"Besides the words 'riant' and 'Euphrosyne,' the sentence is senseless. 'A sweet sadness' capable of inspiring 'a more grave joy'—than what?—than demonstrations of mirth? Odd if it had not been. I had once a wry aunt, which may make me dislike the phrase.

"'Pleasurable:'—no word is good that is awkward to spell. (Query.) Welcome or Joyous.

"'Steady self-possession rather than undaunted courage,' etc. The two things are not opposed enough. You mean, rather than rash fire of valour in action.

"'Looking like a heifer,' I fear wont do in prose. (Qy.) 'Like to some spotless heifer,'—or,'that you might have compared her to some spotless heifer,' etc.—or 'Like to some sacrificial heifer of old.' I should prefer, 'garlanded with flowers as for a sacrifice '—and cut the cow altogether.

"(Say) 'Like the muttering of some strange spell,'—omitting the demon,—they are subject to spells, they don't use them.

"'Feud' here (and before and after) is wrong. (Say) old malice, or, difference. Feud is of clans. It might be applied to family quarrels, but is quite improper to individuals falling out.

"'Apathetic.' Vile word.

"'Mechanically,' faugh!—insensibly—involuntarily—in-any-thing-ly but mechanically.

"Calianax's character should be somewhere briefly drawn, not left to be dramatically inferred.

"'Surprised and almost vexed while it troubled her.' (Awkward.) Better, 'in a way that while it deeply troubled her, could not but surprise and vex her to think it should be a source of trouble at all.'

"'Reaction' is vile slang. 'Physical'—vile word.

"Decidedly, Dorigen should simply propose to him to remove the rocks as ugly or dangerous, not as affecting her with fears for her husband. The idea of her husband should be excluded from a promise which is meant to be frank upon impossible conditions. She cannot promise in one breath infidelity to him, and make the conditions a good to him. Her reason for hating the rocks is good, but not to be expressed here.

"Insert after 'to whatever consequences it might lead,'—'Neither had Arviragus been disposed to interpose a husband's authority to prevent the execution of this rash vow, was he unmindful of that older and more solemn vow which, in the days of their marriage, he had imposed upon himself, in no instance to control the settled purpose or determination of his wedded wife;—so that by the chains of a double contract he seemed bound to abide by her decision in this instance, whatever it might be.'"

"A tragi-comedy"—Lamb's dramatic version of Crabbe's "Confidante," which he called "The Wife's Trial" (see Vol. IV. of this edition).

"Procter has got a wen." This paragraph must be taken with salt. Poor Hone, however, had the rules of the King's Bench at the time. Beckey was the Lambs' servant and tyrant; she had been Hazlitt's. Patmore described her at some length in his reminiscences of Lamb.

"Chatty-Briant"—Chateaubriand.]



LETTER 420

CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Enfield, July 26th, 1827.

Dear Mrs. Shelley,—At the risk of throwing away some fine thoughts, I must write to say how pleased we were with your very kind remembering of us (who have unkindly run away from all our friends) before you go. Perhaps you are gone, and then my tropes are wasted. If any piece of better fortune has lighted upon you than you expected, but less than we wish you, we are rejoiced. We are here trying to like solitude, but have scarce enough to justify the experiment. We get some, however. The six days are our Sabbath; the seventh—why, Cockneys will come for a little fresh air, and so—

But by your month, or October at furthest, we hope to see Islington: I like a giant refreshed with the leaving off of wine, and Mary, pining for Mr. Moxon's books and Mr. Moxon's society. Then we shall meet.

I am busy with a farce in two acts, the incidents tragi-comic. I can do the dialogue commey fo: but the damned plot—I believe I must omit it altogether. The scenes come after one another like geese, not marshalling like cranes or a Hyde Park review. The story is as simple as G[eorge] D[yer], and the language plain as his spouse. The characters are three women to one man; which is one more than laid hold on him in the "Evangely." I think that prophecy squinted towards my drama.

I want some Howard Paine to sketch a skeleton of artfully succeeding scenes through a whole play, as the courses are arranged in a cookery book: I to find wit, passion, sentiment, character, and the like trifles: to lay in the dead colours,—I'd Titianesque 'em up: to mark the channel in a cheek (smooth or furrowed, yours or mine), and where tears should course I'd draw the waters down: to say where a joke should come in or a pun be left out: to bring my personae on and off like a Beau Nash; and I'd Frankenstein them there: to bring three together on the stage at once; they are so shy with me, that I can get no more than two; and there they stand till it is the time, without being the season, to withdraw them.

I am teaching Emma Latin to qualify her for a superior governess-ship; which we see no prospect of her getting. 'Tis like feeding a child with chopped hay from a spoon. Sisyphus—his labours were as nothing to it.

Actives and passives jostle in her nonsense, till a deponent enters, like Chaos, more to embroil the fray. Her prepositions are suppositions; her conjunctions copulative have no connection in them; her concords disagree; her interjections are purely English "Ah!" and "Oh!" with a yawn and a gape in the same tongue; and she herself is a lazy, block-headly supine. As I say to her, ass in praesenti rarely makes a wise man in futuro.

But I daresay it was so with you when you began Latin, and a good while after.

Good-by! Mary's love.

Yours truly, C. LAMB.

[This is the second letter to Mrs. Shelley, nee Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the widow of the poet and the author of Frankenstein. She had been living in England since 1823; and in 1826 had issued anonymously The Last Man. That she kept much in touch with the Lambs' affairs we know by her letters to Leigh Hunt.

Major Butterworth has kindly supplied me with a copy of her letter to Mary Lamb which called forth Lamb's reply. It runs thus:—

Kentish Town, 22 July, 1827.

My dear Miss Lamb,

You have been long at Enfield—I hardly know yet whether you are returned—and I quit town so very soon that I have not time to—as I exceedingly wish—call on you before I go. Nevertheless believe (if such familiar expression be not unmeet from me) that I love you with all my heart—gratefully and sincerely—and that when I return I shall seek you with, I hope, not too much zeal—but it will be with great eagerness.

You will be glad to hear that I have every reason to believe that the worst of my pecuniary troubles are over—as I am promised a regular tho' small income from my father-in-law. I mean to be very industrious on other accounts this summer, so I hope nothing will go very ill with me or mine.

I am afraid Miss Kelly will think me dreadfully rude for not having availed myself of her kind invitation. Will you present my compliments to her, and say that my embarassments, harassings and distance from town are the guilty causes of my omission—for which with her leave I will apologize in person on my return to London.

All kind and grateful remembrances to Mr. Lamb, he must not forget me nor like me one atom less than I delight to flatter myself he does now, when again I come to seize a dinner perforce at your cottage. Percy is quite well—and is reading with great extacy (sic) the Arabian Nights. I shall return I suppose some one day in September. God bless you.

Yours affectionately,

MARY W. SHELLEY.

Commey fo is Lamb's comme il faut.

"In the 'Evangely.'" If by Evangely he meant Gospel, Lamb was a little confused here, I think. Probably Isaiah iv. I was in his mind: "and in that day seven women shall take hold of one man." But he may also have half remembered Luke xvii. 35.

"I am teaching Emma Latin." Mary Lamb contributed to Blackwood's Magazine for June, 1829, the following little poem describing Emma Isola's difficulties in these lessons:—

TO EMMA, LEARNING LATIN, AND DESPONDING

Droop not, dear Emma, dry those falling tears, And call up smiles into thy pallid face, Pallid and care-worn with thy arduous race: In few brief months thou hast done the work of years. To young beginnings natural are these fears. A right good scholar shalt thou one day be, And that no distant one; when even she, Who now to thee a star far off appears, That most rare Latinist, the Northern Maid— The language-loving Sarah[1] of the Lake— Shall hail thee Sister Linguist. This will make Thy friends, who now afford thee careful aid, A recompense most rich for all their pains, Counting thy acquisitions their best gains.

[Footnote 1: Daughter of S.T. Coleridge, Esq.; an accomplished linguist in the Greek and Latin tongues, and translatress of a History of the Abipones.]

A letter to an anonymous correspondent, in the summer of 1827, has an amusing passage concerning Emma Isola's Latin. Lamb says that they made Cary laugh by translating "Blast you" into such elegant verbiage as "Deus afflet tibi." He adds, "How some parsons would have goggled and what would Hannah More say? I don't like clergymen, but here and there one. Cary, the Dante Cary, is a model quite as plain as Parson Primrose, without a shade of silliness."

On July 21, 1827, is a letter to Mr. Dillon, whom I do not identify, saying that Lamb has been teaching Emma Isola Latin for the past seven weeks.

"Ass in praesenti." This was Boyer's joke, at Christ's Hospital (see Vol. I. of this edition).

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Edward White, of the India House, dated August 1, 1827, in which Lamb has some pleasantry about paying postages, and ends by heartily commending White to mind his ledger, and keep his eye on Mr. Chambers' balances.]



LETTER 421

CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. BASIL MONTAGU

[Summer, 1827.]

Dear Madam,—I return your List with my name. I should be sorry that any respect should be going on towards [Clarkson,] and I be left out of the conspiracy. Otherwise I frankly own that to pillarize a man's good feelings in his lifetime is not to my taste. Monuments to goodness, even after death, are equivocal. I turn away from Howard's, I scarce know why. Goodness blows no trumpet, nor desires to have it blown. We should be modest for a modest man—as he is for himself. The vanities of Life—Art, Poetry, Skill military, are subjects for trophies; not the silent thoughts arising in a good man's mind in lonely places. Was I C[larkson,] I should never be able to walk or ride near ——— again. Instead of bread, we are giving him a stone. Instead of the locality recalling the noblest moment of his existence, it is a place at which his friends (that is, himself) blow to the world, "What a good man is he!" I sat down upon a hillock at Forty Hill yesternight—a fine contemplative evening,—with a thousand good speculations about mankind. How I yearned with cheap benevolence! I shall go and inquire of the stone-cutter, that cuts the tombstones here, what a stone with a short inscription will cost; just to say—"Here C. Lamb loved his brethren of mankind." Everybody will come there to love. As I can't well put my own name, I shall put about a subscription:

s. d. Mrs. —— 5 0 Procter 2 6 G. Dyer 1 0 Mr. Godwin 0 0 Mrs. Godwin 0 0 Mr. Irving a watch-chain. Mr. ———- the proceeds of ——— first edition.* 8 6

I scribble in haste from here, where we shall be some time. Pray request Mr. M[ontagu] to advance the guinea for me, which shall faithfully be forthcoming; and pardon me that I don't see the proposal in quite the light that he may. The kindness of his motives, and his power of appreciating the noble passage, I thoroughly agree in.

With most kind regards to him, I conclude, Dear Madam,

Yours truly, C. LAMB.

