[The London Magazine passed into the hands of Henry Southern in September, 1825. Lamb's last article for it was in the August number—"Imperfect Dramatic Illusion," reprinted in the Last Essays of Elia as "Stage Illusion."]



LETTER 380

CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY

August 10, 1825.

Dear Southey,—You'll know who this letter comes from by opening slap-dash upon the text, as in the good old times. I never could come into the custom of envelopes; 'tis a modern foppery; the Plinian correspondence gives no hint of such. In singleness of sheet and meaning then I thank you for your little book. I am ashamed to add a codicil of thanks for your "Book of the Church." I scarce feel competent to give an opinion of the latter; I have not reading enough of that kind to venture at it. I can only say the fact, that I have read it with attention and interest. Being, as you know, not quite a Churchman, I felt a jealousy at the Church taking to herself the whole deserts of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant, from Druid extirpation downwards. I call all good Christians the Church, Capillarians and all. But I am in too light a humour to touch these matters. May all our churches flourish! Two things staggered me in the poem (and one of them staggered both of us). I cannot away with a beautiful series of verses, as I protest they are, commencing "Jenner." 'Tis like a choice banquet opened with a pill or an electuary— physic stuff. T'other is, we cannot make out how Edith should be no more than ten years old. By'r Lady, we had taken her to be some sixteen or upwards. We suppose you have only chosen the round number for the metre. Or poem and dedication may be both older than they pretend to; but then some hint might have been given; for, as it stands, it may only serve some day to puzzle the parish reckoning. But without inquiring further (for 'tis ungracious to look into a lady's years), the dedication is eminently pleasing and tender, and we wish Edith May Southey joy of it. Something, too, struck us as if we had heard of the death of John May. A John May's death was a few years since in the papers. We think the tale one of the quietest, prettiest things we have seen. You have been temperate in the use of localities, which generally spoil poems laid in exotic regions. You mostly cannot stir out (in such things) for humming-birds and fire-flies. A tree is a Magnolia, &c.—Can I but like the truly Catholic spirit? "Blame as thou mayest the Papist's erring creed"—which and other passages brought me back to the old Anthology days and the admonitory lesson to "Dear George" on the "The Vesper Bell," a little poem which retains its first hold upon me strangely.

The compliment to the translatress is daintily conceived. Nothing is choicer in that sort of writing than to bring in some remote, impossible parallel,—as between a great empress and the inobtrusive quiet soul who digged her noiseless way so perseveringly through that rugged Paraguay mine. How she Dobrizhoffered it all out, it puzzles my slender Latinity to conjecture. Why do you seem to sanction Lander's unfeeling allegorising away of honest Quixote! He may as well say Strap is meant to symbolise the Scottish nation before the Union, and Random since that act of dubious issue; or that Partridge means the Mystical Man, and Lady Bellaston typifies the Woman upon Many Waters. Gebir, indeed, may mean the state of the hop markets last month, for anything I know to the contrary. That all Spain overflowed with romancical books (as Madge Newcastle calls them) was no reason that Cervantes should not smile at the matter of them; nor even a reason that, in another mood, he might not multiply them, deeply as he was tinctured with the essence of them. Quixote is the father of gentle ridicule, and at the same time the very depository and treasury of chivalry and highest notions. Marry, when somebody persuaded Cervantes that he meant only fun, and put him upon writing that unfortunate Second Part with the confederacies of that unworthy duke and most contemptible duchess, Cervantes sacrificed his instinct to his understanding.

We got your little book but last night, being at Enfield, to which place we came about a month since, and are having quiet holydays. Mary walks her twelve miles a day some days, and I my twenty on others. 'Tis all holiday with me now, you know. The change works admirably.

For literary news, in my poor way, I have a one-act farce going to be acted at the Haymarket; but when? is the question. 'Tis an extravaganza, and like enough to follow "Mr. H." "The London Magazine" has shifted its publishers once more, and I shall shift myself out of it. It is fallen. My ambition is not at present higher than to write nonsense for the playhouses, to eke out a somewhat contracted income. Tempus erat. There was a time, my dear Cornwallis, when the Muse, &c. But I am now in MacFleckno's predicament,—

"Promised a play, and dwindled to a farce."

Coleridge is better (was, at least, a few weeks since) than he has been for years. His accomplishing his book at last has been a source of vigour to him. We are on a half visit to his friend Allsop, at a Mrs. Leishman's, Enfield, but expect to be at Colebrooke Cottage in a week or so, where, or anywhere, I shall be always most happy to receive tidings from you. G. Dyer is in the height of an uxorious paradise. His honeymoon will not wane till he wax cold. Never was a more happy pair, since Acme and Septimius, and longer. Farewell, with many thanks, dear S. Our loves to all round your Wrekin.

Your old friend, C. LAMB.

[In the letter to Barton of March 20, 1826, Lamb continues or amplifies his remarks on his own letter-writing habits.

"Capillarians." The New English Dictionary gives Lamb's word in this connection as its sole example, meaning without stem.

"The poem"—Southey's Tale of Paraguay, 1825, which begins with an address to Jenner, the physiologist:—

Jenner! for ever shall thy honour'd name,

and is dedicated to Edith May Southey—

Edith! ten years are number'd, since the day.

Edith Southey was born in 1804. The dedication was dated 1814.

John May was Southey's friend and correspondent. It was not he that had died.

"The Vesper Bell"—"The Chapel Bell," which was not in the Annual Anthology, but in Southey's Poems, 1797. Dear George would perhaps be Burnett, who was at Oxford with Southey when the verses were written.

"The compliment to the translatress." Southey took his Tale of Paraguay from Dobrizhoffer's History of the Abipones, which his niece, Sara Coleridge, had translated. Southey remarks in the poem that could Dobrizhoffer have foreseen by whom his words were to be turned into English, he would have been as pleased as when he won the ear of the Empress Queen.

"Landor's ... allegorising." Landor, in the conversation between "Peter Leopold and the President du Paty," makes President du Paty say that Cervantes had deeper purpose than the satirising of knight-errants, Don Quixote standing for the Emperor Charles V. and Sancho Panza symbolising the people. Southey quoted the passage in the Notes to the Proem. Lamb's Elia essay on the "Defect of Imagination" (see Vol. II.) amplifies this criticism of Don Quixote.

"A one-act farce." This was, I imagine, "The Pawnbroker's Daughter," although that is in two acts. It was not, however, acted.

George Dyer had just been married to the widow of a solicitor who lived opposite him in Clifford's Inn.

Here should come three unimportant notes to Hone with reference to the Every-Day Book—adding an invitation to Enfield to be shown "dainty spots."]



LETTER 381

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP

[P.M. Sept. 9, 1825.]

My dear Allsop—We are exceedingly grieved for your loss. When your note came, my sister went to Pall Mall, to find you, and saw Mrs. L. and was a little comforted to find Mrs. A. had returned to Enfield before the distresful event. I am very feeble, can scarce move a pen; got home from Enfield on the Friday, and on Monday follow'g was laid up with a most violent nervous fever second this summer, have had Leeches to my Temples, have not had, nor can not get, a night's sleep. So you will excuse more from Yours truly, C. LAMB.

Islington, 9 Sept.

Our most kind rememb'ces to poor Mrs. Allsop. A line to say how you both are will be most acceptable.

[Allsop's loss was, I imagine, the death of one of his children.]



LETTER 382

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP

[P.M. Sept. 24, 1825.]

My dear Allsop—Come not near this unfortunate roof yet a while. My disease is clearly but slowly going. Field is an excellent attendant. But Mary's anxieties have overturned her. She has her old Miss James with her, without whom I should not feel a support in the world. We keep in separate apartments, and must weather it. Let me know all of your healths. Kindest love to Mrs. Allsop. C. LAMB.

