"He sang in meads how sweet the brooklets ran, To the rough ocean and red restless sands."

I design to give up smoking; but I have not yet fixed upon the equivalent vice. I must have quid pro quo; or quo pro quid, as Tom Woodgate would correct me. My service to him. C.L.

[This is the first letter to Hood, then a young man of twenty-five, and assistant editor of the London Magazine. He was now staying at Hastings, on his honeymoon, presumably, and, like the Lambs, near the Priory.

"Cucullus non facit Monachum"—A "Lamb-pun." The Hood does not make the monk.

"Old Lignum Janua"—the Tom Woodgate mentioned at the end of the letter, a boatman at Hastings. Hood wrote some verses to him.

"My old New River." This passage was placed by Hood as the motto of his verses "Walton Redivivus," in Whims and Oddities, 1826.

"Little churchling." This is Lamb's second description of Hollingdon Rural. The third and best is in a later letter.

"There is nothing like inland murmurs." Lamb is here remembering Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey lines:—

With a sweet inland murmur.

In the Elia essay "The Old Margate Hoy" Lamb, in speaking of Hastings, had made the same objection.

In a letter to his sister, written from Hastings at this time, Hood says:—

This is the last of our excursions. We have tried, but in vain, to find out the baker and his wife recommended to us by Lamb as the very lions of green Hastings. There is no such street as he has named throughout the town, and the ovens are singularly numerous. We have given up the search, therefore, but we have discovered the little church in the wood, and it is such a church! It ought to have been our St. Botolph's. ... Such a verdant covert wood Stothard might paint for the haunting of Dioneus, Pamphillus, and Fiammetta as they walk in the novel of Boccacce. The ground shadowed with bluebells, even to the formation of a plumb-like bloom upon its little knolls and ridges; and ever through the dell windeth a little path chequered with the shades of aspens and ashes and the most verdant and lively of all the family of trees. Here a broad, rude stone steppeth over a lazy spring, oozing its way into grass and weeds; anon a fresh pathway divergeth, you know not whither. Meanwhile the wild blackbird startles across the way and singeth anew in some other shade. To have seen Fiammetta there, stepping in silk attire, like a flower, and the sunlight looking upon her betwixt the branches! I had not walked (in the body) with Romance before. Then suppose so much of a space cleared as maketh a small church lawn to be sprinkled with old gravestones, and in the midst the church itself, a small Christian dovecot, such as Lamb has truly described it, like a little temple of Juan Fernandes. I could have been sentimental and wished to lie some day in that place, its calm tenants seeming to come through such quiet ways, through those verdant alleys, to their graves.

In coming home I killed a viper in our serpentine path, and Mrs. Fernor says I am by that token to overcome an enemy. Is Taylor or Hessey dead? The reptile was dark and dull, his blood being yet sluggish from the cold; howbeit, he tried to bite, till I cut him in two with a stone. I thought of Hessey's long back-bone when I did it.

They are called adders, tell your father, because two and two of them together make four.]



LETTER 351

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. August 17, 1824.]

Dear B.B.—I congratulate you on getting a house over your head. I find the comfort of it I am sure. At my town lodgings the Mistress was always quarrelling with our maid; and at my place of rustication, the whole family were always beating one another, brothers beating sisters (one a most beautiful girl lamed for life), father beating sons and daughters, and son again beating his father, knocking him fairly down, a scene I never before witnessed, but was called out of bed by the unnatural blows, the parricidal colour of which, tho' my morals could not but condemn, yet my reason did heartily approve, and in the issue the house was quieter for a day or so than I had ever known. I am now all harmony and quiet, even to the sometimes wishing back again some of the old rufflings. There is something stirring in these civil broils.

The Album shall be attended to. If I can light upon a few appropriate rhymes (but rhymes come with difficulty from me now) I shall beg a place in the neat margin of your young housekeeper.

The Prometheus Unbound, is a capital story. The Literal rogue! What if you had ordered Elfrida in sheets! She'd have been sent up, I warrant you. Or bid him clasp his bible (i.e. to his bosom)-he'd ha clapt on a brass clasp, no doubt.—

I can no more understand Shelly than you can. His poetry is "thin sewn with profit or delight." Yet I must point to your notice a sonnet conceivd and expressed with a witty delicacy. It is that addressed to one who hated him, but who could not persuade him to hate him again. His coyness to the other's passion (for hate demands a return as much as Love, and starves without it) is most arch and pleasant. Pray, like it very much.

For his theories and nostrums they are oracular enough, but I either comprehend 'em not, or there is miching malice and mischief in 'em. But for the most part ringing with their own emptiness. Hazlitt said well of 'em—Many are wiser and better for reading Shakspeare, but nobody was ever wiser or better for reading Sh——y.

I wonder you will sow your correspondence on so barren a ground as I am, that make such poor returns. But my head akes at the bare thought of letter writing. I wish all the ink in the ocean dried up, and would listen to the quills shivering [? shrivelling] up in the candle flame, like parching martyrs. The same indisposit'n to write it is has stopt my Elias, but you will see a futile Effort in the next No., "wrung from me with slow pain."

The fact is, my head is seldom cool enough. I am dreadfully indolent. To have to do anything-to order me a new coat, for instance, tho' my old buttons are shelled like beans— is an effort.

My pen stammers like my tongue. What cool craniums those old enditers of Folios must have had. What a mortify'd pulse. Well, once more I throw myself on your mercy— Wishing peace in thy new dwelling— C. LAMB.

[The Lambs gave up their "country lodgings" at Dalston on moving to Colebrooke Row.

"The album." See next letter to Barton.

"The Prometheus Unbound." A bookseller, asked for Prometheus Unbound, Shelley's poem, had replied that Prometheus was not to be had "in sheets." Elfrida was a dramatic poem by William Mason, Gray's friend.

This is Shelley's poem (not a sonnet) which Lamb liked:—

LINES TO A REVIEWER

Alas! good friend, what profit can you see In hating such an hateless thing as me? There is no sport in hate, where all the rage Is on one side. In vain would you assuage Your frowns upon an unresisting smile, In which not even contempt lurks, to beguile Your heart by some faint sympathy of hate. Oh conquer what you cannot satiate! For to your passion I am far more coy Then ever yet was coldest maid or boy In winter-noon. Of your antipathy If I am the Narcissus, you are free To pine into a sound with hating me.

Hazlitt writes of Shelley in his essay "On Paradox and Commonplace" in Table Talk; but he does not make this remark there. Perhaps he said it in conversation.

"The next Number." The "futile Effort" was "Blakesmoor in H——shire" in the London Magazine for September, 1824.

Here should come a note from Lamb to Cary, August 19, 1824, in which Lamb thanks him for his translation of The Birds of Aristophanes and accepts an invitation to dine.]



LETTER 352

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[Dated at end: September 30, 1824.]

Little Book! surnam'd of White; Clean, as yet, and fair to sight; Keep thy attribution right,

Never disproportion'd scrawl; Ugly blot, that's worse than all; On thy maiden clearness fall.

In each Letter, here design'd, Let the Reader emblem'd find Neatness of the Owner's mind.

Gilded margins count a sin; Let thy leaves attraction win By thy Golden Rules within:

Sayings, fetch'd from Sages old; Saws, which Holy Writ unfold, Worthy to be writ in Gold:

Lighter Fancies not excluding; Blameless wit, with nothing rude in, Sometimes mildly interluding

Amid strains of graver measure:— Virtue's self hath oft her pleasure In sweet Muses' groves of leisure.

Riddles dark, perplexing sense; Darker meanings of offence; What but shades, be banish'd hence.

Whitest Thoughts, in whitest dress— Candid Meanings—best express Mind of quiet Quakeress.

Dear B.B.—"I am ill at these numbers;" but if the above be not too mean to have a place in thy Daughter's Sanctum, take them with pleasure. I assume that her Name is Hannah, because it is a pretty scriptural cognomen. I began on another sheet of paper, and just as I had penn'd the second line of Stanza 2 an ugly Blot [here is a blot] as big as this, fell, to illustrate my counsel.—I am sadly given to blot, and modern blotting-paper gives no redress; it only smears and makes it worse, as for example [here is a smear]. The only remedy is scratching out, which gives it a Clerkish look. The most innocent blots are made with red ink, and are rather ornamental. [Here are two or three blots in red ink.] Marry, they are not always to be distinguished from the effusions of a cut finger.

Well, I hope and trust thy Tick doleru, or however you spell it, is vanished, for I have frightful impressions of that Tick, and do altogether hate it, as an unpaid score, or the Tick of a Death Watch. I take it to be a species of Vitus's dance (I omit the Sanctity, writing to "one of the men called Friends"). I knew a young Lady who could dance no other, she danced thro' life, and very queer and fantastic were her steps. Heaven bless thee from such measures, and keep thee from the Foul Fiend, who delights to lead after False Fires in the night, Flibbertigibit, that gives the web and the pin &c. I forget what else.—

From my den, as Bunyan has it, 30 Sep. 24. C.L.

[The verses were for the album of Barton's daughter, Lucy (afterwards Mrs. Edward FitzGerald). Lucy was her only name. Lamb afterwards printed them in his Album Verses, 1830.]



LETTER 353

CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. JOHN DYER COLLIER

[Dated at end: November 2, 1824.]

Dear Mrs. Collier—We receive so much pig from your kindness, that I really have not phrase enough to vary successive acknowledg'mts.

I think I shall get a printed form: to serve on all occasions.

To say it was young, crisp, short, luscious, dainty-toed, is but to say what all its predecessors have been. It was eaten on Sunday and Monday, and doubts only exist as to which temperature it eat best, hot or cold. I incline to the latter. The Petty-feet made a pretty surprising proe-gustation for supper on Saturday night, just as I was loathingly in expectation of bren-cheese. I spell as I speak.

