prospect that I may see Manchester some day, and then I will avail
myself of your kindness. But Holydays are scarce things with me, and the
Laws of attendance are getting stronger and stronger at Leadenhall. But
I shall bear it in mind. Meantime something may (more probably) bring
you to town, where I shall be happy to see you. I am always to be found
(alas!) at my desk in the forepart of the day.
I wonder why they do not send the revise. I leave late at office, and my
abode lies out of the way, or I should have seen about it. If you are
impatient, Perhaps a Line to the Printer, directing him to send it me,
at Accountant's Office, may answer. You will see by the scrawl that I
only snatch a few minutes from intermitting Business.
Your oblig. Ser., C. LAMB.
[William Harrison Ainsworth, afterwards to be known as a novelist, was
then a solicitor's pupil at Manchester, aged 18. He had sent Lamb
William Warner's _Syrinx; or, A Sevenfold History_, 1597. The book was a
gift, and is now in the Dyce and Foster library at South Kensington.
Goethe's _Faust_. Lamb, as we have seen, had read the account of the
play in Madame de Staël's _Germany_. He might also have read the
translation by Lord Francis Leveson-Gower, 1823. Hayward's translation
was not published till 1834. Goethe admired Lamb's sonnet on his family
name.]
LETTER 338
CHARLES LAMB TO W. HARRISON AINSWORTH
[Dated at end: December 29 (1823).]
My dear Sir--You talk of months at a time and I know not what
inducements to visit Manchester, Heaven knows how gratifying! but I have
had my little month of 1823 already. It is all over, and without
incurring a disagreeable favor I cannot so much as get a single holyday
till the season returns with the next year. Even our half-hour's
absences from office are set down in a Book! Next year, if I can spare a
day or two of it, I will come to Manchester, but I have reasons at home
against longer absences.--
I am so ill just at present--(an illness of my own procuring last night;
who is Perfect?)--that nothing but your very great kindness could make
me write. I will bear in mind the letter to W.W., you shall have it
quite in time, before the 12.
My aking and confused Head warns me to leave off.--With a muddled sense
of gratefulness, which I shall apprehend more clearly to-morrow, I
remain, your friend unseen,
C.L.
I.H. 29th.
Will your occasions or inclination bring _you_ to London? It will give
me great pleasure to show you every thing that Islington can boast, if
you know the meaning of that very Cockney sound. We have the New River!
I am asham'd of this scrawl: but I beg you to accept it for the present.
I am full of qualms.
A fool at 50 is a fool indeed.
[W.W. was Wordsworth.
"A fool at 50 is a fool indeed." "A fool at forty is a fool indeed" was
Young's line in Satire II. of the series on "Love of Fame." Lamb was
nearing forty-nine.]
LETTER 339
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[January 9, 1824.]
Dear B.B.--Do you know what it is to succumb under an insurmountable day
mare--a whoreson lethargy, Falstaff calls it--an indisposition to do any
thing, or to be any thing--a total deadness and distaste--a suspension
of vitality --an indifference to locality--a numb soporifical
goodfornothingness--an ossification all over--an oyster-like
insensibility to the passing events--a mind-stupor,--a brawny defiance
to the needles of a thrusting-in conscience--did you ever have a very
bad cold, with a total irresolution to submit to water gruel
processes?--this has been for many weeks my lot, and my excuse--my
fingers drag heavily over this paper, and to my thinking it is three and
twenty furlongs from here to the end of this demi-sheet--I have not a
thing to say--nothing is of more importance than another--I am flatter
than a denial or a pancake--emptier than Judge Park's wig when the head
is in it--duller than a country stage when the actors are off it --a
cypher--an O--I acknowledge life at all, only by an occasional
convulsional cough, and a permanent phlegmatic pain in the chest--I am
weary of the world--Life is weary of me-- My day is gone into Twilight
and I don't think it worth the expence of candles--my wick hath a thief
in it, but I can't muster courage to snuff it--I inhale suffocation--I
can't distinguish veal from mutton--nothing interests me--'tis 12
o'clock and Thurtell is just now coming out upon the New Drop--Jack
Ketch alertly tucking up his greasy sleeves to do the last office of
mortality, yet cannot I elicit a groan or a moral reflection-- if you
told me the world will be at end tomorrow, I should just say, "will
it?"--I have not volition enough to dot my i's --much less to comb my
EYEBROWS--my eyes are set in my head--my brains are gone out to see a
poor relation in Moorfields, and they did not say when they'd come back
again-- my scull is a Grub street Attic, to let--not so much as a joint
stool or a crackd jordan left in it--my hand writes, not I, from habit,
as chickens run about a little when their heads are off-- O for a
vigorous fit of gout, cholic, tooth ache--an earwig in my auditory, a
fly in my visual organs--pain is life--the sharper, the more evidence of
life--but this apathy, this death--did you ever have an obstinate cold,
a six or seven weeks' unintermitting chill and suspension of hope, fear,
conscience, and every thing--yet do I try all I can to cure it, I try
wine, and spirits, and smoking, and snuff in unsparing quantities, but
they all only seem to make me worse, instead of better--I sleep in a
damp room, but it does me no good; I come home late o' nights, but do
not find any visible amendment.
Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
It is just 15 minutes after 12. Thurtell is by this time a good way on
his journey, baiting at Scorpion perhaps, Ketch is bargaining for his
cast coat and waistcoat, the Jew demurs at first at three half crowns,
but on consideration that he, may get somewhat by showing 'em in the
Town, finally closes.--
C.L.
["Judge Park's wig." Sir James Alan Park, of the Bench of Common Pleas,
who tried Thurtell, the murderer of Mr. William Weare of Lyon's Inn, in
Gill's Hill Lane, Radlett, on October 24, 1823.]
LETTER 340
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. January 23, 1824.]
My dear Sir--That peevish letter of mine, which was meant to convey an
apology for my incapacity to write, seems to have been taken by you in
too serious a light. It was only my way of telling you I had a severe
cold. The fact is I have been insuperably dull and lethargic for many
weeks, and cannot rise to the vigour of a Letter, much less an Essay.
The London must do without me for a time, a time, and half a time, for I
have lost all interest about it, and whether I shall recover it again I
know not. I will bridle my pen another time, & not teaze and puzzle you
with my aridities. I shall begin to feel a little more alive with the
spring. Winter is to me (mild or harsh) always a great trial of the
spirits. I am ashamed not to have noticed your tribute to Woolman, whom
we love so much. It is done in your good manner. Your friend Taylor
called upon me some time since, and seems a very amiable man. His last
story is painfully fine. His Book I "like." It is only too stuft with
scripture, too Parsonish. The best thing in it is the Boy's own story.
When I say it is too full of Scripture, I mean it is too full of direct
quotations; no book can have too much of SILENT SCRIPTURE in it. But the
natural power of a story is diminished when the uppermost purpose in the
writer seems to be to recommend something else, viz Religion. You know
what Horace says of the DEUS INTERSIT. I am not able to explain myself,
you must do it for me.--
My Sister's part in the Leicester School (about two thirds) was purely
her own; as it was (to the same quantity) in the Shakspeare Tales which
bear my name. I wrote only the Witch Aunt, the first going to Church,
and the final Story about a little Indian girl in a Ship.
Your account of my Black Balling amused me. _I think, as Quakers, they
did right_. There are some things hard to be understood.
The more I think the more I am vexed at having puzzled you with that
Letter, but I have been so out of Letter writing of late years, that it
is a sore effort to sit down to it, & I felt in your debt, and sat down
waywardly to pay you in bad money. Never mind my dulness, I am used to
long intervals of it. The heavens seem brass to me--then again comes the
refreshing shower. "I have been merry once or twice ere now."
You said something about Mr. Mitford in a late letter, which I believe I
did not advert to. I shall be happy to show him my Milton (it is all the
show things I have) at any time he will take the trouble of a jaunt to
Islington. I do also hope to see Mr. Taylor there some day. Pray say so
to both.
Coleridge's book is good part printed, but sticks a little for _more
copy_. It bears an unsaleable Title--Extracts from Bishop Leighton--but
I am confident there will be plenty of good notes in it, more of Bishop
Coleridge than Leighton, I hope; for what is Leighton?
Do you trouble yourself about Libel cases? The Decision against Hunt for
the "Vision of Judgment" made me sick. What is to become of the old talk
about OUR GOOD OLD KING --his personal virtues saving us from a
revolution &c. &c. Why, none that think it can utter it now. It must
stink. And the Vision is really, as to Him-ward, such a tolerant good
humour'd thing. What a wretched thing a Lord Chief Justice is, always
was, & will be!
Keep your good spirits up, dear BB--mine will return--They are at
present in abeyance. But I am rather lethargic than miserable. I don't
know but a good horse whip would be more beneficial to me than Physic.
My head, without aching, will teach yours to ache. It is well I am
getting to the conclusion. I will send a better letter when I am a
better man. Let me thank you for your kind concern for me (which I trust
will have reason soon to be dissipated) & assure you that it gives me
pleasure to hear from you.--
Yours truly C.L.
