Lyceum, where
Miss Kelly was acting when Lamb proposed to her in 1819.]
LETTER 263
CHARLES LAMB TO BARRON FIELD
London, 16 Aug., 1820.
Dear Field,--Captain Ogilvie, who conveys this note to you, and is now
paying for the first time a visit to your remote shores, is the brother
of a Gentleman intimately connected with the family of the _Whites_, I
mean of Bishopsgate Street--and you will much oblige them and myself by
any service or civilities you can shew him.
I do not mean this for an answer to your warm-hearted Epistle, which
demands and shall have a much fuller return. We receiped your Australian
First Fruits, of which I shall say nothing here, but refer you to ****
of the _Examiner_, who speaks our mind on all public subjects. I can
only assure you that both Coleridge and Wordsworth, and also C. Lloyd,
who has lately reappeared in the poetical horizon, were hugely taken
with your Kangaroo.
When do you come back full of riches and renown, with the regret of all
the honest, and all the other part of the colony? Mary swears she shall
live to see it.
Pray are you King's or Queen's men in Sidney? Or have thieves no
politics? Man, don't let this lie about your room for your bed sweeper
or Major Domo to see, he mayn't like the last paragraph.
This is a dull and lifeless scroll. You shall have soon a tissue of
truth and fiction impossible to be extricated, the interleavings shall
be so delicate, the partitions perfectly invisible, it shall puzzle you
till you return, & [then] I will not explain it. Till then a ... adieu,
with kind rem'brces of me both to you & ... [_Signature and a few words
torn off_.]
[Barron Field, who was still in New South Wales, had published his poems
under the title _First-Fruits of Australian Poetry_, and Lamb had
reviewed them in _The Examiner_ for January 16, 1820, over his usual
signature in that paper, * * * *. "The Kangaroo" is quoted in that
review (see Vol. I. of the present edition).
Captain Ogilvie was the brother of a clerk at the India House, who gave
Mr. Joseph H. Twichell some reminiscences of Lamb, which were printed in
_Scribner's Magazine_.
"King's or Queen's men"--supporters of George IV. or Caroline of
Brunswick. Lamb was very strongly in favour of the Queen, as his
_Champion_ epigrams show (see Vol. IV.).
"You shall soon see." Lamb's first reference to the _Elia_ essays,
alluding here to "The South-Sea House."
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Hazlitt. Lamb says that his
sister is ill again and that the last thing she read was Hazlitt's
"Thursday Nights" which gave her unmixed delight--the reference being to
the second part of the essay "On the Conversation of Authors," which was
printed in the _London Magazine_ for September, 1820, describing Lamb's
evenings. Stoddart, Hazlitt's brother-in-law, Lamb adds, says it is
better than Hogarth's "Modern Midnight Conversation."
Here should come a business note to John Scott, editor of the _London
Magazine_, dated August 24, 1820, given in the Boston Bibliophile
edition.]
LETTER 263A
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[No date. ? Autumn, 1820.]
Dear C.,--Why will you make your visits, which should give pleasure,
matter of regret to your friends? You never come but you take away some
folio that is part of my existence. With a great deal of difficulty I
was made to comprehend the extent of my loss. My maid Becky brought me a
dirty bit of paper, which contained her description of some book which
Mr. Coleridge had taken away. It was "Luster's Tables," which, for some
time, I could not make out. "What! has he carried away any of the
_tables_, Becky?" "No, it wasn't any tables, but it was a book that he
called Luster's Tables." I was obliged to search personally among my
shelves, and a huge fissure suddenly disclosed to me the true nature of
the damage I had sustained. That book, C., you should not have taken
away, for it is not mine; it is the property of a friend, who does not
know its value, nor indeed have I been very sedulous in explaining to
him the estimate of it; but was rather contented in giving a sort of
corroboration to a hint that he let fall, as to its being suspected to
be not genuine, so that in all probability it would have fallen to me as
a deodand; not but I am as sure it is Luther's as I am sure that Jack
Bunyan wrote the "Pilgrim's Progress;" but it was not for me to
pronounce upon the validity of testimony that had been disputed by
learneder clerks than I. So I quietly let it occupy the place it had
usurped upon my shelves, and should never have thought of issuing an
ejectment against it; for why should I be so bigoted as to allow rites
of hospitality to none but my own books, children, &c.?--a species of
egotism I abhor from my heart. No; let 'em all snug together, Hebrews
and Proselytes of the gate; no selfish partiality of mine shall make
distinction between them; I charge no warehouse-room for my friends'
commodities; they are welcome to come and stay as long as they like,
without paying rent. I have several such strangers that I treat with
more than Arabian courtesy; there's a copy of More's fine poem, which is
none of mine; but I cherish it as my own; I am none of those churlish
landlords that advertise the goods to be taken away in ten days' time,
or then to be sold to pay expenses. So you see I had no right to lend
you that book; I may lend you my own books, because it is at my own
hazard, but it is not honest to hazard a friend's property; I always
make that distinction. I hope you will bring it with you, or send it by
Hartley; or he can bring that, and you the "Polemical Discourses," and
come and eat some atoning mutton with us one of these days shortly. We
are engaged two or three Sundays deep, but always dine at home on
week-days at half-past four. So come all four--men and books I mean--my
third shelf (northern compartment) from the top has two devilish gaps,
where you have knocked out its two eye-teeth.