I do not know what news to send you. You will have heard of Alsager's death, and your Son John's success in the Lottery. I say he is a wise man, if he leaves off while he is well. The weather is wet to weariness, but Mary goes puddling about a-shopping after a gown for the winter. She wants it good & cheap. Now I hold that no good things are cheap, pig-presents always excepted. In this mournful weather I sit moping, where I now write, in an office dark as Erebus, jammed in between 4 walls, and writing by Candle-light, most melancholy. Never see the light of the Sun six hours in the day, and am surprised to find how pretty it shines on Sundays. I wish I were a Caravan driver or a Penny post man, to earn my bread in air & sunshine. Such a pedestrian as I am, to be tied by the legs, like a Fauntleroy, without the pleasure of his Exactions. I am interrupted here with an official question, which will take me up till it's time to go to dinner, so with repeated thanks & both our kindest rememb'ces to Mr. Collier & yourself, I conclude in haste.

Yours & his sincerely, C. LAMB.

from my den in Leadenhall,

2 Nov. 24.

On further enquiry Alsager is not dead, but Mrs. A. is bro't. to bed.

[Mrs. Collier was the mother of John Payne Collier. Alsager we have already met. Henry Fauntleroy was the banker, who had just been found guilty of forgery and on the day that Lamb wrote was sentenced to death. He was executed on the 30th (see a later letter).]



LETTER 354

CHARLES LAMB TO B.W. PROCTER

[Dated at end: November 11, '24.]

My dear Procter,—

I do agnise a shame in not having been to pay my congratulations to Mrs. Procter and your happy self, but on Sunday (my only morning) I was engaged to a country walk; and in virtue of the hypostatical union between us, when Mary calls, it is understood that I call too, we being univocal.

But indeed I am ill at these ceremonious inductions. I fancy I was not born with a call on my head, though I have brought one down upon it with a vengeance. I love not to pluck that sort of fruit crude, but to stay its ripening into visits. In probability Mary will be at Southampton Row this morning, and something of that kind be matured between you, but in any case not many hours shall elapse before I shake you by the hand.

Meantime give my kindest felicitations to Mrs. Procter, and assure her I look forward with the greatest delight to our acquaintance. By the way, the deuce a bit of Cake has come to hand, which hath an inauspicious look at first, but I comfort myself that that Mysterious Service hath the property of Sacramental Bread, which mice cannot nibble, nor time moulder.

I am married myself—to a severe step-wife, who keeps me, not at bed and board, but at desk and board, and is jealous of my morning aberrations. I can not slip out to congratulate kinder unions. It is well she leaves me alone o' nights—the damn'd Day-hag BUSINESS. She is even now peeping over me to see I am writing no Love Letters. I come, my dear— Where is the Indigo Sale Book?

Twenty adieus, my dear friends, till we meet.

Yours most truly, C. LAMB.

Leadenhall, 11 Nov. '24.

[Procter married Anne Skepper, step-daughter of Basil Montagu, in October, 1824. One of their daughters was Adelaide Ann Procter.

"Agnise"—acknowledge. It has been suggested that Lamb favoured this old word also on account of its superficial association with agnus, a lamb.]



LETTER 355

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

[P.M. Nov. 20, 1824.]

Dr. R. Barren Field bids me say that he is resident at his brother Henry's, a surgeon &c., a few doors west of Christ Church Passage Newgate Street; and that he shall be happy to accompany you up thence to Islington, when next you come our way, but not so late as you sometimes come. I think we shall be out on Tuesd'y.

Yours ever

C. LAMB.

Sat'y.

[Barron Field, as I have said, had returned from New South Wales in June of this year. Later he became Chief Justice at Gibraltar.]



LETTER 356

CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON

Desk II, Nov. 25 [1824].

My dear Miss Hutchinson, Mary bids me thank you for your kind letter. We are a little puzzled about your where-abouts: Miss Wordsworth writes Torkay, and you have queerly made it Torquay. Now Tokay we have heard of, and Torbay, which we take to be the true male spelling of the place, but somewhere we fancy it to be on "Devon's leafy shores," where we heartily wish the kindly breezes may restore all that is invalid among you. Robinson is returned, and speaks much of you all. We shall be most glad to hear good news from you from time to time. The best is, Proctor is at last married. We have made sundry attempts to see the Bride, but have accidentally failed, she being gone out a gadding.

We had promised our dear friends the Monkhouses, promised ourselves rather, a visit to them at Ramsgate, but I thought it best, and Mary seemed to have it at heart too, not to go far from home these last holy days. It is connected with a sense of unsettlement, and secretly I know she hoped that such abstinence would be friendly to her health. She certainly has escaped her sad yearly visitation, whether in consequence of it, or of faith in it, and we have to be thankful for a good 1824. To get such a notion into our heads may go a great way another year. Not that we quite confined ourselves; but assuming Islington to be head quarters, we made timid flights to Ware, Watford &c. to try how the trouts tasted, for a night out or so, not long enough to make the sense of change oppressive, but sufficient to scour the rust of home.

Coleridge is not returned from the Sea. As a little scandal may divert you recluses—we were in the Summer dining at a Clergyman of Southey's "Church of England," at Hertford, the same who officiated to Thurtell's last moments, and indeed an old contemporary Blue of C.'s and mine at School. After dinner we talked of C., and F. who is a mighty good fellow in the main, but hath his cassock prejudices, inveighed against the moral character of C. I endeavoured to enlighten him on the subject, till having driven him out of some of his holds, he stopt my mouth at once by appealing to me whether it was not very well known that C. "at that very moment was living in a state of open a———y with Mrs. * * * * * at Highgate?" Nothing I could say serious or bantering after that could remove the deep inrooted conviction of the whole company assembled that such was the case! Of course you will keep this quite close, for I would not involve my poor blundering friend, who I dare say believed it all thoroughly. My interference of course was imputed to the goodness of my heart, that could imagine nothing wrong &c. Such it is if Ladies will go gadding about with other people's husbands at watering places. How careful we should be to avoid the appearance of Evil. I thought this Anecdote might amuse you. It is not worth resenting seriously; only I give it as a specimen of orthodox candour. O Southey, Southey, how long would it be before you would find one of us Unitarians propagating such unwarrantable Scandal! Providence keep you all from the foul fiend Scandal, and send you back well and happy to dear Gloster Place. C.L.

[Thomas Monkhouse, who was in a decline, had been ordered to Torquay. Crabb Robinson had been in Normandy for some weeks. The too credulous clergyman at Hertford was Frederick William Franklin, Master of the Blue Coat school there (from 1801 to 1827), who was at Christ's Hospital with Lamb.

"Mrs. * * * * * *." Mrs. Gillman.]



LETTER 357

CHARLES LAMB TO LEIGH HUNT

[No date. ? November, 1824.]

ILLUSTREZZIMO Signor,—I have obeyed your mandate to a tittle. I accompany this with a volume. But what have you done with the first I sent you?—have you swapt it with some lazzaroni for macaroni? or pledged it with a gondolierer for a passage? Peradventuri the Cardinal Gonsalvi took a fancy to it:—his Eminence has done my Nearness an honour. 'Tis but a step to the Vatican. As you judge, my works do not enrich the workman, but I get vat I can for 'em. They keep dragging me on, a poor, worn mill-horse, in the eternal round of the damn'd magazine; but 'tis they are blind, not I. Colburn (where I recognise with delight the gay W. Honeycomb renovated) hath the ascendency.

I was with the Novellos last week. They have a large, cheap house and garden, with a dainty library (magnificent) without books. But what will make you bless yourself (I am too old for wonder), something has touched the right organ in Vincentio at last. He attends a Wesleyan chapel on Kingsland Green. He at first tried to laugh it off—he only went for the singing; but the cloven foot—I retract—the Lamb's trotters—are at length apparent. Mary Isabella attributes it to a lightness induced by his headaches. But I think I see in it a less accidental influence. Mister Clark is at perfect staggers! the whole fabric of his infidelity is shaken. He has no one to join him in his coarse-insults and indecent obstreperousnesses against Christianity, for Holmes (the bonny Holmes) is gone to Salisbury to be organist, and Isabella and the Clark make but a feeble quorum. The children have all nice, neat little clasped pray-books, and I have laid out 7s. 8d. in Watts's Hymns for Christmas presents for them. The eldest girl alone holds out; she has been at Boulogne, skirting upon the vast focus of Atheism, and imported bad principles in patois French. But the strongholds are crumbling. N. appears as yet to have but a confused notion of the Atonement. It makes him giddy, he says, to think much about it. But such giddiness is spiritual sobriety.

Well, Byron is gone, and ——— is now the best poet in England. Fill up the gap to your fancy. Barry Cornwall has at last carried the pretty A. S. They are just in the treacle-moon. Hope it won't clog his wings—gaum we used to say at school.

Mary, my sister, has worn me out with eight weeks' cold and toothache, her average complement in the winter, and it will not go away. She is otherwise well, and reads novels all day long. She has had an exempt year, a good year, for which, forgetting the minor calamity, she and I are most thankful.

Alsager is in a flourishing house, with wife and children about him, in Mecklenburg Square—almost too fine to visit.

Barron Field is come home from Sydney, but as yet I can hear no tidings of a pension. He is plump and friendly, his wife really a very superior woman. He resumes the bar.

I have got acquainted with Mr. Irving, the Scotch preacher, whose fame must have reached you. He is a humble disciple at the foot of Gamaliel S.T.C. Judge how his own sectarists must stare when I tell you he has dedicated a book to S.T.C., acknowledging to have learnt more of the nature of Faith, Christianity, and Christian Church, from him than from all the men he ever conversed with. He is a most amiable, sincere, modest man in a room, this Boanerges in the temple. Mrs. Montague told him the dedication would do him no good. "That shall be a reason for doing it," was his answer. Judge, now, whether this man be a quack.