From Mrs. Leishman's, Chase, Enfield.

*A capital book, by the bye, but not over saleable.

[The memorial to Thomas Clarkson stands on a hill above Wade Mill, on the Buntingford Road, in Hertfordshire.

Forty Hill is close to Enfield.

Edward Irving's watch-chain. The explanation of Lamb's joke is to be found in Carlyle's Reminiscences (quoted also in Froude's Life, Vol. I., page 326). Irving had put down as his contribution to some subscription list, at a public meeting, "an actual gold watch, which he said had just arrived to him from his beloved brother lately dead in India." This rather theatrical action had evidently amused Lamb as it had disgusted Carlyle.

The "first edition" of "Mr. ——-" was, I suppose, Basil Montagu's work on Bacon, which Macaulay reviewed.]



LETTER 422

MARY LAMB TO LADY STODDART

[August 9, 1827.]

My dear Lady-Friend,—My brother called at our empty cottage yesterday, and found the cards of your son and his friend, Mr. Hine, under the door; which has brought to my mind that I am in danger of losing this post, as I did the last, being at that time in a confused state of mind—for at that time we were talking of leaving, and persuading ourselves that we were intending to leave town and all our friends, and sit down for ever, solitary and forgotten, here. Here we are; and we have locked up our house, and left it to take care of itself; but at present we do not design to extend our rural life beyond Michaelmas. Your kind letter was most welcome to me, though the good news contained in it was already known to me. Accept my warmest congratulations, though they come a little of the latest. In my next I may probably have to hail you Grandmama; or to felicitate you on the nuptials of pretty Mary, who, whatever the beaux of Malta may think of her, I can only remember her round shining face, and her "O William!"—"dear William!" when we visited her the other day at school. Present my love and best wishes—a long and happy married life to dear Isabella—I love to call her Isabella; but in truth, having left your other letter in town, I recollect no other name she has.

The same love and the same wishes—in futuro—to my friend Mary. Tell her that her "dear William" grows taller, and improves in manly looks and manlike behaviour every time I see him. What is Henry about? and what should one wish for him? If he be in search of a wife, I will send him out Emma Isola.

You remember Emma, that you were so kind as to invite to your ball? She is now with us; and I am moving heaven and earth, that is to say, I am pressing the matter upon all the very few friends I have that are likely to assist me in such a case, to get her into a family as a governess; and Charles and I do little else here than teach her something or other all day long.

We are striving to put enough Latin into her to enable her to begin to teach it to young learners. So much for Emma —for you are so fearfully far away, that I fear it is useless to implore your patronage for her.

I have not heard from Mrs. Hazlitt a long time. I believe she is still with Hazlitt's mother in Devonshire.

I expect a pacquet of manuscript from you: you promised me the office of negotiating with booksellers, and so forth, for your next work. Is it in good forwardness? or do you grow rich and indolent now? It is not surprising that your Maltese story should find its way into Malta; but I was highly pleased with the idea of your pleasant surprise at the sight of it. I took a large sheet of paper, in order to leave Charles room to add something more worth reading than my poor mite.

May we all meet again once more!

M. LAMB.



LETTER 423

CHARLES LAMB TO SIR JOHN STODDART

(Same letter: Lamb's share)

Dear Knight—Old Acquaintance—'Tis with a violence to the pure imagination (vide the "Excursion" passim) that I can bring myself to believe I am writing to Dr. Stoddart once again, at Malta. But the deductions of severe reason warrant the proceeding. I write from Enfield, where we are seriously weighing the advantages of dulness over the over-excitement of too much company, but have not yet come to a conclusion. What is the news? for we see no paper here; perhaps you can send us an old one from Malta. Only, I heard a butcher in the market-place whisper something about a change of ministry. I don't know who's in or out, or care, only as it might affect you. For domestic doings, I have only to tell, with extreme regret, that poor Elisa Fenwick (that was)—Mrs. Rutherford—is dead; and that we have received a most heart-broken letter from her mother—left with four grandchildren, orphans of a living scoundrel lurking about the pothouses of Little Russell Street, London: they and she—God help 'em!—at New York. I have just received Godwin's third volume of the Republic, which only reaches to the commencement of the Protectorate. I think he means to spin it out to his life's thread. Have you seen Fearn's Anti-Tooke? I am no judge of such things—you are; but I think it very clever indeed. If I knew your bookseller, I'd order it for you at a venture: 'tis two octavos, Longman and Co. Or do you read now? Tell it not in the Admiralty Court, but my head aches hesterno vino. I can scarce pump up words, much less ideas, congruous to be sent so far. But your son must have this by to-night's post.[Here came a passage relating to an escapade of young Stoddart, then at the Charterhouse, which, probably through Lamb's intervention, was treated leniently. Lamb helped him—with his imposition— Gray's "Elegy" into Greek elegiacs.] Manning is gone to Rome, Naples, etc., probably to touch at Sicily, Malta, Guernsey, etc.; but I don't know the map. Hazlitt is resident at Paris, whence he pours his lampoons in safety at his friends in England. He has his boy with him. I am teaching Emma Latin. By the time you can answer this, she will be qualified to instruct young ladies: she is a capital English reader: and S.T.C. acknowledges that a part of a passage in Milton she read better than he, and part he read best, her part being the shorter. But, seriously, if Lady St——— (oblivious pen, that was about to write Mrs.!) could hear of such a young person wanted (she smatters of French, some Italian, music of course), we'd send our loves by her. My congratulations and assurances of old esteem. C.L.

[Stoddart had been appointed in 1826 Chief-Justice and Justice of the Vice-Admiralty Court in Malta and had been knighted in the same year. His daughter Isabella had just married. Lady Stoddart's literary efforts did not, I think, reach print.

"The deductions of severe reason." See the quotation from Cottle in the letter to Manning of November, 1802.

"A change of ministry." On Liverpool's resignation early in 1827 Canning had been called in to form a new Ministry, which he effected by an alliance with the Whigs.

"Godwin's Republic"—History of the Commonwealth of England, in four volumes, 1824-1828.

"Fearn's Anti-Tooke"—Anti-Tooke; or, An Analysis of the Principles and Structure of Language Exemplified in the English Tongue, 1824.

Here should come a note from Lamb to Hone, dated August 10, 1827, in which Lamb expresses regret for Matilda Hone's illness.]



LETTER 424

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. 10 August, 1827.]

Dear B.B.—I have not been able to: answer you, for we have had, and are having (I just snatch a moment), our poor quiet retreat, to which we fled from society, full of company, some staying with us, and this moment as I write almost a heavy importation of two old Ladies has come in. Whither can I take wing from the oppression of human faces? Would I were in a wilderness of Apes, tossing cocoa nuts about, grinning and grinned at!

Mitford was hoaxing you surely about my Engraving, 'tis a little sixpenny thing, too like by half, in which the draughtsman has done his best to avoid flattery. There have been 2 editions of it, which I think are all gone, as they have vanish'd from the window where they hung, a print shop, corner of Great and Little Queen Streets, Lincolns Inn fields, where any London friend of yours may inquire for it; for I am (tho' you won't understand it) at Enfield (Mrs. Leishman's, Chase). We have been here near 3 months, and shall stay 2 or more, if people will let us alone, but they persecute us from village to village. So don't direct to Islington again, till further notice.

I am trying my hand at a Drama, in 2 acts, founded on Crabbe's "Confidant," mutatis mutandis.

You like the Odyssey. Did you ever read my "Adventures of Ulysses," founded on Chapman's old translation of it? for children or men. Ch. is divine, and my abridgment has not quite emptied him of his divinity. When you come to town I'll show it you.

You have well described your old fashioned Grand-paternall Hall. Is it not odd that every one's earliest recollections are of some such place. I had my Blakesware (Blakesmoor in the "London"). Nothing fills a childs mind like a large old Mansion [one or two words wafered over]; better if un-or-partially-occupied; peopled with the spirits of deceased members of [for] the County and Justices of the Quorum. Would I were buried in the peopled solitude of one, with my feelings at 7 years old.

Those marble busts of the Emperors, they seem'd as if they were to stand for ever, as they had stood from the living days of Rome, in that old Marble Hall, and I to partake of their permanency; Eternity was, while I thought not of Time. But he thought of me, and they are toppled down, and corn covers the spot of the noble old Dwelling and its princely gardens. I feel like a grasshopper that chirping about the grounds escaped his scythe only by my littleness. Ev'n now he is whetting one of his smallest razors to clean wipe me out, perhaps. Well!

["My Engraving"—Brook Pulham's caricature.

"You have well described your ... Grand-paternall Hall." Barton wrote the following account of this house, the home of his step-grandfather at Tottenham; but I do not know whether it is the same that Lamb saw:—

My most delightful recollections of boyhood are connected with the fine old country-house in a green lane diverging from the high road which runs through Tottenham. I would give seven years of life as it now is, for a week of that which I then led. It was a large old house, with an iron palisade and a pair of iron gates in front, and a huge stone eagle on each pier. Leading up to the steps by which you went up to the hall door, was a wide gravel walk, bordered in summer time by huge tubs, in which were orange and lemon trees, and in the centre of the grass-plot stood a tub yet huger, holding an enormous aloe, The hall itself, to my fancy then lofty and wide as a cathedral would seem now, was a famous place for battledore and shuttlecock; and behind was a garden, equal to that of old Alcinous himself. My favourite walk was one of turf by a long straight pond, bordered with lime-trees. But the whole demesne was the fairy ground of my childhood; and its presiding genius was grandpapa. He must have been a very handsome man in his youth, for I remember him at nearly eighty, a very fine-looking one, even in the decay of mind and body. In the morning a velvet cap; by dinner, a flaxen wig; his features always expressive of benignity and placid cheerfulness. When he walked out into the garden, his cocked hat and amber-headed cane completed his costume. To the recollection of this delightful personage, I am, I think, indebted for many soothing and pleasing associations, with old age.

"Those marble busts of the Emperors." See the Elia essay "Blakesmoor in H——shire," in Vol. II, of this edition.]



LETTER 425

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

28th of Aug., 1827.

I have left a place for a wafer, but can't find it again.

Dear B.B.—I am thankful to you for your ready compliance with my wishes. Emma is delighted with your verses, to which I have appended this notice "The 6th line refers to the child of a dear friend of the author's, named Emma," without which it must be obscure; and have sent it with four Album poems of my own (your daughter's with your heading, requesting it a place next mine) to a Mr. Fraser, who is to be editor of a more superb Pocket book than has yet appeared by far! the property of some wealthy booksellers, but whom, or what its name, I forgot to ask. It is actually to have in it schoolboy exercises by his present Majesty and the late Duke of York, so Lucy will come to Court; how she will be stared at! Wordsworth is named as a Contributor. Frazer, whom I have slightly seen, is Editor of a forth-come or coming Review of foreign books, and is intimately connected with Lockhart, &c. so I take it that this is a concern of Murray's. Walter Scott also contributes mainly. I have stood off a long time from these Annuals, which are ostentatious trumpery, but could not withstand the request of Jameson, a particular friend of mine and Coleridge.

