the Messiah, though by all accounts he was a 'nointed one.
["Next week early." Canon Ainger's text here has: "May we venture to
bring Emma with us?"
"Your nephew's pleasant book"--Henry Nelson Coleridge's _Six Months in
the West Indies in 1825_. In the last chapter but one of the book is an
account of the slave question, under the title "Planters and Slaves."
"Sternhold"--Thomas Sternhold, the coadjutor of Hopkins in paraphrasing
the Psalms.
"The pantomime." Coleridge seems to have had some project for
modernising Dekker for Fanny Kelly. Mr. Dykes Campbell suggested that
the play to be treated was "Old Fortunatus."
"Miss Gray." I have found nothing of this lady.
"Manning." Writing to Robert Lloyd twenty-five years earlier Lamb had
said of Manning: "A man of great Power--an enchanter almost.--Far beyond
Coleridge or any man in power of impressing --when he gets you alone he
can act the wonders of Egypt. Only he is lazy, and does not always put
forth all his strength; if he did, I know no man of genius at all
comparable to him."
"Against Thursday." Coleridge was "at home" on Thursday evenings.
Possibly on this occasion some one interested in Gray was to be there,
or the allusion may be a punning one to Miss Gray.
"Your _latest_ theory." I cannot explain this.]
LETTER 392
CHARLES LAMB TO H.F. CARY
April 3, 1826.
Dear Sir,--It is whispered me that you will not be unwilling to look
into our doleful hermitage. Without more preface, you will gladden our
cell by accompanying our old chums of the London, Darley and Allan
Cunningham, to Enfield on Wednesday. You shall have hermit's fare, with
talk as seraphical as the novelty of the divine life will permit, with
an innocent retrospect to the world which we have left, when I will
thank you for your hospitable offer at Chiswick, and with plain hermit
reasons evince the necessity of abiding here.
Without hearing from you, then, you shall give us leave to expect you. I
have long had it on my conscience to invite you, but spirits have been
low; and I am indebted to chance for this awkward but most sincere
invitation.
Yours, with best love to Mrs. Cary, C. LAMB.
Darley knows all about the coaches. Oh, for a Museum in the wilderness!
[Cary, who had been afternoon lecturer at Chiswick and curate of the
Savoy, this year took up his post as Assistant Keeper of the Printed
Books at the British Museum. George Darley, who wrote some notes to
Gary's _Dante_, we have met. Allan Cunningham was the Scotch poet and
the author of the Lives of the Painters, the "Giant" of the _London
Magazine_. The Lambs seem to have been spending some days at Enfield.
Here should come a note from Lamb to Ollier asking for a copy of the
April _New Monthly Magazine_ for himself, and one for his Chinese friend
(Manning) if his jests are in.]
LETTER 393
CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
[P.M. May 9, 1826.]
Dear N. You will not expect us to-morrow, I am sure, while these damn'd
North Easters continue. We must wait the Zephyrs' pleasures. By the bye,
I was at Highgate on Wensday, the only one of the Party.
Yours truly C. LAMB.
_Summer_, as my friend Coleridge waggishly writes, has set in with its
usual severity.
Kind rememb'ces to Mrs. Novello &c.
LETTER 394
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. May 16, 1826.]
Dear B.B.--I have had no spirits lately to begin a letter to you, though
I am under obligations to you (how many!) for your neat little poem,
'Tis just what it professes to be, a simple tribute in chaste verse,
serious and sincere. I do not know how Friends will relish it, but we
out-lyers, Honorary Friends, like it very well. I have had my head and
ears stuff'd up with the East winds. A continual ringing in my brain of
bells jangled, or The Spheres touchd by some raw Angel. It is not George
3 trying the 100th psalm? I get my music for nothing. But the weather
seems to be softening, and will thaw my stunnings. Coleridge writing to
me a week or two since begins his note--"Summer has set in with its
usual Severity." A cold Summer is all I know of disagreeable in cold. I
do not mind the utmost rigour of real Winter, but these smiling
hypocrites of Mays wither me to death. My head has been a ringing Chaos,
like the day the winds were made, before they submitted to the
discipline of a weather-cock, before the Quarters were made. In the
street, with the blended noises of life about me, I hear, and my head is
lightened, but in a room the hubbub comes back, and I am deaf as a
Sinner. Did I tell you of a pleasant sketch Hood has done, which he
calls _Very Deaf Indeed_? It is of a good naturd stupid looking old
gentleman, whom a footpad has stopt, but for his extreme deafness cannot
make him understand what he wants; the unconscious old gentleman is
extending his ear-trumpet very complacently, and the fellow is firing a
pistol into it to make him hear, but the ball will pierce his skull
sooner than the report reach his sensorium. I chuse a very little bit of
paper, for my ear hisses when I bend down to write. I can hardly read a
book, for I miss that small soft voice which the idea of articulated
words raises (almost imperceptibly to you) in a silent reader. I seem
too deaf to see what I read. But with a touch or two of returning Zephyr
my head will melt. What Lyes you Poets tell about the May! It is the
most ungenial part of the Year, cold crocuses, cold primroses, you take
your blossoms in Ice --a painted Sun--
Unmeaning joy around appears,
And Nature smiles as if she sneers.