Dear H., take this imperfect notelet for a letter; it looks so much the more like conversing on nearer terms. Love to all the Hunts, old friend Thornton, and all.

Yours ever, C. LAMB.

[Leigh Hunt was still living at Genoa. Shelley and Byron, whom he had left England to join, were both dead. Lamb, I assume, sent him a second copy of Elia, with this letter.

Cardinal Gonsalvi was Ercole Gonsalvi (1757-1824), secretary to Pius VII. and a patron of the arts. Lawrence painted him.

For the present state of the London Magazine see next letter. Leigh Hunt contributed to Colburn's New Monthly Magazine, among other things, a series of papers on "The Months." Hunt also contributed an account of the Honeycomb family, by Harry Honeycomb.

By Mary Isabella Lamb meant Mary Sabilla Novello, Vincent Novello's wife. The eldest girl was Mary Victoria, afterwards the wife of Charles Cowden Clarke, the Mr. Clark mentioned here. Novello (now living at Shackleford Green) remained a good Roman Catholic to the end. Holmes was Edward Holmes (1797-1859), a pupil of Cowden Clarke's father at Enfield and schoolfellow of Keats. He had lived with the Novellos, studying music, and later became a musical writer and teacher and the biographer of Mozart.

Mrs. Barron Field was a Miss Jane Carncroft, to whom Lamb addressed some album verses (see Vol. IV. of this edition). Leigh Hunt knew of Field's return, for he had contributed to the New Monthly earlier in the year a rhymed letter to him in which he welcomed him home again.

Irving was Edward Irving (1792-1834), afterwards the founder of the Catholic Apostolic sect, then drawing people to the chapel in Hatton Garden, attached to the Caledonian Asylum. The dedication, to which Lamb alludes more than once in his correspondence, was that of his work, For Missionaries after the Apostolical School, a series of orations in four parts, ... 1825. It runs:—

DEDICATION

TO

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, ESQ.

MY DEAR AND HONOURED FRIEND,

Unknown as you are, in the true character either of your mind or of your heart, to the greater part of your countrymen, and misrepresented as your works have been, by those who have the ear of the vulgar, it will seem wonderful to many that I should make choice of you, from the circle of my friends, to dedicate to you these beginnings of my thoughts upon the most important subject of these or any times. And when I state the reason to be, that you have been more profitable to my faith in orthodox doctrine, to my spiritual understanding of the Word of God, and to my right conception of the Christian Church, than any or all of the men with whom I have entertained friendship and conversation, it will perhaps still more astonish the mind, and stagger the belief, of those who have adopted, as once I did myself, the misrepresentations which are purchased for a hire and vended for a price, concerning your character and works. You have only to shut your ear to what they ignorantly say of you, and earnestly to meditate the deep thoughts with which you are instinct, and give them a suitable body and form that they may live, then silently commit them to the good sense of ages yet to come, in order to be ranked hereafter amongst the most gifted sages and greatest benefactors of your country. Enjoy and occupy the quiet which, after many trials, the providence of God hath bestowed upon you, in the bosom of your friends; and may you be spared until you have made known the multitude of your thoughts, unto those who at present value, or shall hereafter arise to value, their worth.

I have partaken so much high intellectual enjoyment from being admitted into the close and familiar intercourse with which you have honoured me, and your many conversations concerning the revelations of the Christian faith have been so profitable to me in every sense, as a student and a preacher of the Gospel, as a spiritual man and a Christian pastor, and your high intelligence and great learning have at all times so kindly stooped to my ignorance and inexperience, that not merely with the affection of friend to friend, and the honour due from youth to experienced age, but with the gratitude of a disciple to a wise and generous teacher, of an anxious inquirer to the good man who hath helped him in the way of truth, I do now presume to offer you the first-fruits of my mind since it received a new impulse towards truth, and a new insight into its depths, from listening to your discourse. Accept them in good part, and be assured that however insignificant in themselves, they are the offering of a heart which loves your heart, and of a mind which looks up with reverence to your mind.

EDWARD IRVING.

"Old friend Thornton" was Leigh Hunt's son, Thornton Leigh Hunt, whom Lamb had addressed in verse in 1815 as "my favourite child." He was now fourteen.]



LETTER 358

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON AND LUCY BARTON

[P.M. December 1, 1824.]

Dear B.B.—If Mr. Mitford will send me a full and circumstantial description of his desired vases, I will transmit the same to a Gentleman resident at Canton, whom I think I have interest enough in to take the proper care for their execution. But Mr. M. must have patience. China is a great way off, further perhaps than he thinks; and his next year's roses must be content to wither in a Wedgewood pot. He will please to say whether he should like his Arms upon them, &c. I send herewith some patterns which suggest themselves to me at the first blush of the subject, but he will probably consult his own taste after all.



The last pattern is obviously fitted for ranunculuses only. The two former may indifferently hold daisies, marjoram, sweet williams, and that sort. My friend in Canton is Inspector of Teas, his name Ball; and I can think of no better tunnel. I shall expect Mr. M.'s decision.

Taylor and Hessey finding their magazine goes off very heavily at 2s. 6d. are prudently going to raise their price another shilling; and having already more authors than they want, intend to increase the number of them. If they set up against the New Monthly, they must change their present hands. It is not tying the dead carcase of a Review to a half-dead Magazine will do their business. It is like G.D. multiplying his volumes to make 'em sell better. When he finds one will not go off, he publishes two; two stick, he tries three; three hang fire, he is confident that four will have a better chance.

And now, my dear Sir, trifling apart, the gloomy catastrophe of yesterday morning prompts a sadder vein. The fate of the unfortunate Fauntleroy makes me, whether I will or no, to cast reflecting eyes around on such of my friends as by a parity of situation are exposed to a similarity of temptation. My very style, seems to myself to become more impressive than usual, with the change of theme. Who that standeth, knoweth but he may yet fall? Your hands as yet, I am most willing to believe, have never deviated into others' property. You think it impossible that you could ever commit so heinous an offence. But so thought Fauntleroy once; so have thought many besides him, who at last have expiated, as he hath done. You are as yet upright. But you are a Banker, at least the next thing to it. I feel the delicacy of the subject; but cash must pass thro' your hands, sometimes to a great amount. If in an unguarded hour—but I will hope better. Consider the scandal it will bring upon those of your persuasion. Thousands would go to see a Quaker hanged, that would be indifferent to the fate of a Presbyterian, or an Anabaptist. Think of the effect it would have on the sale of your poems alone; not to mention higher considerations. I tremble, I am sure, at myself, when I think that so many poor victims of the Law at one time of their life made as sure of never being hanged as I in my presumption am too ready to do myself. What are we better than they? Do we come into the world with different necks? Is there any distinctive mark under our left ears? Are we unstrangulable? I ask you. Think of these things. I am shocked sometimes at the shape of my own fingers, not for their resemblance to the ape tribe (which is something) but for the exquisite adaptation of them to the purposes of picking, fingering, &c. No one that is so framed, I maintain it, but should tremble.

Postscript for your Daughter's eyes only.

Dear Miss —— Your pretty little letterets make me ashamed of my great straggling coarse handwriting. I wonder where you get pens to write so small. Sure they must be the pinions of a small wren, or a robin. If you write so in your Album, you must give us glasses to read by. I have seen a Lady's similar book all writ in following fashion. I think it pretty and fanciful.

"O how I love in early dawn To bend my steps o'er flowery dawn [lawn],"

which I think has an agreeable variety to the eye. Which I recommend to your notice, with friend Elia's best wishes.

[The London Magazine began a new series at half a crown with the number for January, 1825. It had begun to decline very noticeably. The New Monthly Magazine, to the January number of which Lamb contributed his "Illustrious Defunct" essay, was its most serious rival. Lamb returned to some of his old vivacity and copiousness in the London Magazine for January, 1825. To that number he contributed his "Biographical Memoir of Mr. Liston" and the "Vision of Horns"; and to the February number "Letter to an Old Gentleman," "Unitarian Protests" and the "Autobiography of Mr. Munden."

"G.D."—George Dyer again.

"Fauntleroy." See note above. Fauntleroy's fate seems to have had great fascination for Lamb. He returned to the subject, in the vein of this letter, in "The Last Peach," a little essay printed in the London Magazine for April, 1825 (see Vol. I. of this edition); and in Memories of old Friends, being Extracts from the Journals and Letters of Caroline Fox, ... from 1835 to 1871, 1882, I find the following entry:—

October 25 [l839].—G. Wightwick and others dined with us. He talked agreeably about capital punishments, greatly doubting their having any effect in preventing crime. Soon after Fauntleroy was hanged, an advertisement appeared, "To all good Christians! Pray for the soul of Fauntleroy." This created a good deal of speculation as to whether he was a Catholic, and at one of Coleridge's soirees it was discussed for a considerable time; at length Coleridge, turning to Lamb, asked, "Do you know anything about this affair?" "I should think I d-d-d-did," said Elia, "for I paid s-s-s-seven and sixpence for it!"

Lamb's postscript is written in extremely small characters, and —the letters of the two lines of verse are in alternate red and black inks. It was this letter which, Edward FitzGerald tells us, Thackeray pressed to his forehead, with the remark "Saint Charles!" Hitherto, the postscript not having been thought worthy of print by previous editors, it was a little difficult to understand why this particular letter had been selected for Thackeray's epithet. But when one thinks of the patience with which, after making gentle fun of her father, Lamb sat down to amuse Lucy Barton, and, as Thackeray did, thinks also of his whole life, it becomes more clear.

Here should come a letter to Alaric A. Watts dated Dec. 28, 1824, in reply to a request for a contribution to one of this inveterate album-maker's albums. Lamb acquiesces. Later he came to curse the things. Given in the Boston Bibliophile edition.]



LETTER 359

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN

[P.M. January II, 1825.]