I shall hate myself in frippery, strutting along, and vying finery with Beaux and Belles

with "Future Lord Byrons and sweet L.E.L.'s."—

Your taste I see is less simple than mine, which the difference of our persuasions has doubtless effected. In fact, of late you have so frenchify'd your style, larding it with hors de combats, and au desopoirs, that o' my conscience the Foxian blood is quite dried out of you, and the skipping Monsieur spirit has been infused. Doth Lucy go to Balls? I must remodel my lines, which I write for her. I hope A.K. keeps to her Primitives. If you have any thing you'd like to send further, I don't know Frazer's address, but I sent mine thro' Mr. Jameson, 19 or 90 Cheyne Street, Totnam Court road. I dare say an honourable place wou'd be given to them; but I have not heard from Frazer since I sent mine, nor shall probably again, and therefore I do not solicit it as from him.

Yesterday I sent off my tragi comedy to Mr. Kemble. Wish it luck. I made it all ('tis blank verse, and I think, of the true old dramatic cut) or most of it, in the green lanes about Enfield, where I am and mean to remain, in spite of your peremptory doubts on that head.

Your refusal to lend your poetical sanction to my Icon, and your reasons to Evans, are most sensible. May be I may hit on a line or two of my own jocular. May be not.

Do you never Londonize again? I should like to talk over old poetry with you, of which I have much, and you I think little. Do your Drummonds allow no holydays? I would willingly come and w[ork] for you a three weeks or so, to let you loose. Would I could sell or give you some of my Leisure! Positively, the best thing a man can have to do is nothing, and next to that perhaps—good works.

I am but poorlyish, and feel myself writing a dull letter; poorlyish from Company, not generally, for I never was better, nor took more walks, 14 miles a day on an average, with a sporting dog—Dash—you would not know the plain Poet, any more than he doth recognize James Naylor trick'd out au deserpoy (how do you spell it.) En Passant, J'aime entendre da mon bon homme sur surveillance de croix, ma pas l'homme figuratif—do you understand me?

[The verses with which Emma was delighted were probably written for her album. I have not seen them. That album was cut up for the value of its autographs and exists now only in a mutilated state: where, I cannot discover. The pocket-book was The Bijou, 1828, edited by William Fraser for Pickering. Only one of Lamb's contributions was included: his verses for his own album (see Vol. IV. of this edition).

Jameson was Robert Jameson, to whom Hartley Coleridge addressed the sonnets in the London Magazine to which Lamb alludes in a previous letter. He was the husband of Mrs. Jameson, author of Sacred and Legendary Art, but the marriage was not happy. He lived in Chenies Street.

"Future Lord Byrons and sweet L.E.L.'s." A line from some verses written by Lamb in more than one album. Probably originally intended for Emma Isola's album. The passage runs, answering the question, "What is an Album?"—

'Tis a Book kept by modern Young Ladies for show, Of which their plain grandmothers nothing did know. 'Tis a medley of scraps, fine verse, and fine prose, And some things not very like either, God knows. The soft First Effusions of Beaux and of Belles, Of future Lord Byrons and sweet L.E.L.'s.

L.E.L. was, of course, the unhappy Letitia Landon, a famous contributor to the published albums.

"My tragi comedy." Still "The Wife's Trial." Kemble was Charles Kemble, manager of Covent Garden Theatre. The play was never acted.

"Your refusal to lend your poetical sanction." This is not clear, but I think the meaning to be deducible. The Icon was Pulham's etching of Lamb. Evans was William Evans, who had grangerised Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. I take it that he was now making another collection of portraits of poets and was asking other poets, their friends, to write verses upon them. In this way he had applied through Lamb to Barton for verses on Pulham's Elia, and had been refused. This is, of course, only conjecture.

"Your Drummonds"—your bankers. Barton's bankers were the Alexanders, a Quaker firm.

"James Naylor." Barton had paraphrased Nayler's "Testimony."

Following this letter, under the date August 29, 1827, should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Jameson (husband of Mrs. Jameson) asking him to interest himself in Miss Isola's career. "Our friend Coleridge will bear witness to the very excellent manner in which she read to him some of the most difficult passages in the Paradise Lost."]



LETTER 426

CHARLES LAMB TO P.G. PATMORE

Mrs. Leishman's, Chace, Enfield,

September, 1827.

Dear Patmore—Excuse my anxiety—but how is Dash? (I should have asked if Mrs. Patmore kept her rules, and was improving—but Dash came uppermost. The order of our thoughts should be the order of our writing.) Goes he muzzled, or aperto ore? Are his intellects sound, or does he wander a little in his conversation? You cannot be too careful to watch the first symptoms of incoherence. The first illogical snarl he makes, to St. Luke's with him! All the dogs here are going mad, if you believe the overseers; but I protest they seem to me very rational and collected. But nothing is so deceitful as mad people to those who are not used to them. Try him with hot water. If he won't lick it up, it is a sign he does not like it. Does his tail wag horizontally or perpendicularly? That has decided the fate of many dogs in Enfield. Is his general deportment cheerful? I mean when he is pleased—for otherwise there is no judging. You can't be too careful. Has he bit any of the children yet? If he has, have them shot, and keep him for curiosity, to see if it was the hydrophobia. They say all our army in India had it at one time—but that was in Hyder-Ally's time. Do you get paunch for him? Take care the sheep was sane. You might pull out his teeth (if he would let you), and then you need not mind if he were as mad as a Bedlamite. It would be rather fun to see his odd ways. It might amuse Mrs. Patmore and the children. They'd have more sense than he! He'd be like a Fool kept in the family, to keep the household in good humour with their own understanding. You might teach him the mad dance set to the mad howl. Madge Owl-et would be nothing to him. "My, how he capers!" [In the margin is written:] One of the children speaks this.

[Three lines here are erased.] What I scratch out is a German quotation from Lessing on the bite of rabid animals; but, I remember, you don't read German. But Mrs. Patmore may, so I wish I had let it stand. The meaning in English is—"Avoid to approach an animal suspected of madness, as you would avoid fire or a precipice:—" which I think is a sensible observation. The Germans are certainly profounder than we.

If the slightest suspicion arises in your breast, that all is not right with him (Dash), muzzle him, and lead him in a string (common pack-thread will do; he don't care for twist) to Hood's, his quondam master, and he'll take him in at any time. You may mention your suspicion or not, as you like, or as you think it may wound or not Mr. H.'s feelings. Hood, I know, will wink at a few follies in Dash, in consideration of his former sense. Besides, Hood is deaf, and if you hinted anything, ten to one he would not hear you. Besides, you will have discharged your conscience, and laid the child at the right door, as they say.

We are dawdling our time away very idly and pleasantly, at a Mrs. Leishman's, Chace, Enfield, where, if you come a-hunting, we can give you cold meat and a tankard. Her husband is a tailor; but that, you know, does not make her one. I knew a jailor (which rhymes), but his wife was a fine lady.

Let us hear from you respecting Mrs. Patmore's regimen. I send my love in a ——— to Dash. C. LAMB.

[On the outside of the letter was written:—]

Seriously, I wish you would call upon Hood when you are that way. He's a capital fellow. I sent him a couple of poems —one ordered by his wife, and written to order; and 'tis a week since, and I've not heard from him. I fear something is the matter.

Omitted within

Our kindest remembrance to Mrs. P.

[This is from Patmore's My Friends and Acquaintances, 1854; but again I have no confidence in Patmore's transcription.

Dash had been Hood's dog, and afterwards was Lamb's; while at one time Moxon seems to have had the care of it. Patmore possibly was taking Dash while the Lambs were at Mrs. Leishman's. One of the children who might be amused by the dog's mad ways was Coventry Patmore, afterwards the poet, then nearly four years old.]



LETTER 427

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN

[P.M. September 5, 1827.]

Dear Dib,—Emma Isola, who is with us, has opened an ALBUM: bring some verses with you for it on Sat'y evening. Any fun will do. I am teaching her Latin; you may make something of that. Don't be modest. For in it you shall appear, if I rummage out some of your old pleasant letters for rhymes. But an original is better.

Has your pa[1] any scrap? C.L.

We shall be MOST glad to see your sister or sisters with you. Can't you contrive it? Write in that case.

[Footnote 1: the infantile word for father.]

[On the blank pages inside the letter Dibdin seems to have jotted down ideas for his contribution to the album. Unfortunately, as I have said, the album is not forthcoming.]



LETTER 428

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN

[P.M. September 13, 1827.]

Dear John—Your verses are very pleasant, and have been adopted into the splendid Emmatic constellation, where they are not of the least magnitude. She is delighted with their merit and readiness. They are just the thing. The 14th line is found. We advertised it. Hell is cooling for want of company. We shall make it up along with our kitchen fire to roast you into our new House, where I hope you will find us in a few Sundays. We have actually taken it, and a compact thing it will be.

Kemble does not return till the month's end. My heart sometimes is good, sometimes bad, about it, as the day turns out wet or walky.

Emma has just died, choak'd with a Gerund in dum. On opening her we found a Participle in rus in the pericordium. The king never dies, which may be the reason that it always REIGNS here.

We join in loves. C.L. his orthograph.

what a pen!

the Umberella is cum bak.



LETTER 429

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN

[P.M. September 18, 1827.]

My dear, and now more so, JOHN—

How that name smacks! what an honest, full, English, and yet withal holy and apostolic sound it bears, above the methodistical priggish Bishoppy name of Timothy, under which I had obscured your merits!

What I think of the paternal verses, you shall read within, which I assure you is not pen praise but heart praise.

It is the gem of the Dibdin Muses.

I have got all my books into my new house, and their readers in a fortnight will follow, to whose joint converse nobody shall be more welcome than you, and any of yours.

The house is perfection to our use and comfort.

Milton is come. I wish Wordsworth were here to meet him. The next importation is of pots and saucepans, window curtains, crockery and such base ware.

The pleasure of moving, when Becky moves for you. O the moving Becky!

I hope you will come and warm the house with the first.

From my temporary domicile, Enfield.

ELIA, that "is to go."—

[The paternal verses were probably a contribution by Charles Dibdin the Younger for Emma Isola's album. The Lambs were just moving to Enfield for good, as they hoped (see next letter), Milton was the portrait.]