It is ill with me when I begin to look which way the wind sits. Ten
years ago I literally did not know the point from the broad end of the
Vane, which it was the [?that] indicated the Quarter. I hope these ill
winds have blowd _over_ you, as they do thro' me. Kindest rememb'ces to
you and yours. C.L.
["Your neat little poem." It is not possible to trace this poem.
Probably, I think, the "Stanzas written for a blank leaf in Sewell's
History of the Quakers," printed in _A Widow's Tale_, 1827.
"George 3." Byron's "Vision of Judgment" thus closes:--
King George slipp'd into Heaven for one;
And when the tumult dwindled to a calm,
I left him practising the hundredth psalm.
This is Hood's sketch, in his _Whims and Oddities_:--
[Illustration: "Very deaf indeed."]
"Unmeaning joy around appears..." I have not found this.]
LETTER 395
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
June 1st, 1826.
Dear Coleridge,--If I know myself, nobody more detests the display of
personal vanity which is implied in the act of sitting for one's picture
than myself. But the fact is, that the likeness which accompanies this
letter was stolen from my person at one of my unguarded moments by some
too partial artist, and my friends are pleased to think that he has not
much flattered me. Whatever its merits may be, you, who have so great an
interest in the original, will have a satisfaction in tracing the
features of one that has so long esteemed you. There are times when in a
friend's absence these graphic representations of him almost seem to
bring back the man himself. The painter, whoever he was, seems to have
taken me in one of those disengaged moments, if I may so term them, when
the native character is so much more honestly displayed than can be
possible in the restraints of an enforced sitting attitude. Perhaps it
rather describes me as a thinking man than a man in the act of thought.
Whatever its pretensions, I know it will be dear to you, towards whom I
should wish my thoughts to flow in a sort of an undress rather than in
the more studied graces of diction.
I am, dear Coleridge, yours sincerely, C. LAMB.
[The portrait to which Lamb refers will be found opposite page 706 in my
large edition. It was etched by Brook Pulham of the India House. It was
this picture which so enraged Procter when he saw it in a printshop
(probably that referred to by Lamb in a later letter) that he
reprimanded the dealer.
Here should come a charming letter to Louisa Holcroft dated June,
offering her a room at Enfield "pretty cheap, only two smiles a week."]
LETTER 396
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
Friday, someday in June, 1826. [P.M. June 30, 1826.]
Dear D.--My first impulse upon opening your letter was pleasure at
seeing your old neat hand, nine parts gentlemanly, with a modest dash of
the clerical: my second a Thought, natural enough this hot weather, Am I
to answer all this? why 'tis as long as those to the Ephesians and
Galatians put together--I have counted the words for curiosity. But then
Paul has nothing like the fun which is ebullient all over yours. I don't
remember a good thing (good like yours) from the 1st Romans to the last
of the Hebrews. I remember but one Pun in all the Evangely, and that was
made by his and our master: Thou art Peter (that is Doctor Rock) and
upon this rock will I build &c.; which sanctifies Punning with me
against all gainsayers. I never knew an enemy to puns, who was not an
ill-natured man.
Your fair critic in the coach reminds me of a Scotchman who assured me
that he did not see much in Shakspeare. I replied, I dare say _not_. He
felt the equivoke, lookd awkward, and reddish, but soon returnd to the
attack, by saying that he thought Burns was as good as Shakspeare: I
said that I had no doubt he was--to a _Scotchman_. We exchangd no more
words that day.--Your account of the fierce faces in the Hanging, with
the presumed interlocution of the Eagle and the Tyger, amused us
greatly. You cannot be so very bad, while you can pick mirth off from
rotten walls. But let me hear you have escaped out of your oven. May the
Form of the Fourth Person who clapt invisible wet blankets about the
shoulders of Shadrach Meshach and Abednego, be with you in the fiery
Trial. But get out of the frying pan. Your business, I take it, is
bathing, not baking.