Your wronged friend,
C. LAMB.
[This letter is usually dated 1824, but I think it was written earlier.
For one reason, Hartley Coleridge was not in London in that year, and
for another, there are several phrases in the _Elia_ essay "Two Races of
Men" (printed in the _London Magazine_, December, 1820) that are so
similar to some in this letter that I imagine the letter to have
suggested the subject of the essay, the composition of which immediately
followed it. Thus, in the essay we read:--
"That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great eye-tooth
knocked out--(you are now with me in my little back study in Bloomsbury,
reader!)--with the huge Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the
Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant of nothing) once
held the tallest of my folios, _Opera Bonaventurae_, choice and massy
divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity also, but of a
lesser calibre,--Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas), showed but as dwarfs,--
itself an Ascapart!--_that_ Comberbatch abstracted upon the faith of a
theory he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for me to surfer by than
to refute, namely, that 'the title to property in a book (my
Bonaventure, for instance) is in exact ratio to the claimant's powers of
understanding and appreciating the same.' Should he go on acting upon
this theory, which of our shelves is safe?"
"Luster's Tables"--Luther's _Table Talk_.
"More's fine poem." The _Psychozoia Platonica_, 1642, of Henry More, the
Platonist. Lamb seems to have returned the book, for it was not among
his books that he left. Luther's _Table Talk_ seems also to have been
given up.]
APPENDIX
CONSISTING OF THE LONGER PASSAGES FROM BOOKS REFERRED TO BY LAMB IN HIS
LETTERS
COLERIDGE'S "ODE ON THE DEPARTING YEAR"
TEXT OF THE QUARTO, 1796
(_See Letter 19, page 75_)
STROPHE I
_Spirit_, who sweepest the wild Harp of Time,
It is most hard with an untroubled Ear
Thy dark inwoven Harmonies to hear!
Yet, mine eye fixt on Heaven's unchanged clime,
Long had I listen'd, free from mortal fear,
With inward stillness and a bowed mind:
When lo! far onwards waving on the wind
I saw the skirts of the DEPARTING YEAR!
Starting from my silent sadness
Then with no unholy madness,
Ere yet the entered cloud forbade my sight,
I rais'd th' impetuous song, and solemnized his flight.
STROPHE II
Hither from the recent Tomb;
From the Prison's direr gloom;
From Poverty's heart-wasting languish:
From Distemper's midnight anguish;
Or where his two bright torches blending
Love illumines Manhood's maze;
Or where o'er cradled Infants bending
Hope has fix'd her wishful gaze:
Hither, in perplexed dance,
Ye WOES, and young-eyed JOYS, advance!
By Time's wild harp, and by the Hand
Whose indefatigable Sweep
Forbids its fateful strings to sleep,
I bid you haste, a mixt tumultuous band!
From every private bower,
And each domestic hearth,
Haste for one solemn hour;
And with a loud and yet a louder voice
O'er the sore travail of the common earth
Weep and rejoice!
Seiz'd in sore travail and portentous birth
(Her eye-balls flashing a pernicious glare)
Sick NATURE struggles! Hark--her pangs increase!
Her groans are horrible! But O! most fair
The promis'd Twins, she bears--EQUALITY and PEACE!
EPODE
I mark'd Ambition in his war-array:
I heard the mailed Monarch's troublous cry--
"Ah! whither [wherefore] does the Northern Conqueress stay?