LETTER 430

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOOD

Tuesday [September 18, 1827],

Dear Hood,

If I have any thing in my head, I will send it to Mr. Watts. Strictly speaking he should have had my Album verses, but a very intimate friend importund me for the trifles, and I believe I forgot Mr. Watts, or lost sight at the time of his similar Souvenir. Jamieson conveyed the farce from me to Mrs. C. Kemble, he will not be in town before the 27th. Give our kind loves to all at Highgate, and tell them that we have finally torn ourselves out right away from Colebrooke, where I had no health, and are about to domiciliate for good at Enfield, where I have experienced good.

Lord what good hours do we keep! How quietly we sleep!

See the rest in the Complete Angler. We have got our books into our new house. I am a drayhorse if I was not asham'd of the indigested dirty lumber, as I toppled 'em out of the cart, and blest Becky that came with 'em for her having an unstuffd brain with such rubbish. We shall get in by Michael's mass. Twas with some pain we were evuls'd from Colebrook. You may find some of our flesh sticking to the door posts. To change habitations is to die to them, and in my time I have died seven deaths. But I don't know whether every such change does not bring with it a rejuvenescence. Tis an enterprise, and shoves back the sense of death's approximating, which tho' not terrible to me, is at all times particularly distasteful. My house-deaths have generally been periodical, recurring after seven years, but this last is premature by half that time. Cut off in the flower of Colebrook. The Middletonian stream and all its echoes mourn. Even minnows dwindle. A parvis fiunt MINIMI. I fear to invite Mrs. Hood to our new mansion, lest she envy it, & rote [? rout] us. But when we are fairly in, I hope she will come & try it. I heard she & you were made uncomfortable by some unworthy to be cared for attacks, and have tried to set up a feeble counteraction thro' the Table Book of last Saturday. Has it not reach'd you, that you are silent about it? Our new domicile is no manor house, but new, & externally not inviting, but furnish'd within with every convenience. Capital new locks to every door, capital grates in every room, with nothing to pay for incoming & the rent L10 less than the Islington one. It was built a few years since at L1100 expence, they tell me, & I perfectly believe it. And I get it for L35 exclusive of moderate taxes. We think ourselves most lucky. It is not our intention to abandon Regent Street, & West End perambulations (monastic & terrible thought!), but occasionally to breathe the FRESHER AIR of the metropolis. We shall put up a bedroom or two (all we want) for occasional ex-rustication, where we shall visit, not be visited. Plays too we'll see,—perhaps our own. Urban! Sylvani, & Sylvan Urbanuses in turns. Courtiers for a spurt, then philosophers. Old homely tell-truths and learn-truths in the virtuous shades of Enfield, Liars again and mocking gibers in the coffee houses & resorts of London. What can a mortal desire more for his bi-parted nature?

O the curds & cream you shall eat with us here!

O the turtle soup and lobster sallads we shall devour with you there!

O the old books we shall peruse here!

O the new nonsense we shall trifle over there!

O Sir T. Browne!—here.

O Mr. Hood & Mr. Jerdan there,

thine,

C (urbanus) L (sylvanus) (ELIA ambo)—

Inclos'd are verses which Emma sat down to write, her first, on the eve after your departure. Of course they are only for Mrs. H.'s perusal. They will shew at least, that one of our party is not willing to cut old friends. What to call 'em I don't know. Blank verse they are not, because of the rhymes—Rhimes they are not, because of the blank verse. Heroics they are not, because they are lyric, lyric they are not, because of the Heroic measure. They must be call'd EMMAICS.———

[Mr. Watts was Alaric A. Watts.

"Thro' the Table Book." Lamb contributed to Hone's Table Book a prose paraphrase of Hood's Plea, of the Midsummer Fairies, just published, which had been dedicated to him, under the title "The Defeat of Time." In a previous number Moxon had addressed to Hood a eulogistic sonnet on the same subject. The attacks on Hood I have not sought.

"We shall put up a bedroom." This project was very imperfectly carried out. Indeed Lamb practically lost London from this date, his subsequent visits there being as a rule not fortunate.

"Mr. Jerdan"—William Jerdan, editor of the Literary Gazette.

"Emmaics." These verses are no longer forthcoming.

Here should come a letter to Allsop dated September 25, 1827, saying that Mary Lamb has her nurse Miss James and the house is melancholy. Given in the Boston Bibliophile edition.]



LETTER 431

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY COLBURN

[Dated at end: September 25, 1827.]

Dear Sir—I beg leave in the warmest manner to recommend to your notice Mr. Moxon, the Bearer of this, if by any chance yourself should want a steady hand in your business, or know of any Publisher that may want such a one. He is at present in the house of Messrs. Longman and Co., where he has been established for more than six years, and has the conduct of one of the four departments of the Country line. A difference respecting Salary, which he expected to be a little raised on his last promotion, makes him wish to try to better himself. I believe him to be a young man of the highest integrity, and a thorough man of business; and should not have taken the liberty of recommending him, if I had not thought him capable of being highly useful.

I am, Sir, with great respect, your hble Serv't CHARLES LAMB.

Enfield, Chace Side, 25th Sep. 1827.

[Moxon did not go to Colburn, but to Hurst & Co. in St. Paul's Churchyard.]



LETTER 432

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[No date. ?Sept. 26, 1827.]

Pray, send me the Table Book.

Dear M. Our pleasant meeting[s] for some time are suspended. My sister was taken very ill in a few hours after you left us (I had suspected it),—and I must wait eight or nine weeks in slow hope of her recovery. It is her old complaint. You will say as much to the Hoods, and to Mrs. Lovekin, and Mrs. Hazlitt, with my kind love.

We are in the House, that is all. I hope one day we shall both enjoy it, and see our friends again. But till then I must be a solitary nurse.

I am trying Becky's sister to be with her, so don't say anything to Miss James.

Yours truly

CH. LAMB.

Monday. I will send your books soon.

[Miss James was, as we have seen, Mary Lamb's regular nurse. She had subsequently to be sent for. I do not identify Mrs. Lovekin.]



LETTER 433

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

[Dated at end: October 1 (1827).]

Dear R.—I am settled for life I hope, at Enfield. I have taken the prettiest compactest house I ever saw, near to Antony Robinson's, but alas! at the expence of poor Mary, who was taken ill of her old complaint the night before we got into it. So I must suspend the pleasure I expected in the surprise you would have had in coming down and finding us householders.

Farewell, till we can all meet comfortable. Pray, apprise Martin Burney. Him I longed to have seen with you, but our house is too small to meet either of you without her knowledge.

God bless you.

C. LAMB.

Chase Side 1st Oct'r

[Antony Robinson, a prominent Unitarian, a friend but no relation of Crabb Robinson's, had died in the previous January. His widow still lived at Enfield.]



LETTER 434

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN

[P.M. October 2, 1827.]

My dear Dibdin, It gives me great pain to have to say that I cannot have the pleasure of seeing you for some time. We are in our house, but Mary has been seized with one of her periodical disorders—a temporary derangement—which commonly lasts for two months. You shall have the first notice of her convalescence. Can you not send your manuscript by the Coach? directed to Chase Side, next to Mr. Westwood's Insurance office. I will take great care of it.

Yours most Truly C. LAMB.



LETTER 435

CHARLES LAMB TO BARRON FIELD

Oct. 4th, 1827.

I am not in humour to return a fit reply to your pleasant letter. We are fairly housed at Enfield, and an angel shall not persuade me to wicked London again. We have now six sabbath days in a week for—none! The change has worked on my sister's mind, to make her ill; and I must wait a tedious time before we can hope to enjoy this place in unison. Enjoy it, when she recovers, I know we shall. I see no shadow, but in her illness, for repenting the step! For Mathews —I know my own utter unfitness for such a task. I am no hand at describing costumes, a great requisite in an account of mannered pictures. I have not the slightest acquaintance with pictorial language even. An imitator of me, or rather pretender to be me, in his Rejected Articles, has made me minutely describe the dresses of the poissardes at Calais!—I could as soon resolve Euclid. I have no eye for forms and fashions. I substitute analysis, and get rid of the phenomenon by slurring in for it its impression. I am sure you must have observed this defect, or peculiarity, in my writings; else the delight would be incalculable in doing such a thing for Mathews, whom I greatly like—and Mrs. Mathews, whom I almost greatlier like. What a feast 'twould be to be sitting at the pictures painting 'em into words; but I could almost as soon make words into pictures. I speak this deliberately, and not out of modesty. I pretty well know what I can't do.

My sister's verses are homely, but just what they should be; I send them, not for the poetry, but the good sense and good-will of them. I was beginning to transcribe; but Emma is sadly jealous of its getting into more hands, and I won't spoil it in her eyes by divulging it. Come to Enfield, and read it. As my poor cousin, the bookbinder, now with God, told me, most sentimentally, that having purchased a picture of fish at a dead man's sale, his heart ached to see how the widow grieved to part with it, being her dear husband's favourite; and he almost apologised for his generosity by saying he could not help telling the widow she was "welcome to come and look at it"—e.g. at his house—"as often as she pleased." There was the germ of generosity in an uneducated mind. He had just reading enough from the backs of books for the "nec sinit esse feros"—had he read inside, the same impulse would have led him to give back the two-guinea thing—with a request to see it, now and then, at her house. We are parroted into delicacy.—Thus you have a tale for a Sonnet.

Adieu! with (imagine both) our loves. C. LAMB.

[The suggestion had been made to Lamb, through Barron Field, that he should write a descriptive catalogue of Charles Mathews' collection of theatrical portraits; Lamb having already touched upon them in his "Old Actors" articles in the London Magazine (see Vol. II. of this edition). When they were exhibited, after Mathews' death, at the Pantheon in Oxford Street, Lamb's remarks were appended to the catalogue raisonne. They are now at the Garrick Club.

"An imitator of me." P.G. Patmore's Rejected Articles, 1826, leads off with "An Unsentimental Journey" by Elia which is, except for a fitful superficial imitation of some of Lamb's mannerisms, as unlike him as could well be. The description of the butterwomen's dress, to which Lamb refers, will illustrate the divergence between Elia and his parodist:—

Her attire is fashioned as follows: and it differs from all her tribe only in the relative arrangement of its colours. On the body a crimson jacket, of a thick, solid texture, and tight to the shape; but without any pretence at ornament. This is met at the waist (which is neither long, nor short, but exactly where nature placed it) by a dark blue petticoat, of a still thicker texture, so that it hangs in large plaits where it is gathered in behind. Over this, in front, is tied tightly round the waist, so as to keep all trim and compact, a dark apron, the string of which passes over the little fulled skirt of the jacket behind, and makes it stick out smartly and tastily, while it clips the waist in. The head-gear consists of a sort of mob cap, nothing of which but the edge round the face can be seen, on account of the kerchief (of flowered cotton) which is passed over it, hood fashion, and half tied under the chin. This head-kerchief is in place of the bonnet—a thing not to be seen among the whole five hundred females who make up this pleasant show. Indeed, varying the colours of the different articles, this description applies to every dress of the whole assembly; except that in some the fineness of the day has dispensed with the kerchief, and left the snow-white cap exposed; and in others, the whole figure (except the head) is coyishly covered and concealed by a large hooded cloak of black cloth, daintily lined with silk, and confined close up to the throat by an embossed silver clasp, but hanging loosely down to the heels, in thick, full folds. The petticoat is very short; the trim ancles are cased in close-fit hose of dark, sober, slate colour; and the shoes, though thick and serviceable like all the rest of the costume, fit the foot as neatly as those which are not made to walk in.

