Dear Clare, I thank you heartily for your present. I am an
inveterate old Londoner, but while I am among your choice
collections, I seem to be native to them, and free of the
country. The quantity of your observation has astonished me.
What have most pleased me have been Recollections after a
Ramble, and those Grongar Hill kind of pieces in eight
syllable lines, my favourite measure, such as Cowper Hill
and Solitude. In some of your story telling Ballads the
provincial phrases sometimes startle me. I think you are too
profuse with them. In poetry slang [underlined] of every
kind is to be avoided. There is a rustick Cockneyism
as little pleasing as ours of London. Transplant Arcadia to
Helpstone. The true rustic style, the Arcadian English, I
think is to be found in Shenstones. Would his
Schoolmistress, the prettiest of poems, have been better, if
he had used quite the Goody's own language? Now and then a
home rusticism is fresh & startling, but where nothing is
gained in expression, it is out of tenor. It may make
people [crossed out] folks smile and stare, but the
ungenial coalition of barbarous with refined phrases will
prevent you in the end from being so generally tasted, as
you deserve to be. Excuse my freedom, and take the same
liberty with my puns [underlined].
I send you two little volumes of my spare hours. They are of
all sorts, there is a methodist hymn for Sundays, and a
farce for Saturday night. Pray give them a place on your
shelf. Pray accept a little volume, of which I have
duplicate, that I may return in an equal number to your
welcome presents--
I think I am indebted to you for a sonnet in the London for
August.
Since I saw you I have been in France, and have eaten frogs.
The nicest little rabbity things you ever tasted. Do look
about for them. Make Mrs. Clare pick off the hind quarters,
boil them plain, with parsley and butter. The
four [crossed out] fore quarters are not so good. She may
let them hop off by themselves. Yours sincerely, Cha^s
Lamb.