Saturday.

Can you call at Mrs. Burney 26 James Street, and tell her, & that I can see no one here in this state. If Martin return— if well enough, I will meet him some where, don't let him come.

[Field was Henry Field, Barren Field's brother.

Here should come a note from Lamb to Hone, dated September 30, 1825, in which Lamb describes the unhappy state of the house at Colebrooke Row, with himself and his sister both ill.

Here also should come a similar note to William Ayrton. "All this summer almost I have been ill. I have been laid up (the second nervous attack) now six weeks."

On October 18 Lamb sends Hone the first "bit of writing" he has done "these many weeks."]



LETTER 383

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE

[P.M. Oct. 24, 1825.]

I send a scrap. Is it worth postage? My friends are fairly surprised that you should set me down so unequivocally for an ass, as you have done, Page 1358.

HERE HE IS what follows? THE ASS

Call you this friendship?

Mercy! What a dose you have sent me of Burney!—a perfect opening* draught.

*A Pun here is intended.

[This is written on the back of the MS. "In re Squirrels" for Hone's Every-Day Book (see Vol. I. of this edition). Lamb's previous contribution had been "The Ass" which Hone had introduced with a few words.]



LETTER 384

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP

[Dec. 5, 1825.]

Dear A.—You will be glad to hear that we are at home to visitors; not too many or noisy. Some fine day shortly Mary will surprise Mrs. Allsop. The weather is not seasonable for formal engagements.

Yours most ever,

C. LAMB.

Satr'd.

[Here should come a note to Manning at Totteridge, signed Charles and Mary Lamb, and dated December 10, 1825. It indicates that both are well again, and hoping to see Manning at Colebrooke.]



LETTER 385

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER

[No date. ? Dec., 1825.]

Dear O.—I leave it entirely to Mr. Colburn; but if not too late, I think the Proverbs had better have L. signd to them and reserve Elia for Essays more Eliacal. May I trouble you to send my Magazine, not to Norris, but H.C. Robinson Esq. King's bench walks, instead.

Yours truly

C. LAMB.

My friend Hood, a prime genius and hearty fellow, brings this.

[Lamb's "Popular Fallacies" began in the New Monthly Magazine in January, 1826. Henry Colburn was the publisher of that magazine, which had now obtained Lamb's regular services. The nominal editor was Campbell, the poet, who was assisted by Cyrus Redding. Ollier seems to have been a sub-editor.]



LETTER 386

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER

Colebrook Cottage, Colebrook Row, Tuesday [early 1826].

Dear Ollier,—I send you two more proverbs, which will be the last of this batch, unless I send you one more by the post on THURSDAY; none will come after that day; so do not leave any open room in that case. Hood sups with me to-night. Can you come and eat grouse? 'Tis not often I offer at delicacies.

Yours most kindly, C. LAMB.



LETTER 387

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER

January, 1826.

Dear O.,—We lamented your absence last night. The grouse were piquant, the backs incomparable. You must come in to cold mutton and oysters some evening. Name your evening; though I have qualms at the distance. Do you never leave early? My head is very queerish, and indisposed for much company; but we will get Hood, that half Hogarth, to meet you. The scrap I send should come in AFTER the "Rising with the Lark."

Yours truly.

Colburn, I take it, pays postages.

[The scrap was the Fallacy "That we Should Lie Down with the Lamb," which has perhaps the rarest quality of the series.

Here perhaps should come two further notes to Ollier, referring to some articles on Chinese jests by Manning.

Here should come a letter to Mr. Hudson dated February 1, 1826, recommending a nurse for a mental case. Given in the Boston Bibliophile edition.]



LETTER 388

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. February 7, 1826.]

My kind remembrances to your daughter and A.K. always.

Dear B.B.—I got your book not more than five days ago, so am not so negligent as I must have appeared to you with a fortnight's sin upon my shoulders. I tell you with sincerity that I think you have completely succeeded in what you intended to do. What is poetry may be disputed. These are poetry to me at least. They are concise, pithy, and moving. Uniform as they are, and unhistorify'd, I read them thro' at two sittings without one sensation approaching to tedium. I do not know that among your many kind presents of this nature this is not my favourite volume. The language is never lax, and there is a unity of design and feeling, you wrote them with love—to avoid the cox-combical phrase, con amore. I am particularly pleased with the "Spiritual Law," page 34-5. It reminded me of Quarles, and Holy Mr. Herbert, as Izaak Walton calls him: the two best, if not only, of our devotional poets, tho' some prefer Watts, and some Tom Moore.

I am far from well or in my right spirits, and shudder at pen and ink work. I poke out a monthly crudity for Colburn in his magazine, which I call "Popular Fallacies," and periodically crush a proverb or two, setting up my folly against the wisdom of nations. Do you see the "New Monthly"?

One word I must object to in your little book, and it recurs more than once—FADELESS is no genuine compound; loveless is, because love is a noun as well as verb, but what is a fade?—and I do not quite like whipping the Greek drama upon the back of "Genesis," page 8. I do not like praise handed in by disparagement: as I objected to a side censure on Byron, etc., in the lines on Bloomfield: with these poor cavils excepted, your verses are without a flaw. C. LAMB.

[Barton's new book was Devotional Verses: founded on, and illustrative of Select Texts of Scripture, 1826. See the Appendix for "The Spiritual Law."

"Holy Mr. Herbert." Writing to Lady Beaumont in 1826 Coleridge says: "My dear old friend Charles Lamb and I differ widely (and in point of taste and moral feeling this is a rare occurrence) in our estimate and liking of George Herbert's sacred poems. He greatly prefers Quarles—nay, he dislikes Herbert."

Barton whipped the Greek drama on the back of Genesis in the following stanza, referring to Abraham's words before preparing to sacrifice Isaac:—

Brief colloquy, yet more sublime, To every feeling heart, Than all the boast of classic time, Or Drama's proudest art: Far, far beyond the Grecian stage, Or Poesy's most glowing page.

For Lamb's reference to Byron, see above.]



LETTER 389

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER

[P.M. March 16, 1826.]

D'r Ollier if not too late, pray omit the last paragraph in "Actor's Religion," which is clumsy. It will then end with the word Mugletonian. I shall not often trouble you in this manner, but I am suspicious of this article as lame.

C. LAMB.

["The Religion of Actors" was printed in the New Monthly Magazine for April, 1826. The essay ends at "Muggletonian." See Vol. I. of this edition.]



LETTER 390

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. March 20, 1826.]