My Dear Sir—Pray return my best thanks to your father for his little volume. It is like all of his I have seen, spirited, good humoured, and redolent of the wit and humour of a century ago. He should have lived with Gay and his set. The Chessiad is so clever that I relish'd it in spite of my total ignorance of the game. I have it not before me, but I remember a capital simile of the Charwoman letting in her Watchman husband, which is better than Butler's Lobster turned to Red. Hazard is a grand Character, Jove in his Chair. When you are disposed to leave your one room for my six, Colebrooke is where it was, and my sister begs me to add that as she is disappointed of meeting your sister your way, we shall be most happy to see her our way, when you have an even'g to spare. Do not stand on ceremonies and introductions, but come at once. I need not say that if you can induce your father to join the party, it will be so much the pleasanter. Can you name an evening next week? I give you long credit.

Meantime am as usual yours truly C.L.

E.I.H.

11 Jan. 25.

When I saw the Chessiad advertised by C.D. the Younger, I hoped it might be yours. What title is left for you—

Charles Dibdin the Younger, Junior.

O No, you are Timothy.

[Charles Dibdin the Younger wrote a mock-heroic poem, "The Chessiad," which was published with Comic Tales in 1825. The simile of the charwoman runs thus:—

Now Morning, yawning, rais'd her from her bed, Slipp'd on her wrapper blue and 'kerchief red, And took from Night the key of Sleep's abode; For Night within that mansion had bestow'd The Hours of day; now, turn and turn about, Morn takes the key and lets the Day-hours out; Laughing, they issue from the ebon gate, And Night walks in. As when, in drowsy state, Some watchman, wed to one who chars all day, Takes to his lodging's door his creeping way; His rib, arising, lets him in to sleep, While she emerges to scrub, dust, and sweep.

This is the lobster simile in Hudibras, Part II., Canto 2, lines 29-32:—

The sun had long since, in the lap Of Thetis, taken out his nap, And, like a lobster boiled, the morn From black to red began to turn.

Hazard is the chief of the gods in the Chessiad's little drama.

"You are Timothy." See letter to Dibdin above.

I have included in Vol. I. of the present edition a review of Dibdin's book, in the New Times, January 27, 1825, which both from internal evidence and from the quotation of the charwoman passage I take to be by Lamb, who was writing for that paper at that time.]



LETTER 360

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP

Jan. 17, 1825.

Dear Allsop—I acknowledge with thanks the receipt of a draft on Messrs. Wms. for L81:11:3 which I haste to cash in the present alarming state of the money market. Hurst and Robinson gone. I have imagined a chorus of ill-used authors singing on the occasion:

What should we when Booksellers break? We should rejoice da Capo.

We regret exceed'ly Mrs. Allsop's being unwell. Mary or both will come and see her soon. The frost is cruel, and we have both colds. I take Pills again, which battle with your wine & victory hovers doubtful. By the bye, tho' not disinclined to presents I remember our bargain to take a dozen at sale price and must demur. With once again thanks and best loves to Mrs. A.

Turn over—Yours, C. LAMB.

[Hurst and Robinson were publishers. Lamb took the idea for his chorus from Davenant's version of "Macbeth" which he described in The Spectator in 1828 (see Vol. I. of the present edition). It is there a chorus of witches—

We should rejoice when good kings bleed. ]



LETTER 361

CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON

[P.M. January 20, 1825.]

The brevity of this is owing to scratching it off at my desk amid expected interruptions. By habit, I can write Letters only at office.

Dear Miss H. Thank you for a noble Goose, which wanted only the massive Encrustation that we used to pick-axe open about this season in old Gloster Place. When shall we eat another Goosepye together? The pheasant too must not be forgotten, twice as big and half as good as a partridge. You ask about the editor of the Lond. I know of none. This first specimen is flat and pert enough to justify subscribers who grudge at t'other shilling. De Quincey's Parody was submitted to him before printed, and had his Probatum. The "Horns" is in a poor taste, resembling the most laboured papers in the Spectator. I had sign'd it "Jack Horner:" but Taylor and Hessey said, it would be thought an offensive article, unless I put my known signature to it; and wrung from me my slow consent. But did you read the "Memoir of Liston"? and did you guess whose it was? Of all the Lies I ever put off, I value this most. It is from top to toe, every paragraph, Pure Invention; and has passed for Gospel, has been republished in newspapers, and in the penny play-bills of the Night, as an authentic Account. I shall certainly go to the Naughty Man some day for my Fibbings. In the next No. I figure as a Theologian! and have attacked my late brethren, the Unitarians. What Jack Pudding tricks I shall play next, I know not. I am almost at the end of my Tether.

Coleridge is quite blooming; but his Book has not budded yet. I hope I have spelt Torquay right now, and that this will find you all mending, and looking forward to a London flight with the Spring. Winter we have had none, but plenty of foul weather. I have lately pick'd up an Epigram which pleased me.

Two noble Earls, whom if I quote, Some folks might call me Sinner; The one invented half a coat; The other half a dinner.

The plan was good, as some will say And fitted to console one: Because, in this poor starving day, Few can afford a whole one.

I have made the Lame one still lamer by imperfect memory, but spite of bald diction, a little done to it might improve it into a good one. You have nothing else to do at ["Talk kay" here written and scratched out] Torquay. Suppose you try it. Well God bless you all, as wishes Mary, [most] sincerely, with many thanks for Letter &c. ELIA.

[The Monkhouses' house in London was at 34 Gloucester Place.

Lamb's De Quincey parody was the "Letter to an Old Gentleman, whose Education has been Neglected."

"Coleridge's book"—the Aids to Reflection, published in May or June, 1825.

"I have lately pick'd up an Epigram." This is by Henry Man, an old South-Sea House clerk, whom in his South-Sea House essay Lamb mentions as a wit. The epigram, which refers to Lord Spencer and Lord Sandwich, will be found in Man's Miscellaneous Works, 1802.]



LETTER 362

CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO

[P.M. Jan. 25, 1825.]

Dear Corelli, My sister's cold is as obstinate as an old Handelian, whom a modern amateur is trying to convert to Mozart-ism. As company must & always does injure it, Emma and I propose to come to you in the evening of to-morrow, instead of meeting here. An early bread-and-cheese supper at 1/2 past eight will oblige us. Loves to the Bearer of many Children. C. LAMB.

Tuesday Colebrooke.

I sign with a black seal, that you may begin to think, her cold has killed Mary, which will be an agreeable UNSURPRISE when you read the Note.

[This is the first letter to Novello, who was the peculiar champion of Mozart and Haydn. Lamb calls him Corelli after Archangelo Corelli (1653-1713), the violinist and composer. It was part of a joke between Lamb and Novello that Lamb should affect to know a great deal about music. See the Elia essay "A Chapter on Ears" for a description of Novello's playing. Mrs. Novello was the mother of eleven children.]



LETTER 363

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[Dated at end: 10 February, 1825.]

Dear B.B.—I am vexed that ugly paper should have offended. I kept it as clear from objectionable phrases as possible, and it was Hessey's fault, and my weakness, that it did not appear anonymous. No more of it for God's sake.

The Spirit of the Age is by Hazlitt. The characters of Coleridge, &c. he had done better in former publications, the praise and the abuse much stronger, &c. but the new ones are capitally done. Horne Tooke is a matchless portrait. My advice is, to borrow it rather than read [? buy] it. I have it. He has laid on too many colours on my likeness, but I have had so much injustice done me in my own name, that I make a rule of accepting as much over-measure to Elia as Gentlemen think proper to bestow. Lay it on and spare not.

Your Gentleman Brother sets my mouth a watering after Liberty. O that I were kicked out of Leadenhall with every mark of indignity, and a competence in my fob. The birds of the air would not be so free as I should. How I would prance and curvet it, and pick up cowslips, and ramble about purposeless as an ideot! The Author-mometer is a good fancy. I have caused great speculation in the dramatic (not thy) world by a Lying Life of Liston, all pure invention. The Town has swallowed it, and it is copied into News Papers, Play Bills, etc., as authentic. You do not know the Droll, and possibly missed reading the article (in our 1st No., New Series). A life more improbable for him to have lived would not be easily invented. But your rebuke, coupled with "Dream on J. Bunyan," checks me. I'd rather do more in my favorite way, but feel dry. I must laugh sometimes. I am poor Hypochondriacus, and not Liston.

Our 2'nd N'o is all trash. What are T. and H. about? It is whip syllabub, "thin sown with aught of profit or delight." Thin sown! not a germ of fruit or corn. Why did poor Scott die! There was comfort in writing with such associates as were his little band of Scribblers, some gone away, some affronted away, and I am left as the solitary widow looking for water cresses.

The only clever hand they have is Darley, who has written on the Dramatists, under name of John Lacy. But his function seems suspended.

I have been harassed more than usually at office, which has stopt my correspondence lately. I write with a confused aching head, and you must accept this apology for a Letter.

I will do something soon if I can as a peace offering to the Queen of the East Angles. Something she shan't scold about.

For the Present, farewell.

Thine C.L.

10 Feb. 1825.

I am fifty years old this day. Drink my health.

["That ugly paper" was "A Vision of Horns."

Hazlitt's Spirit of the Age had just been published, containing criticisms, among others, of Coleridge, Horne Tooke, and Lamb. Lamb was very highly praised. Here is a passage from the article:—

How admirably he has sketched the former inmates of the South-Sea House; what "fine fretwork he makes of their double and single entries!" With what a firm yet subtle pencil he has embodied "Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist!" How notably he embalms a battered beau; how delightfully an amour, that was cold forty years ago, revives in his pages! With what well-disguised humour he introduces us to his relations, and how freely he serves up his friends! Certainly, some of his portraits are fixtures, and will do to hang up as lasting and lively emblems of human infirmity. Then there is no one who has so sure an ear for "the chimes at midnight," not even excepting Mr. Justice Shallow; nor could Master Silence himself take his "cheese and pippins" with a more significant and satisfactory air. With what a gusto Mr. Lamb describes the Inns and Courts of law, the Temple and Gray's Inn, as if he had been a student there for the last two hundred years, and had been as well acquainted with the person of Sir Francis Bacon as he is with his portrait or writings! It is hard to say whether St. John's Gate is connected with more intense and authentic associations in his mind, as a part of old London Wall, or as the frontispiece (time out of mind) of the Gentleman's Magazine. He hunts Watling Street like a gentle spirit; the avenues to the play-houses are thick with panting recollections; and Christ's Hospital still breathes the balmy breath of infancy in his description of it!