["The London must do without me." Lamb contributed nothing between
December, 1823 ("Amicus Redivivus"), and September, 1824 ("Blakesmoor in
H----shire").
Barton's tribute to Woolman was the poem "A Memorial to John Woolman,"
printed in Poetic Vigils.
Taylor was Charles Benjamin Tayler (1797-1875), the curate of Hadleigh,
in Suffolk, and the author of many religious books. Lamb refers to _May
You Like It_, 1823.
"What Horace says":--
Nec deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus
Inciderit.
_Ars Poetica_, 191, 192.
Neither let a god interfere, unless a difficulty worth a god's
unravelling should happen (Smart's translation).
"My Black Balling." _Elia_ had been rejected by a Book Club in
Woodbridge.
"Coleridge's book"--the _Aids to Reflection_, 1825. The first intention
had been a selection of "Beauties" from Bishop Leighton (1611-1684),
Archbishop of Glasgow, and author, among other works, of _Rules and
Instructions for a Holy Life_.
"The Decision against Hunt." John Hunt, the publisher of _The Liberal_,
in which Byron's "Vision of Judgment" had been printed in 1822, had just
been fined £100 for the libel therein contained on George III.
Here should come a note from Lamb to Charles Ollier, thanking him for a
copy of his _Inesilla; or, The Tempter: A Romance, with Other Tales_.]
LETTER 341
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. February 25, 1824.]
My dear Sir--Your title of Poetic Vigils arrides me much more than A
Volume of Verse, which is no meaning. The motto says nothing, but I
cannot suggest a better. I do not like mottoes but where they are
singularly felicitous; there is foppery in them. They are unplain,
un-Quakerish. They are good only where they flow from the Title and are
a kind of justification of it. There is nothing about watchings or
lucubrations in the one you suggest, no commentary on Vigils. By the
way, a wag would recommend you to the Line of Pope
Sleepless himself--to give his readers sleep--
I by no means wish it. But it may explain what I mean, that a neat motto
is child of the Title. I think Poetic Virgils as short and sweet as can
be desired; only have an eye on the Proof, that the Printer do not
substitute Virgils, which would ill accord with your modesty or meaning.
Your suggested motto is antique enough in spelling, and modern enough in
phrases; a good modern antique: but the matter of it is germane to the
purpose only supposing the title proposed a vindication of yourself from
the presumption of authorship. The 1st title was liable to this
objection, that if you were disposed to enlarge it, and the bookseller
insisted on its appearance in Two Tomes, how oddly it would sound--
A Volume of Verse
in Two Volumes
2d edition &c--
You see thro' my wicked intention of curtailing this Epistolet by the
above device of large margin. But in truth the idea of letterising has
been oppressive to me of late above your candour to give me credit for.
There is Southey, whom I ought to have thank'd a fortnight ago for a
present of the Church Book. I have never had courage to buckle myself in
earnest even to acknowledge it by six words. And yet I am accounted by
some people a good man. How cheap that character is acquired! Pay your
debts, don't borrow money, nor twist your kittens neck off, or disturb a
congregation, &c.-- your business is done. I know things (thoughts or
things, thoughts are things) of myself which would make every friend I
have fly me as a plague patient. I once * * *, and set a dog upon a
crab's leg that was shoved out under a moss of sea weeds, a pretty
little feeler.--Oh! pah! how sick I am of that; and a lie, a mean one, I
once told!-- I stink in the midst of respect.
I am much hypt; the fact is, my head is heavy, but there is hope, or if
not, I am better than a poor shell fish--not morally when I set the
whelp upon it, but have more blood and spirits; things may turn up, and
I may creep again into a decent opinion of myself. Vanity will return
with sunshine. Till when, pardon my neglects and impute it to the wintry
solstice.
C. LAMB.
[The motto eventually adopted for Barton's _Poetic Vigils_ was from
Vaughan's _Silex Scintillans:_--
Dear night! this world's defeat;
The stop to busie fools; care's check and curb;
The day of spirits; my soul's calm retreat
Which none disturb!]
LETTER 342
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. 24 March, 1824.]
DEAR B.B.--I hasten to say that if my opinion can strengthen you in your
choice, it is decisive for your acceptance of what has been so
handsomely offered. I can see nothing injurious to your most honourable
sense. Think that you are called to a poetical Ministry--nothing
worse--the Minister is worthy of the hire.