Groans not her Chariot o'er its onward way?"
Fly, mailed Monarch, fly!
Stunn'd by Death's "twice mortal" mace
No more on MURDER'S lurid face
Th' insatiate Hag shall glote with drunken eye!
Manes of th' unnumbered Slain!
Ye that gasp'd on WARSAW'S plain!
Ye that erst at ISMAIL'S tower,
When human Ruin chok'd the streams,
Fell in Conquest's glutted hour
Mid Women's shrieks, and Infants' screams;
Whose shrieks, whose screams were vain to stir
Loud-laughing, red-eyed Massacre!
Spirits of th' uncoffin'd Slain,
Sudden blasts of Triumph swelling
Oft at night, in misty train
Rush around her narrow Dwelling!
Th' exterminating Fiend is fled--
(Foul her Life and dark her Doom!)
Mighty Army of the Dead,
Dance, like Death-fires, round her Tomb!
Then with prophetic song relate
Each some scepter'd Murderer's fate!
When shall scepter'd SLAUGHTER cease?
Awhile He crouch'd, O Victor France!
Beneath the light'ning of thy Lance,
With treacherous dalliance wooing PEACE.
But soon up-springing from his dastard trance
The boastful, bloody Son of Pride betray'd
His hatred of the blest and blessing Maid.
One cloud, O Freedom! cross'd thy orb of Light
And sure, he deem'd, that Orb was quench'd in night:
For still does MADNESS roam on GUILT'S bleak dizzy height!
ANTISTROPHE I
DEPARTING YEAR! 'twas on no earthly shore
My Soul beheld thy Vision. Where, alone,
Voiceless and stern, before the Cloudy Throne
Aye MEMORY sits; there, garmented with gore,
With many an unimaginable groan
Thou storiedst thy sad Hours! Silence ensued:
Deep Silence o'er th' etherial Multitude,
Whose purple Locks with snow-white Glories shone.
Then, his eye wild ardors glancing,
From the choired Gods advancing,
the SPIRIT of the EARTH made reverence meet
And stood up beautiful before the Cloudy Seat!
ANTISTROPHE II
On every Harp, on every Tongue
While the mute Enchantment hung;
Like Midnight from a thundercloud,
Spake the sudden SPIRIT loud--
"Thou in stormy blackness throning
"Love and uncreated Light,
"By the Earth's unsolac'd groaning
"Seize thy terrors, Arm of Might!
"By Belgium's corse-impeded flood!
"By Vendee steaming Brother's blood!
"By PEACE with proffer'd insult scar'd,
"Masked hate, and envying scorn!
"By Tears of Havoc yet unborn;
"And Hunger's bosom to the frost-winds bar'd!
"But chief by Afric's wrongs
"Strange, horrible, and foul!
"By what deep Guilt belongs
"To the deaf Synod, 'full of gifts and lies!'
"By Wealth's insensate Laugh! By Torture's Howl!
"Avenger, rise!
"For ever shall the bloody Island scowl?
"For aye unbroken, shall her cruel Bow
"Shoot Famine's arrows o'er thy ravag'd World?
"Hark! how wide NATURE joins her groans below--
"Rise, God of Nature, rise! Why sleep thy Bolts unhurl'd?"
EPODE II
The Voice had ceas'd, the Phantoms fled,
Yet still I gasp'd and reel'd with dread.
And even when the dream of night
Renews the vision to my sight,
Cold sweat-damps gather on my limbs,
My Ears throb hot, my eye-balls start,
My Brain with horrid tumult swims,
Wild is the Tempest of my Heart;
And my thick and struggling breath
Imitates the toil of Death!
No uglier agony confounds
The Soldier on the war-field spread,
When all foredone with toil and wounds
Death-like he dozes among heaps of Dead!
(The strife is o'er, the day-light fled,
And the Night-wind clamours hoarse;
See! the startful Wretch's head
Lies pillow'd on a Brother's Corse!)
O doom'd to fall, enslav'd and vile,
O ALBION! O my mother Isle!
Thy valleys, fair as Eden's bowers,
Glitter green with sunny showers;
Thy grassy Upland's gentle Swells
Echo to the Bleat of Flocks;
(Those grassy Hills, those glitt'ring Dells
Proudly ramparted with rocks)
And Ocean 'mid his uproar wild
Speaks safely to his Island-child.