"Your Gentleman Brother"—John Barton, Bernard's younger half-brother.

"The Author-mometer." I have not discovered to what Lamb refers.

"Dream on J. Bunyan." Probably a poem by Barton, but I have not traced it.

"T. and H."—Taylor & Hessey.

"Poor Scott"—John Scott, who founded the London Magazine.

"Darley"—George Darley (1795-1846), author of Sylvia; or, The May Queen, 1827.

"The Queen of the East Angles." Possibly Lucy Barton, possibly Anne Knight, a friend of Barton's.]



LETTER 364

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING

[Not dated. ? February, 1825.]

My dear M.,—You might have come inopportunely a week since, when we had an inmate. At present and for as long as ever you like, our castle is at your service. I saw Tuthill yesternight, who has done for me what may

"To all my nights and days to come, Give solely sovran sway and masterdom."

But I dare not hope, for fear of disappointment. I cannot be more explicit at present. But I have it under his own hand, that I am non-capacitated (I cannot write it in-) for business. O joyous imbecility! Not a susurration of this to anybody!

Mary's love.

C. LAMB.

[Lamb had just taken a most momentous step in his career and had consulted Tuthill as to his health, in the hope of perhaps obtaining release and a pension from the East India House. We learn more of this soon.

Here might come two brief notes to Dibdin, of no importance.]



LETTER 365

CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON

[Dated at end: March 1, 1825.]

Dear Miss Hutchinson Your news has made us all very sad. I had my hopes to the last. I seem as if I were disturbing you at such an awful time even by a reply. But I must acknowledge your kindness in presuming upon the interest we shall all feel on the subject. No one will more feel it than Robinson, to whom I have written. No one more than he and we acknowleged the nobleness and worth of what we have lost. Words are perfectly idle. We can only pray for resignation to the Survivors. Our dearest expressions of condolence to Mrs. M——— at this time in particular. God bless you both. I have nothing of ourselves to tell you, and if I had, I could not be so unreverent as to trouble you with it. We are all well, that is all. Farewell, the departed—and the left. Your's and his, while memory survives, cordially

C. LAMB.

1 Mar. 1825.

[The letter refers to the death of Thomas Monkhouse.

Here should come an undated note from Lamb to Procter, in which Lamb refers to the same loss: "We shall be most glad to see you, though more glad to have seen double you."]



LETTER 366

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. March 23, 1825.]

Wednesday.

Dear B.B.—I have had no impulse to write, or attend to any single object but myself, for weeks past. My single self. I by myself I. I am sick of hope deferred. The grand wheel is in agitation that is to turn up my Fortune, but round it rolls and will turn up nothing. I have a glimpse of Freedom, of becoming a Gentleman at large, but I am put off from day to day. I have offered my resignation, and it is neither accepted nor rejected. Eight weeks am I kept in this fearful suspence. Guess what an absorbing stake I feel it. I am not conscious of the existence of friends present or absent. The E.I. Directors alone can be that thing to me—or not.—

I have just learn'd that nothing will be decided this week. Why the next? Why any week? It has fretted me into an itch of the fingers, I rub 'em against Paper and write to you, rather than not allay this Scorbuta.

While I can write, let me adjure you to have no doubts of Irving. Let Mr. Mitford drop his disrespect. Irving has prefixed a dedication (of a Missionary Subject 1st part) to Coleridge, the most beautiful cordial and sincere. He there acknowledges his obligation to S.T.C. for his knowledge of Gospel truths, the nature of a Xtian Church, etc., to the talk of S.T.C. (at whose Gamaliel feet he sits weekly) [more] than to that of all the men living. This from him—The great dandled and petted Sectarian—to a religious character so equivocal in the world's Eye as that of S.T.C., so foreign to the Kirk's estimate!—Can this man be a Quack? The language is as affecting as the Spirit of the Dedication. Some friend told him, "This dedication will do you no Good," i.e. not in the world's repute, or with your own People. "That is a reason for doing it," quoth Irving.

I am thoroughly pleased with him. He is firm, outspeaking, intrepid—and docile as a pupil of Pythagoras.

You must like him.

Yours, in tremors of painful hope,

C. LAMB.

[In the first paragraphs Lamb refers to the great question of his release from the India House.

In a letter dated February 19, 1825, of Mary Russell Mitford, who looked upon Irving as quack absolute, we find her discussing the preacher with Charles Lamb.]



LETTER 367

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

[March 29], 1825.

I have left the d———d India House for Ever!

Give me great joy.

C. LAMB.

[Robinson states in his Reminiscences of Coleridge, Wordsworth and Lamb, preserved in MS. at Dr. Williams' Library: "A most important incident in Lamb's life, tho' in the end not so happy for him as he anticipated, was his obtaining his discharge, with a pension of almost L400 a year, from the India House. This he announced to me by a note put into my letter box: 'I have left the India House. D——— Time. I'm all for eternity.' He was rather more than 50 years of age. I found him and his Sister in high spirits when I called to wish them joy on the 22 of April. 'I never saw him so calmly cheerful,' says my journal, 'as he seemed then.'" See the next letters for Lamb's own account of the event.]



LETTER 368

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Colebrook Cottage,

6 April, 1825.

Dear Wordsworth, I have been several times meditating a letter to you concerning the good thing which has befallen me, but the thought of poor Monkhouse came across me. He was one that I had exulted in the prospect of congratulating me. He and you were to have been the first participators, for indeed it has been ten weeks since the first motion of it.

Here I am then after 33 years slavery, sitting in my own room at 11 o'Clock this finest of all April mornings a freed man, with L441 a year for the remainder of my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who outlived his annuity and starved at 90. L441, i.e. L450, with a deduction of L9 for a provision secured to my sister, she being survivor, the Pension guaranteed by Act Georgii Tertii, &c.

I came home for ever on Tuesday in last week. The incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelm'd me. It was like passing from life into Eternity. Every year to be as long as three, i.e. to have three times as much real time, time that is my own, in it! I wandered about thinking I was happy, but feeling I was not. But that tumultuousness is passing off, and I begin to understand the nature of the gift. Holydays, even the annual month, were always uneasy joys: their conscious fugitiveness—the craving after making the most of them. Now, when all is holyday, there are no holydays. I can sit at home in rain or shine without a restless impulse for walkings. I am daily steadying, and shall soon find it as natural to me to be my own master, as it has been irksome to have had a master. Mary wakes every morning with an obscure feeling that some good has happened to us.

Leigh Hunt and Montgomery after their releasements describe the shock of their emancipation much as I feel mine. But it hurt their frames. I eat, drink, and sleep sound as ever. I lay no anxious schemes for going hither and thither, but take things as they occur. Yesterday I excursioned 20 miles, to day I write a few letters. Pleasuring was for fugitive play days, mine are fugitive only in the sense that life is fugitive. Freedom and life co-existent.

At the foot of such a call upon you for gratulation, I am ashamd to advert to that melancholy event. Monkhouse was a character I learnd to love slowly, but it grew upon me, yearly, monthly, daily. What a chasm has it made in our pleasant parties! His noble friendly face was always coming before me, till this hurrying event in my life came, and for the time has absorpt all interests. In fact it has shaken me a little. My old desk companions with whom I have had such merry hours seem to reproach me for removing my lot from among them. They were pleasant creatures, but to the anxieties of business, and a weight of possible worse ever impending, I was not equal. Tuthill and Gilman gave me my certificates. I laughed at the friendly lie implied in them, but my sister shook her head and said it was all true. Indeed this last winter I was jaded out, winters were always worse than other parts of the year, because the spirits are worse, and I had no daylight. In summer I had daylight evenings. The relief was hinted to me from a superior power, when I poor slave had not a hope but that I must wait another 7 years with Jacob—and lo! the Rachel which I coveted is bro't to me—

Have you read the noble dedication of Irving's "Missionary Orations" to S.T.C. Who shall call this man a Quack hereafter? What the Kirk will think of it neither I nor Irving care. When somebody suggested to him that it would not be likely to do him good, videlicet among his own people, "That is a reason for doing it" was his noble answer.

That Irving thinks he has profited mainly by S.T.C., I have no doubt. The very style of the Ded. shows it.

Communicate my news to Southey, and beg his pardon for my being so long acknowledging his kind present of the "Church," which circumstances I do not wish to explain, but having no reference to himself, prevented at the time. Assure him of my deep respect and friendliest feelings.

Divide the same, or rather each take the whole to you, I mean you and all yours. To Miss Hutchinson I must write separate. What's her address? I want to know about Mrs. M.

Farewell! and end at last, long selfish Letter!

C. LAMB.

[Lamb expanded the first portion of this letter into the Elia essay "The Superannuated Man," which ought to be read in connection with it (see Vol. II. of the present edition).

Leigh Hunt and James Montgomery, the poet, had both undergone imprisonment for libel.

At a Court of Directors of the India House held on March 29, 1825, it was resolved "that the resignation of Mr. Charles Lamb of the Accountant General's Office, on account of certified ill-health, be accepted, and, it appearing that he has served the Company faithfully for 33 years, and is now in the receipt of an income of L730 per annum, he be allowed a pension of L450 (four hundred and fifty pounds) per annum, under the provisions of the act of the 53 Geo. III., cap. 155, to commence from this day."]