Let me hear that you have clamber'd up to Lover's Seat; it is as fine in
that neighbourhood as Juan Fernandez, as lonely too, when the Fishing
boats are not out; I have sat for hours, staring upon a shipless sea.
The salt sea is never so grand as when it is left to itself. One
cock-boat spoils it. A sea-mew or two improves it. And go to the little
church, which is a very protestant Loretto, and seems dropt by some
angel for the use of a hermit, who was at once parishioner and a whole
parish. It is not too big. Go in the night, bring it away in your
portmanteau, and I will plant it in my garden. It must have been erected
in the very infancy of British Christianity, for the two or three first
converts; yet hath it all the appertenances of a church of the first
magnitude, its pulpit, its pews, its baptismal font; a cathedral in a
nutshell. Seven people would crowd it like a Caledonian Chapel. The
minister that divides the word there, must give lumping penny-worths. It
is built to the text of two or three assembled in my name. It reminds me
of the grain of mustard seed. If the glebe land is proportionate, it may
yield two potatoes. Tythes out of it could be no more split than a hair.
Its First fruits must be its Last, for 'twould never produce a couple.
It is truly the strait and narrow way, and few there be (of London
visitants) that find it. The still small voice is surely to be found
there, if any where. A sounding board is merely there for ceremony. It
is secure from earthquakes, not more from sanctity than size, for
'twould feel a mountain thrown upon it no more than a taper-worm would.
Go and see, but not without your spectacles. By the way, there's a
capital farm house two thirds of the way to the Lover's Seat, with
incomparable plum cake, ginger beer, etc. Mary bids me warn you not to
read the Anatomy of Melancholy in your present _low way_. You'll fancy
yourself a pipkin, or a headless bear, as Burton speaks of. You'll be
lost in a maze of remedies for a labyrinth of diseasements, a plethora
of cures. Read Fletcher; above all the Spanish Curate, the Thief or
Little Nightwalker, the Wit Without Money, and the Lover's Pilgrimage.
Laugh and come home fat. Neither do we think Sir T. Browne quite the
thing for you just at present. Fletcher is as light as Soda water.
Browne and Burton are too strong potions for an Invalid. And don't thumb
or dirt the books. Take care of the bindings. Lay a leaf of silver paper
under 'em, as you read them. And don't smoke tobacco over 'em, the
leaves will fall in and burn or dirty their namesakes. If you find any
dusty atoms of the Indian Weed crumbled up in the Beaum't and Fletcher,
they are _mine_. But then, you know, so is the Folio also. A pipe and a
comedy of Fletcher's the last thing of a night is the best recipe for
light dreams and to scatter away Nightmares. Probatum est. But do as you
like about the former. Only cut the Baker's. You will come home else all
crust; Rankings must chip you before you can appear in his counting
house. And my dear Peter Fin Junr., do contrive to see the sea at least
once before you return. You'll be ask'd about it in the Old Jewry. It
will appear singular not to have seen it. And rub up your Muse, the
family Muse, and send us a rhyme or so. Don't waste your wit upon that
damn'd Dry Salter. I never knew but one Dry Salter, who could relish
those mellow effusions, and he broke. You knew Tommy Hill, the wettest
of dry salters. Dry Salters, what a word for this thirsty weather! I
must drink after it. Here's to thee, my dear Dibdin, and to our having
you again snug and well at Colebrooke. But our nearest hopes are to hear
again from you shortly. An epistle only a quarter as agreeable as your
last, would be a treat.
Yours most truly C. LAMB
Timothy B. Dibdin, Esq., No. 9, Blucher Row, Priory, Hastings.
[Dibdin, who was in delicate health, had gone to Hastings to recruit,
with a parcel of Lamb's books for company. He seems to have been lodged
above the oven at a baker's. This letter contains Lamb's crowning
description of Hollingdon Rural church.
"A Caledonian Chapel." Referring to the crowds that listened to Irving.
"Peter Fin." A character in Jones' "Peter Finn's Trip to Brighton,"
1822, as played by Liston.
"Tommy Hill." In the British Museum is preserved the following brief
note addressed to Mr. Thomas Hill--probably the same. The date is
between 1809 and 1817:--]
LETTER 397
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HILL
D'r Sir It is necessary _I see you sign_, can you step up to me 4 Inner
Temple Lane this evening. I shall wait at home.
Yours,
C. LAMB.
[I have no notion to what the note refers. It is quite likely, Mr. J.A.