Dear B.B.—You may know my letters by the paper and the folding. For the former, I live on scraps obtained in charity from an old friend whose stationary is a permanent perquisite; for folding, I shall do it neatly when I learn to tye my neckcloths. I surprise most of my friends by writing to them on ruled paper, as if I had not got past pothooks and hangers. Sealing wax, I have none on my establishment. Wafers of the coarsest bran supply its place. When my Epistles come to be weighed with Pliny's, however superior to the Roman in delicate irony, judicious reflexions, etc., his gilt post will bribe over the judges to him. All the time I was at the E.I.H. I never mended a pen; I now cut 'em to the stumps, marring rather than mending the primitive goose quill. I cannot bear to pay for articles I used to get for nothing. When Adam laid out his first penny upon nonpareils at some stall in Mesopotamos, I think it went hard with him, reflecting upon his old goodly orchard, where he had so many for nothing. When I write to a Great man, at the Court end, he opens with surprise upon a naked note, such as Whitechapel people interchange, with no sweet degrees of envelope: I never inclosed one bit of paper in another, nor understand the rationale of it. Once only I seald with borrow'd wax, to set Walter Scott a wondering, sign'd with the imperial quarterd arms of England, which my friend Field gives in compliment to his descent in the female line from O. Cromwell. It must have set his antiquarian curiosity upon watering. To your questions upon the currency, I refer you to Mr. Robinson's last speech, where, if you can find a solution, I cannot. I think this tho' the best ministry we ever stumbled upon. Gin reduced four shillings in the gallon, wine 2 shillings in the quart. This comes home to men's minds and bosoms. My tirade against visitors was not meant particularly at you or A.K. I scarce know what I meant, for I do not just now feel the grievance. I wanted to make an article. So in another thing I talkd of somebody's insipid wife, without a correspondent object in my head: and a good lady, a friend's wife, whom I really love (don't startle, I mean in a licit way) has looked shyly on me ever since. The blunders of personal application are ludicrous. I send out a character every now and then, on purpose to exercise the ingenuity of my friends. "Popular Fallacies" will go on; that word concluded is an erratum, I suppose, for continued. I do not know how it got stuff'd in there. A little thing without name will also be printed on the Religion of the Actors, but it is out of your way, so I recommend you, with true Author's hypocrisy, to skip it. We are about to sit down to Roast beef, at which we could wish A.K., B.B., and B.B.'s pleasant daughter to be humble partakers. So much for my hint at visitors, which was scarcely calculated for droppers in from Woodbridge. The sky does not drop such larks every day.

My very kindest wishes to you all three, with my sister's best love. C. LAMB.

["Mr. Robinson's last speech." Frederick John Robinson, afterwards Earl of Ripon, then Chancellor of the Exchequer under the Earl of Liverpool. The Government had decided to check the use of paper-money by stopping the issue of notes for less than L5; and Robinson had made a speech on the subject on February 10. The motion was carried, but to some extent was compromised. It was Robinson who, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, found the money for building the new British Museum and purchasing Angerstein's pictures as the beginning of the National Gallery.

"My tirade against visitors"—the Popular Fallacy "That Home is Home," in the New Monthly Magazine for March.

"Somebody's insipid wife." In the Popular Fallacy "That You Must Love Me and Love My Dog," in the February number, Lamb had spoken of Honorius' "vapid wife."

Barton and his daughter visited Lamb at Colebrooke Cottage somewhen about this time. Mrs. FitzGerald, in 1893, wrote out for me her recollections of the day. Lamb, who was alone, opened the door himself. He sent out for a luncheon of oysters. The books on his shelves, Mrs. FitzGerald remembered, retained the price-labels of the stalls where he had bought them. She also remembered a portrait over the fireplace. This would be the Milton. In the Gem for 1831 was a poem by Barton, "To Milton's Portrait in a Friend's Parlour."]



LETTER 391

CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE

March 22nd, 1826.

Dear C.,—We will with great pleasure be with you on Thursday in the next week early. Your finding out my style in your nephew's pleasant book is surprising to me. I want eyes to descry it. You are a little too hard upon his morality, though I confess he has more of Sterne about him than of Sternhold. But he saddens into excellent sense before the conclusion. Your query shall be submitted to Miss Kelly, though it is obvious that the pantomime, when done, will be more easy to decide upon than in proposal. I say, do it by all means. I have Decker's play by me, if you can filch anything out of it. Miss Gray, with her kitten eyes, is an actress, though she shows it not at all, and pupil to the former, whose gestures she mimics in comedy to the disparagement of her own natural manner, which is agreeable. It is funny to see her bridling up her neck, which is native to F.K.; but there is no setting another's manners upon one's shoulders any more than their head. I am glad you esteem Manning, though you see but his husk or shrine. He discloses not, save to select worshippers, and will leave the world without any one hardly but me knowing how stupendous a creature he is. I am perfecting myself in the "Ode to Eton College" against Thursday, that I may not appear unclassic. I have just discovered that it is much better than the "Elegy."

In haste, C.L.

P.S.—I do not know what to say to your latest theory about Nero being 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:—



"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.

Dear D.—I have observed that a Letter is never more acceptable than when received upon a rainy day, especially a rainy Sunday; which moves me to send you somewhat, however short. This will find you sitting after Breakfast, which you will have prolonged as far as you can with consistency to the poor handmaid that has the reversion of the Tea Leaves; making two nibbles of your last morsel of stale roll (you cannot have hot new ones on the Sabbath), and reluctantly coming to an end, because when that is done, what can you do till dinner? You cannot go to the Beach, for the rain is drowning the sea, turning rank Thetis fresh, taking the brine out of Neptune's pickles, while mermaids sit upon rocks with umbrellas, their ivory combs sheathed for spoiling in the wet of waters foreign to them. You cannot go to the library, for it's shut. You are not religious enough to go to church. O it is worth while to cultivate piety to the gods, to have something to fill the heart up on a wet Sunday! You cannot cast accounts, for your ledger is being eaten up with moths in the Ancient Jewry. You cannot play at draughts, for there is none to play with you, and besides there is not a draught board in the house. You cannot go to market, for it closed last night. You cannot look in to the shops, their backs are shut upon you. You cannot read the Bible, for it is not good reading for the sick and the hypochondriacal. You cannot while away an hour with a friend, for you have no friend round that Wrekin. You cannot divert yourself with a stray acquaintance, for you have picked none up. You cannot bear the chiming of Bells, for they invite you to a banquet, where you are no visitant. You cannot cheer yourself with the prospect of a tomorrow's letter, for none come on Mondays. You cannot count those endless vials on the mantlepiece with any hope of making a variation in their numbers. You have counted your spiders: your Bastile is exhausted. You sit and deliberately curse your hard exile from all familiar sights and sounds. Old Ranking poking in his head unexpectedly would just now be as good to you as Grimaldi. Any thing to deliver you from this intolerable weight of Ennui. You are too ill to shake it off: not ill enough to submit to it, and to lie down as a lamb under it. The Tyranny of Sickness is nothing to the Cruelty of Convalescence: 'tis to have Thirty Tyrants for one. That pattering rain drops on your brain. You'll be worse after dinner, for you must dine at one to-day, that Betty may go to afternoon service. She insists upon having her chopped hay. And then when she goes out, who was something to you, something to speak to—what an interminable afternoon you'll have to go thro'. You can't break yourself from your locality: you cannot say "Tomorrow morning I set off for Banstead, by God": for you are book'd for Wednesday. Foreseeing this, I thought a cheerful letter would come in opportunely. If any of the little topics for mirth I have thought upon should serve you in this utter extinguishment of sunshine, to make you a little merry, I shall have had my ends. I love to make things comfortable. [Here is an erasure.] This, which is scratch'd out was the most material thing I had to say, but on maturer thoughts I defer it.

P.S.—We are just sitting down to dinner with a pleasant party, Coleridge, Reynolds the dramatist, and Sam Bloxam: to-morrow (that is, today), Liston, and Wyat of the Wells, dine with us. May this find you as jolly and freakish as we mean to be.

C. LAMB.

[Addressed to "T. Dibdin Esq're. No. 4 Meadow Cottages, Hastings, Sussex."

"You have counted your spiders." Referring, I suppose, to Paul Pellisson-Fontanier, the academician, and a famous prisoner in the Bastille, who trained a spider to eat flies from his hand.

"Grimaldi"—Joseph Grimaldi, the clown. Ranking was one of Dibdin's employers.

"A pleasant party." Reynolds, the dramatist, would be Frederic Reynolds (1764-1841); Bloxam we have just met; and Wyat of the Wells was a comic singer and utility actor at Sadler's Wells.

Canon Ainger remarks that as a matter of fact Dibdin was a religious youth.]