Hence for many a fearless age
Has social Quiet lov'd thy shore;
Nor ever sworded Foeman's rage
Or sack'd thy towers, or stain'd thy fields with gore.
Disclaim'd of Heaven! mad Av'rice at thy side,
At coward distance, yet with kindling pride--
Safe 'mid thy herds and corn-fields thou hast stood,
And join'd the yell of Famine and of Blood.
All nations curse thee: and with eager wond'ring
Shall hear DESTRUCTION like a vulture, scream!
Strange-eyed DESTRUCTION, who with many a dream
Of central flames thro' nether seas upthund'ring
Soothes her fierce solitude, yet (as she lies
Stretch'd on the marge of some fire-flashing fount
In the black chamber of a sulphur'd mount,)
If ever to her lidless dragon eyes,
O ALBION! thy predestin'd ruins rise,
The Fiend-hag on her perilous couch doth leap,
Mutt'ring distemper'd triumph in her charmed sleep.
Away, my soul, away!
In vain, in vain, the birds of warning sing--
And hark! I hear the famin'd brood of prey
Flap their lank pennons on the groaning wind!
Away, my Soul, away!
I unpartaking of the evil thing,
With daily prayer, and daily toil
Soliciting my scant and blameless soil,
Have wail'd my country with a loud lament.
Now I recenter my immortal mind
In the long sabbath of high self-content;
Cleans'd from the fleshly Passions that bedim
God's Image, Sister of the Seraphim.
WITHER'S "_SUPERSEDEAS_ TO ALL THEM, WHOSE CUSTOME IT IS, WITHOUT ANY
DESERVING, TO IMPORTUNE _AUTHORS_ TO GIVE UNTO THEM THEIR _BOOKES_"
FROM A COLLECTION OP EMBLEMS, 1635
(See _Letter_ 35, _page_ 123)
It merits not your Anger, nor my Blame,
That, thus I have inscrib'd this _Epigram_:
For, they who know me, know, that, _Bookes_ thus large,
And, fraught with _Emblems_, do augment the Charge
Too much above my _Fortunes_, to afford
A _Gift_ so costly, for an _Aierie-word_:
And, I have prov'd, your _Begging-Qualitie_,
So forward, to oppresse my _Modestie_;
That, for my future ease, it seemeth fit,
To take some Order, for preventing it.
And, peradventure, other Authors may,
Find Cause to thanke me for't, another day.
These many years, it hath your _Custom_ bin,
That, when in my possession, you have seene
A _Volume_, of mine owne, you did no more,
But, _Aske_ and _Take_; As if you thought my store
Encreast, without my Cost; And, that, by _Giving_,
(Both _Paines_ and Charges too) I got my living;
Or, that, I find the _Paper_ and the _Printing_,
As easie to me, as the _Bookes_ Inventing.
If, of my _Studies_, no esteeme you have,
You, then abuse the _Courtesies_ you crave;
And, are _Unthankfull_. If you prize them ought,
Why should my _Labour_, not enough be thought,
Unlesse, I adde _Expences_ to my paines?
The _Stationer_, affoords for little Gaines,
The _Bookes_ you crave: And, He, as well as I
Might give away, what you repine to buy:
For, what hee _Gives_, doth onely _Mony_ Cost,
In mine, both _Mony_, _Time_, and _Wit_ is lost.
What I shall Give, and what I have bestow'd
On Friends, to whom, I _Love_, or _Service_ ow'd,
I grudge not; And, I thinke it is from them,
Sufficient, that such _Gifts_ they do esteeme:
Yea, and, it is a _Favour_ too, when they
Will take these _Trifles_, my large _Dues_ to pay;
(Or, Aske them at my hands, when I forget,
That, I am to their _Love_, so much in debt.)
But, this inferres not, that, I should bestow
The like on all men, who my _Name_ do know;
Or, have the Face to aske: For, then, I might,
Of _Wit_ and _Mony_, soone be begger'd, quite.
So much, already, hath beene _Beg'd_ away,
(For which, I neither had, nor looke for pay)
As being valu'd at the common Rate,
Had rais'd, _Five hundred Crownes_, in my Estate.
Which, (if I may confesse it) signifies,
That, I was farre more _Liberall_, than _Wise_.