Patmore tells us that his first meeting with the Lambs was immediately after they had first seen his book; and they left the house intent upon reading it.

"My sister's verses." I think these would probably be the lines on Emma learning Latin which I have quoted above.

Here should come a very pleasant letter from Lamb to Dodwell, of the India House, dated October 7, 1827. Lamb thanks Dodwell, to whom there is an earlier letter extant, for a pig. He first describes his new house at Enfield, and then breaks off about the cooking of the pig, bidding Becky do it "nice and crips." The rest is chaff concerning the India House and Dodwell's fellow-clerks.]



LETTER 436

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE

[No date. ? Oct., 1827.]

Dear Hone,—having occasion to write to Clarke I put in a bit to you. I see no Extracts in this N'o. You should have three sets in hand, one long one in particular from Atreus and Thyestes, terribly fine. Don't spare 'em; with fragments, divided as you please, they'll hold out to Xmas. What I have to say is enjoined me most seriously to say to you by Moxon. Their country customers grieve at getting the Table Book so late. It is indispensable it should appear on Friday. Do it but once, & you'll never know the difference.

FABLE

A boy at my school, a cunning fox, for one penny ensured himself a hot roll & butter every morning for ever. Some favor'd ones were allowed a roll & butter to their breakfasts. He had none. But he bought one one morning. What did he do? He did not eat it, but cutting it in two, sold each one of the halves to a half-breakfasted Blue Boy for his whole roll to-morrow. The next day he had a whole roll to eat, and two halves to swap with other two boys, who had eat their cake & were still not satiated, for whole ones to-morrow. So on ad infinitum. By one morning's abstinence he feasted seven years after.

APPLICATION

Bring out the next N'o. on Friday, for country correspondents' sake. I[t] will be one piece of exertion, and you will go right ever after, for you will have just the time you had before, to bring it out ever after by the Friday.

You don't know the difference in getting a thing early. Your correspondents are your authors. You don't know how an author frets to know the world has got his contribution, when he finds it not on his breakfast table.

ONCE in this case is EVER without a grain of trouble afterw'ds.

I won't like you or speak to you if you don't try it once.

Yours, on that condition,

C. LAMB.

[This letter is dated by Mr. Hazlitt conjecturally 1826, but I think it more probably October, 1827, as the extracts (passages from Crowne's "Thyestes") contributed by Lamb to Hone's Table Book were printed late in 1827.

In Lamb's next note to Hone he says how glad he was to receive the Table Book early on Friday: the result of the fable.]



LETTER 437

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOOD

[No date. ? 1827.]

Dear H.,—Emma has a favour, besides a bed, to ask of Mrs. Hood. Your parcel was gratifying. We have all been pleased with Mrs. Leslie; I speak it most sincerely. There is much manly sense with a feminine expression, which is my definition of ladies' writing.

[Mrs. Leslie and Her Grandchildren, 1827, was the title of a book for children by Mrs. Reynolds, mother of John Hamilton Reynolds and Mrs. Hood, and wife of the Writing Master at Christ's Hospital.]



LETTER 438

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[No date. Late 1827.]

My dear B.B.—You will understand my silence when I tell you that my sister, on the very eve of entering into a new house we have taken at Enfield, was surprised with an attack of one of her sad long illnesses, which deprive me of her society, tho' not of her domestication, for eight or nine weeks together. I see her, but it does her no good. But for this, we have the snuggest, most comfortable house, with every thing most compact and desirable. Colebrook is a wilderness. The Books, prints, etc., are come here, and the New River came down with us. The familiar Prints, the Bust, the Milton, seem scarce to have changed their rooms. One of her last observations was "how frightfully like this room is to our room in Islington"—our up-stairs room, she meant. How I hope you will come some better day, and judge of it! We have tried quiet here for four months, and I will answer for the comfort of it enduring.

On emptying my bookshelves I found an Ulysses, which I will send to A.K. when I go to town, for her acceptance— unless the Book be out of print. One likes to have one copy of every thing one does. I neglected to keep one of "Poetry for Children," the joint production of Mary and me, and it is not to be had for love or money. It had in the title-page "by the author of Mrs. Lester's School." Know you any one that has it, and would exchange it?

Strolling to Waltham Cross the other day, I hit off these lines. It is one of the Crosses which Edw'd 1st caused to be built for his wife at every town where her corpse rested between Northamptonsh'r and London.

A stately Cross each sad spot doth attest, Whereat the corpse of Elinor did rest, From Herdby fetch'd—her Spouse so honour'd her— To sleep with royal dust at Westminster. And, if less pompous obsequies were thine, Duke Brunswick's daughter, princely Caroline, Grudge not, great ghost, nor count thy funeral losses: Thou in thy life-time had'st thy share of crosses.

My dear B.B.—My head akes with this little excursion. Pray accept 2 sides for 3 for once.

And believe me Yours sadly C.L.

Chace side Enfield.

["An Ulysses"—Lamb's book for children, The Adventures of Ulysses, 1808.

The Poetry for Children. The known copies of the first edition of this work can be counted on the fingers.

"A stately Cross..." These verses were printed in the Englishman's Magazine in September, 1831. Lamb's sympathies were wholly with Caroline of Brunswick, as his epigrams in The Champion show (see Vol. IV. of this edition).]



LETTER 439

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. December 4, 1827.]

My dear B.B.—I have scarce spirits to write, yet am harass'd with not writing. Nine weeks are completed, and Mary does not get any better. It is perfectly exhausting. Enfield and every thing is very gloomy. But for long experience, I should fear her ever getting well.

I feel most thankful for the spinsterly attentions of your sister. Thank the kind "knitter in the sun."

What nonsense seems verse, when one is seriously out of hope and spirits! I mean that at this time I have some nonsense to write, pain of incivility. Would to the fifth heaven no coxcombess had invented Albums.

I have not had a Bijoux, nor the slightest notice from Pickering about omitting 4 out of 5 of my things. The best thing is never to hear of such a thing as a bookseller again, or to think there are publishers: second hand Stationers and Old Book Stalls for me. Authorship should be an idea of the Past.

Old Kings, old Bishops, are venerable. All present is hollow.

I cannot make a Letter. I have no straw, not a pennyworth of chaff, only this may stop your kind importunity to know about us.

Here is a comfortable house, but no tenants. One does not make a household.

Do not think I am quite in despair, but in addition to hope protracted, I have a stupifying cold and obstructing headache, and the sun is dead.

I will not fail to apprise you of the revival of a Beam.

Meantime accept this, rather than think I have forgotten you all.

Best rememb

& Yours and theirs truly, C.L.



LETTER 440

CHARLES LAMB TO LEIGH HUNT

[No date. December, 1827.]

Dear H.,—I am here almost in the eleventh week of the longest illness my sister ever had, and no symptoms of amendment. Some had begun, but relapsed with a change of nurse. If she ever gets well, you will like my house, and I shall be happy to show you Enfield country.

As to my head, it is perfectly at your or any one's service; either M[e]yers' or Hazlitt's, which last (done fifteen or twenty years since) White, of the Accountant's office, India House, has; he lives in Kentish Town: I forget where, but is to be found in Leadenhall daily. Take your choice. I should be proud to hang up as an alehouse sign even; or, rather, I care not about my head or anything, but how we are to get well again, for I am tired out.

God bless you and yours from the worst calamity.—Yours truly, C.L.

Kindest remembrances to Mrs. Hunt. H.'s is in a queer dress. M.'s would be preferable ad populum.

[Leigh Hunt had asked Lamb for his portrait to accompany his Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries. Lamb had been painted by Hazlitt in 1804, and by Henry Meyer, full size, in May, 1826, as well as by others. Hunt chose Meyer's picture, which was beautifully engraved, for his book, in the large paper edition. The original is now in the India Office; a reproduction serves as the frontispiece to this volume. The Hazlitt portrait, representing Lamb in the garb of a Venetian senator, is now in the National Portrait Gallery; a reproduction serves as the frontispiece to Vol. I. of this edition.]



LETTER 441

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE

[P.M. Dec. 15, 1827.]

My dear Hone, I read the sad accident with a careless eye, the newspaper giving a wrong name to the poor Sufferer, but learn'd the truth from Clarke. God send him ease, and you comfort in your thick misfortunes. I am in a sorry state. Tis the eleventh week of the illness, and I cannot get her well. To add to the calamity, Miss James is obliged to leave us in a day or two. We had an Enfield Nurse for seven weeks, and just as she seem'd mending, she was call'd away. Miss J.'s coming seem'd to put her back, and now she is going. I do not compare my sufferings to yours, but you see the world is full of troubles. I wish I could say a word to comfort you. You must cling to all that is left. I fear to ask you whether the Book is to be discontinued. What a pity, when it must have delighted so many! Let me hear about you and it, and believe me with deepest fellow feeling

Your friend C. LAMB. Friday eveng.

[Hone's son Alfred, who had met with an accident, was a sculptor. The Table Book was to close with the year.]



LETTER 442

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP

[No date. ? Middle Dec., 1827.]

My dear Allsop—Thanks for the Birds. Your announcement puzzles me sadly as nothing came. I send you back a word in your letter, which I can positively make nothing [of] and therefore return to you as useless. It means to refer to the birds, but gives me no information. They are at the fire, however.

My sister's illness is the most obstinate she ever had. It will not go away, and I am afraid Miss James will not be able to stay above a day or two longer. I am desperate to think of it sometimes. 'Tis eleven weeks!

The day is sad as my prospects.

With kindest love to Mrs. A. and the children,

Yours, C.L.

No Atlas this week. Poor Hone's good boy Alfred has fractured his skull, another son is returned "dead" from the Navy office, & his Book is going to be given up, not having answered. What a world of troubles this is!

[The Atlas was the paper which Allsop sent to Lamb every week.]



LETTER 443

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP

[December 20, 1827.]