LETTER 402

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. September 26, 1826.]

Dear B.B.—I don't know why I have delay'd so long writing. 'Twas a fault. The under current of excuse to my mind was that I had heard of the Vessel in which Mitford's jars were to come; that it had been obliged to put into Batavia to refit (which accounts for its delay) but was daily expectated. Days are past, and it comes not, and the mermaids may be drinking their Tea out of his China for ought I know; but let's hope not. In the meantime I have paid L28, etc., for the freight and prime cost, (which I a little expected he would have settled in London.) But do not mention it. I was enabled to do it by a receipt of L30 from Colburn, with whom however I have done. I should else have run short. For I just make ends meet. We will wait the arrival of the Trinkets, and to ascertain their full expence, and then bring in the bill. (Don't mention it, for I daresay 'twas mere thoughtlessness.)

I am sorry you and yours have any plagues about dross matters. I have been sadly puzzled at the defalcation of more than one third of my income, out of which when entire I saved nothing. But cropping off wine, old books, &c. and in short all that can be call'd pocket money, I hope to be able to go on at the Cottage. Remember, I beg you not to say anything to Mitford, for if he be honest it will vex him: if not, which I as little expect as that you should [not] be, I have a hank still upon the JARS.

Colburn had something of mine in last month, which he has had in hand these 7 months, and had lost, or cou'dnt find room for: I was used to different treatment in the London, and have forsworn Periodicals.

I am going thro' a course of reading at the Museum: the Garrick plays, out of part of which I formed my Specimens: I have Two Thousand to go thro'; and in a few weeks have despatch'd the tythe of 'em. It is a sort of Office to me; hours, 10 to 4, the same. It does me good. Man must have regular occupation, that has been used to it. So A.K. keeps a School! She teaches nothing wrong, I'll answer for't. I have a Dutch print of a Schoolmistress; little old-fashioned Fleminglings, with only one face among them. She a Princess of Schoolmistress, wielding a rod for form more than use; the scene an old monastic chapel, with a Madonna over her head, looking just as serious, as thoughtful, as pure, as gentle, as herself. Tis a type of thy friend.

Will you pardon my neglect? Mind, again I say, don't shew this to M.; let me wait a little longer to know the event of his Luxuries. (I am sure he is a good fellow, tho' I made a serious Yorkshire Lad, who met him, stare when I said he was a Clergyman. He is a pleasant Layman spoiled.) Heaven send him his jars uncrack'd, and me my—— Yours with kindest wishes to your daughter and friend, in which Mary joins

C.L.

["I saved nothing." Lamb, however, according to Procter, left L2000 at his death eight years later. He must have saved L200 a year from his pension of L441, living at the rate of L241 per annum, plus small earnings, for the rest of his life, and investing the L200 at 5 per cent, compound interest.

"Colburn had something of mine." The Popular Fallacy "That a Deformed Person is a Lord," not included by Lamb with the others when he reprinted them. Printed in Vol. I. of this edition.

"Reading at the Museum." Lamb had begun to visit the Museum every day to collect extracts from the Garrick plays for Hone's Table Book, 1827.

"A.K."—Anne Knight again.

The pleasant Yorkshire lad whom Mitford's secular air surprised was probably Moxon.

Here might come a business letter, from Lamb to Barton, preserved in the British Museum, relating to Mitford's jars.]



LETTER 403

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[No date. ? Sept., 1826.]

I have had much trouble to find Field to-day. No matter. He was packing up for out of town. He has writ a handsomest letter, which you will transmit to Murry with your proof-sheets. Seal it.—

Yours C. L——.

Mrs. Hood will drink tea with us on Thursday at 1/2 past 5 at Latest.

N.B. I have lost my Museum reading today: a day with Titus: owing to your dam'd bisness.—I am the last to reproach anybody. I scorn it.

If you shall have the whole book ready soon, it will be best for Murry to see.

[I am not clear as to what proof-sheets of Moxon's Lamb refers. His second book, Christmas, 1829, was issued through Hurst, Chance & Co.

Barton Field and John Murray were friends.

"A day with Titus." Can this (a friend suggests) have any connection with the phrase Amici! diem perdidi? There is no Titus play among the Garrick Extracts.]



LETTER 404

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[No postmark or date. Soon after preceding letter to Barton. 1826.]

Dear B.B.—the Busy Bee, as Hood after Dr. Watts apostrophises thee, and well dost thou deserve it for thy labors in the Muses' gardens, wandering over parterres of Think-on-me's and Forget-me-nots, to a total impossibility of forgetting thee,—thy letter was acceptable, thy scruples may be dismissed, thou art Rectus in Curia, not a word more to be said, Verbum Sapienti and so forth, the matter is decided with a white stone, Classically, mark me, and the apparitions vanishd which haunted me, only the Cramp, Caliban's distemper, clawing me in the calvish part of my nature, makes me ever and anon roar Bullishly, squeak cowardishly, and limp cripple-ishly. Do I write quakerly and simply, 'tis my most Master Mathew-like intention to do it. See Ben Jonson.—I think you told me your acquaint'ce with the Drama was confin'd to Shakspeare and Miss Bailly: some read only Milton and Croly. The gap is as from an ananas to a Turnip. I have fighting in my head the plots characters situations and sentiments of 400 old Plays (bran new to me) which I have been digesting at the Museum, and my appetite sharpens to twice as many more, which I mean to course over this winter. I can scarce avoid Dialogue fashion in this letter. I soliloquise my meditations, and habitually speak dramatic blank verse without meaning it. Do you see Mitford? he will tell you something of my labors. Tell him I am sorry to have mist seeing him, to have talk'd over those OLD TREASURES. I am still more sorry for his missing Pots. But I shall be sure of the earliest intelligence of the Lost Tribes. His Sacred Specimens are a thankful addition to my shelves. Marry, I could wish he had been more careful of corrigenda. I have discover'd certain which have slipt his Errata. I put 'em in the next page, as perhaps thou canst transmit them to him. For what purpose, but to grieve him (which yet I should be sorry to do), but then it shews my learning, and the excuse is complimentary, as it implies their correction in a future Edition. His own things in the book are magnificent, and as an old Christ's Hospitaller I was particularly refreshd with his eulogy on our Edward. Many of the choice excerpta were new to me. Old Christmas is a coming, to the confusion of Puritans, Muggletonians, Anabaptists, Quakers, and that Unwassailing Crew. He cometh not with his wonted gait, he is shrunk 9 inches in the girth, but is yet a Lusty fellow. Hood's book is mighty clever, and went off 600 copies the 1st day. Sion's Songs do not disperse so quickly. The next leaf is for Rev'd J.M. In this ADIEU thine briefly in a tall friendship C. LAMB.

[Barton's letter, to which this is an answer, not being preserved, we do not know what his scruples were. B.B. was a great contributor to annuals.

"With a white stone." In trials at law a white stone was cast as a vote for acquittal, a black stone for condemnation (see Ovid, Metamorphoses, 15, 41).

"Master Mathew"—in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in His Humour."

"Croly"—the Rev. George Croly (1780-1860), of the Literary Gazette, author of The Angel of the World and other pretentious poems.

"Mitford's Sacred Specimens"—Sacred Specimens Selected from the Early English Poets, 1827. The last poem, by Mitford himself, was "Lines Written under the Portrait of Edward VI."

"Hood's book"—Whims and Oddities, second series, 1827.

Here should come a note to Allsop stating that Lamb is "near killed with Christmassing."]



LETTER 405

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

Colebrooke Row, Islington,

Saturday, 20th Jan., 1827.