The only objection I feel is founded on a fear that the acceptance may
be a temptation to you to let fall the bone (hard as it is) which is in
your mouth and must afford tolerable pickings, for the shadow of
independence. You cannot propose to become independent on what the low
state of interest could afford you from such a principal as you mention;
and the most graceful excuse for the acceptance, would be, that it left
you free to your voluntary functions. That is the less _light_ part of
the scruple. It has no darker shade. I put in _darker_, because of the
ambiguity of the word light, which Donne in his admirable poem on the
Metempsychosis, has so ingeniously illustrated in his invocation
1 2 1 2
Make my _dark heavy_ poem, _light_ and _light_--
where the two senses of _light_ are opposed to different opposites. A
trifling criticism.--I can see no reason for any scruple then but what
arises from your own interest; which is in your own power of course to
solve. If you still have doubts, read over Sanderson's Cases of
Conscience, and Jeremy Taylor's Ductor Dubitantium, the first a moderate
Octavo, the latter a folio of 900 close pages, and when you have
thoroughly digested the admirable reasons pro and con which they give
for every possible Case, you will be--just as wise as when you began.
Every man is his own best Casuist; and after all, as Ephraim Smooth, in
the pleasant comedy of Wild Oats, has it, "there is no harm in a
Guinea." A fortiori there is less in 2000.
I therefore most sincerely congratulate with you, excepting so far as
excepted above. If you have fair Prospects of adding to the Principal,
cut the Bank; but in either case do not refuse an honest Service. Your
heart tells you it is not offered to bribe you _from_ any duty, but
_to_
a duty which you feel to be your vocation. Farewell heartily C.L.
[In the memoir of Barton by Edward FitzGerald, prefixed to the _Poems
and Letters_, it is stated that in this year Barton received a handsome
addition to his income. "A few members of his Society, including some of
the wealthier of his own family, raised £1200 among them for his benefit
[not 2000 guineas, as Lamb says]. It seems that he felt some delicacy at
first in accepting this munificent testimony which his own people
offered to his talents." Birton had written to Lamb on the subject.]
LETTER 343
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[(Early spring), 1824.]
I am sure I cannot fill a letter, though I should disfurnish my scull to
fill it. But you expect something, and shall have a Note-let. Is Sunday,
not divinely speaking, but humanly and holydaysically, a blessing?
Without its institution, would our rugged taskmasters have given us a
leisure day, so often, think you, as once in a month?--or, if it had not
been instituted, might they not have given us every 6th day? Solve me
this problem. If we are to go 3 times a day to church, why has Sunday
slipped into the notion of a _Holli_day? A Holyday I grant it. The
puritans, I have read in Southey's Book, knew the distinction. They made
people observe Sunday rigorously, would not let a nursery maid walk out
in the fields with children for recreation on that day. But _then_--they
gave the people a holliday from all sorts of work every second Tuesday.
This was giving to the Two Caesars that which was _his_ respective.
Wise, beautiful, thoughtful, generous Legislators! Would Wilberforce
give us our Tuesdays? No, d--n him. He would turn the six days into
sevenths,
And those 3 smiling seasons of the year
Into a Russian winter.
_Old Play_.
I am sitting opposite a person who is making strange distortions with
the gout, which is not unpleasant--to me at least. What is the reason we
do not sympathise with pain, short of some terrible Surgical operation?
Hazlitt, who boldly says all he feels, avows that not only he does not
pity sick people, but he hates them. I obscurely recognise his meaning.
Pain is probably too selfish a consideration, too simply a consideration
of self-attention. We pity poverty, loss of friends etc. more complex
things, in which the Sufferers feelings are associated with others. This
is a rough thought suggested by the presence of gout; I want head to
extricate it and plane it. What is all this to your Letter? I felt it to
be a good one, but my turn, when I write at all, is perversely to travel
out of the record, so that my letters are any thing but answers. So you
still want a motto? You must not take my ironical one, because your
book, I take it, is too serious for it. Bickerstaff might have used it
for _his_ lucubrations. What do you think of (for a Title)
RELIGIO TREMULI OR TREMEBUNDI
There is Religio-Medici and Laici.--But perhaps the volume is not quite
Quakerish enough or exclusively for it--but your own VIGILS is perhaps
the Best. While I have space, let me congratulate with you the return of
Spring--what a Summery Spring too! all those qualms about the dog and
cray-fish melt before it. I am going to be happy and _vain_ again.
A hasty farewell C. LAMB.
["Southey's Book"--_The Book of the Church_.
"Would Wilberforce give us our Tuesdays?"--William Wilberforce, the
abolitionist and the principal "Puritan" of that day.]