But, for the time to come, resolv'd I am,
That, till without denyall (or just blame)
I may of those, who _Cloth_ and _Clothes_ do make,
(As oft as I shall need them) _Aske_, and _Take_;
You shall no more befoole me. Therfore, _Pray_
_Be Answer'd_; And, henceforward, keepe away.
PASSAGE FROM GEORGE DYER'S "POETIC SYMPATHIES"
FROM _POEMS_, 1800
(_See Letter_ 83, _page_ 218)
Yet, Muse of Shakspeare[1], whither wouldst thou fly,
With hurried step, and dove-like trembling eye?
Thou, as from heav'n, that couldst each grace dispense,
Fancy's rich stream, and all the stores of sense;
Give to each virtue face and form divine,
Make dulness feel, and vulgar souls refine,
Wake all the passions into restless life,
Now calm to softness, and now rouze to strife?
Sick of misjudging, that no sense can hit,
Scar'd by the jargon of unmeaning wit,
The senseless splendour of the tawdry stage[2],
The loud long plaudits of a trifling age,
Where dost thou wander? Exil'd in disgrace,
Find'st thou in foreign realms some happier place[3]?
Or dost thou still though banish'd from the town,
In Britain love to linger, though unknown?
Light Hymen's torch through ev'ry blooming grove,[4]
And tinge each flow'ret with the blush of love?
Sing winter, summer-sweets, the vernal air,
Or the soft Sofa, to delight the fair[5]?
Laugh, e'en at kings, and mock each prudish rule,
The merry motley priest of ridicule[6]?
With modest pencil paint the vernal scene,
The rustic lovers, and the village green?
Bid Mem'ry, magic child, resume his toy,
And Hope's fond vot'ry seize the distant joy[7]?
Or dost thou soar, in youthful ardour strong,
And bid some female hero live in song[8]?
Teach fancy how through nature's walks to stray,
And wake, to simpler theme, the lyric lay[9]?
Or steal from beauty's lip th' ambrosial kiss,
Paint the domestic grief, or social bliss[10]?
With patient step now tread o'er rock and hill,
Gaze on rough ocean, track the babbling rill[11],
Then rapt in thought, with strong poetic eye,
Read the great movement of the mighty sky?
Or wilt thou spread the light of Leo's age,
And smooth, as woman's guide, Tansillo's page[12]?
Till pleas'd, you make in fair translated song,
Odin descend, and rouse the fairy throng[13]?
Recall, employment sweet, thy youthful day,
Then wake, at Mithra's call, the mystic lay[14]?
Unfold the Paradise of ancient lore[15],
Or mark the shipwreck from the sounding shore?
Now love to linger in the daisied vale,
Then rise sublime in legendary tale[16]?
Or, faithful still to nature's sober joy,
Smile on the labours of some Farmer's Boy[17]?
Or e'en regardless of the poet's praise,
Deck the fair magazine with blooming lays[18]?
Oh! sweetest muse, oh, haste thy wish'd return,
See genius droop, and bright-ey'd fancy mourn,
Recall to nature's charms an English stage,
The guard and glory of a nobler age.
[Footnote 1: It is not meant to say, that even Shakspeare followed
invariably a correct and chastized taste, or that he never purchased
public applause by offering incense at the shrine of public taste.
Voltaire, in his Essays on Dramatic Poetry, has carried the matter too
far; but in many respects his reflections are unquestionably just. In
delineating human characters and passions, and in the display of the
sublimer excellencies of poetry, Shakspeare was unrivalled.
There he our fancy of itself bereaving,
Did make us marble with too much conceiving.
MILTON'S SONNET TO SHAKSPEARE.]
[Footnote 2: Pomp and splendour a poor substitute for genius.]
[Footnote 3: The dramatic muse seems of late years to have taken her
residence in Germany. Schiller, Kotzebue, and Goethé, possess great
merit both for passion and sentiment, and the English nation have done
them justice. One or two principles which the French and English critics
had too implicitly followed from Aristotle, are indeed not adopted, but
have been, I hope, successfully, counteracted by these writers; yet are
these dramatists characterised by a wildness bordering on extravagance,
attendant on a state of half-civilization. Schiller and Kotzebue, amid
some faults, possess great excellencies.