Dear Robinson,—I called upon you this morning, and found that you were gone to visit a dying friend. I had been upon a like errand. Poor Norris has been lying dying for now almost a week, such is the penalty we pay for having enjoyed a strong constitution! Whether he knew me or not, I know not, or whether he saw me through his poor glazed eyes; but the group I saw about him I shall not forget. Upon the bed, or about it, were assembled his wife and two daughters, and poor deaf Richard, his son, looking doubly stupified. There they were, and seemed to have been sitting all the week. I could only reach out a hand to Mrs. Norris. Speaking was impossible in that mute chamber. By this time I hope it is all over with him. In him I have a loss the world cannot make up. He was my friend and my father's friend all the life I can remember. I seem to have made foolish friendships ever since. Those are friendships which outlive a second generation. Old as I am waxing, in his eyes I was still the child he first knew me. To the last he called me Charley. I have none to call me Charley now. He was the last link that bound me to the Temple. You are but of yesterday. In him seem to have died the old plainness of manners and singleness of heart. Letters he knew nothing of, nor did his reading extend beyond the pages of the "Gentleman's Magazine." Yet there was a pride of literature about him from being amongst books (he was librarian), and from some scraps of doubtful Latin which he had picked up in his office of entering students, that gave him very diverting airs of pedantry. Can I forget the erudite look with which, when he had been in vain trying to make out a black-letter text of Chaucer in the Temple Library, he laid it down and told me that—"in those old books, Charley, there is sometimes a deal of very indifferent spelling;" and seemed to console himself in the reflection! His jokes, for he had his jokes, are now ended, but they were old trusty perennials, staples that pleased after decies repetita, and were always as good as new. One song he had, which was reserved for the night of Christmas-day, which we always spent in the Temple. It was an old thing, and spoke of the flat bottoms of our foes and the possibility of their coming over in darkness, and alluded to threats of an invasion many years blown over; and when he came to the part

"We'll still make 'em run, and we'll still make 'em sweat, In spite of the devil and Brussels Gazette!"

his eyes would sparkle as with the freshness of an impending event. And what is the "Brussels Gazette" now? I cry while I enumerate these trifles. "How shall we tell them in a stranger's ear?" His poor good girls will now have to receive their afflicted mother in an inaccessible hovel in an obscure village in Herts, where they have been long struggling to make a school without effect; and poor deaf Richard—and the more helpless for being so—is thrown on the wide world.

My first motive in writing, and, indeed, in calling on you, was to ask if you were enough acquainted with any of the Benchers, to lay a plain statement before them of the circumstances of the family. I almost fear not, for you are of another hall. But if you can oblige me and my poor friend, who is now insensible to any favours, pray exert yourself. You cannot say too much good of poor Norris and his poor wife.

Yours ever, CHARLES LAMB.

[This letter, describing the death of Randal Norris, Sub-Treasurer and Librarian of the Inner Temple, was printed with only very slight alterations in Hone's Table Book, 1827, and again in the Last Essays of Elia, 1833, under the title "A Death-Bed." It was, however, taken out of the second edition, and "Confessions of a Drunkard" substituted, in deference to the wishes of Norris's family. Mrs. Norris, as I have said, was a native of Widford, where she had known Mrs. Field, Lamb's grandmother. With her son Richard, who was deaf and peculiar, Mrs. Norris moved to Widford again, where the daughters, Miss Betsy and Miss Jane, had opened a school—Goddard House; which they retained until a legacy restored the family prosperity. Soon after that they both married, each a farmer named Tween. They survived until quite recently.

Mrs. Coe, an old scholar at the Misses Morris's school in the twenties, gave me, in 1902, some reminiscences of those days, from which I quote a passage or so:—

When he joined the Norrises' dinner-table he kept every one laughing. Mr. Richard sat at one end, and some of the school children would be there too. One day Mr. Lamb gave every one a fancy name all round the table, and made a verse on each. "You are so-and-so," he said, "and you are so-and-so," adding the rhyme. "What's he saying? What are you laughing at?" Mr. Richard asked testily, for he was short-tempered. Miss Betsy explained the joke to him, and Mr. Lamb, coming to his turn, said—only he said it in verse—"Now, Dick, it's your turn. I shall call you Gruborum; because all you think of is your food and your stomach." Mr. Richard pushed back his chair in a rage and stamped out of the room. "Now I've done it," said Mr. Lamb: "I must go and make friends with my old chum. Give me a large plate of pudding to take to him." When he came back he said, "It's all right. I thought the pudding would do it." Mr. Lamb and Mr. Richard never got on very well, and Mr. Richard didn't like his teasing ways at all; but Mr. Lamb often went for long walks with him, because no one else would. He did many kind things like that.

There used to be a half-holiday when Mr. Lamb came, partly because he would force his way into the schoolroom and make seriousness impossible. His head would suddenly appear at the door in the midst of lessons, with "Well, Betsy! How do, Jane?" "O, Mr. Lamb!" they would say, and that was the end of work for that day. He was really rather naughty with the children. One of his tricks was to teach them a new kind of catechism (Mrs. Coe does not remember it, but we may rest assured, I fear, that it was secular), and he made a great fuss with Lizzie Hunt for her skill in saying the Lord's Prayer backwards, which he had taught her.

"We'll still make 'em run..." Garrick's "Hearts of Oak," sung in "Harlequin's Invasion."

"How shall we tell them in a stranger's ear?" A quotation from Lamb himself, in the lines "Written soon after the Preceding Poem," in 1798 (see Vol. IV.).]



LETTER 406

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

[No date. Jan. 20, 1827.]

Dear R.N. is dead. I have writ as nearly as I could to look like a letter meant for your eye only. Will it do?

Could you distantly hint (do as your own judgment suggests) that if his son could be got in as Clerk to the new Subtreasurer, it would be all his father wish'd? But I leave that to you. I don't want to put you upon anything disagreeable.

Yours thankfully

C.L.

[The reference at the beginning is to the preceding letter, which was probably enclosed with this note.

Here should come a note to Allsop dated Jan. 25, 1827, complaining of the cold.]



LETTER 407

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

[Dated by H.C.R. Jan. 29, 1827.]

Dear Robinson, If you have not seen Mr. Gurney, leave him quite alone for the present, I have seen Mr. Jekyll, who is as friendly as heart can desire, he entirely approves of my formula of petition, and gave your very reasons for the propriety of the "little village of Hertf'shire." Now, Mr. G. might not approve of it, and then we should clash. Also, Mr. J. wishes it to be presented next week, and Mr. G. might fix earlier, which would be aukward. Mr. J. was so civil to me, that I think it would be better NOT for you to show him that letter you intended. Nothing can increase his zeal in the cause of poor Mr. Norris. Mr. Gardiner will see you with this, and learn from you all about it, & consult, if you have seen Mr. G. & he has fixed a time, how to put it off. Mr. J. is most friendly to the boy: I think you had better not teaze the Treasurer any more about him, as it may make him less friendly to the Petition

Yours Ever

C.L.

[Writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on February 13, 1827, Robinson says: "The Lambs are well. I have been so busy that I have not lately seen them. Charles has been occupied about the affair of the widow of his old friend Norris whose death he has felt. But the health of both is good."

Gurney would probably be John Gurney (afterwards Baron Gurney), the counsel and judge. Jekyll was Joseph Jekyll, the wit, mentioned by Lamb in his essay on "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple." He was a friend of George Dyer.]



LETTER 408

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

[Dated by H.C. R. Jan., 1827.]

Dear R. do not say any thing to Mr. G. about the day or Petition, for Mr. Jekyll wishes it to be next week, and thoroughly approves of my formula, and Mr. G. might not, and then they will clash. Only speak to him of Gardner's wish to have the Lad. Mr. Jekyll was excessive friendly. C.L.

