_Recollections of the Lambs_
Keswick, 2 _Feb._ 1836.
My dear sir,
I have been too closely engaged in clearing off the second volume of
Cowper to reply to your inquiries concerning poor Lamb sooner. His
acquaintance with Coleridge began at Christ's Hospital; Lamb was
some two years, I think, his junior. Whether he was ever one of the
_Grecians_ there, might be ascertained, I suppose, by inquiring. My
own impression is, that he was not. Coleridge introduced me to him
in the winter of 1794-5, and to George Dyer also, from whom, if his
memory has not failed, you might probably learn more of Lamb's early
history than from any other person. Lloyd, Wordsworth, and Hazlitt
became known to him through their connexion with Coleridge.
When I saw the family (one evening only, and at that time), they were
lodging somewhere near Lincoln's Inn, on the western side (I forget
the street), and were evidently in uncomfortable circumstances. The
father and mother were both living; and I have some dim recollection
of the latter's invalid appearance. The father's senses had failed him
before that time. He published some poems in quarto. Lamb showed me
once an imperfect copy: the _Sparrow's Wedding_ was the title of the
longest piece, and this was the author's favourite; he liked, in his
dotage, to hear Charles read it.
His most familiar friend, when I first saw him, was White, who held
some office at Christ's Hospital, and continued intimate with him as
long as he lived. You know what Elia says of him. He and Lamb were
joint authors of the _Original Letters of Falstaff_. Lamb, I believe,
first appeared as an author in the second edition of Coleridge's
_Poems_ (Bristol, 1797), and, secondly, in the little volume of blank
verse with Lloyd (1798). Lamb, Lloyd, and White were inseparable in
1798; the two latter at one time lodged together, though no two men
could be imagined more unlike each other. Lloyd had no drollery in his
nature; White seemed to have nothing else. You will easily understand
how Lamb could sympathize with both.
Lloyd, who used to form sudden friendships, was all but a stranger
to me, when unexpectedly he brought Lamb down to visit me at a little
village (Burton) near Christchurch, in Hampshire, where I was lodging
in a very humble cottage. This was in the summer of 1797, and then, or
in the following year, my correspondence with Lamb began. I saw more
of him in 1802 than at any other time, for I was then six months
resident in London. His visit to this county was before I came to it;
it must have been either in that or in the following year: it was to
Lloyd and to Coleridge.
I had forgotten one of his schoolfellows, who is still living--C.V.
Le Grice, a clergyman at or near Penzance. From him you might learn
something of his boyhood.
Cottle has a good likeness of Lamb, in chalk, taken by an artist named
Robert Hancock, about the year 1798. It looks older than Lamb was at
that time; but he was old-looking.
Coleridge introduced him to Godwin, shortly after the first number
of the _Anti-Jacobin Magazine and Review_ was published, with a
caricature of Gillray's, in which Coleridge and I were introduced with
asses' heads, and Lloyd and Lamb as toad and frog. Lamb got warmed
with whatever was on the table, became disputatious, and said things
to Godwin which made him quietly say, 'Pray, Mr. Lamb, are you toad
or frog?' Mrs. Coleridge will remember the scene, which was to her
sufficiently uncomfortable. But the next morning S.T.C. called on
Lamb, and found Godwin breakfasting with him, from which time their
intimacy began.
His angry letter to me in the _Magazine_ arose out of a notion that
an expression of mine in the _Quarterly Review_ would hurt the sale of
_Elia_; some one, no doubt, had said that it would. I meant to serve
the book, and very well remember how the offence happened. I had
written that it wanted nothing to render it altogether delightful but
a _saner_ religious feeling. _This_ would have been the proper word if
any other person had written the book. Feeling its extreme unfitness
as soon as it was written, I altered it immediately for the first word
which came into my head, intending to remodel the sentence when it
should come to me in the proof; and that proof never came. There can
be no objection to your printing all that passed upon the occasion,
beginning with the passage in the _Quarterly Review_, and giving his
letter.
I have heard Coleridge say that, in a fit of derangement, Lamb fancied
himself to be young Norval. He told me this in relation to one of his
poems.
If you will print my lines to him upon his _Album Verses_, I will
send you a corrected copy. You received his letters, I trust, which
Cuthbert took with him to town in October. I wish they had been more,
and wish, also, that I had more to tell you concerning him, and what
I have told were of more value. But it is from such fragments of
recollection, and such imperfect notices, that the materials for
biography must, for the most part, be collected.
=CHARLES LAMB=
1775-1834