LETTER 369

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. April 6, 1825.]

Dear B.B.—My spirits are so tumultuary with the novelty of my recent emancipation, that I have scarce steadiness of hand, much more mind, to compose a letter.

I am free, B.B.—free as air.

The little bird that wings the sky Knows no such Liberty!

I was set free on Tuesday in last week at 4 o'Clock.

I came home for ever!

I have been describing my feelings as well as I can to Wordsw'th. in a long letter, and don't care to repeat. Take it briefly that for a few days I was painfully oppressed by so mighty a change, but it is becoming daily more natural to me.

I went and sat among 'em all at my old 33 years desk yester morning; and deuce take me if I had not yearnings at leaving all my old pen and ink fellows, merry sociable lads, at leaving them in the Lurch, fag, fag, fag.

The comparison of my own superior felicity gave me any thing but pleasure.

B.B., I would not serve another 7 years for seven hundred thousand pounds!

I have got L441 net for life, sanctioned by Act of Parliament, with a provision for Mary if she survives me.

I will live another 50 years; or, if I live but 10, they will be thirty, reckoning the quantity of real time in them, i.e. the time that is a man's own.

Tell me how you like "Barbara S."—will it be received in atonement for the foolish Vision, I mean by the Lady?

Apropos, I never saw Mrs. Crawford in my life, nevertheless 'tis all true of Somebody.

Address me in future Colebrook Cottage, Islington.

I am really nervous (but that will wear off) so take this brief announcement.

Yours truly C.L.

["Barbara S——," the Elia essay, was printed in the London Magazine, April, 1825 (see Vol II. of this edition). It purports to be an incident in the life of Mrs. Crawford, the actress, but had really happened to Fanny Kelly.]



LETTER 370

CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON

[P.M. April 18, 1825.]

Dear Miss Hutchinson—You want to know all about my gaol delivery. Take it then. About 12 weeks since I had a sort of intimation that a resignation might be well accepted from me. This was a kind bird's whisper. On that hint I spake. Gilman and Tuthill furnishd me with certificates of wasted health and sore spirits—not much more than the truth, I promise you—and for 9 weeks I was kept in a fright— I had gone too far to recede, and they might take advantage and dismiss me with a much less sum than I had reckoned on. However Liberty came at last with a liberal provision. I have given up what I could have lived on in the country, but have enough to live here by managem't and scribbling occasionally. I would not go back to my prison for seven years longer for L10000 a year. 7 years after one is 50 is no trifle to give up. Still I am a young Pensioner, and have served but 33 years, very few I assure you retire before 40, 45, or 50 years' service.

You will ask how I bear my freedom. Faith, for some days I was staggered. Could not comprehend the magnitude of my deliverance, was confused, giddy, knew not whether I was on my head or my heel as they say. But those giddy feelings have gone away, and my weather glass stands at a degree or two above

CONTENT

I go about quiet, and have none of that restless hunting after recreation which made holydays formerly uneasy joys. All being holydays, I feel as if I had none, as they do in heaven, where 'tis all red letter days.

I have a kind letter from the Words'wths congratulatory not a little.

It is a damp, I do assure you, amid all my prospects that I can receive none from a quarter upon which I had calculated, almost more than from any, upon receiving congratulations. I had grown to like poor M. more and more. I do not esteem a soul living or not living more warmly than I had grown to esteem and value him. But words are vain. We have none of us to count upon many years. That is the only cure for sad thoughts. If only some died, and the rest were permanent on earth, what a thing a friend's death would be then!

I must take leave, having put off answering [a load] of letters to this morning, and this, alas! is the 1st. Our kindest remembrances to Mrs. Monkhouse and believe us

Yours most Truly, C. LAMB.



LETTER 371

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HORNE

[P.M. May 2, 1825.]

Dear Hone,—I send you a trifle; you have seen my lines, I suppose, in the "London." I cannot tell you how much I like the "St. Chad Wells."

Yours truly

C. LAMB.

P.S. Why did you not stay, or come again, yesterday?

[These words accompany Lamb's contribution, "Remarkable Correspondent," to Hone's Every-Day Book (see Vol. I. of this edition). Lamb was helping Hone in his new venture as much as he was able; and Hone in return dedicated the first volume to him. "St. Chad's Wells" was an article by Hone in the number for March 2.]



LETTER 372

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

[No date. May, 1825.]

Dear W. I write post-hoste to ensure a frank. Thanks for your hearty congratulations. I may now date from the 6th week of my Hegira or Flight from Leadenhall. I have lived so much in it, that a Summer seems already past, and 'tis but early May yet with you and other people. How I look down on the Slaves and drudges of the world! its inhabitants are a vast cotton-web of spin spin spinners. O the carking cares! O the money-grubbers-sempiternal muckworms!

Your Virgil I have lost sight of, but suspect it is in the hands of Sir G. Beaumont. I think that circumstances made me shy of procuring it before. Will you write to him about it? and your commands shall be obeyed to a tittle.

Coleridge has just finishd his prize Essay, which if it get the Prize he'll touch an additional L100 I fancy. His Book too (commentary on Bishop Leighton) is quite finished and penes Taylor and Hessey.

In the London which is just out (1st May) are 2 papers entitled the Superannuated Man, which I wish you to see, and also 1st Apr. a little thing called Barbara S——— a story gleaned from Miss Kelly. The L.M. if you can get it will save my enlargement upon the topic of my manumission.

I must scribble to make up my hiatus crumenae, for there are so many ways, pious and profligate, of getting rid of money in this vast city and suburbs that I shall miss my third: but couragio. I despair not. Your kind hint of the Cottage was well thrown out. An anchorage for age and school of economy when necessity comes. But without this latter I have an unconquerable terror of changing Place. It does not agree with us. I say it from conviction. Else—I do sometimes ruralize in fancy.

Some d———d people are come in and I must finish abruptly. By d———d, I only mean deuced. 'Tis these suitors of Penelope that make it necessary to authorise a little for gin and mutton and such trifles.

Excuse my abortive scribble.

Yours not in more haste than heart C.L.

Love and recollects to all the Wms. Doras, Maries round your Wrekin.

Mary is capitally well.

Do write to Sir G.B. for I am shyish of applying to him.

[Coleridge had been appointed to one of the ten Royal Associateships of the newly chartered Royal Society of Literature, thus becoming entitled to an annuity of 100 guineas. An essay was expected from each associate. Coleridge wrote on the Prometheus of Aeschylus, and read it on May 18. His book was Aids to Reflection. See note on page 734.

"I shall miss my thirds." Lamb's pension was two-thirds of his stipend.

"Some d——-d people." A hint for Lamb's Popular Fallacy on Home, soon to be written.

"Round your Wrekin." Lamb repeats this phrase twice in the next few months. He got it from the Dedication to Farquhar's play "The Recruiting Officer"—"To all friends round the Wrekin."

Here perhaps should come a letter to Mrs. Norris printed in the Boston Bibliophile edition containing some very interesting comic verses on England somewhat in the manner of Don Juan—

I like the weather when it's not too rainy, That is, I like two months of every year,

and so on.]



LETTER 373

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES CHAMBERS

[Undated. ? May, 1825.]

With regard to a John-dory, which you desire to be particularly informed about, I honour the fish, but it is rather on account of Quin who patronised it, and whose taste (of a dead man) I had as lieve go by as anybody's (Apicius and Heliogabalus excepted—this latter started nightingales' tongues and peacocks' brains as a garnish).

Else in itself, and trusting to my own poor single judgment, it hath not that moist mellow oleaginous gliding smooth descent from the tongue to the palate, thence to the stomach, &c., that your Brighton Turbot hath, which I take to be the most friendly and familiar flavor of any that swims—most genial and at home to the palate.

Nor has it on the other hand that fine falling off flakiness, that oleaginous peeling off (as it were, like a sea onion), which endears your cod's head & shoulders to some appetites; that manly firmness, combined with a sort of womanish coming-in-pieces, which the same cod's head & shoulders hath, where the whole is easily separable, pliant to a knife or a spoon, but each individual flake presents a pleasing resistance to the opposed tooth. You understand me—these delicate subjects are necessarily obscure.

But it has a third flavor of its own, perfectly distinct from Cod or Turbot, which it must be owned may to some not injudicious palates render it acceptable—but to my unpractised tooth it presented rather a crude river-fish-flavor, like your Pike or Carp, and perhaps like them should have been tamed & corrected by some laborious & well chosen sauce. Still I always suspect a fish which requires so much of artificial settings-off. Your choicest relishes (like nature's loveliness) need not the foreign aid of ornament, but are when unadorned (that is, with nothing but a little plain anchovy & a squeeze of lemon) then adorned the most. However, I shall go to Brighton again next Summer, and shall have an opportunity of correcting my judgment, if it is not sufficiently informed. I can only say that when Nature was pleased to make the John Dory so notoriously deficient in outward graces (as to be sure he is the very Rhinoceros of fishes, the ugliest dog that swims, except perhaps the Sea Satyr, which I never saw, but which they say is terrible), when she formed him with so few external advantages, she might have bestowed a more elaborate finish in his parts internal, & have given him a relish, a sapor, to recommend him, as she made Pope a Poet to make up for making him crooked.