[The matter referred to is still the Norrises' welfare. Mr. Hazlitt says that an annuity of L80 was settled by the Inn on Mrs. Norris.

Here perhaps should come a letter from Lamb to Allsop, printed by Mr. Fitzgerald, urging Allsop to go to Highgate to see Coleridge and tell him of the unhappy state of his, Allsop's, affairs. In Crabb Robinson's Diary for February 1, 1827, I read: "I went to Lamb. Found him in trouble about his friend Allsop, who is a ruined man. Allsop is a very good creature who has been a generous friend to Coleridge." Writing of his troubles in Letters, Conversations and Recollections of S.T. Coleridge, Allsop says: "Charles Lamb, Charles and Mary Lamb, 'union is partition,' were never wanting in the hour of need."]



LETTER 409

CHARLES LAMB TO B.R. HAYDON

[March, 1827.]

Dear Raffaele Haydon,—Did the maid tell you I came to see your picture, not on Sunday but the day before? I think the face and bearing of the Bucephalus-tamer very noble, his flesh too effeminate or painty. The skin of the female's back kneeling is much more carnous. I had small time to pick out praise or blame, for two lord-like Bucks came in, upon whose strictures my presence seemed to impose restraint: I plebeian'd off therefore.

I think I have hit on a subject for you, but can't swear it was never executed,—I never heard of its being,—"Chaucer beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleet Street." Think of the old dresses, houses, &c. "It seemeth that both these learned men (Gower and Chaucer) were of the Inner Temple; for not many years since Master Buckley did see a record in the same house where Geoffry Chaucer was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleet Street." Chaucer's Life by T. Speght, prefixed to the black letter folio of Chaucer, 1598.

Yours in haste (salt fish waiting), C. LAMB.

[Haydon's picture was his "Alexander and Bucephalus." The two Bucks, he tells us in his Diary, were the Duke of Devonshire and Mr. Agar Ellis. Haydon did not take up the Chaucer subject.]



LETTER 410

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE [No date. April, 1827.]

Dear H. Never come to our house and not come in. I was quite vex'd.

Yours truly. C.L.

There is in Blackwood this month an article MOST AFFECTING indeed called Le Revenant, and would do more towards abolishing Capital Punishments than 400000 Romillies or Montagues. I beg you read it and see if you can extract any of it. The Trial scene in particular.

[Written on the fourteenth instalment of the Garrick Play extracts. The article was in Blackwood for April, 1827. Hone took Lamb's advice, and the extract from it will be found in the Table Book, Vol. I., col. 455.

Lamb was peculiarly interested in the subject of survival after hanging. He wrote an early Reflector essay, "On the Inconveniences of Being Hanged," on the subject, and it is the pivot of his farce "The Pawnbroker's Daughter."

"Romillies or Montagues." Two prominent advocates for the abolition of capital punishment were Sir Samuel Romilly (who died in 1818) and Basil Montagu.]



LETTER 411

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOOD

[No date. May, 1827.]

Dearest Hood,—Your news has spoil'd us a merry meeting. Miss Kelly and we were coming, but your letter elicited a flood of tears from Mary, and I saw she was not fit for a party. God bless you and the mother (or should be mother) of your sweet girl that should have been. I have won sexpence of Moxon by the sex of the dear gone one.

Yours most truly and hers,

[C.L.]

[This note refers to one of the Hoods' children, which was still-born. It was upon this occasion that Lamb wrote the beautiful lines "On an Infant Dying as soon as Born" (see Vol. IV.).]



LETTER 412

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[No date. (1827.)]

My dear B.B.—A gentleman I never saw before brought me your welcome present—imagine a scraping, fiddling, fidgetting, petit-maitre of a dancing school advancing into my plain parlour with a coupee and a sideling bow, and presenting the book as if he had been handing a glass of lemonade to a young miss—imagine this, and contrast it with the serious nature of the book presented! Then task your imagination, reversing this picture, to conceive of quite an opposite messenger, a lean, straitlocked, wheyfaced methodist, for such was he in reality who brought it, the Genius (it seems) of the Wesleyan Magazine. Certes, friend B., thy Widow's tale is too horrible, spite of the lenitives of Religion, to embody in verse: I hold prose to be the appropriate expositor of such atrocities! No offence, but it is a cordial that makes the heart sick. Still thy skill in compounding it I not deny. I turn to what gave me less mingled pleasure. I find markd with pencil these pages in thy pretty book, and fear I have been penurious.

page 52, 53 capital. page 59 6th stanza exquisite simile. page 61 11th stanza equally good. page 108 3d stanza, I long to see van Balen. page 111 a downright good sonnet. Dixi. page 153 Lines at the bottom.

So you see, I read, hear, and mark, if I don't learn—In short this little volume is no discredit to any of your former, and betrays none of the Senility you fear about. Apropos of Van Balen, an artist who painted me lately had painted a Blackamoor praying, and not filling his canvas, stuff'd in his little girl aside of Blacky, gaping at him unmeaningly; and then didn't know what to call it. Now for a picture to be promoted to the Exhibition (Suffolk Street) as HISTORICAL, a subject is requisite. What does me? I but christen it the "Young Catechist" and furbishd it with Dialogue following, which dubb'd it an Historical Painting. Nothing to a friend at need.

While this tawny Ethiop prayeth, Painter, who is She that stayeth By, with skin of whitest lustre; Sunny locks, a shining cluster; Saintlike seeming to direct him To the Power that must protect him? Is she of the heav'nborn Three, Meek Hope, strong Faith, sweet Charity? Or some Cherub?

They you mention Far transcend my weak invention. 'Tis a simple Christian child, Missionary young and mild, From her store of script'ral knowledge (Bible-taught without a college) Which by reading she could gather, Teaches him to say OUR FATHER To the common Parent, who Colour not respects nor hue. White and Black in him have part, Who looks not to the skin, but heart.—

When I'd done it, the Artist (who had clapt in Miss merely as a fill-space) swore I exprest his full meaning, and the damosel bridled up into a Missionary's vanity. I like verses to explain Pictures: seldom Pictures to illustrate Poems. Your wood cut is a rueful Lignum Mortis. By the by, is the widow likely to marry again?

I am giving the fruit of my Old Play reading at the Museum to Hone, who sets forth a Portion weekly in the Table Book. Do you see it? How is Mitford?—

I'll just hint that the Pitcher, the Chord and the Bowl are a little too often repeated (passim) in your Book, and that on page 17 last line but 4 him is put for he, but the poor widow I take it had small leisure for grammatical niceties. Don't you see there's He, myself, and him; why not both him? likewise imperviously is cruelly spelt imperiously. These are trifles, and I honestly like your [book,] and you for giving it, tho' I really am ashamed of so many presents.

I can think of no news, therefore I will end with mine and Mary's kindest remembrances to you and yours. C.L.

[It has been customary to date this letter December, 1827, but I think that must be too late. Lamb would never have waited till then to tell Barton that he was contributing the Garrick Plays to Hone's Table Book, especially as the last instalment was printed in that month.

Barton's new volume was A Widow's Tale and Other Poems, 1827. The title poem tells how a missionary and his wife were wrecked, and how after three nights and days of horror she was saved. The woodcut on the title-page of Barton's book represented the widow supporting her dead or dying husband in the midst of the storm.

This is the "exquisite simile" on page 59, from "A Grandsire's Tale":—

Though some might deem her pensive, if not sad, Yet those who knew her better, best could tell How calmly happy, and how meekly glad Her quiet heart in its own depths did dwell: Like to the waters of some crystal well, In which the stars of heaven at noon are seen. Fancy might deem on her young spirit fell Glimpses of light more glorious and serene Than that of life's brief day, so heavenly was her mien.