Rutter suggests, that Hill the drysalter, a famous busy-body, and a
friend of Theodore Hook, stood for the portrait of Tom Pry in Lamb's
"Lepus Papers" (see Vol. I.). S.C. Hall, in his _Book of Memories_, says
of Hill that "his peculiar faculty was to find out what everybody did,
from a minister of state to a stableboy."]
LETTER 398
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[P.M. July 14, 1826.]
Because you boast poetic Grandsire,
And rhyming kin, both Uncle and Sire,
Dost think that none but _their_ Descendings
Can tickle folks with double endings?
I had a Dad, that would for half a bet
Have put down thine thro' half the Alphabet.
Thou, who would be Dan Prior the second,
For Dan Posterior must be reckon'd.
In faith, dear Tim, your rhymes are slovenly,
As a man may say, dough-baked and ovenly;
Tedious and long as two Long Acres,
And smell most vilely of the Baker's.
(I have been cursing every limb o' thee,
Because I could not hitch in _Timothy_.
Jack, Will, Tom, Dick's, a serious evil,
But Tim, plain Tim's--the very devil.)
Thou most incorrigible scribbler,
Right Watering place and cockney dribbler,
What _child_, that barely understands _A,
B, C_, would ever dream that Stanza
Would tinkle into rhyme with "Plan, Sir"?
Go, go, you are not worth an answer.
I had a Sire, that at plain Crambo
Had hit you o'er the pate a damn'd blow.
How now? may I die game, and you die brass,
But I have stol'n a quip from Hudibras.
'Twas thinking on that fine old Suttler, }
That was in faith a second Butler; }
Mad as queer rhymes as he, and subtler. }
He would have put you to 't this weather
For rattling syllables together;
Rhym'd you to death, like "rats in Ireland,"
Except that he was born in High'r Land.
His chimes, not crampt like thine, and rung ill,
Had made Job split his sides on dunghill.
There was no limit to his merryings
At christ'nings, weddings, nay at buryings.
No undertaker would live near him,
Those grave practitioners did fear him;
Mutes, at his merry mops, turned "vocal."
And fellows, hired for silence, "spoke all."
No _body_ could be laid in cavity,
Long as he lived, with proper gravity.
His mirth-fraught eye had but to glitter,
And every mourner round must titter.
The Parson, prating of Mount Hermon,
Stood still to laugh, in midst of sermon.
The final Sexton (smile he _must_ for him)
Could hardly get to "dust to dust" for him.
He lost three pall-bearers their livelyhood,
Only with simp'ring at his lively mood:
Provided that they fresh and neat came,
All jests were fish that to his net came.
He'd banter Apostolic castings,
As you jeer fishermen at Hastings.
When the fly bit, _like me_, he leapt-o'er-all,
And stood not much on what was scriptural.
P.S.
I had forgot, at Small Bohemia
(Enquire the way of your maid Euphemia)
Are sojourning, of all good fellows
The prince and princess,--the _Novellos_--
Pray seek 'em out, and give my love to 'em;
You'll find you'll soon be hand and glove to 'em.
In prose, Little Bohemia, about a mile from Hastings in the Hollington
road, when you can get so far. Dear Dib, I find relief in a word or two
of prose. In truth my rhymes come slow. You have "routh of 'em." It
gives us pleasure to find you keep your good spirits. Your Letter did us
good. Pray heaven you are got out at last. Write quickly.
This letter will introduce you, if 'tis agreeable. Take a donkey. 'Tis
Novello the Composer and his Wife, our very good friends.
C.L.
[Dibdin must have sent the verses which Lamb asked for in the previous
letter, and this is Lamb's reply. Pride of ancestry seems to have been
the note of Dibdin's effort. Probably there is a certain amount of truth
in Lamb's account of the resolute merriment of his father. It is not
inconsistent with his description of Lovel in the _Elia_ essay "The Old
Benchers of the Inner Temple."
"I have stol'n a quip." The manner rather than the precise matter, I
think.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to the Rev. Edward Coleridge,
Coleridge's nephew, dated July 19, 1826. It thanks the recipient for his
kindness to the child of a friend of Lamb's, Samuel Anthony Bloxam,
Coleridge having assisted in getting Frederick Bloxam into Eton (where
he was a master) on the foundation. Samuel Bloxam and Lamb were at
Christ's Hospital together.]
LETTER 399
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[P.M. September 6, 1826.]