My dear Allsop—I have writ to say to you that I hope to have a comfortable Xmas-day with Mary, and I can not bring myself to go from home at present. Your kind offer, and the kind consent of the young Lady to come, we feel as we should do; pray accept all of you our kindest thanks: at present I think a visitor (good & excellent as we remember her to be) might a little put us out of our way. Emma is with us, and our small house just holds us, without obliging Mary to sleep with Becky, &c.

We are going on extremely comfortably, & shall soon be in capacity of seeing our friends. Much weakness is left still. With thanks and old rememb'rs, Yours, C.L.



LETTER 444

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[P.M. Dec. 22, 1827.]

My dear Moxon, I am at length able to tell you that we are all doing well, and shall be able soon to see our friends as usual. If you will venture a winter walk to Enfield tomorrow week (Sunday 3Oth) you will find us much as usual; we intend a delicious quiet Christmas day, dull and friendless, for we have not spirits for festivities. Pray communicate the good news to the Hoods, and say I hope he is better. I should be thankful for any of the books you mention, but I am so apprehensive of their miscarriage by the stage,—at all events I want none just now. Pray call and see Mrs. Lovekin, I heard she was ill; say we shall be glad to see them some fine day after a week or so.

May I beg you to call upon Miss James, and say that we are quite well, and that Mary hopes she will excuse her writing herself yet; she knows that it is rather troublesome to her to write. We have rec'd her letter. Farewell, till we meet.

Yours truly,

C. LAMB.

Enfield.



LETTER 445

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[No date. End of 1827.]

My dear B.—We are all pretty well again and comfortable, and I take a first opportunity of sending the Adventures of Ulysses, hoping that among us—Homer, Chapman, and C'o.—we shall afford you some pleasure. I fear, it is out of print, if not, A.K. will accept it, with wishes it were bigger; if another copy is not to be had, it reverts to me and my heirs for ever. With it I send a trumpery book; to which, without my knowledge, the Editor of the Bijoux has contributed Lucy's verses: I am asham'd to ask her acceptance of the trash accompanying it. Adieu to Albums—for a great while, I said when I came here, and had not been fixed two days but my Landlord's daughter (not at the Pot house) requested me to write in her female friend's, and in her own; if I go to [blank space: something seems to be missing] thou art there also, O all pervading ALBUM! All over the Leeward Islands, in Newfoundland, and the Back Settlements, I understand there is no other reading. They haunt me. I die of Albo-phobia!

["A trumpery book." I have not found it. Writing in the Englishman's Magazine in 1831, in a review of his own Album Verses, Lamb amplifies his sentiments on albums (see Vol. I.).]



LETTER 446

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP

[January 9, 1828.]

Dear Allsop—I have been very poorly and nervous lately, but am recovering sleep, &c. I do not invite or make engagements for particular days; but I need not say how pleasant your dropping in any Sunday morn'g would be. Perhaps Jameson would accompany you. Pray beg him to keep an accurate record of the warning I sent by him to old Pan, for I dread lest he should at the 12 months' end deny the warning. The house is his daughter's, but we took it through him, and have paid the rent to his receipts for his daughter's. Consult J. if he thinks the warning sufficient. I am very nervous, or have been, about the house; lost my sleep, & expected to be ill; but slumbered gloriously last night golden slumbers. I shall not relapse. You fright me with your inserted slips in the most welcome Atlas. They begin to charge double for it, & call it two sheets. How can I confute them by opening it, when a note of yours might slip out, & we get in a hobble? When you write, write real letters. Mary's best love & mine to Mrs. A.

Yours ever, C. LAMB.

[I cannot explain the business part of this letter.]



LETTER 447

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[P.M. (? January, Sunday) 1828.]

Dear Moxon I have to thank you for despatching so much business for me. I am uneasy respecting the enclosed receipts which you sent me and are dated Jan. 1827. Pray get them chang'd by Mr. Henshall to 1828. I have been in a very nervous way since I saw you. Pray excuse me to the Hoods for not answering his very pleasant letter. I am very poorly. The "Keepsake" I hope is return'd. I sent it back by Mrs. Hazlitt on Thursday. 'Twas blotted outside when it came. The rest I think are mine. My heart bleeds about poor Hone, that such an agreeable book, and a Book there seem'd no reason should not go on for ever, should be given up, and a thing substituted which in its Nature cannot last. Don't send me any more "Companions," for it only vexes me about the Table Book. This is not weather to hope to see any body to day, but without any particular invitations, pray consider that we are at any time most glad to see you, You (with Hunt's "Lord Byron" or Hazlitt's "Napoleon" in your hand) or You simply with your switch &c. The night was damnable and the morning is not too bless-able. If you get my dates changed, I will not trouble you with business for some time. Best of all rememb'ces to the Hoods, with a malicious congratulation on their friend Rice's advancem't.

Yours truly C. LAMB.

[Hone's Table Book ceased with 1827: it was succeeded by a reprint, in monthly parts, of Strutt's Sports and Pastimes.

The Companion would be the periodical started by Leigh Hunt in 1828.

"Hazlitt's 'Napoleon.'" Of this work the first two volumes appeared in 1828, and the next two in 1830.

"Their friend Rice's advancement." I cannot say to what this would refer. Rice was Edward Rice.]



LETTER 448

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[P.M. Feb. 18, 1828.]

Dear M. I had rather thought to have seen you yesterday, or I should have written to thank you for your attentions in the Book way &c. Hone's address is, 22 Belvidere Place, Southwark. 'Tis near the Obelisk. I can only say we shall be most glad to see you, when weather suits, and that it will be a joyful surprisal to see the Hoods. I should write to them, but am poorly and nervous. Emma is very proud of her Valentine. Mary does not immediately want Books, having a damn'd consignment of Novels in MS. from Malta: which I wish the Mediterranean had in its guts. Believe me yours truly C.L.

Monday.

[Emma's valentine probably came from Moxon, who, I feel sure, in spite of Lamb's utterance in a previous letter, had not yet told his love, if it had really budded.

"Novels in MS."—Lady Stoddart's, we may suppose (see letter above).]



LETTER 449

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE

Enfield, 25 Feb. [1828].

My dear Clarke,—You have been accumulating on me such a heap of pleasant obligations that I feel uneasy in writing as to a Benefactor. Your smaller contributions, the little weekly rills, are refreshments in the Desart, but your large books were feasts. I hope Mrs. Hazlitt, to whom I encharged it, has taken Hunt's Lord B. to the Novellos. His picture of Literary Lordship is as pleasant as a disagreeable subject can be made, his own poor man's Education at dear Christ's is as good and hearty as the subject. Hazlitt's speculative episodes are capital; I skip the Battles. But how did I deserve to have the Book? The Companion has too much of Madam Pasta. Theatricals have ceased to be popular attractions. His walk home after the Play is as good as the best of the old Indicators. The watchmen are emboxed in a niche of fame, save the skaiting one that must be still fugitive. I wish I could send a scrap for good will. But I have been most seriously unwell and nervous a long long time. I have scarce mustered courage to begin this short note, but conscience duns me.

I had a pleasant letter from your sister, greatly over-acknowledging my poor sonnet. I think I should have replied to it, but tell her I think so. Alas for sonnetting, 'tis as the nerves are; all the summer I was dawdling among green lanes, and verses came as thick as fancies. I am sunk winterly below prose and zero.

But I trust the vital principle is only as under snow. That I shall yet laugh again.

I suppose the great change of place affects me, but I could not have lived in Town, I could not bear company.

I see Novello flourishes in the Del Capo line, and dedications are not forgotten. I read the Atlas. When I pitched on the Ded'n I looked for the Broom of "Cowden knows" to be harmonized, but 'twas summat of Rossini's.

I want to hear about Hone, does he stand above water, how is his son? I have delay'd writing to him, till it seems impossible. Break the ice for me.

The wet ground here is intolerable, the sky above clear and delusive, but under foot quagmires from night showers, and I am cold-footed and moisture-abhorring as a cat; nevertheless I yesterday tramped to Waltham Cross; perhaps the poor bit of exertion necessary to scribble this was owing to that unusual bracing.

If I get out, I shall get stout, and then something will out —I mean for the Companion—you see I rhyme insensibly.

Traditions are rife here of one Clarke a schoolmaster, and a runaway pickle named Holmes, but much obscurity hangs over it. Is it possible they can be any relations?

'Tis worth the research, when you can find a sunny day, with ground firm, &c. Master Sexton is intelligent, and for half-a-crown he'll pick you up a Father.

In truth we shall be most glad to see any of the Novellian circle, middle of the week such as can come, or Sunday, as can't. But Spring will burgeon out quickly, and then, we'll talk more.

You'd like to see the improvements on the Chase, the new Cross in the market-place, the Chandler's shop from whence the rods were fetch'd. They are raised a farthing since the spread of Education. But perhaps you don't care to be reminded of the Holofernes' days, and nothing remains of the old laudable profession, but the clear, firm, impossible-to-be-mistaken schoolmaster text hand with which is subscribed the ever-welcome name of Chas. Cowden C. Let me crowd in both our loves to all. C.L.

Let me never be forgotten to include in my rememb'ces my good friend and whilom correspondent Master Stephen.

How, especially, is Victoria?

I try to remember all I used to meet at Shacklewell. The little household, cake-producing, wine-bringing out Emma—the old servant, that didn't stay, and ought to have staid, and was always very dirty and friendly, and Miss H., the counter-tenor with a fine voice, whose sister married Thurtell. They all live in my mind's eye, and Mr. N.'s and Holmes's walks with us half back after supper. Troja fuit!

["The Companion." Leigh Hunt's paper lasted only for seven months. Madame Pasta, of whom too much was written, was Giudetta Pasta (1798-1865), a singer of unusual compass, for whom Bellini wrote "La Somnambula."

The following is the account of the Sliding Watchman in the essay, "Walks Home by Night in Bad Weather. Watchmen":—

But the oddest of all was the Sliding Watchman. Think of walking up a street in the depth of a frosty winter, with long ice in the gutters, and sleet over head, and then figure to yourself a sort of bale of a man in white, coming towards you with a lantern in one hand, and an umbrella over his head. It was the oddest mixture of luxury and hardship, of juvenility and old age! But this looked agreeable. Animal spirits carry everything before them; and our invincible friend seemed a watchman for Rabelais. Time was run at and butted by him like a goat. The slide seemed to bear him half through the night at once; he slipped from out of his box and his common-places at one rush of a merry thought, and seemed to say, "Everything's in imagination;—here goes the whole weight of my office."

"Your sister"—Mrs. Isabella Jane Towers, author of The Children's Fireside, 1828, and other books for children, to whom Lamb had sent a sonnet (see Vol. IV.).