This was the "downright good sonnet":—

TO A GRANDMOTHER

"Old age is dark and unlovely."—Ossian.

O say not so! A bright old age is thine; Calm as the gentle light of summer eves, Ere twilight dim her dusky mantle weaves; Because to thee is given, in strength's decline, A heart that does not thanklessly repine At aught of which the hand of God bereaves, Yet all He sends with gratitude receives;— May such a quiet, thankful close be mine. And hence thy fire-side chair appears to me A peaceful throne—which thou wert form'd to fill; Thy children—ministers, who do thy will; And those grand-children, sporting round thy knee, Thy little subjects, looking up to thee, As one who claims their fond allegiance still.

And these are the lines at the foot of page 153 in a poem addressed to a child seven years old:—

There is a holy, blest companionship In the sweet intercourse thus held with those Whose tear and smile are guileless; from whose lip The simple dictate of the heart yet flows;— Though even in the yet unfolded rose The worm may lurk, and sin blight blooming youth, The light born with us long so brightly glows, That childhood's first deceits seem almost truth, To life's cold after lie, selfish, and void of ruth.

Van Balen was the painter of the picture of the "Madonna and Child" which Mrs. FitzGerald (Edward FitzGerald's mother) had given to Barton and for which he expressed his thanks in a poem.

The artist who painted Lamb recently was Henry Meyer (1782?-1847), the portrait being that which serves as frontispiece to this volume. I give in my large edition a reproduction of "The Young Catechist," which Meyer also engraved, with Lamb's verses attached. In 1910 I saw the original in a picture shop in the Charing Cross Road, now removed.]



LETTER 413

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE

[No date. End of May, 1827.]

Dear H. in the forthcoming "New Monthly" are to be verses of mine on a Picture about Angels. Translate em to the Table-book. I am off for Enfield.

Yours. C.L.

[Written on the back of the XXI. Garrick Extracts. The poem "Angel Help" was printed in the New Monthly Magazine for June and copied by Hone in the Table-Book, No. 24, 1827.]



LETTER 414

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE

[No date. June, 1827.]

Dear Hone, I should like this in your next book. We are at Enfield, where (when we have solituded awhile) we shall be glad to see you. Yours,

C. LAMB.

[This was written on the back of the MS. of "Going or Gone" (see Vol. IV.), a poem of reminiscences of Lamb's early Widford days, printed in Hone's Table-Book, June, 1827, signed Elia.]



LETTER 415

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

Enfield, and for some weeks to come, "June 11, 1827."

Dear B.B.—One word more of the picture verses, and that for good and all; pray, with a neat pen alter one line

His learning seems to lay small stress on

to

His learning lays no mighty stress on

to avoid the unseemly recurrence (ungrammatical also) of "seems" in the next line, besides the nonsence of "but" there, as it now stands. And I request you, as a personal favor to me, to erase the last line of all, which I should never have written from myself. The fact is, it was a silly joke of Hood's, who gave me the frame, (you judg'd rightly it was not its own) with the remark that you would like it, because it was b—d b—d,—and I lugg'd it in: but I shall be quite hurt if it stands, because tho' you and yours have too good sense to object to it, I would not have a sentence of mine seen, that to any foolish ear might sound unrespectful to thee. Let it end at appalling; the joke is coarse and useless, and hurts the tone of the rest. Take your best "ivory-handled" and scrape it forth.

Your specimen of what you might have written is hardly fair. Had it been a present to me, I should have taken a more sentimental tone; but of a trifle from me it was my cue to speak in an underish tone of commendation. Prudent givers (what a word for such a nothing) disparage their gifts; 'tis an art we have. So you see you wouldn't have been so wrong, taking a higher tone. But enough of nothing.

By the bye, I suspected M. of being the disparager of the frame; hence a certain line.

For the frame,'tis as the room is, where it hangs. It hung up fronting my old cobwebby folios and batter'd furniture (the fruit piece has resum'd its place) and was much better than a spick and span one. But if your room be very neat and your other pictures bright with gilt, it should be so too. I can't judge, not having seen: but my dingy study it suited.

Martin's Belshazzar (the picture) I have seen. Its architectural effect is stupendous; but the human figures, the squalling contorted little antics that are playing at being frightend, like children at a sham ghost who half know it to be a mask, are detestable. Then the letters are nothing more than a transparency lighted up, such as a Lord might order to be lit up, on a sudden at a Xmas Gambol, to scare the ladies. The type is as plain as Baskervil's—they should have been dim, full of mystery, letters to the mind rather than the eye.—Rembrandt has painted only Belshazzar and a courtier or two (taking a part of the banquet for the whole) not fribbled out a mob of fine folks. Then every thing is so distinct, to the very necklaces, and that foolish little prophet. What one point is there of interest? The ideal of such a subject is, that you the spectator should see nothing but what at the time you would have seen, the hand—and the King—not to be at leisure to make taylor-remarks on the dresses, or Doctor Kitchener-like to examine the good things at table.

Just such a confusd piece is his Joshua, fritterd into 1000 fragments, little armies here, little armies there—you should see only the Sun and Joshua; if I remember, he has not left out that luminary entirely, but for Joshua, I was ten minutes a finding him out.

Still he is showy in all that is not the human figure or the preternatural interest: but the first are below a drawing school girl's attainment, and the last is a phantasmagoric trick, "Now you shall see what you shall see, dare is Balshazar and dare is Daniel." You have my thoughts of M. and so adieu C. LAMB.

[Lamb had sent Barton the picture that is reproduced in Vol. V. of my large edition. Later Lamb had sent the following lines:—

When last you left your Woodbridge pretty, To stare at sights, and see the City, If I your meaning understood, You wish'd a Picture, cheap, but good; The colouring? decent; clear, not muddy; To suit a Poet's quiet study, Where Books and Prints for delectation Hang, rather than vain ostentation. The subject? what I pleased, if comely; But something scriptural and homely: A sober Piece, not gay or wanton, For winter fire-sides to descant on; The theme so scrupulously handled, A Quaker might look on unscandal'd; Such as might satisfy Ann Knight, And classic Mitford just not fright. Just such a one I've found, and send it; If liked, I give—if not, but lend it. The moral? nothing can be sounder. The fable? 'tis its own expounder— A Mother teaching to her Chit Some good book, and explaining it. He, silly urchin, tired of lesson, His learning seems to lay small stress on, But seems to hear not what he hears; Thrusting his fingers in his ears, Like Obstinate, that perverse funny one, In honest parable of Bunyan. His working Sister, more sedate, Listens; but in a kind of state, The painter meant for steadiness; But has a tinge of sullenness; And, at first sight, she seems to brook As ill her needle, as he his book. This is the Picture. For the Frame— 'Tis not ill-suited to the same; Oak-carved, not gilt, for fear of falling; Old-fashion'd; plain, yet not appalling; And broad brimm'd, as the Owner's Calling.

It was not Obstinate, by the way, who thrust his fingers in his ears, but Christian.

"Hence a certain line"—line 16, I suppose.

Martin's "Belshazzar." "Belshazzar's Feast," by John Martin (1789-1854), had been exhibited for some years and had created an immense impression. Lamb subjected Martin's work to a minute analysis a few years later (see the Elia essay on the "Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Productions of Modern Art," Vol. II.). Barton did not give up Martin in consequence of this letter. The frontispiece to his New Year's Eve, 1828, is by that painter, and the volume contains eulogistic poems upon him, one beginning—

Boldest painter of our day.

