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.