"Novello... dedications... I read the Atlas." In The Atlas for February 17 was reviewed Select Airs from Spohr's celebrated Opera of Faust, arranged as duetts for the Pianoforte and inscribed to his friend Charles Cowden Clarke by Vincent Novello. Holmes was musical critic for The Atlas.

"One Clarke a schoolmaster." See note to the letter to Clarke in the summer of 1821.

"Holofernes' days"—Holofernes, the schoolmaster, in "Love's Labour's Lost." Cowden Clarke had assisted his father.

"Master Stephen." I do not identify Stephen.

"Victoria"—Mary Victoria Novello, afterwards Mrs. Charles Cowden Clarke.

"At Shacklewell"—the Novellos' old home. They now lived in Bedford Street, Covent Garden.

"Whose sister married Thurtell." Thurtell, the murderer of Mr. Weare, I suppose.

In the Boston Bibliophile edition there is also a brief note to Clarke.]



LETTER 450

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

[P.M. Feb. 26, 1828.]

My dear Robinson, It will be a very painful thing to us indeed, if you give up coming to see us, as we fear, on account of the nearness of the poor Lady you inquire after. It is true that on the occasion she mentions, which was on her return from last seeing her daughter, she was very heated and feverish, but there seems to be a great amendment in her since, and she has within a day or two passed a quiet evening with us. At the same time I dare not advise any thing one way or another respecting her daughter coming to live with her. I entirely disclaim the least opinion about it. If we named any thing before her, it was erroneously, on the notion that she was the obstacle to the plan which had been suggested of placing her daughter in a Private Family, which seem'd your wish. But I have quite done with the subject. If we can be of any amusement to the poor Lady, without self disturbance, we will. But come and see us after Circuit, as if she were not. You have no more affect'te friends than C. AND M. LAMB.

["The poor Lady" was, I imagine, the widow of Antony Robinson.]



LETTER 451

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

March 19th, 1828.

My dear M.—It is my firm determination to have nothing to do with "Forget-me-Nots"—pray excuse me as civilly as you can to Mr. Hurst. I will take care to refuse any other applications. The things which Pickering has, if to be had again, I have promised absolutely, you know, to poor Hood, from whom I had a melancholy epistle yesterday; besides that, Emma has decided objections to her own and her friend's Album verses being published; but if she gets over that, they are decidedly Hood's.

Till we meet, farewell. Loves to Dash. C.L.

[Moxon seems to have asked Lamb for a contribution for one of Hurst's annuals, probably the Keepsake.

Hood was to edit The Gem for 1829.

"Dash."—Moxon seems to have been the present master of the dog.

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Edward Irving, introducing Hone, who in later life became devout and preached at the Weigh House Chapel in Eastcheap.]



LETTER 452

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. April 21, 1828.]

DEAR B.B.—You must excuse my silence. I have been in very poor health and spirits, and cannot write letters. I only write to assure you, as you wish'd, of my existence. All that which Mitford tells you of H.'s book is rhodomontade, only H. has written unguardedly about me, and nothing makes a man more foolish than his own foolish panegyric. But I am pretty well cased to flattery, or its contrary. Neither affect[s] me a turnip's worth. Do you see the Author of May you Like it? Do you write to him? Will you give my present plea to him of ill health for not acknowledge a pretty Book with a pretty frontispiece he sent me. He is most esteem'd by me. As for subscribing to Books, in plain truth I am a man of reduced income, and don't allow myself 12 shillings a-year to buy OLD BOOKS with, which must be my Excuse. I am truly sorry for Murray's demur, but I wash my hands of all booksellers, and hope to know them no more. I am sick and poorly and must leave off, with our joint kind remembrances to your daughter and friend A.K. C.L.

["H.'s book." In Hunt's Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries Lamb was praised very warmly.

"The Author of May you Like it"—the Rev. C.B. Tayler. The book with a pretty frontispiece was A Fireside Book, 1828, with a frontispiece by George Cruikshank.

"Murray's demur"-an unfavourable reply, possibly to a suggestion of Barton's concerning a new volume.]



LETTER 453

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP

[May 1st, 1828.]

Dear A.—I am better. Mary quite well. We expected to see you before. I can't write long letters. So a friendly love to you all.

Yours ever,

C.L.

Enfield.

This sunshine is healing.



LETTER 454

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[P.M. May 3rd, 1828.]

Dear M.,—My friend Patmore, author of the "Months," a very pretty publication, [and] of sundry Essays in the "London," "New Monthly," &c., wants to dispose of a volume or two of "Tales." Perhaps they might Chance to suit Hurst; but be that as it may, he will call upon you, under favor of my recommendation; and as he is returning to France, where he lives, if you can do anything for him in the Treaty line, to save him dancing over the Channel every week, I am sure you will. I said I'd never trouble you again; but how vain are the resolves of mortal man! P. is a very hearty friendly fellow, and was poor John Scott's second, as I will be yours when you want one. May you never be mine!

Yours truly, C.L.

Enfield.

[Patmore was the author of The Mirror of the Months, 1826.]



LETTER 455

CHARLES LAMB TO WALTER WILSON

[Dated at end: 17 May (1828).]

Dear Walter, The sight of your old name again was like a resurrection. It had passed away into the dimness of a dead friend. We shall be most joyful to see you here next week,—if I understand you right—for your note dated the 10th arrived only yesterday, Friday the 16th. Suppose I name Thursday next. If that don't suit, write to say so. A morning coach comes from the Bell or Bell & Crown by Leather Lane Holborn, and sets you down at our house on the Chase Side, next door to Mr. Westwood's, whom all the coachmen know.

I have four more notes to write, so dispatch this with again assuring you how happy we shall be to see you, & to discuss Defoe & old matters.

Yours truly

C. LAMB.

Enf'd. Satur'dy. 17th May.

[The last letter to Wilson was on Feb. 24, 1823. Lamb wrote to Hone a few days later: "Valter Vilson dines with us to-morrow. Vell! How I should like to see Hone!"]



LETTER 456

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS NOON TALFOURD

[P.M. May 20, 1828.]

My dear Talfourd, we propose being with you on Wednesday not unearly, Mary to take a bed with you, and I with Crabbe, if, as I understand, he be of the party.

Yours ever,

CH. LAMB.

[Lamb's future biographer was then living at 26 Henrietta Street, Brunswick Square. He had married in 1822. Crabb Robinson's Diary for May 21 tells us that Talfourd's party consisted of the Lambs, Wordsworth, Miss Anne Rutt, three barristers and himself. Lamb was in excellent spirits. He slept at Robinson's that night.]



LETTER 457

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

[No date. May, 1828.]

Dear Wordsworth, we had meant to have tried to see Mrs. Wordsworth and Dora next Wednesday, but we are intercepted by a violent toothache which Mary has got by getting up next morning after parting with you, to be with my going off at 1/2 past 8 Holborn. We are poor travellers, and moreover we have company (damn 'em) good people, Mr. Hone and an old crony not seen for 20 years, coming here on Tuesday, one stays night with us, and Mary doubts my power to get up time enough, and comfort enough, to be so far as you are. Will you name a day in the same or coming week that we can come to you in the morning, for it would plague us not to see the other two of you, whom we cannot individualize from you, before you go. It is bad enough not to see your Sister Dorothy.

God bless you sincerely

C. LAMB.

[Robinson dates this letter 1810, but this is clearly wrong. It was obviously written after Lamb's liberation from the India House. If, as I suppose, the old crony is Walter Wilson, we get the date from Lamb's letters to him and to Hone, mentioned above.

By "the other two of you" Lamb means Dora Wordsworth and Johnny Wordsworth. Lamb had already seen William. The address of the present letter is W. Wordsworth, Esq., 12 Bryanstone Street, Portman Square.

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Cary, dated June 10, 1828, declining on account of ill-health an invitation to dinner, to meet Wordsworth. Instead he asks Cary to Enfield with Darley and Procter.]



LETTER 458

CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. MORGAN

Enfield, 17 June, 1828.

The gentleman who brings this to you has been 12 years principal assistant at the first School in Enfield, and bears the highest character for carefulness and scholarship. He is about opening an Establishment of his own, a Classical and Commercial Academy at Peckham. He has just married a very notable and amiable young person, our next neighbour's daughter, and I do not doubt of their final success, but everything must have a beginning and he wants pupils. It strikes me, that one or two of Mr. Thompson's sons may be about leaving you,—in that case, if you can recommend my friend's school, you will much oblige me. I can answer for the very excellent manner in which he has conducted himself here as an assistant, for I have talked it over with Dr. May's brother and I know him to be very learned. He will explain to you the situation of our cottage, where we hope to see you soon—with Mary's kind love.

[The gentleman was a Mr. Sugden.]



LETTER 459

MARY LAMB TO THE THOMAS HOODS

[No date. ? Summer, 1828.]

My dear Friends,—My brother and Emma are to send you a partnership letter, but as I have a great dislike to my stupid scrap at the fag end of a dull letter, and, as I am left alone, I will say my say first; and in the first place thank you for your kind letter; it was a mighty comfort to me. Ever since you left me, I have been thinking I know not what, but every possible thing that I could invent, why you should be angry with me for something I had done or left undone during your uncomfortable sojourn with us, and now I read your letter and think and feel all is well again. Emma and her sister Harriet are gone to Theobalds Park, and Charles is gone to Barnet to cure his headache, which a good old lady has talked him into. She came on Thursday and left us yesterday evening. I mean she was Mrs. Paris, with whom Emma's aunt lived at Cambridge, and she had so much to [tell] her about Cambridge friends, and to [tell] us about London ditto, that her tongue was never at rest through the whole day, and at night she took Hood's Whims and Oddities to bed with her and laught all night. Bless her spirits! I wish I had them and she were as mopey as I am. Emma came on Monday, and the week has passed away I know not how. But we have promised all the week that we should go and see the Picture friday or saturday, and stay a night or so with you. Friday came and we could not turn Mrs. Paris out so soon, and on friday evening the thing was wholly given up. Saturday morning brought fresh hopes; Mrs. Paris agreed to go to see the picture with us, and we were to walk to Edmonton. My Hat and my new gown were put on in great haste, and his honor, who decides all things here, would have it that we could not get to Edmonton in time; and there was an end of all things. Expecting to see you, I did not write.

Monday evening.

Charles and Emma are taking a second walk. Harriet is gone home. Charles wishes to know more about the Widow. Is it to be made to match a drawing? If you could throw a little more light on the subject, I think he would do it, when Emma is gone; but his time will be quite taken up with her; for, besides refreshing her Latin, he gives her long lessons in arithmetic, which she is sadly deficient in. She leaves in a week, unless she receives a renewal of her holydays, which Mrs. Williams has half promised to send her. I do verily believe that I may hope to pass the last one, or two, or three nights with you, as she is to go from London to Bury. We will write to you the instant we receive Mrs. W.'s letter. As to my poor sonnet—and it is a very poor sonnet, only [it] answered very well the purpose it was written for—Emma left it behind her, and nobody remembers more than one line of it, which is, I think, sufficient to convince you it would make no great impression in an Annual. So pray let it rest in peace, and I will make Charles write a better one instead.