I am sorry to find that you have got a knack of saying things which are not true to shew your wit. If I had no wit but what I must shew at the expence of my virtue or my modesty, I had as lieve be as stupid as * * * at the Tea Warehouse. Depend upon it, my dear Chambers, that an ounce of integrity at our death-bed will stand us in more avail than all the wit of Congreve or... For instance, you tell me a fine story about Truss, and his playing at Leamington, which I know to be false, because I have advice from Derby that he was whipt through the Town on that very day you say he appeared in some character or other, for robbing an old woman at church of a seal ring. And Dr. Parr has been two months dead. So it won't do to scatter these untrue stories about among people that know any thing. Besides, your forte is not invention. It is judgment, particularly shown in your choice of dishes. We seem in that instance born under one star. I like you for liking hare. I esteem you for disrelishing minced veal. Liking is too cold a word.—I love you for your noble attachment to the fat unctuous juices of deer's flesh & the green unspeakable of turtle. I honour you for your endeavours to esteem and approve of my favorite, which I ventured to recommend to you as a substitute for hare, bullock's heart, and I am not offended that you cannot taste it with my palate. A true son of Epicurus should reserve one taste peculiar to himself. For a long time I kept the secret about the exceeding deliciousness of the marrow of boiled knuckle of veal, till my tongue weakly ran riot in its praises, and now it is prostitute & common.—But I have made one discovery which I will not impart till my dying scene is over, perhaps it will be my last mouthful in this world: delicious thought, enough to sweeten (or rather make savoury) the hour of death. It is a little square bit about this size in or near the knuckle bone of a fried joint of... fat I can't call it nor lean



neither altogether, it is that beautiful compound, which Nature must have made in Paradise Park venison, before she separated the two substances, the dry & the oleaginous, to punish sinful mankind; Adam ate them entire & inseparate, and this little taste of Eden in the knuckle bone of a fried... seems the only relique of a Paradisaical state. When I die, an exact description of its topography shall be left in a cupboard with a key, inscribed on which these words, "C. Lamb dying imparts this to C. Chambers as the only worthy depository of such a secret." You'll drop a tear....

[Charles Chambers was the brother of John Chambers (see above). He had been at Christ's Hospital with Lamb and subsequently became a surgeon in the Navy. He retired to Leamington and practised there until his death, somewhen about 1857, says Mr. Hazlitt. He seems to have inherited some of the epicure's tastes of his father, the "sensible clergyman in Warwickshire" who, Lamb tells us in "Thoughts on Presents of Game," "used to allow a pound of Epping to every hare."

This letter adds one more to the list of Lamb's gustatory raptures, and it is remarkable as being his only eulogy of fish. Mr. Hazlitt says that the date September 1, 1817, has been added by another hand; but if the remark about Dr. Parr is true (he died March 6, 1825) the time is as I have stated. Fortunately the date in this particular case is unimportant. Mr. Hazlitt suggests that the stupid person in the Tea Warehouse was Bye, whom we met recently.

Of Truss we know nothing. The name may be a misreading of Twiss (Horace Twiss, 1787-1849, politician, buffoon, and Mrs. Siddons' nephew), who was quite a likely person to be lied about in joke at that time.

Here should come a note to Allsop dated May 29, 1825, changing an appointment: "I am as mad as the devil." Given in the Boston Bibliophile edition.]



LETTER 374

CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE

[? June, 1825.]

My dear Coleridge,—With pain and grief, I must entreat you to excuse us on Thursday. My head, though externally correct, has had a severe concussion in my long illness, and the very idea of an engagement hanging over for a day or two, forbids my rest; and I get up miserable. I am not well enough for company. I do assure you, no other thing prevents my coming. I expect Field and his brothers this or to-morrow evening, and it worries me to death that I am not ostensibly ill enough to put 'em off. I will get better, when I shall hope to see your nephew. He will come again. Mary joins in best love to the Gillmans. Do, I earnestly entreat you, excuse me. I assure you, again, that I am not fit to go out yet.

Yours (though shattered), C. LAMB. Tuesday.

[This letter has previously been dated 1829, but I think wrongly. Lamb had no long illness then, and Field was then in Gibraltar, where he was Chief-Justice. Lamb's long illness was in 1825, when Coleridge's Thursday evenings at Highgate were regular. Coleridge's nephew may have been one of several. I fancy it was the Rev. Edward Coleridge. Henry Nelson Coleridge had already left, I think, for the West Indies.]



LETTER 375

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY COLBURN (?)

[Dated at end: June 14 (? 1825).]

Dear Sir,

I am quite ashamed, after your kind letter, of having expressed any disappointment about my remuneration. It is quite equivalent to the value of any thing I have yet sent you. I had Twenty Guineas a sheet from the London; and what I did for them was more worth that sum, than any thing, I am afraid, I can now produce, would be worth the lesser sum. I used up all my best thoughts in that publication, and I do not like to go on writing worse & worse, & feeling that I do so. I want to try something else. However, if any subject turns up, which I think will do your Magazine no discredit, you shall have it at your price, or something between that and my old price. I prefer writing to seeing you just now, for after such a letter as I have received from you, in truth I am ashamed to see you. We will never mention the thing again.

Your obliged friend & Serv't

C. LAMB.

June 14.

[In the absence of any wrapper I have assumed this note to be addressed to Colburn, the publisher of the New Monthly Magazine. Lamb's first contribution to that periodical was "The Illustrious Defunct" (see Vol. I. of this edition) in January, 1825. A year later he began the "Popular Fallacies," and continued regularly for some months.]



LETTER 376

CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE

[P.M. July 2, 1825.]

Dear C.—We are going off to Enfield, to Allsop's, for a day or 2, with some intention of succeeding them in their lodging for a time, for this damn'd nervous Fever (vide Lond. Mag. for July) indisposes me for seeing any friends, and never any poor devil was so befriended as I am. Do you know any poor solitary human that wants that cordial to life a—true friend? I can spare him twenty, he shall have 'em good cheap. I have gallipots of 'em—genuine balm of cares—a going—a going—a going. Little plagues plague me a 1000 times more than ever. I am like a disembodied soul—in this my eternity. I feel every thing entirely, all in all and all in etc. This price I pay for liberty, but am richly content to pay it. The Odes are 4-5ths done by Hood, a silentish young man you met at Islinton one day, an invalid. The rest are Reynolds's, whose sister H. has recently married. I have not had a broken finger in them.

They are hearty good-natured things, and I would put my name to 'em chearfully, if I could as honestly. I complimented them in a Newspaper, with an abatement for those puns you laud so. They are generally an excess. A Pun is a thing of too much consequence to be thrown in as a make-weight. You shall read one of the addresses over, and miss the puns, and it shall be quite as good and better than when you discover 'em. A Pun is a Noble Thing per se: O never lug it in as an accessory. A Pun is a sole object for reflection (vide my aids to that recessment from a savage state)—it is entire, it fills the mind: it is perfect as a Sonnet, better. It limps asham'd in the train and retinue of Humour: it knows it should have an establishment of its own. The one, for instance, I made the other day, I forget what it was.

Hood will be gratify'd, as much as I am, by your mistake. I liked 'Grimaldi' the best; it is true painting, of abstract Clownery, and that precious concrete of a Clown: and the rich succession of images, and words almost such, in the first half of the Mag. Ignotum. Your picture of the Camel, that would not or could not thread your nice needle-eye of Subtilisms, was confirm'd by Elton, who perfectly appreciated his abrupt departure. Elton borrowed the "Aids" from Hessey (by the way what is your Enigma about Cupid? I am Cytherea's son, if I understand a tittle of it), and returnd it next day saying that 20 years ago, when he was pure, he thought as you do now, but that he now thinks as you did 20 years ago. But E. seems a very honest fellow. Hood has just come in; his sick eyes sparkled into health when he read your approbation. They had meditated a copy for you, but postponed it till a neater 2d Edition, which is at hand.

Have you heard the Creature at the Opera House—Signor Non-vir sed VELUTI Vir?

Like Orpheus, he is said to draw storks &c, after him. A picked raisin for a sweet banquet of sounds; but I affect not these exotics. Nos DURUM genus, as mellifluous Ovid hath it.

Fanny Holcroft is just come in, with her paternal severity of aspect. She has frozen a bright thought which should have follow'd. She makes us marble, with too little conceiving. Twas respecting the Signor, whom I honour on this side idolatry. Well, more of this anon.

We are setting out to walk to Enfield after our Beans and Bacon, which are just smoking.

Kindest remembrances to the G.'s ever.

From Islinton,

2d day, 3d month of my Hegira or Flight from Leadenhall.

C.L. Olim Clericus.

["To Allsop's." Allsop says in his Letters... of Coleridge that he and the Lambs were housemates for a long time.

"Vide Lond. Mag. for July"—where the Elia essay "The Convalescent" was printed.

"The Odes"—Odes and Addresses to Great People, 1825. Coleridge after reading the book had written to Lamb as follows (the letter is printed by Hood):—

MY DEAR CHARLES,—This afternoon, a little, thin, mean-looking sort of a foolscap, sub-octavo of poems, printed on very dingy outsides, lay on the table, which the cover informed me was circulating in our book-club, so very Grub-Streetish in all its appearance, internal as well as external, that I cannot explain by what accident of impulse (assuredly there was no motive in play) I came to look into it. Least of all, the title, Odes and Addresses to Great Men, which connected itself in my head with Rejected Addresses, and all the Smith and Theodore Hook squad. But, my dear Charles, it was certainly written by you, or under you, or una eum you. I know none of your frequent visitors capacious and assimilative enough of your converse to have reproduced you so honestly, supposing you had left yourself in pledge in his lock-up house. Gillman, to whom I read the spirited parody on the introduction to Peter Bell, the Ode to the Great Unknown, and to Mrs. Fry; he speaks doubtfully of Reynolds and Hood. But here come Irving and Basil Montagu.

Thursday night 10 o'clock.—No! Charles, it is you. I have read them over again, and I understand why you have anon'd the book. The puns are nine in ten good—many excellent —the Newgatory transcendent. And then the exemplum sine exemplo of a volume of personalities, and contemporaneities, without a single line that could inflict the infinitesimal of an unpleasance on any man in his senses: saving and except perhaps in the envy-addled brain of the despiser of your Lays. If not a triumph over him, it is at least an ovation. Then, moreover, and besides, to speak with becoming modesty, excepting my own self, who is there but you who can write the musical lines and stanzas that are intermixed?