With respect to England, it has long been noticed by very intelligent
observers, that the dramatic taste of the present age is vitiated. Pope,
who directed very powerful satire against the stage in his time, makes
Dulness say in general terms,
Contending theatres our empire raise,
Alike their censure, and alike their praise.
It would be the highest arrogance in me to make such an assertion, with
my slender knowledge in these matters; ready too, as I am, to admire
some excellent pieces that have fallen in my way; and to affirm, that
there is by no means a deficiency of poetic talent in England.
Aristotle observes, that all the parts of the Epic poet are to be found
in tragedy, and, consequently, that this species of writing is, of all
others, most interesting to men of talents. [Greek: Peri ooiaetikaes]
And baron Kotzebue thinks the theatre the best school of instruction,
both in morals and taste, even for children; and that better effects are
produced by a play, than by a sermon. See his life, written by himself,
just translated by Anne Plumptre.
How much then is it to be wished, that so admirable a mean of amusement
and instruction might be advanced to its true point of excellence! But
the principles laid down by Bishop HURD, though calculated to advance
the love of splendour, will not, I suspect, advance the TRUE PROVINCE OF
THE DRAMA.]
[Footnote 4: Loves of the Plants, by Dr. Darwin.]
[Footnote 5: The Task, by Cowper; written at the request of a lady. The
introductory poem is entitled, The Sofa.]
[Footnote 6: Dr. Walcot [Wolcot: Peter Pindar], whose poetry is of a
farcical and humorous character.]
[Footnote 7: The _Pleasures of Memory_, by Rogers; and the _Pleasures of
Hope_, by Campbell.]
[Footnote 8: Joan of Arc, by Southey;--a volume of poems with an
introductory sonnet to Mary Wolstonecraft, and a poem, on the praise of
woman, breathes the same spirit.]
[Footnote 9: Alludes to the character of a volume of poems, entitled
Lyrical Ballads. Under this head also should be mentioned Smythe's
English Lyrics.]
[Footnote 10: Characteristic of a volume of poems, the joint production
of Coleridge, Lloyd, and Lamb.]
[Footnote 11: Descriptive Poems, such as Leusden hill, by Thomas Crowe;
and the Malvern hills, by Joseph Cottle.]
[Footnote 12: Roscoe's Reign of Leo de Medici is interspersed with
poetry. Roscoe has also translated, THE NURSE, a poem, from the Italian
of Luigi Tansillo.]
[Footnote 13: Icelandic poetry, or the Edda of Sæmund, translated by
Amos Cottle; and the Oberon of Wieland, by Sotheby.]
[Footnote 14: Thomas Maurice, the author of the Indian Antiquities, is
republishing his poems; the Song to Mithra is in the third volume of
Indian Antiquities.]
[Footnote 15: The Paradise of Taste, and Pictures of Poetry, by
Alexander Thomson.]
[Footnote 16: There is a tale of this character by Dr. Aikin, and the
Hermit of Warkworth, by Bishop Percy. It will please the friends of
taste to hear, that Cartwright's Armine and Elvira, which has been long
out of print, is now republishing.]
[Footnote 17: The Farmer's Boy, a poem just published, on THE SEASONS,
by Robert Bloomfield.]
[Footnote 18: Many of the anonymous poetical pieces thrown into
magazines, possess poetical merit. Those of a young lady in the Monthly
Magazine, will, I hope, in time be more generally known. Those of
Rushton, of Liverpool, will also, I hope, be published by some judicious
friend:--this worthy man is a bookseller, who has been afflicted with
blindness from his youth.]
HAYDON'S PARTY FROM THE _LIFE OF BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON_, BY TOM TAYLOR
(_See Letter_ 241, _page_ 537)
On December 28th the immortal dinner came off in my painting-room, with
Jerusalem towering up behind us as a background. Wordsworth was in fine
cue, and we had a glorious set-to,--on Homer, Shakespeare, Milton and
Virgil. Lamb got exceedingly merry and exquisitely witty; and his fun in
the midst of Wordsworth's solemn intonations of oratory was like the
sarcasm and wit of the fool in the intervals of Lear's passion. He made
a speech and voted me absent, and made them drink my health. "Now," said
Lamb, "you old lake poet, you rascally poet, why do you call Voltaire
dull?" We all defended Wordsworth, and affirmed there was a state of
mind when Voltaire would be dull. "Well," said Lamb, "here's
Voltaire--the Messiah of the French nation, and a very proper one too."