This shall go to the Post to-night. If any [one] chooses to add anything to it they may. It will glad my heart to see you again.

Yours (both yours) truly and affectionately, M. LAMB.

Becky is going by the Post office, so I will send it away. I mean to commence letter-writer to the family.

[Mr. Hazlitt dates this letter April, 1828. The reference to the Widow, towards the end, shows that Hood was preparing The Gem, and, what is not generally known, that Lamb had been asked to write on that subject. As it happened, Hood wrote the essay for him and signed it Elia (see note below). Mrs. Paris we have met. Harriet, Emma Isola's sister, we do not hear of again. I was recently shown a copy of Lamb's Works, 1818, inscribed in his hand to Miss Isola: this would be Harriet Isola. Emma had just begun her duties at Fornham, in Suffolk, where she taught the children of a Mr. Williams, a clergyman. I cannot say what the Picture was. The sonnet was probably that printed in the note to the letter to Mrs. Shelley of July 26, 1827. Charles Lamb's and Emma's joint letter has not been preserved.]



LETTER 460

CHARLES LAMB TO B.R. HAYDON

August, 1828.

Dear Haydon,—I have been tardy in telling you that your Chairing the Member gave me great pleasure;—'tis true broad Hogarthian fun, the High Sheriff capital. Considering, too, that you had the materials imposed upon you, and that you did not select them from the rude world as H. did, I hope to see many more such from your hand. If the former picture went beyond this I have had a loss, and the King a bargain. I longed to rub the back of my hand across the hearty canvas that two senses might be gratified. Perhaps the subject is a little discordantly placed opposite to another act of Chairing, where the huzzas were Hosannahs,—but I was pleased to see so many of my old acquaintances brought together notwithstanding.

Believe me, yours truly,

C. LAMB.

[Haydon's "Chairing the Member" was exhibited in Bond Street this year, together with "Christ's Entry into Jerusalem," and other of his works. "The former picture" was his "Mock Election," which the King had bought for 500 guineas. For "Chairing the Member" Haydon received only half that price.

Here should come a letter to Rickman, dated September 11, 1828, in which Lamb thanks him for a present of nuts and apples, but is surprised that apples should be offered to the owner of a "whole tree, almost an orchard," and "an apple chamber redolent" to boot.

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Louisa Holcroft, dated October 2, 1828, in which, so soon after Mary Lamb's determination to be the letter writer of the family, he says, "Mary Lamb has written her last letter in this world," adding that he has been left her writing legatee. He calls geese "those pretty birds that look like snow in summer, and cackle like ice breaking up."

Here should come a long Latin letter to Rickman, dated October 4, 1828. Canon Ainger prints the Latin. I append an English version:—]



LETTER 461

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN RICKMAN

(Translation)

[Postmark Oct. 3, 1828.]

I have been thinking of sending some kind of an answer in Latin to your very elaborate letter, but something has arisen every day to hinder me. To begin with our awkward friend M.B. has been with us for a while, and every day and all day we have had such a lecture, you know how he stutters, on legal, mind, nothing but legal notices, that I have been afraid the Latin I want to write might prove rather barbaro-forensic than Ciceronian. He is swallowed up, body and soul, in law; he eats, drinks, plays (at the card table) Law, nothing but Law. He acts Ignoramus in the play so thoroughly, that you w'd swear that in the inmost marrow of his head (is not this the proper anatomical term?) there have housed themselves not devils but pettifoggers, to bemuddle with their noisy chatter his own and his friends' wits. He brought here, 'twas all his luggage, a book, Fearn on Contingent Remainders. This book he has read so hard, and taken such infinite pains to understand, that the reader's brain has few or no Remainders to continge. Enough, however, of M.B. and his luggage. To come back to your claims upon me. Your return journey, with notes, I read again and again, nor have I done with them yet. You always make something fresh out of a hackneyed theme. Our milestones, you say, bristle with blunders, but I must shortly explain why I cannot comply with your directions herein.

Suppose I were to consult the local magnates about a matter of this kind.—Ha! says one of our waywardens or parish overseers,—What business is this of yours? Do you want to drop the Lodger and come out as a Householder?—Now you must know that I took this house of mine at Enfield, by an obvious domiciliary fiction, in my Sister's name, to avoid the bother and trouble of parish and vestry meetings, and to escape finding myself one day an overseer or big-wig of some sort. What then w'd be my reply to the above question?

Leisure I have secured: but of dignity, not a tittle. Besides, to tell you the truth, the aforesaid irregularities are, to my thinking, most entertaining, and in fact very touching indeed. Here am I, quit of worldly affairs of every kind; for if superannuation does not mean that, what does it mean? The world then, being, as the saying is, beyond my ken, and being myself entirely removed from any accurate distinctions of space or time, these mistakes in road-measure do not seriously offend me. For in the infinite space of the heavens above (which in this contracted sphere of mine I desire to imitate so far as may be) what need is there of milestones? Local distance has to do with mortal affairs. In my walks abroad, limited though they must be, I am quite at my own disposal, and on that account I have a good word for our Enfield clocks too. Their hands generally point without any servile reference to this Sun of our World, in his sub-Empyrean position. They strike too just as it happens, according to their own sweet wiles,—one—two—three—anything they like, and thus to me, a more fortunate Whittington, they pleasantly announce, that Time, so far as I am concerned, is no more. Here you have my reasons for not attending in this matter to the requests of a busy subsolar such as you are.

Furthermore, when I reach the milestone that counts from the Hicks-Hall that stands now, I own at once the Aulic dignity, and, were I a gaol-bird, I should shake in my shoes. When I reach the next which counts from the site of the old Hall, my thoughts turn to the fallen grandeur of the pile, and I reflect upon the perishable condition of the most imposing of human structures. Thus I banish from my soul all pride and arrogance, and with such meditations purify my heart from day to day. A wayfarer such as I am, may learn from Vincent Bourne, in words terser and neater than any of mine, the advantages of milestones properly arranged. The lines are at the end of a little poem of his, called Milestones—(Do you remember it or shall I write it all out?)

How well the Milestones' use doth this express, Which make the miles [seem] more and way seem less.

What do you mean by this—I am borrowing hand and style from this youngster of mine—your son, I take it. The style looks, nay on careful inspection by these old eyes, is most clearly your very own, and the writing too. Either R's or the Devil's. I will defer your explanation till our next meeting—may it be soon.

My Latin failing me, as you may infer from erasures above, there is only this to add. Farewell, and be sure to give Mrs. Rickman my kind remembrances.

C. LAMB.

Enfield, Chase Side, 4th Oct., 1828. I can't put this properly into Latin. Dabam—what is it?



LETTER 462

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. October 11, 1828.]

A splendid edition of Bunyan's Pilgrim—why, the thought is enough to turn one's moral stomach. His cockle hat and staff transformed to a smart cockd beaver and a jemmy cane, his amice gray to the last Regent Street cut, and his painful Palmer's pace to the modern swagger. Stop thy friend's sacriligious hand. Nothing can be done for B. but to reprint the old cuts in as homely but good a style as possible. The Vanity Fair, and the pilgrims there—the silly soothness in his setting out countenance—the Christian idiocy (in a good sense) of his admiration of the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains—the Lions so truly Allegorical and remote from any similitude to Pidcock's. The great head (the author's) capacious of dreams and similitudes dreaming in the dungeon. Perhaps you don't know my edition, what I had when a child: if you do, can you bear new designs from—Martin, enameld into copper or silver plate by—Heath, accompanied with verses from Mrs. Heman's pen O how unlike his own—

Wouldst thou divert thyself from melancholy? Wouldst thou be pleasant, yet be far from folly? Wouldst thou read riddles and their explanation? Or else be drowned in thy contemplation? Dost thou love picking meat? or wouldst thou see A man i' th' clouds, and hear him speak to thee? Wouldst thou be in a dream, and yet not sleep? Or wouldst thou in a moment laugh and weep? Or wouldst thou lose thyself, and catch no harm, And find thyself again without a charm? Wouldst read thyself, and read thou knowst not what, And yet know whether thou art blest or not By reading the same lines? O then come hither, And lay my book, thy head and heart together.

JOHN BUNYAN.

Shew me such poetry in any of the 15 forthcoming combinations of show and emptiness, yclept Annuals. Let me whisper in your ear that wholesome sacramental bread is not more nutritious than papistical wafer stuff, than these (to head and heart) exceed the visual frippery of Mitford's Salamander God, baking himself up to the work of creation in a solar oven, not yet by the terms of the context itself existing. Blake's ravings made genteel. So there's verses for thy verses; and now let me tell you that the sight of your hand gladdend me. I have been daily trying to write to you, but paralysed. You have spurd me on this tiny effort, and at intervals I hope to hear from and talk to you. But my spirits have been in a deprest way for a long long time, and they are things which must be to you of faith, for who can explain depression? Yes I am hooked into the Gem, but only for some lines written on a dead infant of the Editor's, which being as it were his property, I could not refuse their appearing, but I hate the paper, the type, the gloss, the dandy plates, the names of contributors poked up into your eyes in 1st page, and whistled thro' all the covers of magazines, the barefaced sort of emulation, the unmodest candidateship, bro't into so little space—in those old Londons a signature was lost in the wood of matter—the paper coarse (till latterly, which spoil'd them)—in short I detest to appear in an Annual. What a fertile genius (an[d] a quiet good soul withal) is Hood. He has 50 things in hand, farces to supply the Adelphi for the season, a comedy for one of the great theatres, just ready, a whole entertainment by himself for Mathews and Yates to figure in, a meditated Comic Annual for next year, to be nearly done by himself.— You'd like him very much. Wordsworth I see has a good many pieces announced in one of em, not our Gem. W. Scott has distributed himself like a bribe haunch among 'em. Of all the poets, Cary has had the good sense to keep quite clear of 'em, with Clergy-gentle-manly right notions. Don't think I set up for being proud in this point, I like a bit of flattery tickling my vanity as well as any one. But these pompous masquerades without masks (naked names or faces) I hate. So there's a bit of my mind. Besides they infallibly cheat you, I mean the booksellers. If I get but a copy, I only expect it from Hood's being my friend. Coleridge has lately been here. He too is deep among the Prophets—the Yearservers—the mob of Gentlemen Annuals. But they'll cheat him, I know.