Here, Gillman, come up to my Garret, and driven back by the guardian spirits of four huge flower-holders of omnigenous roses and honeysuckles—(Lord have mercy on his hysterical olfactories! What will he do in Paradise? I must have a pair or two of nostril-plugs, or nose-goggles laid in his coffin)—stands at the door, reading that to M'Adam, and the washer-woman's letter, and he admits the facts. You are found in the manner, as the lawyers say! so, Mr. Charles! hang yourself up, and send me a line, by way of token and acknowledgment. My dear love to Mary. God bless you and your Unshamabramizer.

S.T. COLERIDGE.

Reynolds was John Hamilton Reynolds. According to a marked copy in the possession of Mr. Buxton Forman, Reynolds wrote only the odes to Mr. M'Adam, Mr. Dymoke, Sylvanus Urban, Elliston and the Dean and Chapter of Westminster.

The newspaper in which Lamb complimented the book was the New Times, for April 12, 1825. See Vol. I. of the present edition for the review, where the remarks on puns are repeated. The "Mag. Ignotum" was the ode to the Great Unknown, the author of the Scotch novels. In the same paper on January 8, 1825, Lamb had written an essay called "Many Friends" (see Vol. I.) a little in the manner of this first paragraph.

"Your picture of the Camel." Probably the story of a caller told by Coleridge to Lamb in a letter.

"Your Enigma about Cupid." Possibly referring to the following passage in the Aids to Reflection, 1825, pages 277-278:—

From the remote East turn to the mythology of Minor Asia, to the Descendants of Javan who dwelt in the tents of Shem, and possessed the Isles. Here again, and in the usual form of an historic Solution, we find the same Fact, and as characteristic of the Human Race, stated in that earliest and most venerable Mythus (or symbolic Parable) of Prometheus—that truly wonderful Fable, in which the characters of the rebellious Spirit and of the Divine Friend of Mankind ([Greek: Theos philanthropos]) are united in the same Person: and thus in the most striking manner noting the forced amalgamation of the Patriarchal Tradition with the incongruous Scheme of Pantheism. This and the connected tale of Io, which is but the sequel of the Prometheus, stand alone in the Greek Mythology, in which elsewhere both Gods and Men are mere Powers and Products of Nature. And most noticeable it is, that soon after the promulgation and spread of the Gospel had awakened the moral sense, and had opened the eyes even of its wiser Enemies to the necessity of providing some solution of this great problem of the Moral World, the beautiful Parable of Cupid and Psyche was brought forward as a rival FALL OF MAN: and the fact of a moral corruption connatural with the human race was again recognized. In the assertion of ORIGINAL SIN the Greek Mythology rose and set.

"Have you heard the Creature?"—Giovanni Battista Velluti (1781-1861), an Italian soprano singer who first appeared in England on June 30, 1825, in Meyerbeer's "Il Crociato in Egitto." He received L2,500 for five months' salary.]



LETTER 377

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. July 2, 1825.]

My dear B.B.—My nervous attack has so unfitted me, that I have not courage to sit down to a Letter. My poor pittance in the London you will see is drawn from my sickness. Your Book is very acceptable to me, because most of it [is] new to me, but your Book itself we cannot thank you for more sincerely than for the introduction you favoured us with to Anne Knight. Now cannot I write Mrs. Anne Knight for the life of me. She is a very pleas—, but I won't write all we have said of her so often to ourselves, because I suspect you would read it to her. Only give my sister's and my kindest rememb'ces to her, and how glad we are we can say that word. If ever she come to Southwark again I count upon another pleasant BRIDGE walk with her. Tell her, I got home, time for a rubber; but poor Tryphena will not understand that phrase of the worldlings.

I am hardly able to appreciate your volume now. But I liked the dedicat'n much, and the apology for your bald burying grounds. To Shelly, but that is not new. To the young Vesper-singer, Great Bealing's, Playford, and what not?

If there be a cavil it is that the topics of religious consolation, however beautiful, are repeated till a sort of triteness attends them. It seems as if you were for ever losing friends' children by death, and reminding their parents of the Resurrection. Do children die so often, and so good, in your parts? The topic, taken from the considerat'n that they are snatch'd away from possible vanities, seems hardly sound; for to an omniscient eye their conditional failings must be one with their actual; but I am too unwell for Theology. Such as I am, I am yours and A.K.'s truly

C. LAMB.

["My poor pittance"-"The Convalescent."

"Your Book"-Barton's Poems, 4th edition, 1825. The dedication was to Barton's sister, Maria Hack.

"Anne Knight." A Quaker lady, who kept a school at Woodbridge.]



LETTER 378

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN AITKEN

Colebrooke Cottage, Islington, July 5, 1825.

DEAR Sir,—With thanks for your last No. of the Cabinet— as I cannot arrange with a London publisher to reprint "Rosamund Gray" as a book, it will be at your service to admit into the Cabinet as soon as you please. Your h'ble serv't, CH's LAMB.

EMMA, eldest of your name, Meekly trusting in her God Midst the red-hot plough-shares trod, And unscorch'd preserved her fame. By that test if you were tried, Ugly names might be defied; Though devouring fire's a glutton, Through the trial you might go 'On the light fantastic toe,' Nor for plough-shares care a BUTTON.

[Aitken was an Edinburgh bookseller who edited The Cabinet; or, The Selected Beauties of Literature, 1824, 1825 and 1831. The particular interest of the letter is that it shows Lamb to have wanted to publish Rosamund Gray a third time in his life. Hitherto we had only his statement that Hessey said that the world would not bear it. Aitken printed the story in The Cabinet for 1831. Previously he had printed "Dream Children" and "The Inconveniences of being Hanged."

I have been told (but have had no opportunity of verifying the statement) that the Buttons, for one of whom the appended acrostic was written, were cousins of the Lambs.

Here should come an unpublished letter to Miss Kelly thanking her for tickets and saying that Liston is to produce Lamb's farce "The Pawnbroker's Daughter," which "will take."

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Hone, dated Enfield, July 25, 1825. Lamb had written some quatrains to the editor of the Every-Day Book, which were printed in the London Magazine for May, 1825. Hone copied them into his periodical, accompanied by a reply. Lamb began:—

I like you, and your book, ingenuous Hone!

Hone's reply contained the sentiment:—

I am "ingenuous": it is all I can Pretend to; it is all I wish to be.

See the Every-Day Book, Vol. I., July 9. Hone at this time was occupying Lamb's house at Colebrooke Row, while the Lambs were staying at the Allsops' lodgings at Enfield.

Lamb again refers to "The Pawnbroker's Daughter." He says it is at the theatre now and Harley is there too. This would be John Pritt Harley, the actor. The play, as it happened, was never acted.

Here should come three notes to Thomas Allsop in July and August, 1825, one of which damns the afternoon sun. Given in the Boston Bibliophile edition.]



LETTER 379

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. August 10, 1825.]

We shall be soon again at Colebrook.

Dear B.B.—You must excuse my not writing before, when I tell you we are on a visit at Enfield, where I do not feel it natural to sit down to a Letter. It is at all times an exertion. I had rather talk with you, and Ann Knight, quietly at Colebrook Lodge, over the matter of your last. You mistake me when you express misgivings about my relishing a series of scriptural poems. I wrote confusedly. What I meant to say was, that one or two consolatory poems on deaths would have had a more condensed effect than many. Scriptural— devotional topics—admit of infinite variety. So far from poetry tiring me because religious, I can read, and I say it seriously, the homely old version of the Psalms in our Prayer-books for an hour or two together sometimes without sense of weariness.

I did not express myself clearly about what I think a false topic insisted on so frequently in consolatory addresses on the death of Infants. I know something like it is in Scripture, but I think humanly spoken. It is a natural thought, a sweet fallacy to the Survivors—but still a fallacy. If it stands on the doctrine of this being a probationary state, it is liable to this dilemma. Omniscience, to whom possibility must be clear as act, must know of the child, what it would hereafter turn out: if good, then the topic is false to say it is secured from falling into future wilfulness, vice, &c. If bad, I do not see how its exemption from certain future overt acts by being snatched away at all tells in its favor. You stop the arm of a murderer, or arrest the finger of a pickpurse, but is not the guilt incurred as much by the intent as if never so much acted? Why children are hurried off, and old reprobates of a hundred left, whose trial humanly we may think was complete at fifty, is among the obscurities of providence. The very notion of a state of probation has darkness in it. The all-knower has no need of satisfying his eyes by seeing what we will do, when he knows before what we will do. Methinks we might be condemn'd before commission. In these things we grope and flounder, and if we can pick up a little human comfort that the child taken is snatch'd from vice (no great compliment to it, by the bye), let us take it. And as to where an untried child goes, whether to join the assembly of its elders who have borne the heat of the day—fire-purified martyrs, and torment-sifted confessors—what know we? We promise heaven methinks too cheaply, and assign large revenues to minors, incompetent to manage them. Epitaphs run upon this topic of consolation, till the very frequency induces a cheapness. Tickets for admission into Paradise are sculptured out at a penny a letter, twopence a syllable, &c. It is all a mystery; and the more I try to express my meaning (having none that is clear) the more I flounder. Finally, write what your own conscience, which to you is the unerring judge, seems best, and be careless about the whimsies of such a half-baked notionist as I am. We are here in a most pleasant country, full of walks, and idle to our hearts desire. Taylor has dropt the London. It was indeed a dead weight. It has got in the Slough of Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, and stand like Xtian with light and merry shoulders. It had got silly, indecorous, pert, and every thing that is bad. Both our kind remembrances to Mrs. K. and yourself, and stranger's-greeting to Lucy—is it Lucy or Ruth?—that gathers wise sayings in a Book. C. LAMB.