"Baskervil's"—John Baskerville (1706-1775), the printer, famous for his folio edition of the Bible, 1763.

Doctor William Kitchiner—the author of Apicius Redivious; or, The Cook's Oracle, 1817.]



LETTER 416

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

[P.M. June 26, 1827.]

Dear H.C. We are at Mrs. Leishman's, Chase, Enfield. Why not come down by the Green Lanes on Sunday? Picquet all day. Pass the Church, pass the "Rising Sun," turn sharp round the corner, and we are the 6th or 7th house on the Chase: tall Elms darken the door. If you set eyes on M. Burney, bring him.

Yours truly C. LAMB.

[Mrs. Leishman's house, or its successor, is the seventh from the Rising Sun. It is now on Gentleman's Row, not on Chase Side proper. The house next it—still, as in Lamb's day, a girl's school—is called Elm House, but most of the elms which darkened both doors have vanished. It has been surmised that when later in the year Lamb took an Enfield house in his own name, he took Mrs. Leishman's; but, as we shall see, his own house was some little distance from hers.]



LETTER 417

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE

[No date. Early July, 1827.]

Dear H., This is Hood's, done from the life, of Mary getting over a style here. Mary, out of a pleasant revenge, wants you to get it engrav'd in Table Book to surprise H., who I know will be amus'd with you so doing.

Append some observations about the awkwardness of country styles about Edmonton, and the difficulty of elderly Ladies getting over 'em.——

That is to say, if you think the sketch good enough.

I take on myself the warranty.

Can you slip down here some day and go a Green-dragoning? C.L.

Enfield (Mrs. Leishman's, Chase).

If you do, send Hood the number, No. 2 Robert St., Adelphi, and keep the sketch for me.

["This" was the drawing by Hood. I take it from the Table-Book, where it represents Mrs. Gilpin resting on a stile:—



Lamb subsequently appended the observations himself. The text of his little article, changing Mary Lamb into Mrs. Gilpin, was in the late Mr. Locker-Lampson's collection. The postmark is July 17. 1827.]



LETTER 418

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

Enfield. P.M. July 17, 182[7].

Dear M. Thanks for your attentions of every kind. Emma will not fail Mrs. Hood's kind invitation, but her Aunt is so queer a one, that we cannot let her go with a single gentleman singly to Vauxhall; she would withdraw her from us altogether in a fright; but if any of the Hood's family accompany you, then there can be small objection.

I have been writing letters till too dark to see the marks. I can just say we shall be happy to see you any Sunday after the next: say, the Sunday after, and perhaps the Hoods will come too and have a merry other day, before they go hence. But next Sunday we expect as many as we can well entertain.

With ours and Emma's acknowlgm's yours C.L.

[The earliest of a long series of letters to Edward Moxon, preserved at Rowfant by the late Mr. Locker-Lampson, but now in America. Emma Isola's aunt was Miss Humphreys.]



LETTER 419

CHARLES LAMB TO P.G. PATMORE

[Dated at end: July 19, 1827.]

Dear P.—I am so poorly! I have been to a funeral, where I made a pun, to the consternation of the rest of the mourners. And we had wine. I can't describe to you the howl which the widow set up at proper intervals. Dash could, for it was not unlike what he makes.

The letter I sent you was one directed to the care of E. White, India House, for Mrs. Hazlitt. Which Mrs. Hazlitt I don't yet know, but A. has taken it to France on speculation. Really it is embarrassing. There is Mrs. present H., Mrs. late H., and Mrs. John H., and to which of the three Mrs. Wiggins's it appertains, I don't know. I wanted to open it, but it's transportation.

I am sorry you are plagued about your book. I would strongly recommend you to take for one story Massinger's "Old Law." It is exquisite. I can think of no other.

Dash is frightful this morning. He whines and stands up on his hind legs. He misses Beckey, who is gone to town. I took him to Barnet the other day, and he couldn't eat his victuals after it. Pray God his intellectuals be not slipping.

Mary is gone out for some soles. I suppose 'tis no use to ask you to come and partake of 'em; else there's a steam-vessel.

I am doing a tragi-comedy in two acts, and have got on tolerably; but it will be refused, or worse. I never had luck with anything my name was put to.

Oh, I am so poorly! I waked it at my cousin's the bookbinder's, who is now with God; or, if he is not, it's no fault of mine.

We hope the Frank wines do not disagree with Mrs. Patmore. By the way, I like her.

Did you ever taste frogs? Get them, if you can. They are like little Lilliput rabbits, only a thought nicer.

Christ, how sick I am!—not of the world, but of the widow's shrub. She's sworn under L6000, but I think she perjured herself. She howls in E la, and I comfort her in B flat. You understand music?...

"No shrimps!" (That's in answer to Mary's question about how the soles are to be done.)

I am uncertain where this wandering letter may reach you. What you mean by Poste Restante, God knows. Do you mean I must pay the postage? So I do to Dover.

We had a merry passage with the widow at the Commons. She was howling—part howling and part giving directions to the proctor—when crash! down went my sister through a crazy chair, and made the clerks grin, and I grinned, and the widow tittered—and then I knew that she was not inconsolable. Mary was more frightened than hurt.

She'd make a good match for anybody (by she, I mean the widow).

"If he bring but a relict away, He is happy, nor heard to complain."

SHENSTONE.

Procter has got a wen growing out at the nape of his neck, which his wife wants him to have cut off; but I think it rather an agreeable excrescence—like his poetry—redundant. Hone has hanged himself for debt. Godwin was taken up for picking pockets.... Beckey takes to bad courses. Her father was blown up in a steam machine. The coroner found it Insanity. I should not like him to sit on my letter.

Do you observe my direction? Is it Gallic?—Classical?

Do try and get some frogs. You must ask for "grenouilles" (green-eels). They don't understand "frogs," though it's a common phrase with us.

If you go through Bulloign (Boulogne) enquire if old Godfrey is living, and how he got home from the Crusades. He must be a very old man now.

If there is anything new in politics or literature in France, keep it till I see you again, for I'm in no hurry. Chatty-Briant is well I hope.

I think I have no more news; only give both our loves ("all three," says Dash) to Mrs. Patmore, and bid her get quite well, as I am at present, bating qualms, and the grief incident to losing a valuable relation.

C.L.

Londres, July 19, 1827.

[This is from Patmore's My Friends and Acquaintances, 1854; but I have no confidence in Patmore's transcription. After "picking pockets" should come, for example, according to other editors, the sentence, "Moxon has fallen in love with Emma, our nut-brown maid." This is the first we hear of the circumstance and quite probably Lamb was then exaggerating. As it happened, however, Moxon and Miss Isola, as we shall see, were married in 1833.

We do not know the name of the widow; but her husband was Lamb's cousin, the bookbinder.

The doubt about the Hazlitts refers chiefly to William Hazlitt's divorce from his first wife in 1822, and his remarriage in 1824 with a Mrs. Bridgewater.

"Your book." Patmore, in My Friends and Acquaintances, writes:—

This refers to a series of tales that I was writing, (since published under the title of Chatsworth, or the Romance of a Week.) for the subject of one of which he had recommended me to take "The Old Law." As Lamb's critical faculties (as displayed in the celebrated "specimens" which created an era in the dramatic taste of England) were not surpassed by those of any writer of his day, the reader may like to see a few "specimens" of some notes which Lamb took the pains to make on two of the tales that were shown to him. I give these the rather that there is occasionally blended with their critical nicety of tact, a drollery that is very characteristic of the writer. I shall leave these notes and verbal criticisms to speak for themselves, after merely explaining that they are written on separate bits of paper, each note having a numerical reference to that page of the MS. in which occurs the passage commented on.