LETTER 344
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. THOMAS ALLSOP
[P.M. April 13, 1824.]
Dear Mrs. A.--Mary begs me to say how much she regrets we can not join
you to Reigate. Our reasons are --1st I have but one holyday namely Good
Friday, and it is not pleasant to solicit for another, but that might
have been got over. 2dly Manning is with us, soon to go away and we
should not be easy in leaving him. 3dly Our school girl Emma comes to us
for a few days on Thursday. 4thly and lastly, Wordsworth is returning
home in about a week, and out of respect to them we should not like to
absent ourselves just now. In summer I shall have a month, and if it
shall suit, should like to go for a few days of it out with you both
_any where_. In the mean time, with many acknowledgments etc. etc., I
remain yours (both) truly, C. LAMB.
India Ho. 13 Apr. Remember Sundays.
LETTER 345
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE [No date. April, 1824.]
Dear Sir,--Miss Hazlitt (niece to Pygmalion) begs us to send to you _for
Mr. Hardy_ a parcel. I have not thank'd you for your Pamphlet, but I
assure you I approve of it in all parts, only that I would have seen my
Calumniators at hell, before I would have told them I was a Xtian, _tho'
I am one_, I think as much as you. I hope to see you here, some day
soon. The parcel is a novel which I hope Mr. H. may sell for her. I am
with greatest friendliness
Yours C. LAMB.
Sunday.
["Pygmalion." A reference to Hazlitt's _Liber Amoris; or, The New
Pygmalion_, 1823.
Hone's pamphlet would be his _Aspersions Answered: an Explanatory
Statement to the Public at Large and Every Reader of the "Quarterly
Review_," 1824.
Here should come a note from Lamb to Thomas Hardy, dated April 24, 1824,
in which Lamb says that Miss Hazlitt's novel, which Mr. Hardy promised
to introduce to Mr. Ridgway, the publisher, is lying at Mr. Hone's.
Hardy was a bootmaker in Fleet Street.]
LETTER 346
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
May 15, 1824.
DEAR B.B.--I am oppressed with business all day, and Company all night.
But I will snatch a quarter of an hour. Your recent acquisitions of the
Picture and the Letter are greatly to be congratulated. I too have a
picture of my father and the copy of his first love verses; but they
have been mine long. Blake is a real name, I assure you, and a most
extraordinary man, if he be still living. He is the Robert [William]
Blake, whose wild designs accompany a splendid folio edition of the
"Night Thoughts," which you may have seen, in one of which he pictures
the parting of soul and body by a solid mass of human form floating off,
God knows how, from a lumpish mass (fac Simile to itself) left behind on
the dying bed. He paints in water colours marvellous strange pictures,
visions of his brain, which he asserts that he has seen. They have great
merit. He has _seen_ the old Welsh bards on Snowdon--he has seen the
Beautifullest, the strongest, and the Ugliest Man, left alone from the
Massacre of the Britons by the Romans, and has painted them from memory
(I have seen his paintings), and asserts them to be as good as the
figures of Raphael and Angelo, but not better, as they had precisely the
same retro-visions and prophetic visions with themself [himself]. The
painters in oil (which he will have it that neither of them practised)
he affirms to have been the ruin of art, and affirms that all the while
he was engaged in his Water paintings, Titian was disturbing him, Titian
the III Genius of Oil Painting. His Pictures--one in particular, the
Canterbury Pilgrims (far above Stothard's)--have great merit, but hard,
dry, yet with grace. He has written a Catalogue of them with a most
spirited criticism on Chaucer, but mystical and full of Vision. His
poems have been sold hitherto only in Manuscript. I never read them; but
a friend at my desire procured the "Sweep Song." There is one to a
tiger, which I have heard recited, beginning--
"Tiger, Tiger, burning bright,
Thro' the desarts of the night,"
which is glorious, but, alas! I have not the book; for the man is flown,
whither I know not--to Hades or a Mad House. But I must look on him as
one of the most extraordinary persons of the age. Montgomery's book I
have not much hope from. The Society, with the affected name, has been
labouring at it for these 20 years, and made few converts. I think it
was injudicious to mix stories avowedly colour'd by fiction with the sad
true statements from the parliamentary records, etc., but I wish the
little Negroes all the good that can come from it. I batter'd my brains
(not butter'd them--but it is a bad _a_) for a few verses for them, but
I could make nothing of it. You have been luckier. But Blake's are the
flower of the set, you will, I am sure, agree, tho' some of Montgomery's
at the end are pretty; but the Dream awkwardly paraphras'd from B.