He then, in a strain of humour beyond description, abused me for putting
Newton's head into my picture,--"a fellow," said he, "who believed
nothing unless it was as clear as the three sides of a triangle." And
then he and Keats agreed he had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow
by reducing it to the prismatic colours. It was impossible to resist
him, and we all drank "Newton's health, and confusion to mathematics."
It was delightful to see the good-humour of Wordsworth in giving in to
all our frolics without affectation and laughing as heartily as the best
of us.
By this time other friends joined, amongst them poor Ritchie who was
going to penetrate by Fezzan to Timbuctoo. I introduced him to all as "a
gentleman going to Africa." Lamb seemed to take no notice; but all of a
sudden he roared out, "Which is the gentleman we are going to lose?" We
than drank the victim's health, in which Ritchie joined.
In the morning of this delightful day, a gentleman, a perfect stranger,
had called on me. He said he knew my friends, had an enthusiasm for
Wordsworth and begged I would procure him the happiness of an
introduction. He told me he was a comptroller of stamps, and often had
correspondence with the poet. I thought it a liberty; but still, as he
seemed a gentleman, I told him he might come.
When we retired to tea we found the comptroller. In introducing him to
Wordsworth I forgot to say who he was. After a little time the
comptroller looked down, looked up and said to Wordsworth, "Don't you
think, sir, Milton was a great genius?" Keats looked at me, Wordsworth
looked at the comptroller. Lamb who was dozing by the fire turned round
and said, "Pray, sir, did you say Milton was a great genius?" "No, sir;
I asked Mr. Wordsworth if he were not." "Oh," said Lamb, "then you are a
silly fellow." "Charles! my dear Charles!" said Wordsworth; but Lamb,
perfectly innocent of the confusion he had created, was off again by the
fire.
After an awful pause the comptroller said, "Don't you think Newton a
great genius?" I could not stand it any longer. Keats put his head into
my books. Ritchie squeezed in a laugh. Wordsworth seemed asking himself,
"Who is this?" Lamb got up, and taking a candle, said, "Sir, will you
allow me to look at your phrenological development?" He then turned his
back on the poor man, and at every question of the comptroller he
chaunted--
"Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John
Went to bed with his breeches on."
The man in office, finding Wordsworth did not know who he was, said in a
spasmodic and half-chuckling anticipation of assured victory, "I have
had the honour of some correspondence with you, Mr. Wordsworth." "With
me, sir?" said Wordsworth, "not that I remember." "Don't you, sir? I am
a comptroller of stamps." There was a dead silence;--the comptroller
evidently thinking that was enough. While we were waiting for
Wordsworth's reply, Lamb sung out
"Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle."
"My dear Charles!" said Wordsworth,--
"Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John,"
chaunted Lamb, and then rising, exclaimed, "Do let me have another look
at that gentleman's organs." Keats and I hurried Lamb into the
painting-room, shut the door and gave way to inextinguishable laughter.
Monkhouse followed and tried to get Lamb away. We went back, but the
comptroller was irreconcilable. We soothed and smiled and asked him to
supper. He stayed though his dignity was sorely affected. However, being
a good-natured man, we parted all in good-humour, and no ill effects
followed.
All the while, until Monkhouse succeeded, we could hear Lamb struggling
in the painting-room and calling at intervals, "Who is that fellow?
Allow me to see his organs once more."
It was indeed an immortal evening. Wordsworth's fine intonation as he
quoted Milton and Virgil, Keats' eager inspired look, Lamb's quaint
sparkle of lambent humour, so speeded the stream of conversation, that
in my life I never passed a more delightful time. All our fun was within
bounds. Not a word passed that an apostle might not have listened to. It
was a night worthy of the Elizabethan age, and my solemn Jerusalem
flashing up by the flame of the fire, with Christ hanging over us like a
vision, all made up a picture which will long glow upon--
"that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude."
Keats made Ritchie promise he would carry his Endymion to the great
desert of Sahara and fling it in the midst.
Poor Ritchie went to Africa, and died, as Lamb foresaw, in 1819. Keats
died in 1821, at Rome. C. Lamb is gone, joking to the last. Monkhouse is
dead, and Wordsworth and I are the only two now living (1841) of that
glorious party.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb,
Vol. 5, by Edited by E. V. Lucas
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS CHARLES AND MARY LAMB ***
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