"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.]