My dear Wordsworth, The Bearer of this is my young friend Moxon, a
young lad with a Yorkshire head, and a heart that would do honour to a
more Southern county: no offence to Westmoreland. He is one of Longman's
best hands, and can give you the best account of The Trade as 'tis now
going; or stopping. For my part, the failure of a Bookseller is not the
most unpalatable accident of mortality:
sad but not saddest
The desolation of a hostile city.
When Constable fell from heaven, and we all hoped Baldwin was next, I
tuned a slight stave to the words in Macbeth (D'avenant's) to be sung by
a Chorus of Authors,
What should we do when Booksellers break?
We should rejoyce.
Moxon is but a tradesman in the bud yet, and retains his virgin Honesty;
Esto perpetua, for he is a friendly serviceable fellow, and thinks
nothing of lugging up a Cargo of the Newest Novels once or twice a week
from the Row to Colebrooke to gratify my Sister's passion for the newest
things. He is her Bodley. He is author besides of a poem which for a
first attempt is promising. It is made up of common images, and yet
contrives to read originally. You see the writer felt all he pours
forth, and has not palmed upon you expressions which he did not believe
at the time to be more his own than adoptive. Rogers has paid him some
proper compliments, with sound advice intermixed, upon a slight
introduction of him by me; for which I feel obliged. Moxon has
petition'd me by letter (for he had not the confidence to ask it in
London) to introduce him to you during his holydays; pray pat him on the
head, ask him a civil question or two about his verses, and favor him
with your genuine autograph. He shall not be further troublesome. I
think I have not sent any one upon a gaping mission to you a good while.
We are all well, and I have at last broke the bonds of business a second
time, never to put 'em on again. I pitch Colburn and his magazine to the
divil. I find I can live without the necessity of writing, tho' last
year I fretted myself to a fever with the hauntings of being starved.
Those vapours are flown. All the difference I find is that I have no
pocket money: that is, I must not pry upon an old book stall, and cull
its contents as heretofore, but shoulders of mutton, Whitbread's entire,
and Booth's best, abound as formerly.
I don't know whom or how many to send our love to, your household is so
frequently divided, but a general health to all that may be fixed or
wandering; stars, wherever. We read with pleasure some success (I forget
quite what) of one of you at Oxford. Mrs. Monkhouse (... was one of you)
sent us a kind letter some [months back], and we had the pleasure to
[see] her in tolerable spirits, looking well and kind as in by-gone
days.
Do take pen, or put it into goodnatured hands Dorothean
or Wordsworthian-female, or Hutchinsonian, to inform us of
your present state, or possible proceedings. I am ashamed
that this breaking of the long ice should be a letter of business.
There is none circum praecordia nostra I swear by the honesty
of pedantry, that wil I nil I pushes me upon scraps of Latin.
We are yours cordially: CHAS. & MARY LAMB.
September. 1826.
[In this letter, the first to Wordsworth for many months, we have the
first mention of Edward Moxon, who was to be so closely associated with
Lamb in the years to come. Moxon, a young Yorkshireman, educated at the
Green Coat School, was then nearly twenty-five, and was already author
of _The Prospect and other Poems_, dedicated to Rogers, who was destined
to be a valuable patron. Moxon subsequently became Wordsworth's
publisher.
"Constable ... Baldwin." Archibald Constable & Co., Scott's publishers,
failed in 1826. Baldwin was the first publisher of the _London
Magazine_.
"I pitch Colburn and his magazine." Lamb wrote nothing in the _New
Monthly Magazine_ after September, 1826.
I append portions of what seems to be Lamb's first letter to Edward
Moxon, obviously written before this date, but not out of place here.
The letter seems to have accompanied the proof of an article on Lamb
which he had corrected and was returning to Moxon.]
LETTER 400
CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
(_Fragment_)
Were my own feelings consulted I should print it verbatim, but I won't
hoax you, else I love a Lye. My biography, parentage, place of birth, is
a strange mistake, part founded on some nonsense I wrote about Elia, and
was true of him, the real Elia, whose name I took.... C.L. was born in
Crown Office Row, Inner Temple in 1775. Admitted into Christs Hospital,
1782, where he was contemporary with T.F.M. [Thomas Fanshawe Middleton],
afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, and with S.T.C. with the last of these
two eminent scholars he has enjoyed an intimacy through life. On
quitting this foundation he became a junior clerk in the South Sea House
under his Elder Brother who died accountant there some years since.... I
am not the author of the Opium Eater, &c.
[I have not succeeded in finding the article in question.]
LETTER 401
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[P.M. September 9, 1826.]
An answer is requested.
Saturday.